I Love So Much: A Celebration of Exceptional Books

The bones by Jessica Knoll is one of my favorite books of all time, and I was thrilled to see that this new book would continue the legacy of her captivating storytelling. This latest release has taken a slightly different direction than its predecessor, but it's still a beautiful and thought-provoking read. The story follows Joe, his sister Kayla, and their biracial children as they embark on a journey with their African-American grandparents, Mam and Pop, and their mother Leone, who is struggling with addiction. This epic tale has been likened to Homer's Odyssey, with its various stops along the way to retrieve important items. Throughout the book, flashbacks reveal the harsh realities of racism faced by Pop during his time in prison, which adds depth and complexity to the narrative. The author masterfully weaves these themes together, creating a rich tapestry that explores what it means to be family.

Chinko by Minjung Kim is another standout title on this list, published by Grand Central Publishing in the US. This book delves into the fascinating history of Korean people living in Japan, an issue that has garnered increasing attention in recent years. The author's journey began when she came across a news article about a young man who had jumped to his death and was discovered to be a victim of racism by his classmates. Inspired by this tragic event, Kim embarked on a thorough research project, spending hundreds of pages exploring the complex web of issues surrounding Korean identity in Japan. As a result, this book is both a personal memoir and a comprehensive historical analysis, shedding light on a previously underappreciated community. With its engaging narrative and meticulous attention to detail, Chinko has earned its place as a beautifully crafted and unforgettable read.

A Time for Mercy by Alexander Maksymchuk is the final title on our list, published by Knopf in the US. This debut novel has already gained widespread acclaim, and it's easy to see why. Written by Barack Obama, this book tells the story of yesterday, a young woman struggling with infertility and navigating her relationships as she embarks on a journey to discover herself. The author masterfully explores themes such as motherhood, womanhood, and what makes us human, all while tackling sensitive topics like sexism, racism, and identity politics. With its concise yet powerful narrative, A Time for Mercy is an instant classic that has already captured the hearts of readers worldwide. As a debut novel, it's nothing short of remarkable, and we can't wait to see what Obama has in store for us next.

The Non-Fiction Shortlist: A Surprising Twist

While our previous discussions may have hinted at the winners of this year's non-fiction award, the actual list is full of surprises. This time around, I've decided to keep the nominees under wraps, and readers will have to wait until the big reveal to find out which books made the cut. From thought-provoking essays to gripping true stories, our shortlist promises to be a diverse and captivating reflection of the best in non-fiction writing. Stay tuned for the announcement, and we'll dive deeper into each of these incredible titles in the days to come.

Links to Podcast Episodes, Author Interviews, and Q&A

For those who missed our podcast discussions or interviews with some of this year's nominees, fear not! All the episodes are available now, featuring insightful conversations with authors, as well as a special Q&A session with one of our featured authors. Be sure to check them out on your preferred platform.

