This is Code Switch from NPR. I'm Shireen Marisol Maraji.

And I'm Karen Grigzby-Bait. More like Karen Grigzby-books.

Ugh. Am I right? Baits on a recent episode. I mentioned that you read at least, at least one book a week.

You are the queen, La Reina of the Code Switch book nerds. I don't know how to say the rest of that in Spanish.

Well, okay. I'll take it. And because this has been such a weird year, Shireen, I'm now sometimes reading more than one book a week.

In more than one way, like print, e-book, audiobook. I am non-denominational about that. Whatever it can manage to capture my extremely fragmented attention at this point. That'll work.

Wait, why has this been a weird year?

Federal judge in Wisconsin yesterday dismissed another Trump campaign lawsuit asking the election results in that state be overturned.

The pandemic is still worsening in the US. More than 224,000 new coronavirus cases were reported yesterday.

I've seen some of the country's largest and most sustained protests following the death of George Floyd during an arrest by police in Minneapolis.

Oh, all right. And by weird, we mean terrible. Yeah, just some minor distractions. Anyway, because this year has been so weird and gone by so fast, we figured that some things might have fallen through the cracks, like the beautiful glossy new books that you might normally seen strewn in every store window during the holiday season.

Yes, a lot of books did not get the notice or the shine. They otherwise might have because 2020 debates. You are going to remedy that.

I hope so. I traveled virtually around the country to speak to some independent people of color focused bookstores about the books they think deserve a little extra shine this year.

Excellent. All right. So who do we have first? Where are we going?

We're going to Frosty Minnesota where the virus has actually had a weird silver lining for some businesses.

My name is Nadine Tiesberg. I work at Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We have been insanely busy throughout this whole pandemic, luckily enough.

Birchbark is owned by the author, Louise Erdrich. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and she writes a lot about native life on the reservation,

keeping native culture close, trying not to get too appropriated or simulated.

Yeah. In her book, The Roundhouse won the National Book Award for fiction in 2012. So I'm guessing Louise only hires people who have amazing taste in literature.

So I'm really excited to hear Nadine's recommendation.

I would love to recommend The Baron Grounds by David A. Robertson. He is a member of Norway House Cree Nation and he lives in Winnipeg.

This book was released, I think, in September. The Baron Grounds follows two indigenous children, Morgan and Eli, that are in the Canadian Foster Care System.

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