Award-winning ESPN reporter Mina Kimes joins the show to share her love of reading and the one book that inspired her career. Mina reveals how she ended up in sports journalism, how she handles online harassment, and what she would change if she were suddenly appointed NFL commissioner.
The Stacks Book Club selection for February isThe Round Houseby Louise Erdrich. We will discuss the book on February 22nd with Mina Kimes.
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The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.
January was Mariah Month at The Stacks! This Unabridged episode is dedicated to the pop icon and author of our Book Club pick The Meaning of Mariah Carey. To celebrate, we brought back some friends of the podcast to share their favorite Mariah moments and songs. Plus, Traci shares her own faves.
*This episode is exclusive to members of The Stacks Pack on patreon. To join this community, get inside access to the show, and listen now, click the link below.
To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.
Chelsea Devantez, host of the Celebrity Book Club podcast, returns to discuss our January Book Club pick The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey with Michaela Angela Davis. In breaking down her memoir, we get into Mariah’s relationships, her experience of race and her dynamic with her parents. We also couldn’t help but compare aspects of Mariah’s story to what Prince Harry shares in his new memoir Spare.
Be sure to listen to the end of today’s episode to find out what our book club pick will be in February 2023.
To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.
Today we’re joined by two award-winning journalists from the field of criminal justice and police misconduct. Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham have coauthored the book The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover-Up in Oakland, an exposé following many years of investigation of The Oakland Police Department. We get into why they wanted to write about the OPD in the first place, and ask whether the police can be reformed. We also discuss how the authors feel their own identities played into their writing of the book.
The Stacks Book Club selection for January isThe Meaning of Mariah Careyby Mariah Carey with Michaela Angela Davis. We will discuss the book on January 25th with Chelsea Devantez.
To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website,
Author, activist and podcaster Aubrey Gordon talks to us today about her brand new second book – “You Just Need to Lose Weight”: And 19 Other Myths about Fat People. She addresses the challenge of writing a book for both fat and thin people, and explains why she was initially apprehensive about “myth-busting.” We also discuss what’s wrong with how we frame fatness, why BMI is unreliable, and the problem with body positivity.
The Stacks Book Club selection for January is The Meaning of Mariah Careyby Mariah Carey with Michaela Angela Davis. We will discuss the book on January 25th with Chelsea Devantez.
To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.
Comedian and Emmy-nominated TV and film writer Chelsea Devantez joins our first Stacks episode of 2023. Her Celebrity Book Club podcast breaks down celeb memoirs with a roster of Chelsea’s funniest friends. We get into how Chelsea started the show, and why she wants to spend time lifting up the stories of the rich and famous. We also ask ourselves why we love to hate these books so much.
The Stacks Book Club selection for January isThe Meaning of Mariah Careyby Mariah Carey with Michaela Angela Davis. We will discuss the book on January 25th with Chelsea Devantez.
To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.
Our first Stacks Book Club selection of the year is the 2020 autobiography The Meaning of Mariah Carey, by Mariah Carey written along with Michaela Angela Davis. Mariah is a global icon in pop and R&B music. In this memoir, the artist and legendary vocalist recounts the many highs and lows of her personal and professional struggles – the triumphs and traumas that had thus far been reported on by everyone but Mariah herself, on her own terms. Mariah on her book: “I let the abandoned and ambitious adolescent have her say, and the betrayed and triumphant woman I became tell her side. Writing this memoir was incredibly hard, humbling and healing. My sincere hope is that you are moved to a new understanding, not only about me, but also about the resilience of the human spirit.”
We will discussThe Meaning of Mariah Careyby Mariah Carey on Wednesday, January 25th. You can find out who our guest will be by listening to the podcast on January 4th. If you’d like even more discussion around the book, consider joining The Stacks Pack on Patreon and participating in The Stacks’ monthly virtual book club.
To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/thestacks). We are beyond grateful for anything you’re able to give to support the production of The Stacks.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed. For more information click here.
The Stacks Pack is The Stacks community on Patreon. They are the most ardent fans of the show, and they believe in putting their money behind this little indie book podcast. I am forever grateful for this generous community. This year, as all the book awards and best of lists were coming out, The Stacks Pack was not into what they were seeing. There were lively debates happening on The Stacks discord channel, and one TSP member decided we should have our own awards. And thus, The Stackies were born.
Before I get to the awards themselves I have to say thank you to Elisah who put together the form and ran ran all the rounds of voting. She is a rock star and I am so grateful she took the reins when I simply could not.
The nominations and voting was open only to members of The Stacks Pack. There was one round of nominations, one round of general voting, and one round for finalists. Then we arrived at the below winners. I have included the winners and the finalists in each category. The winners are in bold. They are also all hyperlinked to bookshop.org so you can shop while you read.
