Once again, 💡 denotes my reading recommendations. I read a lot of excellent fiction in the past year!
The Good Stuff
The surprise goodies for me were the Hunger Games trilogy and Santa Olivia. My brain usually turns off at anything hyper-popularized by the media. Nor is boxing exactly a topic I’d care to hear much about. But these, whoa. Go read them! And, well, any of the other fiction I’ve denoted with the bulb icon. 😀
As for cookbooks, if you like Mexican food, get your hands on The Essential Cuisines of Mexico. If you like Mediterranean food, check out Ottolenghi: The Cookbook. Both are inspiring, yet approachable, and offer weight measurements, whee! If you want the book on chocolate cookery, obtain Bittersweet — by the woman who introduced the concept of truffles to the United States. Finally, if you share my obsession with food pairing and substitution reference tomes, you’ll see that I’ve discovered, uh, more.
…And The Bad
I endured really horrible erotica written by Autumn Dawn and Tina Folsom. Although some of the erotic bits weren’t bad, it was the anti-feminist theme of the women protagonists getting married and knocked up — because no matter how independent or assertive they were to begin with, that’s what they truly wanted and needed in order to become fulfilled. What… the… fuck? (As it were? Haha.) Forgivable for some individuals, I guess, but for hot fiction written in the 21st century? Eegad, give me some anthologies edited by Mary Anne Mohanraj or Susie Bright, please, to clean out my poor neurons. Moreover, if I wanted werewolves or vampires thrown into the mix, I’d happily recommend books by Maggie Stiefvater and Robin McKinley as far superior. Anyhow, my lesson is to be more wary of stuff from Smashwords. But, hey, if they have high quality publications, do let me know.
For easier list jumping:
(Continued)