Books Are My People: A Weekly Newsletter

Books Are My People Weekly Newsletter

out today, paperback releases and more!

Mar 12, 2024

Welcome to my weekly book recommendation newsletter. You can learn more about me by visiting my introductory post here. Please consider purchasing recommended books through my Bookshop.org affiliate links. It’s a great way to support the show and an ethical way to support your local bookstore. (You can even buy books I don’t link in my shop!)

I’ll be going LIVE on Instagram on Thursday, March 14th at 9 am PT with Annie from the online book club, SoThis Come say hi and see what books we loved in February!

Episode #121 of Books Are My People is here , author of The Keeper: Soccer, Me, and the Law That Changed Women’s Lives and Field Guide to Graphic Literature.

I’m starting with the books and ending with Subscriber Notes and Events.

Let Me Help You Discover Books You Might Not Otherwise Read!

Out Today:

Mother Doll by Katya Apekina

Zhenia is adrift in Los Angeles, pregnant with a baby her husband doesn't want, while her Russian grandmother and favorite person in the world is dying on the opposite coast. She gets a strange call from a psychic medium with a message from the other side. Zhenia's great-grandmother Irina, a Russian Revolutionary is desperate to tell her story and receive absolution from Zhenia.

key words: family, Russia, grief, connection

Dominoes by Phoebe McIntosh

A tender and provocative debut novel about a mixed-race British woman who makes the shocking discovery in the days leading up to her wedding that her fiancé's family may have enslaved her ancestors.

key words: family, history, enslavement, love

The Manicurist’s Daughter: A Memoir by Susan Lieu

An emotionally raw memoir about the crumbling of the American Dream and a daughter of refugees who searches for answers after her mother dies during a botched tummy tuck.

key words: memoir, Vietnam, California, immigration

Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family's unrelenting expectation of victory. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country.

key words: boxing, literary, women

These Letters End in Tears by Musih Tedji Xaviere

Set in a country where being gay is punishable by law, These Letters End in Tears is the heart-wrenching forbidden love story of a Christian girl with a rebellious heart and a Muslim girl leading a double life.

key words: Cameroon, LGBTQ+, forbidden love

Victim by Andrew Boryga

Victim is a fearless satire about a hustler from the Bronx who sees through the veneer of diversity initiatives and decides to cash in on the odd currency of identity.

key words: white privilege, satire, humor

This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud

A family story of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family's strangeness; of François's union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.

key words: World War II, colonialism, Algeria, sweeping family saga

Wrong is Not My Name by Erica N. Cardwell

A dazzling hybrid of personal memoir and criticism, considering the work of Black visual artists as a means to explore loss, legacy, and the reclamation of life through art.

key words: art, Black artists, Blondell Cummings, Lorna Simpson, Lorraine O'Grady, and Kara Walker, autobiography, criticism, theory

Paperback Releases:

(I’ve starred the ones I’ve read)

*The Dog of the North by Elizabeth McKenzie

Penny Rush has problems. Her marriage is over; she's quit her job. Her mother and stepfather went missing in the Australian outback five years ago; her mentally unbalanced father provokes her; her grandmother Dr. Pincer keeps experiments in the refrigerator and something worse in the woodshed. But Penny is a virtuoso at what's possible when all else fails.

*Kunstlers in Paradise by Cathleen Schine

There was a time when the family Künstler lived in the fairy-tale city of Vienna. Circumstances transformed that fairy tale into a nightmare, and in 1939 the Künstlers found their way out of Vienna and into a new fairy tale: Los Angeles, California, United States of America.

*Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

A deliciously funny, sharply observed debut of family, love, and class, this zeitgeisty novel follows three women in one wealthy Brooklyn clan.

Join us in reading and / or watching The Expatriates by Janice Y. K. Lee and / or The Expats on Prime Video. We will have a zoom meet up to discuss towards the end of this month.

Feel free to upgrade to paying just for the month and check it out!

Subscribers: We’ll be doing our first round of voting for our May Read With Me book on Thursday!

Happening this week:

Online Writing, Reading and Art Events This Week (three things I love!)

Reading Events:

Wednesday March 13th at 5 p.m. Chat with Hannah Stowe, author of Moves Like Water: My Story of the Sea.

Thursday, March 14th 4:30 PM p.t. The Gothic Girls: Authors in Conversation

Art Events:

We’re on week 2 of

Citlaflor

’s The Sketchbook Games Sketchbook Scavenger Hunt This week, the theme is Harvest Time. (I didn’t have any time to paint before this newsletter went live, but I’m especially looking forward to painting pumpkins.)