If you want to join all the fun of The Stacks Pack please head to patreon.com/thestacksto join in. You earn awesome perks (bonus episodes, the aforementioned discord, virtual book club, reading tracker, and more) and you get to know your money (only $5 a month) is going toward a Black woman run independent book podcast. C’mon, that’s five dollars well spent.
Without further ado, here are the winners of the first ever The Stackies.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.
Of all the lists and awards that are reigned down on books at the end of the year, this list is my most favorite. I have reached out to past guests from The Stacks in 2022 and asked them to share with us their favorite book they read this year, and the one book in 2023 they’re looking forward to. I love the list because, as you know, The Stacks’ guests have the best taste in books, and the list is unlike what you get in every other publication. My guests have range.
I hope you enjoy reconnecting with the many voices from our 2022 season.
Cree Myles Curator behind Penguin Random House’sAll Ways Black
The best book I read in 2022 was Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin. As a lover of Jordan Peele I wanted to make sure I spent some time with the OG and Levin didn’t disappoint. A masterclass in social commentary, Levin uses the genre of horror to explore how little control women had over their bodies in the 1960s.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2023: The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor
As a composition professor, the best thing I read in 2022 was Other People’s English by Vershawn Ashanti Young. It’s a strong rebuke of code-switching ideology and an endorsement of code-meshing, which encourages speakers and writers to draw on their entire linguistic repertoires (even, and especially, in academic settings where language standards are steeped in racism).
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2023: Year of the Tiger by Alice Wong.
I had the pleasure of reading the Graphic Adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower this year. This book holds special distinction for me because the artist of this fantastic adaptation is John Jennings, who grew up not far from where I live in Mississippi. This novel is a Hugo Award Winner for Best Graphic Story. Octavia Butler’s novel is one of the most realistic and believable works of dystopian fiction I’ve ever read. It’s compelling and detailed, with exceptional character and plot development. It pulls you so far into the story that you can’t stop turning the pages until you’ve reached the end. I highly recommend it!
Katrina was our guest for Day 1 of Banned Books Week, where she talked about curating a collection and the process of banning a book in public libraries.
I read a lot of great books this year, but perhaps the most worldview-altering was Disability Visibility, edited by Alice Wong, which provided such a nuanced and diverse understanding of what it means to be disabled today. It was by turns enraging, optimistic and empowering, and even convinced me to self-identify as disabled, a terminology I had previously rejected because of its stigma.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2023: I have bell hooks’ All About Loveon my shelf and I haven’t started it yet, but am very excited to finally get to a timeless classic.
My favorite read of 2022 was Delia Ephron’s Left on Tenth. It’s such a beautiful story about finding love and strength later in life.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2023: I have a pile of frothy, unread rom-coms on my nightstand waiting to be read on holiday, and I’m especially excited to sip some bed-wine and tackle The Rewind during the first few days of the new year before work starts up again.
Best book I read in 2022 is a re-read. 1992’s The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes from the late Janet Malcolm. I’m writing a lot right now, and Malcolm, who was deeply cognizant of biography as a “flawed genre,” inspires me with her ability to investigate, to tell a person’s story, tell her story, and tell the big story— all at once. Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2023: Well, I’m hearing Bernice McFadden is releasing a memoir next autumn called First Born Girls. As a first born girl myself, I will be first in line.
The best book of non-fiction I read in 2022 was How To Read Now by Elaine Castillo. A trenchant and sly and super-readable, super-smart collection of essays that lays bare how much white supremacy fucks up all aspects of literature, from the reader’s experience with language and story and the page to the limits of the captalist publishing imagination. I will read anything that Castillo writes, and this book is no exception. The best book of fiction was Mecca by Susan Straight. I absolutely love everything about this sprawling, ambitious novel set in California’s Inland Empire, and I can’t think of another white author I would trust to explore the experiences and identities of a multiethnic cast of characters than Straight. She writes with respect, compassion, clarity, and depth, especially when she goes in on the twin traumas of police violence and COVID on Black, Latinx, and undocumented folks. The best book of poetry was Time is a Motherby Ocean Vuong because, seriously, everything that Ocean writes and says is just beyond brilliant and gorgeous. I can go into these poems again and again and always find something new. And I’m really not an avid reader of cookbooks or food writing but special shoutout to Simply Julia by Julia Turshen. Sure, the recipes are really fantastic, but what got me is how quietly radical the book is: sandwiched between a chicken cutlet recipe and one for a baked spinach and artichoke dip is a short essay titled “On the Worthiness Of Our Bodies.” It’s a deeply personal and powerful rejection of diet culture, internalized fatphobia and how the culture of “healthy eating” culture too often functions as a front for disordered eating. I can’t think of any other cookbook that includes lines like “There is nothing wrong with being fat. The only thing wrong is thinking that any person, living in any type of body, is less valuable than someone else.”
