July’s Simply Held Fiction Picks

Have you joined Simply Held? If not, you’re missing out! Four times a year, we choose fiction titles for Simply Held members to read from multiple categories: Diverse Debuts, Graphic Novel, Historical Fiction, International Fiction, Juvenile Fiction, Out of This World, Overcoming Adversity, Rainbow Reads, Stranger Things, and Young Adult. Join Simply Held to have any of the new picks automatically put on hold for you.

Below you will find information provided by the publishers and authors on the titles we have picked for April.

Diverse Debuts:

Diverse Debuts: Debut fiction novel by a BIPOC author.

Your Driver is Waiting by Priya Guns

Damani is tired. Her father just died on the job at a fast-food joint, and now she lives paycheck to paycheck in a basement, caring for her mom and driving for an app that is constantly cutting her take. The city is roiling in protests–everybody’s in solidarity with somebody–but while she keeps hearing that they’re fighting for change on behalf of people like her, she literally can’t afford to pay attention.

Then she gives a ride to Jolene (five stars, obviously). Jolene seems like she could be the perfect girlfriend–attentive, attractive, an ally–and their chemistry is off the charts. Jolene’s done the reading, she goes to every protest, and she says all the right things. So maybe Damani can look past the one thing that’s holding her back: she’s never dated anyone with money before, not to mention a white girl with money. But just as their romance intensifies and Damani finally lets her guard down, Jolene does something unforgivable, setting off an explosive chain of events.

A wild, one-sitting read brimming with dark comedy, and piercing social commentary and announcing Priya Guns’s feverishly original voice, Your Driver Is Waiting is a crackling send-up of our culture of modern alienation.

This title is also available as a Libby eBook.

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Graphic Novel:

Graphic Novel: Fiction novel for adults of any subgenre with diverse characters depicted by color illustrations, sketches, and photographs.

Ephemera: A Memoir by Briana Loewinsohn

A debut graphic novel that poignantly blends memoir, magic realism, and graphic medicine.
Ephemera is a poetic and dreamlike take on a graphic memoir set in a garden, a forest, and a greenhouse. The story drifts among a grown woman, her early memories as a child, and the gossamer existence of her mother. A lyrical entry in the field of graphic medicine, Ephemera is a story about a daughter trying to relate to a parent who struggles with mental illness. Gorgeously illustrated in a painted palette of warmy, earthy tones, it is a quiet book of isolation, plants, confusion, acceptance, and the fog of childhood. Loewinsohn’s debut book is an aching, meditative twist on autobiography, infusing the genre with an ethereal fusion of memory and imagination.

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Historical Fiction:

Historical Fiction: Historical fiction novel written by a BIPOC author with BIPOC main character(s).

Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Hosein

From an unforgettable new voice in Caribbean literature, a sweeping story of two families colliding in 1940s Trinidad—and a chilling mystery that shows how interconnected their lives truly are

Trinidad in the 1940s, nearing the end of American occupation and British colonialism. On a hill overlooking Bell Village sits the Changoor farm, where Dalton and Marlee Changoor live in luxury unrecognizable to those who reside in the farm’s shadow. Down below is the Barrack, a ramshackle building of wood and tin, divided into rooms occupied by whole families. Among these families are the Saroops—Hans, Shweta, and their son, Krishna, all three born of the barracks. Theirs are hard lives of backbreaking work, grinding poverty, devotion to faith, and a battle against nature and a social structure designed to keep them where they are.

But when Dalton goes missing and Marlee’s safety is compromised, farmhand Hans is lured by the promise of a handsome stipend to move to the farm as a watchman. As the mystery of Dalton’s disappearance unfolds, the lives of the wealthy couple and those who live in the barracks below become insidiously entwined, their community changed forever and in shocking ways.

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International Fiction:

International Fiction: Fiction novel originally written in another language with BIPOC main character(s).

How to Turn into a Bird by María José Ferrada, translated by Elizabeth Bryer

After years of hard work in a factory outside of Santiago, Chile, Ramón accepts a peculiar job: to look after a Coca-Cola billboard located by the highway. And it doesn’t take long for Ramón to make an even more peculiar decision: to make the billboard his new home.

