Category: In The Club

This book just came out yesterday (you can hear me gushing about it on this week’s All the Books episode). Jess Zimmerman is the editor in chief at Electric Lit, and this is her cultural analysis of female monsters from Greek mythology. She dedicates one chapter to each of 11 female monsters, including Medusa, the Harpies, the Furies, Scylla, and the Sphinx, breaking down how women have been labeled as monsters for daring to be everything from sexual to angry (ya know: human). This is a wonderful work of feminist cultural critique and a sweet sweet hit of dopamine for all my mythology nerds.

Book Club Bonus: Zimmerman gets into the idea that ugliness is so often portrayed as the worst possible thing a woman can be, asking readers to reexamine our relationship to hunger, anger, ugliness, and ambition, traits that are so often vilified. But my favorite part is her challenge to reclaim the monster label because monsters get a certain kind of freedom that “well behaved” women rarely do: the freedom to be complete, unrestrained, and larger than life. Discuss aaaaall of that.

“A war does not ignore half the people whose lives it touches. So why do we?” !!!!!

Did I mention I love mythology? This gave me Circe + The Silence of the Girls vibes which is just pure catnip. Haynes passes the mic to the silenced women of the Trojan War. Told 100% from the perspective of these women, from the goddesses and nymphs to Penelope and Briseis and Cassandra (oh, my poor Cassandra) and lots more, we get a whole new and gutting layer to a story that until recently has always focused on the heroism of men. (TW: mentions of sexual assault, violence, child death, use of the word “slave” to describe the women who are captured and enslaved)

Side note: Penelope’s letters to Odysseus start off very sweet and “hubby where art thou, come home!” But towards the end, the tone shifts to a very “I just think it’s funny how…” and I DIED. I don’t know if they were meant to be funny, but I laughed out loud.

Book Club Bonus: This quote by the muse Calliope talking about a whiny Odysseus made me put the book down to clap: “ If he complains to me again, I will ask him this: is Oenone less of a hero than Menelaus? He loses his wife so he stirs up an army to bring her back to him, costing countless lives and creating countless widows, orphans and slaves. Oenone loses her husband and she raises their son. Which of those is the most heroic act?” Put the tea on the kettle and get into that.

I recommended this just last month but it just fits so well with this theme. So much has been written about (as it should be) Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin, but very little has been said about the extraordinary women who raised them. Scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood and the power of community by telling these women’s stories with the depth and care that they deserve.

Book Club Bonus: Imagine what it must feel like to watch a person you love be taken from you in an act of violence while they advocated for racial equality and social justice, and to now, if you’ve lived to see this moment, take in how seemingly little progress we’ve made as a society AND watch that loved ones’ image and message used in bad faith by the very people who hold up those systems of oppression. I thought so much about this last summer and think about it every day as I walk through the world and wonder if we learned anything collectively, or done anything meaningful about it, since then. So discuss: what have we learned? What have we done?

Is anyone surprised that this is the first book on my list? It’s almost cheating to include it since there is, in fact, a Hulu series in the works. I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am to see those opening scenes in 1950s Mexico City, that creepy ass house in the countryside, the entire <insert spoilers and swear words here> situation, and the fashion!! My brain immediately pictured Nazanin Mandi as Noemi from the first time I saw the cover, but I’ll be happy as long as they cast a Latina with beautiful brown skin.

Book Club Bonus: Gothic horror tropes! Which ones did you pick up on and how does this book both employ them and flip the script?

The success of Bridgerton has reminded me how much I enjoy a historical romance with lots of drama, and what I wouldn’t give to see it done with Latinx flair. Enter the books from Lydia San Andres’ Arroyo Blanco series, which are set in a fictional island in the Spanish Caribbean. Emilia Cruz is a romance author in secret; she puts out some seriously steamy content under an assumed name because judgy society folk gon’ judge. Ruben Torres, the darling of the literary world, is moonlighting as the literary critic of a gossip paper, but he’s also doing that in secret because, ya know, all of that is beneath him. Emilia and Ruben are thrown together in a hilarious meet-not-so-cute (a boating party + a capsized boat), and it’s not long before they feel an undeniable attraction to one another. The problem is, Ruben has been absolutely eviscerating Emilia’s serial in that gossip mag, and neither one of them knows about the other’s secret identity.

Book Club Bonus: One might argue that telenovelas already exist, and trust: I got my life from those growing up (where my Amor Real fans at?!). But Adult Me wants a version of those with less sexism and colorism, more sex positivity, and less problematic themes overall. If you’re familiar with the telenovela scene, discuss how an adaptation like this one could be part of a larger course correction (which we’re already seeing hints of, praise be). Otherwise, go for the obvious meta theme: the belittling of romance and erotica in literature.

My kingdom for this adaptation! Renata is a memory thief who was kidnapped as a child and brought to the palace of Andalucia where she was forced to use her powers to kill thousands and thousands of people. Years later, she’s been rescued by the Whispers, a group of rebel spies working against the crown who don’t entirely trust Renata given her dark past. When Dez—the commander of her unit and the object of Renata’s affection—is taken captive by the (truly hateful, awful, no good, very bad) evil prince, Renata must return to the palace to complete Dez’ top secret mission. But doing so stirs up a lot of old stuff and reveals a secret from her past that could change everything. The whole thing is set in a lush, magical world inspired by Inquisition Spain and had me yelling, “Oh no she did not!” real early on.

Book Club Bonus: Inquisition-era Spain was a scary place for so many people, leading to the cruel and senseless deaths and forced conversion of Jewish and Muslim people. Discuss the parallels you see here and how this sort of oppression is one that rears its head both constantly and cyclically throughout history. Then discuss the role of present day youth in activism, from climate change to social justice. The last few years have made me acutely aware of the hypocrisy of a society that devours stories of rebellion against oppressive forces like this one while also discrediting these kinds of movements in real life. There’s a lot to get into there.

Who doesn’t want a thrilling space opera with a super prickly spaceship captain of Cuban descent who swears a ton PLUS CATS? Who, I ask you!? This book follows Eva Innocente, captain of La Sirena Negra, a cargo ship that ferries goods across the universe. When a shady corporation kidnaps her sister and demands the mother of all ransoms, Eva spirals into a web of lies and deception, alienating her beloved crew as she tries to raise the funds. This book is so damn hilarious and would be super fun to see on screen; move over Baby Yodita, here come the space gatos!

Book Club Bonus: Talk about the importance of found family in this book and as it applies in real life. Also take turns assessing what you would do in Eva’s shoes. It’s not an easy answer for most!

I made a face and went “eeew!” out loud a few times in the first few chapters of this book. Why? Because “eew” is how I feel about a husband stealing his brilliant scientist wife’s research and then using that information to not only clone her (seriously, bro?) and but then cheat on her with! that! clone! The squick factor gets turned all the way up when we find out the clone is pregnant. It all gets just a little more complicated when the wife, Evelyn, gets a panicked call from Martine: she’s just killed the husband Nathan and needs help… err… cleaning up the mess. It does not go how you’re thinking it will. Whew.

Book Club Bonus: Well then! There’s so much to talk about here: bodily autonomy, consent, a woman’s right to choose, and of course: the ethics of scientific research. There’s a lot of grey area in this kind of innovation, and this book dives straight into the murky bits.

I thought a lot about this book when I heard it was being adapted for film (yiiiiiikes, if you know, you know), and again last week when the Perseverance rover landed on Mars. It’s about a Jesuit priest and linguist who leads a scientific mission to make first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. I was told to prepare for a catastrophic end, but I was so not prepared! Space exploration is super cool and all, pero this book is all, “what if it went horribly wrong?” Like rull wrong. So wrong. Theeee most wrong. I can’t get the wrong out of my brain and it’s been literal years since I read it. (TW: violence, sexual assault)

Book Club Bonus: I don’t want to tell you too much here because you need to experience it for yourself. Once you’ve taken a day or two to process this one, write down and discuss the ways in which this book is an indictment of colonization, an examination of faith, and what it says about the way we define humanity.

