25 Years of Shanti Bhavan

In 1997, Dr. Abraham George used his George Foundation to create the Shanti Bhavan Children’s Project. For a quarter of a century, the project has been redefining non-profit education. Based in George’s home country, the residential school takes children from the poorest areas of India and allows them to be the first in their families to attend preschool through college. They believe that one underserved child, given the same opportunities as other children, can break the cycle of systematic, generational poverty. Their holistic approach allows them to not only give these children an education, but also access to shelter, medical care, food, clothing, and a community they otherwise would not have. One hundred percent of their graduates can make more within five years post-graduate than their parents would be able to make in their lifetime.

The Residential school itself is run by faculty and caregivers in Tamil Nadu, India. But, in the United States, the Shanti Bhavan Children’s Project manages fundraising and partnerships and oversees education.

Last year, CambridgeEditors was lucky to work with Dr. George on his autobiography which details his life both in India and America, as well as his time building the Shanti Bhavan Project.

On November 5^th, 2022, the project is hosting an event to celebrate 25 years of impact and their many success stories. It will be a night of looking back on the past quarter century, as well as looking towards the future. Their goal for the year is to raise $2 million to put towards expanding the project.

The evening will be about facilitating friendship and gratitude, as well as meeting Shanti’s first two students to attend Ivy League Universities: Sam and Dhanush, who both attend Dartmouth.

Both boys’ families had a yearly income of less than $1,000; Sam’s family only made  $30 a month. Sam’s mother had a weakened immune system which often required medical care. Along with medical issues, his family experienced religious persecution, and they were evicted from their home. Dhanush’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, and soon after his father abandoned their family causing Dhanush to take on much more responsibilities. Both boys were able to overcome these hardships with the help of Shanti Bhavan.

The event will take place at the Academy of Creative Arts in Burlington, MA. You can reserve tickets here: https://give.shantibhavanchildren.org/event/boston-ma-shanti-bhavans-25th-anniversary-celebration/e429926

Sophia Boyce, CambridgeEditors Team

Project Spotlight: Clara Wu and the Warlock

CambridgeEditors is proud to have worked with author Vincent Yee on his five-book series Clara Wu Books. The series is a young adult Asian American fantasy adventure where Clara Wu, Sung Kim, Yuka Satoh, and Daniel Nguyen must battle a demonic Warlock to save the world. But they are not alone, as they are paired with their trustworthy Guardians: the panda, white tiger, red crown crane, and the water buffalo. Proofreading of the first four books in his series was done by Dr. Felicia Lee between March 2021 and August 2022. She will proofread the final book later this fall. 

Yee is a Boston native who currently resides in Cambridge, MA. He graduated from Suffolk University in ’94 and worked in various managerial roles before quitting corporate work during the pandemic. Despite working in the corporate world, Yee always had a dream “to write better Asian representation.” He had envisioned an Asian American fantasy trilogy, but as he began outlining it in October of 2020 it quickly went from three books to five.

Yee grew up on fantasy series such as Narnia, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter. But, there’s very little to no Asian representation in those books. He wanted to write a series where his friends’ kids could see themselves as the heroes and not just the sidekicks. Yee’s series includes Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese characters and makes sure to highlight Asian values from different cultures. While representation is always important, it’s especially imperative in the current climate of America, where Asian Americans are having to fight anti-Asian sentiments in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. His stories are helping combat the negative stereotypes that exist in the country right now.

While he wants to show Asian Americans can be heroes, Yee also wants to help people reconnect with their culture. Having his characters embrace and love being authentically Asian is a prominent part of his fantasy series. As food is a big part of Asian culture, and is typically something Americans ridicule, Yee made sure it was a main feature of the books. Not only does he love his culture’s food, but his heroes can’t fight demonic warlocks on an empty stomach!

To catch up on the series before the final book comes out later this year, the first four books are all available online on Amazon & Kindle, as well as Barnes and Noble. If you’re in the Boston area, you can also pick up his books at Brookline Booksmith at 283 Harvard St., Brookline, MA. Or, if you’re in New York, you can find the series at You and Me Books, 44 Mulberry St., New York Chinatown.

