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Aug 7, 20203 min read

Friday Book Debrief Vol 35

Every week we’re sharing what our some of our writers are currently reading.


For all of our US readers, we now have our own Bookshop! You can find the full list of the below books here and with every purchase you will be helping local independent bookstores! If you do not live in the US please support your local independent stores, lots are now doing local deliveries and they need your help more then ever in these uncertain times. - ❤️



Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow (Author). The Book Slut Friday book debrief. thebookslut book reviews. Fans of Girl, Interrupted, Thirteen Reasons Why, and All the Bright Places will love this New York Times bestseller. "A haunting, beautiful, and necessary book that will stay with you long after you've read the last page."--Nicola Yoon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything, Everything and The Sun Is Also a Star Charlotte Davis is in pieces. At seventeen she's already lost more than most people do in a lifetime. But she's learned how to forget. The broken glass washes away the sorrow until there is nothing but calm. You don't have to think about your father and the river. Your best friend, who is gone forever. Or your mother, who has nothing left to give you. Every new scar hardens Charlie's heart just a little more, yet it still hurts so much. It hurts enough to not care anymore, which is sometimes what has to happen before you can find your way back from the edge. A deeply moving portrait of a girl in a world that owes her nothing, and has taken so much, and the journey she undergoes to put herself back together. Kathleen Glasgow's debut is heartbreakingly real and unflinchingly honest. It's a story you won't be able to look away from. "Girl, Interrupted meets Speak."--Refinery29.com "A dark yet powerful read."--Paste Magazine "One of the most affecting novels we have read."--Goop.com "Breathtaking and beautifully written."--Bustle "Intimate and gritty."--The Irish Times And don't miss Kathleen Glasgow's newest novel How to Make Friends with the Dark, which Karen M. McManus, the New York Times bestselling author of One of Us Is Lying, calls "rare and powerful." Product Details Price $10.99 $10.11 Publisher Ember Publish Date April 10, 2018 Pages 432 Dimensions 5.5 X 0.9 X 8.25 inches | 0.8 pounds Language English Type Paperback EAN/UPC 9781101934746 BISAC Categories: Social Themes - Physical & Emotional Abuse (see also Social Themes - Sexual Girls & Women Social Themes - Emotions & Feelings

Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow - Mel

Charlie is found barely alive and put into a ward for young women struggling with various forms of self-harm. Slowly the fog lifts and she remembers, and reveals, more about how she ended up in her present reality.


 

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (Author). The Book Slut Friday debrief. thebookslut. #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick! "Bennett's tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it's especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison's 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye." --Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal "A story of absolute, universal timelessness ...For any era, it's an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it's piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be...." - Entertainment Weekly From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins. As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise. Product Details Price $27.00 $24.84 Publisher Riverhead Books Publish Date June 02, 2020 Pages 352 Dimensions 6.2 X 1.2 X 9.3 inches | 1.22 pounds Language English Type Hardcover EAN/UPC 9780525536291 BISAC Categories: Women Literary Coming of Age

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett - Maggie

THIS BOOK IS AMAZING OMG. SO MANY TOPICS OF DISCUSSION. I LOVE IT.



 

No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram by Sarah Frier (Author). The Book Slut book reviews, thebookslut Friday debrief "A sequel to The Social Network" --The New York Times "Deeply reported and beautifully written" --Nick Bilton, Vanity Fair reporter Award-winning reporter Sarah Frier reveals the never-before-told story of how Instagram became the most culturally defining app of the decade. In 2010, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger released a photo-sharing app called Instagram, with one simple but irresistible feature: it would make anything you captured through your phone look more beautiful. The cofounders started to cultivate a community of photographers and artisans around the app, but it quickly went mainstream. In less than two years, it caught Facebook's attention: Mark Zuckerberg bought the company for a historic $1 billion when Instagram was just 13 employees. That might have been the end of a classic success story. But the cofounders stayed on, trying to maintain Instagram's beauty, brand, and cachet, considering their app a separate company within the social networking giant. They urged their employees to make changes only when necessary, resisting Facebook's grow-at-all-costs philosophy in favor of a strategy that highlighted creativity and celebrity. Just as Instagram was about to reach 1 billion users, Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg--once supportive of the founders' autonomy--began to feel threatened by Instagram's success. At its heart, No Filter is a human story, as Sarah Frier uncovers how the company's decisions have fundamentally changed how we interact with the world around us. Frier draws on unprecedented exclusive access--from the founders of Instagram, as well as employees, executives, and competitors; Anna Wintour of Vogue; Kris Jenner of the Kardashian-Jenner empire; and a plethora of influencers, from fashionistas with millions of followers to owners of famous dogs worldwide--to show how Instagram has fundamentally changed the way we shop, eat, travel, and communicate, all while fighting to preserve the values which contributed to the company's success. No Filter examines how Instagram's dominance acts as lens into our society today, highlighting our fraught relationship with technology, our desire for perfection, and the battle within tech for its most valuable commodity: our attention. Product Details Price $28.00 $25.76 Publisher Simon & Schuster Publish Date April 14, 2020 Pages 352 Dimensions 6.3 X 1.2 X 9.3 inches | 1.1 pounds Language English Type Hardcover EAN/UPC 9781982126803 BISAC Categories: Entrepreneurship Corporate & Business History - General

