January: Book Stash!

If you subscribe to my newsletter, you’ll know that my favorite way to spend January includes tea and books. I have a fresh supply of Scottish breakfast tea, and a new book stash that I can’t wait to get to.

Included in my new stash:

March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women by Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado and Jane Smiley. (Random House, 2019)

Did you see Greta Gerwig’s Little Women? We (me, the hubs, the teenage son) saw it on Christmas Day, because that’s how we roll. And yes, we loved it. Or, like me, did you grow up reading Little Women and dreaming about being the feisty, independent Jo? March Sisters is a series of essays about the sisters, about their (and our) personal connections to these characters.

The World that We Knew by Alice Hoffman. (Simon & Schuster, 2019)

I’ve loved Alice Hoffman’s work since Property Of, her first novel for adults, so every new release is a must-buy for me. The World that We Knew is on the bottom of my pile—I’m saving it, because that’s what I do. I’ve also been known to not finish books because I don’t want them to be over, but that’s a conversation for a different day.

And then there’s Backyard Foraging by Ellen Zachos. (Storey Publishing, 2013)

Did you know you can eat spruce? Seriously, you can—the new-growth tips are edible. Spruce-eating aside, this one is for research—and a gift from the nice guy I married who explained “I thought the character in that book you’re working on would know about this kind of stuff” (not really a direct quote). It’s weirdly, and occasionally disturbingly, fascinating.

These aren’t the only books in my stash—I have another fiction or two, and several that would be categorized as Social Sciences, because while I never wanted to study the social sciences, I find them fascinating. One is a treatise on the Opioid Epidemic, another is Ben Sasse’s Them because while Mr. Sasse and I don’t always, or even often, agree, he has some interesting things to say about the current state of our society and how we found ourselves here (hint: we’re really not that different, we’ve just bought into a horrible narrative that highlights those differences in devastating ways).

I hope your January is filled with books, and tea, and laughter!

Brooke