Apocalyptic snow, vengeful faeries, and one bad teacher
Plus the best place to do your holiday shopping and oodles of best-of-the-year lists
Hey, readers!
Today’s newsletter is popping into your inbox late due to a very fun Hannukah party we hosted yesterday. We gathered with friends to make latkes, play dreidel, light the candles, and, mostly, watch our sizable brood of 5 and unders wreck havoc on our home. It was so much fun!
Speaking of holiday cheer, today I am thrilled to be partnering with Bookshop.org to share a great way to make holiday shopping convenient and meaningful. If you’re not familiar with Bookshop.org, they’re an online book retail platform that supports independent bookstores. Through Bookshop, you can choose what indie store your purchases support, while shopping a much vaster catalog of books than most small retailers are able to carry.
This holiday season, Bookshop.org is helping making gifting easier than every with thoughtfully curated guides and a quiz to help you find the right book for everyone on your list. Plus, you can get 15% off every book on their gift guides by using code Holiday23 at checkout. There’s also an option to send a Bookshop.org gift card. I love this as a gift because it lets your favorite readers choose both what they want to read and what bookstore they want to support with their holiday cash. Where we spend our gift money matters and, this year, it’s easier than ever to support independent bookstores by visiting Bookshop.org to find the perfect gift for all the readers in your life.
And for my own holiday recs with links straight to Bookshop.org, be sure to check out my 2023 gift guide:
This week in books.
This week I read…
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett. This story follows a socially awkward professor research faeries as she is forced to partner with her professional rival to complete her ambitious encyclopedia project and finally get the attention her work deserves. But Wendell Bambery may not be who he says he is and his presence, plus that of a volatile changeling bring Emily closer to the faerie world than she’s ever hoped to be. This is a delightfully fun adventure filled with meticulously researched folktale and faerie lore. Emily and Wendell are both excellent characters and their banter and chemistry was charming—never annoying, for me. My one complaint is that the entire book is written as Emily’s field journal. While I appreciated some of the field journal passages and the occasional footnotes, I found the narrative style occasionally distracting. There were several moments were it just would not make sense that anyone could be writing in a journal in a given situation, no matter how dedicated that are. And I hate when stories in journal form include long sections of dialogue—nobody can remember word for word dialogue in a journal! Maybe that shouldn’t matter in a light-hearted fantasy tale, but it bothered me. Still, I loved this book on audio and I can’t wait to listen to the second book in the series soon. Bookshop | Libro.fm
Speech Team by Tim Murphy. I’d heard about this book when it first came out and the cover immediately grabbed me, but I hadn’t seen many reviews at all. Sometimes early buzz and an immediate fizzle means the book wasn’t as good as the marketing team thought it was, but I think this particular novel deserves more attention. The story is narrated by Tip Murray (and, yes, I think the protagonist is somewhat of a stand-in for the author) and begins when an old friend of his from high school commits suicide. This shocking news leads Tip to reconnect with the rest of his high school speech team and bond over the bullying they suffered at the hands of their teacher and coach, Mr. Gold. One by one, Tip assembles the former friends like a heist team to travel to Florida and confront Mr. Gold. The story includes a lot of nostalgia, and of course some thoughtful reflection on what sorts of abuses of power would have been tolerated in the past. I can’t be specific because of spoilers, but towards the end, the story verges into territory I wish it hadn’t. For most of the book Murphy was exploring pretty surprising and original question for this type of story and it collapsed into something more familiar by the end. But overall, I really enjoyed this! It’s fun and engaging, though not without bite, and I hope it gets a second life when it comes out in paperback. Bookshop | Libro.fm
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice. This slow burn survival narrative is the FictionMatters Book Club selection for December, and it’s a perfect, harrowing cold-weather read. It takes place on an Anishinaabe reservation in Canada at the onset of a winter when first the phone lines and then the power go out. I don’t want to say anymore because this is a slim book that’s all about the way Rice builds tension. But if you like survival stories or apocalyptic novels where you aren’t quite sure what’s happening, this may be right for you. Bookshop | Libro.fm
Now I’m reading…
Eve by Cat Bohannon. Almost done! Can’t wait to tell you everything! Amazon | Bookshop | Libro.fm
Run Towards the Danger by Sarah Polley. This was recommended by a FictionMatters Book Club member at yesterday’s Biblio Brunch event. I immediately downloaded the audiobook from my library and am enthralled by the way Polley rights about trauma and healing. Bookshop | Libro.fm
If you are an international reader or just prefer UK covers, you can also order books through my Blackwell’s affiliate page!
Links I love.
It’s best of the year list season. Here’s what we got this week:
Books worth gifting, according to Vulture staff writers.
A guide to all of 2023’s celebrity memoirs.
I love the metadata Lit Hub collects with their best reviewed nonfiction and fiction lists.
Loved this beautiful profile of Jesmyn Ward.
I’m very excited about The Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. It’s a highly dramatic tale perfect for television and I think Tom Hollander will make a great Capote.
Whatever your parental status, there is so much good cultural criticism in this article about the contemporary discourse surrounding motherhood.
End notes.
This week in views, listens, eats, and moments of joy.
We’re currently watching Murder at the End of the World. I think the present timeline is interesting and the past one is insufferable, so it’s not exactly bringing me joy, but it’s something to watch.
Our latke trial run and subsequent big latke batch at our Hanukkah part were both excellent.
I recored my best books of the year episode with my friend Liz Hein. Every year there’s at least one book that’s lower on my ranked list and then I realize it’s much more of a favorite after I talk about it with Liz. I can’t wait to share which book that happened with this year!
I reorganized the books in my office. I think that plus a new TBR strategy I’m putting in place are going to help me feel more organized and satisfied in my reading life.
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Happy reading!
Sara
I loved Moon of the Crusted Snow! You’re absolutely right, Rice is brilliant at building tension! Glad to see it’s getting the recognition it deserves