Shanghai Immortal

Written: A. Y. Chao

First line: The steaming Shanghai night drapes heavy over my bare shoulders. 

Why you should read this book: Fast paced, luscious, fresh, and edgy, this is the story of Lady Jing, bad girl half-vampire half-fox spirit, consigned to live under the thumb of the King of Hell (Chinese version) since her grandmother's court rejected her outright as an abomination and her mother subsequently abandoned her. Devoted to rejecting tradition and making trouble, her life is upended the day she's commanded to escort a living mortal through Hell (the King of Hell needs advice on creating a viable banking system) and ends up sent to the mortal realm for her own protection. Jazz age Shanghai is a new world, where Lady Jing discovers she has friends, mortal and otherwise, and devotes herself to unraveling the conspiracy that catapulted her from the world where she endured for ninety years, just in time to finally grow up. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You aren't stirred by the idea of a half-vampire half-demon in a world that blends Chinese mythology with the advances of the early twentieth century. 

Station Eternity

Written by: Mur Lafferty

First line: Nobody ever believed murders "just happened" around Mallory Viridian.

Why you should read this book: This fun near-future science fiction murder mystery takes place primarily on the sentient space station where Mallory has fled to escape the constellation of murders that seem to happen all around her on Earth, where nobody believes they're not her fault even though she always finds the real killer. Surely the curse cannot follow her across the cosmos if she's only one of three humans on board, but her peace of mind is shattered when she learns that more earthlings are on their way. Suddenly, she's surrounded by death and mayhem again, and needs to use all her resources to unravel a series of mysteries and save the lives of every life on the station, including the station itself.

Why you shouldn't read this book: There are a couple main characters and many supporting characters, and the narrative perspective shifts frequently, often giving entire chapters to the point of view of a minor character for an entire chapter, which, to me, can be jarring. 

Yesteryear

Written by: Caro Claire Burke

First line: This is the last day of the life I imagined for myself. 

Why you should read this book: Natalie has always known that everyone around her is stupid, and that her beliefs about marriage and family and femininity are the only intelligent ways to view those concepts, so naturally, when her marriage falters after the birth of her first child, she focuses increasingly on creating a media empire based on her identity as a "trad wife," showcasing a perfect farm life based on conservative ideals. But Natalie's perfect world is shattered when she wakes up mysteriously transported to some strange nineteenth century farm, held hostage and forced to serve as a wife and mother to a husband and children who are sort of like her real husband and children on land that is a lot like her actual home, but not quite. Told in a series of flashbacks, Natalie's journey exposes the dark side of the lifestyle and the hypocrisy of the young women influencers promoting it. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Natalie is an utterly irredeemable character, smug and self-righteous with zero self-awareness, an unreliable narrator who absolutely deserves every awful thing that happens to her, which is interesting to read, but an unusual way to write a protagonist. 

The Bog Wife

Written by: Kay Chronister

First line: On winter nights, the burned heavy bundles of dried peat in the hearth and inhaled the scent of sacred ground burning while their father paced the length of the room, reciting the history of the Haddesley compact.

Why you should read this book: All their lives, the young adult Haddlesley children have been taught to honor the ancient compact between their family and their bog, which every generation offers up one magical wife to the eldest son, to continue the family line. But their vague, eldritch bog mother has mysteriously vanished, and one of the siblings has fled the land, and there are increasing doubts about the eldest son's suitability to serve as patriarch, and meanwhile, in true southern gothic fashion, the weight of their own history is literally crushing the family home. Naturalistic and supernatural, this delightful novel chronicles the breakdown of old family narratives about power and responsibility.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You believe everything your parents told you despite all evidence to the contrary. 

Dybbuk Americana

Written by: Joshua Gottlieb-Miller

First line: I don't like to guess what kind of Jew/I could have been/in 1492, 1942; pick a year/and I would have thought, "Bad Jew,"/looking in a mirror, under my breath. 

Why you should read this book: This collection of poetry examines the questions of identity, belief, and behavior that are, perhaps, unique to American Judaism. Frankly discussing the concepts of whiteness, assimilation, mixed marriage, antisemitism, family history, world history, philosophy, child rearing, and his own relationship with his community, his relatives, and himself, the author offers an honest picture of a man haunted by the quality of Jewishness that coalesces around spirituality and ethnicity in America. This large format book allows for a layout that seems to communicate the multitude of voices and ideas informing the author's journey and evolution as he places his life in the larger context of history, culture, and family. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Some of the experimental-feeling layout makes the poetry ambiguous or difficult to read. 

