Category: In The Club

I saw something saying that Curry Katsu (essentially a Japanese-style curry accompanied by a fried chicken cutlet) was considered the best meal of the year. I had never tried Japanese curry before this, but have loved Indian and Jamaican curry since forever. Y’all. This was so good, I had to make it twice (the picture is what I actually made!).

The dish is pretty simple, but I feel like it takes a little getting used to because of its somewhat disparate parts. Here’s a recipe by Yumiko, but I also have tips. I mostly followed the recipe on the curry box that I got from Amazon, but when it came to the cutlets, I made sure to season both sides with salt, black pepper, and a little garlic powder before letting them hit the flour + egg + panko station.

Published in 1859, this was the first novel to be published in the U.S. by a Black American. Technically, it is the second one written by a Black American, as the first is Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter by William Wells Brown, but the latter was first published in England. It was only after Wilson’s book was published in America that Brown’s book came stateside.

Sketches is essentially auto fiction, and details Wilson’s life as a person of mixed (Black and white) heritage who gets abandoned by her mother once her father dies, going on to live a hard life indentured to a white northern family with an abusive matriarch. The book, and the identity of its writer, was lost in antiquity until Henry Louis Gates, Jr. found it in the early ’80s and fleshed out the history surrounding it.

*Note: The full title basically contains a slur, so I chose to leave it out here.*

Brooks was the first Black American to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize (1950), and it was for her her 1949 collection of poems titled Annie Allen. The collection was inspired by epics Iliad and Aeneid, and followed the life of a Black girl growing up in Chicago’s South Side. The original is very hard to come by now, but there are snippets of it in her Selected Poems, which I have linked.

With this book came the ushering in of a new era. Toomer’s Cane sat at a kind of crossroads. On the one hand, it was an experimental book told in three parts. Its mixed narrative forms — poems, vignettes, and a short play — subverted readers’ stereotypical expectations. In doing this, though, Toomer’s southern Black characters seemed to live stereotyped lives, even as he added nuance to their plight.

This was the book that started the Harlem Renaissance (I wrote a little more about it here). Alice Walker said of it “It has been reverberating in me to an astonishing degree. I love it passionately, could not possibly exist without it.”

The Conjure Man Dies was published in 1932 and is thought to be the first mystery novel by a Black American. It’s set in the time it was written — 1930s Harlem — and follows Frimbo, a man from Africa who has made his home in the U.S. In Harlem, he’s known as a conjure man, and one day his friends find him dead under mysterious circumstances. This serves as a look into the ’30s by someone actually alive during that time, and as a mystery that’s still entertaining. It’s a shame that the talented Fisher, a doctor, musician, and (obvious) writer, died when he was only 37.

I was really feeling like comfort food (when am I not) and wanted something sweet. What’s more comforting than a s’more cookie!? The Salty Marshmallow (fitting name) tells us how to get these glorious things here.

Stella is brilliant with numbers — which has resulted in a pretty sizable salary — but clueless when it comes to romance. She thinks that, as someone with little to no life experience and Asperger’s, it just makes sense to hire a professional to teach her the ways of love. That’s where Michael Phan’s fine self comes into the picture. The escort will teach Stella everything from kissing to beyond missionary *wiggles eyebrows*, but their arrangement soon starts to feel comfortable in a new way.

Kris is looking for her big break through a reality show, while D’Vaughn is looking for an exaggerated way to finally come out to her mom. To achieve these goals, the two decide to be on the reality show Instant I Do, which means they’ll have to plan their wedding in six weeks, and convince their loved ones that they’re actually in love with each other. Then they’ll get the $100,000 grand prize and all the other goodies. Of course, the cash prize isn’t the only thing at stake by the time that six week marker comes around.

Michelle is a graphic designer who is doing pretty well for herself…career-wise. Romantically, it’s a little dry. And Gabriel, her ex boo thang from when she still lived in the Bronx, is also doing pretty well as a co-owner of a celebrity gym in L.A. When Michelle gets brought on for a marketing campaign for Gabriel’s gym, those old feelings resurface, but some things have to be worked out before the relationship can really flourish.

