’s The Sicilian Inheritance as one of these books once they crack it open, but I’d love to know - what was the last book you couldn’t stop reading, couldn’t stop talking about, and couldn’t stop thinking about once you finished?
Demon Copperhead. I loved the characters, especially Demon. And it was one of the best portrayals of trauma and multigenerational drivers of health that I’ve read.
+1 for SICILIAN! And you and I have already discussed SPLINTERS by Leslie Jamison but whew that book embedded in my brain!
On a very much lighter note, I just started THE CHARM OFFENSIVE by Alison Cochrun, and it is delightful for anyone who needs their brain to just hang out in a fun frothy place for a minute.
Unexpectedly, due to its dark content, desolate setting, and lack of dialogue, I still think about Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff months after finishing it. Anyone else?
I have been heavily influenced by Substack in my recent reading :
This American Ex-wife, Class by Stephanie Land and most recently all of ACOTAR after the recent Culture Study podcast about it. All very different but I really enjoyed them all!
Currently reading A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future by Perri Klass, which is a tough read but also fascinating.
Ann Patchett’s TOM LAKE and Chloe Caldwell’s collection of essays I’LL TELL YOU IN PERSON. Tom lake I read months ago, but I’m still reflecting on it. I just read I’ll Tell You in Person last week, after watching all five seasons of Broad City while my partner was away for 4 weeks and it felt like a lovely expansion on NYC + late twenties media.
Time’s Mouth by Edan Lepucki- time travel, a lady cult, coming of age; Do I Know You by Sadie Dingfelder (out soon) - a funny and sciency memoir about faceblindness and other things; Group Living and Other Recipes by Lola Milholland, a crisply written, fresh and page-turning set of essays on ways to live in community. (Also out soon).
thinking about books i still think about and don't disappear from my head immediately even if they were fun reads -
FUTURE HOME OF THE LIVING GOD by Louise Erdrich - pregnant woman in slowly devolving apocalypse dystopia, deals with the MC's experience of being Native American and adopted to a white family, really beautiful prose
DETRANSITION, BABY by Torrey Peters - a man who detransitioned from being a trans woman has an unintended pregnancy with his girlfriend, they start talking to his trans ex-girlfriend to process, many relationship dynamics ensue in present and flashback. the entire read i had no idea if i liked any of the characters or agreed with any of what they said, and the ending does have kind of a "so what was that all for" quality - BUT definitely worth the read in terms of compelling + readable + unique
THE CHRISTMAS ORPHANS CLUB by Becca Freeman - found family and friendship drama in a satisfying happy ending way! there is romance but the central romance is the friend group. i couldn't get a library hold during Christmas season but greatly enjoyed reading in February
for fantasy enjoyers - WAYWARD CHILDREN series by Seanan McGuire (first book is EVERY HEART A DOORWAY) - series of portal fantasies focusing on different young (usually queer girl) characters. each character has their own fantasy universe they've traveled to, and they end up back on our Earth and going to a school to process being kicked out and waiting to go back. there's a new one up to 9 novellas now every January and i look forward to the next one as one of my first books of the year immensely. they're all set in the same universe and will make more sense read in order, but they mostly all have a different MC even as recurring characters come back often. short in a way that does leave you wanting more but not in a frustrating way
I recently re-read Red State Christians by Rev. Angela Denker, and highly recommend it for anyone who want a nuanced examination of how Trumpism became the true faith of Evangelical Christians.
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton- started slow but now I am staying up too late every night to see what happens (also no chapter breaks which makes that way too easy)
Love all of these suggestions and agree with many of them. Also wanted to mention Four Thousand Weeks. Read it recently and think about it multiple times a day still.
OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA by Julia Armfield, which has elements of sci fi / horror, but is really about the nature of loss. On the shorter side, and really distinctive. I immediately put the author's previous book of short stories on hold for myself at the library.
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. It has that tricky quality of being hard to read at points yet even harder to put down. The world is unlike our own, yet you can see how a few small tweaks could lead us down that path. I couldn't stop thinking about it for a long time after.
THE BEST MINDS: A Story of Friendship, Madness and the Tragedy of Good Intentions by Jonathan Rosen. I almost didn’t read this because I thought it might be too heavy but I’m so glad I did. He articulates the context & issues with our mental health system so elegantly. I understood things in a way I never had before. Along with that, the personal nature of the story pulled me right in… I couldn’t put it down!
The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel. It’s a really wonderful novel about a mother and her two daughters who lost their husband/father. Jane, the mother, embarks on an adventure to “de-extinct” a wooly mammoth and brings her daughters with her to Siberia to hunt for ancient DNA. On their trip, they actually end up…finding a wooly mammoth. What happens next? A great novel about relationships, climate change, parenthood, sisterhood, loss, and the ethics of bioengineering. It’s read almost like a thriller at times. It’s very good.
If you live in Texas or have ever lived in Texas or are interested in Red state politics, MR. TEXAS is a must-read. The story is true to life, the characters well drawn, and I felt like I was in Austin/West Texas as the story unfolded. The main character finds a way to collegially work on both sides of the aisle, so it is hopeful too!
Tim Alberta's book- The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory lays out in first-person detail how the Christian Nationalist movement has affected non-nationalist Christians.
Nina Simon's- Mother-Daughter Murder Night was a palate cleanser after thinking too long and hard about politics. I love how the mother-daughter relationship developed as they worked together to solve a murder when their granddaughter/daughter was a key witness. The story lends itself to good conversation about the power of forgiveness in strained relationships.
I am late to the party, but I read THE GUEST earlier this year and could not put it down.
Another good one is THEYRE GOING TO LOVE YOU. Its about family betrayal set against the backdrop of ballet and the AIDS pandemic in 80s NYC. Its so so so good. A perfect pick for book clubs too!
I am reading the new Tana French--she's always good for a slow burn Irish mystery/story about people's secrets. I love her attention to small tells when two people who don't trust each other are talking. Also reading All Things Are Too Small, essays by WaPo book critic Becca Rothfeld; they're very cerebral but also a bit saucy, and I'm into them. Also listening to Mary Gabriel's tome on Madonna on audio but the reader is so bad that I may have to give up--I'm at the Truth or Dare era, but the reader sounds like an AI phone person, with false cheer ("Sorry...I didn't get that...! Please dial zero....") and it's bringing me down. I highly recommend Perfume and Pain by Anna Dorn, coming out in the next month or so? Very funny lesbians in hipster LA--I love Anna Dorn and I think this one will get her a wider audience.
Troubled by Rob Henderson. Definitely not light and very hard to read at times - the American foster care system is a disaster and our allegedly “pro family” politicians are worthless. Not only informative about those issues though, but about his theory of luxury beliefs. Don’t know if I agree but I’m still thinking about it a week later.
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I would linger over a sentence, reread it over and over, marveling at the art. The voice of the narrator, the way it changed as he passed through the years from child through to adult was astounding. It made me want to write fiction just for the impossible reach of craft that brilliant. And the story it tells, wow wow wow.
The last book I read that fit your description was IN MEMORIAM by Alice Winn... it was getting rave reviews on Culture Study, and I read it just before Christmas. It lived up to the hype. Just a beautiful, devastating, read -- and the author wasn't even 30 when she wrote it!!
A fun one that I read last year (twice!) that's stayed with me and that I've recommended to others was KILLERS OF A CERTAIN AGE by Deanna Raybourn. Just a whole lot of fun, with some pity commentary about aging, corporations, sexism, etc. I would love to see a movie version (so long as it doesn't stray too far from the source material), and a sequel!
Current read: THE IMPROBABILITY OF LOVE by Hannah Rothschild. It started out slow, but midway through it got really interesting and now I'm close to the end and having a hard time putting it down. (Picking it up again as soon as I hit post! lol)
If graphic novels are allowed, then Kate Beaton's *Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands.* It is such a beautiful and complex meditation on being a woman in a remote and toxically masculine resource extraction worksite, on having to leave home to enjoy economic opportunities, on blue-collar work and culture, on simultaneously caring for and helping to destroy the environment, and so much more.
Currently listening to The Idea of You because I’m the girl who wants to read the book before the Anne Hathaway movie comes out next month. It’s sexy, fanfic adjacent, and just a nice unrealistic place to escape to in my headphones.
