Author: Vanessa Diaz

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In The Club

Gather Round the Snapchat: In The Club

Hola, friends! Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed.

It’s April! That means it’s Cuba month for me and I’m starting to get giddy about it! In the meantime, this week I’ll share a rodent-insect romance, muse on memoirs, drop new podcast news on the people, and more, all while wondering whether I am indeed a cusp millennial or solidly in that generational classification.

To the club!

Sponsored by A People’s History of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanian from Algonquin Books.

a people's history of heavenThe eagerly anticipated A People’s History of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanian centers on a circle of friends in a Bangalore slum known as Heaven. Together they wage war on the bulldozers that would bury their homes and the city that does not care. A politically driven graffiti artist. A transgender Christian convert. A blind girl who loves to dance. A queer daughter of a hijabi union leader. “This is a book to give your little sister, your mother, your best friend, yourself, so together you can celebrate the strength of women and girls, the tenacity it takes to survive in a world that would rather have you disappear.” ─Nylon

Question for the Club

Last week I asked whether your book club actively chooses books written by women and what percentage of your reading fits the bill.

  • Several responses came from members of book clubs made up entirely of women who specifically read books written by women. For them it was a yes and 100%!
  • The majority of responders said that while they don’t actively choose books written by women, 70% or more of their selection end up being by women. Not bad!

Most of you are reading tons of books by women and that is something to celebrate! If this question were instead about authors of color or reads by LGBTQIA writers: would our reading rank as highly on the inclusivity scale? (For some of you, it already does!) I challenge you all to track your reading more mindfully and see what gaps there might be in your habits. I personally find this a really fun endeavor: I love me a reading challenge!

On to the next one! As always, send your responses to vanessa@riotnewmedia.com.

Kidlit These Days

Cue the airhorns, folks: we have a new podcast! Hosted by New York Times bestselling author Karina Yan Glaser and children’s librarian and host of The Children’s Book Podcast Matthew Winner, Kidlit These Days will pair the best of children’s literature with what’s going on in the world today. Get into it!

Book Club Bonus: The show’s inaugural episode touched on an incident that absolutely incensed me last fall involving Idaho elementary school teachers and some racist costume choices (I just CANNOT). The conversation focused on the importance of inclusive children’s literature to combat a grossly misinformed and increasingly pervasive narrative surrounding Latinx immigrants. The books that Karina and Matt suggest are all ones that I’d love to see in a book club for children. Parents and guardians: gather your littles during playdates for story time and incorporate these beautiful reads to broaden their young perspectives.

Related: Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré  taught me about a Puerto Rican folktale involving a mouse and a cockroach who are in love and I’m still not over it! Illustrator Paola Escobar managed to make one of the creatures that freaks me out most in this world cute! The whole scene in the book is just *chef’s kiss.* Seriously – read it if only to learn about mousekroach romance of Perez and Martinez.

Maybe Try a Memoir

If you’re mostly a fiction reader, you might find yourself a little hesitant to make the leap to nonfiction. Fear not! Here’s a list of fascinating memoirs to get you started; some of these stories are so wild, you’ll forget they aren’t made up.

Book Club Bonus: Many moons ago, I was one of those people who only primarily read fiction because I classed non-fic as one giant snooze fest (I know, I know! I was young and naive but have grown). If your book club has avoided non-fiction for fear of pacing and narrative issues, a page-turner memoir is a great place to start. If your club members are anything like me, they might just have one of those “Holy shitake mushrooms, truth really is stranger than fiction!” moments and seek out more nonfiction post haste.

Related: A couple of quick recs from me: I cosign Educated by Tara Westover on the memoir front. Once you’re ready for more, try Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann, Bad Blood by John Carreyrou, or The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. At the bookstore, I call these my “what in the actual f*#%?” books, of which there are many, many more.

Millennials Ruin Everything

Lately whenever a news story comes out of Florida, I read it with one eye closed hoping it’s not hot trash (no shade to all my progressive Floridians!). I was rewarded today when I learned of a cool Florida-based book club led by two young librarians at the Mandel Public Library. The club’s name? Millennials Ruin Book Club.

Book Club Bonus:  I’ve pitched an idea similar to the structure of Millennials Ruin Book Club where everyone reads a different book and then takes turn sharing their read with the group. This may take a little away from the shared experience, but I appreciate how this looser format takes the pressure off for those with busier schedules. Do any other libraries (or other groups) out there do this sort of thing? It would be kind of cool to just have the option of showing up and talking about whatever the heck I just happened to have read.