Catherine House isn’t your run-of-the-mill educational institution; admission is highly competitive and its demands super intense: once students arrive, they must disconnect from the outside world and remain on campus for their full three-year tenure with no outside contact. No phones, no internet: they must dedicate themselves wholly to the Catherine House way. This sort of immersive education maybe sounds like a cool, edgy and immersive idea, but like… I sense problems! This has been described to me as weird and labyrinthine with major gothic vibes all set in a creepy old house, so what I’m saying is I bought it immediately.

Book Club Bonus: You may have sensed, as I did, that there are some sinister secrets in this story, and you’d be right. The school is determined to keep a history of shady experiments hidden at all costs, and if only THAT were a thing that only happened in fiction. Discuss! You know what to do here.

Lavie Tidhar said “$@^& your Arthurian feelings” with this book. He took the legend, chopped it into pieces, poured on some gasoline, and lit. that. match. To call this work subversive is not enough. It nocks an arrow with a white-hot tip right at the whole idea of Arthurian legend as a noble, virtuous tale of English conquest (can conquer be noble?) and his aim is true. No one, and I do mean not one single soul, is likable in this version: the Knights of the Round Table are a band of selfish misanthropes, Merlin is a lying jerk and an instigator who feeds off conflict, and even the Lady of the Lake is a shady arms dealer. No one is safe! Woven into lots of violence and some dark & twisty humor is a searing critique of Brexit and British nationalism in general. That is where this book hooked me. Make sure to read the afterword: it explains how and why Tidhar twisted this beloved story to point out the hypocrisy of zealous nationalism.

Book Club Bonus: It’s uncomfortable conversation time! Let this book be a jumping board for a chat about how many classic stories aren’t all that virtuous and actually glorify some pretty trash behavior. Maybe that behavior is imperialism, or ableism, or white supremacy; maybe it’s the vilifying of women as evil temptresses and monsters at every turn. Don’t limit the conversation to literature either (American history taught in schools, I’m looking at you); cast that net wide and talk about it!

My months-long hold on this book came and went for a second time because I was reading too many other books! I will get my hands on it soon though, especially in light of this whole kerfuffle. Tracy Deonn combines Southern Black Girl Magic with a modern-day twist on Arthurian legend. After her mother dies in an accident, 16-year-old Bree Matthews needs an escape from family memories and her childhood home. She enrolls at a residential program for bright high school students at UNC Chapel Hill thinking it’ll be just the thing to bring her back to life, but then…. she witnesses a magical attack on her very first night on campus, as one does. She’s hit with an avalanche of revelations: Bree possesses a unique magic of her own that she never knew about, a magical war is coming, and there exists a secret demon-fighting society known as the Legendborn whose members are descendants of King Arthur’s knights. This is just the sort of adventure I need and crave!

Book Club Bonus: We need more retellings that make space for people that don’t fit the white, cis-het, able-bodied norm. “But Vanessa, you’ve already told us that representation matters!” And I’m gonna tell you again, because it does! How does the southern setting and inclusion of Black characters deepen a legend that was previously super not inclusive? Discuss.

**taps mic** The women are the most interesting parts of Arthurian legend. I said what I said. **drops mic**

Now that we have that out of the way, I can tell you about a YA series I have gleaned so much joy from in the last couple of years. Guinevere is front and center in this series, as you may have imagined, but get this: Guinevere isn’t really Guinevere. She’s a changeling! Not-Guinevere has come to Camelot to wed King Arthur in a plot devised by Merlin (spoilery! things! I can’t! tell! you!) to protect him from dark magical forces. Maybe? Gah. I love when a story you think you know still manages to make you go, “Oh word?!” There’s queerness and gender-flipping and all kinds of fun stuff in both this book and it’s sequel, The Camelot Betrayal. I haven’t seen a release date announced for the third book in the trilogy yet and that second book ends on SUCH a cliffhanger. You’ve been warned!

Book Club Bonus: I can’t suggest too much without going into spoiler territory, but I think you’ll come to that part on your own. So here’s this: talk about the symbolism of Guinevere as a changeling and the reframing of villainous women’s arcs in this story. Go!

Jessamyn Stanley is a huge part of the reason I came back to yoga after years of fits and starts. I was disillusioned by all the yoga classes where everyone but me was a thin white person, and where the instructors did little to nothing to offer modifications when poses weren’t accessible to me. I thought there was something wrong with my body and that maybe yoga just wasn’t for me. This book (and Jessamyn’s online presence in general) changed the game. It challenges stereotypes and offers tips and inspiration for finding yoga and self love, whether you’re at the beginning of your yoga practice or have already begun but find yourself hitting a wall. I go back and search for her tutorials at least once a week (I need to repurchase this book, see below to understand why) when I need a little help or encouragement to make a pose work for my body and my ability. It’s also just a really funny book—there’s a section called “The Chick-fil-A Bandit Walks Into Weight Watchers” and I cackle every time I think about that.

A story that sounds made up but is not: I bought this and took it with me to read at a park last summer with a little picnic in tow. A dog beelined it for my sandwich, but I managed to snatch the sammy away just in time. In what I can only call an act of savage vengeance, he/she grabbed my book instead and then hauled ass away in a matter of seconds. And that, children, is how I came to own Every Body Yoga for less than 48 hours.

Book Club Bonus: When you think of yoga, you probably think of a thin, flexible white woman who can effortlessly flow into a perfect chaturanga pushup while dressed in a cute, coordinated sports bra and legging combo that costs what I spend on two weeks of groceries. That’s because yoga is marketed that way pretty aggressively! Discuss that messaging and how completely at odds it is with the core principles of yoga.

I first heard of Dianne Bondy on an episode of the Food Heaven podcast about joyful movement. When I found out her book was blurbed by Jessamyn Stanley, I had to cop it. This book and Jessamyn’s go hand in hand for me. They both offer a ton of insight as to the origins of yoga and its modern iterations, break down poses in a glossary format with modifications, and provide sample sequences. While Every Body Yoga speaks more to the individual and their own practice, Yoga Where You Are takes the messaging of accessible yoga further by tying it into activism. Dianne Bondy and Kat Heagberg discuss the whitewashing of modern yoga and its failure to make space for larger and disabled bodies, offering suggestions and solutions for creating truly safe spaces aimed at yoga teachers, while also speaking to individuals looking to find a place in the yoga world that’s accepting of them. I found the chapters on breath work super helpful and love the emphasis that there isn’t, contrary to what we’ve been told, a “right” way to do yoga.

Book Club Bonus: A lot of the same talking points for Every Body Yoga apply here. It goes beyond yoga though: discuss how fitness spaces in general leave a lot of people out of the conversation.

The cover of the first edition of the book was stunning and they someone managed to up the ante with the second! My nickname for this one is “f*ck your body shame!” Activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor calls readers to embrace radical self love and shed the indoctrinated body shame that’s so engrained in many of our thoughts. I cried a lot while reading this one when I realized quite how many times a day I think negative thoughts about my body and have spent a lot of time thinking about how and when I learned this behavior.

Book Club Bonus: As prep for book club, spend a day or even a couple of hours paying attention to every negative thought that pops into your brain about yourself. Write down your thoughts on that, then have the group share whatever they’re comfortable sharing, even if it’s just “I shamed my body 12 times in an hour” (you don’t have to share the specifics if you don’t want to). Where do these thoughts come from? At what age or stage in life do you remember absorbing that negative messaging? It’s eye-opening and heartbreaking to have these discussions, but empowering to name and reject the shame once you identify it.

I was originally going to suggest Ibram X Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning, a book I’ve been slowly making my way through for months now. Then I remembered Four Hundred Souls and had to go with this. It’s a one-volume community history by 90 brilliant writers, each of whom tackles a five-year period from 1619 to the present. Each writer’s approach is different: some wrote historical essays, others short stories, some shared personal vignettes. The result is an important body of work that “fundamentally deconstructs the idea that Africans in America are a monolith—instead it unlocks the startling range of experiences and ideas that have always existed within the community of Blackness.”

I’m actually surprised the concept for this book wasn’t explored sooner, because it feels long overdue. So much has been written and read about Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin (not that everyone has digested their message accurately, pero that’s some side eye for a different day). But very little has been said about the extraordinary women who raised these American icons. In one stunner of a debut, scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood by telling these women’s stories.

When Isabel Wilkerson gets out bed in the morning, do you think she has her toast and coffee before or after she sits down to craft masterpieces of thought? Whew! It landed on all of the best-of lists and won all of the things in 2020, and it’s no wonder. This time she’s taken on America’s hidden caste system with a “deeply researched narrative and stories about real people.” She pulls back the veil to reveal the hierarchy of human rankings that dominates our society and the systemic racism that allows it to thrive.

I give you this blurb from April 2020 as proof of my When In Romance fandom: “I was in theeeee worst reading slump for weeks and decided I’d try some gothic fiction with a romance at its core; I’m still newish to the romance game, so thanks once again to Trisha and Jess from When in Romance for the inspo. The Widow of Rose House by Diana Biller is the book that not only snapped me out of the slump, but keep the reading well past my bedtime. Gilded Age New York, a gothic mansion, a ruined widow with a tragic past, and a sexy nerd type who loves consent, sexy times, and science in equal, passionate measure. Oh and some ghosts, maybe? What a remedy! Read this now.” (tw: domestic violence)

Book Club Bonus: There is plenty to talk about with respect to Alva and how many hoops she (and any woman from that time period) has to go through to live life on her terms. But! Please also talk about how awesome it is to see such explicit requests for consent in sexy times scenes! It was so refreshing, as is how open and communicative Sam is so consistently.

This is the second book in Sonali Dev’s The Rajes series of Austen rom-com remixes. Chef Ashna Raje is not okay; she’s struggling to run the failing restaurant that was her father’s legacy and is desperate to prove to her estranged mother that she knows what’s best for her own life. When she gets a last-minute offer to be on a celebrity cooking show, Ashna agrees to be on it mostly to avoid having to see her mother, but also because winning the competition means a giant cash prize that could turn her restaurant troubles right around. But plot twist!! The sexy retired pro soccer player she’s paired with is the former love of her life, the one who ghosted her at the lowest point in her life. He has reasons of his own for wanting to be on the show, and he remembers the end of their relationship quite differently. Is this partnership a recipe for disaster, or one for…persuasion? You don’t need to read the series in order, but I do very highly recommend Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors! (tw: suicide, sexual assault; descriptions aren’t extremely graphic, but may still be much for some)

Book Club Bonus: Sonali Dev’s books are hilarious and fun, but they tackle some heavy issues (see trigger warnings above). Both Ashna and her mother have made decisions about the way they move in the world that are easy to judge if you don’t examine them through the lens of trauma. Why is Ashna so attached to the restaurant, and why does she idealize her father? What would you have done in her mother’s shoes? This is such a good one to unpack.

April is a geologist who writes fan fiction of her favorite show, Gods at the Gates, and cosplays in her free time. She’s always kept her “real life” separate from her fandom, but she decides to be more open about it when she gets a new job. When she posts her latest costume creation on Twitter, a plus-size take on Lavinia, it goes viral. Then the star of the show, Marcus, surprised everyone by first defending her from fatphobic trolls online and then asking her out on a date IRL. It’s on that date that Marcus—a secret fanfic writer who goes by Book!AeneasWouldNever online—realizes that April is his longtime online friend. Eek! This part I had to rip from the publisher copy: “With love and Marcus’s career on the line, can the two of them stop hiding once and for all, or will a match made in fandom end up prematurely cancelled?” (tw: fat shaming—but it’s not the whole point of the book, know what I mean?)

Book Club Bonus: We’ve recently seem some progress in the body positivity movement, and with that some moves in fat positivity, too. But wow, is there still a long ways to go. Was I jazzed when Ashley Graham became the first plus size model to book a Sports Illustrated cover? F*ck yes! Am I also tired of *only* seeing plus size bodies with those hourglass proportions in content that alleges fat positivity? Also yes. Discuss fat representation in media and in this book.

