Welcome back, everyone! We have reached eighty editions of Get Rec’d! Can you believe it?
This is the last one before the new year and leans more toward non-fiction. I feel like this is the place where I get to pass along all the non-romance recommendations I keep in my back pocket.
Did you get any good recommendations lately? Do you have a favorite recommendation of the year?
Feast While You Can
Clements and Datta’s debut was a contemporary romance set in Hollywood, so I was really shocked to see them come our with queer horror. However, it’s very good and I loved how the main character wasn’t some sort of badass and was instead a bit of a hot mess express.
For readers of Nightbitch and We Ride Upon Sticks, this strange and sexy novel of queer love in a small town is an unsettling reminder that the horrors of modern life are monsters ready to possess us all.
In the valley at the intersection of three towering mountains sits Cadenze, an ugly, remote town with little to its name. It’s filled with tourists in the summer and dead the rest of the year, when most of its residents surrender to a sleepier existence. Except, that is, for whatever is lurking in the caves…
Angelina Sicco was born and raised in Cadenze, and for many generations, so was every member of her family. Determined to be content with her lot in life, she walks her mongrel dog, attends her brother’s heavy metal concerts, holds court in the local dive bar, and does everything she can to bait hot, queer women to her sleepy, conservative hometown. But on the night of a family party much like every other, Angelina runs into Patrick’s ex, the sternly handsome Jagvi, who’s back in town for a spell. Perhaps enticed by Jagvi’s arrival, an ancient evil lying dormant in those caves is awakened, and soon Angelina’s small, contained world begins to shatter.
As the monstrous force grows bolder, it infiltrates Angelina’s life. It talks with her dog’s mouth; it guzzles on her memories; it controls Angelina from the inside. Only Jagvi’s touch repels it — the final trigger for a secret, passionate romance. But this monster feasts on all the passion, heartbreak, and mess that makes up a life, and Angelina Sicco’s life has never looked tastier. What will Angelina do to protect her future? And what will it cost her?
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Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife
If any of you picked up a previous recommendation of The Sex Lives of Medieval Woman, this would make a great companion if you love medieval history.
“Brilliantly revealing history of medieval women . . . Howes’s debut has just the right meld of insightful research, enjoyable storytelling and contemporary contexts.”—The Guardian
“A history of medieval women’s lives as told through the prism of four exceptional individuals. . . . throughout, the tensions of medieval womanhood strain and stretch—eroticism and purity, sexuality and motherhood, silence and speech.”—The New York Times
Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife charts the lives and times of four medieval women writers—Marie de France, a poet; Julian of Norwich, a mystic and anchoress; Christine de Pizan, a widow and court writer; and Margery Kempe, a no-good wife—who all bucked convention and forged their own paths. Largely forgotten by modern readers, these women have an astonishing amount to teach us about love, marriage, motherhood, friendship, and earning a living.
Reading the words of these four writers, Hetta Howes engagingly reveals how everyday women lived, survived, and thrived in medieval times. Who did they marry and why? Did they ever have extramarital affairs? Could they earn money and become self-sufficient? Could they be leaders? What did they think about death—and what about life and their place in it? Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife paints a vibrant portrait of these women, their world, and the ways they speak to us today.
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We Will Rest!
The author of Rest is Resistance just came out with a follow-up, and it felt like it flew under the radar in terms of book releases. This is more of a poetic meditation and definitely a bit smaller than its predecessor.
A modern sacred object—beautifully illustrated and inspired by hymnals and abolitionist pamphlets—helping to escape from grind culture and dehumanizing systems, by Tricia Hersey, “effin’ genius” (Glennon Doyle) and bestselling author of Rest is Resistance
Give the gift of rest and escape with this exquisitely designed volume of inspiring writings by Tricia Hersey, powerfully illustrated by award-winning designer George McCalman and featuring a silk ribbon marker.
We don’t believe we are worthy of rest unless we burn ourselves out to accomplish it. Our thinking has been limited by disconnection, sleep deprivation, and the unattainable call for perfection. The systems will never give us rest. It is something we must create for ourselves and each other.
Just as the North Star guided the enslaved on their journeys to freedom, visionary artist and founder of The Nap Ministry Tricia Hersey leads us to imagine a new world: one in which we subvert the narrative of productivity at all costs and embrace rest as a healing spiritual practice.
We Will Rest! is a modern sacred object, medicine for a sick and exhausted world. Weaving together meditations and poetry with storytelling and art, Hersey provokes liberation through refusal and trickster rebellion in the face of capitalism and white supremacy.
There is another way. Focus on the escape. Focus on the transformation. We can just be. We are beautiful. We are enough. We are escape artists. We Will Rest!
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What the Chicken Knows
I am a big Sy Montgomery fan. This one, like We Will Rest!, is a shorter book and these feel more like little gift books more than anything. I love chickens and they were probably the highlight of growing up with livestock, so I have a particular soft spot for anyone who wants to wax poetic about them.
A charming and eye-opening exploration of the special relationship between humans and chickens from Sy Montgomery, “one of our finest chroniclers of the natural world” (The New York Times).
For more than two decades, Sy Montgomery—whose The Soul of an Octopus was a National Book Award finalist—has kept a flock of chickens in her backyard. Each chicken has an individual personality (outgoing or shy, loud or quiet, reckless or cautious) and connects with Sy in her own way.
In this short, delightful book, Sy takes us inside the flock and reveals all the things that make chickens such remarkable only hours after leaving the egg, they are able to walk, run, and peck; relationships are important to them and the average chicken can recognize more than one hundred other chickens; they remember the past and anticipate the future; and they communicate specific information through at least twenty-four distinct calls. Visitors to her home are astonished by all this, but for Sy what’s more astonishing is how little most people know about chickens, especially considering there are about twenty percent more chickens on earth than people.
With a winning combination of personal narrative and science, What the Chicken Knows is exactly the kind of book that has made Sy Montgomery such a beloved and popular author.
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