Category: Read This Book

Welcome to Read This Book, the newsletter where I recommend a book you should add to your TBR, STAT! I stan variety in all things, and my book recommendations will be no exception. These must-read books will span genres and age groups. There will be new releases, oldie but goldies from the backlist, and the classics you may have missed in high school. Oh my! If you’re ready to diversify your books, then LEGGO!!

Tomorrow is the last day of Hispanic Heritage Month, and I would be remiss if I let this celebration end without recommending a book written by an Hispanic author. Hopefully, you’ve had the opportunity to read at least one book written by an Hispanic author within the past month. I’ve heard nothing but rave reviews about the recently published Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia for the horror / fantasy crowd. For the scaredy cats like me, today’s recommendation is definitely more family friendly.

Although this story takes place around 2005 and 2006 when ICE Raids were historical almost everyday occurrences, Return to Sender feels as current as ever when America’s new “Deporter-in-Chief” and his administration gleefully continue separating families at the United States-Mexico border. Mari and her family are constantly in fear of being captured by la migra and being separated. While Mari and her parents were born in Mexico, Mari’s sisters were born in North Carolina, so are technically American citizens. Return to Sender will help readers find the humanity behind the headlines. 

I enjoyed this middle grade book, and it didn’t take long for me to become engaged in the story. Moreover, I think it’s a great book for parents and children to read together, then use the discussion questions included in the back of the book to share their thoughts on the book’s key themes of citizenship and immigration.

I recommend reading Return to Sender no matter your stance on the issue of immigration. The book may confirm your suspicions, or it may help you see the issue from a different point of view. Characters in the story like Tyler and Mr. Rossetti learn the issue of immigration is complicated, and it is hard to be against undocumented Mexican workers being in the United States once you know their stories and how they contribute to the American economy.

Until next time bookish friends,

Katisha

Find more of me on Book Riot. 

Find more books by subscribing to Book Riot Newsletters.

Welcome to Read This Book, the newsletter where I recommend a book you should add to your TBR, STAT! I stan variety in all things, and my book recommendations will be no exception. These must-read books will span genres and age groups. There will be new releases, oldie but goldies from the backlist, and the classics you may have missed in high school. Oh my! If you’re ready to diversify your books, then LEGGO!!

It’s October 12, 2020. Have you checked your savings account today? If you haven’t, then you should immediately log into your account right now! Why today? Well, today is National Savings Day, the unofficial holiday founded in 2017 by Capital One “to empower people to feel more confident about their relationship with money by educating them on how saving money can be a simple straightforward experience.” In honor of National Savings Day, I’m recommending you read (or re-read) one of the godfathers of personal finance books, The Millionaire Next Door. 

Despite sometimes struggling through The Millionaire Next Door, I without a doubt value everything I learned from this book. I used to believe the best way to become wealthy was to make a lot of money, but I quickly learned the amount of money one brings home doesn’t matter. What matters the most when it comes to reaching millionaire status is the amount of money one saves (and invests). In fact, those with the millionaire mindset are striving for a high net worth instead of concentrating on getting a bigger paycheck.

In this book, people are referred to as either a PAW (Prodigious Accumulator of Wealth) or an UAW (Under Accumulator of Wealth). Most Americans are UAWs. Not only are we not accumulating wealth, we are swimming in debt. If we want to reach  the rarefied air of millionaire status, we have to take the road less traveled. With anecdotes, data, and plenty of tips, The Millionaire Next Door is an excellent map to get you from the poor house to millionaire’s row.

Until next time bookish friends,

Katisha

Find more of me on Book Riot. 

Find more books by subscribing to Book Riot Newsletters.

Welcome to Read This Book, a weekly newsletter where I recommend one book that I think you absolutely must read. The books will vary across genre and age category to include new releases, backlist titles, and classics. If you’re ready to explode your TBR, buckle up!

To celebrate the spookiest month of the year and my newfound love of horror, this week’s pick is a creepy book!

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Find me on Book Riot, the Insiders Read Harder podcast, All the Books, and Twitter.

If someone forwarded this newsletter to you, click here to subscribe.

Welcome to Read This Book, the newsletter where I recommend a book you should add to your TBR, STAT! I stan variety in all things, and my book recommendations will be no exception. These must-read books will span genres and age groups. There will be new releases, oldie but goldies from the backlist, and the classics you may have missed in high school. Oh my! If you’re ready to diversify your books, then LEGGO!!

October 7th is Frappé Day, so make sure you stop by your favorite coffee shop and order this infamous frozen caffeinated treat. Did you know the frappé has Greek origins? That’s right! During the 1957 Thessaloniki International Fair, Dimitris Vakondios couldn’t find hot water to make his Nescafe instant coffee, so he improvised by mixing Nescafe with cold water and ice. What resulted was a refreshing foamy cold coffee beverage that became the first Greek café frappé! Today, it is still the most popular coffee beverage in Greece and its official national coffee drink!

