Hello, my Tuesday friends. I hope you are enjoying your January. There’s so much going on! Lots of wacky weather, lots of sports, lots of great books. We have been dealing with a sick kitty for the past couple of weeks, so I haven’t finished the books I am going to talk about today. But you know how much I love to just get books on your radar! I say it all the time, and I’ll say it again: Books save lives. Finding the right book can make all the difference, and I appreciate you letting me talk about them with you each week. Today, I have the story of an NYC fashion writer who takes a job in Silicon Valley, a moving and scary middle grade novel about big changes, and a sci-fi thriller in which things get a little wooly!
As far as other new releases, at the top of my list of today’s books that I want to buy are The Curse of Pietro Houdini by Derek B. Miller, The Best That You Can Do: Stories by Amina Gautier, and All I See is Violence by Angie Elita Newell. You can hear about more of the fabulous books coming out today on this week’s episode of All the Books! Vanessa and I talked about great books we loved that are out this week, including This Wretched Valley, Escaping Mr. Rochester, and Beautyland.
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!
And now it’s time for everyone’s favorite game, “Ahhh, My TBR!” Here are today’s contestants!
Valley Verified by Kyla Zhao
When Zoe Zeng moved to NYC to take a job writing about fashion, she thought she had made it. But her boss is young Miranda Priestly, her living situation is cramped, and the industry is hostile to people who have her body type. When a random stranger at a show offers her a job doing publicity for their fashion app, she brushes it off. As her boss gets more horrible and the city continues to disappoint her, though, she decides, “Why not?” But a cross-country move isn’t necessarily going to solve her problems. As Zoe’s time at the app FitPick goes by, she’ll find that the change of job and scenery still comes with the elitism, sexism, and racism she encountered in NYC. If Zoe can help get the funding to launch FitPick, it will be huge for her career and her bank account. But at what cost?
Backlist bump: The Fraud Squad by Kyla Zhao
Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu
Anne Ursu has been consistently writing wonderful books for children for some time now, and this is no exception. Ursu paints a new picture with a familiar story: A child who has to move schools because a parent marries someone new and starts a new family. In this case, it’s Violet Hart. Her mom and her new husband move Violet and her new sibling into a creepy new house. Violet feels replaced by the new baby, especially after they put her bedroom in the dingy attic with the yellow wallpaper. As if that isn’t bad enough, Violet becomes ill shortly after moving in. With her family perplexed as to what is wrong, Violet begins to have hallucinations that there’s someone else in the attic with her. But as the days of illness turn to weeks, she realizes maybe she’s not imagining things after all. How can Violet get out of her situation — and what does this spirit in the attic want from her? This is a smart, sensitive book about change, illness, and anxiety (drawn from The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.)
Backlist bump: The Lost Girl by Anne Ursu
The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler
And I haven’t read any of this one yet, but it sounds absolutely bananapants! It’s a sci-fi thriller about extinction and cloning. When an elephant expert is killed trying to save the last elephants from ivory poachers, her consciousness is downloaded into the mind of a wooly mammoth. (“Oh, she may get wooly…”) Wooly mammoth: “Extinct, who me?” The mammoths have been cloned using their DNA, and now Dr. Khismatullina is one. The goal is to have her teach the other mammoths how to survive in the 21st century. But can her herd get the hang of their new surroundings before the poachers seeking rare mammoth ivory find them? As Dr. Khismatullina teaches the herd everything she knows, she begins to glimpse the real reasons the mammoths were brought back to life in the first place. (“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”) This sounds like a mammoth revenge thriller, and I can’t wait to see if these toothy snuffleupaguses stick it to the poachers!
Backlist bump: The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
This week, I am reading Dead in Long Beach, California by Venita Blackburn and Ilium by Lea Carpenter. I ended up having a very busy weekend, but I really want to see two movies that have just started streaming: Self Reliance and Death and Other Details. The song stuck in my head this week is “Frying Pan” by Evan Dando. And here is your weekly cat picture: This past week marked five years since these two little orange howler monkeys came into our home. So, I thought I would mark it by sharing a picture from when they were small. That’s smol Zevon on the left and smol Farrokh on the right.
I appreciate you more than I can say, friends. Thank you for joining me each Tuesday as I rave about books! I am wishing you all a wonderful rest of your week, whatever situation you find yourself in now. And yay, books! See you next week! – XO, Liberty