You're Ready for College Football

Were a theater kid or are celebrating National Dog Day

.Hi friends!

A special hello and Happy Pub Week to friend of the newsletter Leigh Stein! Her creepy, claustrophobic If You’re Seeing This, It’s Meant for You comes out tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to picking up my pre-order on Tuesday after work. If you need a title for the “book that features an animal” box on summer reading Bingo, it includes a rabbit named Owen Wilson.

Speaking of Bingo, cards are due next Friday, September 6. Submit here.

And, now, what to read if …

You’re Psyched College Football is Back

Mississippi Blue 42 by Eli Cranor

The start of the college football season is one of my dad’s favorite days of the year. Depending on what kind of fan you are, it started over the weekend with “week zero” games or officially kicks off (pun intended) on Thursday with a slate of matchups. If you want more college football nuttiness, grab Eli Cranor’s Mississippi Blue 42.

It’s late summer 2013, and Special Agent Rae Johnson, the daughter of a prominent college football coach, has just completed FBI training. Her supervisors, seeking to take advantage of her knowledge, send Rae to Compson, Mississippi, to investigate dirty money flowing into the beloved college team’s program. A routine, if dull, investigation takes a fatal turn when the team’s star quarterback falls out of a window, lands on a big bag of money and dies.

Rae recognizes the case as an opportunity to make a life-changing arrest — in the first days of her nascent career — and begins to investigate the locals, going undercover against her more experienced partner’s advice, and forming relationships with the fans, coaches, players, and politicians who depend on the football program’s success. What she uncovers causes her to question the game that has defined her life.

Unlike my dad, I’m not really a college football person. In fact, I only watch it when I’m with him and my brother at the end of the year for bowl season. Still, I really enjoyed Mississippi Blue 42. Cranor, a former college football player, shows why the game is so important to so many, while imbuing the book with a Carl Hiassen-esque zaniness and humor. I’ll definitely pick up future series installments.

Bingo box this book checks: First in a series

You Were a Theater Kid

Cry for Me, Argentina by Tamara Yajia

Tamara Yajia’s family is what you might call quirky. Her salami-obsessed grandfather made a living selling poppers , and before her parents set out to make her mother an Only Fans star, they owned a mall food stand called Sexy Chicken. They moved from Argentina to the United States, back to Argentina and then back to the United States. In between, Tamara grew a career that had her on the cusp of achieving childhood stardom.

I picked up Cry for Me, Argentina on a bit of a whim. I’d never seen Tamara’s comedy and was a little apprehensive about reading another childhood star book after I’m Glad My Mom Died (which is astounding, but also extremely dark). But I’m glad I did because it shows a family taking such a different approach than McCurdy’s. The Yajias aren’t a traditional family by any means, but they support Tamara’s dreams while still parenting her.

Cry for Me, Argentina is a funny, foul-mouthed and timely examination of immigration and family. As actress Cecily Strong described it, “Tamara is one of the funniest people I know and her memoir, Cry for Me, Argentina, is as hilarious as she is. Her mother is my favorite character who also happens to be a real person.” (I agree and would very much like to meet Mrs. Yajia.)

Bingo box this book checks: Debut, book by a new-to-you author

You’re Celebrating National Dog Day

Rules for Ruin by Mimi Matthews

Tomorrow is National Dog Day, so please enjoy some pictures of my dog Ellie, who is currently napping next to me as I write this:

If you’re celebrating a furry friend this week, or just want a book where the dog does not die, check out Mimi Matthews’s Rules for Ruin, a Victorian age romance featuring a woman set on taking down a powerful viscount and the bookie who relies on the lord’s protection to keep his operation running.

When the headmistress of the Crinoline Academy — a secret orphanage/school that trains young women to distract, disrupt, and discredit the patriarchy — summons Euphemia Flite back to London, she packs up her black poodle, Franc, and begrudgingly returns home. There, the headmistress offers her enough money to live independently if she finds a way to discredit a viscount blocking women’s rights legislation in Parliament.

On the evening of her first mission, Gabriel Royce finds Euphemia rifling through the lord’s private papers. There’s immediately a tension between the two, but as they spend more time together the pair realize they are working at cross purposes. Euphemia is working to destroy the man Gabriel relies on for protection. Yet, as they both continue to cross paths, they find it harder to resist their growing attraction.

I loved this one and not just because of Franc, the adorable black poodle based on the author’s own dog. The most difficult part of a romance novel is managing the balance of “this couple should be together” and “they need to be apart right now” and Rules for Ruin provides a real — not easily resolved — reason they can’t be together. Read it now before the sequel , The Marriage Method, comes out in November.

Bingo box this book checks: Book set before 1900, book that features an animal, first in a series

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One programming note: I’ll be in your inboxes on Tuesday next week because of the Labor Day holiday.

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