Rutabaga's Reads 2026: Part 8

Will this finally be a year with two nonfiction posts? Who’s to say for certain at this point, but at least I’ve got one done. For the nonfiction readers out there, what do you like to read?

Accidentally on Purpose (Apr. 22, 2025) by Kristen Kish.

   With Stef Ferrari.

She once thought her trajectory would find her as a globe-trotting businesswoman. When Kristen Kish was a teen working a pretzel stand or doing some modeling, she never pictured herself as a winner of Top Chef and, later, an Emmy-nominated host. Kish grew up in the Midwest (Michigan), a Korean adoptee trying to fit in with her female peers who were obsessing over dating boys and dressing in the latest trends. When she drops university, it’s her mother who suggests culinary school. She recollects her days as a proud 22-year-old looking for an executive chef role despite her lack of experience and reminding herself of the importance of line cooks and being willing to work as one. Kish reflects on her introduction to Top Chef and the process it took to become a contestant. She shares her inner turmoil growing up a closeted queer and how freeing it was to share the news with those closest to her. She talks about the opportunities that have opened up to her since her Top Chef win. She reminisces how she met her wife, that it wasn’t love-at-first-sight or an adorable meet-cute. It began with a professional hug and an Arlo Grey plate.

            The life of a chef shall never be for me, but Kish’s insight into the high-octane, high-stress, frazzling world of food is fascinating, tender and tricky, but once Kish finds her food-centric path, that’s when her passion and determination shine. It’s a story of growth and a search for the self. Yes, it’s about her culinary journey, too, and the unexpected ways in which doors can open when you open yourself up to possibilities, even knowing the anxiety it will/can cause. Kish’s road has been winding, as most paths tend to be, and while it looks like she’s had a whole lot of luck on her side, she’s dealt with disappointment, high expectations, sexism, disrespect, trash talk, fear and shame and manages to rise above it all, taking the high road and not letting small-minded people derail her. She doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty like some readers might prefer, especially when she’s mad, and as detailed as her account is, it can feel like some details are still missing. All that said, her memoir is authentically her and, because of that, triumphant as well. Her life of aspiration is also one of inspiration.

The Blood Countess (Feb. 17, 2026) by Shelley Puhak.

It’s said that she tortured and killed over 600 girls. It’s said that she bathed in the blood of her virginal victims. When Countess Elizabeth Bathory was found, she was allegedly caught in the act of murdering another of her maids and had blood on her hands. She was captured and walled up in a tower, never to be seen again except in an uppermost barred window. While so many in the late 1500s and early 1600s believed this to be true, and even the Guinness World Records book listed her as the “Most prolific serial killer (female)” for 50 years, historians raise doubts as to the legitimacy of these claims. Was the Blood Countess the monster that many people (mostly men who didn’t know her) accused her of being?  Could the Blood Countess have been a victim herself, made part of a witch-hunt after she became a widow with a Hungarian aristocratic lineage that went way back? She might’ve been the target of one of the most successful disinformation campaigns in history. For her book, Puhak traces the Countess’ well-to-do early life through her significant marriage to Count Francis Nadasdy, the Black Lord, to her downfall. She’s assertive and smart in a time when neither trait is expected or appreciated in women, and it is a tumultuous time.

            While this book is not overly long (only 210 pages through the Epilogue), it is weighed down by doubts and questions, plus too many men who lust for power/money/favor/land. Puhak’s extensive research takes what’s been written before and factors in new archival evidence to shed light on centuries-old assumptions. Reading it is hard, and it’s hard to imagine what it must’ve been like for the Countess to feel attacked from so many sides when all she’s doing is trying to manage her substantial landholdings, protect and raise her kids and oversee the people around her who also depend on her. She’s feisty, but she’s also a worrier. This reads like a revelatory whodunit that’s turning fabrications and blood-soaked mythology on its head. It’s a sordid, grim legend and an enraging, eye-opening journey that reveals how far some will go to destroy a woman in power.

Every Day I Read (Dec. 2, 2025) by Hwang Bo-Reum.

   Shanna Tan, translator.

In this nonfiction book, the author invites readers to reflect on one’s relationship with reading and the books one chooses. There are “53 Ways to Get Closer to Books.” In other words, this book contains 53 short chapters. It encourages readers to read bestsellers as well as beyond bestsellers, to read classics, poetry and novels, to read what you’re interested in along with books beyond what you’re interested in. It prompts readers to read aloud and not only to oneself, to read widely and deeply, to collect quotes and write book reviews. It nudges readers to join book clubs, to not be afraid to discuss books and to take time for difficult books. And she asks, “What Have You Been Reading?”

