Category: Read This Book

Betty was once an influencer, but now that she’s lost all her money she’s squatting in a dead woman’s house and fervently hoping her successful, rich family members don’t find out. Of course, the ruse becomes impossible to maintain as Christmas approaches and Betty’s not sure how she’s going to get through it until she accidentally drunkenly summons the Holiday Spirit. Hall, for short. Hall is handsome, exuberant, and he loves the holidays. At first Betty thinks his magic is just what she needs in order to convince her family that she’s doing great actually, never been better, but it’s not long before Betty has to admit that the holiday spirit might be growing on her.

I saw this book described on Instagram as “delightfully unhinged” and I can confirm it is indeed that, and much more! This is a romance novel for people who like Schitts’ Creek and enjoy watching Elf every December, and I struggle to remember the last time a book made me laugh out loud as much as this one did. Hall is basically everything you’d expect him to be — over the top, magical, endlessly enthusiastic, and full of quirks. Betty is mostly grumpy and vain to start, but even though most of us would be rolling our eyes at her shallow tendencies, Hogle does a great job of giving readers peeks at the real, vulnerable Betty from the beginning, so you can’t help but want to root for her.

This book also does a great job of packing in a lot of the spirit of the holiday season, which is in fact full of mayhem and angst as well as happiness and cheer. I ended up loving the dysfunctional family, and the plot took some truly wild turns that had me laughing and always wondering what was going to happen next. (The Dancing with the Stars scene undid me.) If you want to laugh and you’re willing to go with a banana-pants Christmas book, then definitely pick this one up!

I didn’t expect to be listening to Tiny Beautiful Things while flying across the country to visit family in California. But there I was, tearing up on a late direct flight as Cheryl Strayed dealt out her incredibly thought-provoking advice. 

Strayed began writing anonymously as Sugar for an advice column on The Rumpus over a decade ago. She answered letters requesting advice, often sharing intimate memories from her own life. She had a way of creating deep emotional intimacy and teasing free the subtleties of the letters she answered.

I have to admit, I struggle to find self-help books that I like. Perhaps this is a fault of my personal taste (feel free to send me recommendations for your favorites!), but sometimes I find a book like Tiny Beautiful Things that knocks my socks off and reminds me of how helpful this genre can be.

She answers many questions about relationships, parenting, dealing with loss, and friendship. But she gives advice in a way that validates these common and relatable questions. In one question, she answers a teenager about why it’s important to understand that your friends will inevitably date people they don’t like. She writes to a trans man who has had a difficult relationship with his parents. She writes to new moms and older moms. But whoever she’s writing to, she invests her whole heart.

Strayed’s columns remind me that I’m not the only one who struggles with navigating life’s ups and downs. We’ve all struggled with similar things. And during those times the answers might be staring us square in the face, but we still wonder if we are doing the right thing. I think this is why the book works. We all have moments in our life where we might know the answer, or maybe we just need reassurance. Whatever it is, Strayed seems to know just what to say.

In this 10th anniversary edition, Strayed adds some columns that she wrote for her Substack, the newest manifestation of her column. So if you’re like me and missed the Tiny Beautiful Things phenomenon the first go around, now is the perfect time to jump on the bandwagon. Plus, if you’re an audiobook fan, she performs the audio!

Tricia Hersey is the founder of The Nap Ministry and she wants us all to rest. She believes that liberation does not come from exhaustion; that burnout is not our path to freedom. Much of Tricia Hersey’s movement is rooted in capitalism’s tie to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Enslaved Africans and eventually enslaved Black people were not allowed to rest much less have leisure, to daydream, or to imagine a better future.

This ministry is the antithesis of productivity and the opposite of grind culture. Hersey doesn’t want us to hustle. She wants us to lie down and to divest completely from productivity culture, capitalism, and the addictive machine that is social media. Rest is Resistance is not only about avoiding the urge to fill every moment with productivity, but also having rest for rest’s sake. That is the part that utterly blew my mind: to rest without the goal of then having more energy to do more. Not resting to fill your empty cup to just pour yourself out again for other people. The author wants you to break the cup. Just naps and daydreams and not taking part in the attention economy.

Hersey makes it very clear that rest is not a privilege and it is not something to be earned. We all deserve rest by merely existing. She addresses the folks who are saying “If I rest then I can’t pay the bills and feed my family.” She’s been there. In fact, that is where she was when she began the Nap Ministry.

After the preface and introduction, the book is broken into four main parts and each is a call to action: Rest, Dream, Resist, and Imagine.

This is an absolutely phenomenal book and if you think it’s not for you because you’re not Black, I promise, it’s for you. If you are living under capitalism, if you are on social media, if you are tired not only physically but emotionally, psychologically, spiritually tired, this book is for you.

