The new year is here! One of my New Year bookish traditions is to very carefully choose my first book of the year. The idea is that this book will set the tone for my entire reading year. I’m not sure when I adopted this tradition, but I suspect that it came after I joined BookTube, which is a wonderful bookish culture all its own. It’s quickly become my favorite tradition. To start off 2024, I’ll be sharing some incredible nonfiction books with which to begin the new year. But first, as always, bookish goods!
2024 is the tenth year of the Read Harder Challenge! Join us as we make our way through 24 tasks meant to expand our reading horizons and diversify our TBRs. To get book recommendations for each task, sign up for the Read Harder newsletter. We’ll also keep you informed about other cool reading challenges, readathons, and more across the bookish internet. If you become a paid subscriber, you get even more recommendations plus community features, where you can connect with a community of passionate, like-minded readers in a cozy and supportive corner of the internet. Sign up today!
Bookish Goods
Library Card Birthday Card by BookologyCo
Once upon a time, I was so organized that I bought and prepared all of my birthday cards at the beginning of the year. I was never surprised by a family member’s birthday. Now, I lean into the chaos, and I just buy several and stash them away to use as needed. Whatever your preferred method, this birthday card is perfect. $7
New Releases
Divine Might by Natalie Haynes
While Haynes is more known for her fiction, Divine Might is nonfiction, each chapter examining Greek goddesses and their stories. Haynes steps back and asks who is telling these women’s stories? When are these stories being told? How would these stories have been received in ancient times versus how they are perceived now?
On Thriving: Harnessing Joy Through Life’s Great Labors by Brandi Sellerz-Jackson
Brandi Sellerz-Jackson describes her perspective on how folks can move from survival mode to truly living. She shares anecdotes from her life and from her experience as a doula to explain how readers can embrace difficulty and conquer the challenges in their lives.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life by Alice Wong
Year of the Tiger was, hands down, one of my favorite books of 2022. In the disability community, Alice Wong is a legend. She’s such a strong advocate for disability justice, and her memoir is a gift. She shares stories from her life, excerpts from articles she’s written for various publications, and transcripts of interviews she conducted in the last several years. I really appreciated her multimedia approach to her memoir, which gives it a unique feel, like snapshots from her life.
Against Technoableism by Ashley Shew
Disability advocate and technology professor Ashley Shew examines the idea of “technoableism,” which is “the belief in the power of technology that considers the elimination of disability a good thing, something we should strive for.” As a disabled person myself, I really appreciated Shew’s frank discussion of the ways that society often forces technology on disabled people in order to “cure” us, whether we like it or not. Shew discusses the way amputees are encouraged to get prosthetics, even if they aren’t the best fit for that person’s situation. She describes how autistic and other kinds of neurodivergent people are pushed to try to behave as “normal” as possible. And she highlights how technology can actually be incredibly helpful for disabled people when they are directing their own futures.
That’s it for this week! You can find me over on my substack Winchester Ave, over on Instagram @kdwinchester, or on my podcast Read Appalachia. As always, feel free to drop me a line at kendra.d.winchester@gmail.com. For even MORE bookish content, you can find my articles over on Book Riot.
Happy Reading, Friends!
~ Kendra