Jennifer Caloyeras's Blog, page 3

Episode #98 - with Rebecca Makkai

Today, on episode 98 of Books Are My People, I’m joined by the brilliant Rebecca Makkai. A Guggenheim fellow, Rebecca and I talk about her latest novel, I Have Some Questions For You, as well as audience culpability, the fetishization of young dead women and she recommends her favorite boarding school book. (Hint: it’s not The Secret History.)  Click here to listen!

Episode #97 - Books Are My People with Author Priya Guns

Today, on episode 97 of Books Are My People, author Priya Guns visits to talk about her debut novel, Your Driver is Waiting, a thoughtful satire about the ideological and physical dangers of being a female ride share driver. We chat about Priya’s life in the Middle East, our mutual love of drawing and painting birds and she offers up some incredible book recommendations! Link to listen here.

Plus, Jai Chakrabarti, author of the short fiction collection, A Small Sacrifice For An Enormous Happiness, shares a favorite read.

Want more book recommendations? Sign up for my bookish newsletter. Tomorrow is the last Tuesday of the month, which means subscribers will also get a book recommendation from my husband. Lucky you!

Episode #96 - Books Are My People with Amy Poeppel

The amazing Amy Poeppel came on the show to talk about her latest novel, The Sweet Spot, out now. This is such a heartwarming and funny read! She brought along some enticing book recommendations to boot. You’ll also learn which of us is compelled to finish every book they begin and which one of us is not! Click here to listen.

Episode #95 - Books Are My People with Grady Hendrix

I am so fortunate to have been visited by the king of contemporary horror, Grady Hendrix! We talk about puppets, Muppets, our mutual love for Jim Henson, how Grady viscerally has to feel horror when he writes and the fascinating subject matter of the next book he's researching and writing.  

Click here to listen!

Books That Will Transport You

Got the stuck at home blues?

Recently, I was asked for some book recommendations that could fill a travel void, so I thought I’d share with a wider audience!

1.     The Caliph’s House  by Tahir ShahThis is non-fiction exploring the author’s decision to purchase a house in Morocco and uproot his family there from England. The book looks at how starkly different his new life is from the life that he knows.

2.  Three Ways to Disappear by Katy Yocum

This is a beautiful novel about a journalist who returns to India to help preserve endangered Bengal tigers, taking place in India.  I interviewed the author on episode #28 of Books Are My People.

3.     Liska Jacobs, the Worst Kind of Want.  Read this novel if you want to travel to Italy. 40-something year old Celia is looking to become reinvigorated on this trip by hanging out with her teenage niece. This is literary noir.

4.     Exciting Times by Naoise Nolan

This is a novel about an Irish ex-pat who becomes enmeshed in a love triangle in Hong Kong. Listen to me recommend this book on episode #40 of Books Are My People.

5.     Love and Fury by Samantha Silva this is historical fiction exploring Mary Wollstonecraft, and her daughter Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. This book will transport you to England. Listen to me recommend this novel on episode #55 of Books Are My People.

6.     In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

This is non-fiction, humor travel writing about Bryson’s adventures in Australia.

7.     Love with a Chance of Drowning by Torre Deroche is about a travel blogger who overcomes her fear of the ocean to sail across the pacific with her boyfriend.

8.     You’ve probably already read this, but arguable one of the most famous nonfiction travel book is A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle about, you guessed it, his year in Provence. (I loved this book so much I spent a year in Provence!)

9.  Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is a family saga set in Korea and Japan in the 20th century, so, historical fiction. Also, a TV series if you want to read the book first, then watch the show.

10.  The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

This book is about Harold, who is freshly retired and living in rural England when he gets a letter from a woman from his past. He writes her back and heads to the mailbox to mail the letter, but decides to keep walking. And he doesn’t stop, continuing for 600 miles. A delightful and uplifting work of fiction.

11.  Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

Nonfiction that follows the lives of six defectors in the 90’s. Harrowing, moving, fascinating and a glimpse into life in North Korea.

13. Less by Andrew Sean Greer This was the Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

This is fiction about Arthur Less who heads out on a globe-trotting adventure in order to get over a bad breakup. Travel the world with Arthur! (And I the a seque, Less is Lost, is also out now. Also, this book is really funny!

Click here or on any of the titles to be taken to my Bookshop.org store where you can help support my show as well as local bookstores!

Want more book recommendations? Listen and subscribe to Books Are My People: a podcast for book lovers and sign up for my weekly newsletter with even more book recs here.