No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram by Sarah Frier - Jessica


The real world is stranger than fiction at the moment, so I'm compelled to explore more about the things that rule our reality. Frier interviewed hundreds of people involved in the rise of everybody's favourite social network for this honest account, and it's a fascinating, in-depth read so far.



 

The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta (Author). The Book Slut book reviews, thebooksglut Friday debrief. A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book for 2011 The New York Times bestseller now in paperback--A thought-provoking engrossing novel about love, connection, and loss from the author of The Abstinence Teacher and Little Children What if your life was upended in an instant? What if your spouse or your child disappeared right in front of your eyes? Was it the Rapture or something even more difficult to explain? How would you rebuild your life in the wake of such a devastating event? These are the questions confronting the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, a formerly comfortable suburban community that lost over a hundred people in the Sudden Departure. Kevin Garvey, the new mayor, wants to move forward, to bring a sense of renewed hope and purpose to his traumatized neighbors, even as his own family disintegrates. His wife, Laurie, has left him to enlist in the Guilty Remnant, a homegrown cult whose members take a vow of silence but haunt the town's streets as living reminders of God's judgment. His son, Tom, is gone, too, dropping out of college to follow a crooked prophet who calls himself Holy Wayne. Only his teenaged daughter, Jill, remains, and she's definitely not the sweet A student she used to be. Through the prism of a single family, Perrotta illuminates a familiar America made strange by grief and apocalyptic anxiety. Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers is a powerful and deeply moving book about regular people struggling to hold onto a belief in their futures. Product Details Price $16.99 $15.63 Publisher St. Martin's Griffin Publish Date May 22, 2012 Pages 355 Dimensions 5.52 X 1.03 X 8.24 inches | 0.73 pounds Language English Type Paperback EAN/UPC 9780312363550 BISAC Categories: Literary Science Fiction - General

The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta - Melissa


At first I didn't think I'd be into this dystopian idea of a large group of the population up and disappearing one day, but that's really not what the story is focused on. It plays a big part, but it's not the entire basis of the book. I'm really enjoying this one so far - and can't wait to watch the show on HBO once I finish!

 

Heavy: An American Memoir Kiese Laymon (Author). The Book Slut book reviews. thebookslut Friday debrief. *Named a Best Book of 2018 by the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly, Buzzfeed (Nonfiction), The Undefeated, Library Journal (Biography/Memoirs), The Washington Post (Nonfiction), Southern Living (Southern), Entertainment Weekly, and The New York Times Critics* In this powerful, provocative, and universally lauded memoir--winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and finalist for the Kirkus Prize--genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon "provocatively meditates on his trauma growing up as a black man, and in turn crafts an essential polemic against American moral rot" (Entertainment Weekly). In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. Heavy is a "gorgeous, gutting...generous" (The New York Times) memoir that combines personal stories with piercing intellect to reflect both on the strife of American society and on Laymon's experiences with abuse. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, he asks us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free. "A book for people who appreciated Roxane Gay's memoir Hunger" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family through years of haunting implosions and long reverberations. "You won't be able to put this memoir] down...It is packed with reminders of how black dreams get skewed and deferred, yet are also pregnant with the possibility that a kind of redemption may lie in intimate grappling with black realities" (The Atlantic). Product Details Price $16.00 $14.72 Publisher Scribner Book Company Publish Date March 05, 2019 Pages 256 Dimensions 5.4 X 0.6 X 8.4 inches | 0.7 pounds Language English Type Paperback EAN/UPC 9781501125669 BISAC Categories: Personal Memoirs Cultural, Ethnic & Regional - General Ethnic Studies - African American Studies

Heavy by Kiese Laymon - Nikki

From the weight of being born Black to the complex relationship between weight and body image, Kiese Laymon explores the nuances of the titular word Heavy in his lyrical, deeply affecting memoir. I'm so glad this hold finally came in from the library.

 

Mouthful of Birds: Stories by Samanta Schweblin (Author). The Book Slut book reviews, thebooksglut Friday debrief, "Superb" -- Vogue "What makes Schweblin so startling as a writer, however, what makes her rare and important, is that she is impelled not by mere talent or ambition but by vision." -- New York Times A powerful, eerily unsettling story collection from a major international literary star. The brilliant stories in Mouthful of Birds burrow their way into your psyche and don't let go. Samanta Schweblin haunts and mesmerizes in this extraordinary collection featuring women on the edge, men turned upside down, the natural world at odds with reality. We think life is one way, but often, it's not -- our expectations for how people act, love, fear can all be upended. Each character in Mouthful of Birds must contend with the unexpected, whether a family coming apart at the seams or a child transforming or a ghostly hellscape or a murder. Schweblin's stories have the feel of a sleepless night, where every shadow and bump in the dark take on huge implications, leaving your pulse racing, and the line between the real and the strange blurs. Product Details Price $16.00 $14.72 Publisher Riverhead Books Publish Date January 07, 2020 Pages 240 Dimensions 5.1 X 0.7 X 8.1 inches | 0.4 pounds Language English Type Paperback EAN/UPC 9780399184635 BISAC Categories: General Literary

Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin - Marian

I am about three stories into reading Samanta Schweblin's Mouthful of Birds and am utterly blown away by this magnificent book. The surreal stories written in pitch-perfect prose have zingers of endings. I cannot believe it took me this long to read Schweblin's work!

 

The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi (Author) The Book Slut book reviews, thebookslut Friday debrief "Electrifying." -- O Magazine Named one of the year's most anticipated books by The New York Times, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, BuzzFeed, Refinery29, and more What does it mean for a family to lose a child they never really knew? One afternoon, in a town in southeastern Nigeria, a mother opens her front door to discover her son's body, wrapped in colorful fabric, at her feet. What follows is the tumultuous, heart-wrenching story of one family's struggle to understand a child whose spirit is both gentle and mysterious. Raised by a distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts, moments of disconnection between self and surroundings. As adolescence gives way to adulthood, Vivek finds solace in friendships with the warm, boisterous daughters of the Nigerwives, foreign-born women married to Nigerian men. But Vivek's closest bond is with Osita, the worldly, high-spirited cousin whose teasing confidence masks a guarded private life. As their relationship deepens--and Osita struggles to understand Vivek's escalating crisis--the mystery gives way to a heart-stopping act of violence in a moment of exhilarating freedom. Propulsively readable, teeming with unforgettable characters, The Death of Vivek Oji is a novel of family and friendship that challenges expectations--a dramatic story of loss and transcendence that will move every reader. Product Details Price $27.00 $24.84 Publisher Riverhead Books Publish Date August 04, 2020 Pages 256 Dimensions 5.7 X 0.9 X 8.5 inches | 0.8 pounds Language English Type Hardcover EAN/UPC 9780525541608 BISAC Categories: Family Life - General Literary Coming of Age

The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi - Karen

This is my first Emezi and I am floored by the writing. My heart has been shredded to pieces and I'm only about 20% of the way into this book. We follow the life and reckoning after the death of Vivek Oji. I truly love when a writer gives so much context between the lines and gives their characters a chance to show us their story so this book has been my reading dream. Highly recommend that you check this one out.

 

The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) by Colson Whitehead (Author) The Book Slut book reviews, thebooksglut Friday debrief, WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR Time, Esquire, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Slate, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Vox, Variety, Christian Science Monitor, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Dallas Morning News, Literary Hub, BuzzFeed, The New York Public Library NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 10 BEST FICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 2020 In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood's only salvation is his friendship with fellow "delinquent" Turner, which deepens despite Turner's conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for 111 years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers. Product Details Price $24.95 $22.95 Publisher Doubleday Books Publish Date July 16, 2019 Pages 224 Dimensions 5.8 X 1.3 X 8.3 inches | 0.9 pounds Language English Type Hardcover EAN/UPC 9780385537070 BISAC Categories: Historical - General Literary African American - General

Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead - Victoria

I finished this last night and it blew me to pieces. It's such a beautifully constructed novel, and it will make you FEEL.

 


The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante - Jessica Maria

As I recently posted on my Goodreads status: Nothing like reading Ferrante when the world makes you simmer with rage but also you’re filled with intense self-loathing.



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