Sophia Boyce, CambridgeEditors Team

Young readers’s reading Yee’s book at Brookline Booksmith.

Goodreads’s Best Books of 2023 Released, Great Gifts for Readers This Holiday Season

As the holiday season quickly approaches, consumers are still scrambling to find gifts for their loved ones. And for those of you with avid readers in your lives, that means books. But scouring your nearest Barnes & Noble or your local bookstore can be a challenge when you aren’t sure if the book you choose will suit a person. You may know which genres they prefer or subjects they are interested in, but that doesn’t mean every book will be one they devour and add to their list of favorites. Worst case scenario, it ends up collecting dust on the shelf and only halfway finished.

Luckily for you frantic shoppers, Goodreads has just released the results of their 2023 Choice Awards for the Best Books of 2023 list! Gathering votes from nearly six million of their site-users, Goodreads has collected a list of both fiction and nonfiction titles that their users have deemed the best of 2023. From science fiction to romance and memoirs to history, Goodreads has something for anyone to enjoy on their list. You can even check out the nominees that didn’t win in each category if you want even more gift ideas for readers. 

Scrolling through Goodreads’s social media accounts may highlight the discourse between readers as they argue which book may have been more deserving to win a particular category than others. This is normal considering the subjectivity of art and the wide-range of taste and preferences amongst readers, so don’t fret over buying a book someone else may call ‘boring’ or ‘trash’ (especially if they mention that they didn’t even read it). What someone else hates, your reader may enjoy! If you choose to scroll through their Instagram or Tiktok, you may want to take note of these comments. Not only could you potentially get a better idea of what certain books are about, but you may just get great recommendations! 

Some titles that may be popular gifts this holiday season seemed almost destined to win first-place in their respective categories. Yellowface and Fourth Wing, for example, were immensely popular on bookstagram and booktok this year, so it seems no surprise that they won by such large margins. There were a few interesting outcomes, however. Interestingly, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which was named the 2023 Barnes & Noble Book of the Year, came in fourth-place in its category for historical fiction, losing to the first-place winner Weyward with almost 30,000 votes. Barnes & Noble determines the winner of their prestigious title by inquiring their booksellers to nominate the titles they feel are particularly remarkable and would recommend to a consumer. This explanation, provided in one of their blog posts this past November,, is rather vague. Meanwhile, Goodreads allows their list to be determined as a sort of popularity contest. A voter isn’t required to have read every book in each category in order to cast their vote, so they merely choose the books they have read and enjoyed to determine who they vote for. This is not necessarily bad, per se, as Goodreads pools together a large group of readers, allowing many different perspectives, interests, and preferences to come together and let their voices be heard. If some books win by large margins, perhaps it’s because a majority of readers believed it deserved to win. 

Lists such as Goodreads’s Best Books of 2023 gives us a great insight into the minds of readers and which books or authors have really made an impact in the publishing world. However, just because one book wins doesn’t mean its fellow nominees in the category are any less enjoyable. Yellowface may have won with over 200,000 votes (with second-place lagging 140,000 votes behind) in the fiction category, but the titles it competed against, such as Hello Beautiful (second-place), Maame (eighth-place), or Evil Eye (thirteenth-place) are also incredible books that you should absolutely check out. If the reader you’re shopping for hasn’t read the book that won in their preferred genre, then you should definitely check it out to see if it’s something they would be interested in. That being said, check out all the nominated books in that category! Even if a book didn’t win, it could be a gem that your reader loves!

The Woman in Me, Spare, and Celebrity Memoirs Humanizing Celebrities

In 2021, the world was captivated by Britney Spears’s story as she spoke out against her father and her management as the result of their abuse and for keeping her under involuntary conservatorship. The world applauded for her as the conservatorship was terminated. Now the world applauds her memoir, The Woman in Me, for reclaiming and humanizing her story. The book highlights the importance of Spears reclaiming her independence by sharing her story as a woman within the music industry fighting against the men in her life that sought to control her. 