Episode #94 - Books Are My People with The Bandit Queens author, Parini Shroff

I loved having Parini Shroff on episode 94! Her new novel, The Bandit Queens is a funny, moving and utterly engaging novel. Geeta is a protagonist that sticks with you long after the book ends. Parini and I talk about her inspiration for writing her debut novel as well as how we like to organize our bookshelves. Over twenty-two books are mentioned on this episode! Click here to listen!

Episode #93 - Books Are My People with soThis Founder Annie Long Sullivan

This week, I am visited by soThis founder, Annie Long Sullivan. soThis is an amazing online book club and community. I was so taken with this concept, that I am now a full-fledged member and so looking forward to our monthly reads and discussions.

You can learn more about soThis here.

Click here to listen to the episode!

And don’t forget to sign up here to receive my brand new Books Are My People newsletter with even more book recommendations!

Episode #92 - Books Are My People with soThis Founder Annie Long Sullivan

This week, I am visited by soThis founder, Annie Long Sullivan. soThis is an amazing online book club and community. I was so taken with this concept, that I am now a full-fledged member and so looking forward to our monthly reads and discussions.

You can learn more about soThis here.

Click here to listen to the episode!

And don’t forget to sign up here to receive my brand new Books Are My People newsletter with even more book recommendations!

2022: My Favorite Books!

Click here to purchase any of the books listed below in my Bookshop.org shop!

I can’t believe that’s a wrap on reading for 2022! Of course, I am going to try and squeeze a few books in before the New Year. In the meantime, here are my Top Ten Reads for 2022 (in no particular order.)

When We Lost Our Heads    by Heather O’Neill    

When We Lost Our Heads takes place in Montreal in the 1870’s. Marie and Sadie become fast friends. Marie comes from Montreal’s most influential family; they own sugar factories and she is want for nothing.  Sadie’s family has scrambled to live in a nice neighborhood. One day, while playing a game of duel with real guns that they found, the girls accidentally shoot Marie’s maid, killing her. Because the death would cause a scandal for Marie’s family and tarnish her father’s reputation as the sugar factory owner, it’s decided that Sadie will take the blame. Her parents agree to this and as a punishment, she is sent to boarding school in England. Time passes and the girls grow into women and re-enter one another’s lives in remarkable ways. This is a completely unique and inventive and absorbing novel that has everything friendship, betrayal, class, identity, sexuality and gender and subtle and not so subtle nods to Marie Antoinette, including cake!

Trust by Hernan Diaz

Longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize this is an exceptional book that takes place in the 1920’s, centering around the Rask who live in New York City.  Benjamin has made millions on Wall Street and his wife Helen comes from a wealthy, albeit eccentric family. The novel unfolds in a really interesting way, structurally. It’s broken down into four parts: there’s a novel within a novel, segments of an autobiography , memoir and a journal, and all of these structures work to explore the Rasks, both the rumors that surround their mystique and their family secrets that are revealed throughout the text.  This is a wonderfully layered and rich novel that is like an onion, with new revelations exposed as the novel progresses. This is a book that explores identity, the ways in which people’s identities are both constructed and deconstructed. It explores wealth, perception and, of course, trust and the many definitions that encompasses.

Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet

In Millet’s latest novel, Gil leaves New York and walks across the country for five months until reaching his new home in the Arizona desert where the family next-door lives in a literal glass house. Gil’s life becomes enmeshed with these neighbors. Dinosaurs is a tricky book to write about as it covers so many prescient topics including issues of privacy, politics, climate change, trust funds and birds, the relatives of dinosaurs, all without following a traditional linear novel structure. We go back and forth in time, from the Gil that existed in New York before the election, the one who had friends and a girlfriend, to a newly awakened Gil living in a different America. Millet’s observational prose breezes by like beautiful desert clouds offering social commentary and a reverence for nature, moving from melancholy to humor. Millet gets to the heart of what matters to Gil and perhaps what should matter to the rest of us.

Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth  

Abby Lamb and her husband Ralph have moved in with Ralph’s mother, Laura, a very, very difficult woman, who makes no bones about the way she feels about her daughter-in-law through subtle digs and not-so-subtle insults hurled in Abby’s direction. Ralph is the ultimate mama’s boy and Abby does her best to survive this essentially thruple she finds herself living in and justifies everything she has to put up with by reminding herself how great her husband Ralph is. Abby, who has had a troubled relationship with her own mother is searching for a mother figure. She works at a long-term care facility and has bonded with a patient there. Ralph’s mother, Laura, suffers from depression and when a suicide attempt takes a dark turn, Abby’s believes that she and her husband  can finally move forward independently and work towards having the baby they always wanted. But unfortunately, or fortunately for the reader, the ghost of Laura remains in the house, affecting the couple in different ways. The book jacket gives too much away, so don’t read it!

