u/IReadBooksSometimes

Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett is not without its flaws (he first went to live among the Pirahã as a missionary, after all), but it shows a unique perspective. Very few people have lived among this isolated group, and fewer still have been able to learn their language. I found it an absolutely fascinating read. I liked learning about how language and culture intertwine, and hearing the story of people I would have never encountered otherwise. The audiobook was especially good because Everett is possibly the only person in the world who speaks the Pirahã language and is literate. It was cool to hear the language pronounced (even by a non-native speaker).

Are there any other similar books folks can recommend me that are written by anthropologists or others that have spent time living immersed in a culture that is unable to or uninterested in writing their own story? I specifically don’t want books that are based on a lot of secondhand research and a handful of interviews. I want books by authors writing about a people they have a personal, long-standing relationship with!

Mostly looking for accounts of small, ancient cultures that retain older traditions and ways of life to some degree! Hoping to also find something that doesn’t exoticize and genuinely has a respect for the people it writes about as both individuals and fellow humans and as a culture.

Thanks in advance!

I’m in charge of picking the next book club book (we tend to swap between good books and bad-on-purpose books). I was thinking it could be fun to do like a domestic thriller or whatever you want to call it (you know what I mean. Like gone girl or the housemaid).

None of us are readers of this particular genre usually so feel free to recommend ones that are already notorious and very popular. The main thing is that I want it to be ridiculous and convoluted and I expect to not root for any of the characters, but I do want it to be at the very least a page turner. For example, we accidentally read The It Girl by Ruth Ware unironically based on a bad recommendation and it wasn’t very good and parts of it were a little ridiculous but it’s worst sin was that it was a fundamentally boring book. I don’t want that. Also, importantly, it cannot be attempting to be satire. It has to be a completely earnest attempt at being titillating (or even just clearly a low effort money grab by an established author who has written so many of these books that they don’t know how to up the ante anymore).

So please recommend us ridiculous domestic thrillers full of awful people that are fun and easy to read!