Volume 1, No. 6: Sophomore Books I Loved Even More + Rosemary Olive Oil Shortbread
Hello, word-lovers and oven-users. I fully expected to be writing to you today after learning that Derek Chauvin had not been convicted. I am glad that that is not the case. But his conviction is not justice. On the day he was convicted, police in Ohio murdered 16-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant. Abolition is justice. Black people walking and driving and singing and shouting and living without fear for their lives is justice. Justice will come when we dismantle the system that was built to uphold white supremacy. Here is one place to start. Let’s not stop there.
This week, I’m highlighting authors’ second books (for the most part). I am a big proponent of giving an author another shot—especially if you didn’t love their debut. I’ve discovered some incredible books this way, and I shudder to think of what I would’ve missed if I’d skipped them.
I didn't love Brandon Hobson’s first novel, Where the Dead Sit Talking. I didn’t dislike it, exactly, it just didn’t stick with me. I can’t remember anything about it now. I did enjoy the first book in Olivia Waite’s Feminine Pursuits series, but I certainly didn’t love it. I didn’t rush to pick up the second book when it came out. I only just got around to reading it in March. But in both cases, something about these authors intrigued me. I loved Waite’s characters (two badass women! a scientist and an artist!), even though the book’s pacing didn’t work for me. I was enchanted by Hobson’s prose, even though the characters in his debut didn’t sink into my heart. They made enough of an impression on me that I gave them both another chance, and wow, am I glad I did.
On the other hand, I loved Donika Kelly’s first book of poetry, Bestiary, with my whole heart. I just loved her second book even more. Which is its own kind of delightful surprise.
The Books
Backlist: The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite (Romance, 2020)
I’m bending the rules with this one. Luckily, since I make the rules, it’s fine. This is not Olivia Waite’s second book—it’s her eighth! But it is the second book in her Feminine Pursuits historical romance series, and also the second book of hers that I’ve read. So it counts. Also, I love it. Also, let’s just ignore that cover, which doesn’t do this lush and beautifully written novel any favors.
Set in London and surroundings in 1820, this novel stars Agatha, a printer, and Penelope, a beekeeper. Agatha is a widow running her husband’s successful printing house. Penelope lives in the same small town where she grew up, caring for various beehives. Honestly, I could have fallen in love with this novel just for the 19th century beekeeping and printing elements, which are utterly fascinating.
I also love Agatha and Penelope so fiercely. They’ve both made compromises to survive in a world that isn’t kind to women, and they each have this edge of practically that I adored and that also broke my heart. They’re both grumpy and forthright and have different but equally delightful take-no-nonsense attitudes. They’re also both exhausted, lonely, and worried for their families and livelihoods I know that historical romance is almost always a kind of fantasy, but there is so much about this book, and these characters, that felt so true.
It is a slow burn. Slow. Most of it concerns their developing friendship, which doesn’t turn romantic until near the end. Was I bored? No. Was I impatient? No. Agatha and Penelope both have so much to lose. Of course they don’t just tumble into bed. Partly, this is because of who they are. But it’s also because of who the world has forced them to be. I loved watching the tenderness and care of their deepening friendship. But their hesitancy to allow themselves happiness made this book stand out for me. The slow burn was practical, and made for an exceptionally well-earned HEA.
This novel contains so many wonderful themes and subplots that I simply can’t write about them all. It’s about compromise, courage, political activism, small town life, marriage laws. The historical and political backdrop is incredibly rich and textured. I’ll mention one last thing: I love how Waite writes about queer family. Besides Penelope and Agatha, two other queer couples feature prominently. All of them make very different choices about their lives, and there’s real hurt and disagreement between them, as well as comfort and recognition. Waite doesn’t paint a rosy picture of queer family. Rather, she writes about queer people trying to live whole, meaningful, satisfying lives amidst repressive laws and political upheaval. They don’t always succeed—or at least, they don’t always succeed without pain, sacrifice, and loss.
This is a slow, luxurious read. If you’re not usually a romance reader, but you enjoy complicated family stories, feminist historical fiction, hilarious middle-aged women, beekeeping, and/or printing, this novel is a great place to start.
Frontlist: The Removed by Brandon Hobson (Fiction)
Content warning: Because I include an upcoming release in each newsletter, I choose the theme and books several weeks in advance. This novel is about a Cherokee boy who was murdered by police. I don’t talk about the murder or police brutality in my review, but please skip over it if you don't want to read anything to do with police violence today.
This beautifully woven and immensely unsettling novel follows the Echotas, a Cherokee family in Oklahoma grieving the loss of their son and brother, Ray-Ray, who was killed by police fifteen years earlier. It takes place in the week leading up to the Echota’s annual bonfire on the anniversary of Ray-Ray’s death. Maria, the matriarch, is caring for her husband Ernest, whose Alzheimer’s is getting worse. They’re fostering a young Cherokee boy, Wyatt, whose presence in their home is both healing and disruptive. Maria’s two adult children, Edgar and Sonja, are dealing with their own life crises. In the midst of drug addiction and a recent breakup, Edgar is attempting to make his way home for the bonfire. Sonja is obsessed with pursuing a man who may or may not have ties to her past. Interspersed with these captivating voices are sections narrated by Tsala, a Cherokee ancestor whose stories and deep knowledge of Cherokee history and folklore connect the Echotas to the past and future.
Whenever I think about this novel, the word that immediately leaps into my brain is haunting. It’s a book about what haunts us: grief, stories, history, memory, people we’ve lost. The writing is haunting; it has a particular cadence that’s both eerie and beautiful. It’s also a story about hauntings, both physical and metaphorical. There are ghosts and spirits and legends that come alive. And it’s a book that has haunted me. I find myself thinking about it often, revisiting the Echota family in my mind.
One thing that really strikes me about all this haunting is how varied and rich it is. We tend to associate haunting with sadness and loss, but this isn’t always the case. Merriam-Webster defines it as: “having qualities (such as sadness or beauty) that linger in the memory : not easily forgotten”. The Echotas are haunted by the loss of their son and brother. They’re haunted by the forced removal of their people and the ongoing trauma of colonization. They’re also haunted by ancestral wisdom. They’re haunted by the stories that have nourished Cherokee people for generations. There is immense presence in this book, a sense of weight. Haunting becomes a way to carry, connect, reckon, get lost, mourn, celebrate.
The only thing I remember about Hobson’s first novel is how meandering and dreamlike it was. I couldn't get a hold on it. This novel has a similar quality, but it affected me in a totally different way. I often found it hard to tell if something was real or imagined. Especially in Edgar’s sections, but elsewhere as well, I kept wondering: is this a drug trip? Hallucination? Magic? Memory? A story? A myth? Religion? Hobson blurs the lines between reality and dream, living and dying, past and present. It makes for a strange, disorienting, and often upsetting reading experience, one that mirrors the experiences of the Echota family. Each of them, in their own way, is navigating these lines, desperately trying to make sense of them.
Ernest’s world is losing definition as he loses his memory. Edgar gets trapped in a nightmarish in-between place called The Darkening Lands. Wyatt seems to live with ghosts. Tsala’s stories come to life. Every character is so vivid, so deeply alive in the present. But the world they live in is unstable and constantly shifting. It’s a powerful and startling juxtaposition. It’s a book about haunting, in all its forms, but it’s also about whatever the opposite of haunting is: rootedness, maybe.
Hobson’s writing is sparse, and there’s a lot of grey space in this story. Things aren’t wrapped up neatly. I don’t always love a book with so much ambiguity, but I loved this one. Writing about it has made me love it even more.
Upcoming: The Renunciations by Donika Kelly (Poetry, Graywolf Press, 5/4)
I loved Kelly’s first poetry collection so I was already excited about this one, and then it exceeded all my expectations. It’s a book with momentum. The poems tell the story of a journey: a journey into self, a journey of reckoning, a journey toward belonging. It’s not a simple or straightforward journey. Kelly writes about how complicated it can be to love yourself and others while carrying trauma, about holding on and letting go, about the many meanings of retreat. Some of the poems deal with childhood sexual abuse and rape, so this is not a light collection. Neither is it gratuitous. You can almost feel Kelly working through the knots of each poem, weaving them into beautiful music.
The book is split into sections, alternating between “Then” and “Now”. Some poems are grounded in childhood and some in an adulthood in which childhood lives on as a ghost that haunts. But Kelly is always blurring these lines. There are several poems with the word oracle in the title, and they fuzz the edges between future and past, rejecting the idea that memory is linear.
Throughout, her language is stunning, both flowing and sharp. I often found myself reading a poem several times, first to let her words wash over me, and then to find the layers of meaning underneath.
From “Love Poem”:
Let us be ocean and coast, a taking
into and over one another:
shifting sediment, a breaking down
of rock: dredge and deposit
I was awed by the way she wrote about bodies and desire in her first collection, and she does it again here.
From “Cartography as an act of remembering”:
You are away. I hunt your scent, your skin,
practice resurrection in the palm of my hand,
unfold you over the uneven terrain
of my own body in the dark.
Also like in her first collection, she uses a lot of imagery of the natural world: oceans, rocks, trees. These things are both terrifying and comforting. This is another theme that is always present in her work: nothing is ever just one way or another.
“In Bedtime Story for the Bruised-Hearted” she describes trees as women trapped by men:
How like them, our fathers,
those small gods who unearthed
their children with rage,
who scored the bark
and bent the branch
to bind their bodies with our own.
But the poem ends with a different image of nature:
Tonight, my love, we are free
of men, of gods, and I am a river
against you, drawn to current and eddy,
ready to make, to be unmade.
Later, In “Hymn” water is not a solace but a danger:
The water don’t love me and she don't love
me and maybe I’m drowning
from the inside.
Her poems express the multiplicity of people, landscapes, memories, places. Trees can be monsters and rivers can be solace. Bodies of water are comforting and alienating, dangerous and a source of joy. She carries this through into the meanings beneath the poems, exploring the many truths a body can hold and shed.
From one of several poems titled “Dear—”
I am neither land nor timber, nor are you
ocean or celestial body. Rather,
we are the small animals we’ve always been.
She’s constantly addressing this in-between place. What exists between an imagined future of wholeness and the trauma of the past? These poems burrow into that messy place, the never-ending journey where all the life happens.
There’s a particularly powerful series of erasure poems, made even more remarkable because the source material is not stated. These poems, long blocks of blacked out text with only a few words visible, are all titled “Dear—”. There’s palpable pain in these erasures, and also a constant questioning: who are they addressing? They begin each section of the book, and add to the momentum.
This is a beautiful, complicated book about inward and outward journeys. It doesn’t end where it started, but it also doesn’t end with an ending. Getting to experience the journey, through these words, is a gift. It’s out on May 4th and you can preorder it here.
The Bake
My theme-loving brain was pretty excited when I realized that one of my favorite cookie recipes comes from Deb Perelman’s second cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Every Day, which I love way more than her first one (The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook). I first made these cookies for Cookie Extravaganza in 2018, and I’ve made them every year since. That’s saying a lot, because I only make my very favorite cookies year after year.
Rosemary Olive Oil Shortbread
Makes about 30 small cookies
This is a nearly perfect recipe, in my opinion. I increased the rosemary because I love the flavor, but that’s about it. The chocolate and rosemary are delightful together—a little savory, a little sweet. They’re very short and crumbly and shortbready. I love butter, and I don’t miss it here. Plus, I adore a dough that freeze well.
Ingredients
195 grams (1 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour
60 grams (1/2 cup) powdered sugar
25 grams (2 Tbs) turbinado sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup (120 ml) olive oil
1 Tbs fresh rosemary, minced
85 grams (1/2 cup) bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 egg white, beaten
Preheat the oven to 325.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, both sugars, and salt. Add the olive oil and rosemary and stir to combine. Mix in the chocolate chunks. Gather the dough into a mass with your hands.
Roll the dough into an 8-9” slab between two pieces of parchment paper. The shape doesn’t matter much; you’re aiming for a vague oval. Peel off the top sheet and slide the round of dough, still on the its parchment, onto the back of a baking tray. Brush with the egg white and sprinkle with 1 tsp coarse sugar (optional).
Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the cookie is lightly browned around the edges. Slide it onto a cutting board, and, while still hot, cut it into squares or rectangles. A sharp knife is key; a pizza cutter also works well. Let cool before separating.
You can freeze the dough after you roll it out. Wrap it in plastic wrap and bake from frozen (add a few minutes to the baking time). Deb says the cookies will keep for 2 weeks in an airtight container. Friends, I have enjoyed them happily for a month.
The Bowl & The Beat
The Bowl: Easiest Potato & Mushroom Frittata
My landlords’ chickens have started laying, so they’ve been bringing me a lot of eggs. Since I consider eggs to be their own separate food group, I’m not sad about this. Here’s an eggy meal I made this week. Look, this recipe is nothing special. But it is easy, fast, and endlessly adaptable, i.e. dinner magic.
Preheat the oven to 425. Cut 3-4 medium potatoes into chunks. Toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roast on a baking sheet for 15-20 minutes while you prepare the other stuff. Sauté some sliced mushrooms in butter in an ovenproof skillet. Crack a dozen eggs into a mixing bowl. I like to add 1/4 cup of yogurt. You can also add a splash of milk, or nothing. Whisk. Add the mushrooms, roasted potatoes, and some grated cheddar (if you’re like me, some = a lot). Add some salt and pepper. If you have fresh thyme or rosemary around, that’s nice. Melt a nice hunk of butter in the mushroom pan and swirl to coat. Pour in the egg mixture. Bake for 35-40 minutes.
The Beat: Raceless by Georgina Lawton, read by the author
I’m about 2/3 of the way through this and wow. Georgina Lawton grew up in suburban England. Her parents were white, and, throughout her childhood, they offered her no explanation for why she was not. Her Blackness was not discussed. When she tried to ask them about it, they’d change the subject. Colorblindness was the philosophy; race didn’t matter. She was expected, and often encouraged, to think of herself as white even though she wasn’t. It wasn’t until after her dad died that she finally got a DNA test and the secrets she’d been forced to carry came out. It’s hard to fathom, and yet, this is the kind of insidious destruction that colorblindness wrecks.
So far this book is an incredible exploration of how identities are shaped, and how bewildering and painful it is to try to reclaim an identity that’s been hidden and/or stolen from you. Lawton isn’t a transracial adoptee, but her experiences are not unlike those of some transracial adoptees, and I appreciate that she shares other people’s stories to broaden the scope of the book.
The Bookshelf
The Library Shelf
I actually managed to return some library books when I went to pick up new ones this week! Tune in next week to see if I can keep it up.
The Visual
I am a big spreadsheet nerd, so tracking my reading brings me mountains of joy. I use a modified version of the Book Riot Reading Log. The fancy graphs are a treasure, and this is one of my favorites. For context, 27% of the books I’ve read this year have been by non-US authors. This is the breakdown of that percentage. A few highlights include My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Nagata Kabi (Japan), Say Hello by Carly Findlay (Australia), and The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi (Nigeria).
Around the Internet
I haven’t written anything new since last week, but I did make a list of 20 Must-Read Queer Essay Collections back in March.
On Audiofile, you can read my review of the audio version of The Removed. Spoiler: I highly recommend listening to it.
Now Out
None of the upcoming books I’ve previously recommended are out yet, but I’m excited for my library holds of two books that published yesterday to come in: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers and Goodbye, Again by Jonny Sun.
The Boost
I am notoriously bad at reading anything other than books. I’m the same way with podcasts. I will never chose one over an audiobook. For the most part, I’ve made peace with this. But I am working on getting better at reading longform pieces, and newsletters have been a great starting place. There are a couple I really enjoy reading each week, bookish and otherwise, so I thought I’d share them with you.
Jules Gill-Peterson writes Sad Brown Girl, a newsletter about trans life, history, and current events. Her recent writing about the cis state left me with a lot to think about.
Rebecca Hussey’s newsletter, Reading Indie is always full of fascinating books, and I enjoy reading her thoughts on them. A recent favorite was her newsletter on reading in translation. I added a bunch of books to my TBR.
A few weeks ago I mentioned Patricia Elzie’s newsletter, Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice, but I’ll mention it again because I look forward to it every Friday. A while back she wrote about snail mail. Reader, it changed me.
I’ve talked before about my prior career as a farmer. Sarah Mock writes an amazing newsletter, Big Team Farms, about agriculture, the US food system, and everything that’s wrong with it. Her April 9th newsletter made me want to immediately watch Minari, a movie about a Korean family starting a farm in Arkansas.
If you have any favorite newsletters, I’d love to hear about them. I’m always looking for solid recs—about anything, but especially about all things bookish and queer.
Finally, as always, a little bit of beauty to send you on your way: When I came across this paragraph in T. Fleischmann’s Time Is the Thing A Body Moves Through, I had to stop reading and take a picture. These words went straight into my heart.
That’s it until next week. Catch you then! In the meantime, you can always find me on Instagram and Goodreads.
Thank you so much for the shoutout! 💙