Prue Perry is a Ladybird Scout legacy, but what most of the world doesn’t realize is that the Ladybirds are more than just a philanthropic social group—they’re also guardians against interdimensional grubs that feed on human emotions. And when the grubs get big enough, they don’t just stop at emotions—they’ll eat humans. Prue is still reeling from the death of fellow scout and best friend Molly three years earlier, and she’s quit the Scouts altogether. But she’s lured back in when she’s given three new recruits to train to take her place, and by the promise of being able to rid herself of the Ladybird life for good. However, training new recruits stirs up old memories, and when another Scout is killed, Prue’s knowledge and skill are needed more than ever.

First off, I love, love, love this premise and I thought that Anderson did such a great job of coming up with a super convincing Ladybird Scout organization and culture that felt realistic. Her world building was excellent, and I enjoyed all of the little details, from an app to social initiatives to various handbooks that evolve over the years. Prue’s backstory keeps the novel from being as light as say Lumberjanes—part of the reason why she no longer wants to be a Scout is because she feels as though Ladybird HQ sees her and her fellow sisters as expendable in the fight against evil, and that can’t be easily solved. But the journey is balanced with lots of humor and levity, particularly in Prue’s recruits: her middle-school-aged cousin and her best friend (who also happens to be the little sister of Prue’s oblivious-to-grubs boyfriend) and her rebellious and maybe slightly dangerous misfit friend, Beast. This unlikely crew has to learn trust and friendship, especially as the stakes get bigger, and I loved watching that journey. Anderson also does a great job of balancing a large cast of characters, which ran the range from lovable to difficult to despicable. I am not at all cut out for hunting inter-dimensional grubs and stabbing them to death, but this book made the Ladybird Scouts seem so cool I sort of wish I could join!

As a food lover who lives in the South, I’m always looking for more books that sit at the intersection of cuisine and culture. Founding Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance John T. Edge gives us all of that and more with his wonderful book The Potlikker Papers. Edge writes about how the South’s culture is reflected in cuisine. He takes us on a tour of the American South, along the way to describe the key places and why they have become landmarks for Southern Cuisine.

Edge is part of the new South, a growing cultural movement that aspires to make a better South, much in the vein of The Bitter Southerner’s famous campaign. The Potlikker Papers writes about Southern cuisine from this more progressive perspective, giving us the history of Southern food, both the good and the bad.

Edge gives a very broad overview of Southern food, describing the various communities that helped create modern Southern cuisine and illustrating how it will continue to evolve over the coming decades. Most importantly, he notes vital contributions of Black chefs throughout the years. He describes how Southern cuisine would not exist if not for these incredible taste makers who are in many ways the cornerstones of Southern cooking.

I especially love the audiobook, which Edge performs himself. There’s just something perfect about listening to Edge’s incredible accent as he describes mouth-watering dishes. I think it’s also important to note that The Potlikker is just an overview, one tile in the mosaic of Southern food. Books like, High on the Hog and The Cooking Gene are key texts about the contribution of African Americans to Southern Cuisine. And chefs like Edna Lewis have done incredible work on bringing Southern Appalachian foodways to the forefront of Southern Cuisine. I could go on, but I think you get the idea. 🙂

In the introduction, the author dissects white supremacy and details some of the ways in which it works according to design. White supremacy is not a broken system. The system is absolutely working as intended. In discussing the title and the thesis of the book, Oluo makes it incredibly clear (because there are always people who are going to play ignorant) that no, she is not arguing that every white man is mediocre or that any race or gender is predisposed to mediocrity; however, our society focuses on preserving white male power regardless of skill or talent. She calls us all in to examine the complacency throughout society that maintains this system.

This book explores and interrogates things that have been normalized in the U.S. like some men’s obsession with cowboys and westerns or the obsession with American football. I learned a staggering amount of history from this book. The chapter on cowboys and Buffalo Bill in particular left me speechless. I know I am not the only one who has a father, uncle, in-law, or grandfather who romanticizes cowboys and westerns. This chapter hit really close to home and has shed some light on many things that I thought I was familiar with.

Oluo writes about the centering of white men in social justice movements including but not limited to Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. She talks about the assault on higher education and how as soon as people of color were allowed to attend universities, suddenly sentiments around higher education took a dive.

This book is so extraordinarily good and necessary. It is a phenomenal read and it’s definitely one you will want to read as a book club pick or at least get a copy for a spouse or friend so that you can discuss it because believe me, there is a lot to talk about and contemplate after digesting this hard-to-swallow book.

Frankie is a bored teenager in 1996 when she meets Zeke, who is spending the summer in her tiny Southern town because his parents’ marriage has hit a rough patch. Frankie and Zeke have an instant connection that’s only a little romantic but a lot to do with the fact that they’re both aspiring artists who want to create something memorable. Hours holed up in Frankie’s room leads to a collaboration that unexpectedly takes their town by storm, leading to a cultural phenomenon that will go down in history as the Coalfield Panic. Twenty years later, Frankie is a semi-famous author who receives a phone call from a reporter who thinks she might have found a link between Frankie and the panic…sending Frankie on a journey of reckoning through the past.

