April Recommendations Roundup
Here’s what all the badass women are reading, watching and listening to this month! But first, how cool is this?
It’s an interactive museum in Kansas City, MO dedicated to children’s literature! You can read all about it here!
April is National Poetry Month so it’s only fitting that we have a newly released collection from some of our nation’s most accomplished poets. The collection is published in association with the Library of Congress and edited by Poet Laureate of the United States, Ada Limon. You can read more about it and get your copy here.
Last week’s bookish podcast newsletter inspired a lot of great new (to me) (non-bookish) podcast recommendations sent by our readers! I’ve got four podcast recommendations for you, eight recent fiction and nonfiction releases (including one with a cover that promises, “Buy this book on Friday and be better at your job by Monday” !?!), and an “it’s about time” documentary.
MicroSkills is built on one core, easy-to-learn principle: every big goal, complicated task, healthy habit, and, yes, even what we think of as character traits, can be broken down into small, learnable, skills that can be practiced, and incorporated real-time. We call these: MicroSkills. The authors are award winning physicians, educators, and mentors. The cover promises, “Buy this book on Friday and be better at your job by Monday”! I’m thinking it would make a great graduation gift! You can read more and get your copy here.
Growing up in a deeply evangelical family in the Midwest in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Sarah McCammon was strictly taught to fear God, obey him, and not question the faith. But through it all, she was increasingly plagued by fears and deep questions as the belief system she'd been carefully taught clashed with her expanding understanding of the outside world. After spending her early adult life striving to make sense of an unraveling worldview, by her 30s, she found herself face-to-face with it once again as she covered the Trump campaign for NPR, where she witnessed first-hand the power and influence that evangelical Christian beliefs held on the political right. The Exvangelicals is the story of the people who make up this generational tipping point, including Sarah herself. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this is the first definitive book that names and describes the post-evangelical movement: identifying its origins, telling the stories of its members, and examining its vast cultural, social, and political impact. You can read more and get your copy here.
Julia Stephen, Clara Miller, and Aurelia Plath were fascinating women in their own rights, and their relationships with their daughters were exceptional; they profoundly influenced the writers’ lives, literature, and attitude to feminism. This book charts the complex, often contradictory, bond between these mothers and daughters. Too often in the past Virginia Wolfe, Agatha Christie and Sylvia Plath have been defined by their lovers, this book redresses the balance by focusing on their formative affinity with their mothers. Drawing on previously unpublished original sources from archives around the world and talking to family and friends of the women this book offers a new perspective on these iconic authors. You can read more and get your copy here.
Most Enneagram books focus on stroking ego rather than challenging it. Elizabeth Orr’s The Unfiltered Enneagram offers practical strategies for liberating yourself from your own garbage. It’s a humorous, no-frills reckoning with our shadow side—the ways we cope with stress or fear—that unlocks the life-changing wisdom of this popular personality typology system. Readers will discover that courageously and comically acknowledging the worst attributes of their Enneagram Type can bring out the best in themselves. Filled with laugh-out-loud descriptions, sobering truths, and inspiring prompts, each chapter is an under-the-rug look at the nine Enneagram Personality Types. You can read more and get your copy here.
When her new husband joins an elite Army unit, Simone Gorrindo is uprooted from New York City and dropped into Columbus, Georgia. With her husband frequently deployed, Simone is left to find her place in this new world, alone—until she meets the wives. Gorrindo gives us an intimate look into the inner lives of a remarkable group of women and a tender, unflinching portrait of a marriage. A love story, an unforgettable coming-of-age tale, and a bracing tour of the intractable divisions that plague our country today. You can read more and get your copy here.
These next two authors are “must reads” for me – I finished each of these books in two days!
When Hazel Sharp, daughter of Mirror Lake’s longtime local detective, unexpectedly inherits her childhood home, she’s warily drawn back to the town—and people—she left behind almost a decade earlier. But Hazel’s not the only relic of the past to return: a drought has descended on the region, and as the water level in the lake drops, long-hidden secrets begin to emerge…including evidence that may help finally explain the mystery of her mother’s disappearance. You can read more and get your copy here.
I had an early copy of this one – it comes out on Tuesday.
For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. As young girls they were rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother, Miss Fairchild, on an idyllic farming estate and given an elusive second chance at a happy family life. But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild and thought they were free. Even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects? You can read more and get your copy here.
Here are three podcasts worth checking out…
Long before Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese were shattering records and making national headlines, there was the 2007 Rutgers team. The New Jersey players had a Cinderella season, powering their way to the Final Four in an extraordinary triumph. But instead of being celebrated, the young women were attacked – dismissed and belittled in an infamous on-air slur by the popular radio host Don Imus. Check out this two-part episode here.
Chameleon: The Michigan Plot focuses on the attempted kidnapping of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Hosted by journalists Ken Bensinger and Jessica Garrison, it centers on one big question: Were the 14 men accused of participating in the conspiracy masterminds of a credible domestic terrorist plot or just a group of hyped-up stoners that talked too much? You can check it out here.
Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Study podcast episode on Moms for Liberty is an important listen for all of us who care about books! And education! And democracy! I can’t say it any better than Anne – here’ s her intro to the episode: Moms for Liberty sucks. I’m not going to even try to soften that statement, because it’s true: they’re an ideologically regressive organization that is wielding the idea of “parental rights” to censor books, teachers, and instructional materials. They make it much, much harder for educators to do their jobs — and many of the people most involved don’t even have kids in public schools. You can listen to it here.
Girls State on AppleTV follows 500 high school girls from all across Missouri as they come together for a week and explore what American democracy would look like in the hands of teenage girls as they navigate an immersive experiment to build a government from the ground up. You can watch the trailer here. And what makes an “it’s about time!” show? HBO released a Boys State documentary in 2020!
PSA: About a hundred years ago I attended Girls State in my home state of Alabama; two years ago, my daughter attended Girls State in Virginia. I’m a big fan of the program – and if you have a daughter who is in high school ask your school counselor about how she can apply.