Welcome back to Get Rec’d! We’re quickly closing in on fifty of these things. I can hardly believe it!
There are a couple non-fiction titles below: one for foodies and one for history buffs. I’ve also included a picture book and a historical romance recommendation.
Have you received any recommendations lately? Any books you want to share with us? Sound out in the comments!
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My Pet Feet
I’ve recommended Josh Funk’s picture books before. They’re just so silly and fun. This one is written without the letter “r” and it results in some pretty funny text (i.e. ferret becomes “feet”).
When the letter R suddenly vanishes, a whole town goes upside-down in this side-splitting picture book of alphabet chaos that’s Can I Be Your Dog? meets P Is for Pterodactyl .
A little girl wakes up one day to find that R , a vital piece of the alphabet, has vanished! Suddenly, she has pet feet instead of a ferret . Flocks of cows replace crows flying in the sky. Giant shoes (not shores!) live on the sandy beaches of her town.
What could have happened to the eighteenth letter of the alphabet? Did it get lost—or stolen? One way or another, the town needs to be saved!
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Raw Dog
This one is more a rec for me. If you’ve listened to any podcast with me on it, you’ve probably learned that I love hot dogs.
A NEW YORK TIMES AND INDIE BESTSELLER!
Part travelogue, part culinary history, all capitalist critique—comedian Jamie Loftus’s debut, Raw Dog , will take you on a cross-country road trip in the summer of 2021, and reveal what the creation, culture, and class influence of hot dogs says about America now.
Featured NPR Weekend Edition • Bon Appétit • Oprah Daily • Glamour • NY Mag • Splendid Table • The Wall Street Journal • Eater • Betches • USA Today • Boston Globe • Eater • Slate • The Next Big Idea Club • Buzzfeed and more
“Wise and funny” —ANDY RICHTER • “Revealing, funny, sad, horny, and insatiably curious” —SARAH MARSHALL • “A wild ride” —ROBERT EVANS • “Deeply incisive and hilariously honest” —JACK O’BRIEN • “Gonzo yet vulnerable” —GABE DUNN • “Hot dog Moby-Dick ” —BRANSON REESE • “One of the freshest and most insightful new comedic voices of this decade.” —LINDSAY ELLIS
Hot dogs. Poor people created them. Rich people found a way to charge fifteen dollars for them. They’re high culture, they’re low culture, they’re sports food, they’re kids’ food, they’re hangover food, and they’re deeply American, despite having no basis whatsoever in America’s Indigenous traditions. You can love them, you can hate them, but you can’t avoid the great American hot dog.
Raw The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs is part investigation into the cultural and culinary significance of hot dogs and part travelog documenting a cross-country road trip researching them as they’re served today. From avocado and spice in the West to ass-shattering chili in the East to an entire salad on a slice of meat in Chicago, Loftus, her pets, and her ex eat their way across the country during the strange summer of 2021. It’s a brief window into the year between waves of a plague that the American government has the resources to temper, but not the interest.
So grab a dog, lay out your picnic blanket, and dig into the delicious and inevitable product of centuries of violence, poverty, and ambition, now rolling around at your local 7-Eleven.
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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!Raw Dog by Jamie Loftus
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The Weaver Takes a Wife
A historical romance for lovers of Mary Balogh and Mimi Matthews!
Haughty Lady Helen Radney is one of London’s most beautiful women and the daughter of a duke, but her sharp tongue has frightened away most of her suitors. When her father gambles away his fortune, the duke’s only chance for recouping his losses lies in marrying off Lady Helen to any man wealthy enough to take a bride with nothing to recommend her but a lovely face and an eight-hundred-year-old pedigree. Enter Mr. Ethan Brundy, once an illegitimate workhouse orphan, now owner of a Lancashire textile mill and one of England’s richest men. When he glimpses Lady Helen at Covent Garden Theatre, he is instantly smitten and vows to marry her. But this commonest of commoners will have his work cut out for him if he hopes to win the heart of his aristocratic bride.
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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!The Weaver Takes a Wife by Sheri Cobb South
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Young Queens
I know we have a ton of history nerds in the Bitchery and I’m happy to help add some new books to your TBR pile.
The boldly original, dramatic intertwined story of Catherine de’ Medici, Elisabeth de Valois, and Mary, Queen of Scots—three queens exercising power in a world dominated by men.
Orphaned from infancy, Catherine de’ Medici endured a tumultuous childhood. Married to the French king, she was widowed by forty, only to become the power behind the French throne during a period of intense civil strife. In 1546, Catherine gave birth to a daughter, Elisabeth de Valois, who would become Queen of Spain. Two years later, Catherine welcomed to her nursery the beguiling young Mary Queen of Scots, who would later become her daughter-in-law.
Together, Catherine, Elisabeth, and Mary lived through the sea changes that transformed sixteenth-century Europe, a time of expanding empires, religious discord, and populist revolt, as concepts of nationhood began to emerge and ideas of sovereignty inched closer to absolutism. They would learn that to rule as a queen was to wage a constant war against the deeply entrenched misogyny of their time.
Following the intertwined stories of the three women from girlhood through young adulthood, Leah Redmond Chang’s Young Queens paints a picture of a world in which a woman could wield power at the highest level yet remain at the mercy of the state, her body serving as the currency of empire and dynasty, sacrificed to the will of husband, family, kingdom.
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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!Young Queens by Leah Redmond Chang
The combined edition of the four book series that includes “The Weaver Tajes a Wife” is currently on sale for $2.99 on kindle, nook, and kobo (at least the U.S. sites) and “The Weaver Takes a Wife” is currently free at all three sites.
The Weaver Takes a Wife and the rest of the series is great. If you enjoy slightly off beat historical fiction, you will love these books.
The same author also wrote a historical mystery series about a man called John Pickett which I apparently read. I remember that it was a good read, so I’ll try out the romance. Lower and higher class mixing was theme there too. I think I read the first one or two books of the mystery series before stopping as they got a little samey.
So I’m not a fan of illustrated covers, but I guess I just have to deal since apparently we’re stuck with them on almost everything.
With that being said though, I literally thought that The Weaver Takes a Wife was a children’s picture book when I saw it.
My second thought was maybe it’s a fun Regency graphic novel. But nope apparently it’s just a regular historical romance.
So now I know that trusting covers just isn’t a thing that works anymore, and I’m bummed about it more than I was before.
spinsterrevival I totally agree! something I’ve also noticed (as a librarian and someone who reads a lot of Goodreads reviews of books I enjoy) is that people often develop the wrong expectations of a book from a cover, which can lead to bad reviews if the book is often picked up by someone who just isn’t the target audience. A lot of people who only like chaste, light-hearted, closed-door romances will be unhappy if a cartoony cover (which might lead you to expect exactly that) reveals a book that’s darker or sexier than they expect, and fans of the darker sexier side might not be picking up these books at all because of the covers. As a supporter of cute closed-door romances and all the others kinds, I just want books to find their readers! Would love to see a return to the beautifully-illustrated, bosom-heaving clinches of yore.
A hero called Mr. Brundy?! I love it. What a spectacularly English name.
I bought the quartet after noticing a hero called Aubrey with a heroine called Polly. I absolutely love historical authors who bother to name their characters appropriately.
@spinsterrevival and Bel: I agree. No trend lasts forever, so I’m wondering what the next “thing” in romance book covers is going to be.
I was wandering through the romance section in Barnes & Noble yesterday and I couldn’t tell the difference between any of the books or authors. All of the covers were bright solid colors with the cartoony illustrations and the same fonts. NOTHING stood out. It was incredibly disorienting. I hadn’t realized how much I’d internalized the traditional visual differences between bodice rippers, women’s fiction, cosy mysteries etc.
This collection is entirely designed for my podcast feed. I read Raw Dog last month and it is best if you can let Jamie Loftus’ voice permeate it. Young Queens author Leah Redmond Chang was a guest on Vulgar History recently, profiling Elisabeth of Valois, as part of the season on Mary Queen of Scots (high recommend. I have listened to the whole season and it is stellar and full of men with ridiculous nicknames).
Most of these are on my TBR!
As much as I hate them, I always appreciate it when Amazon tells me I bought a copy of something already – in this case, The Weaver Takes a Wife, a few years back. Someone must have done a good job of persuading me before you did, @Amanda, but thanks!
@Meg
Note that the combined edition of the complete series is still on sale for $2.99.
@Ely,
It doesn’t help that B&N has separated out the mass market romance from the trade paperbacks, which is a peeve of mine. Guess we wouldn’t want the socially more acceptable “romcoms” being ‘contaminated’ by the mass markets with their flowy dresses, shirtless dudes, and clinchy photo covers.