Twelve-year-old Miguel is enchanted by his uncle’s unusual living arrangement, but the neighborhood is buzzing with gossip, declaring Ramón a madman bringing shame to the community. As he visits his uncle in a perch above it all, Miguel comes to see a different perspective, and finds himself wondering what he believes—has his uncle lost his mind, as everyone says? Is madness—and the need for freedom—contagious? Or is Ramón the only one who can see things as they really are, finding a deeper meaning in a life they can’t understand from the ground?

When a local boy disappears, tensions erupt and forgotten memories come to the surface. And Miguel, no longer perched in the billboard with his uncle, witnesses the reality on the ground: a society that, in the name of peace, is not afraid to use violence.With sharp humor and a deep understanding of a child’s mind, How to Turn Into a Bird is a powerful tale of coming of age, loss of innocence, and shifting perspectives that asks us: how far outside of our lives must we go to really see things clearly?

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Juvenile Fiction:

Juvenile Fiction: Fiction chapter book with diversity, equity, or inclusion subject matter written for children 7-11

Sincerely Sicily by Tamika Burgess

Sicily Jordan’s worst nightmare has come true! She’s been enrolled in a new school, with zero of her friends and stuck wearing a fashion catastrophe of a uniform. But however bad Sicily thought sixth grade was going to be, it only gets worse when she does her class presentation.

While all her classmates breezed through theirs, Sicily is bombarded with questions on how she can be both Black and Panamanian. She wants people to understand, but it doesn’t feel like anyone is ready to listen—first at school and then at home. Because when her abuela starts talking mess about her braids, Sicily’s the only one whose heart is being crumpled for a second time.

Staying quiet may no longer be an option, but that doesn’t mean Sicily has the words to show the world just what it means to be a proud Black Panamanian either. Even though she hasn’t written in her journal since her abuelo passed, it’s time to pick up her pen again—but will it be enough to prove to herself and everyone else exactly who she is?

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Out of this World:

Out of this World: Science fiction novel written by a BIPOC author with BIPOC main character(s).

The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi

Moses Ose Utomi’s debut novella, The Lies of the Ajungo, follows one boy’s epic quest to bring water back to his city and save his mother’s life. Prepare to enter the Forever Desert.

They say there is no water in the City of Lies. They say there are no heroes in the City of Lies. They say there are no friends beyond the City of Lies. But would you believe what they say in the City of Lies?

In the City of Lies, they cut out your tongue when you turn thirteen, to appease the terrifying Ajungo Empire and make sure it continues sending water. Tutu will be thirteen in three days, but his parched mother won’t last that long. So Tutu goes to his oba and makes a deal: she provides water for his mother, and in exchange he will travel out into the desert and bring back water for the city. Thus begins Tutu’s quest for the salvation of his mother, his city, and himself.

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Overcoming Adversity:

Overcoming Adversity: Fiction novel with diversity, equitEny, or inclusion subject matter written for people 14 and older.

Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin

There are the goodbyes and then the fishing out of the bodies—everything in between is speculation.

After the last American troops leave Vietnam, siblings Anh, Minh, and Thanh journey to Hong Kong with the promise that their parents and younger siblings will soon follow. But when tragedy strikes, the three children are left orphaned, and sixteen-year-old Anh becomes the caretaker for her two younger brothers overnight.

In the years that follow, Anh and her brothers immigrate to the UK, living first in overcrowded camps and resettlement centers and then, later, in a modernizing London plagued by social inequality. Anh works in a factory to pay the bills. Minh loiters about with fellow high school dropouts. Thanh, the youngest, plays soccer with his friends after class. As they mature, each sibling reckons with survivor’s guilt, unmoored by their parents’ absence. And with every choice, their paths diverge further, until it’s unclear if love alone can keep them together.

Told through lyrical narrative threads, historical research, voices from lost family, and notes by an unnamed narrator determined to chart these siblings’ fates, Wandering Souls captures the lives of a family marked by loss yet relentless in the pursuit of a better future. With urgency and precision, it affirms that the most important stories are those we claim for ourselves, establishing Cecile Pin as a masterful new literary voice.

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Rainbow Reads:

Rainbow reads: Fiction novel with LGBTQ+ main character(s).

Endpapers by Jennifer Savran Kelly

A queer book conservator finds a mysterious old love letter, setting off a search for the author who wrote it and for a meaningful life beyond the binary in early-2000s New York City.