Related: I have recently embraced the title of Elder Millennial after watching Iliza Schlesinger’s hilarious comedy special of the same name. Seriously, she took me down when she hunched over and croaked, “Gather round the Snapchat, children. I’ll tell you the tale of… the landline!”  Dead. 

Suggestion Section

Thanks for hanging with me today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with your burning book club questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the Audiobooks newsletter, get it on the Read Harder podcast, and watch me booktube every Friday too.

Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa

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Today In Books Uncategorized

Call Racist Stuff Racist: Today In Books

This edition of Today in Books is sponsored by The Chaos Function by Jack Skillingstead.

Fat-Positively Fabulous

Fatventure Mag is a badass magazine that’s dismantling the toxic stigmas of diet and weight-loss culture. Its community is a body-positive space for people of all sizes, abilities, and sexualities leading active lifestyles, the kind of space we desperately need more of here and now. Let’s rally to get their second volume fully funded.

For the Love of Literati

It’s been six years since Literati opened its door in Ann Arbor, Michigan with seven employees and 9,000 books. With just about three times the staff and inventory in 2019, this bookstore success story and community pillar is Publishers Weekly’s Bookstore of the Year.

Call Racist Stuff Racist, The AP Says So!

The Associated Press recently updated its style guide on race-related issues, a move that’s kind of awesome and also kind of overdue. The changes include eliminating the “hyphenated American” and encourages journalists to call racists… well, racist.

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Audiobooks

A Bounty of New Audiobook Releases, and More

Hola, Audiophiles!

Just like that March is pretty much over and out! April is a few days away and that means it’s time for crazy spring allergies (halp!) but also: new books. There are so, so many upcoming titles I want to share with you today–too many, in fact. So I decided to split up the batch of new books between today and next week’s email to avoid writing The Newsletter of A Thousand Scrolls.

Can I also take a minute to say how excited I am for our new podcast?? Our new show is called Kidlit These Days and it’s hosted by author and BR contributor Karina Glaser and children’s librarian Matthew Winner. It’s perfect for anyone who loves to read (or loves to give) picture books and chapter books. My baby nephew ain’t gonna know what hit him!

Back to the audio things. Here are some titles coming out in the first half of April. Let’s audio!

Sponsored by Oasis Audio

Fred Rogers was an enormously influential figure in the history of television and in the lives of tens of millions of children. The Good Neighbor, the first full-length biography of Fred Rogers, tells the story of this enduring American icon. Narrated by LeVar Burton, The Good Neighbor traces Rogers’s personal, professional, and artistic life through decades of work — including a surprising decision to walk away from the show to make television for adults, only to return with increasingly sophisticated episodes. An engaging story, rich in detail, The Good Neighbor is the definitive portrait of a beloved figure, cherished by generations.

 New Releases (publisher’s descriptions in quotes)

boy swallows universeBoy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton, narrated by Stig Wemyss (April 2)

Life has never been easy for 12-year-old Eli Bell. He lives in a remote and seedy suburb in less than ideal conditions: his father is lost, his mother is in jail, and his stepdad is a heroin dealer. The one person he looks up to is Slim, an elderly felon with a knack for escaping from prison who serves as protector his Eli and his older brother August. All Eli wants is to fix his broken home, fall in love, and maybe bust a drug ring, as one does. Tis quite the tall order for someone who has yet to start high school. This debut set in 1980s Australia is a coming of age story about brotherhood, love, crime, and friendship in unexpected places.

Lights All Night Long by Lydia Fitzpatrick, narrated by Michael Crouch (April 2)

Fifteen-year-old Ilya is a Russian exchange student who’s newly arrived in Louisiana, ready for what should be a super awesome year in the states. He’s immediately struck by all of the good ol’ American excess: the giant Walmarts, huge televisions, the weirdly cheery personalities of his host family. As he tries to adjust to his new surroundings, he can’t help but think about Vladimir, the brother he left behind in Russia and watched descend into an underworld of drugs and violence before he was ultimately imprisoned for murder. Ilya becomes obsessed with proving his brother’s innocence from afar, discovering truths about Vladimir that he could only have learned from a distance.

