It's been almost 2 years of posting content every day (my anniversary is in may) and I can't overstate how debased the normalization of scrolling is.

I am convinced of two things:

1) there will be scroll rehabs soon (and we will describe scrolling as an addiction/sickness)

2) there will be a new DSM entry that describes whatever tf happens to your brain when you get into the influencer racket

^^you will never be a worse partner than when you are caring about how many views your new brain rot is getting

It's hard to say what was worse for my mental health

becoming a content creator or working with my ex-publisher (which collapsed 1 month after my book came out). I'm not exaggerating when I say, this past summer, I could physically feel my mental health deteriorating.

(A weird side effect of 2 years of posting is that it made me certain I'm not having kids. I don't understand how one could parent with this addictive drug that is totally accepted and mainstream and pushed on kids.)

I haven't opened a social media app since Sunday march 1st. I scheduled my IG content (and this post) and removed the apps from my main phone (I got a "content" phone this summer because storage was an issue). This stealth hiatus is what I mean by quiet quitting -- maintaining my social presence w minimum effort.

I'll see how I feel at the end of my 2 week break (maybe I'll miss posting?) but my rough plan is to pivot to writing more long form essays and treating this (SadRichGirls.com) as a Substack with weekly/biweekly posts.

Making content is the fastest way to become pathologically self-conscious

Before posting each Reel/TikTok, I would visualize and imagine the answers to: "What is the most unhinged hateful toxic reaction that someone could have to this?" Then I'd marinate in that space for a while. Mmmm.

It is a sort of "skill" to anticipate what precisely internet psychos will hurl at you (lotssss of bean soup) and I desperately want to unlearn it. Obviously. I don't want to waste a moment imagining what the dumbest, incel-y-est person thinks about me.

I thought about turning off comments (some people were like, nooo dont do that your engagement will drop! literally. friends of mine said this and i had to be like, ya but my mental health??) but then people DM you. I don't want that either.

For me, not reading comments isn't only about being too smart to engage with 99% of commenters-- it's also because I don't want to self-censor. when you read criticism ("you're pretentious", "you're condescending,") you keep checking yourself for that quality. I found myself being hyper self-critical and these voices of internet randoms-- people whose opinions I would never listen to irl-- were deafening in my head. (I'm condescending on purpose!)

So you dilute yourself to try to avoid any criticism and this means you make boring ass NormalBob content. do i want to make crazy gonzo content? not exactly. I just want to get rid of all the voices.

i hate living in a self-created panopticon

I'm sort of mad at myself for getting here. I took a faustian deal that, I would argue, I had to accept for my author career--but you never have to take it. I could've let my book die. I could've looked on as it was decapitated and just let it happen - but instead i went down the social media warpath route willingly. It was a choice.

I might be falling for the 'one for them, one for me' fallacy: I want to have a career as an author, if it means i have to participate in the attention economy so be it -- here's 2 min of me talking about how I'm annoyed my friend was late again. I don't know if you can make short-form content without self-harming* to some degree. But I'm gonna try-- this is my new thing. I'm planning to queue up my posts twice a month in batches and only check the stats, say, once a week. (Should it be less?)

I'm not gonna pick up my phone almost 100x a day (this stat is embarrassing- since my mini-hiatus started I've cut this in half). I'm not gonna try to ride topical waves (but when there's a wild article in the cut, will i be able to resist?). If one of my videos is going viral, I'm not gonna make one that piggybacks off it (Part II!!).

It's just going to be scheduled programming. consistent. agnostic of what is going on in the world. I think (hope) this will be enough distance so I don't feel like social media is my main (unpaid) job.

*I've come to believe that posting publicly, exposing yourself to scrutiny/hate on the internet, is self-harm. Every influencer gets to the point where they either make a video replying to hate comments (guilty) or a crying video where they say, "i'm a real person with feelings".

i've earned the right to protect myself... right?

I read how to do nothing by jenny odell a few years ago and it really stuck with (aka haunted) me- yet I have been more online than ever in the past 2 years.

I don't think i need to justify my new plan of pretending to be online-- because that's what I'm basically planning to do. I'll continue to "post every day" but I'm only simulating that I am actually there.

