If you’re shopping for a reader this Valentine’s Day or are the reader casually dropping hints 👀, bookish gifts fall into two swoon-worthy categories: The Experience all about cozy, immersive reading vibes and The Keepsake pieces that celebrate a lifelong love of stories. 

✨The Experience Cozy Reading Goals
Think Blind Date with a Book wrapped in paper with tropes like Enemies to Lovers or Only One Bed teasing what’s inside, candles that smell like old libraries or favorite characters, a reading valet to hold books, glasses, and tea, and the ultimate game-changer: a Kindle page-turner remote so you never have to leave your blanket burrito.

💌Personal & Romantic Keepsakes
From custom library embossers stamped with “From the Library of…” to personalized “Story of Us” books, book bouquets made from classic romance pages, and book-shaped jewelry boxes hiding a plot-twist surprise, these gifts feel like they were pulled straight from a love story.

💝Thoughtful Small Gifts Budget-Friendly but Mighty
Leather heart bookmarks, literary tea blends, cozy bookish socks, and ceramic book vases prove you don’t need a big budget to give something meaningful and adorable.

❗️You can also sign them up for our annual Bookish Valentine Gift Exchange on Elfster! Tap the link to join! https://www.elfster.com/gift-exchanges/04001f27-092d-4a41-922b-7a506773a519/?join=mdqw

❓️Which of these is already on your wishlist? Or did I miss a bookish essential? Let’s chat in the comments!👇

Because nothing says I love you quite like supporting someone’s reading obsession one chapter at a time. 💕📖

Happy Saturday, mis internet amigxs,

I wanted to begin this week's newsletter by highlighting a few action items you can take in the book community to help our friends in Minnesota.

#MeltIceBookStack Challenge on Instagram: Through the end of February, for every post of a “flame” stack of yellow/orange/red books using #MeltIceStack hashtag and tagging @readerbotdiaries, Lou will be donating $1 to the @womensfndnmn Immigrant Rapid Response Fund, up to $200. 30 other bookstagrammers have joined the cause, meaning that the first 200 posts will raise $3,900 for the Immigrant Rapid Response Fund. You have 4 weeks to join us and contribute your stack.

In addition, I created the flyer below and posted it across all my social media platforms supporting Stand With Minnesota a comprehensive list of mutual aid for Immigrants, legal defense funds, individuals and businesses whose lives and livelihoods have been interrupted by ICE in the Twin Cities. Please donate and share widely. This flyer is available for you to download and share on your socials. No need to credit me.

In case you’d just like to amplify my social media posts instead, you can find them on all my channels, particularly Instagram and Tik Tok.

In addition, Haymarket Books has 3 free ebooks for those that would like to learn about migrant justice and border abolition.

By now, you’ve probably seen the photo of 70-year old Greg Ketter, owner of Minneapolis bookstore DreamHaven Books and Comics, emerging from a cloud tear gas last week. This and his interview about ICE created such interest in the bookstore that the online site was down for days. This is your reminder that you can add many Twin City bookstores doing work on the ground as your supported bookstores on both LibroFM and Bookshop to help them through these difficult times in addition to buying gift cards or ordering books directly from their websites.

BIEN LEIDOS BOOK CLUB UPCOMING EVENTS

We have a number of events coming up in the next few weeks I wanted to remind you about (Events are available exclusively to Bindery subscribers, check out THIS POST for registration links) :

• We’re finishing up reading Orange Wine by Esperanza Hope Snyder for January and have 2 upcoming events:

  • On February 4th, we’ll be doing an all day rolling spoilery chat to get all our thoughts about the book out in the open on Discord. If you’ve been wanting to chat Orange Wine, save the date!

  • On February 10th at 8PM EST, we’ll be chatting on Zoom with Esperanza

• We're currently reading our February Book is Sparks Fly by Zakiya N. Jamal AND we’ll be continuing our nonfiction side quest reading of Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality by Tanya Kateri -Hernandez

• Our March-April nonfiction side quest book is Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer. I have opened up discussion early in case anyone wants to begin early, seeing as this is a very in-depth look at US immigration policy and the founding of ICE. Today, the publisher reached out and we’re planning some giveaways as well as other events you should stay tuned.

• We’re currently voting on April’s fiction pick and the Discord poll has landed us on fantasy and science fiction. I’ll be putting up options to vote on in Discord this weekend.

• Speaking of side quests, we have a BIG journaling presence on Discord and we’re scheduling a zoom to share some of our favorite stickers on Sunday, February 1st at 8:00PM EST (this invite is linked in the post above).

SPREADSHEET UPDATE

I had the spreadsheet updated with this week's upcoming releases, but I'm experiencing some technical issues that isn't allowing me to share. I'm going to revert back to the double-posting to ensure you have all the latest in Latine lit early. I'm hoping to have this issue resolved this week and Beta test the spreadsheet with you SOON! Thank you for bearing with me...and without further ado, February 3rd Latine releases

New Latine Books

Young Adult

Carnival Fantastico by Angela Montoya (audiobook) Fantasy where a young woman poses as a fortune teller at a magical travelliing carnival where the handsome boy who once broke her heart resurfaces and warns her that the carnival is more sinister than it appears

Few Blue Skies by Carolina Ixta (audiobook) a tender story about love and hope, following a teen as she works to protect her family and community from a major corporation taking over her town

Translated Literary Fiction

Autobiography of Cotton: A Novel by Cristina Rivera Garza and translated by Christina MacSweeney (audiobook) Deeply personal and polically acute, Rivera Garza crafts a new kind of border novel that tells how a brittle land radically altered her grandparent' lives and the territories they helped develop.

xoxo,

Carmen

Friends! Enemies! Everyone in between!

I hope you're all doing as best as you can be and taking care of yourselves. It's time to vote for the March book club!

A woman’s desperate flight from an Apache raid unfolds into a sweeping tale of the Mexico–US border wars.

Orchestrated with a stunningly imagined cast of characters, both historical and purely fictional, Now I Surrender radically recasts the story of how the West was “won.” In the contested borderlands between Mexico and the United States, a woman flees into the desert after a devastating raid on her dead husband’s ranch. A lieutenant colonel in service to the fledgling Republic, sent in pursuit of cattle rustlers, discovers he’s on the trail of a more dramatic abduction. Decades later, with political ambitions on the line, the American and Mexican militaries try to maneuver Geronimo, the most legendary of Apache warriors, into surrender. In our own day, a family travels through the region in search of a truer version of the past.

Part epic, part alt-Western, Now I Surrender is Álvaro Enrigue’s most expansive and impassioned novel yet. It weaves past and present, myth and history into a searing elegy for a way of life that was an incarnation of true liberty—and an homage to the spark in us that still thrills to its memory.

An award-winning international author’s stunning US debut about two estranged friends who are forced to reunite over one feverish weekend and reckon with the choices that tore them apart.

A decade has passed since Ava spoke to Aliya. During the years of silence, Ava's life has remained at a standstill, while Aliya got the one thing they both wanted more than anything: a book deal. Forced back together at a mutual friend’s bachelorette in London, Ava returns to Aliya’s doorstep, desperate to unpack the truth of their shared history—and what they meant to each other.

When the two first met in the halls of their historic campus, their connection was electric. Aliya and Ava created a world of their own through the stories they wrote, influencing and borrowing from each other’s work. But when the end of college loomed, the real world began to pull them in opposite directions. Was their bond ever truly as strong as Aliya thought? And what would become of the stories they told themselves about each other?

Weaving together the friends’ past and present, Strange Girls is an ingenious portrait of a fraught friendship, and an exploration of the ties forged in the intensity of the college experience, and the scars left when they break.

A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage—Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.

Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.

A novel about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in contemporary fiction.

Set during a doom-fated vacation to the Oregon coast, The Disappointment follows a couple trying to hold close to one another while a bent reality—warped by personal losses and an ever-increasing drift toward the surreal—threatens to unravel them

It’s the night before a much-needed vacation, and Jack—a former playwright mourning his failed career—catches his husband, Randy, packing his mother’s urn. They had agreed: no mother on this trip. Parents, living or otherwise, aren’t the ideal guests for romantic getaways. But Randy has been carrying his mother’s remains everywhere since her death, and he isn’t ready to let go now.

Despite its natural beauty and kitschy charm, the Oregon coast does not provide the respite the couple seeks. Instead, their surroundings and encounters with locals grow increasingly surreal as the days pass. An overly -dedicated Method actor, tantra-obsessed neighbors, and a child environmentalist who may be able to communicate with the dead are but a few of the characters whose presence exposes long-simmering tensions that threaten to undo Jack and Randy’s marriage—to say nothing of their hold on reality.

Told with sly, irreverent humor, and shot through with dark currents of envy and longing for something other than what one has, The Disappointment explores the mutual exhilaration and terror of being placed center stage in one’'s own life.

Four very compelling choices! Happy voting and remember we are reading The White Hot by Quiara Alegría Hudes in February, today is your last day to sign up.

Love what we do? Become a paid subscriber for less than a cup of coffee a month. Your ongoing support helps us plan ahead, fund causes we care about, and create meaningful programming for our community.

Our first book, What Feeds Below is listed next to CG Drews on the Barnes and Noble Bestsellers in teen fiction!

Tatiana and I could not be more thrilled! Your support and preorders mean everything! Seeing your response has been incredible! If you haven't preordered yet, it's actually cheaper on Bookshop right now.

Your early support gives What Feeds Below and Tatiana a shot at all kinds of bestseller lists, media attention and can even help with store placement.

You will love What Feeds Below if

• you love horror or quest fantasy

• you loved Annihilation or The Descent

• you loved Attack on Titan, Made in Abyss, Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

• you always think about quicksand

• you love books that read like video games

Hi All,

So excited to share February's read: This Is Not A Test by Courtney Summers! Grab your copy at the link above if you’ve haven’t preordered this one!

And the coolest news: Courtney will be joining us for a bookclub zoom. Still working out the date, so stay tuned!

Did you know This is Not A Test has been turned into a movie! (limited theater release 2/20, and then we should be able to watch on Shudder, I think!

Check out the movie trailer here.

Women in Horror book club takes place primarily in the community Discord. It's a very low stakes book club. Discussions are left up a few months so conversations continue for people who are unable to read the book during bookclub month.

If you're not in the community Discord already, that's is where all the magic happens, so make sure you're a member today.

Hi Friends,

Back with another 10 more horror books written by women that I can't wait for this year! There are way too many books coming out this year, I have no idea how I'm going to read them all. Have you heard of any of these?

1. I Love You Don't Die by Jade Song (3/17) This one is for the weird girls.

   For as far back as she can remember, Vicky has been fascinated and obsessed with death as the only inevitable thing in life. From living above a Chinatown funeral parlor to working at a celebrity start-up for bespoke urns, she has surrounded herself with death—in her home, in her work, and in her ever-growing collection of zhizha, paper creations meant to be burned for the dead, adorning the walls of her apartment. Yet, though living in Manhattan and working her dream job is all she ever wanted, she still struggles to have meaningful connections—or find any meaning at all—in her life. Too often she spends the day in bed, only drawn out from time to time by her best (and only) friend, Jen.

   That changes when a dating app leads her into a throuple with an artist and a labor organizer, who offer exactly the kind of love she needs. For some time, it’s perfect, but no one understands better than Vicky that all things must end. As doubts grow over the love in her life, her friendship with Jen, and her professional success, the oddly comforting abstraction of death starts becoming something else altogether. With everything beginning to feel hollow and temporary, Vicky must decide how to keep moving forward. To try and hold on to what she has, or to once again do what she does best: destroy.

2. Afterbirth: Novel by Emma Cleary (3/24) An unsettling, hypnotic descent into the visceral heart of “mommy horror,” Afterbirth is a story of fractured sisterhood, aching hunger, and irrevocable transformation—reverberating with the echoes of classic horror cinema.

3. Wayward Souls by Susan J Morris ( 3/17) gothic sequel to Strange Beasts, a delicious gothic suspense following the daughter of Dracula's killer and the daughter of criminal mastermind Moriarty.

4. Indigent by Briana Cox (3/20)

LEIGH PIERCE ESTATES is home to a diverse array of tenants: families, immigrants, students, the forgotten elderly. All working poor, and all in danger.

Because the tenants of Leigh Pierce are disappearing.

Live-in handyman Xavier seems to be the only one who notices. Or cares. After a chance encounter with the culprit leaves him infected with something horrifying, Xavier is thrust into a surreal nightmare of starvation and consumption all too familiar to his gentrifying Atlanta neighborhood.

Succumbing to his infection, Xavier is drawn into the cobbled-together family squatting in Leigh Pierce's basement. People who, through a myriad of doomed roads, fell into the same self-destructive cycle of indigency, harboring dark secrets... and darker appetites. Trapped in a dynamic of codependency and complicity, Xavier and his family- new and old- are forced to confront the cost of survival in a world that has disregarded them

1. Hex House by Amy Jane Stewart (4/28) A feverishly told, dark and unsettling Scotland-set fairy-tale about a safe haven for women which transforms them into vessels of revenge, perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, A. G Slatter and Julia Armfield

2. The Lady in Chains by Bonnie Quinn (4/28)

Every year, campground manager Kate sends out a pamphlet titled “How to Survive Your Camping Experience.” It includes a list of rules to help campers have an enjoyable experience and hopefully survive any encounters with the campgrounds other…inhabitants.

With the campground in the throes of a bad year, it will take more than a list of rules to keep everyone safe. Monsters that were previously lying dormant are starting to stir and they’re waking up hungry. Among them is the Lady in Chains, a creature feared by both human and inhuman things alike.

Her reappearance creates an upheaval in the balance of power in the campground by renewing an old grudge with the harvesters, who are willing to sacrifice anyone they get their hands on in order to gain an advantage. On top of all this, the man with the skull cap has started taking an unusual interest in Kate. But with the harvesters on the prowl, the Lady in Chains hunting her down, and a sinister spider infestation, Kate is going to need all the allies she can get, even if those allies aren’t actually…human.

1. Wife Shaped Bodies by Lauren Cranehill (4/14) Sorrowland meets Manhunt in this literary horror debut in which an isolated newlywed—covered in mushroom growths like all the other wives in her community—strikes a precarious balance between following her husband’s strict rules and pursuing an intense connection with a woman who makes her question everything.

2. Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker (4/21) In this lyrical, wildly inventive horror novel interwoven with Japanese mythology, two people living centuries apart discover a door between their worlds.

3. Molka by Monica Kim (4/30) Dahye can't believe her luck when she finds herself in a whirlwind romance with handsome, charismatic Hyukjoon, the heir to a multi-million dollar fortune. But then a shocking revelation threatens everything: the couple has been caught on a spycam amid Korea's growing molka epidemic, and the video is all over the internet.

4. Dark is When the Devil Comes by Daisy Pearce The woods are known as the place to avoid. What goes in, doesn’t come out.
   
   Hazel has been gone from her small hometown of Idless in the English countryside for years. Now returned in the wake of a traumatic divorce and crumbling personal life, her simple plans are to lay low at her parents’ vacated house, reconnect with her prickly sister Cathy, and slowly get back on her feet.
   
   Cathy is surprised when Hazel doesn’t show. Their relationship strained from a fallout half a decade ago, she didn’t expect them to get back into a sisterly rhythm…though she hadn’t counted on Hazel bailing, either.
   
   But something isn’t adding up. Other people in town whisper of a threat that can’t be shaken. The woods are known for being restless. And Cathy knows the old saying.
   
   If you go looking for trouble, you just might find it.

Which ones are you preordering? Which ones are you adding to your TBR?

I want to read ALL of these and I want to read them RIGHT NOW!

January really said: “New year, new TBR,” and we took that personally. 📚✨

We kicked off 2026 with a massive bang! From the pulse-pounding thrillers of The Page Ladies to the seriously magical journeys in our Young Readers club, the "January Blues" never stood a chance against these stories. Whether we were binging audiobooks on our morning commute or getting lost in our own individual stacks, this month was one for the record books.

🌟 January Highlights at a Glance:

• 🏒 Best "Hockey Era" Binge: Wildfire & Skate It Till You Make It

• 🕵️‍♂️ Biggest Page Ladies Thrill: The Rembrandt Heist & Presumed Guilty

• 🏰 Young Readers MVP: The Last Resort & Spellbinders

How many books did you tackle this month? Click through to see our full review of every title we touched this January, and don't forget to tell us your favorite read in the comments! 👇

Let’s be honest: my current To-Be-Read TBR pile is already looking elite, but I have a feeling the bookish community is hiding some absolute gems that I haven't discovered yet.

I’m kicking things off with three heavy hitters that I’m betting will be the talk of the year. If these aren't on your radar yet, they should be!

🩸The Dark & Poetic: Empire of the Dawn by Jay Kristoff

The endless night is finally here, and I am fully prepared for the emotional damage Gabriel and Dior are about to put me through. If you like your fantasy dark, bloody, and written with a poetic edge, this is the one to watch.

💊The High-Stakes Thriller: The Forbidden Heiress by Glede Browne Kabongo

This is a twisty inheritance thriller where the secrets are deadlier than the corporate games being played. I’m already looking over my shoulder just reading the synopsis! It’s the perfect pick for fans of intense, high-stakes suspense.

🚀The Emotional Journey: Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

TJR is taking us to the stars! Set against the backdrop of 1980s NASA, this story follows female pioneers with that signature emotional gut-punch she does so well. My tissues are already on standby for this one.

Now, I Need Your Help! 🗣️📖

I want to turn this post into the Ultimate Community Recommendation List. I’m looking for your #1 must-read  recommendation right now is the book you can't stop thinking about.

Here is how to join in:

1. Drop your #1 book pick in the comments. Any genre is welcome!

2. Tell me why it’s a masterpiece in 5 words or less.

The Plan 🗓️

I’m going to compile all your suggestions into a Master Recommendations Guide and share the final list later this week. We’ll have a curated, community-vetted list that we can all screenshot and save for our next bookstore trip!

Ready... set... GO! 

Happy Saturday, mis internet amigxs!

We've got a few events coming up on Zoom that I wanted to get on your radar, including our very highly anticipated chat with Orange Wine author, Esperanza Hope Snyder! In addition, I'm highlighting some upcoming Discord events.

STICKER NIGHT

For anyone who is on Discord and part of the sticker discourse in #Journaling or wants to know where to purchase amazing and unique vinyl stickers, we'll be doing a sticker show-and-tell tomorrow night, Sunday, February 1st at 8:00PM EST on Zoom! This is an informal evening where we'll be sharing either our newest stickers (from a recent haul) or our favorite stickers. Each volunteer speaker will get UP TO 5 minutes to share their stickers. Bring your favorite/most recent sticker purchases and the store name where you purchased them for the class! This promises to be a fun and lowkey evening. If you'd like to join, then REGISTER HERE.

ESPERANZA HOPE SNYDER AUTHOR EVENT

I don't think book club has had a bigger discussion than for January's book club pick, Orange Wine, so I'm so excited author Esperanza Hope Snyder is joining us to discuss the book with us on February 10th at 8:00 PM EST EXCLUSIVELY for Bindery members! Mareas tastemaker, Marines Alvarez, who picked the book for her imprint will also hopefully be joining us as well. I plan to speak with Esperanza for about 40-45 minutes and then turn to attendees for Q&A. You can REGISTER HERE for the chat. This event will be recorded and posted privately for those who can't make it.

Both events are exclusively for Bindery members, so please do not share the Zoom links provided. I encourage you to share this post with friends you think might be interested and get them to join Bindery to attend.

In addition, we have a couple of Discord events coming up:

SPOILERY ORANGE WINE DISCORD BOOK CLUB CHAT

On February 4th, we'll be discussing Orange Wine all day long in the Orange Wine Discord channel. After the end of the month reading and discussing our book club book spoiler-free, we open up for a one day long rolling spoilery chat of the book free from the grey boxes before closing out the book club discussion channel. Bring all your thoughts, feelings and questions and let's discuss!

WEEKLY DISCORD READING/PRODUCTIVITY SPRINTS

Every Monday night at 8 PM EST, we run ⁠reading/productivity sprints. If you're not familiar with sprints, it's where we meet, chat for 5-10 minutes, then focus on an activity (it can be reading, but also work, cleaning, whatever you're trying to get done) for about 25-30 minutes (length of time is set by person running sprints), and then we chat again for another 10 minutes or so before beginning another sprint. We have members across many time zones, so don't feel bad if you're "late" and usually there are shifts of sprints that go on for several hours after start time. This is a casual and fun way to make new bookish friends while knocking things off your to-do list.

I'm looking forward to seeing you all at these events. Thank you so much for making the Bien Leidos community such a bright light in this world.

xoxo,

Carmen

Hi War-band,

a reminder that the discussion for January’s Booksworn Pick WOLF OF WESSEX is scheduled for this Sunday 1st February at 8GMT on Discord.

Hope to see as many of you there as possible!

Ed and Will

As someone with a chronic illness, it's been kind of hard to feel like I'm doing enough for The Cause. So aside from calling reps & striking today, I finished reading The Chainbreakers by Julian Randall. It filled my cup when I was drained.

This middle grade/YA fantasy centers on community, resistance, & memory. I love the original storytelling! I don't think I've ever read a fantasy book that depicts life for the Africans who freed themselves & others from their would-be enslavers and lived. 

While The Deep by Rivers Solomon follows the story of a people who became water-dwellers eager to forget their past. The Chainbreakers is about Sun People, a community dedicated to remembering & continuing resistance through saving souls taken by the "chainmakers." According to their lore, the chainmakers were cursed by the gods for their cruelty and forced to the depths of the ocean where they became Children of the Shark, creatures endlessly hungry for the souls of the chainbreakers. 

The actions and creativity of Violet and her crew are thrilling and sometimes playful. Her community is loving and compassionate as well as fierce. I'd definitely recommend this book to everyone!

Comfort over truth

White supremacy culture prioritizes comfort, especially white comfort. This shows up when tone becomes more important than content. It shows up when anger, grief, or directness from Black and Brown women is labeled as unsafe, aggressive, or inappropriate.

Comfort over truth sounds like:
Can you say that more nicely.
I agree, but the way you said it was harsh.
I am open to feedback, but not like this.

This shifts focus away from harm and toward managing white emotional experience.

Reflective journaling:
How were you taught to relate to anger or strong emotion, especially from women of color.
What messages did you receive about politeness, niceness, and being likable.
How has that shaped whose emotions you take seriously.

Intent over impact

White supremacy culture teaches individualism and defensiveness. Many white women are taught to focus on intent. If harm was not intended, then harm feels up for debate. This moves the conversation away from the person harmed and toward protecting white identity.

Intent over impact sounds like:
That was not my intention.
I did not mean it that way.
You misunderstood me.

Intent does not erase impact. Accountability asks for attention to what happened, not just what was meant.

Reflective journaling:
What happens in your body when your impact is named.
What stories do you tell yourself to feel less responsible.
What would it feel like to stay with impact without explaining.

Tone policing and emotional control

White supremacy culture values emotional restraint and control. Black and Brown women are often punished socially for expressing anger, urgency, or pain. White women are often rewarded for calmness and softness. This creates a dynamic where white women feel entitled to set the emotional rules.

Tone policing sounds like:
I would listen if you were calmer.
I agree with you, but you are being too intense.
Let’s keep this productive.

This treats emotional expression as the problem instead of the harm being named.

Reflective journaling:
Who taught you what emotions are acceptable.
Whose emotions feel threatening to you and why.
How do you benefit from being seen as calm or reasonable.

Moving Toward Accountability and Relational Repair

Shifting these patterns requires more than intellectual agreement. It requires nervous system work, relational skills, and a willingness to tolerate discomfort without centering yourself. Accountability asks white women to build capacity for staying present when feedback feels activating.

This means learning to notice defensive impulses without acting on them. It means resisting the urge to correct tone, explain intent, or manage your image. It means staying focused on the harm named, even when your body wants to escape, justify, or shut down.

Practically, this can look like.
Listening without interrupting or correcting.
Naming impact before intent.
Saying, “I hear you. I caused harm,” without adding explanations.
Asking what repair would look like.
Sitting with discomfort without making it someone else’s problem.

This is not about perfection. It is about practice. Each moment of staying with impact builds capacity for real relationship. Each time you choose accountability over comfort, you weaken the systems that depend on white emotional centrality.

This work is not abstract. It shows up in friendships, workplaces, therapy spaces, activism, and family systems. It shapes who feels safe to speak and who feels pressured to stay silent. Choosing truth over comfort is a daily practice. It is relational. It is embodied. It is ongoing.

I'm here with some super exciting updates on my Reading the World resource.

In case you missed it when it was launched, I created a spreadsheet resource to help readers read more diversely from around the world. The spreadsheet features:

• 2,000+ book recommendations for every country in the world

• Every book is labeled by genre and includes a summary

But now I have a few updates for you:

• 200+ new books, including 2026 releases

• Every book is now linked directly to Bookshop.org so you can easily pick it up (this also helps to support me in the project as I recieve affiliate money for every order)
  

I'm really excited to keep this initiative going. As always, this document is a work in progress and if there's ever anything I should change or any books I should add, sound-off in the document's comments💖

Inky Fam,

I hesitated to book this Zoom until February with everything happening in the US/world right now, but then I realized — this is literally why The Inky Phoenix exists. We are a community. We NEED each other. This bookish, rebellious family is a like-minded group of thinkers, movers and shakers, and I can't think of anywhere else I'd rather be right now than with strong and inspired folks like yourself, talking about rage and the feminist figure Medusa.

I hope to see you there, and as always, if you can't make it I will share the conversation here afterwards.

Join our I, MEDUSA Zoom conversation this Saturday at 2pm EST:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82499594944?pwd=GQsMA62vh9Ba1y02ShkgJkPpmDo2QE.1

xo Kathryn

In case you haven't seen this yet:

Friday, January 20, 2026 is the official date of the next national strike/shutdown to protest ICE and DHS, inspired by the work of community organizers in the Twin Cities.

No work. No school. No shopping.

If you cannot afford to miss work, please avoid purchasing anything on this day.

Now is the time to get to know your neighbors and community in order to establish a practice of mutual aid and support. If you know that your neighbor or community member is worried about the risk of leaving their homes for groceries, see if you can aid them.

We protect us.

Go to nationalshutdown.org for more information.

I tried to pick some different genres, but always feel free to send me suggestions! Choose your top pick by 2/1

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

The working homeless. In a country where hard work and determination are supposed to lead to success, there is something scandalous about this phrase. But skyrocketing rents, low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling phenomenon: People with full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head, especially in America’s booming cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. These families are being forced into homelessness not by a failing economy but a thriving one.

In this gripping and deeply reported book, Brian Goldstone plunges readers into the lives of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city. Maurice and Natalia make a fresh start in the country’s “Black Mecca” after being priced out of DC. Kara dreams of starting her own cleaning business while mopping floors at a public hospital. Britt scores a coveted housing voucher. Michelle is in school to become a social worker. Celeste toils at her warehouse job while undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. Each of them aspires to provide a decent life for their children—and each of them, one by one, joins the ranks of the nation’s working homeless.

Through intimate, novelistic portraits, Goldstone reveals the human cost of this crisis, following parents and their kids as they go to sleep in cars, or in squalid extended-stay hotel rooms, and head out to their jobs and schools the next morning. These are the nation’s hidden homeless—omitted from official statistics, and proof that overflowing shelters and street encampments are only the most visible manifestation of a far more pervasive problem.

All the Colors of the Dark

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Muhammad Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the smalltown of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.

When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.

Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.

Famous

Meet Lance. Thirty-eight years old. Works a meaningless job. Still lives above his parents’ garage. By all accounts, a world-class loser. Save for one glaring exception: He has a million-dollar face.

Lance has been mistaken eighty-seven times for the Oscar-winning movie star James Jansen, and for the last ten years, he’s saved his money and studied Jansen’s films, his moves, his idiosyncrasies—even the way he speaks. Now, after an unceremonious termination from his job, Lance has decided that the time has come to go after his dream of truly becoming Jansen.

From New York’s avant-garde, off-off Broadway scene to the glitter of Los Angeles, Lance embarks on a journey toward becoming James Jansen that will take him closer to the star than even he had dreamed—and to darker lengths than he could’ve possibly imagined.

Artemis

Jasmine Bashara never signed up to be a hero. She just wanted to get rich.

Not crazy, eccentric-billionaire rich, like many of the visitors to her hometown of Artemis, humanity’s first and only lunar colony. Just rich enough to move out of her coffin-sized apartment and eat something better than flavored algae. Rich enough to pay off a debt she’s owed for a long time.

So when a chance at a huge score finally comes her way, Jazz can’t say no. But engineering the perfect crime is just the start of her problems—because her little heist is about to land her in the middle of a conspiracy for control of Artemis herself.

Trapped between competing forces, pursued by a killer and the law alike, she’ll have to hatch a truly spectacular scheme to have a chance at staying alive and saving her city.

Jazz is no hero, but she is a very good criminal.

That’ll have to do.