Staff Recommendations, Week of July 23, 2024

 

Aaaand we're back again with a roundup of the Boswellian's favorite releases of the week. Check out what we've been reading, and you might just find another favorite for your own list.

Jason Kennedy kicks it off with Nicked, a new horror novel by M T Anderson. Jason says: "Okay, here's the opening: a priest, a thief, and a dog-man go on a job to steal the bones of a saint. Stop me, have you heard of this one? Why steal bones of a saint? The city of Bari feels like it is losing out to other cities with Christian relics that have boosted their tourism prospects. The crew finds out (from a monk’s dream, no less) that the bones of St. Nicholas (ho-ho-ho) are in the city of Myra. Obviously, they must go rescue them from abandonment and bring them to Bari. At times hilarious, shocking, thrilling, and insightful, M.T. Anderson delivers an amazing adventure like none I've read recently."

Next we go to Daniel Goldin for his take on Guilty Creatures: Sex, God, and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida by Mikita Brottman. Daniel says: "Mike, Denise, Brian, and Kathy grew up in the Southern Baptist tradition in Tallahassee – sports focused, no sex before marriage, and certainly no drugs. But their marriages and subsequent freedoms from their families’ restrictions led to a sort of delayed Rumspringa. When it came time for Mike and Kathy to settle down, their spouses Denise and Brian kept partying, a bond that led to an extramarital affair. And then Mike died in a tragic fishing accident. There were rumors, but no evidence. Guilty Creatures is a little more straightforward true crime than I normally read, but there is cultural context here too, with a culture that regards divorce as almost worse than murder (at least if you got caught) and an example of how with regained piety, you could explain away almost anything.  I love the image of the earnest subdivisions set amidst the swampy alligator ponds, an image that matches not just the place, but the people living there."

And we've got recommendations from two Rachels for Gravity Lost, the second Ambit's Run space opera by LM Sagas. First, from Rachel Copeland: "Trouble once again finds the crew of the good ship Ambit in this rip-roaring second installment from LM Sagas. Sagas serves up a tasty soup of sci-fi adventure ingredients (heists, hot exits, haunting locales) that's spiced just right (tea, teasing, tears) that it's just what this found family trope lover could ask for. And how dare Sagas give us more to love this time around? I found myself instantly falling for brand-new characters with one line of dialogue, enthusiastically rooting for a morally questionable character, and cheering on my favorite crew of idiots as they rally to avert disaster. It's really rude when authors write books that make you feel things and then leave you wanting more - please, kind author, may I have another serving?"

And this book comes with one last legacy rec from former Boswellian Rachel Ross, who adds: "The crew of The Ambit is back with a bang in this follow-up to Sagas’ explosive debut, Cascade Failure. While everyone may still be in one piece following the tumultuous escapades of the first book, they’re all also dealing with the fallout. Bedrock beliefs have been cracked, trauma has been sustained, and systemic rot has been exposed. This entry is chock full of my favorite space western tropes: a bar fight! A haunted (?) derelict spaceship! Murphy’s Law in full effect! And most importantly, the greatest found family in the Spiral. Gravity Lost is brimming with humor, unabashed love, white knuckle peril, compulsively readable action, and repeated (borderline gleeful?) emotional gut punches. Through it all, Sagas shows us that true family isn’t just the people you’d die for, it’s also the people you would choose to live for."

And there's one paperback pick to add to the mix this week. That's The English Experience by Julie Schumacher, which gets nods from Rachel C and Daniel. First, from Rachel: "When professionally tired English department chair Jason Fitger is pressganged into chaperoning the idiotically named Experience: Abroad winterim program, it's just another indignity in a long career of them. Resigned to revisiting a place he never liked in the first place (England, ironically), it's up to Fitger to keep eleven youths alive and academically engaged for three whole weeks, even if it kills him. The latest from Schumacher completes a trilogy focusing on Fitger and his foibles, but it holds up on its own as an exploration of a specific undergrad experience: the study abroad program. And let me tell you, it's painfully, hilariously accurate. The tours, the essays, the misuse of grammar and idioms, the students ranging from distracted to drunk to far too intense - if you were lucky (or unlucky) enough to experience a study abroad program, whether as a student or teacher, The English Experience will have you howling."

Daniel adds: "For those of you who loved Dear Committee Members, the classic epistolary novel told in letters of recommendation, beleaguered English Professor Fitger of the chronically underfunded Payne University is back, and this time, he’s been asked to lead a study abroad program in England. There’s a reason he was the director’s last choice! And while we don’t have the letters this time, we do get to read the students’ daily assignments, which tend towards the offbeat, perhaps due to one student’s offhand comment to classmates that Fitger likes his papers experimental. At equal turns poignant and hilarious, The English Experience shows that despite ridiculous odds, we will do whatever it takes for human connection."

Those are our picks of the week! We'll be back again with more books in 7ish days. Until then, read on.