You Too Think Taylor Swift is the Person of the Year

Are baking Christmas cookies or followed the Ohtani saga

Hi friends,

Hope you had a great weekend. I’m still processing that there are 20 days left in the year.

I want to quickly thank the podcast City Cast D.C. for naming me and my pal Destinee Hodge to their list of people influencing the District’s literary scene. The two of us run East City Bookshop’s Really Reading Romance book club and it’s such a source of joy for all of us. Hearing that we’re building a community was pretty cool.

And, now, what to read if …

You Devoured Time’s Interview with Taylor Swift

Kiss the Girl by Zoraida Córdova

Time named Taylor Swift its person of the year last week. To mark the occasion, the star — who the Federal Reserve credited with boosting the economy — gave her first interview in four years. If you dropped everything to read the feature or just want “A Little Mermaid”-inspired romance (the cute Disney version, not the terrifying original), add Zoraida Córdova’s Kiss the Girl to your TBR.

As Kiss the Girl opens, Ariel del Mar, one of the most famous people in the world, is looking forward to finally living a somewhat normal life. The international farewell tour for the Siren Seven, the band she’s been in with her sisters since she was a kid, is coming to an end. When she learns that her father, the head of Atlantica Records, has secretly planned for her to immediately launch a solo career, she impulsively runs off with Star-Crossed, an up-and-coming pop-punk band led by Eric Reyes, hiding her identity by ditching her famous red wig.

Kiss the Girl is a fast, fun read, chock-full of “Little Mermaid” easter eggs. (That said, you could easily enjoy the book without being a fan of the Disney flick.) It features A+ banter and entertaining side characters. Romance readers will be enchanted with this one.

Reminder rec: For more celebrity romance, check out Lucy Parker’s London Celebrities series, one of my all-time favorite romance series.

You’re Baking Christmas Cookies

The Belt Cookie Table Book edited by Bonnie Tawse

As I write this, my mom and I are texting to finalize this year’s Christmas cookie list. My family takes Christmas cookies very seriously: It looks like we’re coming in at about 20 types – my guess is we’ll end up with 600 or so cookies. (For more on our insane baking tradition, you can read an essay I wrote about it for my friend Jolene’s fab newsletter Time Travel Kitchen). If you, too, are making a cookie list and checking it twice, you’ll want to check out The Belt Cookie Table Book, a compilation of recipes and short stories about them.

As the book’s editor, Bonnie Tawse, explained, “The cookie table is a tradition beloved by residents of Youngstown [Ohio], Pittsburgh, and parts in between. It has its roots in a time when wedding cakes were far too dear for newly arrived immigrants to purchase. Instead, family and friends showed their love for a bride and groom by baking from scratch hundreds (sometimes thousands) of cookies and other small sweet treats to be shared at the reception.”

The book features recipes ranging from the complex — pizelle, thin Italian cookies — to the more straightforward potato chip crunch cookies (don’t knock them till you try them). While the recipes are great, what makes this book shine is the anecdotes that go along with them. They remind us that cookies can create great memories.

Reminder rec: I also adore Sarah Kieffer’s 100 Cookies.

You Got Caught Up in the Shohei Ohtani Drama

Winning Fixes Everything by Evan Drellich

One story has captured the baseball world for the past few weeks: the future Shohei Ohtani, the rare all-star in both pitching and batting. After weeks of breathless coverage and countless tweets/xs/threads, Ohtani signed a 10-year, $700-million contact with the LA Dodgers. For a behind-the-scenes look at the MLB signing process, read Evan Drellich’s Winning Fixes Everything, a chronicle of the years leading up to the Astro’s World Series victory and sign-stealing scandal.

I’m not just highlighting this book to needle Astros fans (that’s a bonus ; ) ) but because I think it’s a fascinating look at the MLB in the post-Moneyball era. With stats replacing scouts and McKinsey consultants standing in for long-time managers, the game is changing and the Astros saga documents the ways. Drellich, who broke the story on the sign-stealing scheme, takes us into the rooms where executives decided what players to sign, what surveillance technology to implement and what exactly “The Astros Way” meant.

This isn’t just a baseball book — it’s a business book — proving the axiom that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” With the Astros’ leadership focused on winning at all costs, employees at every level took on the mindset, taking it to extreme degrees. Well worth a read for anyone looking to fill the time until Spring Training (except for Astros fans, you probably won’t like this one).

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Thanks for reading. You can catch up on last week’s recs here and my Q&A with Becca Freeman here.

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