Published on October 24, the memoir narrates a story that is described on the Gallery Books website—the publisher and a division of Simon & Schuster—as “a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope.” Gallery Books reports that the memoir sold 1.1 million copies in its first week in the U.S, with the combined figure composed of sales of print books, e-books, pre-orders, and audiobooks. The publisher has also announced the memoir is going for a fourth printing, bringing the number of hardcover copies in print to about 1.4 million, making it the fastest selling book in Gallery’s history. The Woman in Me now joins other celebrity memoirs such as Spare by Prince Harry, The Promised Land by Barack Obama, Becoming by Michelle Obama, and Too Much and Never Enough by Mary Trump in selling over a million copies in their first week of publication.

What these numbers reflect is the support for the #FreeBritney movement that began in 2020 when rumors and personal accounts of the conservatorship and the effects it had on Spears’s mental health began to be uncovered. The internet has come out in droves to support Spears before the full extent of the situation and the implications of what that meant for the pop star’s life was even fully revealed. Of course, this also means that people have eagerly awaited for more news concerning Spears’s career under the authority of her conservatorship and what effects this had on her. And perhaps that reveals the harsh truth: the obsessive curiosity audiences possess when it comes to knowing and understanding the ugly and humane realities that lie beyond the persona celebrities present to the world. An almost desperate need to know that these larger-than-life figures possess larger-than-life issues that ground them back into reality and bring them to equal footing with us, humanizing them to us.

Another celebrity memoir that did exceptionally well was Prince Harry’s Spare, which was published earlier this year in January and sold 1.6 million copies in the U.S. during its first week. Spare followed the announcement that Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, would be leaving the royal family. Like Spears’s memoir, the success and reception of Spare could be attributed to the memoir’s debut following a huge news story.

The near-instant success of celebrity memoirs such as The Woman in Me following the dramatic revelation of such imperfections in these people’s lives seems to suggest readers crave these tragic stories that explore every human emotion that hides behind the smiles and carefully-crafted persona portrayed in public. Readers want to know the details hidden behind closed doors that humanize celebrities. In a sense, a memoir like The Woman in Me is the closest we can get to an honest portrayal of a human who has been placed on a pedestal.

The Horrors of the Supernatural & Family Trauma

As Halloween quickly approaches, this is the best season to indulge in a great horror novel that sends chills down your spine. In order to celebrate the spookiest season of the year, this blog post is dedicated to reviewing a popular horror novel published earlier this year. How to Sell A Haunted House by Grady Hendrix is not this author’s first foray into horror and he does not hesitate to thrust you into an environment bursting with tension and eeriness once the main character, Louise, enters the aforementioned haunted house. This narrative  doesn’t just frighten its reader with the hauntings of the supernatural, though. In it, Hendrix explores the depth of unresolved trauma and the ways it can haunt a family through generations.

The story begins with Louise receiving a call from her estranged brother, Mark, with the news that both of their parents tragically died in a car accident. Now, single-parent Louise must leave her daughter Poppy behind in San Francisco to travel back to Charleston for the funeral. As is often the case with a death in the family, money becomes a huge issue between Louise and Mark as they fight over their inheritance and what they should do with the house—including their late-mother’s extensive and creepy puppet collection. Eventually agreeing to sell the house, as the siblings bicker over their past and the differences in how they view their lives, Hendrix makes it clear that something is very wrong with the house. From dolls that seem to move on their own to the attic being nailed shut as though to keep something from getting out, coupled with Aunt Honey’s recollection of their mother saying their father had been “attacked” the night they died, Hendrix eloquently weaves together a story laced with figurative and literal hauntings that forces the siblings to actually talk through their differences and their family’s past.

Hendrix’s haunted house and haunted dolls are undeniably campy but they work well with the dark topics discussed within the family and the awkward, heavy tension that often permeates any interaction between Louise and Mark. Hendrix didn’t attempt to reinvent the horror genre or bring anything new to the table, but the novel is enjoyable because he plays into the camp and the supernatural aspects of the story works to develop the family conflict and force the family to confront the issues they were often prone to avoiding. Avoidance is perhaps the most prominent theme within the story and the setting of the family home is the most appropriate setting to force this confrontation. Although Louise wishes to escape the odd occurrences once more and flee to San Francisco, her determination to ensure the house is ready for sale in order to use the money to provide for her daughter is what drives her to confront the ghosts of her family’s past.