The Affairs of the Falcons by Melissa Rivera, narrated by Frankie Corzo (April 2)

Ana Falcón is a young undocumented woman who’s fled economic and political unrest in Peru with her husband and children. They plan to find a fresh start in 1990s New York City, but Ana soon finds that survival is an uphill battle. The factory work she finds in grueling and unrelenting, debt to a loan shark is piling up, the cousin whose spare room the family is staying with has had just about enough of them, and Ana begins to receive unwanted attention from a man who isn’t her husband. Ana’s husband wants to return to Peru, but the past Ana ran from is too dark to return to after all she’s sacrificed to escape. She’ll have to confront what lines she’s willing to cross in order to protect her family.

Notes from a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi, Joshua David Stein, narrated by: Kwame Onwuachi (April 9)

You may recognize Kwame Onwuachi as a contestant on Top Chef; this uber talented alum of Eleven Madison Park found himself on the show at just 25 years of age and soon went on to open–and then abruptly close–a much-anticipated restaurant in D.C. Onwuachi now shares details of that experience “in this inspiring memoir about the intersection of race, fame, and food.” He shares the remarkable story of his childhood in the Bronx, being sent to rural Nigeria by his mother to “learn respect,” and the downward spiral that food saved him from and that ultimately gave him a second chance.

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi, narrated by Adina Verson, Jennifer Lim, Suehyla El-Attar (April 9)

“In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes.” Two freshmen from this school, David and Sarah, fall passionately in love and everyone is all heart-eyed emoji about it until BAM! A crazy turn of events turns everything upside down. You think you know what happened, and you sort of do but also… don’t? You’ll have to read until the very last page to piece together this complicated puzzle. Mwahaha.

How to Make Friends with the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow, narrated by Jorjeana Marie and Kathleen Glasgow (April 9)

For Tiger, it’s always been her and her mom against the world. Then one day, the brightest day of summer, her world turns dark when Tiger’s mom suddenly dies. Now Tiger is all alone, so alone; this is how you make friends with the dark. This stunning novel deals with loss, grief, empathy in both heart-shattering and heartwarming ways.

When We Left Cuba by Chanel Cleeton, narrated by Kyla Garcia (April 9)

The author of Next Year in Havana brings us another beautiful historical novel with Cuba at the root, which I could not be ore jazzed about because I’m going there in just a few weeks! Set in 1960s Florida, Cuban exile Beatriz Perez has lost everything to the revolution: her family, her people, her country. “Recruited by the CIA to infiltrate Fidel Castro’s inner circle and pulled into the dangerous world of espionage, Beatriz is consumed by her quest for revenge and her desire to reclaim the life she lost.” Cuba + history + espionage and strong female character is something I’m going to want to read and I think you are too.

From the Internets

Paste Magazine is going strong with Women’s History Month and recommends these exceptional audiobooks written and narrated by women. Circe and the Broken Earth Trilogy made the list so you know I’m happy!

Over at the Riot

Rioter Rebecca wrote a piece that feels dedicated to me: it suggests using audiobooks to help you reread books and I feel understood!

That’s all I got today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with audiobook feedback & questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the In The Club newsletter, peep the Read Harder podcast, and watch me booktube every Friday too!

Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa

Categories
In The Club

Let Me Put On My Surprised Face

Hola, friends! Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed. This week we’re talking food, romance, and pregnancy. You’d think the three were related but… nope! Book club is just funny that way.

To the club!

This newsletter is sponsored by Meerkat Press and Smoke City by Keith Rosson.

“Rosson tackles the big life questions in this book, picking apart themes of purpose, redemption, suffering, forgiveness, addiction, passion, talent, guilt, the unknowable nature of life and death, the ways in which we help each other and the ways in which we hinder, the joy of living and the anticipation of death, and the absolute necessity of an examined life. His talent is staggering, his craft is meticulous, and his story is one of the quirkiest but most heartfelt I have ever read. He will clench your heart and drag you through his landscape of horror and bliss. You’ll be so utterly grateful for it.” – Dianah Hughley, Powells.com

Question for the Club – I asked, you answered: do you only consider a book a “good” pick if everyone liked it? I definitely don’t think so and everyone who wrote in seems to agree! Here are some of your thoughts:

  • One of my core book club beliefs is that people are free to dislike the book–so long as they share why.
  • I find it to be more fun when at least one person DOESN’T like the book! When everyone likes it, the conversation can die quickly.
  • I think that if everyone likes the book it feels like a win, but the discussion is more flavorful if there are some who didn’t like the book and are willing to share why.
  • A good pick for us is one that most of us were interested enough to actually read… some of us will dislike or hate it, and this is when we have the most interesting discussions.

