Kosher Soul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew

Written by: Michael W. Twitty

First line: When I first started talking about this developing this book, a fellow African American food writer asked what it was about, saying, "So you're not writing about Black [food], you're writing about Jewish [food]." 

Why you should read this book: Twitty goes on to explain that he is writing about Black Jewish food, because there are Black Jewish people and this is the second in a three-book trilogy (the first being The Cooking Gene) about the "intersections between food and identity." It takes the form of a series of essays and "mayseh" (stories) about the numerous threads that create Blackness and Judaism, and the food traditions that arise where these identities come together. Making the point that, while often overlooked as anomalies, Black Jews exist and the Black Jewish tradition in America is strong and stretches back centuries and encompasses a vast smorgasbord of flavor and ingredients; this book, of course, includes numerous delectable looking recipes.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You might need to have a previous interest in cooking or foodways or culinary history or at least intersectional identities to get into this one. 

Something in the Woods Loves You

Written by: Jarod K. Anderson

First line: In Ohio, winter is landscape poetry.

Why you should read this book: Magical and heart wrenching, these essays braid the poet's childhood memories of Ohio's plants and animals with his intentional present day reconnection with nature, and its evolution as a tool in his arsenal against depression. This book touched me on a deep level, probably because it resonated with so many of my personal experiences, both beautiful and terrible, but the prose is  also a luscious dive into the wilderness, an immersive experience of midwestern flora and fauna through the lenses of nostalgia, depression, and recovery. This book is for anyone who has ever loved the woods. 

Why you should read this book: You hate the woods. 

The Book of Delights

Written by: Ross Gay

First line: One day last July, feeling delighted and compelled to both wonder about and share that delight, I decided that it might feel nice, even useful, to write a daily essay about something delightful.

Why you should read this book: In the tradition of daily affirmations and daily gratitudes, an award-winning poet seeks to catalog those fleeting moments of delight, which bring sometimes unspeakable joy to a moment, but, unrecorded, often vanish with the passage of time. But these delights (high fives from strangers, Botan rice candy, the reactions you observe in others when you board an airplane carrying a tomato seedling) are immortalized in a book that transcends its stated motive and also examines the intersection of these delights with experiences of racism, death, or similarly undelightful concepts. These mini-essays, 102 of them, allow the reader to dip into the book for just the right sized helping of delight to combat difficult times.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You don't believe in happiness.

Buy The Book of Delights now

Do Anything: Thoughts on Comics and Things

Written by: Warren Ellis

First line: I have the head of Jack Kirby in my office.

Why you should read this book: Two parts history, one part science fiction, one part name dropping, and one part stream of consciousness, this 48-page volume contains as many disembodied heads as an Alan Moore novel, and makes you work just as hard. Ellis's musings on the history of comics and culture somehow come together to form a perfect gestalt, despite the fact that the individual pieces, scrutinized on their own, bear some resemblance to random object pulled from that one junk drawer in your kitchen. With more parenthetical asides than paragraphs, this book is a window into the mind of a popular and future-thinking writer of exceptional comics.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You know nothing about the history of comics: this is definitely not an introductory volume, and even though I consider myself fairly knowledgeable on the subject compared to the general populace, I only recognized about half the references.