What I've Been Reading: April 2026

Books about monsters, deconstruction, gardening, and cooking

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century: Stories by Kim Fu

The book bingo I'm doing had a square for "short story collection," so I took the bingo-maker's recommendation for this collection. And holy moley, it was so good. All the stories have some element of the fantastical— magic realism, dystopia, sci-fi, horror— and are absolutely gripping. She has a knack for introducing an absolutely horrifying concept and then taking it in a different direction than you expect, not the darkest path but one that leaves you keenly aware of how bad things could be. One story, for instance, is about a couple who buy a subscription to a service that will 3D-print you a new body with your consciousness downloaded into it if you die suddenly— and how the husband, after letting his wife kill him to make sure it actually works, gets addicted to killing her and wallowing in the grief of being a widower for 24-hour periods while her new body is being printed. Another story is about a day when everyone in the world suddenly can't taste food anymore, and how a mother and her tween daughter deal with the cultural disconnect between them as a result. I highly, highly recommend this, and will definitely be checking out more of her work. 

Braving the Truth: Essential Essays for Reckoning with and Reimagining Faith by Rachel Held Evans (compiled and edited by Sarah Bessey)

This book is a collection of blog posts from the influential Christian writer who unofficially headed up a whole subculture of Christianity in the 2010s until her untimely death. Although I missed the RHE zenith (I was deep into Christian patriarchy at the time, and though I came across her posts a few times, I just dismissed them out of hand because they made me uncomfortable), but her blog was a great comfort to me when I hit the wall with my own Christian faith and had to admit myself that I needed to figure out what kind of religion I could actually practice. Reading this book is a trip, mostly because of how specific 2010s culture was— I can remember moments in my own life with each blog post as she responded to various debates at the time. (My goodness, sometimes I forget how recent legal gay marriage is in the U.S.) This book is a wonderful read for anyone who has been influenced by her work, and who wants to be challenged to put love before everything, including and especially being "right."

The Climate-Change Resilient Vegetable Garden: How to Grow Food in a Changing Climate by Kim Stoddart

I like to read gardening books, and this one had an interesting perspective, giving advice for dealing with the challenges that climate change continues to throw at us, ensuring that our veggie gardens are as resilient as possible. The section about flooding made me think more about the way we handle water on our property, and there were lots of good tips about gardening for cheap. 

Rooted in Fire: A Celebration of Native American and Mexican Cooking by Pyet DeSpain

I was telling someone a few weeks ago that I thought Native American cooking might become the new trendy cuisine, and the very next day I spotted this book at the library! The recipes looked good, but I was mostly interested in her musings about food, culture, and heritage in between. 

• Books my one-year-old kid has been loving:

Peek-a-Who? by Nina Laden (Simple and bold, with cute illustrations)

It's Pajama Time! by Sandra Boynton (So cute! The rhyme gets stuck in my head)

Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss (A classic)

(Previous What I've Been Reading posts)

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