Our next club query is:

Email your answers to vanessa@riotnewmedia.com!

Let Me Put On My Surprised Face – I briefly mentioned this story in this Sunday’s edition of Today In Books, only under the headline, “Here So White, There So White, Everywhere So White White” because whyyyyyy? As Jess Pryde explains with more precision and finesse, the finalists for the RITA and Golden Heart awards were announced and they’re supes blanche. What’s more, they seem to stay this way year after year after year.

Babies on the Brain – As Rioter Anna puts it, “Advice about pregnancy isn’t hard to find, but good advice about pregnancy may as well be made of gold.” We think these new and upcoming releases are a great place to start.

  • Book Club Bonus: I actually think errbody should read up on pregnancy and would encourage book clubs to do so. It is astounding how little most folks know about even the basics of pregnancy, and how little many of us know because we flat out weren’t ever told. This feels like one small step in improving how we approach everything about parenting: pre- and post-partum care, maternity leave, child care…. Let’s start at the beginning and go from there.

Hunger Games: Book Club Edition – I have some travel coming soon (Cuba!!!) but I’m impatient as hell, so I’ve been choosing books set in faraway places to sort of satiate my wanderlust in the interim. The trouble is so many of them have included mouth-watering descriptions of food! The rose and cardamom-flavored Parsi delights in The Widows of Malabar Hill and the fragrant rice dishes and ALL the coconut things in The Night Tiger??? I’ve been staring at my own basic AF meals with sheer and utter contempt for weeks.

  • Book Club Bonus: You do not want to know how much time I spent on the internet trying to find Parsi and Malaysian food near me. Not easy since the dishes I want come from books set in the 1920s! I’ve suggested book/food pairings plenty of times, but this might be a tall order when the cuisine isn’t widely available. Have a go at preparing the foods yourself if you can find some good recipes and ingredients. You could also find a local or online market and at least buy some treats from whatever region you’re looking for; I sure as sh*t ordered some Malaysian pandan layer cakes from an online store and I have no regrets.

Suggestion Section – For those that missed last week’s trial run, Suggestion Section is where I’ll drop links to news, celeb book clubs, online book club announcements, lists for book groups, etc. Basically related content not otherwise talked discussed in the “meat” of the newsletter. Enjoy!

Thanks for hanging with me today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with your burning book club questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the Audiobooks newsletter, get it on the Read Harder podcast, and watch me booktube every Friday too.

Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa

Categories
Today In Books

Dan McFakerPants Mallory Is Nominated for A British Book Award : Today In Books

Sponsored by our What’s Up in YA Giveaway of a $100 gift card to Amazon! Enter here.

Fake It Till You Make It, I Guess

Remember that bananapants story about Dan Mallory, a.k.a. A.J. Finn, the guy who faked a bout with cancer, pretended to be British, and left cups of urine in his office? Turns out all of that behavior got him… nominated for a British Book Award. Oh, ok.

Here So White, There So White, Everywhere So White White

It’s no shocker to anyone that BIPOC representation is lacking in publishing, but some new data on the RITAS is next-level disappointing.  Hashtags #ritassowhite , #ritadata , and this thread on 20 years of RITA data show that the RITAs average only 4% representation of BIPOC. *shakes fists at the sky*

The Emperor of All Science Writers

First: I really wanted to call this section “The Emperor of All Mukherjees.” Second: Siddhartha Mukherjee deserves all of the prizes for his contributions to oncological research, patient care, and his accessible, informative, and demystifying writing on cancer. Good thing the folks who award the Lewis Thomas prize agree.

 

Categories
Audiobooks

Dystopia Should Feel More Far Away

Hola, Audiophiles!

Como estan!? I’m amazing, thanks for asking. San Diego decided to remember it’s San Diego and blessed us with some sunshine and 70+ degree weather for a few days now, so your girl busted out the tank tops and sandals only to be reminded that her pedicure situation is still stuck in winter. Ay… I can neither confirm nor deny that I painted only the six toes visible in the wedges I wore to my mama’s birthday dinner.

Enough about gorgeous weather and pedi emergencies: time to talk latest listens, audiobook buzz and more.

Let’s audio!

Sponsored by Oasis Audio

Fred Rogers was an enormously influential figure in the history of television and in the lives of tens of millions of children. The Good Neighbor, the first full-length biography of Fred Rogers, tells the story of this enduring American icon. Narrated by LeVar Burton, The Good Neighbor traces Rogers’s personal, professional, and artistic life through decades of work — including a surprising decision to walk away from the show to make television for adults, only to return with increasingly sophisticated episodes. An engaging story, rich in detail, The Good Neighbor is the definitive portrait of a beloved figure, cherished by generations.

Latest Listen

Internment by Samira Ahmed, narrated by Soneela Nankani – I started this a few weeks ago and then paused; this was in part because of schedule stuff and also because I just wasn’t in the right headspace. Well… I dove back in coincidentally on the day of the shooting in New Zealand; I couldn’t stop myself from tearing up when l was only five minutes into listening. Still, I’m pressing on. It feels like I should.

Set in a near-future United States, 17-year-old Layla Amin and her family are forced into an internment camp for Muslim Americans. In the midst of this new and terrifying reality, Layla is determined to keep her family safe and to fight for freedom. She will not remain silent, she will not be complicit. She will resist.

Dystopia should feel more far away, ya know? I suspect this is going to ruin me beautifully.

Listens on Deck

queenieQueenie by Candice Carty-Williams, narrated by Shvorne Marks

Once I’m all done with Internment, I think I’ll move on to a title I mentioned in my roundup of new audiobooks at the top of the month. I’ve seen Queenie pitched as “Bridget Jones’s Diary meets Americanah;” that sounds like something I need in my life.

Main character Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London. She finds herself straddling two cultures while not quite fitting into either of them and no one aspect of life is going smoothly. She’s constantly compared to her white male coworkers at the newspaper where she works and she’s fresh off a messy breakup with her white boyfriend so…. queue the making of bad choices in the search of self worth!

I’m realizing how much I love reading books where women of color get to be messy and go through things. Dunno about you all, but I was sure as sh*t going through it in my twenties; like I say just about every time about every book in every genre all the time, I’d have loved to read something a Bridget Jonesesque with some POC rep in it if I could.

From the Internets

Paste Magazine suggests these 19 Audiobooks You Can’t Miss in 2019. I spy several titles I co-sign, including Ann Leckie’s The Raven Tower. In spite of my issues with some of the accents in the audiobook (seriously: someone tell me I’m not mistaken about the myriad’s weird cadence?!?!), it is still very much worth the read or listen. Come for the drama, the treachery, the usurping of throne, stay for the unique perspective on god worship and the handling of gender fluidity.  

Over at the Riot

I was saying to myself, “I’ve been meaning to learn to meditate,” when I read the first line of this piece. Welp, here’s your chance Diaz! Join me in making time to get zen with this list of meditation audiobooks to help you find your inner peace.

That’s all I got today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with audiobook feedback & questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the In The Club newsletter, peep the Read Harder podcast, and watch me booktube every Friday too!

Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa

Categories
In The Club

When in Doubt, Creep Them Out!

Hola, friends! Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met and well-read. This week I’ve managed to sneak in my future rap alias, a peek at my baby nephew, and a personal anecdote about faith in between all the book club talk! We’ve been clubbing together for awhile now and I feel like we’ve grown close, ya know? You share with me, so now I’ve shared with you.

Testing out another new format change too — let me know what you think.

To the club!

This newsletter is sponsored by ​The Bird King​ by G. Willow Wilson, available now from Grove Press.

The Bird King cover imageA fantastical journey set at the height of the Spanish Inquisition from the award-winning author of ​Alif the Unseen​ and writer of the Ms. Marvel series, G. Willow Wilson’s ​The Bird King​ is a jubilant story of love versus power, religion versus faith, and freedom versus safety. The novel follows Fatima, the only remaining Circassian concubine to the sultan, and her dearest friend Hassan, the palace mapmaker, on their quest to find the mysterious, possibly mythic island of the Bird King, whose shifting boundaries will hopefully keep them safe.

Question for the Club: Last week I asked what you all think is the ideal size for a book club and the most common answer by a landslide! was seven members. Some gave a range of 6-10 and a couple of folks suggested 5-6; either way, no super crazy outliers.