Evangelina Everyday

Written by: Dawn Burns

First line: "I feel adrift," Evangelina said, sitting at the kitchen table reading but not really reading the Elkhart Truth as Russel went about his business preparing a fire for the night because on cold December nights, that is just what they had come to do over their twenty-one years of marriage. 

Why you should read this book: From the outside, Evangelina looks like an ordinary woman in an ordinary marriage, but on the inside, she's keenly aware that something about her is different, and something about her life isn't quite right, not when held up against the lives of the people around her. Told as a novel in short stories, this book gives a gripping picture of this meaningful year in her life, the year when Evangelina has to stop dismissing the quiet disconnect and occasional revulsion in her relationship with her husband and the sense of loss and longing she's felt since her best friend moved away, feelings that other women in her circles don't seem to grapple with. Evangelina is no everyday woman, and when she finds the space within herself to ask who she used to be, who she is, and who she wants to be in the future, her entire world will change. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're not ready to stop dismissing your quiet disconnect and occasional revulsion. 

The Round House

Written by: Louise Erdrich

First line: Small trees had attacked my parents' house at the foundation.

Why you should read this book: Joe Coutts's childhood comes to an end the summer his mother is brutally assaulted by an unidentified assailant on land that may or may not fall under the jurisdiction of tribal law. Distressed by his mother's trauma and retreat from the world and frustrated by the callous inefficiency of the justice system, Joe takes on his own investigation of the crime, aided explicitly by his three best friends and implicitly by his Ojibwe family and community and their history, shared and secret, old and new, and often hindered by his own adolescent sensibilities. Powerful, revelatory, upsetting, and important, this book shines a light on inequality, hypocrisy, the betrayals of the American government toward indigenous people, the power of unbroken tradition, and questions of morality in an immoral world. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: The plot turns on the violent rape and attempted murder of an indigenous woman. 

Proud Knight, Fair Lady: The Twelve Lais of Marie de France

Written by: Naomi Lewis and Angela Barrett

First line: You know that in bygone times the Bretons made lays of the happenings in their land.

Why you should read this book: Over 800 years ago, French and British nobility went crazy for these fantastic stories of brave knights and fair maidens and bold romance and strange magic. Written in the twelfth century, but ostensibly based on older oral musical tradition, these "lays" offer a fairy tale picture of a nearly forgotten aesthetic of courtly love, which faithful knights should offer to beautiful ladies, without expectation of reciprocation (but with interesting results when it was returned). Including ancient examples of tropes known to modern readers (an adventure set in King Arthur's court, a werewolf hell bent on vengeance, twins separated at birth) and offering salacious details of forbidden intimacy, tragic deaths, and joyful reunions, these twelve historical tales still resonate with readers ready to step outside standard fare. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You are a jealous old man who married a beautiful young woman and then locked her away from the world but are still convinced she's betraying you. 

A Green Glow on the Horizon: Tales from the National Association of Tourist Attraction Survivors

 Written by: Dawn Burns

First line: This is the story I'm learning to tell.

Why you should read this book: Beneath the structure of these surreal fictions, linked by the premise that  roadside tourist attractions leave bruises upon those who don't have the luxury of simply passing through the amusement, lies a series of hard truths about parents and children, and the disconnect and betrayal that comes from irrational adult beliefs that are too rigid to accommodate "sensitive" children. Metaphorically examining religious trauma through a uniquely American fairy tale lens, these stories showcase the reluctantly expressed pain of those (usually daughters) who feel diminished in the face of others' (usually their mother's) obsessions with strange, unyielding ideals that do not serve unbelieving children. From Roswell, New Mexico to Pedro's South of the Border in South Carolina, Iowa's Corn Palace, Arizona's The Thing to The Fort Wayne Children's Zoo, and even stranger settings, surprising locations lead to surprising maladies, anger, introspection, and sometimes, recovery, and redemption.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You know your teenager is wrong about their own identity, needs, and beliefs, and if you just keep ignoring what she wants, she'll get better. 

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated

Written by: Alison Arngrim

First line: The Los Angeles County Fair is probably not the first place you'd go if you were seeking to be forgiven of your sins, but I have a tendency to find strange things in strange places. 

