Categories
True Story

New Releases: These Are So Good??

I know I have gotten excited about new release weeks in the past, but all of these look so good and I am very there-are-not-enough-hours-in-the-day-whyyyy about them. They’re also all pretty different? IMO this is yet another example of why nonfiction is great: incredibly relevant conversations about race and guns and gender and historical inequalities and rebellions and also sexy escapades at a hotel?? It all falls under nonfiction and it’s all fascinating.

The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America by Carol Anderson

Historian Anderson, who previously wrote White Rage and One Person, No Vote, looks at the history and impact of the United States’s Second Amendment, “how it was designed, and how it has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable.” Through her research, she demonstrates that “the Second Amendment is not about guns but about anti-Blackness.” Anderson consistently uses history to illuminate and explain issues of our time, which IMO, is the best use of history.

As a Woman cover

As a Woman: What I Learned about Power, Sex, and the Patriarchy after I Transitioned by Paula Stone Williams

Williams, formerly an anti-LGBTQ+ evangelical leader and president of a church-planting organization, transitioned in her sixties after a “call to authenticity.” In an other-side-of-the-coin to Thomas Page McBee’s book Amateur, instead of being listened to more post-transition, she finds herself ignored, sidelined, and overlooked. She “urges men to recognize the ways in which the world is tilted in their favor and validates the experiences of women who have been disregarded based solely on their gender, while also acknowledging how she was once like those men who are blind to their privilege.”

Wake cover

Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts by Rebecca Hall, Hugo Martínez (Illustrated by)

This graphic memoir and history of women-led slave revolts rejects the popularly-held idea that slave revolts were solely led by men. Hall, the granddaughter of enslaved people, combs through “old court records, slave ship captain’s logs, crumbling correspondence, and even the forensic evidence from the bones of enslaved women from the ‘negro burying ground’ uncovered in Manhattan. She finds women warriors everywhere.” I love Martínez’s art, which makes this history even more evocative.

The Secret Life of the Savoy cover

The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World’s Most Famous Hotel by Olivia Williams

One hundred years of “glamour and high society” told through the lives of the Savoy Hotel’s founders! It talks about Gilbert and Sullivan, it talks about P.G. Wodehouse, it talks about electric lights like Moulin Rouge did, it talks about Oscar Wilde, Marilyn Monroe, The Beatles, and basically everyone incredibly famous in the 20th century.


For more nonfiction new releases, check out the For Real podcast which I co-host with the excellent Kim here at Book Riot. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

Categories
True Story

Nonfiction You Can Read Over a Long Weekend

Here we are. If you’re in the US, you’re lookin’ at a three-day weekend. Otherwise…probably a normal weekend. But STILL, some time to just sit and read (yayyy). I asked my wife what I should write about and she suggested a topic for people with way more focus than I have, but! My sole criterion for these is they have to be shorter than 250 pages. I feel like you can knock that out in two days and then hey, you’ve read a book. Exciting.

We Should All Be Feminists Cover

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This is a short nonfiction classic. It’s so short! I read it during a lunch break at work! And not only is it short, but it’s got some A+ points by a great writer. Adichie’s feminism is something that benefits everyone (the patriarchy harms all! it is only superficially beneficial to men! this is an important fact!). You can knock this out on Saturday afternoon and still have time to watch some Star Trek: Discovery. Or…whatever people watch. It should probably be that, though.

Heart Berries: A Memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot

This title reminds me of Tracy Jordan talking about mind grapes, and I had to get that out of the way because this book is intense! Lots of serious topics! But also it’s v. short, so you can delve into Feelings and then come back out. Mailhot grew up on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. As an adult, she is simultaneously diagnosed with PTSD and bipolar II disorder. She takes to a notebook to write out her feelings, which turns into exploring memory, family, and maybe give yourself a tiny recovery window from this one.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling

This is shorter than 250 pages! And pretty breezy. I’ve talked about this on the podcast, but I happened to bring this to a tough family holiday, and I retreated to a room with it and it was SUCH an amazing break. I will forever love this book. Kaling talks about working in writers rooms, creating her two women show (two woman show?) about Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and how she’s a huge nerd and figured out what she wanted to do with her life.


