Hooray, It’s Time for New Books!

Okay, so this is wild. It’s a bananapants thriller about a woman named Katrina Kim who is definitely not stalking her coworker Kurt, uh-uh, not her. She just finds obsessing over him and spying on him a good way to control her anxiety and give her something to do. But when she witnesses his death by suicide, she discovers he was more aware of her attention than she knew. And suddenly her past comes flooding back, while reality might be going out the door. It’s hard to do this justice without making it sound like a really dark, upsetting book, which it can be, but it’s more nuanced, and the story is twisted around and poured out for us in such a way to make it wildly intriguing and complex. It’s quite something. (CW include discussions of mental health, suicide, violence, and death.)

Backlist bump: I don’t even want to try and compare it to something! So pick your favorite book with an unreliable narrator and add it here.

In keeping with Liberty’s Cheery Picks™ today, I chose this devastating and important book. If you’re a citizen of this country, it’s something you should read. We all know about the prevalence of gun violence and mass shootings in America. It happens so often now that it often doesn’t even make the news anymore. Auster looks at the history of gun use in this country and examines how it became the world capital of gun violence, and what, if anything, can be done about it.

Backlist bump: Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy

And last but not least, let’s end this week on a delightful note. If you like faeries, magic, whimsy, romance, etc., you might be charmed by this one. It’s told through the journal entries of Cambridge’s foremost expert on faeries. Emily Wilde has set out to write a book about all the knowledge there is about faeries. To do so, she’ll need to go work among people, who are a species she’s not as sure about. But when a handsome academic rival appears in the small town where Emily is working, she discovers there’s another kind of magic she didn’t know existed — love. Okay, yeah, I made myself a little nauseated with that last sentence. But it is a charming novel for fans of fantasy (but a heads up that it isn’t very fast paced) and it certainly surprised me.

Backlist bump: Even the Darkest Stars by Heather Fawcett

This week, I am reading Bellies by Nicola Dinan and Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie. Outside of books, I watched The Menu this weekend and I *loved* it. Ralph Fiennes is just the best — THE BEST — and I always love Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult. If you watch it, try and avoid learning anything about it. Don’t even watch the trailer, it’s too spoiler-y! Moving on, the song stuck in my head is “Heathens” by Twenty One Pilots. I have been adding to a playlist of songs that are new to me, and you can listen too! And here is your weekly cat picture: I got a new blanket called a Coma Inducer to help me sleep, and it has been helping! It’s super-soft and pink and I named it Shagatha. But Zevon, who needs no help going to sleep, definitely uses it more than me.