The leader of these haunted dolls is Pupkin, the late-mother’s favorite puppet and a source of great fear for the siblings. As a reader, one can feel how much fun Hendrix likely had while writing this character. His eerie song that echoes in Louise’s head and the aggressive actions he often displays coupled with the joy others’ fear provides him makes him a being of pure chaos. One gets the sense he is, in an ironic play by Hendrix, the puppetmaster jerking Louise and Mark around like his own pair of puppets for his twisted amusement. As Hendrix explains in the novel, “A puppet is a possession that possesses the possessor.” What Pupkin is and what he wants remains a mystery throughout most of the novel, as he represents the physical symbol for all of the secrets that have been buried and carefully avoided within the family. 

Hendrix uses a simplistic foundation for any horror story—a haunted house and haunted dolls—and uses them to reinforce the very real horrors of a family rife with secrecy, family drama, and generational trauma. The story works best when the family begins opening up to one another and the truth finally begins to unravel, allowing Louise to come to terms with her past and make amends with her family, both the living and dead. This is definitely a great novel to check out if you’re looking for some good old-fashioned horror mixed with the exploration of a family and their strained bonds.

Our Recent Edits: 2023

Established in 2003, CambridgeEditors is an independent firm dedicated to providing superior editorial services for a wide range of clients. Our diverse clientele includes, but is not limited to, Academics, Creative Writers, and Corporations. We edit texts of all varieties, such as: scholarly monographs, chapters, and journal articles; dissertations and master’s theses; novels and other forms of fiction; poetry; websites; undergraduate essays; proposals and application essays; and institutional materials, brochures, advertising, and reports.

Here are some of our recent projects we’ve completed. Thank you to to everyone who has supported us and to all the authors who have entrusted us with their projects and allowed us to help bring their work to its fullest potential.

Exploring Feminine Rage in “When Women Were Dragons”

Image of the cover of When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill.

In honor of Women’s History Month, this blog post is dedicated to one of the most inspiring books about women that captures the concept of feminine rage. When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill is more than just a story of women spontaneously turning into dragons and taking off toward the sky; it is a raw and emotional tale of womanhood and trying to fit into a society that was never built for that.

This story takes place in America in the 1950s, in a world much like our own. The only difference is that every once in a while, for no foreseeable reason, women spontaneously turn into dragons and take off to the skies, never to be seen again. This all started with what is referred to as “the mass dragoning of 1955” where hundreds of thousands of American wives and mothers suddenly morphed into dragons, causing mass chaos and destruction, and then flew off. This eventually became “taboo” with all other women’s issues and was rarely talked about and never taught formally as a legitimate part of history. The story follows Alex Green, a young girl whose aunt was transformed in the “mass dragoning.” Alex finds herself faced with questions no one will answer. Where is her beloved Aunt? Why is her family forcing her to pretend she never existed? Why are they now referring to her cousin as Alex’s sister? Eventually forced into silence, Alex tries to go on with her life, that is, until her cousin turned sister Bea becomes obsessed with dragons and all the forbidden history behind them.

There are many novels that capture the experience of womanhood and trying to meld into a society that never fully accepts you, but there are none that capture feminine rage the way this novel does. This story uses “dragoning” as something that is so clearly visible and extreme that you think it simply cannot be ignored. It can’t possibly be pushed aside or written out of history, but then it is. This is an extreme version of what society has been doing to women and other marginalized genders for all of time. It’s also a representation of what that dismissal and repression does to women, creating a monster of feminine rage. This book labels “dragoning” or female rage, as just another women’s issue that isn’t important enough to talk about. Women can deal with it internally, or they can allow it to consume them. While society would like you to think that allowing your inner rage to surface is a bad thing, living life as a dragon may prove to be a better option for some than living life as a housewife. Bigger than choosing which path to follow is this: all women are dragons. The issue is that dragons are misconstrued, and seen as mindless violence and chaos. This is because there hasn’t been a place in society for “dragons” because it wasn’t built for them.