Whenever I think of Greece, my mind automatically visualizes Rory Gilmore Lena Kaligaris traipsing through Santorini with Kostos on some serious summer loving. Although their love story is sweet, I still prefer Lena’s story in the book. If you only know The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants through the movie, then I highly recommend reading the book.

I was surprised with how quickly I finished The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It usually takes me up to a month to finish a book, but I devoured this book in less than a week! All of the summer stories were engaging from beginning to end. I was laughing. I was crying. What I absolutely loved about this book was this being a story for teenagers that didn’t talk down to them. The book does a good job handling heavier topics like death, sex, and cancer for a teenage audience. If you enjoy The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants as much as I did, then remember the story continues in The Second Summer of the Sisterhood.

Until next time bookish friends,

Katisha

Find more of me on Book Riot. 

Find more books by subscribing to Book Riot Newsletters.

Welcome to Read This Book, the newsletter where I recommend a book you should add to your TBR, STAT! I stan variety in all things, and my book recommendations will be no exception. These must-read books will span genres and age groups. There will be new releases, oldie but goldies from the backlist, and the classics you may have missed in high school. Oh my! If you’re ready to diversify your books, then LEGGO!!

My original plan was to celebrate the big opening weekend for the Wonder Woman sequel. However, I have to hold off on all of that because Wonder Woman 1984 has been delayed until Christmas. Although, with the way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if the movie was further delayed until 2021. That may be good news for book nerds who want to get in plenty of Wonder Woman reading before seeing Gal Gadot portray her once again on the big screen. If you’re looking for a quick bite of Wonder Woman goodness, then pick up Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo.

Princess Diana longs to prove herself to her legendary warrior sisters. However, when the opportunity comes, she throws it away (and breaks Amazon law) by rescuing a mortal.

Alia Kerlias just wanted to spend a semester at sea away from her overprotective brother. After a bomb detonates aboard her ship, she is forced to accept the horrible truth. Alia is a Warbringer. As a direct descendant of Helen of Troy, she is fated to bring about an age of global bloodshed and misery.

Together, Diana and Alia form an unlikely alliance in the hope of stopping the tide of war and finally ending the Warbringer curse.

What I enjoyed most about Wonder Woman: Warbringer is getting in this book what I didn’t get in the first Wonder Woman movie, which was more time on Themyscira and a deeper dive into the associated mythology. Although the majority of Warbringer takes place in the World of Man, the book still spent plenty of time on the island. I also appreciated the beautiful damsel in distress needing protection being a young Black woman.

Overall, I absolutely loved Wonder Woman: Warbringer. It’s an adventurous hero’s journey that can be enjoyed by both teen and adult readers, and it will most certainly have you geeked about Wonder Woman’s return to theaters.

Until next time bookish friends,

Katisha

Find more of me on Book Riot.

Find more books by subscribing to Book Riot Newsletters.

Welcome to Read This Book, a weekly newsletter where I recommend one book that I think you absolutely must read. The books will vary across genre and age category to include new releases, backlist titles, and classics. If you’re ready to explode your TBR, buckle up!

It’s finally October, so my pick this week has to be the book that gives me the most cozy fall feelings: Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks.

This is a super charming graphic novel about Josiah and Deja, two work best friends at the pumpkin patch where they pick up some extra cash each fall. But this is no ordinary pumpkin patch–it’s the Disneyland of pumpkin patches, where fall glory abounds! It’s Halloween, the last night of the season, but also Josiah and Deja’s last night working together, as they’re seniors who will be off to college next year. Deja wants Josiah to finally ask out his crush, and she concocts a plan to give Josiah his chance–if he can find his courage!

I dare you to pick this book up and not be grinning by the time you finish it! Rowell and Hicks have created a fall paradise for those who are in love with the season, and this book is full of charm and laughs, and illustrated in gorgeous fall hues. I loved the friendship between Josiah and Deja–she nudges do-gooder Josiah to get outside of his comfort zone, and he patiently indulges Deja in her desire for alllll the amazing fall snacks the pumpkin patch has to offer as they are sent on a bit of a scavenger hunt to find his crush. This allows readers to take a delightful journey through the pumpkin patch and all it has to offer, although Josiah and Deja’s journey is thwarted by a wayward goat, some misbehaving youths, and a crush that’s always just out of reach. By the end, you have a deeper appreciation for their friendship, and Josiah and Deja even learn a thing or two about their relationship.