I really loved how this book unfolded, and how I immediately was drawn to Frankie. She is a misfit 16 year old who wants so much more out of life than what she’s got, and feels pretty trapped by circumstance. Her yearning to create something memorable and amazing comes to fruition in a wholly unexpected way, and both she and Zeke have to reckon with very different reactions to the panic and fascination that their creation brings about. I thought that Wilson did such a great job of exploring exactly how a small Southern town in the ’90s might react if a strange poster with a bizarre message started appearing everywhere, and it was really fun to see a mystery begin from the inside. Interspersed between the chapters set in the ’90s are chapters from Frankie’s adult life, where she reckons with the fact that she created a social phenomenon but no one knows about it, not even her family. This was such a weird, big-hearted novel about art and aspiration, and dealing with the consequences of your actions, and it packs a big emotional punch.

Back in grad school, I remember spending every possible moment pouring over texts, constantly mulling over ideas of why and how we read. Since then, I’ve been kept busy by a gazillion different things and haven’t had time to think much about ideas around reading. So when I saw Elaine Castillo’s How to Read Now, I had to pick it up and take advantage of the opportunity.

In her introduction, Castillo says, “When I talk about how to read now, I’m not just talking about how to read books now; I’m talking about how to read the world now.” In the rest of the collection, Castillo examines books, film, art exhibitions, and more. To her, “reading” means thinking critically about the art and media we consume.

Castillo also discusses how the world reads her as the daughter of Filipinx immigrants from a working class background. She argues that reading is political, that we bring our understanding of the world to our interpretations of literature, film, and other media. She pushes for readers to think beyond the buzzwords — like “diverse,” “inclusive,” and “positive representation”— to change how we view where literature comes from as a whole.

But Castillo doesn’t just discuss her ideas around reading; she puts them into practice. In the essay, “Reading Teaches Us Empathy and Other Fictions,” Castillo examines Nobel Prize-winning author Peter Handke’s Across, asking why Handke believes that his work is apolitical and should just be appreciated for what it is. In “Main Character Syndrome,” Castillo discusses the work of Joan Didion, pushing against the idea that a settler colonial writer can be “the” voice of California.

Castillo does not hold back her critiques of literary darlings. Instead, she boldly calls for all literature — including treasures of the modern literary world — to be viewed from an anti-imperialist viewpoint. We can appreciate Austen AND acknowledge that her family benefitted monetarily from the slave trade at the time.

While this newsletter will never do this collection of essays justice, I hope you will take the leap and pick up this book. But be forewarned, it’s not for the faint of heart. Prepare to be challenged.

If you are reading this newsletter I know I am preaching to the choir when talking about the importance of storytelling and the profound connections that can be born from a well-crafted tale. The folks at The Moth know this very, very well. The Moth is a storytelling experience that has live shows, The Moth radio hour, a podcast, and workshops. This book gathers the core of The Moth’s storytelling wisdom and knowledge and makes it available to all of us and as both a writer and a person who loves a good story, I cannot stress how invaluable this is.

This was a phenomenal read as it was not only theory and practical advice on craft but heavy doses of examples in the forms of stories that have been told at events put on by The Moth. The stories and snippets of stories shared in this book will make you laugh, cry, hope, cringe, break your heart wide open, and more. The lessons in this book are for everyone because we all, in some way, have to be storytellers at some point whether we are writers, work in marketing, have a job interview, have a speech to give, have a toast to make, have a presentation due, and myriad of other things we do that people may not think of as storytelling but they very much are.

This is a book I listened to on audiobook and I also own a hardcover copy so that I could highlight particular parts that I have returned to again and again. It is both a great read and a great gift and I cannot recommend it enough.

In the small town of Springville, GA, things are done the way they’ve always been done…including hosting separate proms rather than integrate them. Maddy Washington is a loner in Springville, and she tries to fly under the radar, but when an unexpected rainstorm reveals that she’s been passing as white her entire life, the school is in an uproar. And when the bullying hits the Internet, it’s time to change their image. Cue: the school’s first integrated prom. The white teen in charge of it even gets the idea to have her boyfriend, who is Black, invite Maddy as his date to show the world they’re not as racist as everyone thinks. But Maddy has been told what to do her entire life, and when prom night starts to go wrong, she finally comes into her own terrifying power.

This book is an obvious homage to Stephen King’s Carrie and there are a lot of parallels between the story, characters, and events, but whether you’re a King fan or unfamiliar with King’s classic, this book really does stand on its own. The characters are compelling, and Jackson does a really great job at encapsulating the mental gymnastics many go through to justify upholding the past, while also showing how many characters have learned to adapt in order to survive in Springville. It takes some truly unexpected twists and turns, with some gratifying moments and some horrifying ones, and it left me wondering how on earth everything would be resolved. It’s not a book for the faint of heart, but it is a fascinating look at small town tensions and what happens when everything reaches a boiling point. Unlike White Smoke, this book doesn’t have a lot of sustained suspense or scary moments, but it has an incredible amount of tension that has you hurdling to an explosive ending!