I like the thinking here: seven-ish members is enough to ensure good conversation and to get a variety of outlooks and opinions in the mix. It’s a good number for restaurant outings, manageable if potentially lively. Thank you for the feedback!

The next question is: …drumroll please…

 

Little Miss Persist-a-lot … might just be my rap name if I ever start dropping bars. More importantly: Persist is back! Book Riot’s feminist book club run entirely on Instagram returned last week (sorry, I’m a slacker and forgot to mention it). “Meetings” will come to order once a week on Instagram Live through April 8th and this quarter’s club is led by María Cristina!

All is Not Lost – If you didn’t catch last week’s episode of The Book Riot Podcast (Episode 303: Durable Dirigibles), you might have missed out on this piece of genuine feel-good news. A couple of high school boys at a Jesuit boys on the Upper East Side started a feminist book club back in 2017, naming it “HeForShe” after Emma Watson’s feminism campaign. The club meets to this day and has about a dozen regular members. There is hope, friends.

  • Book Club Bonus: Young adults reading books that foster critical thinking and examination of complicated subjects gets lots of emphatic clapping from me, especially if it forces them to think about concepts like race, privilege, consent, etc. While the hope is that young people will band together on their own like the men of HeForShe, some encouragement by adults might not be a bad idea. Volunteer to lead the charge and get some young people talking!

When in Doubt, Creep Them Out! – News flash! Not all women want to be mothers. This list of reads is for you if you fall into that camp. These all sound like titles that need to be on my TBR. For real though: I cackled when I saw the last title on this list. When in doubt, creep them out!

  • Book Club Bonus: I’ve pitched all sorts of parenting-related book club ideas but never suggested one for women who don’t want children. Considering I’m not sure whether I want any, I would love to dedicate at least one or two rounds of book club picks to the kinds of books on this list and be able to chat openly about my doubts, reasons, and feelings.
  • Related: I may not be sure about motherhood, but I am made for the tia (auntie) life. I know I’m clearly biased here, but even the back of my nephew’s head is just the best.

Church Group Feminism – In Rioter Heather’s 35 years as a Christian, she’s been a part of countless and assorted book groups. She’s also rarely read books by a women in those groups and thinks it’s time that changed, offering a list of titles to get that ball rolling.

  • Book Club Bonus: A little about me: I was raised in the Catholic faith and then grew up to be a pro-choice, anti-misogyny, LGBTQ ally and feminist. I now have an uneasy relationship with religion, in particular with how little agency women are given in most Christian faith systems (referencing Christianity here since that’s what I’m familiar with). But I feel hope when I read about women like Heather, ones that practice a progressive faith and seek to give women the voice they have long deserved. If you’re in a book group with members from your church, fight to include titles by women. Don’t stop there: include books from all kinds of diverse voices and perspectives.

Suggestion Section – I’m starting to play around with the format of this here newsletter as you may have noticed of late. In Suggestion Section, I’ll be dropping links to celeb book clubs, online book club announcements, lists for book groups, etc not otherwise talked discussed in the meat of the newsletter. You with me? Let’s give it a try.

Thanks for hanging with me today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with your burning book club questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the Audiobooks newsletter, get it on the Read Harder podcast, and watch me booktube every Friday too.

Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa

Categories
Today In Books

Pete Buttigieg Learned Norwegian to Read More Books: Today In Books

Sponsored by our What’s Up in YA Giveaway of a $100 gift card to Amazon! Enter here.

Let Me Just Learn Another Language Right Quick

The more I learn about Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the more I like: he’s apparently a Hufflepuff AND the guy went and learned Norwegian so he could read more books by an author he liked. You know…. as one does!

J.K. Rowling-related News That Won’t Incite an Eye Roll

Arthur A. Levine, the guy who brought the Harry Potter series to U.S., is leaving Scholastic after 23 years to start an independent publishing company. His mission is to “make books reflecting the greatest diversity and the highest standards of artistic excellence.” Sound good to us!

It’s Been A Long Time Since She’s All That

Breaking news: I am old. More news: Freddie Prinze Jr. will play Nancy’s Drew’s papa in The CW’s series based on the books. The show will follow 18-year-old Nancy during the summer after high school graduation, when she thinks she’s headed for college but then BOOM! Murder! No word yet as to whether Freddie will lead a flash mob dance number to Fatboy Slim’s greatest hits.

Categories
Audiobooks

Harry Potter and the News I Forgot to Tell You

Hola, Audiophiles!

Things are pretty steady here in the land of Required Reading: still balancing 10+ books at the same time, still walking around audiobooking whenever I’m not regular-booking. Things have been so busy that I forgot to share some pretty cool news about Harry Potter and one of my crushes last week! Read on, dear friend, and bear with me while I babble about my latest listen. 

Let’s audio.

Sponsored by Dreamscape Media, LLC and Good Riddance, by Elinor Lipman.

When an unsavory yearbook filled with her mother’s past comments about students gets into the hands of a woman who wants to turn it into a documentary, Daphne must stop her before her family secrets are in danger. As she struggles to silence the documentarian, she also finds herself struggling with her own demons. Expertly written and beautifully narrated, Elinor Lipman’s newest audiobook is available free with your library card on hoopla digital. Experience the novel that has received rave reviews from the Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, and People.

Latest Listen

I finished The Night Tiger and… wow. Last week I mentioned starting this mythical, sumptuous and delightful read set in 1930s Malaysia about a young woman working at a dance hall on the low and a house boy whose master has given him a task to complete at his death. Their paths collide when they each embark on separate and dangerous missions involving a mysterious severed finger in a glass vial. You get a murder mystery, a ghost story, and tale of forbidden love all wrapped up in one!

What really sets this story over the top are the lush descriptions of scenery, aromas, and some of the most decadent food I’ve seen on a page (I paused the audio to Google “Malaysian food in San Diego” on at least three occasions). I also really love the theme of women’s empowerment that’s woven throughout; I clapped at the end when Ji Lin made a choice I was hoping she’d make but wasn’t sure she would.

Listens on Deck

gingerbread by helen oyeyemiGet up, stretch, use the restroom and grab your coffee because I’m about rave about Helen Oyeyemi’s Gingerbread. Oyeyemi is just a master at reworking a fairy tale in strange and lovely ways, and with language that has me hitting that rewind button on my Libro app to experience a sentence like this one again:

“A gingerbread addict once told Harriet that eating her gingerbread is like eating revenge…with darts of heat, salt, spice, and sulfurous syrup, as if honey was measured out, set ablaze, and trickled through the dough along with the liquefied spoon.”

British schoolgirl Perdita and her mother, Harriet, live in a gold-painted seventh-floor walk-up apartment where they make gingerbread that no one seems to really… want? One day Perdita appears to commit suicide by ingesting some poisoned gingerbread, but leaves a note behind that’s like, “BRB Mom! Not really dead, just going off to find the long-lost friend you always talk about!” That friend’s name is Gretel and the mythical place is Druhástrana, a faraway land where Harriet spent her youth that most people don’t believe exists. Perdita survives and comes back with a story, one she will only tell if Harriet first tells the truth about her mysterious past.

I’ve gone on long enough but one more thing: this one is narrated by Oyeyemi herself and her voice is silky smooth perfection.

From the Internets

They Came, They Saw, They Audied – The Audie Awards happened last week! The full list of winners is here. Some highlights include Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi winning Audiobook of the Year and Educated by Tara Westover winning for both Autobiography/Memoir and Best Female Narrator.

Audio Across the Pond – Here is some more talk of audiobooks’ double-digit growth for you from the London Book Fair. Check out the write-up in Publisher’s Weekly on why it’s likely to continue.

Harry Potter and the News I Forgot to Tell You – How I forgot to mention this last week, I don’t know: the Harry Potter audiobooks will be available in Spanish for the first time this year. Alohomora, that is good news! The cherry on top here is that the books will be narrated by Carlos Ponce, the Puerto Rican actor and singer that  I crushed* on HARD for the better part of my youth. Those eyes!

*past tense used here because lies

Over at the Riot

LatinAudio Love – While I’m personally not an Audible user, I do support the creation of spaces for Spanish-language books. Audible has done just that with the launch of Audible Latino; I’ll clap for that.

Sounds of SciFi – Rioter Alex has done us all a huge favor here with this list of 25 Science Fiction audiobooks to get into, plus a little more if you count the entire series and not just the first installment. As Alex points out, you get 35 audiobook recs for the price of 25!

All About Accents – Last week I talked audiobook accents over at the YouTube – my thoughts on when they work, when they don’t, and when they’re doing the most.

