Welcome back to Get Rec’d!
Half of today’s books were recommend to me by colleagues and friends, and I wanted to pass them along to you. I think that’s what I love so much about having a personal bookish community, especially one where everyone has their niches.
What book recommendations have you received recently? Do you also have your own wonderful bookish circles in your personal life?
The Bride Wore Constant White
This one actually popped up on Amazon for me in the section where it recommends similar books to whatever you’re browsing and I’m personally intrigued. It’s a steampunk mystery with cozy elements set in an alternate history of America.
Book one of the Mysterious Devices series of clockwork cozies set in the Magnificent Devices world!
A bride in search of safety. Young ladies in search of their father. A man in search of self-respect. But in the Wild West, you always find more than you’re looking for…
Margrethe Amelia Linden (Daisy to her friends) is a young woman of gentle upbringing, some talent as a watercolorist, and firm opinions that often get her into trouble. Determined to find her missing father, in the summer of 1895 she sets out for the last place he was seen: the Wild West. It’s a rude shock when her younger sister stows away on the airship—such behavior no doubt the result of her unsuitable friendship with Maggie Polgarth and the Carrick House set.
On the journey, friendship blooms between Daisy and Miss Emma Makepeace, who is traveling to the Texican Territories as a mail-order bride. When Emma begs the girls to delay their search by a day or two in order to stand with her at the altar, Daisy is delighted to accept.
But the wedding day dawns on a dreadful discovery. Within hours the Texican Rangers have their man—but even in her grief, Daisy is convinced he cannot have killed her friend. She must right this terrible mistake before he hangs … and before the real culprit realizes that two very observant young ladies are not going to allow him to get away with murder…
Eight Very Bad Nights
This is a Hanukkah mystery/crime anthology with eleven stories. As with most anthologies, there are some hits and misses but I love the concept.
The perfect holiday gift for the crime fiction lover in your life!
Curated by New York Times bestselling author Tod Goldberg, this collection of eleven delightful and twisted Hanukkah capers will entertain you through all eight nights of the Festival of Lights.
In Stefanie Leder’s “Not a Dinner Party Person,” an unstable pharmaceutical rep tries not to kill anyone at her family dinner on the last night of Hanukkah; in Ivy Pochoda’s “Johnny Christmas,” a taciturn Gulf War vet commissions a tattoo from a man he knew from his prison days, a man not named Christmas but Goldfarb; in David L. Ulin’s “Shamash,” it’s the last night of Hanukkah, and a live-at-home adult son considers doing something drastic to get out of his elderly father’s Upper West Side apartment; in James D.F. Hannah’s “Twenty Centuries,” a pair of detectives solve a curiously unprompted murder during the holiday season.
This captivating collection contains old-school slapstick comedy, hardboiled noir, gritty procedurals, and poignant reminders of the meaning of Hanukkah, offering something for almost every reader willing to take the journey through these twisted tales.
With stories by: Ivy Pochoda, David L. Ulin, James D.F. Hannah, Lee Goldberg, Nikki Dolson, J.R. Angelella, Liska Jacobs, Gabino Iglesias, Stefanie Leder, and Jim Ruland, plus a foreword and story by Tod Goldberg.
Hope for Cynics
One of my colleagues who was very plugged into the election cycle recommend this one soon after the results were confirmed. She said it’s understandable if people aren’t ready right now for hope and challenging this cynicism, but it’s worth a read if/when you are.
Cynicism is making us sick; Stanford Psychologist Dr. Jamil Zaki has the cure—a “ray of light for dark days” (Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author).
For thousands of years, people have argued about whether humanity is selfish or generous, cruel or kind. But recently, our answers have changed. In 1972, half of Americans agreed that most people can be trusted; by 2018, only a third did. Different generations, genders, religions, and political parties can’t seem to agree on anything, except that they all think human virtue is evaporating.
Cynicism is a perfectly understandable response to a world full of injustice and inequality. But in many cases, it is misplaced. Dozens of studies find that people fail to realize how kind, generous, and open-minded others really are. Cynical thinking worsens social problems, because our beliefs don’t just interpret the world—they change it. When we expect the worst in people, we often bring it out of them. Cynicism is a disease, with a history, symptoms—and a cure. Through science and storytelling, Jamil Zaki imparts the secret for beating back hopeful skepticism. This approach doesn’t mean putting our faith in every politician or influencer. It means thinking critically about people and our problems, while simultaneously acknowledging and encouraging our strengths. Far from being naïve, hopeful skepticism is a more precise way of understanding others, and paying closer attention re-balances how you think about human nature. As more of us do this, we can take steps towards building the world we truly want.
The Luneburg Variation
My good friend Cristy has a monthly-ish book chat where she sends out an email to anyone interested about what she’s been reading. She loves in translation stuff and this was in her latest Book Chat email:
Jewish chess players pursuing complicated chess-based revenge upon Nazi chess players in the 1970s. I don’t know what to tell you, this book rules! I’ve never read anything like it! It’s exciting, insightful, perfectly paced, and wildly constructed.
“Not since White Knights of Reykjavik, George Steiner’s riveting account of the 1972 world championship match between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer, has a writer demonstrated such stunning insight into the nurturing madness that compels chess play at the master level.” – Publishers Weekly
At the opening of this amazing fiction from Paolo Maurensig, The Luneburg Variation, a cadaver is discovered, the body of a wealthy businessman from Vienna, apparently a suicide without plausible motivation. Next to the body is a chessboard made of rags with buttons for pieces whose positions on the board may hold the only clue. As the plot of this passionately colored, coolly controlled thriller unfolds, we meet two chess players—one a clever, persecuted Jew, the other a ruthless, persecuting German—who have faced each other many times before and played for stakes that are nothing less than life itself.
