Hey all! It’s a very sleepy edition of Get Rec’d, as in I’m very sleepy while writing this list.
For those who don’t know, I talk about books a lot in my daily life outside of SBTB. I work at a bookstore and give professional book recs through Book Riot’s TBR subscription. I personally love playing book matchmaker, and I love it when people give me recs as well!
Get any good recommendations lately? Tell me all about them!
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I Dream of Dinner (So You Don’t Have To)
Sarah recommended this one to me on a recent podcast episode! I pulled it off the shelf at the bookstore to peruse and a coworker also said it’s a great cookbook.
150 essential recipes for dinner on the fly, from New York Times contributor Ali Slagle
With minimal ingredients and maximum joy in mind, Ali Slagle’s no-nonsense, completely delicious recipes are ideal for dinner tonight–and every single night. Like she does with her instantly beloved recipes in the New York Times, Ali combines readily available, inexpensive ingredients in clever, uncomplicated ways for meals that spark everyday magic. Maybe it’s Fish & Chips Tacos tonight, a bowl of Olive Oil-Braised Chickpeas tomorrow, and Farro Carbonara forever and ever. All come together with fewer than eight ingredients and forty-five minutes, using one or two pots and pans. Half the recipes are plant-based, too.
Organized by main ingredients like eggs, noodles, beans, and chicken, chapters include quick tricks for riffable cooking methods and flavor combinations so that dinner bends to your life, not the other way around (no meal-planning required!). Whether in need of comfort and calm, fire and fun–directions to cling to, or the inspiration to wing it–Dinnertime is the only phone-a-friend you need. That’s because Ali, a home cook turned recipe developer, guides with a reassuring calm, puckish curiosity, and desire for everyone, everywhere, to make great food–and fast. (Phew!)
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Inventing the It Girl
This one was another recommendation from someone else. SBTB reader Susan sent this to my inbox and felt it would be of interest in the Bitchery, and I definitely agree.
The modern romance novel is elevated to a subject of serious study in this addictive biography of pioneering celebrity author Elinor Glyn.
Unlike typical romances, which end with wedding bells, Elinor Glyn’s story really began after her marriage up the social ladder and into the English gentry class in 1892. Born in the Channel Islands, Elinor Sutherland, like most Victorian women, aspired only to a good match. But when her husband, Clayton Glyn, gambled their fortune away, she turned to her pen and boldly challenged the era’s sexually straightjacketed literary code with her notorious succes de scandale, Three Weeks. An intensely erotic tale about an unhappily married woman’s sexual education of her young lover, the novel got Glyn banished from high society but went on to sell millions, revealing a deep yearning for a fuller account of sexual passion than permitted by the British aristocracy or the Anglo-American literary establishment.
In elegant prose, Hilary A. Hallett traces Glyn’s meteoric rise from a depressed society darling to a world-renowned celebrity author who consorted with world leaders from St. Petersburg to Cairo to New York. After reporting from the trenches during World War I, the author was lured by American movie producers from Paris to Los Angeles for her remarkable third act. Weaving together years of deep archival research, Hallett movingly conveys how Glyn, more than any other individual during the Roaring Twenties, crafted early Hollywood’s glamorous romantic aesthetic. She taught the screen’s greatest leading men to make love in ways that set audiences aflame, and coined the term It Girl, which turned actress Clara Bow into the symbol of the first sexual revolution.
With Inventing the It Girl, Hallett has done nothing less than elevate the origins of the modern romance genre to a subject of serious study. In doing so, she has also reclaimed the enormous influence of one of Anglo-America’s most significant cultural tastemakers while revealing Glyn’s life to have been as sensational as any of the characters she created on the page or screen. The result is a groundbreaking portrait of a courageous icon of independence who encouraged future generations to chase their desires wherever they might lead.
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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!Inventing the It Girl by Hilary Hallett
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Nobody Hugs a Cactus
I love a grumpy character in my reading, no matter the genre. So a grumpy cactus who secretly wants all the love and affection was just too cute.
Celebrated artist and lead character designer of Brave, Ratatouille, and Despicable Me, Carter Goodrich, shows that sometimes, even the prickliest people—or the crankiest cacti—need a little love.
