My Top Songs From 2023
You know I Iove music! Here are the top 100 songs I listened to this year, according to Spotify
About Talia Whyte
Posts by Talia Whyte:
My Year in Books 2023
My first year owning a brick-and-mortar bookstore is in the books, and I found time to read books again!
I discovered audiobooks this year, mainly because I get free advanced listening copies (ALC) from Libro.fm because I am a bookseller and borrow them from the library. Audiobooks have let me enjoy books more personally and immersively, and I can multi-task! I am proud to say that I have listened to over 60 books this year! I listed all of them below, and the red ones were great reads. Most of these are new books with a few oldies but goodies!
Because I am a bookstore owner who has to be able to sell all types of books, I opened myself up to reading more books I wouldn’t normally read. I’m a nonfiction girl, but I read a lot of really good fiction. My favorite nonfiction book this year was G-Man, and my overall favorite fiction books were Yellowface, Mermaid of Black Conch, Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.
You can purchase all the books mentioned below on a page I created on Rozzie Bound’s website.
| Title | Author |
| The Vanishing Half | Britt Bennet |
| G-Man: J Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century | Beverly Gage |
| While We Were Dating | Jazmine Guillory |
| The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X | Les and Tamara Payne |
| Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own | Eddie Glaude |
| Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy | Damien Lewis |
| American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis | Adam Hochschild |
| Spare | Prince Harry |
| The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family | Kerri Greenidge |
| Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America | Gilbert King |
| Waiting to Exhale | Terry McMillan |
| The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation | Anna Malaika Tubbs |
| City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles | Mike Davis |
| Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and A Mother’s Will To Survive | Stephanie Land |
| An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene’s Journey from Prejudice to Privilege | Heidi Ardizzone |
| Angela Davis: An Autobiography | Angela Davis |
| Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop | Vikki Tobar |
| Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom | Ilyon Woo |
| An Honorable Exit | Eric Vuillard |
| Summer on the Bluff | Sunny Hostin |
| The Wedding | Dorothy West |
| The Catch Me If You Can: One Woman’s Journey to Every Country in the World | Jessica Nabongo |
| Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York’s Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist | Jennifer Wright |
| King: A Life | Jonathan Eig |
| Parts of the Holy Bible | |
| A Disappearance in Fiji | Nilima Rao |
| Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto | Tricia Hersey |
| Summer on Sag Harbor | Sunny Hostin |
| Yellowface | R.F. Kuang |
| Poverty, By America | Matthew Desmond |
| Narcas: The Secret Rise of Women in Latin America’s Cartels | Deborah Bonello |
| A History of Burning | Janika Oza |
| The Mermaid of Black Conch | Monique Roffey |
| The White Woman on the Green Bicycle | Monique Roffey |
| The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World | Vijay Prashad |
| The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store | James McBride |
| That Peckham Boy: Growing Up, Getting Out and Giving Back | Kenny Imafidon |
| Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close | Hannah Carlson |
| The Blood of Emmett Till | Timothy Tyson |
| Hijab Butch Blues | Lamya H |
| The Islands | Dionne Irving |
| The War of Words: How America’s GI Journalists Battled Censorship and Propaganda to Help Win World War II | Molly Guptill Manning |
| The Widows of Malabar Hill | Sujata Massey |
| All The Sinners Bleed | S.A. Cosby |
| Quietly Hostile | Samantha Irby |
| The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder | David Grann |
| Songs of Irie | Asha Ashanti Bromfield |
| The First Ladies | Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray |
| How to Say Babylon | Safiya Sinclair |
| Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World | Christopher Cooper |
| Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America | Michael Harriot |
| Word Nerds Unite!: The Fascinating Stories Behind 200 Words and Phrases | Webb Garrison |
| How to Protect Bookstores and Why: The Present and Future of Bookselling | Danny Caine |
| Black Fortunes: The Story of the First Six African-Americans Who Escaped Slavery and Became Millionaires | Shomari Wills |
| Black Cake | Charmaine Wilkerson |
| The Satapur Moonstone | Sujeta Massey |
| Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism | Rachel Maddow |
| The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World | Vincent Bevins |
| When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era | Donovan X. Ramsey |
| Walk Through Fire | Sheila Johnson |
| Glory Be | Danielle Arceneaux |
| Killers of the Flower Moon | David Grann |
| Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business | Roxane Gay |
| The Woman In Me | Britney Spears |
| Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education | Stephanie Land |
| Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money, and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement | Tanisha Ford |
| Hurricane Summer | Asha Ashanti Bromfield |
| There Will Be Fire: Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, and Two Minutes That Changed History | Rory Carroll |
| Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World | Yepoka Yeebo |
| The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination | Stuart Reid |
Plan Your 2024 Marketing Strategy Today!
Preparing your marketing strategies for the end of the year will help you start the new year on the right step. Here are some steps to take now:
1. Review your monthly and annual performances: What worked? What didn’t work? Review all your marketing tools – emails, newsletters, social media, website, etc. Use analytical tools like Hootsuite and Google Analytics to look at specific monthly or quarterly performance rates and trends.
2. Review your budget: Did your current budget fulfill your marketing plans? Did you overspend, or were you under budget? Would better marketing technology or vendor sources have helped create different results?
3. Do a content audit: We talk about content audits all the time here! The primary purpose of having a content strategy is to make sure the information you are presenting online is consistent with your organizational messaging and brand identity. It’s a good idea to do audits to keep your content regularly especially at the end of the year, to stay on point.
If you have any questions about how your company can end the marketing year right, contact us!