Enjoy your weekend to the utmost. For more nonfiction new releases, check out the For Real podcast which I co-host with the excellent Kim here at Book Riot. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

Categories
True Story

New Releases: A Hidden Figures Bio and More

HALLO, welcome to your week, which, if you live in the United States, will hopefully be culminating in a three day weekend (MORE READING) and if you do not, I hope you enjoy your healthcare.

I just started reading The Secret Life of Groceries, which is really good, but I keep getting distracted by new releases! And this week’s are no exception. I remain in awe of those who decide to put thoughts to paper, pitch it, get rejected, pitch more, write a finished draft, and get it out in the world. It is a tremendous undertaking and it happens all the time. A+ WORK, EVERYONE. Here are your new release highlights for the week:

My Remarkable Journey

My Remarkable Journey: A Memoir by Katherine Johnson, Joylette Hylick, Katherine Moore

Remember Katherine Johnson, the amazing central character of Hidden Figures?? She wrote a book! It’s about her path from growing up in the mountains of West Virginia to becoming a “human computer” for NASA. An AMAZING human computer. Her story “is centered around the basic tenets of her life—no one is better than you, education is paramount, and asking questions can break barriers.” Ngl, the asking questions one made me tear up. I love questions. She seems like such a fantastic person and I’m so glad she got to tell her own story.

King Richard: Nixon and Watergate: An American Tragedy by Michael Dobbs

Wow, remember when everyone was like, boy, Nixon sure was the worst? I’m not saying he wasn’t real bad, but boy. Things have happened. ANYWAY, 1) I love this cover, 2) ever since the movie Dick, I have been interested in Watergate (what a great movie), 3) this was on some “most anticipated” lists for 2021, so if you’re like, “WOW, cannot wait to learn more about mid-20th century American political scandals” then do I have a new release for you.

Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance by Moya Bailey

Bailey, who coined the term “misogynoir,” defines it as “the ways anti-Black and misogynistic representation shape broader ideas about Black women, particularly in visual culture and digital spaces.” Here, she focuses on the many ways Black women resist misogynoir on YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, and other platforms. It “highlights Black women’s remarkable efforts to disrupt mainstream narratives, subvert negative stereotypes, and reclaim their lives.” Sounds amazing.


Don’t forget our soon-to-be-ending iPad giveaway, for the chance to win an iPad Mini. For more nonfiction new releases, check out the For Real podcast which I co-host with the excellent Kim here at Book Riot. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

Categories
True Story

Chef Memoirs!

As we have discussed before in this newsletter, nonfiction is vast and mighty. It’s pretty impressive if you think about it. This week, we’re gonna talk about some food-themed books, of which there are many. SO MANY. This shall be but a SOUPÇON of those available. Side note: I definitely thought soupçon had a food etymology, despite supposedly knowing better, but it does NOT; it’s just primarily used in the food space because as Americans, we see the word ‘soup’ and go ‘ahhh.’ ENJOY:

Blood, Bones & Butter Cover

Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton

How can a chef get her own restaurant? Hamilton’s memoir goes from rural Pennsylvania to New York City and across Europe as she gathers cooking knowledge, gets married, and starts her restaurant Prune. This was a NYT bestseller that has been described as “gritty.” Also, look at that cover. It is A+.

Yes Chef a Memoir

Yes, Chef: A Memoir by Marcus Samuelsson

Samuelsson was born in Ethiopia, grew up in Sweden, and moved to America. He cooked in Switzerland, on cruise ships, and “became the youngest chef ever to be awarded a coveted three-star rating from the New York Times.” He also cooked for Obama and won Top Chef Masters, which I have not SEEN, but it sounds very impressive. I’m gonna be honest, the part of his extremely varied life I am most fascinated by is cooking on a cruise ship. The writing immediately draws you in and if you’re going to read a chef book, this one is great.

A Tiger in the Kitchen Cover

A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

This has recipes! Tan was born in Singapore in the Year of the Tiger (hence the title!). At eighteen, she moved to the U.S. and became a fashion writer, but in her 30s, she began to seriously miss Singaporean cooking. By cooking with her family, she not only learns the recipes of her childhood, but the stories of her family. You meet her parents, aunts, uncles, and grandmother. She “learns to infuse her New York lifestyle with the rich lessons of the Singaporean kitchen, ultimately reconnecting with her family and herself.”