Our book club is meeting tomorrow night and this thread is so wonderful for our next monthly suggestion <3<3
THE LIST by Yomi Adegoke. What happens when a feminist writer’s fiancé is included in a Shitty Media Men type list that goes public a month before their wedding day? What does it matter that the UK’s overlapping Black and African-immigrant communities see them as #BlackCoupleGoals ? The characters feel REAL and there were a couple of good twists I didn’t see coming.
Even though I felt ambivalent about it while I was reading, Teju Cole’s TREMOR keeps floating back up in the back of my mind.
“And yet for each problem there are better and worse solutions, so the people continue to search through the gods, through money, through poetry, through the movies, through the reading of leaves and clouds and constellations for ever-better paths out of the problems of being human.”
And for comfort and funzies! Any and all of the LADY VIOLET mysteries by Grace Burrowes. They helped get me through an unexpectedly tragic January *and* there are a whole bunch that don’t involve murder (I get bored of mysteries that are only about murder).
My whole book club was obsessed with Yellowface by R.F. Kuang a couple of months ago. Could not stop talking about it, and I still think about it all the time.
Martyr! By Kaveh Akbar was so good, but I cannot stop talking about Mary Magdalene Revealed by Meggan Watterson. It’s part memoir part history and I can’t get over the way it validates the experience of being silenced and sidelined as a woman in the church
South of Broad by Pat Conroy. My all time favorite book. The setting is in Charleston, SC which is a place very near and dear to my heart. The writing is just beautiful.
I picked up five-year-old THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD by Claire Lombardo from the library in February, following a recommendation in one of Anne Helen Petersen’s What Are You Reading? threads. Fast forward to April and I hadn’t touched it, but it got tapped as the Reese Witherspoon book of the month so the library is now clamoring to get it back. Halfway through and really enjoying it - I love an intergenerational family drama - and bonus the central location is Oak Park, IL, where I live. I had no idea!
I have retreated to the complete comfort food zone of Ann Patchett, currently an old paperback of "The Magician's Assistant" (you know it's from the '90s because the characters still smoke.)Such clear, lovely prose and well-told stories, absorbing characters. Contemporary fiction is exhausting me lately, just give me the deep satisfaction of an artful yet not "arty" seasoned novelist who really knows what she's doing.
I am looking for this experience with my next read so thank you for this thread! Currently reading BRAIDING SWEETGRASS which is so interesting and I'm learning a lot, but it doesn't keep me up past my bedtime like fiction.
THE LIGHT PIRATE: maybe one of the best books I’ve ever read. I am biased as a 4th gen Floridian but it is such a haunting and beautiful look at what our state could look like as these hurricanes keep getting bigger and bigger. Totally got me into climate change dystopia 😂 and then promptly read and also loved THE DISPLACEMENTS. I found about that one when I wouldn’t stop talking about The Light Pirate to my librarian and she recommended it to me. God bless librarians.
For comfort reading, I will always go back to Ellery Adams’ cozy mysteries. I love her heroines so much that I sometimes imagine myself traveling to the settings and hanging out with them! They got me through the year after my mom died when I couldn’t bear to read anything remotely realistic or disturbing.
A PSALM FOR THE WILD-BUILT and its sequel, A PRAYER FOR THE CROWN-SHY by Becky Chambers. A little futuristic but also so grounded and full of nature and life and comfort. These are very quick books, and they will forever be go-to comfort reads for me.
Demon Copperhead. I loved the characters, especially Demon. And it was one of the best portrayals of trauma and multigenerational drivers of health that I’ve read.
+1 for SICILIAN! And you and I have already discussed SPLINTERS by Leslie Jamison but whew that book embedded in my brain!
On a very much lighter note, I just started THE CHARM OFFENSIVE by Alison Cochrun, and it is delightful for anyone who needs their brain to just hang out in a fun frothy place for a minute.
Unexpectedly, due to its dark content, desolate setting, and lack of dialogue, I still think about Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff months after finishing it. Anyone else?
Loved Such a fun age by Kiley Reid for a good but quick read.
I have been heavily influenced by Substack in my recent reading :
This American Ex-wife, Class by Stephanie Land and most recently all of ACOTAR after the recent Culture Study podcast about it. All very different but I really enjoyed them all!
