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#bookrecs — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #bookrecs, aggregated by home.social.

  1. ICYMI: I was recently asked by Shepherd to select my three favorite books of 2025 from everything I read between October of 2024 and September of this year. A daunting task to be sure but I managed it, just barely. 🤪👍

    shepherd.com/bboy/2025/f/micha

    #books #bestreads #bestbooks #booksof2025 #booksofmastodon #readersofmastodon #reading #readingcommunity #whattoread #bookrecs #bookstodon #booktodon #sciencefiction #specfic #speculativefiction #horror #horrorbooks

  2. [Updated!] Which new #books are you most looking forward to in 2025? 📚Here are some of mine (in publication order):

    * The Sinners All Bow by #KateWinklerDawson (history/true crime)

    * The Mask of Fear by #AlexanderFreed (#StarWars/media tie-in)

    * Broken Fields by #MarcieRendon (mystery/Indigenous) #CashBlackbear series

    * Oathbound by #TracyDeonn (YA fantasy) #Legendborn series

    * Sunrise on the Reaping by #SuzanneCollins (YA dystopia/science fiction) #HungerGames series

    * School of Shards by #SergeyDyachenko & #MarinaDyachenko (dark academia/SFF in translation) #VitaNostra trilogy

    * All That We See or Seem by #KenLiu (science fiction/techno-thriller)

    ** Also, This Book Will Bury Me by #AshleyWinstead (crime fiction/mystery) would be on this list, but I had the good fortune to read an ARC this year. 👍👍

    #Bookstodon #BookRecs #2025Books

  3. #AmReading: All the Living and the Dead:

    From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life's Work

    By Hayley Campbell

    Real talk: I was hesitant when I first saw this book because I knew it had the potential to sensationalize or demonize the funeral profession. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Hayley interviewed exceptional people and portrayed them accurately. Phew!

    She didn’t shy away from the graphic nature of each person’s occupation, but she also kept it within a professional context. I appreciate her efforts to shine a light on the workers people prefer to ignore and prove that we’re compassionate and empathetic rather than a flock of vultures (fun fact: it’s actually called a “wake” of vultures).

    As a funeral director and embalmer, I highly recommend this book. Everyone ought to know a bit about what happens behind closed doors before passing a broad judgement based on stereotypes.

    FYI, this book covers the duties of workers in the USA and UK. Practices and laws vary by location. Here’s the book’s blurb:

    “A deeply compelling exploration of the death industry and the people―morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners―who work in it and what led them there.

    We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we’re so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look?

    Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.”

    bookshop.org/shop/hisandhearse

    #HisAndHearsePress #BookRecommendations #BookRecs #Bookstodon #Bookwyrm #Nonfiction #DeathPositive #Funeral #Mortician #DeathCare #DeathProfessional #HayleyCampbell