Grab the Lapels

January Reads: The List

On the first day of the year, I laid out my 2018 reading goals. Here’s what’s on the list for January:

#1 Fat Fiction: I’ll be reading Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy. I talked my book club into picking this book!

Brief Description: “Self-proclaimed fat girl Willowdean Dickson . . . has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body.”

dumplin

#2 The Oldest Book Shelved on Goodreads: Your Name Here: ________ by Cris Mazza. I shelved this book on April 15, 2011.

Brief Description: “Forces readers to reexamine biases and consider the varying degrees of sexual harassment.”

your name here

#3 Newest Book Shelved on Goodreads: Daddy’s by Lindsay Hunter, which I shelved on December 28, 2017. The publisher had an end-of-the-year sale (dammit!).

Brief Description: “In this collection of slim southern Gothics, [Hunter] offers an exploration not of the human heart but of the spine, mixing sex, violence and love into a harrowing, head-spinning read.”

daddys
Fun fact: this book opens and reads like a calendar.

#4 Random Pick: A book sent to me by the owner of Shade Mountain Press, Kingdom of Women by Rosalie Morales Kearns.

Brief Description: “In a slightly alternate near-future, women are forming vigilante groups to wreak vengeance on rapists, child abusers, and murderers of women. In the midst of this turmoil is Averil Parnell, the world’s first female Catholic priest.”

kingdom of women.jpg

39 comments

        • I forgot we all got swimming goggles! Yes! Davis Schneiderman got soaked in his clothes, Lidia Yuknavitch wore a bathing suit and fishnets, and Cris Mazza, I think, agreed to stand near the pool. She’s a no-nonsense kind of lady, even though I know Davis takes his performance art dead serious.

          Like

          Reply

    • I know I got it at a reading. It was in this crazy studio space. All three authors had a water theme. There was Lidia Yuknavitch, Davis Schneiderman, and Cris Mazza. It’s entirely possibly I haven’t gotten to Mazza’s book because I bought multiple books that night. I can’t figure out which one to read when I buy a lot of books at once, so I read something else.

      Like

      Reply

    • According to Goodreads I have 345 books I “want to read,” but I don’t know how to make it specify books that I own (as opposed to the ones I’ve marked that are in libraries). I would argue the majority of them are ones I own.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  7. I love the idea of choosing both the oldest and newest books on your tbr – I’m already looking forward to finding out what they all are!
    My daughter read Dumplin’ last year. She liked it, but didn’t really tell me much about it. Julie Murphy was one of the authors she met in Dartmouth last year, along with Angie Thomas and Becky Albertalli. It sounds like a good one… I hope it is!
    Kingdom of Women also sounds promising.

    Like

    Reply

    • Murphy, Thomas, and Albertalli are the trifecta of YA authors right now. They’re so, so big. There’s also a guy named Adam SIlvera people like and talk about, but I don’t know much about him other than he has a forthcoming book he co-authored with Albertalli.

      I’m looking forward to Kingdom of Women as someone who was raised Catholic, lapsed, and now teaches at a Catholic college. There’s supposed to be a secret romance between the first female Catholic leader and some guy in this book. Spicy!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    • I first heard about it when I Googled new creepy books and found that very few women make the list. For some reason, I didn’t buy the book then, but I was sent a different book by Hunter to review when I first launched Grab the Lapels. So many small presses supported me right away!

      Like

      Reply

    • I was wondering if it would be similar to that one book that came out last year (I think?) that maybe you reviewed (I think?) about women taking over and killing men . . . except this one has the Catholic angle, which I’m excited about. I never even thought of the comparison to Dietland, but you may be right!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  11. Can’t wait to hear what you think of Dumplin’. It came out when I was still ridding the fantasy high, but as 2017 closed, I ended up picking up more contemporaries. I now need to go back and pick up all the contemporaries I missed out on. Happy reading!

    Like

    Reply

  13. This should be a fun month. Be careful before extracting anything from the bottom of ye olde To Be Read shelf. You don’t want the Leaning Tower of Literature to fall on you!

    Like

    Reply

  14. Ooooo I’m super excited that you are reading Dumplin’! I’ve had my eye on it for a while now. Actually I’m pretty sure you already read and reviewed it, so I’ll just head over there and see what you thought. My fingers are crossed that you gave it a stamp of approval 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Insert 2 Cents Here: