Author: Erica Ezeifedi

I am a simple creature. You fry a fish and I’ll eat it. Seriously, it may be a circumstance of my Nashvillian upbringing, but I love a good fish fry. This recipe does something new that I find super intriguing. It uses corn meal (which I’m used to for frying fish), but also ground up roasted pine nuts. You follow the usual steps for frying fish, you just add pine nuts that you’ve roasted and ground for five minutes to the dry fish fry before you coat the fish and fry it in oil at 350 degrees.

Reading the title and looking at the cover had me thinking “Is that…Patricia? With the rather large hand and dripping nail polish??”

Let’s just say it might be because once the weary contestants of a heterosexual dating show make it to the top of an island’s tallest peak and meet her, they have to start fighting for their lives. This is a comedy that’s also a queer love story that I’ve seen compared to X-Files and The Bachelor.

This book won this year’s 2022 Booker Award, proving that extra plots are where it’s at. In this satire, it’s 1990 in Colombo when queer photographer Maali Almeida wakes up in the celestial visa office. Well, his consciousness wakes up, while the rest of him — his actual body — is rotting in the Beira Lake. He has no idea who killed him, and the widespread, varied violence of the time makes the suspect list long. To add to the drama of it all, he has only seven moons to lead two loved ones to photos that will change the course of Sri Lanka.

Tell me you wouldn’t read this cover in a bookstore or at a library and have to pick it up. And the title is pretty spot on. Cinnamon is drunk when she saves the shifter demon Fallon, and after he follows her home and tells her of the evil goddess that has reduced demons to zombie-like states, she accompanies him to free his people. She helps him free some other things, too, if you know what I mean. This is a fun, funny, steamy monster romance with a Black female lead (in other words, you should read it ASAP). Bonus points for Cinnamon’s siblings being named Chili and Cumin.

I’m a plebeian and have never read any McCarthy books, but I’ve heard they can be pretty out there as a general rule. This one seems to have core elements that tickle my fancy. It follows Bobby Western, a salvage diver, who, in 1980 Mississippi, has found a sunken jet. Among the wreckage are nine bodies, but what isn’t there is more where the story lies. The black box is missing and so is the 10th passenger, and people are thinking Bobby had something to do with it. This may sound like a kind of so-so set up so far, intriguing but not quite out there, but what made me do a double take with this one was that 1) both Bobby and his sister are mathematical geniuses who are descendants of a scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project, and 2) he’s in love with his sister who spends her last days in an asylum.

It’s settling into colder temperatures in many places, which means this Moroccan staple will come in clutch for many. I love this tomato-based lentil and chickpea soup — which can be vegetarian/vegan or not if you like. Follow Taste of Maroc’s recipe to find out how to make it.

I’ll start with the book itself in case many aren’t familiar, but I have to warn you that I haven’t actually read Akira. Yet. But since watching the movie this past weekend, I am definitely interested. Although the movie was long for an anime, there inevitably were details left out. This follows Tetsuo and Kaneda, two teen boys who are friends and part of a motorcycle gang in Neo Tokyo. They battle other street gangs, occasionally go to a derelict alternative high school, and do all matter of inappropriate activity all while protests and unrest seems to be amping up in the city. Once Tetsuo’s and Kaneda’s gang crosses paths with a boy with psychic powers, their lives change forever. Tetsuo gets taken away and when he’s seen next, he also has psychic powers. Powers that he can’t control. Then there’s the seemingly mythological Akira, who may have caused WWIII and Tokyo’s annihilation years past.

In this version of Japan, human existence and machine existence have intersected. Humans are regularly upgraded with machine parts, and machines with human parts. It’s in this world that Major Motoko Kusanagi is tasked with tracking down the worst kinds of cybercriminals. One in particular, known as the Puppeteer, exploits the human/machine interface by hacking it in order to control people’s bodies. Chasing down this master hacker leads her down a path that shows her a whole new world.

Soo, another confession: I’ve watched several seasons of the show this series was adapted into, but haven’t read one book. Clearly I am slacking! Here, humans have colonized planetary bodies within the solar system. One day Jim Holden’s ice miner team finds an abandoned ship, the Scopuli, and a secret that they could have lived without. Elsewhere, Detective Miller searches for a billionaire’s missing daughter. Eventually, Miller and Holden cross paths and they realize that the missing girl may explain what’s gone wrong.

While I like watching superhero movies, I’ve never been much of one to read comics centered around them. They are just not really my cup of tea. Until now! Sojourner Mullein is a new Green Lantern and protects City Enduring. Her job has been fairly easy as the massive city has known peace for the last 500 years, which it attained by removing its citizens’ ability to feel. Violent crime has been nonexistent ever since. But then a brutal murder breaks this artificially gained era of peace and Sojourner must solve the crime and bring back peace.