In The Spirit(s)...Chapter One
/A Bookish & Boozy Holiday…Chapter One
Many readers will tell you that how and where you read is almost as important as what you read. If you are a true book lover, you can plop yourself down just about anywhere and lose yourself in the pages. But your preference is always to make an occasion of it.
Picture this; outside its cold and snowy, your notifications are turned off, the chaos of daily life is on pause, and your favourite chair is beckoning you with a plush and warm blanket. What better way to settle into the moment than with a good book and a cocktail. This holiday season let me lure you to your happy place with lovingly curated pairings of reading recommendations and cocktail recipes.
My Christmas wish is that you find whatever it is you might be craving or needing in these pages. May they provoke thought, impart wisdom, induce fits of laughter or bouts of tears, transport you into entirely new and unexplored worlds, allow you to be captivated and entertained, and above all, may they provide sustenance to your heart and mind.
Get cozy, raise a glass, and crack open a book as you celebrate the season!
Cocktail Note: First and foremost, please drink responsibly and legally! Also, each cocktail is about one(ish) servings and the expectation is you choose the brands suited to your taste.
On The Shelf: Brave Outlaws & Rum With A Bite
The Lincoln Highway – Amor Towles
In June 1954, Emmett is driven home by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he just served his sentence for involuntary manslaughter. His mother is long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm belongs to the bank. Without much holding him there, Emmett decides to grab his eight-year-old brother and head for a better life. Then he discovers that a couple of friends from the work farm hitched a ride in the trunk and have a different plan in mind. Richly imagined and beautifully told. Towles delivers an enthralling odyssey with prose as profound always!
Outlawed – Anna North
A fugitive girl, a mysterious gang of robbers and a dangerous mission to transform the Wild West. On the day of her wedding, Ada’s life is looking good; she loves her husband to be and loves being an apprentice midwife alongside her mother. But after a year with no babies in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, she makes a bold choice to become an outlaw. Joining up with a notorious gang she not only discovers herself but reminds the reader that the Western is far from dead. Giddy-up!
A History Of Wild Places – Shea Ernshaw
This story follows three residents of a secluded, seemingly peaceful commune as they investigate the disappearances of two outsiders. They bring in Travis who has an unusual talent for finding the missing, he only needs to touch a single object that belonged to them. The search leads them to a reclusive commune believed to only be a legend. Then Travis disappears and all the secrets inside this community are at threat of exposure. Beautiful and hypnotic writing that recalls the best kind of fairy tale. One with a chill!
On The Shelf: Rock Legends & Sweet Sweet Whiskey
Led Zeppelin: The Biography – Bob Spitz
Rockstar. Whatever that term means to you, chances are it owes a debt to Led Zeppelin. No one before or since have defined it quite like Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and the incomparable John Bonham. Spitz separates the myth from the men with his trademark storytelling flair. Previous books on the band have been light on details and guarded in the telling, this one is a collision of brilliance and primal force. Much like the band’s music!
The Storyteller – Dave Grohl
Grohl has always written stories and finally decided to expand his oeuvre by chronicling an extensive career and a life well lived. He compared the joy of doing this to that of recording a song and being excited to share it with the world. A written reverence for the enduring power of music; those who write it, those who perform it and those that hear it. Something I didn’t know about him; he is very witty!!
The Flyer Vault: 150 Years Of Toronto Concert History – Daniel Tate
Through the stunning graphics of the time, this book traces seminal live music moments in the city I call home, Toronto. Including James Brown’s performance in the middle of a city-wide blackout, an unknown Jimi Hendrix as an opening act, the multiple appearances of Led Zeppelin, and the Notorious B.I.G. show that caused a riot in the middle of a brutal Canadian winter. Allow yourself to be taken on this magical musical mystery tour!
On The Shelf: Twisty Tales & Tail With A Twist
Gilded – Marissa Meyer
Riding the wave of the huge success of the reimagined fairytales to be found in the Lunar Chronicles, Meyer returns to that world with this haunting retelling of Rumpelstiltskin. Long ago cursed by the god of lies, a poor miller’s daughter has developed a talent for spinning stories that are fantastical and spellbinding and entirely untrue. Then she finds her outlandish tales attract the wrong kind of attention and unwittingly summons a mysterious boy to her aid. What can possibly go wrong?
The Perishing – Natashia Deon
Lou wakes up in an alley in 1930’s LA with no memory of how she got there or where she is from. Taken in by a caring family, she dedicates herself to her education while trying to put her mysterious origins behind her. When she befriends a firefighter at a boxing gym, she feels certain that their paths previously crossed. As she is beset by flashes from different eras, she begins to believe that she may be an immortal. Part lyrical mystery, part science fiction and part history lesson of stuff they don’t teach you in school. A genre smashing and richly inventive novel!
The Invisible Life Of Addie LaRue – V.E. Schwab
France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus, begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name. All the good stuff happens in bookstores!
