This week I figured I'd share some books I've read recently that I'd recommend:
Wonderful, calming, inspirational book of a woman's post-cancer journey to climb 100 summits in Japan within one year. Includes tidbits about foods enjoyed in the region, too.
A murder mystery in the style of Agatha Christie and Mary Roberts Rinehart. A group of co-workers from a tech company get stuck in a ski lodge after a massive avalanche must figure out who's murdering them one by one.
A beautiful, lyrical, but dark literary piece about the damaging cycles shared by the women in a family. Murder, abuse, and loss. Some sensitive themes.
A book written in the 90s about what we're doing to teenage girls that kills their strength, their bravery, and their individualism in their teen years, and what to do to get that back. Deals significantly with media, society, and culture.
I posted asking people to recommend anything they've read lately that they'd recommend to others, and these were the answers I got:
The Ladies of the Secret Circus, by Constance Sayers
When the Stars Go Dark, by Paula McClain
The Last Thing He Told Me, by Laura Dave
Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories, by Ray Russell
The Last Final Girl, by Stephen Graham Jones
Severance, by Ling Ma
The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman
Know My Name, by Chanel Miller
Sinner, Priest, and American Queen, by Sierra Simone
Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee
Tell Me, by Anne Frasier
My Best Friend's Exorcism, by Grady Hendrix
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Vampire Slaying, by Grady Hendrix
The Codebreakers, by David Khan
Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown
The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown
The Gift of Fear: Surviving Signals That Protect Us From Violence, by Gavin de Becker
Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, by Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD
A Master of Djinn, by P. Djeli Clark
All the Murmuring Bones, by AG Slater
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert B. Cialdini, PhD
Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens
My Name is Memory, by Ann Brasheres
Still Life, by Louise Penny
Dragon Weather, by Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by V.E. Schwab
Monarchs of the Sea: the 500 Million Year History of Cephalopods, by Dana Staaf
Sweet Silver Blues, by Glen Cook
Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon
The Searcher, by Tana French
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong
Who Fears Death, by Nnedi Okorafor
Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir
The Wonder, by Emma Donoghue
Sorrowland, by Rivers Solomon
We Were Never Here, by Andrea Bartz
The Lost Apothecary, by Sarah Penner
Torchship Trilogy, by Karl Gallagher
Love, Lies, & Hocus Pocus, by Lydia Sherrer
Level Six, by William Ledbetter
We Are Satellites, by Sarah Pinsker
Wanderers, by Chuck Wendig
Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
These Toxic Things, by Rachel Howzell Hall
Getaway, by Zoje Stage
Cat Among the Pigeons, by Agatha Christie
About Grace, by Anthony Doerr
The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig
A Thousand Brains, by Jeff Hawkins
All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
Live Girls, by Ray Garton
Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
I also asked for recommendations of nonfiction books on the following: McCarthyism, the black plague and other pandemics, and the World's Fair, due to my own curiosity. These were the recommendations (some were clearly fiction, but I included them anyway):
World's Fair, by E.L. Doctorow
All the World's a Fair, by Robert Rydell
Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, by Ahmed Rashid
Of Plagues and Peoples, by William H. McNeil
Guns, Germs, & Steel, by Jared Diamond
The Speckled Monster: A Tale of Battling Smallpox, by Jennifer Lee Carrel
The Doomsday Book/Fire Watch, by Connie Willis
The Stand, by Stephen King
Flu, by Gina Kolata
The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston
1939: The Lost World of the Fair, by David Gelernter
I hope you find a good new read from this list!
Have you read anything lately that you'd recommend? Or do you know of a book you'd recommend on the topics I asked about (McCarthyism, pandemics, the World's Fair)? Have you read any of these, and would you agree with the recommendation?
May you find your Muse.
Blue Swoosh, by OCAL, clker.com