Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed. September is over (weren’t we all just grooving to Earth, Wind, and Fire??) and once again I insist that time has ceased to have all meaning. October is my birthday month and I love witchy season, so I’m not too mad. I just need Portland to get with the autumnal program and go back to cooler temps so I may blissfully don my chunky knits.
Enough about me, let’s talk libros. To the club!!
Nibbles and Sips
The second the weather began to cool* here in Portland, all my cooking reluctance magically vanished and I was DTC (down to cook). I immediately made one of my favorite labor-of-love recipes: Persian jeweled rice. It’s bursting with so many mouthwatering flavors—sweet caramelized onions, a melange of golden raisins, dried apricots and cherries, the delicious warmth of cinnamon, cardamom, and allspice—all nestled inside a bed of fragrant basmati rice soaked in saffron with a luscious buttery crust and topped with warm almonds and pistachios. WHEW. It’s so good. Here’s the recipe I use, and a similar one without the paywall that I haven’t tried. Enjoy!
*Me: “Yay fall!”
Fall: “Oh you thought you had me? Byeeeeee!”
Books
The innanets are overflowing with lists of Latinx lit for Hispanic Heritage Month! Por ejemplo:
There’s a lot of great lit on these lists, make sure to check them out! Below you’ll find a few from my own reading or TBR that I think your book clubs would have a good time discussing.
The Book of Lost Saints by Daniel José Older – This is a multigenerational Cuban-American family story about a woman named Marisol, a woman who lived during the Cuban Revolution and disappeared without a trace. “Now, shaped by atrocities long-forgotten, her tenacious spirit visits her nephew, Ramón, in modern-day New Jersey.” This prompts Ramon to go looking for answers about his family’s painful history, just as Marisol intended. The journey brings with it romance, a murderous gangster, and a discovery of the lost saints who helped his aunt survive imprisonment.
The Book of Anna by Carmen, translated by Samantha Schnee – Real talk: I have tried to read Anna Karenina several times and failed, each time as a teenager so maybe now it would be different in my 30s? What I do know is that I am very interested in this book by Mexican writer Carmen Boullosa, a novel told from the perspective of Anna K’s son in the years after her tragic fate with the Russian Revolution on the horizon.
Loteria by Cynthia (Cina) Pelayo – It’s spooky season, so let’s do a little light horror, shall we? First, you should know that La Loteria is an iconic Mexican card game, a little like bingo but with images instead of numbers. As for this book, I read it earlier this year and it really got under my skin, but not so much with and graphic, gory, in-your-face horror. The terror here is more of the dark fairytale variety (expect monsters, ghosts, vampires, and werewolves) but the best part is the format: it’s a collection of 54 (very) short stories, one for each of the images in the Loteria deck.
Note: This appears to be out of print at the moment, so try your libraries and secondhand shops, or check Cina Pelayo’s website down the line for availability!
Tender is the Flesh by Agustina María Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses – Fasten your seatbelts, folks: we’re leaving Gentle Horrorville and headed straight for Dark and Twisty Town. Bazterrica book imagines a world where widespread animal disease has now made the consumption of human mean legal (gulp). Marcos runs a slaughterhouse for humans, though he’s trained not to think of his specimens as human and is barred from personal contact with them on pain of death. But when he’s gifted a live specimen of the finest quality, he’s drawn to her irresistibly, “tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.” This isn’t horror so much as dystopian literary fiction but dios mio! This sounds twisted and skin-crawly AF.
Suggestion Section
GMA’s October book club pick is The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, a book I recently added to my TBR! Time-travel + a magical library that sits between life and death filled with all the lives you could have led = my kind of read.
at Salon: how Emily Dickinson, Octavia Butler, Joan Didion, Jericho Brown, and other authors helped one reader survive this quarantine.
Remember last week when I mentioned Carole Bell’s post on fat representation in romance and said this would be a great topic for book club? Well booya! Carole also wrote a follow-up post with very thoughtful and detailed recommendations of fat positive romance novels.
Apparently Jane Fonda is dropping in on virtual book clubs as she promotes her new book on environmental activism, What Can I Do? All the winners of the nationwide search have been selected, but Jane and Greenpeace have provided these book club discussion questions for all to unpack and enjoy.
Thanks for hanging with me today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with your burning book club questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the Audiobooks newsletter and catch me once a month on the All the Books podcast.
Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
—Vanessa aka La Pumpkin Spicy
by Anna James and Paola Escobar is $2. Start a new series!
(and all the sequels!) by Max Brallier are just $2–read them before you see the Netflix show!
A Decline in Prophets
I Hope You’re Listening