Don’t forget our soon-to-be-ending iPad giveaway, for the chance to win an iPad Mini. For more nonfiction new releases, check out the For Real podcast which I co-host with the excellent Kim here at Book Riot. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

Categories
True Story

New Releases: Dating Apps, Black Rebellion, and ACT UP

I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m getting back into the reading GROOVE. I’ve been kind of slumpy for a number of weeks/maybe-possibly-months. But I just finished a book about a 17th century French poison scandal and a fiction (!!) book about Yale secret societies (yes, it was Ninth House). Fortunately, as always, we have a veritable onslaught of new books, so let’s check some out:

America on Fire Cover

America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s by Elizabeth Hinton

I am so excited about this book? Hinton makes a clear case that the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd did not exist in isolation. They were part of a history of police violence and public reaction, specifically on the part of the Black community. In it, Hinton says “the word riot was nothing less than a racist trope applied to events that can only be properly understood as rebellions—explosions of collective resistance to an unequal and violent order.” Love this reframing. Love adding context to current events.

The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams Cover

The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams by Jonathan Ned Katz

Adams emigrated to the US from Poland in 1912, where she hung out with anarchists and ran queer speakeasies in NYC and Chicago. It’s like Emma Goldman, but gay. In 1925, she published a book called Lesbian Love, which is included as part of the biography. She was convicted of publishing an obscene book, because it was America in the 1920s, and eventually deported to Europe, where she later died in Auschwitz. I tell you all these details so you know what you’re getting into, but also dang, I thought I knew my US lesbian history, and I did not.

Let the Record Show

Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 by Sarah Schulman

ACT UP was founded in 1987 at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in NYC. At a time when the AIDS crisis was being ignored, they made it impossible to ignore. Author Schulman has been working on the ACT UP Oral History Project since 2001, and here highlights how “a broad and unlikely coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds, changed the world.”

Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir by Brian Broome

Poet Broome writes this extremely interesting memoir, framed around Gwendolyn Brooks’s ‘We Real Cool.’ It covers his “early years growing up in Ohio as a dark-skinned Black boy harboring crushes on other boys,” his increasing drug use, his family, and “the true depth of vulnerability for young Black boys,” which is a phrase that just cuts right to your heart. Also, bonus points for the title, which is SO good.

Nothing Personal Cover

Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno by Nancy Jo Sales

Dating apps. Real annoying. Real helpful. Lot to unpack there probably. Sales not only talks about the data around dating apps, but as an almost-50-year-old, went on TENS of dates through them, which she covers in the book. She says that these apps do little to foster real connection, but in a world where more and more people are meeting their longtime partners through them, what’s the alternative? (side note: I met my wife through Tinder and she is great.)


For more nonfiction new releases, check out the For Real podcast which I co-host with the excellent Kim here at Book Riot. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

Categories
True Story

Nonfiction Books for Kids

Hello and welcome to another Friday. I realized I have been REMISS in addressing nonfiction for children. A classic blunder! But I am here to rectify this egregious oversight and bring you just a smattering of the excellent nonfiction titles available to children. Facts are for all ages! So sayeth me.

Oh, you know what kids could read these on? That’s right, yep, their own (or yours that you’re lending them for a minute) iPad Mini. Enter the Book Riot iPad Mini giveaway today. *air horn sound*

My Family Divided: One Girl’s Journey of Home, Loss, and Hope by Diane Guerrero with Erica Moroz

Did I pick this because I A) love the cover, B) love Diane Guerrero and her story, or C) all of the above? YES, C wins the day. This is an adaptation of Guerrero’s memoir In the Country We Love, which is about her parents’ deportation and the push for immigration reform in the United States. This is listed as ages 10-14, which I agree with because it clocks in at over 200 pages. If you have some ambitious 10-year-olds, check this out.

Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge: George and Martha Washington’s Courageous Slave Who Dared to Run Away by Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Kathleen Van Cleve

I like that we’re in an age when we’re adding more context about the Founders of America, which includes George and Martha Washington enslaving people. Ona Judge was among these people, and her story of escape and ability to elude captors is amazing. This is for kids age 9-13 and is also just over 200 pages.

The Street Beneath My Feet Cover

The Street Beneath My Feet by Charlotte Guillain and Yuval Zommer

I LOVE this because it not only adds knowledge, it prompts curiosity. The world is so interesting and there’s so much going on that we can’t even see! This is 20 pages and for ages 5-8, but there’s so much going on in the pictures, that it could take up a good amount of time.

Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History by Vashti Harrison

Fun fact: this book was one of our picks in Kim’s and my first episode of the nonfiction podcast For Real. It’s a board book! And 97 pages, but lists at ages 8-12. IMO, you can go younger with it? Especially if you read it out loud. There are 18 stories and each features an illustration of the woman featured.


For more nonfiction new releases, check out the For Real podcast which I co-host with the excellent Kim here at Book Riot. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

Categories
True Story

New Releases: Benin Bronzes, Victorians, and Food

I like doing the new release newsletter because the mix of books is frequently very ODD with no real through-line. I mean, you could probably find one if you really looked. Also, I tend to trust that the really huge releases are going to have big enough advertising budgets that they don’t need a lot of help. So we get to look at some fun or weird or not as known books. Which is exciting.

Loot Cover

Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes by Barnaby Phillips

Okay. I wouldn’t normally START by quoting the book description, but look at this: “In 1897, Britain responded to the killing of a group of officials by razing an empire to the ground.” Like, what?? That’s an amazing intro. Horrifying, but amazing. The kingdom of Benin (now Nigeria) was destroyed by the British and they carried off the Benin Bronzes, which still sit in the British Museum. Author Phillips is also working to shut down the ivory trade and save Africa’s elephants. Great job, sir.

Out of the Shadows Cover

Out of the Shadows: Six Visionary Victorian Women in Search of a Public Voice by Emily Midorikawa

This title refers to the Spiritualist movement and the women who made their names off it. This includes the Fox sisters, who started the movement with the knocking sounds they claimed to hear in their Hydesville, NY home, to Victoria Woodhull, Georgina Weldon, and others. More books about women in the 19th century! All the books.

Tastes Like War: A Memoir

Tastes Like War: A Memoir by Grace M. Cho

It’s a food book, it’s a memoir, it’s a “sociological investigation.” There’s a lot going on here. Cho grew up with a white American father and a Korean mother. In Cho’s teens, her mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia. In “her mother’s final years, Grace learned to cook dishes from her parent’s childhood in order to invite the past into the present, and to hold space for her mother’s multiple voices at the table.”


Don’t forget to enter Book Riot’s iPad Mini giveaway, because hey — free iPad Mini. For more nonfiction new releases, check out the For Real podcast which I co-host with the excellent Kim here at Book Riot. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

Categories
True Story

Pulitzer Prize Nonfiction Winners Not By White Men

When you scroll back through the Pulitzer Prize winners, you realize, wow, this is a LOT of white men. Which I know is not an original observation in the year of 2021, but it’s like watching Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings over here. Nevertheless! There are some non-white-men winners (hurrayyy) so let’s look at them and read them and hopefully their numbers shall continue to grow in future years.

Oh! And you know what you could read these on? Yes, CORRECT, your very own iPad Mini. Which works out really well, because here at Book Riot, we are having a giveaway for one. May the odds be ever in your favor etc etc.

The Undying Cover

The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care by Anne Boyer

Winner: 2020
I know. I know! What a year+ we have had, and this is a very sad-sounding book. But I have only heard raves about it. Boyer was diagnosed with breast cancer right after her 41st birthday. She was a single mother living paycheck to paycheck. From that experience, she writes this expansive book (in not that many pages) covering “the experience of illness as mediated by digital screens, weaving in ancient Roman dream diarists, cancer hoaxers and fetishists, cancer vloggers, corporate lies, John Donne, pro-pain ‘dolorists,’ the ecological costs of chemotherapy, and the many little murders of capitalism.” Man.

Locking Up Our Own cover

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr.

Winner: 2018
Forman is a former public defender who focuses on the disproportionate representation of people of color in our system of mass incarceration. The title refers to how he “seeks to understand the war on crime that began in the 1970s and why it was supported by many African American leaders in the nation’s urban centers.” One of his focuses, which he adds as a layer to the systemic racism that has led to mass incarceration, is classism. I usually don’t point to Goodreads ratings, since they typically sit at an unhelpful 3-3.5, but this has a 4.38 from over 3,000 reviews. Which is pretty impressive.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Winner: 2011
I KNOW, another cancer book. This is from the perspective of a doctor and not a patient, though, and it is a history of cancer rather than someone’s specific experience of it. So maybe read both. Mukherjee starts 4,600 years ago in Egypt, all the way to the 21st century, detailing the history of cancer treatment around the world. This is a modern nonfiction classic.

