I am already rec’d in preparation for today! By that, I mean I’m recovering from getting both my booster and flu shots yesterday. But the book recommendations shall still continue!
It’s holiday season and at work, I’m getting a lot of requests like “My dad likes X, what would you suggest?” or “My teen reads Y, but I have no idea what’s new!” All of these books fall into comparison titles for genres or other authors.
But enough about me, have you recommended a book to someone lately? Gotten a good rec yourself? Let me know!
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Chilling Effect
This one is a recommendation I hold in my back pocket for Douglas Adams lovers. It’s just a wonderfully absurdist science fiction adventure.
A hilarious, offbeat debut space opera that skewers everything from pop culture to video games and features an irresistible foul-mouthed captain and her motley crew, strange life forms, exciting twists, and a galaxy full of fun and adventure.
Captain Eva Innocente and the crew of La Sirena Negra cruise the galaxy delivering small cargo for even smaller profits. When her sister Mari is kidnapped by The Fridge, a shadowy syndicate that holds people hostage in cryostasis, Eva must undergo a series of unpleasant, dangerous missions to pay the ransom.
But Eva may lose her mind before she can raise the money. The ship’s hold is full of psychic cats, an amorous fish-faced emperor wants her dead after she rejects his advances, and her sweet engineer is giving her a pesky case of feelings. The worse things get, the more she lies, raising suspicions and testing her loyalty to her found family.
To free her sister, Eva will risk everything: her crew, her ship, and the life she’s built on the ashes of her past misdeeds. But when the dominoes start to fall and she finds the real threat is greater than she imagined, she must decide whether to play it cool or burn it all down.
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Hurts So Good
Handselling is really about suggesting comparative titles. I’ve gotten a lot of readers who have finished Mary Roach’s latest book Fuzz and caught up on her backlist. What else can I give them that’s similar? If you like deep dives into niche topics, this is it, though be warned that descriptions can be graphic and there are examples of self harm and disordered eating.
An exploration of why people all over the world love to engage in pain on purpose–from dominatrices, religious ascetics, and ultramarathoners to ballerinas, icy ocean bathers, and sideshow performers
Masochism is sexy, human, reviled, worshipped, and can be delightfully bizarre. Deliberate and consensual pain has been with us for millennia, encompassing everyone from Black Plague flagellants to ballerinas dancing on broken bones to competitive eaters choking down hot peppers while they cry. Masochism is a part of us. It lives inside workaholics, tattoo enthusiasts, and all manner of garden variety pain-seekers.
At its core, masochism is about feeling bad, then better—a phenomenon that is long overdue for a heartfelt and hilarious investigation. And Leigh Cowart would know: they are not just a researcher and science writer—they’re an inveterate, high-sensation seeking masochist. And they have a few questions: Why do people engage in masochism? What are the benefits and the costs? And what does masochism have to say about the human experience?
By participating in many of these activities themselves, and through conversations with psychologists, fellow scientists, and people who seek pain for pleasure, Cowart unveils how our minds and bodies find meaning and relief in pain—a quirk in our programming that drives discipline and innovation even as it threatens to swallow us whole.
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Migrations
Lit fic isn’t my favorite genre, but throw in a setting of a near-future climate crisis and I’m interested. Definitely a book I enjoy handselling to people who want character-driven plots and love lyrical prose.
For readers of Station Eleven and Flight Behavior, a debut novel set on the brink of catastrophe, as a young woman chases the world’s last birds – and her own final chance for redemption.
A dark past. An impossible journey. The will to survive.
Franny Stone has always been a wanderer. By following the ocean’s tides and the birds that soar above, she can forget the losses that have haunted her life. But when the wild she so loves begins to disappear, Franny can no longer wander without a destination. She arrives in remote Greenland with one purpose: to find the world’s last flock of Arctic terns and follow them on their final migration. She convinces Ennis Malone, captain of the Saghani, to take her onboard, winning over his salty, eccentric crew with promises that the birds she is tracking will lead them to fish.
