“These are a few of my favorite [books]”

No one:…

Absolutely no one:…

Crickets.

Me: Let me recommend you some books!

2021 was a good reading year for me. I read stuff I liked, stopped reading stuff that didn’t resonate with me, and read in some of my favorite genres.

Whether you’re buying books for yourself (You Deserve!) for people on your gift list (lucky for them!), or just looking for books to check out from the library, I’ve got thoughts and recommendations.

Oh, let’s do it.

For you or the women, gender expansive folk in your life:

• Dear Senthuran x Akwaeke Emezi. The most spiritually important book I read this year.

For Black women and girls:

On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library: x Glory Edim.

For Black People and/or people who loved High On the Hog:

• Black Food: Stories, Arts, and Essays x Bryant Terry.

For the cool tween or teen in your life:

• Nubia and the Amazons. Comic books are books, ya dig? I’m committing to this series.

For your best friend who likes thrillers and mess:

• Bath Haus x P.J. Vernon. This book was a trip and a treat!

For your friend who is still hype from watching The Harder They Fall, but wants a little more romance:

• Wild Rain x Beverly Jenkins. This romance was HOT! A wild rancher woman in Wyoming meets a big city lawyer from back East? Yes.

• Rebel x Beverly Jenkins. Again, hot! But set during the beginning of Reconstruction. Listen to Code Switch’s episode on the Romance Queen.

For the friend who loved Passing and wants more historical fiction by Black women:

• The Living is Easy x Dorothy West. The protagonist in this story is just as striving and scheming as our girl Clare.

For the romantic in your life or the romance lover:

• Seven Days in June x Tia Williams. Can’t say enough good things about this book. Believe the hype.

• Get a Life, Chloe Brown x Talia Hibbert. I finally get the hype of these books. It was super cute!

For the poetry lover or explorer in your life:

• Preparing My Daughter for Rain x Key Ballah-this poetry collection was a surprise hit in my book club and I really appreciated the discussions it spurned.

• Black Girl, Call Home x Jasmine Mans.

For the person who has spent the past months learning about cults or MLMs:

• Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism x Amanda Montell. This was fascinating, enlightening, and disconcerting. The author does a great job differentiating between cults and cult-y activities and it might have you side-eying a few of your activities or friends…

For the history buffs in in your life:

• Tomorrow They Won’t Dare to Murder Us x Joseph Andras

• On Juneteenth x Annette Gordon-Reed

• Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy x Anne Sebba-if you learned about the Rosenbergs in your history class and want to learn more about the tragic miscarriage of justice, this is a must-read.

For the person who is in a rut:

• Beginners x Tom Vanderbilt.

For the music lovers in your life:

• Hip-Hop (And Other Things) x Shea Serrano-shout out to the FOH army. Shea is one of my favorite writers.

• Music is History x ?uestlove-?Questlove is the best at so many things, including being a history teacher. Give the gift of his encyclopedic musical knowledge.

These are my recommendations…

The Book Connect or Read These Books Together Pt. One

If you just read the synopses for these two books, Transcendent Kingdom and Godshot, they seem radically different.

Transcendent Kingdom features a young Black middle class woman who is trying to make peace with her family’s personal tragedy in the midst of a national opioid epidemic by pursuing scientific answers. On top of all this, she’s also learning new ways to exist with her grieving mother.

Godshot features a poor white little white girl being raised by a single mother in a religious sect who has to grow up too fast and figure out a way to question and then exist.

However, and perhaps it's because I read them relatively close together, I think they complement each other really nicely. Loosely inspired by the great Shea Serrano’s new podcast “The Connect”, I’m going to run down things these two books have in common:

• They are both coming-of-age stories that feature a daughter-mother duo;

• The mother in question is deeply involved with religion;

• The previously mentioned devout daughter has a crisis of faith prompting her to reevaluate her relationship to religion;

• The authors invite us to think about motherhood, agency, and community;

• The books’ settings are in rural places; and

• At some point the books also both take place in California.

If you’ve read these two books are there any other connections I’m missing?