Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge discussion

Share and discuss book ideas for
Task 12: Read a staff pick from an indie bookstore. (Preferably, from your local indie bookstore.)

I looked up my nearest indie and they had staff recommendations on their website.

This one sounds intriguing: Sistersong by Lucy Holland

My local indie is recommending:
Piranesi
The Glass Castle
Cannery Row
The Mists of Avalon
Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life
Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
The Secret History

I'll have to see what to actually do for this one since my local indie bookstores don't have any staff picks I can find on their websites (if they have websites at all). I'm not sure I can remember seeing staff picks in them in person, but I wasn't looking for that before. I'm a little worried about going in person since it feels rude to physically go to a bookstore to look for a book the library has or that I already own, and if they have staff picks I feel like they aren't likely to be lower cost secondhand editions as the actual displays are usually their pricier stuff and I'm poor. If I can't make it happen locally, I'll find one elsewhere that I vibe with that has a website with staff picks featured.

We don't have an indie bookstore in my city. I've traveled to one in the area, and they are recommending:
The Covenant of Water
There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension
What Strange Paradise
You Dreamed of Empires

If you want some inspiration, please check out Inkwood Books in Haddonfield, NJ! It’s my local indie with great bookseller picks. https://www.inkwoodnj.com/staff-picks

They also have a ton of book clubs (my personal favorite is their horror book club:). They also list the books each club has been reading if you want some more ideas.

Enjoy and happy reading:)

When I was in Portree, Scotland, last summer, I went to a little bookstore and asked for a book by a local author. So I bought this "As women lay dreaming" by Donald S. Murray. Which is set in Scotland and it is also a true story about a disaster. Is it allowed to use it as task 17? a little-known history. I get so, but I want to be sure, since I'm not an English tongue

"The Sisters Brothers" by Patrick Dewitt

Local bookstore's website recommended Memoirs of a Woman Doctor

A local bookstore is having a reading and book signing by Kate Winkler Dawson of her new book The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne. The book will be released January 7.

Synopsis:

Acclaimed journalist, podcaster, and true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson tells the true story of the scandalous murder investigation that became the inspiration for both Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and the first true-crime book published in America.

On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Cornell was found hanging in a barn, four months pregnant, after a disgraceful liaison with a charismatic Methodist minister, Reverend Ephraim Avery. Some (Avery's lawyers) claimed her death was suicide...but others weren't so sure.

Determined to uncover the real story, intrepid Victorian writer Catherine Read Williams threw herself into the investigation and wrote what many claim is the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River : an authentic narrative. The case and Williams' book became a sensation — one that divided the country and inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

But the reverend was not convicted, and questions linger to this day about what really led to Sarah Cornell's death. Until now. In The Sinners All Bow, acclaimed true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson travels back in time to 19th century small town America, emboldened to finish the work Williams started nearly two centuries before. Using modern investigative advancements-such as "forensic knot analysis" to determine cause of death, the prosecutor's notes from 1833, and criminal profiling which was invented 55 years later with Jack the Ripper — Dawson fills in the gaps of Williams' research to find the truth.

Along the way she also examines how society decides who is the "right kind" of crime victim and how America's long history of religious evangelism may have clouded the facts both in the 1830s and today. Ultimately, The Sinners All Bow brings justice to an unsettling mystery that speaks to our past as well as our present, anchored by three women who subverted the script they were given.

I read Bodega Bakes: Recipes for Sweets and Treats Inspired by My Corner Store. I love that our indie shop gets awesome cookbooks.

Where They Last Saw Her is a rec from Books and Burrow, a Native American owned bookstore in Kansas.

I went to my local indie bookshop and they had an entire shelf of staff picks! The one I chose is actually a book that caught my eye recently: The Eyes Are the Best Part

Robin I recently finished reading this. A bit gruesome but I absolutely loved it. Very enjoyable

My favorite "local" bookstore (about an hour's drive) is a mystery bookstore and loves to promote local authors. I read Cry Wolf by Annette Dashofy, an installment in the Zoe Chambers (paramedic and deputy coroner) mystery series.

I read All Fours

Found a place where I went down a rabbit hole and now I can't decide which one to read.

Kills Well with Others
When the Moon Hits Your Eye
Uglies
The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies
I'll Have What He's Having

I think I'm going with the last one, but mostly because it's available NOW from the library, and I just finished my previous read last night.

I read Lost and Lassoed by Lyla Sage

Currently reading The Eyes Are the Best Part and wanted to note here that it checks the box for #4 A book about obsession.