This book is both gothic and filled with dark humor, sometimes scatological in nature. It’s a book about loyalty and mental health struggles and the narrator’s reckoning with her relationship with her own mother. I read this in one sitting, yes there’s horror, but there’s also humor.

First up is Night of the Living Rez: Stories by Morgan Talty

This is a dark and explosive collection of twelve connected short stories centered around an indigenous Penobscot reservation in Maine exploring relationships, drug use, alcoholism, and poverty. Because the stories are connected, if you are not the type of reader who typically dives into short stories, Night of the Living Rez may be a perfect fit as it stays within one family, and one narrator, David, whose narrative moves back and forth in time. Heartbreaking and tender with moments of levity, this book is for lovers of connected short stories, fans of Louise Erdrich and stories told in the first-person point of view. Masterfully written, spending time with David illuminates universal themes about family and the ways in which we find our place in the world. If you like literary short stories, if you like books that are probably going to win some awards, then this is the book for you! It’s gritty, raw and so well written.

Hurricane Girl by Marcy Dermansky

I am such a huge fan of Dermansky’s work that I have been waited with bated breath to get my hands on an ARC of Hurricane Girl. I read it in one sitting and it did not disappoint! Allison Brody, thirty-two, wants to swim in the ocean every day, which is why she purchases a beach house in North Carolina. After a week and a half of bliss, the coast is hit with a category five hurricane that destroys her new home, leaving behind the detritus of her dream existence. Feeling unmoored, she’s interviewed by the local news and takes the cameraman up on his offer to stay with him. But Keith turns out to be an abhorrent human who leaves Allison with a skull injury and no choice but to return home to her mother in New Jersey where she is forced to face her past and her never-ending quest to submerse herself in water. Dermansky’s characteristic clipped sentences, penchant for dark humor and characters in flux shine throughout this buoyant novel.

Defenestrate by Renee Branum

This is an amazingly unique novel that I zipped through and it’s really unlike any book I’ve read. The word Defenestrate, is a fantastic word and means to throw (As in someone) out a window. And the book leans on this as the theme, which sounds dark and, it’s safe to say this is not a light read, but it is funny in many places. There’s a superstition in Marta’s family specifically about falling because it’s happened so many times throughout the history of her family. People have leaned on railings that didn’t hold them, people have fallen off roofs while cleaning gutters, They can trace the first fall to their great great grandfather in Prague when he, a stone mason, fell to the cobblestone below. Prague, as Marta explains was famous for throwing men out of windows and then we get a brief history of this. Marta is consumed by her family legacy. She doesn’t think of it so much as a curse than as something almost enviable, like when will it be her turn to experience the fall? It does affect other family members differently, some won’t stay above the second floor, etc. After a fight with their religious mother, Marta and her twin brother, Nick decide to move to Prague, where all this falling first started. And lo and behold, Nick experiences a fall from the balcony, which Marta is trying to parse out whether or not it was an accident or purposeful. The novel is broken down into very finy chapters, each with their own heading. The writing is so exquisitely sharp in this novel. It’s a book about family stories that get passed along and about how these family stories can bolster or hinder us.

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka

This is a quick read that packs a punch. The Swimmers is a hypnotic book about the people who frequent a community pool. The swimmers keep to themselves and make the most of this idea that swimming laps is an individual activity. Until one day, a crack emerges at the bottom of the pool sending the swimmers reeling. They now have to find something else to do with their time and it throws off all of their routines. This fissure parallels what is happening in the individual swimmers’ lives from Alice, who is losing her memory, forced to confront her childhood in a Japanese American incarceration camp. Again the first half of the book is just so captivating and meditative and then we’re jolted by the crack and sent in a different direction, honing in on Alice and her story. This is truly a beautiful book that I recommend to lovers of language and readers who want something a little different. Reading this book was like staring at a masterful painting in a museum. I urge everyone who is interested to take the plunge.

Black Cake         Charmaine Wilkerson  

This novel is about two siblings, Bryon and Benny who are no longer speaking with one another. Their mother, Eleanor, has passed away and left behind a Black Cake, a traditional Caribbean Black Cake. She also leaves behind a voice recording and they get to know their mother and their heritage through her oral history, like how she fled the island in order to escaped accusations of murder. This is a novel about secrets, memories and family bonds. This novel is beautifully rendered - the chapters are written in shorter clips involving many characters - a wonderful and engaging read.

Click here to purchase any of the books above!

Episode #91 - Books Are My People

Delighted to have audiobook narrator extraordinaire, Anna Caputo, on episode 91 of Books Are My People: a podcast for book lovers. Listen to learn what goes in to creating an audiobook! Tagged authors discussed on the show. Anna shares some of her favorite books that she’s narrated. Click here to listen!