November Staff Book Report: Nita Basu
Each month we ask our staff to share their latest reading recommendations and give us a peek into their reading habits by answering your favorite bookish questions. In November, we hear from Nita Basu, Senior Manager, Marketing & Publicity, Hachette Audio. Read ahead for Nita’s trusted reading (and listening!) recommendations and what she would name her dream bookstore (hint: it’s a-meow-zing).
Nita Basu | Senior Manager, Marketing & Publicity, Hachette Audio
In Tree Thieves, Lyndsie Bourgon takes us deep into the underbelly of the illegal timber market. As she traces three timber poaching cases, she introduces us to tree poachers, law enforcement, forensic wood specialists, the enigmatic residents of former logging communities, environmental activists, international timber cartels, and indigenous communities along the way.Featuring excellent investigative reporting, fascinating characters, logging history, political analysis, and cutting-edge tree science, Tree Thieves takes readers on a thrilling journey into the intrigue, crime, and incredible complexity sheltered under the forest canopy.
I love true crime. In all its forms, I love it so so so much. And I love hiking in the woods to look at trees. True crime with trees? SOLD. Best part is how the intro starts, crunching leaves along the way, making you feel like you’re on a hike with a friend who tells you this insane wacky tale of tree thievery over the years.
Four-time Hugo Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author N.K. Jemisin crafts a glorious tale of identity, resistance, magic and myth.
All is not well in the city that never sleeps. Even though the avatars of New York City have temporarily managed to stop the Woman in White from invading—and destroying the entire universe in the process—the mysterious capital “E” Enemy has more subtle powers at her disposal. A new candidate for mayor wielding the populist rhetoric of gentrification, xenophobia, and “law and order” may have what it takes to change the very nature of New York itself and take it down from the inside.
In order to defeat him, and the Enemy who holds his purse strings, the avatars will have to join together with the other Great Cities of the world in order to bring her down for good and protect their world from complete destruction.
I am continually astounded by what we can accomplish with audio, like being able to CREEP PEOPLE OUT with sound. There’s nothing like it in my opinion. The sound design and effects in this, and the first in the duology, THE CITY WE BECAME made the book (which was already astounding) just leap off the page, into my earholes.
Recounting the wildest tales of racism from their parents, their siblings, and Amber’s nieces and nephews, this intergenerational look at ludicrous (but all too believable) everyday racism as experienced across age, gender, and appearance will have you gasping with shock and laughter in turn. Validating for anyone who has first-hand experience, and revealing for anyone who doesn’t, Amber and Lacey’s next book helps us all find the absurdity in the pervasive frustrations of racism. Illuminating and packed with love and laughter, this is a must-read for just about everyone.
I feel like Amber Ruffin could read me the phonebook, and I would still spit out my coffee laughing. Full of cringy experiences that both enraged me, exasperated me, and sometimes just made me chuckle, I feel like this should be mandatory listening for people in a lesson on microaggressions (and you know, aggressive-aggressions).
This audiobook features dramatized audio performances by a full cast – featuring some of your favorite Riot voices.
Discover an epic tale of magic, revenge, and an empire on the verge of ruin in the first ever novel set in the blockbuster universe of League of Legends.
I do love listening to straight reads, but there’s something really delightful and fun about listening to such a big cast production – it’s like an audio drama! As a gamer nerd, I was also excited IRL with the star casting of people I recognized hearing from playing video games and watching anime over the years. (AKA: I almost screamed when I realized we cast Scott McNeil, seriously.)
What’s one audiobook you would recommend to those looking to get into audiobook listening?
CIRCE, without a doubt. It really highlights the pinnacle of connecting with a listener, and using VOICE as a medium to connect with the story. I love to think of audiobooks more than just another format of book, but an entirely different way of connecting with narratives. My experience with CIRCE and listening to CIRCE were both equally rewarding, but entirely different, and that’s what I think would be best as someone’s first audiobook!
Do you have a go-to comfort read or listen?
I have two levels of comfort reads. If I’m really down in the dumps, I love, love memoirs, especially if they’re about travel or running. RUNNING RANSOM ROAD is a book very close and dear to my heart, and I’ve listened and read it approximately 84573847 times now.
If I’m just going through a reading and listening slump, then instead I need something peppy and upbeat which means any and all rom-coms. ESPECIALLY if it’s enemies to lovers. The One True Romance Trope. Something like Farrah Rochon’s THE HOOKUP PLAN, Manda Collin’s HEIRESS’S GUIDE TO DECEPTION, give me all the enemies falling in reluctant love with each other.
If you owned a bookstore, what would you call it?
Books-a-MEOWlion. Cat 22. Reading Between the Felines. You get the idea. Cats and books.
What book is at the top of your TBR pile right now?
LUNAR LOVE looks like everything I’m looking for. Representation, food, romance, and did I say food? I’m so excited to dig into that one next.
Always a matchmaker, never a match…
Olivia Huang Christenson is excited-slash-terrified to be taking over her grandmother’s matchmaking business. But when she learns that a new dating app has made her Pó Po’s traditional Chinese zodiac approach all about “animal attraction,” her emotions skew more toward furious-slash-outraged. Especially when L.A.’s most-eligible bachelor Bennett O’Brien is behind the app that could destroy her family’s legacy . . .
Liv knows better than to fall for any guy, let alone an infuriatingly handsome one who believes that traditions are meant to be broken. As the two businesses go head to head, Bennett and Liv make a deal: they’ll find a match for each other—and whoever falls in love loses. But Liv is dealing with someone who’s already adept at stealing business ideas . . . so what’s stopping him from stealing her heart too?