The transience of the season is also a big theme in this book, especially as Josiah and Deja are facing some changes ahead and Josiah in particular has a hard time letting go. But with humor and heart, Rowell and Hicks show readers that it’s okay to say goodbye to a wonderful thing, and even while you’re mourning the end of an era, sometimes the saddest endings lead to the best beginnings.

I recommend grabbing your favorite fall beverage and cuddling up with this book. You might want to even buy a copy, because reading this book might become your new fall tradition!

Happy reading!
Tirzah

Find me on Book Riot, the Insiders Read Harder podcast, All the Books, and Twitter.

If someone forwarded this newsletter to you, click here to subscribe.

Welcome to Read This Book, the newsletter where I recommend a book you should add to your TBR, STAT! I stan variety in all things, and my book recommendations will be no exception. These must-read books will span genres and age groups. There will be new releases, oldie but goldies from the backlist, and the classics you may have missed in high school. Oh my! If you’re ready to diversify your books, then LEGGO!!

It’s still Banned Books Week, which means recommending another oft-challenged book that corresponds to this year’s theme of Censorship is a Dead End. Find Your Freedom to Read. The book that fits the bill is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Not only was it one of the Top 10 Challenged Books of 2019, The Handmaid’s Tale is #29 on the list of the 100 Most Banned and Challenged Books from the last decade.

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. Once a day, she is allowed to leave the Commander’s home and go to the food markets where the signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. Once a month, she prays for the Commander to make her pregnant. In a time of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only as valuable as their viable ovaries. There was a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job and money of her own, but that is gone now.

I read The Handmaid’s Tale about a year after the election of President Trump, and this book was a serious gut punch. I’m sure if you read it in our current environment with both a generation-defining election and Supreme Court nomination in the balance, The Handmaid’s Tale would leave you with a similar feeling. Although I felt slightly underwhelmed by the novel as a whole since it seems to be white feminism’s cautionary tale, I enjoyed the disjointed narration between Offred’s life before Gilead and her current life as a Handmaid.

This story kept my attention from the beginning and made me wonder which women in The Handmaid’s Tale I would be, but I was unsatisfied with the ambiguous ending. Lately, I’ve been wondering if my questions were answered in The Testaments, but I’m not excited to read the sequel, so I guess I may never know.

Until next time bookish friends,

Katisha

Find more of me on Book Riot.

Find more books by subscribing to Book Riot Newsletters.

Welcome to Read This Book, the newsletter where I recommend a book you should add to your TBR, STAT! I stan variety in all things, and my book recommendations will be no exception. These must-read books will span genres and age groups. There will be new releases, oldie but goldies from the backlist, and the classics you may have missed in high school. Oh my! If you’re ready to diversify your books, then LEGGO!!

Today is the second day of Banned Books Week, which began 40 years ago during a time of increased book challenges. In 1982, the Supreme Court case Island Trees School District v. Pico ruled school officials could not ban books in libraries simply based on their content. At BookExpo America in the same year, 500 banned books were showcased in large padlocked cages under signs warning attendants that some people considered these books dangerous. With that exhibit, an initiative was born, and the rest is history.

One aspect of Banned Books Week I enjoy the most is the list of the most frequently challenged books. It’s interesting to see both the evolution and the consistency year after year. Today’s recommendation The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas was one of the Top 10 Most Challenged Books from 2017 to 2018.

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter lives in a poor, mostly Black neighborhood and attends a fancy suburban prep school full of mostly White students. Those two worlds collide when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood friend Khalil by a police officer. His death becomes a national headline, and protesters take to the streets. Everyone wants to know what really happened that night. Starr is the only person alive who can tell the truth, but what she does (or doesn’t) say could upend her community and endanger her life.

The Hate U Give is as relevant today as it was when the book first published. I both loved and hated this novel for the same reason: It spoke nothing but facts about Black life in America. After I finished, I couldn’t stop the tears and knew this book should be required reading both inside and outside of the classroom. Put down To Kill a Mockingbird and pick up The Hate U Give because it’s time to normalize learning about the Black American experience from those who live it.

When published in 2017, The Hate U Give was about “Oscar. Aiyana. Trayvon. Rekia. Michael. Eric. Tamir. John. Ezell. Sandra. Freddie. Alton. Philando. It’s even about that little boy in 1955 who nobody recognized at first–Emmett.” In 2020, the list continues. It’s also about Ahmaud. Elijah. George. It is absolutely about a young woman named Breonna.

Until next time bookish friends,

Katisha

Find more of me on Book Riot.

Find more books by subscribing to Book Riot Newsletters.

Welcome to Read This Book, a weekly newsletter where I recommend one book that I think you absolutely must read. The books will vary across genre and age category to include new releases, backlist titles, and classics. If you’re ready to explode your TBR, buckle up!

