The end of the year turns really quickly into January and the holidays feel long and short at the same time. In between the office parties that give way to family gatherings and New Year’s Eve, the shopping and the frenetic pace of these holidays, it’s good to take some time out. Feed your mind and your spirit with some quality you-time, and pick up a book.
Any book, as long as you enjoy it. Few pleasures are as fulfilling as reading can be. Here are a few recommendations that may tickle your fancy.
Set in New York’s unforgiving fine-dining scene,Carnivorefollows Kash, a Bangladeshi-born chef whose exotic-meat restaurant collapses under debt and bad decisions. Enter a violent loan shark that’s, of course, demanding settlement. It’s then when Kash learns about an invitation-only supper club for billionaires and figures that this may be his last chance at survival.
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To get the assignment, he plans to cook something no one has ever tasted. So far, so good, but things turn brutal when the loan shark cuts off one of Kash’s fingers. After that, the story goes to a dark place.
It’s a mix of ambition, how far anyone would go to meet their own ideals and what it feels like when there may be only one way out. Carnivoreis as dark as it is light, and it makes for totally immersive reading. It’s provocative and can smack you sideways if you don’t pay attention.
An absolutely five-star book. This is a serious book. Make no mistake.The Holy and The Brokenwas written after the eruption of violence in 2023 and is a reflection on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
History, lived experience and years of peacebuilding work is assembled together in an argument that challenges readers to look beyond the hatred, the generational anger and zero-budge from both sides. It’s a look at people, people on the ground, faith and empathy. Imagine if people could actually learn to live together and understand one another.
What would it look like in the region? What if humanity was really shared and understood? Flescher’s book is slow going because speed reading this work will not allow for the takeouts that present themselves.
It’s also blunt. A tough read, but in a more universal sense, an essential treatise to comprehending some of the deep-set challenges that can prevent nations from being at peace with themselves, and their foes. What is it about True Crime that’s so delectably voyeuristic?
Podcaster turned authorNicole Engebrecht’scollection of cold cases looks at a few unsolved crimes. There are disappearances, unidentified remains and murders without answers, both to families and authorities.
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