This third book in the Twisted Wishes series is one I keep meaning to read, and I remember that every time Trisha gives it a shout out on the show. Bass player Mish Sullivan is a rockstar goddess who can fend for herself, thankyouverymuch. But when a stalker gets too close and puts her in the hospital, Mish finds herself stuck with a bodyguard she doesn’t need or want. That bodyguard is David, a badass, ex-army martial arts expert who feels an instant attraction to this person he’s supposed to protect. Neither of them can deny the attraction and whoops! They wind up in bed together (again and again and again). But when the stalker up his game, David will have to choose—lover or bodyguard?

Book Club Bonus: Mish is cis femme and David is trans masc, and that’s why I think this makes such a great book club book: not because it has a trans character (because that should just be normal), but because it centers trans joy. As Zabo said themselves, “…people aren’t only their gender—even cis people. It’s an aspect of their lives, sure, and maybe a big one, but at a certain point, you’re just yourself. You’re the sum of all the things about you, and then some.” Discuss how representation is more than just seeing yourself on the page; it’s also about the quality and diversity of that representation, like in this lovely HEA.

Look, I told you this would make you uncomfortable. Ijeoma Oluo’s latest asks: “What happens to a country that tells generation after generation of white men that they deserve power? What happens when success is defined by status over women and people of color, instead of by actual accomplishments?”

Book Club Bonus: Apply what you learn here to what the US is going through right now, and really sit with the fact that it was a long time coming.

Amber Ruffin is such a talented and hilarious human. She’s written for Late Night with Seth Meyers since 2014 (a role that made her the first Black woman to write for a late-night network talk show in the US). Amber lives in New York, but her sister Lacey still lives back in Nebraska where they both grew up. This book is a downright horrifying collection of stories of the kinds of the racist BS that Lacey deals with on a daily basis in Omaha (some examples: strangers touching her hair, being mistaken for Harriet Tubman(!?), Oh, and getting hit on by a dude with the confederate flag in his online dating profile). But!! It’s also so, so funny. The sisters’ banter and delivery injects such comedy into some truly cringey stories. You’ll learn something, but you’ll stay laughing too.

Book Club Bonus: Have you been a Lacey, or have you been the person with your paws all up in Lacey’s hair? Share your experience with the group, both on the giving and receiving ends.

January is a successful romance novelist who always believed in love and happy endings. That was until her dad died and she learned that he was unfaithful to her mother for years. Broke, grief-stricken, and on a deadline, she goes to stay at her dad’s Lake Michigan beach house for the summer to clear the house out and hopefully bang out an overdue book. She’s less than pleased to learn that Gus, a Very Serious literary fiction author and her college rival, lives in the house next door. Their reunion is… less than pleasant, but they also can’t seem to stay away from each other. When they both reveal that they have writer’s block, January and Gus come up with a plan: they’ll swap genres for the summer (and try not to fall in love).

Book Club Bonus: Both January and Gus are bringing some baggage to the table and are processing some grief, grief that colors their interaction and more than once leads to miscommunication. Discuss examples of similar patterns in your own lives if it feels right in the moment, orrrrrr you can talk about how romance has helped you heal in your life like it did for January. Embrace the feels! Share the feels! Get all up in those feels.

Sabriel has spent most of her life at a boarding school outside the walls of the Old Kingdom, where the line between the living and the dead is blurred. During her final semester at the school, her father, the Abhorsen—the guardian of the border between life and death—goes missing. Though most presume him dead, Sabriel is convinced he’s still alive, so she journeys into the Old Kingdom to find him. Along for the ride are two companions: Touchstone, a young Charter Mage long imprisoned by magic, and Mogget, a talking cat who’s forever mood is “grumpy AF.” As the trio travels deep into the Old Kingdom, they encounter threats of all sorts (most of them dead); every step brings them closer to a battle between the forces of life and death, one that brings Sabriel face-to-face with her own hidden destiny.

Book Club Bonus: I love books where a well-meaning person or group tries to protect a “chosen one” type by keeping information from them (or removing them from a situation entirely) in the name of protecting that person, only to sort of have it all blow up in their face. Discuss the Abhorsen’s decision to send Sabriel to Ancelstierre. Did he do the right thing?

