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If your weekend plans look similar, let me suggest a new recipe favorite: Ginger Apple Crumble, from Deb Perelman’s terrific cookbook Smitten Kitchen Crumble goes by many names, but any combination of fruit with a topping of butter, sugar, and flour is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser, especially as the temperatures fall, meals linger on, and the call to bake and savor a warm dessert is hard to resist. You could make it for the spices alone, but part of a crumble’s appeal too, I think, is the simple comfort in putting it together: the peeling apples and zesting lemons and sprinkling dough. B Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pocket

[Release Date: March 26] Samira Ahmed’s Love, Hate, & Other Filters has been and remains one of my favorite YA titles to recommend, so needless to say, I’m looking forward to the release of her sophomore novel, Internment, in March. [Release Date: March 19] Shout is the only book of nonfiction on my list, but it’s a title I’m eagerly awaiting. [Release Date: May 7] Expect no sophomore slump here: Kathleen Glasglow’s second novel, How to Make Friends with the Dark, looks brilliant, a heart-wrenching story of family, loss, and love. The release date is still a few months out, but I’m very much looking forward to meeting Tiger and diving into Glasglow’s beautiful and powerful prose.

First on my list is Ruth Lehrer’s excellent, heartfelt debut, Being Fishkill, a YA novel that follows the friendship between thirteen-year-old Fishkill, her classmate Duck-Duck, and Duck-Duck’s mom, Molly. Ruby’s action-packed, puzzle-filled escapades end with the perfect blend of suspense, humor, and sass, and Child demonstrates an acute sense of pacing over the book’s 500+ pages. I’ve already raved about Kate Messner’s Breakout, but it’s for good reason: the epistolary novel is all at once tender, pressing, and thought-provoking in its discussions of race, class, and privilege. One reviewer writes that it’s a novel that feels “so very human,” and I couldn’t agree more: characters aren’t perfect, but they aren’t called to be.

Looking over my summer, it’s been marked by excellent reads, but so too has it been marked by great music. I’ve used his album, Island Songs, as writing music throughout the summer, and I suspect I’ll listen to it just as much once the semester kicks off. Dirty Bird may have formed in 2016, but the harmonies on their debut album, Still to Be Ours, sound as if they’ve been singing together for decades. As seems to be the pattern of my playlists, I’m easily won over by folk groups with a sense of intimacy, and Dirty Bird delivers: their songs are well-written gems that are perfect for lazy summer afternoons.