As the Saghani fights its way south, Franny’s new shipmates begin to realize that the beguiling scientist in their midst is not who she seems. Battered by night terrors, accumulating a pile of letters to her husband, and dead set on following the terns at any cost, Franny is full of dark secrets. When the story of her past begins to unspool, Ennis and his crew must ask themselves what Franny is really running toward—and running from.
Propelled by a narrator as fierce and fragile as the terns she is following, Migrations is a shatteringly beautiful ode to the wild places and creatures now threatened. But at its heart, it is about the lengths we will go, to the very edges of the world, for the people we love.
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We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy
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Serpent & Dove
My go-to recommendation that I use a lot for teens or adults who want fantasy romance and have exhausted all of my usual recommendations. Trust me, in-store fantasy romance recs are tough and this is just sexy enough in my opinion to live in that new adult middle ground.
For her sixteenth birthday, Louise le Blanc’s mother gave her three things: a sacrificial altar, a ritual knife, and a wicked scar.
Lou’s death would have ended the ancient war between the Church and witches, but Lou refuses to become a martyr. Forsaking her coven, she escapes to the gloomy city of Cesarine and hides her magic as a thief in the criminal underworld. But life in Cesarine has its own dangers. Huntsmen roam the city revered as holy men. Witches burn without trial. And the Archbishop, the Church’s austere patriarch, revels in violence.
As a huntsman, Reid Diggory lives by one verse: thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
He’s devoted his entire life to eradicating the occult and making his surrogate father, the Archbishop, proud. Finally given the chance to capture a witch of his own, Reid is devastated when a foul-mouthed thief thwarts him—and doubly devastated when she too disappears. Hell-bent on bringing her to justice, Reid vows she won’t escape again. But when Lou tricks him into public scandal trying to avoid capture, the two are forced into an impossible situation—marriage.
Marriage to a huntsman could provide real protection from the witches—if Lou can convince Reid she isn’t one herself. The secret proves difficult to keep as Lou begins practicing magic in secret within the heart of the Church, determined to prepare for her mother’s inevitable return. As time passes, however, Lou discovers yet another danger lurking: her own growing feelings for her husband. But Reid is still dangerous. He’s just as likely to tie her to the stake as defend her if he learns her true identity. With enemies closing in—and more than her own life at stake—Lou must decide who she can trust before it’s too late…and she’s not the only one with a secret.
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This book is available from:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin
CHILLING EFFECT was on my radar for so long, but the sample felt like the author was trying too hard to be absurd/funny. Any thoughts, Bitchery?
I picked it up, @Darlynne, but did not get far before putting it aside. (Admittedly, I’ve put a lot of books aside lately!)
Chilling Effect was too frenetic for me. Lots of great ideas, but none of them were properly fleshed out. I could tell the writer has a lot of talent, but I felt like she needed an editor who would keep her from throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the plot. Also, sadly, although the psychic cats were highlighted in the description, after the first chapter, they disappeared just like all the other plot points, rarely to be seen again.
If you need uncomplicated laughs, I recently discovered a podcast called “Let’s Stop There.” The premise is that 3 guys (obviously real-life friends, the chemistry is delightful) pick a free book on Kindle and read the first page, 25%, 50%, 75%, and the last page to puzzle out whether they actually like the book, what the heck is going on, and who would be cast in the movie version. I’d say at least half their episodes I’ve listened to so far are flavors of romance books, and it’s been really fun listening to men who don’t know anything about the genre laugh about bad writing, maybe squirming at sex scenes, but never making fun of the genre itself.
Re: Chilling Effect
It missed the mark for me too. It was all over the place and basically a series of little missions that did not connect well. It also had some tonal missmatch in some big plot points that I did not like (without spoiling, some stuff happened that did not fit the otherwise light tone)
And like JenM said, not enough space cats! You can’t promise psychic cats and barely use them!!