Next Stop: The Non-Fiction Shortlist

Join us next time when we'll be unveiling the winners of this year's non-fiction award. Will it be the book that everyone's been talking about, or a title that flew under the radar? Tune in to find out which books have taken the top spot and what makes them so special.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello I'm Kendra Winchester welcome back to my channel and today I am so incredibly excited to talk to you about the shortlisted books for the reading women award now I'm innocent talk about the fiction shortlist today next I will talk about the nonfiction shortlist but if you didn't know the reading women podcast which I'm a part of we have an award that we give to one fiction one nonfiction war book every year there we go and this is the second year that we're doing it so this is the first year that we have shortlist so super excited just to promote more wonderful books by or about women and we give the award to a book fire about a woman that's been published in the u.s. in the calendar year of whatever year it is so County year of 2017 and last year was shelter by John Young we really love this book I'll link the podcast episode about this book and the nonfiction winner all the single ladies down below so you can check that out but there are so many books to choose from it was very very difficult but we wanted to have a well balanced shortlist a wide range of authors and her backgrounds and places and different things and we're just really excited about all of these books and they're definitely favorites obviously of the year but yeah so I'm gonna quit gushing about them in general and talk about each one so you can see what those are the first one to talk about is the weight of him by ethel rowan this is really the dark horse of the list and i haven't really seen it talked about many other places but we really loved it and this is about an irish man who lives in a small town outside of Dublin and his 17 year old son recently committed suicide and he is also overweight he weighs 400 pounds and so there's this beautiful parallel between his weight and grief and like the weight of his grief and his son's suicide and it's just really well done with a very delicate hand and I felt that you know a lot of books about suicide I'm thinking about a particular one that became a TV series on Netflix can be so triggering for people who do struggle with mental illness and thoughts of suicide but either one did a great job of balancing that and trying not to be triggering while at the same time raising awareness and she just did a beautiful job and you don't really have to take my word for word Roxane gay also gave this book five stars so I mean yeah it is beautiful and definitely more people need to pick this one up the next book on the list is the Lonely Hearts Hotel by Heather O'Neill this is out from Riverhead in the US this is about two orphans in Montreal in the early 20th century and they live in an orphanage so rose and Pierre live in this orphanage until they're old enough to leave now one there is when they are in the orphanage there is some physical and sexual abuse so just so you know there are trigger warnings and because of that when they're separated when they become old enough they are so readily lonely like they have this loneliness in them and it's like a vacuum and they try to fill it with all these different things and I think this book definitely looks at all the different things that humans will do to rid themselves of that lonely feeling that loneliness in their hearts and so that's like the lonely hearts to tell I mean that basically encapsulates all of this in the book a hotel is temporary traditionally and so they do all these temporary things to try to fill that loneliness it is just a beautiful book and you expect magical realism in this book though there isn't one it's like it's going to be around the corner at any time and it never actually arrives it was just that beautiful and magical and I just absolutely love this book the next book is the strays by Emily Bidault and this is up from 12 books there's actually one the Stella prize in Australia because you know a little bit it was Australian but but it took a few years for it to actually get to the US so this book is about Lily who believes that she lives in like this white bread early 20th century household like she's very bored with her life and her family until she meets her best friend and a rest friend lives in like this really big house with her dad and her mom her dad is an artist and so there ends up being an artist commune and just all this stuff around art Emily Beto was inspired by a community of artists though this is totally completely fiction she does a great job of looking at art and how male are often is and she talked about there's this one artist that actually did exist and she found that this person was just a footnote like this this woman in his life end up just being a footnote and she wanted to point out that these women and women artists as well weren't just footnotes they were a vital part to these artists lifes and they were worth more than people were giving them and these biographies is really famous artists and different things she's an amazing job and I haven't talked about her prose her prose is some of the best pros I have read this year I would say it for me it tied with Jasmine Ward this year and it was just absolutely beautiful and I read some of it on the review I did of it on this channel so I'm gonna link that around here I'm asked to do two interview with her on the Reading Room podcast so I'm gonna link all the things definitely go check out the box down below you want to check out interviews we've done with these authors and different things of course speaking of jasmine ward she's on this list this is the UK edition of Singham Buried sing in the US this is a its out from Scribner and the UK editions out from Bloomsbury Circus this is her I think like a third novel um you know I love so much the bones it's one of my favorite books of all time so I was really excited when this new book came out and I wasn't disappointed with all of the things that she brought to this book she has gone on a little bit of a different direction which I'm not gonna talk about too much because it'll spoil it but it's a beautiful book and it's about Joe Joe and his sister Kayla and their biracial children living with their african-american grandparents mam and pop and their mom Leone is a drug addict so she's kind of in and out of their lives well their dad's in prison so when he gets out Leone decides to take her two kids up to the prison to pick him up and so it's like this journey it's been talked about like the Odyssey and there are different stops along the way to go get it but then also they reached there around the middle of the book and then they come back and it's just so interesting to see this type of journey