Jessica P. Pryde is a contributor at Book Riot! She is one of our resident Romance experts and, here she has edited a collection of essays that both uplift and examine romance through the Black gaze. Contributors include everyone from Jasmine Guillory to Beverly Jenkins, Kosoko Jackson, and more.

This was just released yesterday and is already on a few radars (it’s Jenna Bush Hager’s February book club pick, which I mention again below). It follows 25-year-old Maddie, a British Ghanian woman who is struggling to crawl out from under a mountain of stress. From caring for her father who is suffering from late stage Parkinson’s to dealing with a distant (but somehow still) overbearing mother and constant micro aggressions at work, she just really needs a break. She gets it in the form of her mother finally returning to London, and seizes the chance to start carving out a path for her independence. She accomplishes a few firsts — like living with roommates and engaging in some internet dating — but when something terrible happens, she has to pivot once more. This is a story that has all the seriousness of caring for a sick parent and work stress, but it centers a charming main character and has lots of humor and levity as well.

Lensinda is a young Black woman working in the Canadian town of Dunmore in the 1800s, around the time the Underground Railroad ended. Dunmore is a town that many formerly enslaved people fled to seeking freedom. When a slave hunter is shot dead by an older woman who came by way of the Underground Railroad — and who refuses to leave before authorities come — the crusading journalist Lensinda works for asks that she get the elderly lady’s testimony. But it won’t be for free. She’ll only talk if Lensinda agrees to trade a story for a story. Soon, readers are taken on a journey of Black American history, which shows just how much Black and Indigenous people’s stories have intersected throughout the North American landscape. The older lady also has a secret for Lensinda that could change everything for her.

As I mentioned a couple newsletters ago, I’ve really been into apocalyptic stories lately. I think watching and reading them a lot naturally makes you wonder how you’d fare in the same situation as the characters, so this book is right on time for me. Aretha falls in with a group of survivalists after having become an attorney and striving for partner, only to see that dream gradually slip away. When she meets coffee entrepreneur Aaron and moves in with him, she starts to wonder if her goals in life really make sense for her as she falls into an underground world of selling guns. Apart from having an interesting premise, this book also just has some great comedy moments, which makes sense since the author used to write for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Note: I just realized this is also a book club pick for Roxane Gay’s club!

This story of the differences between socioeconomic class in modern-day Nigeria centers around Eniola, a young boy who struggles with paying for tuition and other expenses after his father loses his job; and Wuraola, a girl from a well-off family who is practicing as a doctor. Though their life circumstances are very different at first glance, there is some overlap, like small instances of violence. Adébáyọ̀ writes in a way that is empathetic and lush, slowly building up characters and their surroundings in a way that is immersive.

Chambers’ chill world opens us up with nonbinary tea monk Sibling Dex, who doesn’t quite know what they want out of life. For now, they just try their best to serve tea in their traveling wagon and provide a listening ear to anyone who wanders in. One day during their travels, they meet a robot named Mosscap, who appears so long after humans agreed to free the robots that their existence was thought to be mythical. Now that robots are ready to mingle with humans again — on their own terms, of course — they want to know what humans need. This novella offers up the most comforting and cozy existential crisis.

In this manga, Seishuu Handa is a calligrapher who has achieved great acclaim for being so young. But when a veteran calligrapher judges his work to be uninspired, Seishuu’s hubris leads him to punching the old man in the face. He gets unofficially exiled to an island by his dad to cool off and think about things. As a lifelong city boy, Seishuu takes a little time to adjust to country life, but he’s got a rambunctious teacher in the form of adorable first-grader Naru. Being in the countryside, and with such kind neighbors, changes Seishuu in ways even his family don’t see coming. There’s also an anime out for this that is seriously so sweet and chill to watch.

Sentaro is a young man living in Japan who has baggage — he feels scarred by his criminal record, and he has dreams of becoming a writer, which may be getting squandered by his drinking habit. So what does he do? He just keeps on making dorayaki, a Japanese confection that is a pancake filled with sweet bean paste. He meets Tokue, an elderly woman, and she starts to teach him how to make the best ever sweet bean paste. But she has a past, too — one that has been wrought with ableism and disease.