This week’s pick is a powerful, hard-hitting YA novel that I inhaled earlier this year: We Are Not From Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez.

Content warning: Violence, death, assault (not detailed, but both on and off page), grief, suicidal ideation

Pulga, Chico, and Pequeña are three teens living in a small city in Guatemala. Chico lives with Pulga and his mom after his own mother’s death, and Pequeña lives with her own mother, who is close with Pulga’s mom–they consider each other cousins, even if they’re not related by blood. At the start of the book, Pequeña is pregnant, and she goes into labor. The boys head to the nearby store for Cokes and fireworks to celebrate the baby’s birth, and instead end up witnessing a violent murder. Mere days later, it becomes obvious to the three teens that it’s no longer safe for them to stay in Guatemala thanks to the violent man who is responsible for the murder the boys witnessed and Pequeña’s rape that resulted in her pregnancy. Under the cover of night they leave and head north. But the journey is perilous, especially aboard La Bestia, the train that many migrants hitch a ride on in Mexico. It’ll take all their strength, courage, and determination to make it.

You may recall some controversy surrounding American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins earlier this year. Writer Myriam Gurba does a great job summarizing why that book is harmful. While I haven’t read it personally, after reading You Are Not From Here and some reviews from writers with much more familiarity on the topic of migrants from Central America than I possess, I think it’s safe to say that this book is absolutely essential reading and the better pick. The author writes these characters with such sensitivity and vibrance.

Pulga and Pequeña share narration duties as they reveal what it’s like to grow up alongside the violence in their neighborhood, so much so that it doesn’t come entirely as a shock when they are finally forced to flee their home. As they travel north and face danger after danger, occasionally sprinkled with some small kindnesses from strangers, Sanchez knows when to focus in on their journey, when to pull back in order to make the reader feel alongside them. She has a true gift for making the reader understand the horrors without having to spell them out explicitly. This is not an easy read, but it is essential and eye-opening. Yes, it’s written for teens, but adults should absolutely read it too. While this book is not without hope, Sanchez also makes it clear that the United States is no promised land–more danger and adversity face these characters at their destination, but they’ll chance it over certain death back home. This is a powerful read that has stayed with me, and I think will linger in my mind for a long time.

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Marisa Blake, which I highly recommend.

Happy reading,

Tirzah

Find me on Book Riot, the Insiders Read Harder podcast, All the Books, and Twitter.

If someone forwarded this newsletter to you, click here to subscribe.

Welcome to Read This Book, the newsletter where I recommend a book you should add to your TBR, STAT! I stan variety in all things, and my book recommendations will be no exception. These must-read books will span genres and age groups. There will be new releases, oldie but goldies from the backlist, and the classics you may have missed in high school. Oh my! If you’re ready to diversify your books, then LEGGO!!

Last week, we lost an American titan in Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who passed away at 87 due to complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer. Despite the immense sadness felt from Gingsburg’s death, there was a silver lining in the passing of the first Jewish woman to serve on the Supreme Court: “Rosh Hashanah began this evening. In Jewish tradition, it is believed a person who dies on a High Holy Day is a tzaddik – a righteous and saintly person by Jewish religious standards.”

Before RBG sat on the Supreme Court, she led the courtroom fight for gender equality. Women can now have credit cards in their own name, serve on juries, fight on the front lines, and even receive an Ivy League education because of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She will always be a rad American woman! If you want to learn about more amazing women, then I recommend reading Rad American Women A-Z written by Katie Schatz and illustrated by Miriam Klein Stahl.

Like other alphabet books, Rad American Women also illustrates the alphabet, but instead of “A is for Apple,” it is “A is for Angela” meaning Angela Davis, the iconic political activist. B is for groundbreaking tennis superstar Billie Jean King, and C is for Carol Burnett who defied the assumptions about women in comedy. The list continues with 23 more amazing, diverse women from various professions and eras who were all brave agents of change.

I don’t remember how I discovered this book, but I immediately fell in love with it. What I absolutely adored about Rad American Women is feeling kinship to so many of these phenomenal women. It was easy for me to see myself in heroic and smart Black women like the aforementioned Angela Davis along with Zora Neale Hurston and Queen Bessie Coleman. However, I also immediately gravitated to other women like the Grimke Sisters who believed in the liberation of all people regardless of gender or race as well as Nellie Bly who let nothing deter her determination and adventurous spirit.

What I especially enjoyed about Rad American Women was the end of the book that encourages and challenges readers with plenty of activities to celebrate and support rad women (and girls) everyday.

Until next time bookish friends,

Katisha

Find more of me on Book Riot.

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