Staff Picks: Katherine Leak’s Favorites
Hi there, my name is Katherine Leak, and I’m an Associate Editor at Harmony and Rodale Books, where I acquire nonfiction books in the cooking, lifestyle, and health and wellness spaces. After work, I love to read a good multigenerational family drama, thriller, or historical fiction novel, but I read a little bit of everything! When I’m not reading, you can find me exploring new restaurants in New York City with my food and travel book club, watching reality competition shows, or going for long walks in Central Park. Check out my Instagram @bookedinthebakery for more book reviews, baked goods, and New York recs!
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Add to BookshelfOn Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong
This book was my first read of 2024, and it’s already in line to be my favorite book of the year! Written as a letter from a Vietnamese American son to his illiterate mother, it contains some of the most gorgeous, visceral, and devastating writing I’ve ever experienced, and it’s a heartbreaking but stunning read. It covers so many topics like the mother/son relationship, an immigrant experience, intergenerational trauma, and first desire and love but also feels so intimate at the same time.
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Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting
by Clare Pooley
This book is one of my favorites to recommend because it’s so heartwarming and charming. It follows the eccentric and larger-than-life Iona Iverson and an unlikely group of friends who meet on a commuter train to London. It will pull at your heartstrings, make you laugh, and teach you the value of kindness because you never know what other people are going through.
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Cantoras
by Caro de Robertis
Set mostly in the 1970s and 80s when Uruguay was under a dictatorship, this book tells the story of five queer women who search for home and community outside of their restrictive city lives. In a time when homosexuality was a dangerous transgression, their very existence and joy were revolutionary, and this was a part of South American history that I knew very little about. It’s gorgeously written, and the relationships and character dynamics are so compelling to read.
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