These last two books are contemplative to me because reading them requires us to situate ourselves within the larger framework of the world (Immense World) and the universe (The Milky Way). In Immense World, Ed Yong expands how we perceive the world by explaining how animals perceive it. He brings in German biology and philosophy to show how truly vast our world is if you think of it in terms of perception. It’s really interesting learning about how other animals have not only more honed senses, but totally different senses that allow them a completely different reality compared to ours.

The Milky Way has seen it all — literally — and is ready to spill, honey. Astrophysicist and folklorist Dr. Moiya McTier writes an autobiography of the Milky Way in its own voice — covering everything we know of its existence, from its start as clouds of gas scattered through primordial plasma 13 billion years ago to when humans gave it a name.

I don’t know what took me so long to include pistachio cake, but here we are. Both of my parents love pistachios, so I guess it’s in my DNA — it’s just a flavor/ingredient I love in any and all my sweet things. This recipe is for a bundt cake that I think will go well with any variety of book club coffees and teas. Enjoy!

Now for some books!

When the apocalypse hits in 2011, Candace is a millennial living in Manhattan and working as a production assistant for a company that makes specialty Bibles. The zombies in Severance, made by what’s called “Shen Fever,” aren’t the usual kind, though. Instead of mindlessly chasing humans, they’re mindlessly completing simple tasks that were part of their daily lives pre-infection until their bodies give out — retail workers keep folding clothing, for instance. The world halts, Candace flees and eventually finds a group of survivors who are looking to start a new civilization elsewhere, but she’s got a secret she has to keep from the leader of the group.

The critique of late-stage capitalism, the new, quirky take on zombies, even the pink cover all make this feel super duper representative of millennials. Plus, I like the phrase “coming-of-adulthood” that’s part of the official book blurb.

A man wakes up in 2010 knowing that a tragedy has befallen the world, but can’t remember his own name. As he tries to survive the new landscape, he meets a young boy named Clay who looks well taken care of. Clay is mysterious and hesitant to answer the man’s questions, but through him, we learn of the main character’s past life, and even sometimes wonder if the world is really as over as the protagonist thinks it is.

This takes place over three days in a post-apocalyptic world that has been rocked by what is basically a zombie plague. We follow Mark, who is a member of a civilian team of workers in lower Manhattan who are trying to clear the area of “malfunctioning stragglers.” These stragglers aren’t the same infected that have been cleared out by the army, but a seemingly less dangerous type that are in a catatonic state, unable to adjust to the new forlorn world. Of course, things don’t go quite according to plan.

Once an ancient, arctic virus is accidentally unleashed by researchers, the entire world changes. Suddenly, ways of life all over the world must be altered and humans’ ability to adapt is tested. But adapt we do, and in that adaptation, our capacity for empathy and creativity are held on to steadfastly — people fall in love in the midst of tragedy; animals develop skills that help us connect more meaningfully to them; and loved ones go on cosmic quests.

I can think of at least five people at the top of my head who’d I’d recommend this book to. In it, Tawwab, a licensed counselor and popular relationship expert, uses research and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) methods to help you identify not just how to establish healthier boundaries with people, but also the root causes of any already existing unhealthy boundaries.

Setting this book as the book club read could make for an interesting meeting. It’s fairly short — at 222 pages — and is part memoir and part yoga instructional. It could be a nice, short intro into the new year for the book club, and you could make your meet-up part yoga session, if you’re feeling cute. Apart from the yoga poses taught, Stanley discusses how her journey as a fat, Black yogi has been. As you probably guessed, she’s been met with stereotypes regarding her race and size. The book club can combine this one with Yoke, her collection of personal essays, for all the goodness.

Price is a social psychologist who leads us away from the lie of laziness with Laziness Does Not Exist. In it, he takes it way back to the beginnings of the present scam that measures self worth based on productivity. Turns out, people in general do more today than they did during any other era in history. So I guess we don’t spend as much time getting avocado toast and overpriced lattes? Huh.

Discuss this one as a way to explore learning how to balance your work load and manage expectations.

Financial education is not as prevalent as it should be, especially for those living in a capitalistic society that runs counter to their best interests. Aliche tries to remedy that by detailing a practical process of 10 steps that is designed to help guide people to financial security by managing debt, budgeting, and more. She writes from the perspective of someone who experienced being in quite the predicament financially, which makes her all the more relatable.

These are some bougiely-cut potatoes (yes, I made that word up, but it feels right) that look extra crispy and wonderful. I also like how you can add whatever toppings you like. @thatdudecancook shows the technique here.

This is my first book of the year! Deanna Rayburn used to hold me down on my historical mystery/romance needs back in the day. I hadn’t read her in a while, though, so it was nice to read her writing in a different genre (somewhat, it’s still mystery). In this one, Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie are older ladies who have spent the last 40 years as elite assassins for a secrete organization called The Museum that hunts down people like Nazis and dictators for termination. After the organization sends them on a paid vacay, they soon realize they’re the latest to be put on a hit list. Turns out there’s someone at The Museum who has turned in a report detailing how they’ve been freelancing, and unless they can clear their names, The Museum’s assassins will keep on coming.

This was so unputdownable for me that I didn’t even mind the flashbacks, which are every other chapter. I usually don’t care for flashbacks, even in books I like, because I don’t like being taken out of the present. I may be alone in that, though!

In this collection of essays, Irby talks about being 40, moving to a Republican town in Michigan with her wife and step kids, and all the things that come with that. Like, literally, all the things — her stories of everyday life include everything from friend dates to the lack of cartilage in her knees. Reading this feels like sitting down with that one homegirl who always has a funny life story to share.

I discussed this book as one of my faves for 2022 in the In Reading Color newsletter, it’s that good. It’s a YA retelling of Carrie, but I couldn’t really tell you how closely it stays to the source material since I haven’t read the original. My guess is that it strays a bit, since it’s about a (mostly) white-passing mixed girl named Maddy who lives in a small Georgia town where high school prom is still segregated in the year of our lord 2014. One day it rains, causing her hair’s natural texture to show. Maddy gets bullied with this revelation, some of which goes viral. To save her school’s reputation — thereby securing her own future at a future college — another student offers up her Black boyfriend to accompany Maddy to the prom to show how “progressive” the school is now. Ish gets real once a couple white students push Maddy too far…I love how this had segments of a podcast discussing the massacre at the high school. We learned more about the incident as we learned more about Maddy, and that narrative structure kept me hooked.

This is a memoir that is unlike any you’ll ever read. Machado summons fairy tale and horror tropes to tell the story of domestic abuse within a same-sex relationship. I think this is especially affecting — juxtaposing narratives most of us are familiar with will make the details of the abuse she suffered feel all the more familiar and therefore devastating. This is inventive, poetic, and raw, and Machado will have you turning the pages with a quickness.

In addition to being a fabulous shade of purple, courtesy of ube extract, these cookies are also not too sweet — a quality I admire in a cookie. Janelle Eats details the recipe for the Filipine cookies on her Youtube account and website.

Now that you’ve got warm cookies, let’s get to the books!

This isn’t standard cozy fare for me as it’s a little on the serious side, but I still think it works. Mukesh tries to carry on in a London borough after having lost his wife. He spends his time doing regular life stuff like grocery shopping and going to Temple, but he also worries about his granddaughter Priya, who has withdrawn into herself.

Then there’s Aleisha, a teenager who works at the library and has found a list of books she’s never heard of in a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird. Naturally, she decides to read them and through them discovers an escape from home life. When Mukesh comes to the library, he’s hoping to find a way to connect to his granddaughter. What he finds is a teenage girl who shares a book list with him that opens him up.

Here’s another library one! Honestly, library and bookstores are such perfectly cozy settings. This is more my usual speed for cozy readings as its a cozy mystery. In it, Marvey is a librarian who has moved from Brooklyn to a small town in Georgia. She’s still getting used to the quirky town when she finds a dead body in a bookstore. She gets involved in the murder investigation once her friend becomes a suspect. As a librarian, she’s an expert researcher and knows a thing or two about crime from all the mystery novels she’s read. She also goes around asking if everyone has a library card, which is precious.

