Hello, my friends. I hope your February is going smoothly. Sometimes, I wish I had something different to tell you, like, “This weekend, I won a wrestling championship, then swam with tiger sharks, and finished my Sunday by going square dancing with a family of poodles!” But…nope. This weekend, I read books. I feel very fortunate to be able to do the thing I love pretty much every day. And then I get to tell you about the books I read! Like today, I have a highly anticipated YA vampire book, a wonderful memoir about food and family, and a new entry in one of my favorite middle grade graphic novel series!
As for other new releases, at the top of my list of today’s books that I want to get my hands on are Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters by Charan Ranganath, River Mumma by Zalika Reid-Benta, and A Fire So Wild by Sarah Ruiz-Grossman. You can hear about more of the fabulous books coming out today on this week’s episode of All the Books! Tirzah and I talked about great books we loved that are out this week, including Splinters, Island Witch, and Ours.
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And now it’s time for everyone’s favorite game, “Ahhh, My TBR!” Here are today’s contestants!
A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal
As a fan of Faizal’s earlier work, this first in a dark YA duology has been on my TBR since they announced it. How could it not be? A teahouse that turns into an illegal vampire den of iniquity in the evening, with a heist and double-crossing? YES, PLEASE. Arthie Casimir is the owner of the place, an established criminal, and the one everyone tells their secrets to. But when Arthie’s livelihood is threatened, she decides to take on the city’s fanged citizens. She’ll need a crew to pull it off, one she can trust. But Arthie learns the hard way that you can’t really fully trust anyone, especially when it comes to criminals. I would like an adaptation of this right now, please and thank you. And the second book, post haste! (Content warnings for violence, gore, murder, loss of a loved one, racism, and xenophobia.)
Backlist bump: We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal
Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes by Chantha Nguon and Kim Green
This is Nguon’s powerful story of Cambodia, war, family, and food. Nguon lost her family during the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s. She was able to escape and became a refugee in Thailand, where she worked whatever jobs she could find. Through making the food from the recipes of her family, Nguon kept their memories alive and felt close to them. It also was an act of resistance, recreating the food of the people the Khmer Rouge attempted to wipe out. This is a tough read at times, but it’s also one of bravery and determination. Nguon has written a love letter to those she lost and to the millions of other victims of Pol Pot’s rule. (Content warnings for mentions of violence, war, genocide, racism, sexual assault of children and adults, child death, loss of loved ones, and suicide.)
Backlist bump: Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam by Thien Pham
InvestiGators: Agents of S.U.I.T.: From Badger to Worse by John Patrick Green, Christopher Hastings, Pat Lewis
As I mentioned last week, I love the InvestiGators series, featuring two alligator secret agents named Mango and Brash who solve mysteries and stop crimes for S.U.I.T.* or Special Undercover Investigation Teams. They get all kinds of cool spy gadgets and go on adventures. And now there’s a spinoff series featuring other agents! The first book was with chameleons, and this one is about Bongo and Marsha, the badgers of the B-Team. They are headed to Bora Bora to investigate criminal activity at a tropical resort. I normally recommend books in order, but you can pick any of these up and know what’s going on. They’re very colorful and silly, the villains are never scary, and the books all have more puns than should be legal. (Warning for badgers not wearing any pants.)
Backlist bump: InvestiGators by John Patrick Green
This week, I am reading Green Dot by Madeleine Gray and Killer House Party by Lily Anderson. In non-book news, now that True Detective S4 is done (meh), we need a new show. I am thinking the second season of Slow Horses. We watched the first season and enjoyed it. Then I got it in my head that I wanted to read the books before I continued, but that was two years ago, and it still hasn’t happened. So it’s time to start it again! I haven’t watched a movie in a long time, so I hope to get to a couple of those soon, too. I really want to see Poor Things and All of Us Strangers. (I love Andrew Scott so much.) The song stuck in my head this week is “Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You” by Flock of Seagulls. And here is your weekly cat picture: We are doing spring cleaning early (or late, if you count the last several years, lol), and Farrokh wants to try sleeping on every container we pack. He’s like a little fanged Goldilocks.
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
“My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.”—Dylan Thomas