In this story, society believed that if they were to ignore dragons, they would go away. But this proved to be impossible because dragons were everywhere. “There were dragons who showed up in Ladies’ sewing circles. And dragons who showed up to labor meetings. And dragons who marched with farmworkers. And dragons who joined anti-war committees. No one knew what to do with them at first. Newspapers didn’t report it. The evening news remained silent. People averted their eyes and changed the subject. Cheeks flushed; voices faltered. Most people simply assumed that if they just ignored dragons that they would go away. The dragons did not go away.”

This book is a must-read for woman identifying people and beyond. This book highlights the importance of the bond of womanhood and embracing femininity for all that it is, which includes strength and rage. This book also touches on LGBTQIA+ themes, mostly in the support of sapphic romance and transgender women as important pillars of femininity. This book talks about how femininity and strength once went hand in hand, and how somewhere along the line, divine femininity and the worship it induced were not only forgotten, but discouraged. Most importantly, the book identifies the pain that women have inside of them that cannot go away or be ignored, and how society can be and must be shaped around women being their full selves, claws and all. 

By Ally Orsini, CambridgeEditors Team

Books to Read Before They Hit the Screen

Daisy Jones & the Six television series promotional image.

Daisy Jones and The Six: Limited series coming to Amazon Prime on March 3, 2023.

            Taylor Jenkins Reid’s best-selling novel is a series of interviews telling the story of a fictional band called Daisy Jones and The Six, their rise to fame, and the highs and lows and rock and roll. This book has all the drama you would expect from a rock band in the seventies, including an off-beat female lead, band romances, backstabbing, and a possible love triangle. The series is set to start releasing episodes in March, with its first episode airing March 3rd.  If you find yourself feeling as though the storyline feels eerily similar, Reid has admitted she got the inspiration for her story from one of the most infamous bands of all time, Fleetwood Mac. Along with an entertaining story, the show will also feature original music as seen in the book, which fans are more than a little excited for. The show is set to star Riley Keough as Daisy Jones and Sam Clafflin as Billy Dune, the main male protagonist.

It Ends with Us: Movie to be released in late 2024.

            It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover is the book that broke the internet, becoming a Tik-Tok sensation. This book was originally published in 2014, and its original popularity was underwhelming. Back when the COVID-19 pandemic first started in 2020, the book was talked about nonstop online until everyone had heard of it. To say this completely changed Colleen Hoover’s career would be an understatement. This book and its revival in popularity nearly single-handedly created #BookTok, a section of Tik-Tok dedicated to talking about books and book recommendations. While there is no official release date for the movie, the two lead actors have been announced, which again sent Tik-Tok into a frenzy. The story follows Lily Bloom, who moves to Boston to follow her dream of opening her own flower shop when she meets Ryle, a dreamy surgeon. When their relationship progresses, her dream man turns into more of a nightmare. Before you read this book or watch the movie, read about trigger warnings, especially if you are specifically affected by domestic abuse.

            What has fans going so crazy over this cast? It was not at all who they expected. Fancasts have been going around since the news dropped of the upcoming movie. The most popular fancast for the leads of Lily and Ryle were Abigail Cowen and Theo James. However, the official leads of the movie are Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, who also originally bought the rights to make the film.

Lessons In Chemistry: Apple TV drama show set to release in 2023.

            Lessons In Chemistry byBonnie Garmus tells the story of Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant chemist who is forced out of the lab and into the kitchen in the sixties. Struggling to make it in the misogynistic world of science at the time, she is discovered for her knowledge of food science and nutrition and is offered a television show. With a daughter to support, she has little choice but to accept the offer. While it isn’t her dream and is far beneath her intellectual abilities and her degree, it pays the bills and is a less rigid path than that of a female scientist. This book was the Barnes & Noble Book of the Year for 2022, a New York Times bestseller, and the Goodreads Choice Award winner for 2022. It was published on March 29, 2022 by Doubleday books. The series stars Brie Larson as Elizabeth Zott, who is most well known for her role as the titular character in Captain Marvel.