            When I first started this book, my initial reaction was that it might not be for me. I felt it might feel too philosophical. Fortunately, I don’t like to quit books and so I can now rave about this one’s significance. I love books, and I love reading, but Hwang loves both more. This love letter to reading celebrates books of all types, even down to reading multiple books at once (a norm for me). Reading is intimate and personal, but it’s also a shared experience, one that can include a community. Here is a book that makes you reflect; it is highly introspective. It ended up being absorbing, and I flew through it. Hwang reminds us that “reading helps us confront our inner selves,” but we must also realize that we can only do that if we’re willing to challenge our reading selves. I can’t say I’ll regularly push myself to read deeply, but I do know that, like the author, I will live my life reading. Always.

            Powerful lines: “We see what others choose to show us. We see the curls in their hair, but not the tangles in their hearts.”

            Also by the author (fiction): Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop

"The Midnight Train" by Matt Haig

The Midnight Train (May 26, 2026) by Matt Haig.

<This is the second novel in a series.>

It’s the three-cylinder passenger express engine of Wilbur Budd’s childhood, the Duke of Gloucester, except this one has carriages trailing behind, and the gray nameplate on the side of the boiler reads The Midnight Train. The station location isn’t SHEFFIELD, but WILBUR. Wilbur has just died, you see. Dead or not, no one can change a past that’s already been, but the Midnight Train can take you to all of those places where there is something to be observed and learned. It’s a chance to relive the moments that meant the most. With Agnes Deborah Amaryllis Bagdale (a.k.a. Mrs. Bagdale) of Bagdale’s Bookshop as his guide, Wilbur’s about to take a really hard look at the person he was in life. He’ll visit his best days with Maggie Shaw (eventually Mrs. Budd), the love of his life, when their love was young and their compasses centered. Then there was after. The shop expansions, the trips, more business trips, a husband that is never home and a wife who no longer feels like she has a husband. He wants more, more, more, but pushes Maggie aside as he achieves all of that more-ness. He loses his compass. Referring to his deceased self as the Ghost, he anticipates the memories he’s about to relive and there are those he wishes he could skip over (but he can’t). The regrets he didn’t have in life are staring back at him through his memories. He wishes he could go back and live better. He has an idea ... but the risk might be too great.

            Penned as the second novel in The Midnight World series but easily read as a standalone (Nora Seed makes an appearance), this is a time travel fiction novel of fantasy and magical realism that gives readers an interesting take on a journey after death. This love story is an adventure, as well as an exploration of what’s truly important in a lifetime. Through Wilbur, Haig reminds us that we should remember to live in the moment, but not in a way that feels clichéd. The love story is an appreciation expedition, a journey, a lesson and a reflection. It’s an adult fiction novel that makes readers think and encourages us “...to be nostalgic about the present.” Let none of us ever be in the sidecar of anyone’s ambition!

            Book One: The Midnight Library

Summer 2026

Rutabaga's Reads 2026: Part 7

It is a commitment to begin a new series, but this one is comprised of short novels. I tend to gravitate toward fantasy stories, so this series is right up my alley. As of this posting, there are 11 published books with the twelfth slated for publication early next year. I plan to read and review each of them. Thanks to my coworker, Brittany, for the recommendation!

            FYI: The write-ups are in chronological order.

Every Heart a Doorway (Apr. 5, 2016) by Seanan McGuire.

<This is the first novel in a series.>

There sits an elegant manor. It houses Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. Eleanor – once little Ely West – has a door that remains open, though that is not the norm for most who cross the threshold of her house. They come desperate to return to the worlds they have visited. They are desperate to find their doors. This includes Nancy Whitman, who’s just arrived. She went to the Halls of the Dead and plans to return to the darkness and stillness and right otherness of that Underworld. All this color and fast movement is as nonsensical to her as terms like Nonsense, Logic, Wickedness and Virtue (world types). But Nancy’s only just arrived, and three students are murdered in quick succession. Who’s an easier target to blame than the new girl with darkness in her veins? Fortunately, Nancy has comrades in Kade (Prism: a Fairyland), Jack Addams (the Moors with a mad scientist) and Christopher (Mariposa/Country of the Bones: a world of happy, dancing skeletons).

            Here is a gothic fantasy series opener for adults that is a grown-up version of holding childlike imagination. When one door closes, the door each of these people want may not actually open again. Or it may be lurking, but the traveler isn’t looking in the right place. This short novel is a gem of darkness, yearning and hope. The story can be mean, and it isn’t typically pretty. It’s a portal fantasy that’s “Grimm” but strangely charming, too. It is for every person who’s ever felt out of place, but I hope you, dear reader, don’t have to portal to another world to find your home.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones (June 13, 2017) by Seanan McGuire.

<This is the second novel in a series.>

When Chester and Serena Wolcott got pregnant, it was for the convenience of a handsome baby boy or a beautiful baby girl. When they were told they were expecting twins, they were smug about the idea, how it “smacked of efficiency.” Instead of a girl and a boy, out came two girls: Jacqueline and Jillian. While Louise Wolcott (a.k.a. Gemma Lou) tried to raise them with love, she was kicked out by her son after five years. The twins were given a type according to their parents’ whims: Jacqueline got the frilly dresses and long tresses, while Jillian got the pixie cuts and sports gear. When they’re 12, Jack and Jill open an old steamer trunk holding an impossible stairway instead of clothes and costume jewelry. They find the Moors. They are promised three safe nights, but Jack leaves with Dr. Bleak after only one, and Master despises being selected second. Jill had already chosen him, though. The same of face, Jack and Jill are competitors as well as companions, but here, where a vampire and a mad scientist reside, they are as different as night and day in a land of eternal twilight. Jack learns of love from Alexis, a plump, well-endowed teen whom she and Dr. Bleak once resurrected, but Jill does not. Yearning to become Master’s daughter, she chooses ruthlessness. She also chooses desperation, and it has devastating results for the both of them.

            While someone could read this without reading the first book, I’d still start at the beginning. Jack and Jill are 17 in the series starter, but this is the story of what happened first. It gives context to why they wound up at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. The Moors are dark and fantastical, but they aren’t the only land through that doorway, and I do wish more had been said about the werewolf lords of eternal winter in the mountains and the Drowned Gods of the sea. McGuire’s prose is lyrical even when upset and is lush in its discontent. The second short novel in the Wayward Children Series is richly crafted, a gothic fantasy charmer with horror always at its heels.

Beneath the Sugar Sky (Jan. 9, 2018) by Seanan McGuire.

<This is the third novel in a series.>

<Alert: Potential spoilers ahead.>

A girl falls from the sky and lands with a splash in the pond behind Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, her sugary dress dissolving and leaving her [confidently] naked. The girl is Onishi Rini, from Confection, a “land of the culinary art become miracle.” She is looking for Sumi, her mother (who was in political exile per the Countess of Candy Floss), not expecting to hear that her mother was murdered. Rini is from a Nonsense world, and Reality cannot stop her quest. But without Sumi existing, Rini’s story is dissolving. Rini sets off with Kade (Goblin Prince: Prism), Cora (Mermaid: the Trenches), Christopher, beloved of the Princess of Skeletons (Mariposa) and Nadya (Drowned Girl: Belyyreka). They travel to the Land of the Dead to meet with Nancy, who was at the Home, but was able to find her door again, but there is a cost. One of them must stay behind. With Sumi’s walking skeleton (it cannot talk and has no soul), the group falls into Confection. Literally. Here, the world rearranges itself so that anywhere is within a day’s walk from one’s starting point: “A good day’s journey is like baking soda: use it well, and the cake will rise up to meet you.” To everyone’s dismay, they’re captured by the Queen of Cakes’ soldiers. Without Sumi to overthrow her, she’s back in power. They’ll have to escape a jail of baked gingerbread bricks “glued” together with hard-packed frosting and trick the cakey queen if they’ve any hope of finding the mythical Baker and baking Sumi back to life.

            The third in McGuire’s Wayward Children Series is a magical, restorative tale of adventure, baking and friendship. The gothic portal fantasy exists with reality, even when reality for one world is nonsensical to another, and this story homes in on a character’s struggle with self-acceptance as readers are wooed by robust and zesty prose. This installment is another diverse one, and it happens to contain a world where milk grows on trees and candy corn farms exist. It’s a world where brownies are perfect treats that also double as roofing materials. It’s a world where the Wizard of Fondant can whip up sugar traveling beads. It’s a world where one might go to great lengths to save Confection, even if it means, “I was just a candy shell filled with shadows.” Most importantly, it’s a world where “...everything was different, and everything was finally the same.”