Currently reading A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future by Perri Klass, which is a tough read but also fascinating.
- Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
- Symphony of Secrets by Brendon Slocomb
- The Overstory by Richard Powers
- Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
- The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
- Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See
- Horse by Geraldine Brooks
- The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff
- Educated by Tara Westover
I know that’s a long list but those are the books I was wise enough to log in my Goodreads that I LOVE LOVE LOVED!
Ann Patchett’s TOM LAKE and Chloe Caldwell’s collection of essays I’LL TELL YOU IN PERSON. Tom lake I read months ago, but I’m still reflecting on it. I just read I’ll Tell You in Person last week, after watching all five seasons of Broad City while my partner was away for 4 weeks and it felt like a lovely expansion on NYC + late twenties media.
i resisted for a long time so i'm late to the game, but i'm finally reading the ACOTAR books 🫣 and truthfully...really enjoying them so far
I read “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” last fall and still think about it all the time.
Time’s Mouth by Edan Lepucki- time travel, a lady cult, coming of age; Do I Know You by Sadie Dingfelder (out soon) - a funny and sciency memoir about faceblindness and other things; Group Living and Other Recipes by Lola Milholland, a crisply written, fresh and page-turning set of essays on ways to live in community. (Also out soon).
So many good recommendations above!!! One that I saw missing that I LOVED was Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt 🐙
thinking about books i still think about and don't disappear from my head immediately even if they were fun reads -
FUTURE HOME OF THE LIVING GOD by Louise Erdrich - pregnant woman in slowly devolving apocalypse dystopia, deals with the MC's experience of being Native American and adopted to a white family, really beautiful prose
DETRANSITION, BABY by Torrey Peters - a man who detransitioned from being a trans woman has an unintended pregnancy with his girlfriend, they start talking to his trans ex-girlfriend to process, many relationship dynamics ensue in present and flashback. the entire read i had no idea if i liked any of the characters or agreed with any of what they said, and the ending does have kind of a "so what was that all for" quality - BUT definitely worth the read in terms of compelling + readable + unique
THE CHRISTMAS ORPHANS CLUB by Becca Freeman - found family and friendship drama in a satisfying happy ending way! there is romance but the central romance is the friend group. i couldn't get a library hold during Christmas season but greatly enjoyed reading in February
for fantasy enjoyers - WAYWARD CHILDREN series by Seanan McGuire (first book is EVERY HEART A DOORWAY) - series of portal fantasies focusing on different young (usually queer girl) characters. each character has their own fantasy universe they've traveled to, and they end up back on our Earth and going to a school to process being kicked out and waiting to go back. there's a new one up to 9 novellas now every January and i look forward to the next one as one of my first books of the year immensely. they're all set in the same universe and will make more sense read in order, but they mostly all have a different MC even as recurring characters come back often. short in a way that does leave you wanting more but not in a frustrating way
I recently re-read Red State Christians by Rev. Angela Denker, and highly recommend it for anyone who want a nuanced examination of how Trumpism became the true faith of Evangelical Christians.
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton- started slow but now I am staying up too late every night to see what happens (also no chapter breaks which makes that way too easy)
The Women by Kristin Hannah. And The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese.
The Frozen River was an amazing historical fiction read
Love all of these suggestions and agree with many of them. Also wanted to mention Four Thousand Weeks. Read it recently and think about it multiple times a day still.
OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA by Julia Armfield, which has elements of sci fi / horror, but is really about the nature of loss. On the shorter side, and really distinctive. I immediately put the author's previous book of short stories on hold for myself at the library.
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. It has that tricky quality of being hard to read at points yet even harder to put down. The world is unlike our own, yet you can see how a few small tweaks could lead us down that path. I couldn't stop thinking about it for a long time after.
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Such an interesting read about a complex family.
Wanted to know so much more about the main characters sister
THE BEST MINDS: A Story of Friendship, Madness and the Tragedy of Good Intentions by Jonathan Rosen. I almost didn’t read this because I thought it might be too heavy but I’m so glad I did. He articulates the context & issues with our mental health system so elegantly. I understood things in a way I never had before. Along with that, the personal nature of the story pulled me right in… I couldn’t put it down!
