Books Are My People: A Weekly Newsletter

Books Are My People Weekly Newsletter

out today, paperback releases and more!

Apr 30, 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!)

This week’s newsletter is brought to you by The Year We Danced by Stephen E. Smith

Covering topics such as starting college, becoming a newcomer to the South, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Vietnam War, the year author Stephen E. Smith covers in The Year We Danced: A Memoir was anything but uneventful, both for Stephen personally and for the world at large. While Stephen first turned to the nostalgia of his past looking for comfort, he was instead hit with the shocking reality that the past is rarely quite what we remember it to be. In this vivid and humorous exploration into his freshman year, 1965-66, at Elon College in North Carolina, he relives the events—good and bad—that shaped his own coming-of-age in the 1960s.

Check out The Year We Danced by Stephen E. Smith

I’m back from my artist retreat in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I have so much to share about this trip and I will be doing so over on my Instagram and in at least one post here on Substack.

I was recently featured in an article in Apartmentguide.com. Click here to read the article in its entirety.

Last week, on episode 124 of Books Are My People: a podcast for book lovers, collage artist and printmaker Sarah Z. Short and I discuss how being a reader and English teacher inspired her integration of letters and words in her amazing collages. Click here to listen. And follow Sarah on instagram @sarah_z_short and visit her website here.

GIVEAWAY:

I am giving away one copy of The Women by Kristin Hannah, an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided. Click here to be taken to may Instagram post where you can read the rules and enter. This giveaway will close on May 9th. Open to U.S. Mailing addresses only.

Subscribing Members Update:

Our April Book Social Meetup will take place on 4/30 (that’s TODAY!) at 4 pm PT. Click here to register for this meeting.

Our next Read With Me selection for May will be:

Read more about how you can join in the fun in a previous newsletter.

Our June book to film adaptation read / watch will be The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith alongside the film and the new TV series, Ripley. Watch / read whichever version you’d like!

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

Out Today:

(I’ve starred the ones I’ve read)

*Real Americans by Rachel Khong (author of Goodbye, Vitamin - a book I absolutely loved!)

A multigenerational story taking place in 1999 New York, 2021 Washington state and China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. A novel about class, race, genetics and family.

key words: Washington, New York, China, single mom, multi-generational, family

Silk: A World History by Aarathi Prasad

A written history of the complex story of one of society’s most coveted fabrics.

key words: biography, science, social history, silk, geography

Shanghailanders by Juli Min

A complex family story told in reverse timeline, beginning in 2040 and moving back to 2014.

key words: family secrets, Shanghai, Boston, marriage, relationships.

Murdle Volume 3 by G. T. Karber

I purchased volume one for my fifteen-year-old and we are having so much fun working our way through these quick Clue-like mysteries. If you have a kid who likes codes, maps, logic and brainteasers, this is the series for you! There are now three books in the series, but it doesn’t matter which one you start with.

You can get Murdle Volume 1 and Murdle Volume 2 as well!

key words: Logic and brain teasers

Off the Tracks by Pamela Mulloy

As COVID locked us down, Mulloy began an imaginary journey that recalled the trips she has taken, as well as those of others. Whether it was Mary Wollstonecraft traveling alone to Sweden in the late 1700s, or the incident that had Charles Dickens forever fearful of trains, or the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt trapped in her carriage in a midwestern blizzard in the 1890s.

key words: historical fiction, railroads, history, adventure

The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson (author of The Splendid and the Vile)

Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln's election and the Confederacy's shelling of Sumter--a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were "so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them."

key words: historic fiction, birth father, Lincoln, Civil War, suspense

Paperback Releases:

*The London Seance Society by Sarah Penner
Lenna Wickes is seeking answers about her sister's death and pairs up with Vaudeline in London to solve a high-profile murder. With shared determination, the women find companionship that perhaps borders on something more and team up with the powerful men of London's exclusive Séance Society to solve the mystery, becoming entangled in their own mystery themselves.

A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung couldn't hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found community and a path to the life she'd long wanted. After losing her father, her mother contracts cancer during the pandemic. This memoir examines what it takes to reconcile the distance between one life, one home, and another - and sheds needed light on some of the most persistent and grievous inequalities in American society.

What are you excited to read?

Books Are My People

Books Are My People Weekly Newsletter

out today, paperback releases and more!

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