It’s 2003,and artist Dawn Levit is stuck. A bookbinder who works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she spends all day repairing old books but hasn’t created anything of her own in years. What’s more, although she doesn’t have a word for it yet, Dawn is genderqueer, and with a partner who wishes she were a man and a society that wants her to be a woman, she’s struggling to feel safe expressing herself. Dawn spends her free time scouting the city’s street art, hoping to find the inspiration that will break her artistic block—and time is of the essence, because she’s making her major gallery debut in six weeks and doesn’t have anything to show yet.

One day at work, Dawn discovers something hidden under the endpapers of an old book: the torn-off cover of a lesbian pulp novel from the 1950s, with an illustration of a woman looking into a mirror and seeing a man’s face. Even more intriguing is the queer love letter written on the back. Dawn becomes obsessed with tracking down the author of the letter, convinced the mysterious writer can help her find her place in the world. Her fixation only increases when her best friend, Jae, is injured in a hate crime for which Dawn feels responsible. But ultimately for Dawn, the trickiest puzzle to solve is how she truly wants to live her life.

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Stranger Things:

Stranger Things: Horror novel written by a BIPOC author with BIPOC main character(s).

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez

A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.

For Gaspar, the son, this maniacal cult is his destiny. As the Order tries to pull him into their evil, he and his father take flight, attempting to outrun a powerful clan that will do anything to ensure its own survival. But how far will Gaspar’s father go to protect his child? And can anyone escape their fate?

Moving back and forth in time, from London in the swinging 1960s to the brutal years of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, Our Share of Night is a novel like no other: a family story, a ghost story, a story of the occult and the supernatural, a book about the complexities of love and longing with queer subplots and themes.

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Young Adult Fiction:

Young Adult Fiction: Fiction chapter book with diversity, equity, or inclusion subject matter written for children 14 and older.

Chaos Theory by Nic Stone

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin delivers a gripping romance about two teens: a certified genius living with a diagnosed mental disorder and a politician’s son who is running from his own addiction and grief. Don’t miss this gut punch of a novel about mental health, loss, and discovering you are worthy of love.

Scars exist to remind us of what we’ve survived.

DETACHED
Since Shelbi enrolled at Windward Academy as a senior and won’t be there very long, she hasn’t bothered making friends. What her classmates don’t know about her can’t be used to hurt her—you know, like it did at her last school.

WASTED
Andy Criddle is not okay. At all.
He’s had far too much to drink.
Again. Which is bad.
And things are about to get worse.

When Shelbi sees Andy at his lowest, she can relate. So she doesn’t resist reaching out. And there’s no doubt their connection has them both seeing stars . . . but the closer they get, the more the past threatens to pull their universes apart.

This title is also available as a Libby eBook, Libby eAudiobook, in large print, and as a Playaway Audiobook.

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Ronan and the Endless Sea of Stars written by Rick Louis and illustrated by Lara Antal

Trigger warning for child loss.

It’s seldom that I read a book that leaves me in tears. Ronan and the Endless Sea of Stars written by Rick Louis and illustrated by Lara Antal emotionally devastated me and tore out my heart. This graphic novel memoir tells the story of one parent’s journey caring for his son with a terminal diagnosis. Rick Louis beautifully wrote this story about his life, while Lara Antal illustrated his words with sensitivity. The pallet of blues, whites, and blacks is breathtaking and tenderly adds to the story of the before, during, and after his son’s life.

Rick and Emily were overjoyed when she became pregnant. After their son Ronan was born and as his development progressed, they noticed a slight issue with his vision that necessitated a trip to the doctor. That visit led them down a rabbit hole of other doctors and ended with a devastating diagnosis for Ronan. Ronan has Tay-Sachs, an incurable neurological disorder. Rick and Emily have to deal with the practical issues of raising their son, while also paired with the emotional hurdles of loving their son under the shadow of their inevitable loss and his inevitable death. They are trapped in an impossible situation with very little positives.

This book was heartbreaking, yet told beautifully by a father destroyed by the loss of his young son. I strongly recommend this book (though have the tissues ready). While this story is sad, Rick also lightens his telling with comedy paired with gorgeous artwork. It’s full of warmth and heartbreak, sorrow and joy, as Rick discusses the importance of finding joy no matter how your life is at the moment.