Why you should read this book: If you were a kid in the '70s and '80s, you probably watched Little House on the Prairie and if you watched Little House on the Prairie, you probably hated that bitch, Nellie Oleson, and considered her the epitome of evil and deserving of any and all abuse heaped upon her by Laura and the show runners, but Nellie Oleson wasn't a real person; she was a conglomerate character brought to life by an earnest, clever, and dedicated child actress named Alison Arngrim, who spent her real life youth taking the lumps earned by a character she portrayed with such natural joy and intensity that people seemed to think Nellie was real and Alison didn't exist. This buoyant and fast-paced memoir tells all about what was going on behind the scenes of the popular, long-running show (Michael Landon never wore underwear, every adult in the cast and crew was drunk at all times, that wig was incredibly painful to wear, and the real bitch was the girl who played Mary) along with her own heart-wrenching stories of abuse and loss. Arngrin is candid and humorous, even when discussing the most painful memories, and illustrates how she managed to survive child stardom relatively unscathed and pivot into adult success in the entertainment industry without compromising her values and beliefs at all. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Trigger warning for candid discussions of child sexual abuse/incest including a somewhat disconcerting confrontation with the abuser in adulthood. 

Grimericks

Written by: Susan Pearson and Gris Grimly

First line: Dear Reader, please lend me your ear

Why you should read this book: A cute little gothy kids' book featuring twenty moderately amusing limericks about various creepy subjects (ghosts, ghouls, witches, and so on). The rhymes are clearly just vehicles for the delightfully demented illustrations of black cats with mismatched eyes, dead little girls with birds nesting in their hair, and so on. Perfect for big kids with dark senses of humor. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You don't think there's anything funny about death. 

The Neverending Story

Written by: Michael Ende

First line: This inscription could be seen on the glass door of a small shop, but naturally this was only the way it looked if you were inside the dimly lit shop, looking out at the street through the plateglass door.

Why you should read this book: If you think you know The Neverending Story because you saw the movie eleventy billion times in the eighties, you do NOT know The Neverending Story, because that movie ends less than halfway through this novel and the author hated it so much that he sued to have his name removed from the film. In the original version, Bastian does more than hide in an attic and scream the Empress's new name; naming the Empress is his passage into a magical land (here called Fantastica) where his use of AURYN helps him overcome every one of his numerous personality flaws, transforming him into a kid who wouldn't steal an antique book from an old man or hide from his bullies all day. It's a much more expansive and intelligent story than the movie shows, and Bastian is a much more flawed hero who requires much more from Atreyu, Falkor, the Childlike Empress, and the land of Fantastica than they ever needed from him.

Why you shouldn't read this book: The narration reminds us, over and over and over, that chief among Bastian's flaws (and he's a pretty flawed person: canonically, his only redeeming characteristic is his imagination) is that he is fat and bow-legged. 

Le Pater: Alphonse Mucha's Symbolist Masterpiece and the Lineage of Mysticism

Written by: Thomas Negovan

First line: Religion is symbolism

Why you should read this book: Alphonse Mucha's 1899 masterpiece doesn't merely illustrate the Lord's Prayer, it illuminates its universal meaning through the use of detailed symbolism, elevating it from a Christian staple to a pantheistic truth about the nature of spirituality. Negovan's massive (12"x16") tome not only reproduces these limited edition plates in stunning accuracy, but also includes preliminary sketches for every illustration as well as copious historical and cultural details situating Mucha's work in time and place. A complex and beautiful book about a complex and beautiful piece of art. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Now that I've read it, I don't know what to do with it, as it doesn't fit on my any of my bookshelves. 

Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

Written by: Virgina Roberts Giuffre

First line: Picture a girl sitting alone on a curb, her face stained with tears. 

Why you should read this book: This is the brutal and hard-to-read memoir of one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims, who spent several years of her childhood being repeatedly sexually assaulted and trafficked by the notorious billionaire. Giuffre speaks with frank honesty about her history of abuse, beginning with her father and his friend, continued at the facility for troubled youth where she was sent when her psychological issues overwhelmed her parents, and furthered by a different rich man who picked her up by the side of the road before she eventually found employment at Donald Trump's Mar-a-lago resort and was collected by Ghislaine Maxwell. Sometimes, but not always, naming names, Giuffre recounts her painful truths in excruciating details, not only the crimes committed against her by wealthy, powerful men, but her escape from their orbit and her quest to bring her abusers to justice. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's very heavy and almost everything that happens in it is terrible. 

Strange Animals

Written by: Jarod K. Anderson

First line: Green died and then he didn't. 

Why you should read this book: Following a very near-death encounter with a city bus, depressed and disillusioned city-dweller Green hauls himself off to Appalachia to reconnect with nature and encounters a natural world beyond the perception of most mortals. Following a terrifying encounter with not one, but two cryptids his first night outdoors, he finds himself apprenticed to Valentina Blackwood, presumably the world's oldest cryptonaturalist, and immersed in pursuit of a deadly killer. Green can see what others cannot see, so he can do what others cannot do, and with Valentina's help, he is determined to protect the natural world.

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's a great fantasy story, but I think I enjoyed this author's nonfiction work more. 

A World Worth Saving

Written by: Kyle Lukoff

First line: "A___! It's time to go! Are your shoes on?"

Why you should read this book: This powerhouse YA novel follows A, a fourteen-year-old trans masc kid whose progressive parents want to feminize him, forcing him to attend weird, cult-like anti-trans family meetings in a church, even though they're Jewish. When Yarrow, one of A's club friends, is taken away after an outburst at the meeting, A feels compelled to investigate, and is surprised to make the acquaintance of a trash golem, whose power helps him uncover an awful conspiracy: demons who feed off human misery and other demons who feed off trans kids. Suddenly, A is on the run with a girl from his meeting, meeting other trans kids who live on the street, uncovering new friends and new enemies, with the clock counting down for him to save Yarrow and return home. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: This is among the greatest Jewish YA fantasy novels you'll ever read; if you can't handle queer content, that's your problem. 

Queerly Autistic: The Ultimate Guide for LGBTQUIA+ Teens on the Spectrum

Written by: Erin Ekins

First line: Hello there! 

Why you should read this book: Exactly what it says on the tin, this is a thorough and fairly comprehensive book for queer, neurodiverse adolescents, which defines and explains all the terms and issues at the intersection of these three categories. While I found some of the writing extremely simplistic, and perhaps more appropriate to even younger readers, I recognize that some autistic youth might need the information presented very simply. While it doesn't spend much time talk about sex or transitioning, given that these are more adult topics, it devotes a lot of space to the subject of figuring out your own gender and sexuality, and what to do about it when you've come to some kind of conclusion, and the only thing I felt was missing in the entire book would be one or two sentences about taking care of your fingernails before fingering someone. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: While it is chock full of very interesting looking resources, the author is British and a huge percentage of the resources and some other information in the book is specific to the UK and would not be useful for teens in other parts of the world. 

American Dirt

Written by: Jeanine Cummins

First line: One of the very first bullets comes in through the open window above the toilet where Luca is standing.

Why you should read this book: Fast paced and gut wrenching, it tells the story of Lydia and Luca, a mother and young child who survive the cartel's assassination of the rest of their family and must escape Acapulco, join the procession of migrants traveling north to the border, and cross into el norte if they are to have any hope of escaping the long reach of their enemies. The journey is terrifying, treacherous, and punctuated by encounters with true monsters, but Lydia and Luca also meet kind and generous helpers along the way, and create bonds with other migrants. The writing is immersive and evocative, creating an intimate picture of the physical and emotionally devastating journey.

Why you shouldn't read this book: The author received some criticism for writing this story despite not being a Central American immigrant but it seems to me that her research was sufficient to tell it properly and well, and that gives a person the right to tell a story. 

Closer

Written by: Mirian Gershow

First line:

Why you should read this book: The impacts of several crude racist incidents at an Oregon high school ripple through the community, causing a series of unexpected outcomes. We view the incidents and their fallout through three sets of eyes: Woody is the school guidance counselor who desperately wants to help his students and address the problems in his school, but has no idea how, Stephanie is the mother of the bullied student, overburdened with other worries and responsibilities, and Lark is the girl whose best friend's life is the most changed. Everybody makes mistakes, but some people pay more dearly than others. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It just seems problematic to me for a white woman to write a novel about racism that centers around how racism impacts white people. 

The Return of the King

Written by: JRR Tolkien 

First line: Pippin looked out from the shelter of Gandalf's coat.

Why you should read this book: I don't know if Lord of the Rings is the greatest story ever told, but this tale of epic bravery in the face of impossible odds is certainly very high on the list. By the beginning of this third book in the trilogy, every single character is convinced that theirs is an impossible suicide mission, and despite this knowledge every single character chooses to continue on their path simply because it is the right thing to do. Good triumphs over evil, but at great cost, and while there is celebration and joy, there is no true happy every after, because everything always ends, and what has been destroyed can never return (except for Gandalf, of course). 

Why you shouldn't read this book: The poignant, gripping thread of sorrow and loss woven throughout may cause grief and nostalgia for a world that can never be.