Books Are My People Weekly Newsletter
out today, paperback releases and more!
Dear Reader,
Is anyone else experiencing the inability to concentrate? I am having so much trouble reading lately. Even listening to books is proving difficult. Ugh. Reading is a self-soothing activity, so what happens when I can’t do it? My anxiety spikes. Luckily, it’s cooled off a bit in Los Angeles. And the bird feeder I purchased for my husband has had a few visitors besides the rotund squirrel that was a little over-zealous about the bird seed. I’ve posted our first bird visitor at the bottom of this newsletter.
BOOK COVER CHAT AND DRAW: Let’s paint / draw book covers and have a casual chat about the books we’re reading! (I’ve hosted two of these in the past and people seem to like them! Sign up here. (You must sign up to attend.) All attendees will receive a document with all of the books we talk about. No art experience required, as evidenced by my invented book cover for Katya Apekina’s Mother Doll. Please share with book and art-loving friends!
WHEN: Wednesday, November 13th at 11:30 am PT
PAYING SUBSCRIBERS: The polls are open, PLEASE VOTE HERE for our February Read With Me Book! Voting closes on Friday.
Our Meetup to discuss The Alternatives will happen this Wednesday, October 30th at 11 am PT. Make sure you sign up using the Luna Link. There will be a book giveaway.
Givewaway Closes Tomorrow: I am giving away one copy of NIGHT MAGIC: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens and Other Marvels of the Dark by Leigh Ann Henion.
To Enter: Visit THIS post on Instagram and follow the simple instructions! This giveaway will close on tomorrow and I will contact the winner on October 31st. Open to U.S. mailing addresses only.
Latest Podcast:
Click here to listen to my latest episode of my book recommendations podcast, Books Are My People where I interview fellow podcaster and writer Jonathan Small, author of the recently published Write About Now: Successful Authors on Overcoming Obstacles, Finding Inspiration and the Birth of Their Careers. He also has an incredible podcast called Write About Now where he interviews authors. Check it out!
Let Me Help You Discover Books You Might Not Otherwise Read! You can learn more about me by visiting my introductory post here.
The best way you can support this newsletter is to click on the books below and purchase them through my Bookshop.org affiliate store. A portion of your spending goes to independent bookstores! A win-win-win! (You win, I win, indie bookstores win!)
Books Out Today: (I’ve starred the ones I’ve read)
Like Mother, Like Mother by Susan Rieger
A novel about family stories: Lila Pereira is two years old when her angry, abusive father has her mother committed to an asylum. Three decades later, Lila rises to the pinnacle of American media as the powerful, brilliant executive editor of The Washington Globe, but her youngest daughter wishes she’d be more present. When Grace becomes a successful reporter she wonders about her past.
Mondrian: His Life, His Art, His Quest for the Absolute by Nicholas Fox Weber
The story behind the artist: The life of an elusive modern master: from his youth in a religious household in the Netherlands to his move to Paris where he embraced the work of Pablo Picasso, Georges Seurat, and Cézanne, to the 1920s and onward where, surviving the turmoil of two world wars and embracing a rapidly shifting culture, Mondrian challenged the concept of art and invented a new world of undiluted colors and rhythmic straight lines.
Miss Kim Knows by Cho Nam-Joo
Microcosmic stories: Written in Cho Nam-joo's signature razor-sharp prose, Miss Kim Knows follows eight women as they confront how gender shapes and orders their lives. A woman is born. A woman is filmed in public without consent. A woman is gaslit. A woman is discriminated against at work. A woman grows old. A woman becomes famous. A woman is hated, and loved, and then hated again.
Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me by Glory Edim
A book lover’s delight: Glory Edim (creator of the the Well-Read Black Girl book club) grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents. What became an escape, a safe space, and a second home for her and her brother was their local library. Edim recounts how writers taught her how to value herself by helping her to find her own voice when her mother lost hers, to trust her feelings when her father remarried, and to create bonds with other Black women and uplift their stories. This led to inception of the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age thirty.
Masquerade by Mike Fu
Creepy novel that explorers cultural and sexual identities: Newly single Meadow Liu is house-sitting for his friend, artist Selma Shimizu, when he stumbles upon The Masquerade, a translated novel about a masked ball in 1930s Shanghai. The author's name is the same as Meadow's own in Chinese. Over the course of a single summer, Meadow must contend with a possibly haunted apartment, a mirror that plays tricks, a stranger speaking in riddles at the bar where he works, as well as a startling revelation about a former lover. And when Selma vanishes from her artist residency, Meadow is forced to question everything he knows as the boundaries between real and imagined begin to blur.
Paperback Releases
*The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
Family circumstances: A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a mystery that will haunt the survivors, unravel a family, and remain unsolved for nearly fifty years.
Absolution by Alice McDermott
Women in the Vietnam War: Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era's mandate to be "helpmeets" to their ambitious husbands with their own inchoate impulse to "do good" for the people of Vietnam. They reunite sixty years later.
*The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan
Couple about to get married: Meet Celine and Luke. For all intents and purposes, the happy couple.Luke (a serial cheater) and Celine (more interested in piano than domestic life) plan to marry in a year.Archie (the best man) should be moving on from his love for Luke and up the corporate ladder, but he finds himself utterly stuck.Phoebe (the bridesmaid and Celine's sister) just wants to get to the bottom of Luke's frequent unexplained disappearances.And Vivian (a wedding guest) is the only one with any emotional distance and observes her friends like ants in a colony.As the wedding approaches and their five lives intersect, these characters will each look for a path to the happily ever after--but does it lie at the end of an aisle?
Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park
Blend of history and fiction in Korea: In World War II, the KPG dissolves and civil war erupts, resulting in the tragic North-South split that remains in Korea today.But what if the KPG still existed--now working toward a unified Korea, secretly pulling levers to further its aims? Same Bed Different Dreams weaves together three distinct narrative voices with an archive of mysterious images, and twists reality like a kaleidoscope. Korean history, American pop culture, and our tech-fraught lives come together in this extraordinary and unforgettable novel.
Upcoming Activities for Paying Subscribers:
November: Book to Film Series: Poor Things by Alasdair Gray. Read the book, watch the movie, or both!
UPDATED: December - I will be pausing Substack for the month of December in order to recharge. What does this mean for you? If you’re a paying subscriber, you won’t be charged for December. And there will be no paying subscriber activities. For free subscribers, this means no newsletters for the month of December. I WILL still be publishing my book recommendation podcast, Books Are My People during December. And business as usual will resume in January.
January: Independent Reading - read a book! Let’s discuss what we’ve read at the end of January.
February: Read With Me month. We’ll read a shorter book (around 200 pages) in February. The title will be announced soon. Stay tuned.
I hope you all have a wonderfully bookish week! What are you looking forward to reading on or off this list? Share below.
Here’s the Bewick’s Wren, the first bird caught on our bird feeder film. It was very exciting.
And here’s art from my latest BIG mixed media pieces I’ve been working on. They’re so much fun to make! They aren’t up in my Etsy shop yet, but other works of art are.
And, if you haven't yet, the greatest gift would be to rate my podcast, wherever you listen!
Can’t wait for your Book Cover Draw along… and love your bird Camera catcher!!! So cool!
Also love your Geli prints, I need more practice.
Thanks Jen.
Thanks for having me on!