On The Shelf: Heartbreak & Tequila
We Begin At The End – Chris Whitaker
Bookended by mysterious deaths, the beating heart of this novel is without question its lead characters. Walk, a forty something Sheriff hanging on for dear life to a past that may have only existed in his imagination and Duchess, a foul-mouthed, fierce, and furious thirteen-year-old that refuses to cower from the misery’s life has seen fit to throw at her. The author imbues them with such longing for a life outside their grasp that your heart will lay torn and tattered on their behalf. See full review here…
https://www.crackingthespine.ca/blog/2021/4/6/we-begin-at-the-end-chris-whitaker
Fault Lines – Emily Itami
Funny and provocative, this novel is for anyone who ever looked in the mirror and asked, who am I and how did I get here? Mizuki is a housewife with a hardworking husband, two adorable children and a beautiful Tokyo apartment. She has everything you are supposed to want but feels suffocated by her life. Then she meets a man with whom she rediscovers herself but soon must choose between the two lives she is living.
The People We Keep – Allison Larkin
April lives out her days in a motorless motorhome, picking up shifts at a local diner and trying to figure out who she wants to be. After a fight with her dad, she decides to hit the road. With no chosen destination she stumbles into Café Decadence where she finds some kindred spirits. As she settles in, she begins to write songs that chronicle her life in ways that will break your heart and put it back together again. Lovely and full of heart!
On The Shelf: Kickass Women & Sassy Gin
All Of Us Villains – Amanda Foody
The Blood Moon rises. The Blood Veil falls. The Tournament begins. Every generation seven families each name a champion to compete to the death. The prize? Exclusive control of the most powerful resource of high magick in the world. This year, thanks to a salacious tell all book, the champions are thrust into the worldwide spotlight, granting them new opportunities to win. Wicked in all the right ways! Think Hunger Games but with much more blood…and much more spectacle.
The Days Of Afrekete – Asali Solomon
On the day of the dinner party to thank her husband’s supporters in a bid for election, Liselle discovers that he may be guilty of corruption and is being investigated by the FBI. Across town, but worlds away, an estranged friend Selena is struggling with just putting one foot in front of the other. An astute, funny, and deeply human story of two women coming back to themselves in midlife. An infinite amount of power in a story that takes place in a finite measure of time.
The Paper Palace – Miranda Cowley Heller
Over the course of a singular day, one woman must make a life-changing decision that has been brewing for decades. Secrets, lies and a very complex love triangle will be unraveled. Elle is a fifty-year-old mother of three who believes she has been happy when an encounter with the love of her youth has her questioning everything. Now she finds herself torn between the life she has made and the life she imagined. Loved that the woman was of a mature age, as a reader it’s getting harder to identify with protagonists in their thirties, of which there is an abundance.
On The Shelf: Noir & Fizzy Booze
Harlem Shuffle – Colson Whitehead
Highly entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns and rip offs set in 1960’s Harlem and steeped in atmospheric noir. Ray is raising a growing family on a tight budget when he finds himself pulled into a shady heist. When everything goes sideways, Ray is exposed to a dark underbelly he had no idea existed. Unsurprisingly this is intricately plotted and beautifully described, Whitehead has cleverly masked a dramatic saga as a crime novel. Fast-paced, snappy, and brilliant!
Velvet Was The Night – Silvia Moreno-Garcia
A delicious and twisted treat for lovers of noir! Following the story of a daydreaming secretary, a lonely enforcer, and the mystery of a woman they are both desperate to find. Maite escapes the unrest 1970’s Mexico City by losing herself in stories of passion and danger found in the pages of Secret Romance. When her neighbour, who seems to be living a life straight from those pages, disappears, Maite journey’s deeper into her secret life. Edgy and nostalgic, just as good noir should be.
Suburban Dicks – Fabian Nicieza
Written by the cocreator of Deadpool. Which is really all I need to say. But I will say more. A hilariously entertaining novel featuring two unlikely and unforgettable amateur sleuths, where the skewering of social commentary is relentless, and the edge is on point. Our characters include a pregnant mother of five and a disgraced journalist who uncover body parts and conspiracy. Brilliant banter!
On The Shelf: Sweetly Funny & A Festive Treat
The Reading List – Sara Nisha Adams
Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in London after losing his beloved wife, finding solace in the sameness of the day to day. Aleisha is a bright teenager struggling with anxiety working at the local library when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill A Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she has never heard of before and she sets out to read every book on it. When she shares the list with Mukesh, they find comfort and joy in each other and the story’s that give up their secrets and power one by one.
The Sentence – Louise Erdrich
A small independent bookstore is haunted by the stores most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls Day, but she simply won’t leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration, which she survived only by reading, wants to solve the mystery of this haunting while settling into her new life. Wickedly funny and touching story that asks what we owe to the living, to the dead, to the reader and to the written word. Books about books? I’m all in!
Atlas Of The Heart – Brene Brown
Brown takes us on a journey through eighty-seven of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human. As she maps the necessary framework for meaningful connection, she provides the language and tools to access new choices and second chances.