It’s the 2020s (yeah, you read that right) and climate change has made basic resources scarce (gulp), and most find themselves at the mercy of the few corporations who have jobs and money to offer (well that’s just great!). Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives in Los Angeles inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors where they’re all sheltered from the goings on of the outside world—for a while. As the anarchy grows and her world falls apart, Lauren struggles to make her voice heard while trying to protect her loved ones the imminent doom her small, insular community stubbornly insists on ignoring (screams in relatable dread). Making matters more complicated: she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to other people’s emotions.

Full disclosure: I have not read these books myself and will remedy that this year. I bring this up in order to tell you that my eyes went the size of quarters when I learned that this second book takes place after the election of—wait for it—an ultra-conservative president who vows to “make America great again.” I’m sorry… make America QUE?!?! It’s now 2032 and Lauren is living in and leading Acorn, her vision of a peaceful community in northern California that lives by the Earthseed faith. This subversive community provides refuge for those persecuted in the wake of the election and is led by a Black woman, so… you know what that means: the prezzy and his MAGA folk put a target on her back.

This book was my big white whale, a book I’ve picked up and put down several times and finally tackled in the final days of 2020. At an elite college tucked away in Vermont, a group of eclectic misfits opt to study Ancient Greek—and only Ancient Greek—under the tutelage of a charismatic and unconventional professor. We learn right away that the narrator and his friends have committed a murder, then slowly come to understand how the bubble of a world they’ve crafted for themselves may have facilitated the crime, one where the self-importance runs high and the boundaries of ethics and morality are blurred. This is me putting it very, very simply so that you might experience the entirety of this beautiful mess for yourself.

Book Club Bonus: This is a little longer than I’d normally suggest for book club, and many of you may have already conquered it. I’m tossing it in anyway because it’s a polarizing read rich with book club potential. I really was not a fan of The Goldfinch and was scared Donna Tartt may just not be for me, especially since there are some definite similarities in pace and the characters’ drug, drink, and angst-filled ennui. But the slow revelation of each character’s background and motivation in The Secret History was both maddening and ingenious to me, plus the searing critique of elitist institutions. You may agree or want to chuck this book at the wall—discuss!

TW: eating disorders and body stuff (not quite body horror, per se, but think the physical toll of dancing on the body).

Gigi, Bette, and June are three young ballerinas at the intensely competitive American Ballet Conservatory in New York City. Kind and lighthearted Gigi is the only Black girl at the school and just wants to dance, but the act could literally kill her. Privileged New Yorker Bette is a piece of work (!!!) dancing in the shadow of her ballet-star sister, and she’ll stop at nothing to end up on top. June is a dangerous perfectionist who has to land a lead role this year to keep her mother from pulling her from the school, and she too is ready to do so by any means necessary. Feathers are ruffled (understatement!) when Gigi is chosen for the role of Sugar Plum Fairy in the school’s Nutracker performance, and an absolute mess of a scandal ensues. I caught myself holding my breath over and over while reading this book and gripping it with white knuckles. What a ride!

Book Club Bonus: There’s plenty to discuss about the competitive nature of ballet and all the related pressures, body issues, disordered eating, etc. But also dive into the motivations of the less palatable characters (hurt people hurt people!): none of their dysfunctions exist in a vacuum.

I hope to internalize and put the ideas in this book into practice more in 2021. Reshma Saujani is the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code and starts off by telling us about the time she quit her stable and lucrative career for a disastrous run for political office. She not only lost, she lost hard. The hardest! That moment was a turning point in Saujani’s life and a hell of an epiphany: women are taught to chase perfection since childhood, and that pattern ends up holding us back in adulthood. Through a combo of personal anecdotes and some in-your-face statistics and studies, Saujani challenges readers, especially women, to embrace imperfection and live a bolder life.

Book Club Bonus: You know how bad I am at reading self-help, but this book resonated with me tons and gave me some Year of Yes vibes. Share the ways in which you have and continue to hold yourself back (whether you identify as a woman or not) in the name of perfection. On the flip side, examine how teaching boys to be always be brave and not perfect could be problematic, too.