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August is here! It’s the end of summer and the beginning of a new school year (and I am a sucker for new school supplies!) It’s a time for new routines for busy families tackling everyone’s hectic schedules. So this week, we’re looking at two new cookbooks that give readers dozens and dozens of recipes perfect for home cooks short on time.
But first, bookish goods!
Bookish Goods
What’s More Punk Than A Public Library Mug by SanSanCorner
I love a good mug and the caption says it all. $9
New Releases
Homemade-Ish: Recipes and Cooking Tips That Keep It Real by Lauren McDuffie
We’re all busy, so why not find a faster way to cook? Homemade-Ish gives readers over 100 recipes that use store-bought shortcuts to make everything from dinner to dessert a lot easier to prepare.
Let’s Make Some Lunch: Recipes Made with Love for Everyone: A Cookbook by Sulhee Jessica Woo
The queen of the Bento Box has now given readers over 60 recipes to help you jazz up your kids’ (or your own!) lunch boxes. These adorable and delicious lunches are too cute and tasty to pass up.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business by Roxane Gay
I first read Roxane Gay after her essay collection Bad Feminist hit shelves. Since then, Gay has written essays, celebrity profiles, and advice columns. Opinions includes the best of Gay’s writing, giving readers a little snapshots of Gay’s life over the course of the last decade. There’s a profile of Janelle Monáe describing how Afrofuturism influenced their album Dirty Computer. Gay writes about #MeToo from her perspective as a survivor of sexual assault and pushes it further, discussing what it’s like to be well-known for being a survivor of sexual violence. In other less-serious pieces, Gay includes her delightful sense of humor and a practical take on what’s going on in the world.
Thin Skin: Essays by Jenn Shapland
Sometimes you read a writer and you find yourself mesmerized by their prose, wondering how on Earth they do it. For me, Jenn Shapland is one of those writers. In her essay collection, Jenn has several long pieces about her experience traveling alone and the role that clothes have played throughout her life. Within each of these, she connects her personal experiences to ideas in wider society. For example, in her essays about clothes, she ties together ideas of consumerism and how clothes help us perform societal expectations. I was struck over and over again with how Shapland’s work contains multiple layers of depth and meaning. Her prose feels so intentional, as if she’s already thought of and discarded every other possible way of expressing what she wants to say.
You can find me over on my substack Winchester Ave, over on Instagram @kdwinchester, on TikTok @kendrawinchester, or on my podcast Read Appalachia. As always, feel free to drop me a line at kendra.d.winchester@gmail.com. For even MORE bookish content, you can find my articles on Book Riot.
Happy reading, Friends!
~ Kendra
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