 

That’s all I got today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with audiobook feedback & questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the In The Club newsletter, peep the Read Harder podcast, and watch me booktube every Friday too!

Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa

Categories
In The Club

In The Club – 3/13

Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met and well-read.

Hello friends! Currently staring at the rain pouring just outside my window and wondering if this is what having seasons feel like? This San Diegan is not used to all this moisture. Super weird.

But you didn’t come here for weather; you’re here for another round-up of book club things to chat about. This week’s topics include Oprah, inclusion, book prizes, and more. Let’s get into that.

To the club!

This newsletter is sponsored by Libby, the one-tap reading app from your library and OverDrive.

an illustration of the Lorax with the text "Help the Lorax save trees. Celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday. Start reading with Libby"Meet Libby. The award-winning reading app that makes sure you always have something to read. It’s like having your entire library right in your pocket. Download the app today and get instant access to thousands of ebooks and audiobooks for free thanks to your public library and OverDrive.

Question for the Club: Last week I asked you all to share some of your favorite book club memories. So many good ones! Here are a few of my faves:

  • “One is when we read ‘Let’s Pretend This Never Happened‘ because we got to to talk a lot about mental health and the struggles that we all faced in that capacity.  I think that meeting went on for like four plus hours and it was a really good discussion.”  Love this, so much.
  • “When we read ‘Fangirl’ and met up at a local eatery.  One of our members was going off on a bit of a rant (as she does) and using adult language.  At one point one of the other members was like ‘Language; there’s a child’ pointing to a little girl at a nearby table and the other girl was like ‘She has headphones’ to which the other one responded ‘BECAUSE OF YOU!!!'” It be like that sometimes!
  • “My favourite night of the year is in June when we pick our selections for the following Sept-May, and it’s not my favourite night of the book club nights, it’s my favourite night of the 365 nights of the year.  Anyways, since everyone brings 2 or 3 suggestions, we usually have 20-30 suggestions total and have to bring that number down to ten… My favourite is always the disappointment when the books come off the list and we have to remind ourselves that we are still allowed to read them!” UMMM YOU MEAN YOU HOLD A BOOK CLUB DRAFT?? Hell yes!

And now for our next query:

Give Them All the Prizes – I fangirled pretty hard in my intro last week about the Women’s Prize longlist, which is just… I… but…

  • Book Club Bonus: If you already read women, need to read more women, are a woman, know a woman… basically if you’ve ever breathed air: read these books! If your book club is big enough to do so, maybe split off into groups and assign a different nominee to each group. Then come together to discuss and declare your own winner! 

The Book Club That Cares – “One of our members is a romance lover and she gamely reads everything the rest of us suggest without complaint, yet we have never tackled her favorite kind of book. I’d like to propose a romance as our next selection.”  I’m so here for this question from this week’s Get Booked (Episode 171: Making Reader Face).

  • Book Club Bonus: I love that this book club was open to switching things up to include the romance reader’s preferences. MORE OF THIS PLEASE! Do a quick check-in with your people to see how they’re feeling about your selections and be willing to try something new to promote inclusion.
  • Related: Need help finding a book in this new genre? You only have to ask. You can write in to Get Booked, of course, or try a librarian or bookseller (be warned: I *will* make you a spreadsheet). One thing I know for sure: book people love to talk books.

Get That Book Club Money, Honey – Tayari Jones wrote a piece for The Cut’s Get That Money segment and I can’t say enough good things about it. She talks about the success of An American Marriage, getting the call from Oprah, and what she did with those sweet, sweet royalties after Oprah’s Book Club. Or as she put it on Twitter:

  • Book Club Bonus: An American Marriage really is a phenomenal book club pick. The commentary on race, marriage, empathy, the justice system.. I could go on.

Perfect Pairings – I somehow missed this piece from Parade last month on ideal snack spread pairings for the perfect book club. You all know it’d be like a day without orange juice if I didn’t throw some foodstuffs in the mix so… voila.

  • Book Club Bonus: I won’t lie to you: whenever I think of pairings for book club, I’m usually thinking booze. I love the thought that went into these snack suggestions – please share if you’ve come up with creative ones of your own!

Thanks for hanging with me today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with your burning book club questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the Audiobooks newsletter, get it on the Read Harder podcast, and watch me booktube every Friday too.

Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa