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Welcome to The Best of Book Riot, our daily round-up of what’s on offer across our site, newsletters, podcasts, and social channels. Not everything is for everyone, but there is something for everyone.
This month’s collection of book club picks include historical fiction set in pre-Civil War New Orleans, a translated South Korean novel, a memoir about leaving the Evangelical church and creating new community, a missing person mystery set on a reservation, historical fiction set in 1960s New York following the residents of a women’s hotel, a new mystery novel by the author of The Girl on the Train, a memoir by an Indigenous activist, a novel set over decades in England and Lagos inspired by Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, a darkly funny novel with a messy main character, and a dual timeline historical love story.
Follow four girlfriends in the Bronx as they contend with everyday life struggles with the support of their friends and self-care; an ex-yakuza member who now spends his day as a coupon-clipping househusband; and a Japanese gamer who experiences the joys of having a kitten for the first time.
As the end of the year approaches, are you realizing that you’re behind schedule on the 2024 Read Harder Challenge? Don’t worry, you still have time to catch up. One thing you may not know about Read Harder is that you can use the same book to complete multiple tasks. That means careful planners can read far fewer than 24 books and still complete the challenge in full.
In time, I began exploring the wider world of comic books, covering a wide variety of genres from superhero comics to horror. But I do have a fondness for the seeming simplicity of one to four-panel comics in the newspapers and webcomics for humor. I’m glad that Far Side is back and that Off the Mark is still bringing their twisted humor in single-panel comics.
For this list, I’ve put together my tribute to the funny pages. Most of the comics are short form comics, but a few are a little longer narratives.
In good news: there’s a bunch of new adaptations releasing in November for true crime and mystery fans! The tropes and subgenres in your viewing choices this month are vast: from a non-mystery novel that has a police procedural setting (I’ll explain), to an adaptation of a book series that already has previous adaptations with Morgan Freeman and Tyler Perry having played the titular character. Plus, there are options for theater watching and sofa-city viewing.
A note on the flavor of holiday sweatshirts you’ll find here: it leans heavy into Christmas, and that was not by design. I was able to find a couple of Thanksgiving sweatshirts but could not in 2+ hours of searching find any bookish sweatshirts for other holidays. There are plenty of awesome Hanukkah and Kwanzaa sweatshirts out there, don’t get me wrong! But none (that I could find) were of of a bookish variety.
As a missing-persons mystery set at a college campus, it promises a hint of dark academia. The story also includes coming-of-age themes as the protagonist, Aleeza, tries to navigate her first year at a Canadian university. As the story unfolds, you’ll get a taste of both an epistolary romance and a time loop twist. Think of that underrated gem of a movie, The Lake House, starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. They live in timelines two years apart, but correspond with each other through letters left in a mailbox at the same lake house.
November is Native American Heritage Month. These five new middle grade books by Native American and Indigenous Canadian authors explore various topics, from residential schools to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, in fiction and nonfiction formats. They’re all wonderful books.
So this year, whether you are making a homemade, traditional feast or planning on ordering takeout, I suggest reading a cooking romance. These culinary happily ever afters will get you into a cooking, or at least an eating, mood no matter what you have planned for Thanksgiving this year.
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