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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

Zarifa: A Woman's Battle in a Man's World

Written by: Zarifa Ghafari and Hanna Lucinda Smith

First line: The men wanted to know everything about Germany.

Why you should read this book: Educated and outspoken from a young age, in a time and place where girls were typically not allowed to be educated or speak in public at all, Ghafari gained fame and notoriety as the little girl who went on national television and demanded answers from the president of Afghanistan as to why her village had no roads and her school had no computers or English classes. Repeatedly blown up by the Taliban, defied by her family, and opposed by ignorant yahoos in her quest to finish school and reform her country, she never backed down regardless of how often people told her she couldn't do the thing she was already doing. Although the Taliban's capture of Kabul in 2021 effectively ended her political career and forced her to temporarily flee the country, she continues to fight for the rights of all Afghan people, and especially for the rights of girls and women to receive an education, to walk freely through their own streets, and to earn their own money.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Ghafari is tough, but she's not made of steel and her distress over the Taliban's murder of her father and their invasion of Kabul is palpable and heart-rending; this is a book about how you can fight your entire life, always do the right thing, and still be overwhelmed by evil. 

Cry for Me, Argentina: My Life as a Failed Child Star

Written by: Tamara Yajia

First line: I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Why you should read this book: This is the type of wickedly funny writing where you feel bad that you can't stop laughing about the insane, unsavory, and sometimes abusive events of the author's recollections, but you still can't stop laughing at them. Young Yajia gets a taste of the spotlight after her wildly successful debut stripping in front of her religious school to Madonna's "Like a Prayer" and pursues it with a passion, almost tasting stardom, until her parents abruptly yank her away from her goals to live in America. She is honest about her family's foibles, her own failures, her sexuality, her struggle with addiction, and a hundred other weird personal details (like the time a cop accused her of soliciting but she countered that the gentleman fingering her in a parked car was, in fact, her own cousin, and then she paid the cop to leave her alone; or all the times her whole family--three generations, led by her grandmother--drove around the red light district to admire how beautiful all the sex workers were) that seem too crazy to be true, but they're marketing this book as a nonfiction memoir so....

Why you should read this book: If you are easily offended, especially by sex, and very particularly if you were easily offended by the end of the film Little Miss Sunshine, definitely this is not the book for you. 

Never Alone: A Solo Arctic Survival Journey

Written by: Woniya Dawn Thibeault

First line: I heave a deep sigh and watch the water vapor from my breath--a small white cloud against the backdrop of heavy, dark clouds--float out across the ice.

Why you should read this book: I rarely watch reality TV and certainly had never even heard of the show Alone, but I was fascinated by the physical and emotional journey that Woniya takes in her pursuit of living her dream of pitting herself against the elements and thriving in the face of adversity. Dropped by helicopter north of the Arctic Circle in September and carrying only some homemade clothes, a brick of pemmican, ten survival objects, a bunch of cameras, and a tracking beacon, she rejoices in the freedom and possibilities of her frigid endeavor, enduring bitter cold and near starvation, but never giving up her sense of joy and delight. She nearly starves to death, but she never stops dancing, she never stops loving nature, and she never gives up on herself. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: The producers really did these contestants dirty; if they had dropped her off north of the Arctic Circle in April and let her take fifteen survival items instead of forcing her carry a ton of camera equipment and film everything she did from three angles, this lady would have been able to survive indefinitely. 

It Won't Always Be Like This

Written by: Malaka Gharib 

First line: Ugh, how lame!

Why you should read this book: Malaka's already out of her element visiting her father in Egypt, where she barely speaks the language, and she doesn't appreciate the fact that he's only telling her about her new stepmother as she's on the doorstep of his house. Who is this strange woman who has captivated her father's attention and how does Malaka fit into her father's world now that he has a new wife? Throughout the years and across the continent, Malaka learns about Hala, and comes to love her, and embrace her as part of her family, and then finally comes to understand her own place in her father's family. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You have very strong feelings about head scarves.

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. 

Animalia & Fantasia: The Magical Worlds & Fantastic Creatures of Professor Anton Seder, an Art Nouveau Bestiary 1886-1903

Written by: Thomas Negovan

First line: The first Anton Seder Artwork that I remember seeing was a welcome shock.

Why you should read this book: Mere words cannot do justice to the luscious, full color universe depicted in the pages of this oversized art book, based primary on a fin de siecle folio of animal illustrations by a largely forgotten master of the decorative arts. A series of short essays locate the work within its historical, geographical, and artistic contexts and describe the career and philosophy of Professor Seder and his innovative Ecole superieure des arts decoratifs de Strasbourg. Most of the folio pages include multiple close-ups to offer the reader insight into the absolutely insane level of detail of these astonishing illustrations, including numerous dragons. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: The main barrier here is the price, which is about what you'd expect to pay for a 10"x13.5", 200+ page full color coffee table book in 2025, but it's a shame that starving young artists might not have access to this work. 

Music Theory for Ukulele

Written by: David Shipway

First line: Hello and welcome to Music Theory for Ukulele.

Why you should read this book: This book is absolutely perfect if you play the ukulele and want to understand why music is the way it is. After 10 years of playing the ukulele, it turned out I had already intuited some of the information here, but this book really put together everything a beginning or intermediate student would want to know about music theory for ukulele. Chords, keys, triads, progressions, and mini quizzes to test your knowlege, it's all in here, plus 5 appendices with extremely useful charts and tables.

Why you shouldn't read this book: If you're not really musically gifted, it's kind of like studying a foreign language; I think I understood most of this book, but I didn't assimilate all of it.

The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom

Written by: Shari Franke

First line:

Why you should read this book: In many ways, Ruby Franke was no different from millions of other abusive narcissists whose deranged worldviews and behavior make life hellacious for their families, but there was one way in which she distinguished herself and stood out enough to gain notoriety and reprobation, which is that she filmed herself being a terrible mother, posted the videos on YouTube, and monetized them to the tune of millions of dollars before the world turned on her. As the eldest daughter, Shari Franke was the first of her family to see her mother clearly and understand that what was going on in her house was not normal, or healthy, or, eventually, legal. These are Shari's Franke's memoirs, from her earliest childhood, of what it was like to grow up under the influence and control of an absolute monster who somehow managed to hide her crimes behind the mantle of respectable Mormonism for almost two decades before Shari was able to break away and eventually seek justice for herself and her younger siblings. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: There's some lurid stuff in here.

Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir

Written by: Tessa Hulls

First line: If you had told me five years ago that my mother and I would find ourselves here, traveling back into the past in the hopes of building a bridge between us, the sheer impossibility would have caught in my throat like a bone. 

Why you should read this book: I notice that I read a lot of memoirs written by adult women about their complex relationships with their problematic mothers, but this one seems overwhelming in comparison, almost impossibly complex, and deep, and heart-wrenching. To understand her relationship with her mother, Tessa Hulls must understand who her mother is, and to understand that, she must understand her mother's trauma, and to do that, she must understand her grandmother, who she knew only as a small and crazy Chinese lady who lived in her house in California, physically, but mentally existed in some evanescent slice of world history involving the Communist Revolution. Now grown, her grandmother passed, Hulls takes her mother back to Hong Kong and China in an attempt to recreate the lives of her ancestors while recalling her own childhood and how her American upbringing made her a stranger to the past. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's heavy; no wonder it took the author a decade to write. 

When Stars Are Scattered

Written by: Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed

First line: For me, the first years are lost. 

Why you should read this book: This is an award-winning graphic novel memoir for children, and about children, and so full of tragedy and privation and heartache and loss and suffering and trauma that I personally was crying for about fifty percent of the book. Orphans Omar and his nonverbal brother Hassan have lived in a refugee camp for most of their lives, and the story follows Omar's trials and triumphs when he is persuaded to go to school. It's difficult to succeed academically in a refugee camp, and even if he finishes high school, there's no guarantee that he will ever be able to leave the camp or live a life with any sense of hope or possibility.

Why you should read this book: It does have a happy ending, but that doesn't mitigate the author's pain or make up for the childhood that was stolen from him. 

How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter's Memoir

Written by: Molly Jong-Fast

First line: I am the only child of a once-famous woman.

Why you should read this book: Metaphorically, the experience of reading this book is similar to seeing a horse and a thinking, "that is a cool-looking horse," and then you get on the horse even though you don't really know much about horses, and the horse understands this and takes the opportunity to start galloping through the forest at a breakneck speed and you are dodging branches and hanging on for dear life and yes, it's exhilarating but also terrifying and the horse just keeps going until it's got that all out of its system and then abruptly stops in a beautiful meadow not far from where you parked your car and just acts like everything is copacetic and your nightmare ride never happened. Admittedly, while I was aware of the existence of Erica Jong, the author's once-famous mother, I never actually read any of her books, so all my sympathy and interest was held entirely for Jong-Fast from the beginning, and I both enjoyed and was traumatized by her descriptions of a childhood dictated by her mother's absolute chaotic lifestyle and ability to express love, seamlessly woven together with the story of her adult experience of her mother's dementia and decline. The writing achieves that level of flawlessness that allows you to sink into the narrative without noticing how the author is performing all these magic tricks, and it would have been a good story even if she wasn't a tremendous writer. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're still trying to impress your narcissistic parent. 

Unspeakable: Surviving My Childhood and Finding My Voice

Written by: Jessica Willis Fisher

First line: When I go back to examine the earliest memories of my life, I can distinguish three short scenes.

Why you should read this book: The author recounts the devastating details of her childhood, which involve repeated sexual abuse by her father beginning at a very early age, along with physical, spiritual, and emotional abuse, and the eventual realization that her seven younger sisters were all receiving the same treatment, and that nobody was coming to help or protect them. Meanwhile, Fisher was forced to perform in the family band and held responsible for the family's financial wellbeing, writing most of their music and putting on a brave face for the fans and the television cameras that eventually surrounded her life. While Fisher escaped and lived to speak out about what happened to her and see her abuser incarcerated for his crimes, this narrative also highlights the unknown but assuredly vast number of children who experience the same forms of sexual, physical, spiritual, and emotional abuse do not have the means to escape and never see justice or have a chance to tell their stories. 

Why you should read this book: I think this is the first book I've ever read that included a trigger warning, with page numbers (for the three most shocking incidents of abuse); unlike some survivors, Fisher explains exactly what her father did and it is horrific indeed. 

The Reason I Jump

Written by: Naoki Higashida (translated by KA Yoshida David Mitchell)

First line: When I was small, I didn't even know that I was a kid with special needs. 

Why you should read this book: Perhaps there's never been another book like this one, written by a nonverbal, autistic 13-year-old whose primary method of communication is spelling out words by pointing, one-by-one, at the Japanese hiragana letters on a grid. Most of the book is presented in the form of Q and A, with the author answering questions about why and how he does what he does by explaining his inner experience, along with a few provocative short fiction pieces that also provide interesting insight into a mind that might have once remained forever closed to neurotypical observers. The young author's sensitivity and understanding of his own condition, his relationship with the rest of the world, and his expectations for the future, are delightful and eye opening. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You just find all children annoying. 

Crevice: A Life Between Worlds

Written by: Anna Redsand

First line: We drove across endless white alkaline flats into the Navajo Nation.

Why you should read this book: These thirteen thoughtful, provocative essays detail the relationship between the author, a white woman; and the land and people of Dinetah, the Navajo Reservation where she grew up, which will always remain her "home-not-home." Although this is the land of her childhood and her memories, Redsand's life and experience have always showed her the divide between the rich cultural traditions of her friends and neighbors and the paternalist, colonialist intentions of her missionary parents. Like all "Third Culture Kids," she struggles to locate her own identity, feeling acutely that she does not belong in either world, and it takes the space of thirteen essays to unpack all the knowledge and emotion she has accumulated around the in-between spaces in which she has always existed.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You are a proponent of assimilation. 

The Sociopath Next Door

Written by: Martha Stout, PhD

First line: Imagine--if you can--not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members.

Why you should read this book: In accessible language written for a lay audience, the author demystifies the concept known to many as sociopathy, a popular term for the constellation of mental disorders that spring up around the roughly four percent of the population who, for whatever reason, lack a conscience. She demonstrates that such individuals, while often sensationalized in the media as bloodthirsty killers, are typically small, mundane people living small, mundane lives, and also making everyone around them miserable for their own satisfaction. This book endeavors to explain the internal processes of the sociopath, and help other recognize these tendencies in those around them. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It was published twenty years ago, but you will almost certainly recognize some terrifying aspects of modern America in its pages.