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2023: Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden by Camille Dungy. I’ve had the honor of reading this in ARC form and cannot wait for the final, glorious book. To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness by Robin Coste Lewis. I bought this “film for the hands,” as Lewis describes it, for my wife for Christmas, but really I got it so we can read it together.
The best book I read in 2022 was Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe [by Benjamin Alire Sáenz], a YA novel about two Mexican-American teenagers coming into their queerness in the late 1980s. I love this book because I get to vicariously experience the queer adolescence I should’ve been able to have, but never did.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2023: Chasing Pacquiao by Rod Pulido.
So many great books I read this year, but my favorite was Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parentsby Lindsay C. Gibson PsyD. As jarring as that title can be, it actually helped me develop even more empathy for the adults that raised me, seeing more of their humanity in the decisions they made. The book does a great job of helping readers hold accountability and create steps to move forward without blame or shame. I highly recommend it for anyone who is on the journey of healing their childhood wounds, especially anyone who has or is interested in having kids of their own one day.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2023: I’m truly most looking forward to reading South to America by Imani Perry.
The best book I read in 2022 is Leila Mottley’s Nightcrawling. I am floored and inspired by her tremendous talent. She wrote a raw, honest, emotional fiction novel that is a heartfelt coming of age story that’s based in Oakland. She’s a rare talent and it’s impossible not to be shifted by this book in some way.
Jemele was our guest on Episode 240, where she discussed her book Uphill.
My favorite book in 2022 is His Name Is George Floyd by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa. I love books that explain the whys of situations. It is a gripping look at the macro issues of the racial and systematic mechanisms that shaped George Floyd’s life and death. (Dan Charnas’ memoir on J Dilla and Howard Bryant’s book on Rickey Henderson were close runner-ups among my favs of the the year.) Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2023: Questlove’s Music is History. It’s been on my list for a little while.
The book I thought with the most this year was Victor Ray’s On Critical Race Theory: Why It Matters & Why You Should Care. The point of theory is to help us think about things, and Dr. Ray gives us a bountiful gift by sharing his own story and breaking down philosophy in a way that helps us to think about the most pressing issues of race and class in our time. This slim volume is also a masterclass in craft, as every sentence is composed in a way that is elegant, compact, illuminating and inviting. Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2023: The New American Homeless by Brian Goldstone. Dr. Goldstone writes about housing and houselessness with such compassion, rigor and pathos, presenting the moral case for housing as a human right with the urgency it deserves. His writings on Twitter and in The New Republic have deeply informed my own politics and ethics, and his book is going to be a game-changer in American society confronting the scourge of homelessness.
The best book I read in 2022 was Where the Children Take Us by Zain Asher. What a loving and elegantly written tribute to a mother’s determination to put her children on her back and carry them through the most devastating of storms. It’s a story of tragic loss, triumphant love, extraordinary perseverance and odds-shattering achievement delivered in beautiful prose. The tough-love parenting strategies, the immigrant come-up, the Nigerian “no carry last” mandate for excellence – it all hit home for me in such a searing, affirming way. Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2023: A Coastline is an Immeasurable Thing: A Memoir Across Three Continentsby Mary-Alice Daniel
Easily the best book I read in 2022 was Kate Beaton’s Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands. It’s a graphic novel memoir about Beaton’s time digging for oil in northern Canada. It’s a tough and crappy job in a tough and awful environment. She doesn’t sugarcoat it, but she doesn’t condescend to the (mostly) men who have little choice but to work there. It’s an empathetic, complicated, and beautifully drawn look at labor, class, and the choices we make.
Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2023: Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Abraham Riesman. I’m not even one of those wrestling nerds, but even I can appreciate how uniquely of-the-moment professional wrestling is right now – with its reliance on blending “truth” and “performance.” And what better way to understand all that than an exploration of the guy behind it all.
Andrew was our guest on Episode 246, where he discussed his favorite books of 2022
The best thing I read this year was South to Americaby Imani Perry. Perry does an extraordinary job of making the argument for The American South as the center of The United States .The book is captivating and wide ranging and full of complexities. It is a challenge to read and that is precisely what makes it feel like such an enjoyable read. The writing is unreal. The storytelling is dynamic. This book is easily one of the best things I’ve read in the last five years. Book I’m looking forward to reading in 2023:Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and Raw Dogby Jamie Loftus, because ya’ll know I love any excuse to talk about glizzies.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.
For our final book club pick of 2022, Greta Johnsen is back to discuss True Biz by Sara Nović, a novel about the teachers and students of a boarding school for the Deaf. We ask who the audience is for this book, and whether the Deaf community should have to teach hearing people about themselves. We also get into the topic of consent with children and parents, especially when it comes to medical decisions.
Be sure to listen to then end of today’s episode to find out what our book club pick will be in January 2023.
To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.
The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website, and this comes at no cost to you. This in no way effects opinions on books and products reviewed here. For more information click here.