The Haunted Land

The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism by Tina Rosenberg

Winner: 1996
This won the Pulitzer AND the National Book Award. I had literally never heard of it before. Because nonfiction is frequently unsung! Rosenberg travels across Eastern Europe, looking at East Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland and how their citizens responded to the way communism was managed in their countries.


For more nonfiction new releases, check out the For Real podcast which I co-host with the excellent Kim here at Book Riot. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

Categories
True Story

New Releases: Cats, Black Europeans, and the WNBA

WELP here we are with some A+ new releases once more. I’m v. excited about all of them, so let’s get into it:

Queer Icons and Their Cats Cover

Queer Icons and Their Cats by Alison Nastasi, PJ Nastasi

CAN YOU EVEN. Jujubee is on the cover! Famed drag artist and lover of cats! The description of this is filled with cat puns like “amewsing” anecdotes and “impawtent” moments (I was especially impressed by the latter) from the lives of queer heroes. If you love queer icons and also photos of cats, this feels like a must. *looks at the cover again* Ahahaha I love it so much.

African Europeans Cover

African Europeans: An Untold History by Olivette Otele

Otele is Professor of the History of Slavery at Bristol University and the first Black woman to be appointed to a professorial chair in history in the United Kingdom. Here she tells the story of African Europeans, “from Emperor Septimius Severus, to enslaved Africans living in Europe during the Renaissance, and all the way to present-day migrants moving to Europe’s cities.” So much history! I’m so glad this book exists!

They Better Call Me Sugar Cover

They Better Call Me Sugar: My Journey from the Hood to the Hardwood by Sugar Rodgers

My work bestie loves the WNBA so THIS IS FOR YOU, LINDSEY (she doesn’t subscribe to this newsletter). Rodgers was recruited out of high school to play college basketball, and was then drafted by the Minnesota Lynx in 2013. She was the first of her family to attend college and “speaks of her struggles both academically and as an athlete with raw honesty.” TW for early mom death (Rodgers was 14), but more WNBA books, please. They do amazing work!! And they deserve for their stories to be told.


For more nonfiction new releases, check out the For Real podcast which I co-host with the excellent Kim here at Book Riot. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

Categories
True Story

The Books Behind the Oscars

The Oscars happened! Apparently they were very bad. I was rewatching old episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race at home, so I did not watch. But what an appropriate time to look at books that inspired Academy Award-winning films. So we shall do so!

Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder

This won best picture, best director (Chloé ZHAO!), and best actress, so that feels like a pretty good sweep. The book came out in 2017 and covers the phenomenon of older Americans who, following the Great Recession of the late 2000s, started traveling around the country looking for seasonal work. Journalist Bruder traveled with the “houseless” for years. I’ve heard nothing but positives about this book.

Argo Cover

Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History by Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio

Remember Argo? It was the secret rescue of six Americans from Tehran in the early 1980s. Which was accomplished under the guise of filming a sci-fi movie, which if you think about it is perfect, because what was going on at this time? Star Wars. Anyway, this story is wild and such a weird thing to have happened. And yet it did!

Twelve Years a Slave cover

Twelve Years a Slave: A True Story of Betrayal, Kidnap and Slavery by Solomon Northrup

I could not watch this movie because I heard it was difficultttttt to watch. But it was very lauded! And Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong’o are supposed to be very good in it! The book it’s based on is an 1853 memoir by formerly enslaved Solomon Northrup, who was born a free man, tricked into going to Washington D.C., and sold to a plantation in Louisiana. He manages to get free, but good Lord. The things that have happened and continue to happen.

A Beautiful Mind cover

A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

This came out in 1998, which terrifying enough was 23 years ago. It’s a biography of Nobel Prize-winning economist and mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. It goes from his childhood to his time at Princeton and MIT, his Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, and his schizophrenia diagnosis. Nash did not die until 2015, which I did not know until just now. but when the book was published, he was 70.


For more nonfiction new releases, check out the For Real podcast which I co-host with the excellent Kim here at Book Riot. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.