Top Ten Tuesday – March TBR

Hey hey peeps! Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

I don’t usually do TBRs for the simple fact that I never stick with them. And truthfully this month is no different. Having said that I have compiled a list of 10 books I intend to read or would like to read this month. There are a couple of must reads on the list and 5 of the 10 books are under 250 pages and the longest clocks in at nearly 600.

1. Minor Detail by Palestinian author Adania Shibli is a short Historical Fiction that takes place one year after the Nakba that displaced over 700,000 people.  It is a haunting meditation on war, violence and memory, Minor Detail cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience of dispossession, life under occupation, and the persistent difficulty of piecing together a narrative in the face of ongoing erasure and disempowerment.
2. Out There Screaming edited by Jordan Peele is a collection of Horror short stories by Black authors. It explores not only the terrors of the supernatural but the chilling reality of injustice that haunts our nation.
3. Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd. In this debut poetry collection by Palestinian author written in the tradition of Ghassan Kanfani’s Palestinian Resistance Literature. The collection narrates the author’s own experience of dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah–an infamous neighborhood in Jerusalem, Palestine, whose population of refugees continues to live on the brink of homelessness at the hands of the Israeli government and US-based settler organizations.
4. The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey is a must read because it’s due back to the library this week. It’s a Horror Fantasy. Julie Crews is a burnt out thirty something determined to establish herself as a Psychic Operative in NYC by any means necessary. She summons a guardian angel for a quick career boost, but in doing so she accidently releases an elder god hellbent on the annihilation of our galaxy.
5. In the Language of My Captor by Shane McCrae is a short book of poetry by an Indigenous author. I’m reading this one for the Stoodis Readathon*. This collection is about freedom told through stories of captivity.
6. Lone Women by Victor LaValle is a Historical Fiction Horror that blends shimmering prose, an unforgettable cast of adventurers who find horror and sisterhood in a brutal landscape, and a portrait of early-twentieth-century America like you’ve never seen. And at its heart is the gripping story of a woman desperate to bury her past—or redeem it.
7. The Reformatory by Tananarive Due is a Historical Fiction Horror based off Dozier a former reform school in Florida. Set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.
8. Yoke of Stars by R. B. Lemberg is a must read. The publisher reached out and asked if I would like an Advanced copy and of course I said yes. I read Lemberg’s The Four Profound Weaves last year and absolutely loved it. Yoke of Stars is a Fantasy novella that takes place in Lemberg’s Birdverse. An assassin and a linguist negotiate their very different languages, past betrayals, and an unexpected bond. By turns, Stone Orphan and Ulín narrate tales of love, suffering, exile, and self-determination, and two hurt souls find hope in each other through a radical act: listening.
9. Shell Shaker by LeAnne Howe was recommended to me as part of my 12 Friends 12 Recommendations challenged I set for myself last year. Needless to say I didn’t complete the challenge, but I still want to read it. It’s an Indigenous novel that traces the history of the Billy women whose destiny it is to solve two murders with the help of a powerful spirit known as the Shell Shaker.
10. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk is a nonfiction that I’m reading because a friend of mine and I’m going to leave it at that.

Please let me know if you’ve read any of these and what you thought of them, but please remember no spoilers.

*Stoodis Readathon is hosted by Kim at NativeLadyBookWarrior over on Instagram. It’s a year long readathon that focuses on reading literature written by Indigenous authors and with Indigenous main characters.