We have another assortment of recommendations. Half of them are recommendations from other people that have been given to me or other members of SBTB. There’s also a poetry collection and a picture book.
Don’t Squish a Slug
If you have a kiddo or know one who loves nature, bugs, and/or teaching those around them new facts, this would be perfect for them!
Learn all about how amazing bugs and minibeasts are in this detailed guide to over 40 small creatures from around the world. Bugs and minibeasts may be small, sometimes slimy, and maybe a little scary, but they are AMAZING and deserve respect and empathy.
Don’t Squish A Slug will show you everything you need to know, and more, about why bugs are the most important creatures on the planet, even if they may not look it!
For example, did you know that there are bugs who. . .
– Use disguise to blend in with their surroundings
– Bugs who have come up with clever defense tactics to keep themselves safe
– AND bugs who have broken world records?
Or, did you know that. . .
The Taurus Scarab Beetle is the strongest insect in the world and can pull 1,141 times its own body weight – which is the equivalent of a human lifting six double-decker buses!
Or. . . that the Banana Slug has anesthetic slime, so if you were to lick one your tongue would go numb!
Learn about how awe-inspiring bugs really are in Don’t Squish A Slug. Written by zoologist, conservationist and wildlife TV presenter Yussef Rafik and illustrated by Riley Samels (who makes every bug look cool), Dont Squish A Slug is a treasure-trove of expert information and quirky, retro illustrations for young readers to enjoy.
So. . . don’t squash a spider, don’t step on ants and definitely don’t squish a slug!
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Dungeon Crawler Carl
My friend has been talking about his monthly reads on Tiktok and mentioned this one lately. What really sold me is that there’s a cat named Princess Donut.
The apocalypse will be televised! Welcome to the first book in the wildly popular and addictive Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman—now with bonus material exclusive to this print edition.
You know what’s worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Being stuck with her prize-winning show cat. And you know what’s worse than that? An alien invasion, the destruction of all man-made structures on Earth, and the systematic exploitation of all the survivors for a sadistic intergalactic game show. That’s what.
Join Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, as they try to survive the end of the world—or just get to the next level—in a video game–like, trap-filled fantasy dungeon. A dungeon that’s actually the set of a reality television show with countless viewers across the galaxy. Exploding goblins. Magical potions. Deadly, drug-dealing llamas. This ain’t your ordinary game show.
Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the Dungeon. Survival is optional. Keeping the viewers entertained is not.
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Jane Austen’s Bookshelf
Lara actually imparted this recommendation to Carrie recently. It sounds like library holds might be rather long for this one!
From rare book dealer and guest star of the hit show Pawn Stars, a page-turning literary adventure that introduces readers to the women writers who inspired Jane Austen—and investigates why their books have disappeared from our shelves.
Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She loved that Austen’s books took the lives of women seriously, explored relationships with wit and confidence, and always, allowed for the possibility of a happy ending. She read and reread them, often wishing Austen wrote just one more.
But Austen wasn’t a lone genius. She wrote at a time of great experimentation for women writers—and clues about those women, and the exceptional books they wrote, are sprinkled like breadcrumbs throughout Austen’s work. Every character in Northanger Abbey who isn’t a boor sings the praises of Ann Radcliffe. The play that causes such a stir in Mansfield Park is a real one by the playwright Elizabeth Inchbald. In fact, the phrase “pride and prejudice” came from Frances Burney’s second novel Cecilia. The women that populated Jane Austen’s bookshelf profoundly influenced her work; Austen looked up to them, passionately discussed their books with her friends, and used an appreciation of their books as a litmus test for whether someone had good taste. So where had these women gone? Why hadn’t Romney—despite her training—ever read them? Or, in some cases, even heard of them? And why were they no longer embraced as part of the wider literary canon?
Jane Austen’s Bookshelf investigates the disappearance of Austen’s heroes—women writers who were erased from the Western canon—to reveal who they were, what they meant to Austen, and how they were forgotten. Each chapter profiles a different writer including Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Charlotte Smith, Hannah More, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth—and recounts Romney’s experience reading them, finding rare copies of their works, and drawing on connections between their words and Austen’s. Romney collects the once-famed works of these forgotten writers, physically recreating Austen’s bookshelf and making a convincing case for why these books should be placed back on the to-be-read pile of all book lovers today. Jane Austen’s Bookshelf will encourage you to look beyond assigned reading lists, question who decides what belongs there, and build your very own collection of favorite novels.
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There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die
This translated collection of poems has been building buzz for a few months now; a lot of my poetry loving friends have been anticipating this release. This collection has a focus on girlhood and womanhood, which may feel particularly timely.
By the acclaimed author of The Copenhagen Trilogy, a startling and darkly funny volume of selected poetry, the first to be translated into English.
It was a meaningless day
like what you call
love
It was a Thursday
In parentheses. The brackets around it
Have already faded
Life tastes of ash
And is bearable.
From one of Denmark’s most celebrated twentieth-century writers, the author of the acclaimed Copenhagen Trilogy, comes There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die, a major volume of selected poetry written throughout Tove Ditlevsen’s life. Infused with the same wry nihilism, quiet intensity, dark humor, and crystalline genius that readers savor in her prose, these are heartbreak poems, childhood poems, self-portraits, death poems, wounded poems, confessional poems, and love poems—poems that stare into the surfaces that seduce and deceive us. They describe childhood, longing, loss, and memory, obsessively tracing their imprints and intrusions upon everyday life. With morbid curiosity, Ditlevsen’s poems turn toward the uncanny and the abject, approaching gingerly. They stitch the gray scale of daily disappointment with vivid, unsparing detail, a degree of precision that renders loneliness psychedelic.
Speaking across generations to both the passions of youth and the agonies of adulthood, There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die reveals everyday life stripped of its excesses, exposing its bones and bare the normal and the strange, the meaningful and the meaningless. These startling, resonant poems are both canonical and contemporary, and demand to be shared with friends, loved ones, nemeses, and strangers alike.
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