What is Home, Mum? by Sabba Khan

“We must remember…
… race is a construct…
… class is a construct…
… gender is a construct.
Beneath it all we are quivering flesh.
Glistening in the sun.
Goose-pimpled in the moon.”
― Sabba Khan, What is Home, Mum?

Examining families across generations is a major theme present in Sabba Khan’s graphic memoir, What is Home, Mum? Khan explores the idea of where home is as she traces her life from childhood through to adulthood with back-and-forth breaks to different timelines, similar to how our memories track through time.

Khan is a second-generation Pakistani immigrant living in East London, juggling her contemporary British Asian life alongside the expectations set by her family. Khan’s parents were forced to move to the United Kingdom in the 1960s and build a brand new life for themselves. Both were the oldest children of the patriarchs, so they were expected to help family and friends with whatever they needed whenever they needed it. Their new lives in the United Kingdom were rife with struggles as they worked to preserve their culture and family bonds as immigrants. Khan picks up the story by examining her family’s British Pakistani diaspora experience and how her own life falls amid her family. Khan is so honest in her journey to find her truth. She is bravely curious and incredibly courageous in her self exploration and expression. Khan talks about a wide variety of topics and how they all interconnect to build a life.

This graphic memoir goes much deeper than I expected and I am so grateful for that. Khan begins by discussing the collective – her family as a whole. She outlines her ancestors, her heritage, and her native land that her family was forced to abandon. Through this, readers learn about the different relationships she has with various family members and how said relationships shaped her thoughts and beliefs. Khan talks about her emotions and constantly reexamines why she believes what she believes. What I enjoyed were her examinations of the cerebral and how that juxtaposed with the emotional. As she grows up throughout the book, Khan examines her family’s values and beliefs and how they match(or don’t match) society as a whole. The idea of the collective vs the individual is a core principle threading through her life. These complexities create issues for Khan as she intensely examines racism, gender, religion, class, and culture. Her identity is complex. Her journey to discovery is an intimate process that she allows readers to view with the understanding that everything is fluid.

Look Again: A Memoir by Elizabeth A. Trembley

‘Trauma can make truth hard to find.’ – Look Again: A Memoir  by Elizabeth A. Trembley

Trauma dominates Elizabeth A. Trembley’s graphic memoir, Look Again. She talks about the impact trauma has on your experiences, to the effect that what you swear is the truth may not be what actually happened.

While walking her dogs in the woods years ago, Elizabeth found a dead body. That traumatic, grief-stricken moment of utter confusion overwhelmed her so much that what she looked back at that time all she remembered was shattered images flashing through her mind. In an effort to process, Elizabeth relays, in this graphic memoir, six variations of that same event. Each variation changed when seen through different lenses at different points in her life. She acknowledges that her route to track down the truth was convoluted, much like what other trauma survivors experience in their lives.

This graphic memoir was very well written, smart, enlightening, while also managing to be funny and relatable. Readers are able to walk with Elizabeth through her life as she works through what happened that morning in the woods. How Elizabeth chooses to deal with her trauma is clearly reflected in her words and drawings. Readers see when she is finally able to examine why she behaved the way she did – in a sense, readers grow along with her as the story evolves.

This book shook me, as it had me thinking about events in my past and how my memories may be skewed. Her research into trauma was enlightening. Seeing how she was able to find some answers in her research, as well as how learning more opened up her mind, really impacted and made me want to do more research of my own. At the end of her book, the author has a list of selected resources that helped her learn about her experiences (I’ve already snagged a few to read myself!).

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

When I don’t know what to read, I check award lists. My latest read, Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, was the 2020 ALA Alex Award Winner and the 2020 Stonewall – Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award Honor Book. Maia is a gender queer author and illustrator who uses e/em/eir pronouns, an important decision e talks about in eir book. E also worked in libraries for ten years before becoming a freelance writer!

Gender Queer is not the first book e had ever written. In 2014, Maia wrote a comic of reading statistics that eir friends and colleagues loved, but felt that that would be the only autobiographical comic e would ever write. All e wanted people to know about them was those reading statistics and nothing else. Partly because e was still figuring out eir own self-identity.

This is e’s journey to self-identity, something e is clearly still working on at the end of the book. Maia discusses in sometimes graphic detail eir journey with graphic identity and sexuality, a journey that’s incredibly cathartic. E talks about everything from adolescent crushes to puberty to traditional gender rules. Maia wrote this book to help others who are struggling with gender identity to feel less alone, something that e struggled with growing up. This graphic memoir is heartfelt and painful to read at times, but a necessary read to understand what gender queer people work through on a daily basis.