The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel. It’s a really wonderful novel about a mother and her two daughters who lost their husband/father. Jane, the mother, embarks on an adventure to “de-extinct” a wooly mammoth and brings her daughters with her to Siberia to hunt for ancient DNA. On their trip, they actually end up…finding a wooly mammoth. What happens next? A great novel about relationships, climate change, parenthood, sisterhood, loss, and the ethics of bioengineering. It’s read almost like a thriller at times. It’s very good.
If you live in Texas or have ever lived in Texas or are interested in Red state politics, MR. TEXAS is a must-read. The story is true to life, the characters well drawn, and I felt like I was in Austin/West Texas as the story unfolded. The main character finds a way to collegially work on both sides of the aisle, so it is hopeful too!
Tim Alberta's book- The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory lays out in first-person detail how the Christian Nationalist movement has affected non-nationalist Christians.
Nina Simon's- Mother-Daughter Murder Night was a palate cleanser after thinking too long and hard about politics. I love how the mother-daughter relationship developed as they worked together to solve a murder when their granddaughter/daughter was a key witness. The story lends itself to good conversation about the power of forgiveness in strained relationships.
I am late to the party, but I read THE GUEST earlier this year and could not put it down.
Another good one is THEYRE GOING TO LOVE YOU. Its about family betrayal set against the backdrop of ballet and the AIDS pandemic in 80s NYC. Its so so so good. A perfect pick for book clubs too!
I am reading the new Tana French--she's always good for a slow burn Irish mystery/story about people's secrets. I love her attention to small tells when two people who don't trust each other are talking. Also reading All Things Are Too Small, essays by WaPo book critic Becca Rothfeld; they're very cerebral but also a bit saucy, and I'm into them. Also listening to Mary Gabriel's tome on Madonna on audio but the reader is so bad that I may have to give up--I'm at the Truth or Dare era, but the reader sounds like an AI phone person, with false cheer ("Sorry...I didn't get that...! Please dial zero....") and it's bringing me down. I highly recommend Perfume and Pain by Anna Dorn, coming out in the next month or so? Very funny lesbians in hipster LA--I love Anna Dorn and I think this one will get her a wider audience.
Troubled by Rob Henderson. Definitely not light and very hard to read at times - the American foster care system is a disaster and our allegedly “pro family” politicians are worthless. Not only informative about those issues though, but about his theory of luxury beliefs. Don’t know if I agree but I’m still thinking about it a week later.
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I would linger over a sentence, reread it over and over, marveling at the art. The voice of the narrator, the way it changed as he passed through the years from child through to adult was astounding. It made me want to write fiction just for the impossible reach of craft that brilliant. And the story it tells, wow wow wow.
The new Tana French book. Can’t put it down
The last book I read that fit your description was IN MEMORIAM by Alice Winn... it was getting rave reviews on Culture Study, and I read it just before Christmas. It lived up to the hype. Just a beautiful, devastating, read -- and the author wasn't even 30 when she wrote it!!
A fun one that I read last year (twice!) that's stayed with me and that I've recommended to others was KILLERS OF A CERTAIN AGE by Deanna Raybourn. Just a whole lot of fun, with some pity commentary about aging, corporations, sexism, etc. I would love to see a movie version (so long as it doesn't stray too far from the source material), and a sequel!
Current read: THE IMPROBABILITY OF LOVE by Hannah Rothschild. It started out slow, but midway through it got really interesting and now I'm close to the end and having a hard time putting it down. (Picking it up again as soon as I hit post! lol)
If graphic novels are allowed, then Kate Beaton's *Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands.* It is such a beautiful and complex meditation on being a woman in a remote and toxically masculine resource extraction worksite, on having to leave home to enjoy economic opportunities, on blue-collar work and culture, on simultaneously caring for and helping to destroy the environment, and so much more.
Currently listening to The Idea of You because I’m the girl who wants to read the book before the Anne Hathaway movie comes out next month. It’s sexy, fanfic adjacent, and just a nice unrealistic place to escape to in my headphones.
Our book club is meeting tomorrow night and this thread is so wonderful for our next monthly suggestion <3<3
I also just read and couldn't put down The Sicilian Inheritance! But other recent favorites have been Go As a River and The Great Reclamation. :)
THE LIST by Yomi Adegoke. What happens when a feminist writer’s fiancé is included in a Shitty Media Men type list that goes public a month before their wedding day? What does it matter that the UK’s overlapping Black and African-immigrant communities see them as #BlackCoupleGoals ? The characters feel REAL and there were a couple of good twists I didn’t see coming.
Even though I felt ambivalent about it while I was reading, Teju Cole’s TREMOR keeps floating back up in the back of my mind.
“And yet for each problem there are better and worse solutions, so the people continue to search through the gods, through money, through poetry, through the movies, through the reading of leaves and clouds and constellations for ever-better paths out of the problems of being human.”
And for comfort and funzies! Any and all of the LADY VIOLET mysteries by Grace Burrowes. They helped get me through an unexpectedly tragic January *and* there are a whole bunch that don’t involve murder (I get bored of mysteries that are only about murder).
On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel (and Betty by her as well); these will stay with me forever.
My whole book club was obsessed with Yellowface by R.F. Kuang a couple of months ago. Could not stop talking about it, and I still think about it all the time.
Martyr! By Kaveh Akbar was so good, but I cannot stop talking about Mary Magdalene Revealed by Meggan Watterson. It’s part memoir part history and I can’t get over the way it validates the experience of being silenced and sidelined as a woman in the church
Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch was so so so good, I tried to persuade all my friends to read it.
South of Broad by Pat Conroy. My all time favorite book. The setting is in Charleston, SC which is a place very near and dear to my heart. The writing is just beautiful.
Loving Adam Rapp’s new novel Wolf At The Table - reading it rn with my tea, in fact!
I love this segment of your Substack but now I have a reading wish list that is about a mile long! And oh, how I love a good wish list.
I picked up five-year-old THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD by Claire Lombardo from the library in February, following a recommendation in one of Anne Helen Petersen’s What Are You Reading? threads. Fast forward to April and I hadn’t touched it, but it got tapped as the Reese Witherspoon book of the month so the library is now clamoring to get it back. Halfway through and really enjoying it - I love an intergenerational family drama - and bonus the central location is Oak Park, IL, where I live. I had no idea!
I have retreated to the complete comfort food zone of Ann Patchett, currently an old paperback of "The Magician's Assistant" (you know it's from the '90s because the characters still smoke.)Such clear, lovely prose and well-told stories, absorbing characters. Contemporary fiction is exhausting me lately, just give me the deep satisfaction of an artful yet not "arty" seasoned novelist who really knows what she's doing.
I am looking for this experience with my next read so thank you for this thread! Currently reading BRAIDING SWEETGRASS which is so interesting and I'm learning a lot, but it doesn't keep me up past my bedtime like fiction.
And Animal by Lisa Taddeo--I had to reread a few sections they were so good
CUTTING TEETH by Chandler Baker. It’s funny and completely validating of the mind-f that is the modern motherhood experience.
How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang and Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe!
I really loved Marie-Helene Bertino's Beautyland--otherworldly, lovely, plus lots of great Philly and 90s-era details.
THE LIGHT PIRATE: maybe one of the best books I’ve ever read. I am biased as a 4th gen Floridian but it is such a haunting and beautiful look at what our state could look like as these hurricanes keep getting bigger and bigger. Totally got me into climate change dystopia 😂 and then promptly read and also loved THE DISPLACEMENTS. I found about that one when I wouldn’t stop talking about The Light Pirate to my librarian and she recommended it to me. God bless librarians.
For comfort reading, I will always go back to Ellery Adams’ cozy mysteries. I love her heroines so much that I sometimes imagine myself traveling to the settings and hanging out with them! They got me through the year after my mom died when I couldn’t bear to read anything remotely realistic or disturbing.
Demon Copperhead, Covenant of Water, Tom Lake, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
A PSALM FOR THE WILD-BUILT and its sequel, A PRAYER FOR THE CROWN-SHY by Becky Chambers. A little futuristic but also so grounded and full of nature and life and comfort. These are very quick books, and they will forever be go-to comfort reads for me.