that she takes this family on you also see flashbacks with pop who was also in the prison and the racism that he faced and does more just does an amazing job with this book and I just absolutely love it so yeah it is incredibly beautiful the next book on the list is chinko by Minj and Lee this is out from Grand Central publishing in the US and this is about a family of Korean people living in Japan and actually delves into the history of that community of do Koreans living in Japan I never knew about this community at and so min jingly just does a wonderful job of talking about this issue and she says originally she was inspired because you know Koreans are not allowed to become citizens as easily it is become a citizen in the u.s. I know like we have a lot of discussions about that but they have lived there for generations if they're still not allowed to be citizens and they're also treated as like less than there is that racism there against the Korean people and so she found this article about this young man who had jumped out the window committed suicide and they discovered that all of his classmates are being really horrible I was deputies classmates are being really horrible to this poor Korean kid so that really got her into this book and so she's study a topic for a very long time so this book goes on for like 500 pages and I still thought it was not long enough it is that beautiful and I feel like a lot of times you miss some of the rounded qualities that you can have with characters by only spending certain amount of time with them in a multi-generational novel like this but I felt that she did such a good job and I didn't want it to end and it's just absolutely beautiful so you definitely yeah definitely want to go check this out especially if you haven't never heard of this community people just like I hadn't so last certainly not least stay with me but a Obama had to buy us out from Knopf in the US and I love this book so much is just so incredibly beautiful I was just wild by what she this is her debut which I just can't even I just can't even believe that so a Obama was writing this story about yesterday who's been married to her husband akin for four years and they've been trying to have a child and they can't so one day her relatives show up with another woman that they say that is a can second wife because obviously she has the problem since they can't have kids so he needs another woman you can imagine how that goes over so I just really loved so I just really loved how she dubbed into the topic of infertility and womanhood what makes a woman what makes a man and what our children to you and just parenting and that's just like the surface there's a lot of things that she does also talked about that I can't really tell you about because that would be total spoiler so just FYI that is also there's just so much in this book and it's so packed into these like less than 300 pages she just an amazing job so I will be picking up anything else that she writes because it's absolutely beautiful photos all of the short list so we gushed about them a little bit more over on the podcast so I'll link all that down below we've also done interviews with several of these authors and a Q&A with a Obama so I will link all of those things down in the box below for you to check out but otherwise I will see you a little bit later for the non-fiction shortlist those are a bit more of a surprise I feel like if you've been watching this channel you probably could have narrowed it down to ten of the books that might be on a short list that I was judging so anyway I guess I will talk to you guys later see you nexthello I'm Kendra Winchester welcome back to my channel and today I am so incredibly excited to talk to you about the shortlisted books for the reading women award now I'm innocent talk about the fiction shortlist today next I will talk about the nonfiction shortlist but if you didn't know the reading women podcast which I'm a part of we have an award that we give to one fiction one nonfiction war book every year there we go and this is the second year that we're doing it so this is the first year that we have shortlist so super excited just to promote more wonderful books by or about women and we give the award to a book fire about a woman that's been published in the u.s. in the calendar year of whatever year it is so County year of 2017 and last year was shelter by John Young we really love this book I'll link the podcast episode about this book and the nonfiction winner all the single ladies down below so you can check that out but there are so many books to choose from it was very very difficult but we wanted to have a well balanced shortlist a wide range of authors and her backgrounds and places and different things and we're just really excited about all of these books and they're definitely favorites obviously of the year but yeah so I'm gonna quit gushing about them in general and talk about each one so you can see what those are the first one to talk about is the weight of him by ethel rowan this is really the dark horse of the list and i haven't really seen it talked about many other places but we really loved it and this is about an irish man who lives in a small town outside of Dublin and his 17 year old son recently committed suicide and he is also overweight he weighs 400 pounds and so there's this beautiful parallel between his weight and grief and like the weight of his grief and his son's suicide and it's just really well done with a very delicate hand and I felt that you know a lot of books about suicide I'm thinking about a particular one that became a TV series on Netflix can be so triggering for people who do struggle with mental illness and thoughts of suicide but either one did a great job of balancing that and trying not to be triggering while at the same time raising awareness and she just did a beautiful job and you don't really have to take my word for word Roxane gay also gave this book five stars so I mean yeah it is beautiful and definitely more people need to pick this one up the next book on the list is the Lonely Hearts Hotel by Heather O'Neill this is out from Riverhead in the US this is about two orphans in Montreal in the early 20th century and they live in an orphanage so rose and Pierre live in this orphanage until they're old enough to leave now one there is when they are in the orphanage there is some physical and sexual abuse so just so you know there are trigger warnings and because of that when they're separated when they become old enough they are so readily lonely like they have this loneliness in them and it's like a vacuum and they try to fill it with all these different things and I think this book definitely looks at all the different things that humans will do to rid themselves of that lonely feeling that loneliness in their hearts and so that's like the lonely hearts to tell I mean that basically encapsulates