This title is also available in the following format:

A Memoir Deluxe Edition was published in 2022 and you can find it through the library in the following formats:

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, and Steven Scott; art by Harmony Becker

“That remains part of the problem—that we don’t know the unpleasant aspects of American history…and therefore we don’t learn the lesson those chapters have to teach us. So we repeat them over and over again.”
― George Takei, They Called Us Enemy

They Called Us Enemy  by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, and Steven Scott, with art by Harmony Becker, is a gorgeously drawn and written story telling the story of George Takei’s childhood from within the walls of American concentration camps during World War II. As a result of his experiences and after-dinner discussions with his father, Takei’s foundational and life-long commitment to equal rights was born.

In 1942, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was shipped to one of ten relocation centers across the United States. On orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, over 127,000 people of Japanese descent were sent hundreds or thousands of miles from home to those relocation centers where they were held under armed guard for years. Four-year-old George Takei and his family were forced from their home in California to live in a total of two different relocation centers.

They Called Us Enemy is Takei’s first-hand account of his years trapped behind barbed wire, growing up under legalized racism. He wrestled with periods of joy and terror. His mother had to make many hard choices, one of which could tear their family apart. His father kept up his faith in democracy, taking leadership rules as a block manager at the camps. Takei uses his experiences in the internment camps to discuss what being an American means and who gets to decide whether you are one or not.

This book is also available in the following format:

“Shame is a cruel thing. It should rest on the perpetrators but they don’t carry it the way the victims do.”
― George Takei, They Called Us Enemy

For Justice: the Serge and Beate Klarsfeld Story by Pascal Bresson

“We bury our heads in the sand and pretend we’ve moved on.”
― Pascal Bresson, For Justice: The Serge & Beate Klarsfeld Story

Serge and Beate Klarsfeld are people whose lives have had a major impact in the world for more than five decades. In For Justice: The Serge & Beate Klarsfeld Story by Pascal Bresson and illustrated by Sylvan Dorange, readers learn more about Serge & Beate Klarsfeld, famed husband and wife team of Nazi hunters who spent over five decades seeking justice. Serge and Beate frequently say that they traded their lives for justice, demanding acknowledgment and retribution for the victims and survivors of the Holocaust.

Before they started their lives’ work though, circumstances had to allow them to meet. Beate Kunkel was working as an au pair in Paris, while Serge Klarsfled was a political science university student. The two met by chance at a Paris Metro Station in 1960. Over coffee and conversation, Serge shared his family’s history: His father was taken by the German Police in 1943 while Serge, his mother, and sister hid behind a partition in a closet. Beate, a Lutheran German, had a vastly different past: she grew up in an ares where no one ever talked about the Third Reich or what they did. They spent their lives pretending to have move on. Serge and Beate then married and started their tireless campaign to restore the truth the world and the people affected by the Holocaust.

Starting in the late 1960s, Beate and Serge began their crusade to unmask Nazi criminals, several that were convicted in absentia. Some of these criminals were living comfortable lives, some in plain sight, while others lived in foreign countries under new identities. The two were hunting the criminals whose signatures who found on the deportation convoys. Their mission affected their lives, resulting in them living in danger with very limited finances. However, the two are committed to get answers, even though the wheels of justice turn ever so slowly.

This graphic novel was written in partnership with Serge and Beate Klarsfeld.

Nonfiction for the Reluctant, Stressed, and Skeptical

I was recently reminded that there’s a lot of fascinating reading in non-fiction if you only know how to find it. Non-fiction offers a different reading experience than fiction does. Where fiction affects your emotions and takes you on a journey (often tense, angsty, or deeply emotionally wrenching), non-fiction engages your mind with more intellectual fascination. Here are some non-fiction books I’ve read that offer various entry points into the genre.

My top category is always science – I love Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery, and What If (1 & 2) by Randall Munroe. I’ve also started on the works of Mary Roach, renowned for her approachable and entertaining forays into topics like death, sex, space, and most recently animal offenders in Fuzz. I’d say my love for scientific non-fiction (and fiction; my favorite author is Andy Weir after all) is because of my natural curiosity, since these books explore different realms of knowledge and the limits of what’s possible.