As much as social media has been proven to be deleterious to mental health, I wonder if I might be jumping the gun in quitting slash biting the hand that feeds me. Maybe I need to pay my dues a few more years. Because It's impossible to deny that my brain rot on IG is correlated with the sale of my 2nd book (both my new agent and new editor found me on socials). And as someone brought up in an Asian household, I cannot stress to you how much "paying your dues" is beaten into you.

The 'keep your head down' mentality has never been how I've played it though (it's never rewarded- bamboo ceiling!) so even though I'd bet anything that if I asked my family for their advice (don't worry, I will jump off a bridge before I do this) they would say KEEP DOING SOCIAL MEDIA AT A BREAKNECK PACE THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MENTAL HEALTH!!!

But I'd continue to ignore their advice. In fact, imagining what they would advise gives me more confidence that ratcheting down is the smart decision 🤔

I hate getting unsolicited feedback from people I don't respect

Goodreads. Amazon reviews. The comments section. But the understanding is creators invite criticism through the act of posting (idk if I totally agree with this, but it's accepted). I feel like my phone is inhabited with demons all the time.

Part of what inspired this invisible hiatus (does it count less since I scheduled content? I really can't decide) is a newer friend (I met her at my Salon in November and we've gotten close) who told me she deleted IG a while ago. She's in her late 20s and we have great conversations about culture and she is not at all "out of the loop" for being a non-scroller.

Until recently, I genuinely believed that in order to be zeitgeist-y and have my finger on the pulse I "needed" to be somewhat online. I still believe this but I care less about being THAT zeitgeist-y. I can settle for being moderately zeitgeist-y (tiktok format that would do well: how zeitgesit-y are you??)

If, moving forward, my finger-on-the-pulse-ness is simply me reading contemporary fiction, 2 years behind the Big Trends (couldn't care less about cultural microtrends), I am good with that---

because i never wanted to be here in the first place.

("here" being IG/TikTok) My hand to god, when i had the very 1st meeting with my ex-publisher i told them not to waste their breath advising me to do social media. I would never ever do it no matter how important they thought it was. They were fine with my refusal.

And then i got to know them.

They (the folks i worked with at my ex-publisher) had to be the quickest most lethal version of Weaponized Incompetence I've ever met. I went from saying "no social media" to making an account (1 year before my release, mind you) and posting every. single. day. That's how effectively their withhhhering incompetence made me tremble.

It was like swearing I'd never gamble-- and then learning to count cards when I saw what a desperate situation I was in.

I post out of fear

and inertia. I feel I owe it to To Have & Have More, my orphan child. And it suffers from being self-published. I can't provide it with the marketing and publicity it deserves-- the closest I can give it is a viral post every now and again. This is like my baby who deserves to be outfitted in bonpoint but, devastatingly, I have her wearing oshkosh b'gosh. Sure thats fine for most kids but MY baby deserves more.

*Damn $235 swim trunks for baby boys! (i love it)

(you would think I'm crazy if you knew how many photoshoots of this book I've done/how many glamour pics I have in my camera roll)

Vegetable metaphor

In my very first posts, I ended with a disclaimer where I would say, "these ideas have been flattened and reduced for social media," (people still bean-soup-ed over every video so I stopped bothering.) I have to remind myself of this disclaimer when I see an offensively reductive video: other creators are also flattening their ideas to cater to the algorithm.

The thing is, maybe the original un-flattened, un-reduced idea behind their/my post was good and smart and worth listening to. But the act of flattening it takes out all the nutrition. You're left with just the husk. This is why I don't eat canned vegetables.

If the original thing is nutritious, but you eliminate all of the nutrients, what is the point of eating the dregs that remain? The only reason is because you can say, "I ate a vegetable." You can still technically refer to it as a vegetable. And to yourself, you justify consuming this empty, non-nutritious (usually harmful) barely-a-vegetable-anymore entity by saying that it was at one point nutritious.

I've tried to reduce my social media time before (just to be clear, my vice isn't scrolling/consuming content, it's checking my stats and making new content instead of writing books) and failed. I've done invisible hiatuses before but I haven't been able to change my habits in a significant or lasting way. Part of posting this is to shame myself into getting offline for real.

I failed before because my reduction was too half-hearted. I didn't remove the apps from my phone, I was relying on being "more disciplined" to break a habit that is really an addiction. In Ria Chopra's essay (which is an excerpt from her book Never Logged Out) she calls out the trend of IG posts that appear to be scroll-shaming (10 Things to read/watch instead of doomscrolling) and how substituting podcasts/substacks/etc (just more content) for scrolling wasn't addressing the actual problem.

I'll report back after 2 weeks and tell you if I actually got so much writing done by giving myself this time back or, what I'm afraid of discovering, if the problem goes even deeper.

Gosh, wouldn't it be so great to delete my accounts and never post another short-form video ever again? A girl can dream!

Greetings Fools,

I'd like to call your attention to two lists which will be updated on an ongoing basis. I'll add them to the pinned post in due time for easy future access. They are:

1. Banned Books - both those I've read for my ongoing series and an unsorted list of frequently banned books

2. Bookish Creators I Follow - some excellent people whose work I particularly look forward to, again unranked and unsorted

I hope this adds some value and that you're working your way through our March Book Club reads! More to come on those soon.

MQ

Banned Books Central List

As many of you already know, I have a real thing for banned books. Specifically, I like to read them and explain why they shouldn’t be banned.

Although recent book banning has focused on targeting marginalized groups, especially the LGBTQIA and black communities, there’s a long history of censorship that stretches back throughout human history, has affected every group, and been perpetrated by every group.

I’m currently working on a video series in which I read and discuss banned books. As I update that series, I’ll indicate which books I’ve read and which books I plan to read here. Note: I source my banned books from lists compiled by the GOATs on this subject, the American Library Association and PEN America.

Banned Books I’ve Read for the Series

• Gender Queer: A Memoir, Maia Kobabe, Graphic Memoir; watch on Instagram, TikTok, & YouTube

• Flamer, Mike Curato, YA Graphic Novel; watch on Instagram, TikTok, & YouTube

Additional Banned Books (unranked and unsorted)

• Sold, Patricia McCormick, YA Fiction (verse novel)

• The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison, Literary Fiction

• The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky, YA Fiction

• Looking for Alaska, John Green, YA Fiction

• All Boys Aren't Blue, George M. Johnson, Memoir/Essays

• Tricks, Ellen Hopkins, YA Fiction (verse novel)

• Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Jesse Andrews, YA Fiction

• Crank, Ellen Hopkins, YA Fiction (verse novel)

• Nineteen Minutes, Jodi Picoult, Fiction/Thriller

• Thirteen Reasons Why, Jay Asher, YA Fiction

• The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood, Dystopian Fiction

• Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen, Historical Fiction

• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie, YA Fiction

• The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini, Literary Fiction

• A Court of Mist and Fury, Sarah J. Maas, Fantasy/Romance

• Identical, Ellen Hopkins, YA Fiction (verse novel)

• Out of Darkness, Ashley Hope Pérez, YA Historical Fiction

• A Court of Wings and Ruin, Sarah J. Maas, Fantasy/Romance

• The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas, YA Fiction

• A Court of Frost and Starlight, Sarah J. Maas, Fantasy/Romance

• Lucky, Alice Sebold, Memoir

• Tilt, Ellen Hopkins, YA Fiction (verse novel)

• Beloved, Toni Morrison, Literary Fiction

• Living Dead Girl, Elizabeth Scott, YA Fiction

• Forever…, Judy Blume, YA Fiction

• Damsel, Elana K. Arnold, YA Fantasy

• I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, Erika L. Sánchez, YA Fiction

• Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Malinda Lo, YA Historical Fiction

• Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson, YA Fiction

• Breathless, Jennifer Niven, YA Romance

• The Color Purple, Alice Walker, Literary Fiction

• Monday's Not Coming, Tiffany D. Jackson, YA Mystery/Thriller

• The Haters, Jesse Andrews, YA Fiction

• Beyond Magenta, Susan Kuklin, YA Nonfiction

• Milk and Honey, Rupi Kaur, Poetry

• Perfect, Ellen Hopkins, YA Fiction (verse novel)

