Obsessed With Trees

Amanda and Jenn discuss what to read after Where The Crawdad Sings, time travel fiction, challenging reads, and more in this week’s episode of Get Booked.

This episode is sponsored by the Read Harder Journal, The Liar’s Daughter by Megan Cooley Peterson, and Care/Of.

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Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (rec’d by Miranda)

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (rec’d by Miranda)

Questions

1. Hi, I was wondering if you had any recommendations for fun murder mystery novels that are well written and not too dark. I did not enjoy Gone Girl because it was too dark. I love Agatha Christie and have read a good portion of her novels. I am looking for new mysteries that are fun. I recently watched the movie “Clue” and something similar in book format would be great ☺️

-Kaitlin

2. Hello! I am hoping you’ll help me with some new book or series ideas for my husband, who is the type of person who will re-read (and re-listen) to the same books over and over… and over. He also tends to read book series geared towards younger readers. Being an elementary school teacher (currently teaching 6th grade), he likes to recommend & talk books with his students. His all-time favorites include Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, and just about everything by Rick Riordan. He’s also enjoyed Game of Thrones, The Iron Druid Chronicles, and the Scythe trilogy by Neal Shusterman. For stand-alone books, Dark Matter & Ready Player One are recent hits. He’s drawn towards multi-book series because of the rich world-building and loves books seeped in mythology.
Plot twist! He also loves U.S. history, particularly about the gold rush and the american revolution. I think he might be into a fantasy adventure with a historical slant. Alexander Hamilton with a talking dog sidekick in a time machine saving the world? He’d probably read that! I’d love to see him continue to explore new worlds, characters, and ideas so the plan is to gift him some new books for the holidays. Thank you so much in advance!
-Katie

3. Hi there!
Every Christmas I give each of my kids a book that reflects something going on in their lives during the past year. Over the years the collection of books for each child has provided great memories of their interests, accomplishments and dreams. When they were younger it was easier to find books about learning to ride a bike, a cookbook about cakes, or a collection of poems about nature. As they have gotten older, their interests have naturally become more narrowed and specific. I’m hoping you can help me find a book for my oldest daughter, who is 19. This past year she completed an internship where she cared for and trained carnivores at a wildlife park and breeding program. She worked daily feeding and tending to lions, tigers, bears and cheetahs. It was amazing to see her growth over the period of the internship, I’ve never seen her more happy, confident or driven. I’d love to find a book for her about a person who has a similar positive experience with wild animals. I’m open to non-fiction or fiction but would mostly hope for something that continues to inspire her as she works toward her college degree in zoology and on to a career in this field. I have done some searching on my own but often recommendations come back for veterinary medicine and I’m hoping for something more specifically related to care and conservation of animals.
Thank you in advance for your recommendations!

-Heather

4. I want to get my mom a book her birthday. She works as a director at a basketball camp and one of her jobs is mentoring and organizing the counsellors. She likes self-help type books and I want to find one that’s about leadership in a summer camp or basketball setting, or about mentoring and working with teenagers or young adults. I love your podcast and listen to it every week!

-Shannon

5. Hi,

I’m looking for a recommendation after finishing reading “Where the crawdads sing” by Delia Owens. I absolutely loved this book, which surprised me as I usually read more plot driven books and don’t usually like descriptions like ” beautiful prose”, “lyrical” and so on. I found myself completely absorbed in the story, loved the language and even underlined some of the sentences. Maybe it’s the introvert in me, but I loved that it didn’t contain too many characters, some I could root for, and most of, all the mother nature. The nature scenes were my favourites to read and get lost in. I am going on a backpacking trip to South America next month and looking for a good read. Can you please recommend something similar? Thanks so much!

-Kat

6. I recently enjoyed 11.22.63 and the Doomsday book and am looking for more good historical time travel fiction. Kindred is already on my to read list and I read the first Outlander book and found it a bit less consensual than I prefer my romances. Any suggestions for entertaining historical time travel books?

-Shaina

7. Each year, I like to tackle a big, scary book—not scary in the sense that the book is frightening (though I’m not opposed to that), more that the book’s physical weight, complexity, and/or subject matter tend to intimidate readers. I’ve previously read Infinite Jest, East of Eden, A Little Life, The Goldfinch, Ulysses, Moby-Dick, etc. I’ve also read shorter work that would qualify, like Joanna Russ’s Female Man. There are a lot of lists on the Internet of the most difficult books, but those lists are largely white and male and I’m looking for something that isn’t. I know I could pick up War and Peace (and probably should read it eventually) but I really want to read as few books by white dudes in 2018 as possible. Can you point me in the direction of heady, challenging doorstopper fiction that meets this criteria? I’m not adverse to any particular genre, I just want to dig into a really difficult book.

Thanks in advance!

-Meredith

Books Discussed

Death by Dumpling by Vivien Chien

Murder in G Major by Alexia Gordon (tw: ableist language and slurs around mental health)

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

American Hippo by Sarah Gailey

Steve and Me by Terri Irwin

The Daily Coyote by Shreve Stockton

Sum it Up by Pat Summit

Wolfpack by Abby Wambach

Deep Creek by Pam Houston

The Overstory by Richard Powers (tw: suicide)

A Murder in Time by Julie McElwain

Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko (tw: for everything)