By Ally Orsini, CambridgeEditors Team

Valentine’s and Anti-Valentine’s Day Book Recs

The holiday of love is approaching, and as usual, it has caused some division between those celebrating and those abstaining. Couples and singles alike have planted themselves on one side or the other, so why not let your reading reflect the same? Here is a list of recommendations that anyone can get into, whether you’ve been hit by Cupid’s arrow or you’ve broken the bow in half. Happy reading!

Valentine’s

With its origins in Christian and pagan festivals, Valentine’s Day is one of the longest-running holiday traditions. It’s a time of appreciation for those you love, romantic or platonic, and to be appreciated in return. Here are some recommendations to get you in the loving mood.

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

One of the most famous and well-known love stories, Pride and Prejudice is worth all of the love and more. Set in 19th century England, the story follows Elizabeth, an adventurous young daughter of the middle-class and marriage-obsessed Bennett family, who finds herself thrown together with the gloomy Mr. Darcy, a wealthy member of the gentry who seems to hate Elizabeth just as much as she hates him. Romance ensues. Make sure to also watch the 1995 BBC adaptation (available on Hulu and Amazon Prime) and the 2005 film (available on Amazon Prime) for extra Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy content.

2. Beach Read by Emily Henry

Emily Henry has gained enormous popularity in the past two years for her lighthearted rom-com books, especially People We Meet on Vacation, but I personally prefer her 2020 novel Beach Read. It follows January, a rom-com writer, and Augustus, a somber literary fiction writer, two published authors with vastly different tastes. January and Augustus find themselves next-door neighbors in the beach town they both summer in, and bet each other they can’t write the other person’s genre. What I love about Beach Read is that it does not shy away from heavier subjects–like grief, cheating, and death–while still telling a great love story.

Anti-Valentine’s

The anti-Valentine’s Day tradition has become more popular in the last few decades, a celebration of all things horror, grit, and pessimism. Some critics believe Valentine’s Day has become too commercialized, with its current emphasis on buying chocolate, flowers, and presents for others. For all those that celebrate not celebrating, here are some truly dark books to read in protest.

1. Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Set in a post-apocalyptic United States, this book follows two trans women, Beth and Fran, as they try to outlive the T-dominant people turned zombie-like creatures trying to kill them. This novel transforms the popular ‘gendercide’ trope, where one gender disappears from the earth, by instead focusing on the trans women and men that must fight to survive. Manhunt is gory and disturbing while also addressing the subject of love, though in a more balanced and realistic way that addresses trans romance and desire.

2. I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

What begins as a story about a man named Jake bringing his girlfriend home to meet his family turns into a suspenseful thriller that leaves you at the end of the book thinking: What did I just read? All the reader knows for certain is what the main character, the unnamed girlfriend, continues to voice: I’m thinking of ending things. Horror fans will love the surprising twist ending and read it again to pick up on clues they may have missed the first time around.

-Hannah Eaton, CambridgeEditors team

“Anxious People”: A Book for Everyone

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman cover image.

“. . . sometimes it’s easier to live with your own anxieties if you know that no one else is happy, either.”

Anxious People was one of the first books I read this year, and I can already tell it is going to be one of my favorites. Written by New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman, Anxious People was published April 25, 2019, and was adapted into a Netflix limited series in 2021. The story follows a group of people who have nothing in common but that they have all found themselves in the same place at the wrong time. Before you decide to read this book, I would suggest checking out the book’s trigger warnings, as there are some themes that may be sensitive to some readers.

The story begins with a bank robber, who isn’t really a bank robber, who tries to rob a bank. “Tries” being the key phrase here. When the bank robber flees the scene, they accidentally take a group of people hostage who were at an open house looking at an apartment. These eight strangers turn out to be the worst hostages ever, just as the bank robber is the worst bank robber ever. Each person has their own backstory, their own pains, and passions. These eight strangers with nothing in common are all connected to each other in one way or another, though none of them are aware of it. Throughout the hostage situation, it becomes clear to the strangers that their captor may need more saving than they ever did. Reluctant allies, the group bonds together, and learn more about each other than they ever knew about themselves before that fateful day. The story also follows two police officers and a physiatrist, who are connected to this story in ways that will shock you.