all of this in the book a hotel is temporary traditionally and so they do all these temporary things to try to fill that loneliness it is just a beautiful book and you expect magical realism in this book though there isn't one it's like it's going to be around the corner at any time and it never actually arrives it was just that beautiful and magical and I just absolutely love this book the next book is the strays by Emily Bidault and this is up from 12 books there's actually one the Stella prize in Australia because you know a little bit it was Australian but but it took a few years for it to actually get to the US so this book is about Lily who believes that she lives in like this white bread early 20th century household like she's very bored with her life and her family until she meets her best friend and a rest friend lives in like this really big house with her dad and her mom her dad is an artist and so there ends up being an artist commune and just all this stuff around art Emily Beto was inspired by a community of artists though this is totally completely fiction she does a great job of looking at art and how male are often is and she talked about there's this one artist that actually did exist and she found that this person was just a footnote like this this woman in his life end up just being a footnote and she wanted to point out that these women and women artists as well weren't just footnotes they were a vital part to these artists lifes and they were worth more than people were giving them and these biographies is really famous artists and different things she's an amazing job and I haven't talked about her prose her prose is some of the best pros I have read this year I would say it for me it tied with Jasmine Ward this year and it was just absolutely beautiful and I read some of it on the review I did of it on this channel so I'm gonna link that around here I'm asked to do two interview with her on the Reading Room podcast so I'm gonna link all the things definitely go check out the box down below you want to check out interviews we've done with these authors and different things of course speaking of jasmine ward she's on this list this is the UK edition of Singham Buried sing in the US this is a its out from Scribner and the UK editions out from Bloomsbury Circus this is her I think like a third novel um you know I love so much the bones it's one of my favorite books of all time so I was really excited when this new book came out and I wasn't disappointed with all of the things that she brought to this book she has gone on a little bit of a different direction which I'm not gonna talk about too much because it'll spoil it but it's a beautiful book and it's about Joe Joe and his sister Kayla and their biracial children living with their african-american grandparents mam and pop and their mom Leone is a drug addict so she's kind of in and out of their lives well their dad's in prison so when he gets out Leone decides to take her two kids up to the prison to pick him up and so it's like this journey it's been talked about like the Odyssey and there are different stops along the way to go get it but then also they reached there around the middle of the book and then they come back and it's just so interesting to see this type of journey that she takes this family on you also see flashbacks with pop who was also in the prison and the racism that he faced and does more just does an amazing job with this book and I just absolutely love it so yeah it is incredibly beautiful the next book on the list is chinko by Minj and Lee this is out from Grand Central publishing in the US and this is about a family of Korean people living in Japan and actually delves into the history of that community of do Koreans living in Japan I never knew about this community at and so min jingly just does a wonderful job of talking about this issue and she says originally she was inspired because you know Koreans are not allowed to become citizens as easily it is become a citizen in the u.s. I know like we have a lot of discussions about that but they have lived there for generations if they're still not allowed to be citizens and they're also treated as like less than there is that racism there against the Korean people and so she found this article about this young man who had jumped out the window committed suicide and they discovered that all of his classmates are being really horrible I was deputies classmates are being really horrible to this poor Korean kid so that really got her into this book and so she's study a topic for a very long time so this book goes on for like 500 pages and I still thought it was not long enough it is that beautiful and I feel like a lot of times you miss some of the rounded qualities that you can have with characters by only spending certain amount of time with them in a multi-generational novel like this but I felt that she did such a good job and I didn't want it to end and it's just absolutely beautiful so you definitely yeah definitely want to go check this out especially if you haven't never heard of this community people just like I hadn't so last certainly not least stay with me but a Obama had to buy us out from Knopf in the US and I love this book so much is just so incredibly beautiful I was just wild by what she this is her debut which I just can't even I just can't even believe that so a Obama was writing this story about yesterday who's been married to her husband akin for four years and they've been trying to have a child and they can't so one day her relatives show up with another woman that they say that is a can second wife because obviously she has the problem since they can't have kids so he needs another woman you can imagine how that goes over so I just really loved so I just really loved how she dubbed into the topic of infertility and womanhood what makes a woman what makes a man and what our children to you and just parenting and that's just like the surface there's a lot of things that she does also talked about that I can't really tell you about because that would be total spoiler so just FYI that is also there's just so much in this book and it's so packed into these like less than 300 pages she just an amazing job so I will be picking up anything else that she writes because it's absolutely beautiful photos all of the short list so we gushed about them a little bit more over on the podcast so I'll link all that down below we've also done interviews with several of these authors and a Q&A with a Obama so I will link all of those things down in the box below for you to check out but otherwise I will see you a little bit later for the non-fiction shortlist those are a bit more of a surprise I feel like if you've been watching this channel you probably could have narrowed it down to ten of the books that might be on a short list that I was judging so anyway I guess I will talk to you guys later see you next\n"