• Fallout, Ellen Hopkins, YA Fiction (verse novel)

• Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Literary Fiction/Satire

• What Girls Are Made Of, Elana K. Arnold, YA Fiction

• Drama: A Graphic Novel, Raina Telgemeier, Middle Grade Graphic Novel

• The Carnival at Bray, Jessie Ann Foley, YA Fiction

• Wicked, Gregory Maguire, Fantasy

• Impulse, Ellen Hopkins, YA Fiction (verse novel)

• Shine, Lauren Myracle, YA Mystery

• The Sun and Her Flowers, Rupi Kaur, Poetry

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou, Autobiography

• A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, Dystopian Fiction/Satire

• The DUFF: Designated Ugly Fat Friend, Kody Keplinger, YA Fiction

• Storm and Fury, Jennifer L. Armentrout, YA Fantasy/Romance

Bookish Content Creators I Follow

I only got into this racket because it seemed like some very cool people were already having fun doing it. Here’s an unranked and inexhaustive list of creators in bookish spaces whose content I always look forward to. Give them a follow! Note: I’ll likely update the list intermittently.

• Michael Kist on Instagram, TikTok, & here on Bindery!

• Luke Bateman on Instagram & TikTok

• Panic_Kyle on TikTok

• Lucas Page on Instagram & TikTok

• Chris Fizer on Instagram & TikTok

• Dylan Joseph on Instagram & TikTok

• Rea Reads on Instagram & TikTok

• Josh Lora on Instagram & TikTok

• Carla on Instagram & TikTok

• Sam Wall on Instagram & TikTok

• The Book Baba on Instagram & TikTok

• Jack Edwards on Instagram & TikTok

• Salinger on Instagram & TikTok

Hi guys!

I apologise as it's been a while since I've send an exclusive access email but it's been crazy with everything going around in the world and what with me struggling with my MH as I've had to adjust my medications for my chronic illness 😭

While I dont have any lists for you guys, I thought I'd share this blog post and get back to it so let's talk about some of my favourite recent reads 👀 Let me know if you've read any of them and thank you to the authors, publishers and netgalley (if it was an eArc) for the Arc copies of all the books below

Moroccan Folklore Fantasy: Aicha by Soraya Bouazzoui

This is one of my HIGHLY anticipated Fantasy release of 2026 and I'm so thankful I got a copy of an Arc to read it in advance. This is a Moroccan Folklore that follows Aicha and Rachid in their fight against the Portuguese and colonialism.

This was such a good story, a tale of Aicha, who grows up with a father that is part of the freedom fighters of their area against the occupiers. We watch the journey through Aicha's eyes and the costs of freeing themselves and their country from colonialism

As someone who is half Moroccan, this book warmed my heart in the mentions of our food, tea, culture and traditions throughout it all. I need all the Meloui, Tagine and Atay that I can get as my heart misses Morocco (and the couscous!)

A Tale of Yearning & Belonging: Weavingshaw by Heba Al-Wasity

Weavingshaw is a Gothic Fantasy Romance, which follows Leena Al-Sayer and Saint Silas. This is a BEAUTIFUL tale that focuses on what it means to be yourself in a nation that tries to strip that way. It discusses occupation, resistance, language and how we can never fit in the world we are in for so many reasons.

The story is beautifully written, with lyrical prose and so much thoughts poured into it. You can see Heba's influence from her life in it as an Iraqi refugee who was born in Libya and grew up in Canada.

I cannot praise Weavingshaw enough and I hope you love it as much as I did. I did get an eArc ad had to get the special edition for my collection.

Finding love in the STEM Field & Experiments: Love and Other Brain Experiments by Hannah Brohm:

Love and Other Brain Experiments is one I read in 2025 but i'm resharing it now as I annotate it! STEM Romance has a special place in my heart after I restarted my journey in reading Contemp. Romance in September of 2025 and I think Hannah does it amazingly in here, weaving Neuroscience and Memory in so beautifully with a Fake relationship between Frances and Lewis

We see the relationship between the MCs blossom in a beautiful way, as they get vulnerable and learn to trust each other! And watching them learn to achieve their dreams together rather than someone having to sacrifice it? YESS!

A Magical Realism with Ballets & Crows: The Apple and the Pear by Rym Kechacha

The Apple and the Pear is set over a day, taking us through multiple characters in a Ballet set on a day called All Souls Day. This is a very lyrical work, one that takes us on a journey to show us just how intertwined peoples stories are and the impact of magic on art. It shows us what people would do for sacrifice, what we give up to gain in Art and Beauty and how creativity can go beyond magic.

I do think this is perfect if you enjoy magical realism, Ballet and Crows!

A Love that you didn't factor in your plan: The Ex-Perimento by Maria J. Morillo

The Ex-Perimento was such a fun yet emotional read! You've got so many things, from rockstar MMC, FMC who grew up in the celebrity world with her mother and a beautiful setting in Venezuela (with a Latinx rep from an OwnVoice author). We meet Maria as she is going through a break-up and re-discovering herself, learning who she is outside of her plan. Alongside this, she discovers what love is meant to be and how she doesnt need to have all the answers

I think as someone who is a planner, just like Maria, I related a lot to her and how hard it is to just let go and let life happen with you rather than you attempting to direct it.

How is everyone doing???

I totally spaced it and didnt create a weekly chapter check in for Queen of Faces! But for sure will make one for our next read to help guide people on were to be and not fall behind (been swamped with my 9-5 and banners + getting sick on top of everything). So far im about 50% through queen of faces and omg ...... im loving every chapter and the multiple POVs we get!!!! Im terrible at predicting endings so to be honest ill probably be shocked with what happens either way hahahha I also love how ambiguous the genders are for the characters. The magic system is also super cool, giving us a leveling up system were magic can evolve and branch out to new paths. Does anyone have any book recommendations for the month of April? (I'm open to all fiction, romance, epic fantasy, horror, lit-rpg) I can start a new poll next week.

As for my little project I kinda want to make mini banners of each book we read so Ill start posting my work process this weekend

Bookish opinion time! What are your thoughts on book covers? Which style is your favorite? I've put some examples below.

I tried my best but I might've gotten some of the maximalism book covers wrong. It's basically a cover with a lot of detail on it. For artistic, I interpret this as a book with abstract details or a repeating pattern.

Hi nerds,

I recently had a bookseller rite of passage: I attended my first Winter Institute, the annual industry convention hosted by the American Booksellers Association for independent bookstores across the country. This year, 1,600+ stores attended. It was madness.

It’s a packed three days of panels, vendor tables, publisher sales rep appointments, author signings, and more. I was there for my day job in publishing, but I managed to sneak away a few times to catch talks I wanted to attend—and I got to meet SO many fellow booksellers in the wild. I have literally never felt more popular in my life. I’m still riding the high of being pointed at across a room and hearing someone yell “Sunny’s?!” at me.

A big part of Winter Institute is access to upcoming titles that publishers bring with them. There’s something called a galley room (a galley is an advanced reading copy of a book, also referred to as an ARC), which is full of thousands of unreleased titles that are free for the taking. Just after breakfast on the first day, the doors open and absolute chaos ensues. I’m talking people stacking 30+ books in their arms, trying to shuffle through a sea of other people doing the exact same thing. Watching 1,600 people descend on a room full of books is something I won’t forget anytime soon especially because I was right alongside them.

I get a ton of galleys in the mail every day at the store. My sales reps at each publisher are usually happy to send whatever I want for stock consideration, so I wasn’t feeling particularly feral about grabbing everything I saw. But I still came away with my fair share.

The following is my bounty—and I’m going to tell you why each title made the cut and was worth lugging home.

I fucking STAN Hernan Diaz. His hit rate is 2/2 and I'm sure Ply will be a banger as well. I actually got to meet him during an authors reception at Winter Institute, and I told him that I always recommend In the Distance to customers when they come in looking for a Western to prank them. He signed my book with the following: "To CJ, with so many thanks for misleading readers into my work." 🥲

About the book:

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Trust turns to the future with a novel that examines the place of technology in the American imagination

Centuries from now, at the dawn of a historical epoch filled with both uncertainty and promise, an orphan is adrift in a city on the brink of a great transformation. The state has been dismantled, and humans are reinventing social bonds and learning new ways to coexist with nature. Following a childhood defined by loss, survival, and found family, the orphan grows up to become a “pincher,” someone who steals electricity from the grid to sell it on the black market. It’s a high-risk life, one that brings her into a rich downtown art and music scene where she powers underground concerts. It also leads her to a colossal scientific invention that could be either a contraption devised by a deranged mind or a machine that will change the very fabric of reality.

After rewriting America’s past with his two previous novels, Hernan Diaz now gives us a glimpse into the future. Ply questions the place of technology in the American experiment with a plot that grabs both heart and mind. It is a novel of ideas built from a story of people. Combining Dickensian odyssey, family drama, and scientific thriller, Ply poignantly charts the tenuous boundaries of selfhood and the distance that inevitably stands between us and those we love.

Like I mentioned, I was really attending Winter Institute in a publisher capacity and the majority of the time I was behind a folding table handselling upcoming titles from the publisher I work for's catalog. Our table neighbors were the Canadian publisher, Biblioasis. Their sales rep described their table as being segmented into pastoral novels vs. hysterical novels, and directed me to Love Novel when I expressed I was more interested in the hysterical. The author of Love Novel is Croatian, and I am too! I don't think I've read anything translated from Croatian before, so this cemented that this was the book for me.

About the book:

Love in late capitalism: Ivana Sajko takes us to the frontlines of a war waged between kitchen and bedroom.

Love in late capitalism: in an unnamed city, a husband and wife wage a silent war of rage and resentment. He, an out-of-work Dante scholar, is trying to change the world--and write a novel. She was once a passable actress, but now she's failing at breastfeeding. They take on gigs and debts. He drinks cheap wine; she cleans obsessively. In their two-room flat the tension rises and turns exquisite: the rent is past due, their careers have stalled, the regime is crumbling, and there's always the baby, the baby who won't stop crying.

Intense and astutely ironic, devastating and darkly comic, Ivana Sajko's Love Novel takes a scalpel to the heart of modern married life.

I gotta be real with you, this was a cover grab. What a compelling and minimal treatment! I love the sense of scale here. The published FSG is usually a safe bet for me as well, so after reading the description on the back this one came home with me.

About the book:

After her mother is sentenced to life in a hilltop prison, Suzanna vows to return to the hill forever. An unexpectedly funny and deeply moving novel about the many ways we punish and return to each other.

Suzanna Klein was a baby when her mother got up early one morning to rob a bank with a group of fellow radicals. Now, every Saturday, Suzanna lines up at the prison gates among the other children, each dressed as if for celebration. Inside there is a nursery and a cemetery; there are watchful guards and distractable nuns; there are women counting down to release and women like Suzanna’s mother, who will never be released.

At home, Suzanna is raised by her grandmother, who is entirely unforgiving of her daughter’s crime and refuses to visit the prison. Surrounding Suzanna are her grandmother’s friends, who know one another from their years in the Communist Party and still spend extended cocktail hours debating the Hitler-Stalin pact. Though these women once insisted on changing the world, they are torn between teaching Suzanna how the world works and shielding her from it.

Suzanna vows to return to the prison forever but her mother wants her to be free. Harriet Clark’s The Hill is an incandescent novel of a child growing up between worlds, the last of three generations whose fates have been tied to punishment. It is the tale of a family broken apart by the desire for change, told with irreverent wisdom and visionary force. The Hill brings new music to American fiction.

I loved Daniel Mason's debut novel, North Woods. I handsell this a lot at the store and find it works for a lot of recommendation requests I get. I was able to get this one signed as well and meet Daniel and he was nice enough to sign one for my boss Matt, who was the person who recommended North Woods to me in the first place. Hi Matt I know you're reading this.

About the book:

A year in the life of a family as they strike out into the unknown (aka Vermont), leaving all the comforts of home behind—a rollicking, lyrical novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason, the bestselling author of North Woods and one of America’s greatest living writers

Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband, a doting father beloved for his outlandish bedtime stories, and the proud owner of a truffle-hunting dog in a land with no truffles. He is also a bit lost, twelve years late with his PhD on Russian folktales and increasingly haunted by a sense that he’s become a disappointment to his family. So when his wife, Kate, accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the faraway forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be the year to finally move forward with his life.

But Miles is a man of many enthusiasms, one who possesses, in Kate’s words, a great capacity “to fall in with anyone, anywhere.” And no sooner does he arrive than he finds himself entangled with a cast of characters as colorful as those of any of his folktales, from a ghostly tree surgeon to a scythe-mad biochemist, from a Shakespearean temptress to a photographer of snowflakes obsessed with chronicling, on thousands of index cards, the world’s delusions in an Inventory of Wrong Ideas.

The new friends, the enchanted woods, the histories: sure, no PhD, but all good fun. Until Miles stumbles upon a bizarre—perhaps ridiculous—local legend, which, he soon suspects, might not be just a legend after all.

Joyous, absurd, and life-affirming, Country People is a luminous exploration of marriage and parenthood, the nature of belief and the power of stories, and the ways in which we find connection in an increasingly fragmented world.

Soft Skull is another indie publisher who consistently do weird shit that I'm into it. The desert landscape made me pick this one up (always looking for arid desert rep in a novel!) and the description sold me.

About the book:

A complex mother-daughter relationship is taken to a new level in this fresh and propulsive novel of family curses, blood-thirsty ghouls, and budding romance set against the Mojave Desert and Las Vegas

Ellis Karsten spends nights working triage in the ER and days having the same conversation with her mom. The early onset dementia is exhausting, but the real challenge is their curse—Ellis’s family must feed daily on blood, or risk becoming mindless, skinless killing machines. When Ellis’s uncle, who supplies their blood, vanishes, she takes it upon herself to find a new source, aided by a prickly paramedic who’s equal parts unpredictable and intoxicating. But as Ellis fights to balance her bloodthirsty nature with a new relationship, her mom’s impossible demands transform into panicked warnings that a fabled monster, “The Flayed Man,” is stalking them.

As she traverses the desert in search of blood, Ellis risks her safety and her family’s secret, until it becomes clear that her mom is right: something ancient and hungry is hunting them, and it has come for her mom. Blood hunger begins to overtake Ellis, transforming her body into something ghoulish and frightening—exactly what The Flayed Man wants. In the end, she must decide who to trust, what she’s willing to sacrifice, and whether she is worthy of a life, and love, beyond her curse—or if she’s going to succumb to instinct and ravage the world.

This seemed to be the book in the galley room that most people were eager to get to first. I liked Station Eleven, both the book and show, but have not read anything else from this author! The premise of this one sounds more interesting to me compared to the rest of her backlist. Absolutely hate this cover though, so lazy!

About the book:

The award-winning, bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility returns with a breathtaking novel of doubles, shadow worlds, and fractured timelines as a man disappears from a glittering Los Angeles party, and a woman—a gunrunner, an art collector, an operative of the State—searches for answers.

Los Angeles, 2031: The first spring after the collapse of the United States, peacekeeping troops withdraw from the city, the Jacaranda trees blossom, and the curfew is finally lifted. Ari Waker and her roommate pass the gauntlet of bomb-sniffing dogs, the shanty towns, and the Red Cross tents as they walk across Silverlake to a party. The mood is ecstatic inside the apartment, people drink and dance, a woman wears a silver dress, pleated like tinfoil. And then: A shift. A bewildered twin, an uncanny doppelganger stumbles through the crowd and out into the night, and Kareem, the party’s host, vanishes into thin air.

As Ari Waker unravels the mystery of this inexplicable night, Emily St. John Mandel unfurls a story that takes us from a future America splintered by civil war to the seaside cliffs of Greece where weapons dealers hide in an elegant resort, and from the domed city of Paris to a colony on the moon. An unforgettable literary feat, Exit Party is a novel about the price of safety, the perils of the surveillance state, a requiem for a world not unlike our own, and a breathtaking story of resilience in the face of cataclysmic change.

I cruised around some other publisher tables and stopped by Coach House, where their sales rep told me this was Marxism meets sci-fi. Say no more, I'm in. I think this one is going to hurt my brain.

About the book:

Close Encounters of the Third Kind meets Annihilation in this poetic space-age fable of proletarian internationalism.

At the end of the twenty-first century, on the shores of the Indian Ocean, a minor Marxist politician's speech is interrupted by the arrival of an iridescent, pill-shaped object. It brings him, briefly, to another world, and to a state of ecstasy he will struggle to interpret upon his return. Soon, many others will be offered the same incantatory opportunity. Rival states attempt to capitalize on these developments, and a cynical spy sets an elaborate psychological operation in motion. Thousands of miles away, on an agricultural commune near the Caspian Sea, a young poet spends her nights troubled by prophetic dreams. The politician, the spy, and the poet will be ineluctably drawn into one another's orbits, as will the mysterious Bell Letterist, author of a text about "the interdimensional will to the aesthetic" - a powerful motive force that requires human solidarity in order to thrive.

The Coffin of Honey is inspired equally by apocryphal stories of Alexander the Great, Bolaño-esque tales of literary vanishings, thousand-year-old Persian poems by exiled princesses, and the fever-dream conclusions of every parapolitical conspiracy theory that might just be true.

Similar story here, I really liked Sorrow and Bliss, this authors debut. I thought it depicted depression in a really precise and exact way and I am excited to read more from her. I also hate this cover but it is giving the upmarket broad audience appeal I'm sure it is intended to.

About the book:

The “brilliant” (Ann Patchett) and much beloved author of the critically acclaimed Sorrow and Bliss returns with a tender and hilarious novel about heartbreak and the journey from isolation and loneliness towards love.

Sophie Pattison loves books. And as well as a dream job at a local book festival, she has a husband she adores, a lifelong best friend, Emma, and a brother she’s always been close to. Which makes you wonder why since Christmas Sophie has been living alone, estranged from Emma, avoiding her brother, and about to be fired.

Now it feels like the only thing she has left is reading. When Sophie re-discovers an author she first read in her twenties, the words on the page reach her in a new way—becoming both solace and company. Devouring every one of her novels, Sophie begins to dream of meeting her, knowing she never will. But what if she did? What if, by then, the author feels like a friend? What if, for Sophie, it feels almost like love?

In this much anticipated novel, Meg Mason captures the heartache and dark humor of our relationships in all their complexity, giving us a story about the power of connection and an ode to the inexplicable nature of the human heart.

Lastly, I was able to meet Melissa Albert and grab her adult debut. She has a strong career as a YA author in the SFF space. I love this weird ass apothecary meets 1970's horror novel cover. I also feel weirdly connected to her because our last names are almost the same lol.

About the book:

The haunting new novel from New York Times bestselling author Melissa Albert, in which the estranged adult children of a legendary author, written into their dead mother’s beloved fantasy series, must contend with the vine-like creep of legacy, memory, and magic.

Guinevere Sharpe has two childhoods.

In one, she and her brother, Ennis, live in the wooded shadow of their family's isolated Vermont farmhouse; in the other, the pages of their mother’s world-famous Ninth City books, where their magical adventures have made them household names. In reality, Guinevere's childhood isn't the enchanted idyll her mother’s readers imagine: she and Ennis are growing up near-feral, unwashed and underfed, escaping each day to the wild woods they’ve made their playland. As Edith Sharpe’s books explode into epic popularity, the threats of a rural childhood give way to the escalating perils of fame—until the night it all goes up in flames, leaving Edith’s series unfinished and her children the sole survivors.

Now an adult coasting on her mother's name, Guinevere is mid-promotion for a ghostwritten memoir when her estranged brother, an artist who has until now spurned his family's legacy, announces an upcoming installation titled, simply, Mother. As rumors swirl around a death connected to his last show, unsettling recollections from Guinevere’s childhood begin to surface. Her public facade starts to crack, forcing her to confront the questions she's spent the last twenty years running from: What really happened the night of the fire? And what dark history lies behind their mother’s fantasy world?

The Children is wise to the mythic weight childhood memories gather over time, and the way our most beloved stories grow up with us. It's for anyone who's ever revisited an old favorite and found its pages cast in a darker light, the line separating magic from reality blurring as we discover the books that once comforted us carry shadows of their own.

That's it! A conservative haul if you can even believe it. I hope this was interesting and put some new books on your radar.

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