My second-favorite nonfiction category is books by humorists like David Sedaris; I’ve read most of his work (for the title alone I particularly love Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls) as well as other hilarious and relatable personalities. I remember loving Wow No Thank You by Samantha Irby.

Another very common entry point into nonfiction is true crime books – I’m still working my way into this area but I have read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (a classic and definitely fascinating) as well as The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary and the convicted murderer who was an invaluable part of it.

Many people also love memoirs like Crying in H Mart (I’ll read it when I need to cry and not before, thank you) or poetry by breathtaking wordsmiths like Rupi Kaur (I tried Milk and Honey, and it made me feel raw, vulnerable and exposed so I decided to try again later), or powerful, expose-type social science reads. The power of the latter is in making you feel seen, or as if your eyes have been opened. For that reason I loved Ace by Angela Chen and highly recommend it.

The key in my experience is identifying what it is you value in a reading experience and seeking them out. For me, this includes infectious enthusiasm, a dry sense of humor, a sense of hope, and engrossing storytelling. Do you have something that immediately hooks you, or a favorite nonfiction read? Let us know below!

 

What to Do When I’m Gone: A Mother’s Wisdom to Her Daughter by Suzy Hopkins and Hallie Bateman

While looking back over what I read in 2022, I realized that I only read one nonfiction title. This year, I decided that I’m going to read more nonfiction. The perfect way to ease myself into nonfiction? Graphic novels! My first nonfiction read of 2023, What to Do When I’m Gone: A Mother’s Wisdom to Her Daughter by Suzy Hopkins and Hallie Bateman, is a beautifully writter, yet incredibly sad graphic memoir written and illustrated by a mother/daughter duo.

Hallie Bateman is an illustrator/writer, while her mother Suzy Hopkins is also a writer. When Hallie was in her early twenties, she was kept up late one night after realizing that one day her mom would die. Devastated and wanting a way to gather all the motherly advice that she would miss, Hallie came up with a plan. She asked her mom Suzy to write down step-by-step instructions for her to follow after her death. Her mother laughed, but then said yes and began writing.

Suzy started by saying that Hallie needed to walk away from her phone after her death, then ‘pour yourself a stiff glass of whiskey and make some fajitas’. Suzy’s advice walks Hallie through the days, weeks, months, and years after her loss. The advice, guidance, and support she supplies throughout is at times funny, but also heart-wrenching. She talks about issues of all sizes, from how to cook certain recipes to how to choose a life partner. As they worked together making this grpahic novel, they discussed a wide variety of everyday issues with open minds and open hearts.

While I enjoyed the juxtapoisiton of Suzy’s advice with Hallie’s colorful art style, the topics discussed had me tearing up. The format of this book was a unique take on processing grief. It’s essentially a years-long instruction manual for getting through life without your mom. It was a quick read, but one that had me laughing and crying at various points throughout. As soon as I finished, I started my own list of questions that I wanted to talk to my family and friends about while they’re still living.

Online Reading Challenge – December Wrap-Up

Hello Readers!

How did your December Challenge reading go? Did you find something that might have opened your eyes to the issue of mental illness and the stigma around it? Did you see yourself or someone you know with some of the same mental health battles?

I read the main title this month, Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson.  This is a seriously funny memoir of Lawson’s continuing battle with depression and anxiety. She has chosen to embrace  the flawed as well as the beautiful parts of life, unabashedly insisting on being “furiously happy” whenever possible.

This outlook on life has led to some crazy (and frankly, puzzling) situations, like a trip to Australia where she insists on dressing in a koala costume while holding a koala  (she didn’t actually get to hold a koala but she did wear her costume when visiting koalas at a wildlife refuge), or keeping a taxidermized racoon with a bizarre expression (see picture on the front of the book) with her whenever possible (she actually has two taxidermized racoons).

While many of these stories are odd, they are undoubtedly funny and Lawson’s joyful embracing of whatever happens is infectious. There is a serious side to the funny too – Lawson is perfectly aware that each day is a struggle and that her anxiety and depression, while managed, are never far away.

That wraps up the 2022 Online Reading Challenge. I hope you were able to find some excellent, thoughtful books this year with the help of the Challenge! The 2023 Challenge begins in just a few days on January 2nd. Watch the blog for an introduction to our first location.