This book has quickly become one of my personal favorites and what I would declare a must read. It will make you laugh as much as it will make you cry. It’s truly one of the moments where you will wonder if the author crawled inside your head. The themes are so universally human, yet they feel extremely personal. You will feel both individually represented and simultaneously connected to other human beings around you. This is a book about a group of strangers, a bank robber, and a hostage situation, but it is so much more than that. There is a quote from the book that I believe captures the heart of the story: “Deep down, in memories that we might prefer to suppress even from ourselves, a lot of us know that the difference between us and that man on the bridge is smaller than we might think.” 

There are many circumstances that can lead us down so many different paths. What if you were born into a different family? What if you studied something different in college? What if you never met your current partner? This book captures the fact that we are all just a few wrong steps away from misfortunes. That there is sometimes a gray area between what is good and what is bad. That we could easily have been that homeless person on the street or that man standing on the bridge, and we should have empathy for those people as if they were us. Because, at the end of the day, we are all the same. We are all human.

Funny, relatable, tragic, and totally unique, Anxious People is a modern classic that captures the human experience and explores what it means to be a good person, and what even a good person will do when they’ve run out of options. It questions how we as human beings fit into a system that we have created, and the areas in which that system fails us. At the root of it, this book is about accepting one another, and understanding that we all, hostages and captors, bank tellers and bank robbers, heroes, and criminals, are human.

By Ally Orsini, CambridgeEditors Team

Nonfiction Books That Will Change Your Life

For many readers, nonfiction can be an intimidating genre to break into.  However, nonfiction can often help people to change their habits, or keep them informed  on past, current, and future issues. Here, I have collected some nonfiction books I have loved and that have affected the way I think, act, and interact with others. So dive in. I promise, these books will change your life.

1. The Sweetness of a Simple Life by Diana Beresford-Kroeger

Diana Beresford-Kroeger draws on her life as a botanist and scientist to teach a better way of life in her 2013 novel, The Sweetness of a Simple Life. Beresford-Kroeger is a Canadian citizen who grew up in Ireland learning ancient Celtic wisdom. She applies these principles of natural connection, language, and kindness to modern-day life with a series of guidelines for how to live a “simple life.” This book includes tips on a wide range of  things, including how to build a bird’s nest, how to use leftover meat bones to fertilize a garden, and even  how to reduce the chance of a heart attack with food. Beresford-Kroeger’s other works, The Global Forest and To Speak for the Trees, expand on her love of nature and Celtic wisdom.

2. Radical Curiosity by Seth Goldenberg

While the market of pop science books is endlessly diluted by excess, this 2022 book was a standout in its emphasis on curiosity as society’s biggest kept secret. Seth Goldenberg makes the argument that curiosity is in short supply in the modern day, but harnessing its power could radically change the way we view our impact on society. As a more recent release, this book draws on the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic as a catalyst for “looking at the system in a fundamentally new way.”

3. Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall

Hood Feminism is a breakthrough in feminist texts that reframes the conversation towards marginalized groups that created it in the first place. Mikki Kendall outlines the feminist movement as it was developed by and then shunned from BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) women. Each essay in this collection reflects on how BIPOC women have continuously been left out of the mainstream white feminist movement, and how to change this. Kendall shows how the combination of racism, poverty, and hypersexualization of BIPOC women has been at the forefront of this divide, and how intersectionality is a more complex issue than mainstream feminists realize. 

4. How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

As deceiving as the title may seem, this book does not teach you how to do nothing. Instead, it teaches you how to slow down, look outside your window every now and again (or even go for a walk in the park), and distance yourself from what Jenny Odell labels “the attention economy.” Odell makes the argument that in modern society, it has become too easy to get swept up in “the attention economy” of today, with social media, the Internet, and technology at the forefront of our lives. Throughout the book, Odell develops an action plan for taking back our time that does not ignore the complexities of modern-day life and the importance of technology. Instead, Odell shows how we can disconnect from the negative effects and turn the rest into positive action.

5. Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

Trick Mirror was one of the most popular books when it was released in 2019, and for good reason. Expanding on previous essays and adding new ones, journalist Jia Tolentino gives a complex picture of the last two decades through a series of social and cultural questions that many people can relate to. In one essay, Tolentino focuses on the idea of “always optimizing,” wherein people, especially millennials, are constantly trying to find the best use of their time instead of taking a moment alone (similar to Odell’s theory in How to Do Nothing). In another, Tolentino tells the story of a falsified 2014 Rolling Stone article of a sexual assault case that happened at her alma mater, the University of Virginia. Tolentino covers a lot of ground in these essays, but ultimately does a great job of tying together underlying themes of social and cultural touchstones.

6. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Similar to The Sweetness of a Simple Life, this 2013 book serves as a part-memoir and part-instruction guide on how to live a more environmentally-friendly life. Botanist and Potawatomi scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer draws on a lifetime of studying plants, indigenous culture, and her own personal story of motherhood. Wall Kimmerer’s love of nature is infectious, and with each page, she manages to inspire the reader to do better. Her argument for a renewed bond between people and nature relies on a reciprocal culture of gratitude, in which people understand that they are indebted to the natural world in the same way as it is to them.  

Happy reading!

-Hannah Eaton, CambridgeEditors Team

Prince Harry’s Record-Breaking “Spare”

The cover of Prince Harry’s memoir Spare.

Spare, Prince Harry’s memoir, was released on January 10, 2023. The long-anticipated novel was ghost-written by J. R. Moehringer and published by Penguin Random House. This book has created history, breaking the Guinness Book of World Records record for fastest-selling non-fiction book. Spare, in its first week after publication, sold 3.2 million copies worldwide. Out of the 3.2 million copies sold, 1.6 million sales came from American buyers. Spare now replaces the previous record holder, A Promised Land, President Barack Obama’s memoir, which sold 1.7 million copies in its first week after publication.  

The memoir follows Prince Harry’s life, starting with his childhood before his mother, Princess Diana, tragically died. He talks about how the grief changed him; how he blamed the press for the death of his mother and then understandably grew a distaste for the spotlight. The book then takes us through his joining the British Army, along with the repercussions of this, including post-traumatic stress and panic attacks, and ultimately, his struggle to find true love. This all changed when he met Meghan Markle. The public quickly fell in love with the pair. Meghan was a princess of the people that rivaled his own mother’s legacy. The fairytale wedding and whirlwind romance were quickly overshadowed by a whole new array of obstacles brought onto the couple by the press, including racism, lies, and abuse that led to Harry’s decision to leave the royal family.

To say this book has been long anticipated is an understatement. Globally, there has been an obsession with this family—particularly their secrets since the death of Princess Diana. That it’s nearly unheard of for someone to remove themselves from the royal family is reason enough for Prince Harry’s decision to spark attention, but the fact that in doing so, he is following in his mother’s footsteps, is enough to cause record-breaking intrigue worldwide. With the recent passing of Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ, it’s no wonder this book is already record-breaking.

One might question Prince Harry’s reasoning for releasing such a book and the timing of it. Was it purposely released after the queen had passed? According to journalist Rebecca Mead’s New Yorker article “The Haunting of Prince Harry,” Harry stated that this book was “—an invitation to reconciliation, addressed to his father and brother—a way of speaking to them publicly when all his efforts to address them privately have failed to persuade. Spare is, you might say, Prince Harry’s ‘Mousetrap’—a literary device intended to catch the conscience of the King, and the King after him.”

This book, and it’s wild success, are just proof that at its core, family dynamics are universally complicated. There is a reason that so many different people feel the need to read this book. While a common interest in the royal family and drama in general is definitely a factor, it’s also because every family has its own form of dysfunction. Even though there are very few people who can relate to the royal family in any other way, almost everyone can relate to their family dynamics on some level. While the book is receiving mixed reviews so far, the successful launch can be explained by human nature, both in uncovering the secrets of a notoriously mysterious family, as well as connecting to the universal experience of family drama. 

-Ally Orsini, CambridgeEditors Team