Nora Walker comes from a long line of women who have a special, magical connection to the woods. It’s this special connection that lets Nora know that when Oliver Huntsman — the same Oliver Huntsman who disappeared from a camp weeks ago during a terrible snowstorm — shows up, something is amiss. The woods shift uncomfortably around the boy, who should be dead, and Nora starts to seek out the truth surrounding Oliver’s survival. She cares about him, but he has more than a few secrets. This is a kind of wintery fairytale that’s atmospheric with beautiful writing.

Ellie is all about Christmas, even outside of its usual season. Her job she likes…less. She’s desperate for a career change, which comes in the form of CEO Rosalind Caldwell’s need for a new personal assistant. As Caldwell tries to save her Christmas party with the new girl snd Christmas enthusiast Ellie, Ellie develops a big crush on her assertive new boss…

I came across this soup when I started watching a Christmas food from around the World Series. I love soup and this one sounds delicious. Here’s another recipe if you’re like me and like to compare different recipes when trying something new.

It’s 1990 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and Maali Almeida is a photographer and a closeted gay man. He’s also just woken up in a celestial visa office and found out he’s dead. His body is dismembered and sitting in Beira Lake, and if he’s to find out who among the country’s many death squads and goons killed him, he’ll have to do so before the seventh moon.

Ray wants to make a life out of playing classical music on his inherited violin, despite his mother’s “advice” to get a “real” job and the racism he experiences within the world of classical music. As he looks forward to performing in the Tchaikovsky Competition, his violin — which he discovers is an ultra rare Stradivarius — gets stolen. He knows he will get it back, but first he’ll have to wade through claims of ownership of the violin coming from his family as well as the family who enslaved his great-grandfather.

The title of this surprise breakout had everyone and their mom (ha) gagging this year, and for good reason: McCurdy recounts her experiences as a child star, revealing some truly terrible details from her childhood. She describes eating disorders, addiction, child abuse, toxic relationships, and a lot more, all with an endearingly sharp sense of humor.

Okay, so I thought the women in my family could keep a secret, but Byron and Benny’s mom Eleanor really takes the cake (lol). The inheritance she leaves behind consists of a black cake and a recording that tells the story of a young woman who flees the island she called home because of a murder. The siblings try to piece together the truth of their mother’s life, even as their own relationship is at stake.

After taking a night time holiday lights tour in Boston, we were gifted gold-dusted hot chocolate bombs. It was some of the best hot chocolate I’ve had, and I’m hoping I can find a recipe to replicate it. Mashed promises that this recipe only takes 20 minutes, so I’m hoping it’s a match.

When Joan was 10, her mother moved her and her younger sister away from her violent father. They went back to her grandmother’s house in Memphis, a house that was built by Joan’s grandfather who was lynched shortly after becoming a detective in Memphis. There’s a history of violence surrounding Joan’s family, which is explored in this multi-generational novel. The narrative shifts back and forth through 70 years to show the trials of Joan’s matrilineal family, and how she tries to express this generational trauma through art.

This book starts in the 1600s with a discovery made by Robert Hooke and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. What they saw when they looked in their microscopes would go on to be called “cells,” the idea of which would change the field of science forever. By looking at living organisms as being comprised of tiny, self-contained cells, we’ve been able to understand human bodies and come up with advanced treatments. Pulitzer Prize-winning Mukherjee writes of complex science terms clearly and in an engaging way as he details this turning point in biology.

Kiara and her brother Marcus have dropped out of high school and their family has been torn a part by tragedy, so she works to take care of them and the nine-year-old boy next door who was abandoned by his parents. When she discovers the dark world of night crawling as a way to make money, she jumps at what seems to her like a good opportunity. But with it comes involvement in a huge scandal involving the Oakland Police Department.

In 1912, an exiled 18-year-old enters the Canadian wilderness and hears a violin being played. A couple hundred years later, an author goes on tour to promote a book that has a strange passage about a man playing a violin as a forest rises around him. Then there’s the detective who is sent to investigate something strange happening in the North American wilderness involving an exiled earl driven to madness and a writer away from home…Metaphysics, time travel, and a particular set of violin notes all converge in this imaginative novel.