Hank is the prickliest cactus in the entire world. He sits in a pot in a window that faces the empty desert, which is just how he likes it. So, when all manner of creatures—from tumbleweed to lizard to owl—come to disturb his peace, Hank is annoyed.
He doesn’t like noise, he doesn’t like rowdiness, and definitely does not like hugs.
But the thing is, no one is offering one. Who would want to hug a plant so mean? Hank is beginning to discover that being alone can be, well, lonely.
So he comes up with a plan to get the one thing he thought he would never need: a hug from a friend.
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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!Nobody Hugs a Cactus by Carter Goodrich
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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Caitlin Doughty is one of my favorite non-fiction authors to recommend, especially for people who have enjoyed Mary Roach and don’t mind more macabre topics.
A young mortician goes behind the scenes, unafraid of the gruesome (and fascinating) details of her curious profession.
Most people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty—a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre—took a job at a crematory, turning morbid curiosity into her life’s work. With an original voice that combines fearless curiosity and mordant wit, Caitlin tells an unusual coming-of-age story full of bizarre encounters, gallows humor, and vivid characters (both living and very dead). Describing how she swept ashes from the machines (and sometimes onto her clothes), and cared for bodies of all shapes and sizes, Caitlin becomes an intrepid explorer in the world of the deceased. Her eye-opening memoir shows how our fear of dying warps our culture and society, and she calls for better ways of dealing with death (and our dead). In the spirit of her popular Web series, “Ask a Mortician,” Caitlin’s engaging narrative style makes this otherwise scary topic both approachable and profound.
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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!Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty
In case anyone is interested: Three Weeks is free on Amazon via Kindle. I’ve had it for a few months in my TBR list.
Chanel Miller, brave AF. I hope writing this book offers her healing and further illuminates the dreadful way sexual assault victims are treated and thus silenced. Brock Turner deserves a miserable life and if he attempts to assault another woman she fights him to his death.
I realize that this is very late post, but I read NOBODY HUGS A CACTUS and realized that I had all sorts of weird and not positive reactions to the book despite its very “cute” premise. Before I go on a mini-rant about NHAC, I want to recommend an absolutely wonderful alternative: WILL LADYBUG HUG? by Hilary Leung.
I need to start with a self disclosure: I’m touch averse — and especially when it comes to strangers — so hugs are problematic at the best of times and probably a lot of the reason I immediately read NOBODY HUGS A CACTUS (NHAC).
In NHAC, the basic plot is that Cactus, who is both prickly and grumpy, comes to yearn for a hug, although it is unimaginable how that might happen given both its prickliness and grumpiness. In the end, a tumble weed flies into Cactus and they are stuck in a hug forever. As I read the book, all I could think was “how is this a good thing?” Tumbleweed, who by nature travels with the wind, is now stuck in an unanticipated and unintended relationship with Cactus. Cactus, who was just thinking about how a hug might be nice, is also stuck with Tumbleweed in its first — and apparently last — hug. This “adorable” book about Cactus getting its hug creeped me out like you wouldn’t believe. How many book relationships are based on similar serendipitous interactions that end with forced or arranged marriages, marriages of convenience, shotgun marriages, or even just relationships that one can’t leave? Was the hug really worth this result? NOOOOOOOO!!! I ended up just feeling sick for Cactus. I had to reread WILL LADYBUG HUG? to rebalance. At least both books were consistent in showing that exterior appearances are often at odds with one’s interior thoughts about hugs. (In WLH, Sheep appears the most huggable but is the least desirous of a hug and in NHAC, Cactus appears unhuggable but wanted to experience a hug.)
Just had to get this off my grumpy and prickly chest. Okay. Rant managed.
Sounds like some sequels are needed.
First up, Stop Hugging Cactus! – where Tumbleweed and Cactus manage to disengage from their accidental (unwanted? – did anybody ask Tumbleweed how they felt?) forever hug.
And then, Sometimes Cactus Wants a Hug, Sometimes Cactus Doesn’t – where Cactus and those around them learn communication, boundaries and how to safely hug Cactus when both parties want it.