December 2020- Book Thoughts

Important Reads-

Dear Justyce- 

Criminal Justice Reform is desperately needed in the U.S.  People of color are disproportionately incarcerated and young black and brown men have the deck stacked against them as young as elementary school.  Nic Stone uses her amazing abilities and platform to expose these truths in this young adult novel.  Her story ends well, but many black and brown boys in America can’t say the same. 

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November 2020

November was hard on my reading.  With the election coming early in the month I went about six days pretty glued to my phone and texting my brothers constantly.  I don’t think I read anything in that week or so.  But this month also held a fun first.  I joined Instagram earlier this year and have really enjoyed meeting other readers on that platform.  One lovely lady I follow posted about a book she read and when I commented on how I wanted to read it she offered to send it to me to borrow.  So she did and it traveled northward and arrived in my mailbox.  It was so fun to borrow a book that way.  The book that she sent me was Compassion and Conviction and is the one book that I read this month that I think all people who consider themselves Christians should read. 

If you follow me on any social media you know I rave about The AND Campaign regularly.  Compassion and Conviction is their book which is like a manual to help guide Christians on how to navigate and engage in politics, or the public square.  I really enjoy the wisdom in this book.  It helps me really be grounded in the bible rather than in a political party.  I am able to disagree with the party I most identify with and also agree with the party I don’t identify with when their policies align with the bible.  It’s so freeing to not be dependent on a political party.  I am able to support and be excited about candidates without them becoming something in my life that they shouldn’t.  I highly recommend it and would welcome any conversation about it. 

One Sentence Summaries-

On the Horizon-  Lovely poems that reflect a WWII experience at Pearl Harbor and in Japan.

Pride and Prejudice and Other Flavors- A twisty and fun retelling that incorporates Indian culture, food, and cooking with the historical themes of pride and prejudice. 

Furia- Camila lives in Argentina and is keeping her soccer career a secret from her dysfunctional family.

Ghost-  A middle school boy runs to escape, but when he joins a track team he finds connection. 

The Boy in the Black Suit- A high school boy starts working at the funeral home after his mom dies and navigates grief and healing.

As Brave As You- Two boys spend the summer with their grandparents and understand family, loss, and courage in deeper ways.

Listen Slowly- Mai unwillingly finds herself accompanying her Grandma to Vietnam for the summer where she unexpectedly grows and changes how she views the world around her. 

Lost Children Archive- Possibly the most bizarre book I’ve ever read and I don’t think I can summarize it in just one sentence. A blended family on the verge of separating goes on a long road trip to explore sound projects that both parents are working on. The resources for each sound project, refugees at the southern border and this history of the Apaches, are woven into the story as the family meanders across the country. Half way through the narration changes to one of the children and the story takes an unexpected turn.

October 2020

I’m so far beyond the amount of books that I read last year and what I thought I would read this year.  I never make any exact goals.  My overarching goal is to read as much as I can before I return to work full time.  Sometimes though I get weary of picking up one book right after another.  This month I finished up a book with four or five days left in the month and then just rested from reading a bit.  It’s like a chosen reading drought and I think it can help me appreciate it when I start back up.  

With that little reflection here are my book thoughts for October.

Must Reads-

We are Displaced-  Last month I read a book inspired by the story of Malala Yousafazi and was happy to find this book which is her memoir as well as memoirs of other young refugee girls that she has met.  I feel very strongly that a large portion of people in the U.S. have the wrong idea about who refugees are.  Reading or listening to stories of refugees is something that brings truth to light.  These are stories of girls, their desire for education, their persecution in their home countries, the agony decisions of their families, and the journeys to safer places.  

After the Last Border- Staying with the theme of refugees this book follows three story lines.  The first one is of a refugee woman from Myanmar, the second story follows a refugee from Syria, and the third story is the history of Refugee Resettlement in the United States over decades.  The stories of the women and their families are brutal, heartbreaking, tragic, yet hopeful.  The piece of the book that really impacted me was the history of Refugee Resettlement.  As a country, the United States has really moved far away from the original intent and attitude around Refugees.  While the U.S. ‘s history with refugees and immigrants has been rocky when the Refugee Resettlement program was working at it’s best it was doing a lot of good.  It was a bipartisan effort, family reunification was prioritized, valued, and championed. With partnerships with government and private agencies thousands of refugees were resettled.  Unfortunately, within the last few years refugees are seen as synonymous with terrorists, rather than people fleeing terrorists.  Refugee agencies are closing down because the number of refugees the U.S. is allowing into the country is far less than ever before.  I am ashamed of this.  The fact that something that was birthed out of bipartisan effort and support, something that worked quietly to help so many, and something that prioritized human dignity and family changed so suddenly, turned so ugly, and as a result hurt so many people seeking help is deplorable. I’m hoping books like this help change our minds back to viewing refugees as humans made in the image of God in need of help. 

Love Stories-

Tweet Cute- This is a super adorable modern YA You’ve Got Mail remix.  I loved it more than I thought I would.  It was very predictable, but so sweet, and while very much YA didn’t annoy me. 

A Heart So Fierce and Broken- The second book after A Curse so Dark and Lonely and I liked this one better.  We follow the Grey character from the first book.  He meets the princess from a neighboring country and their story begins.  I loved their relationship, her history and family, and the complications that this story line gives to the larger story.

The Flat Share- Can you imagine sharing a flat and a bed with someone you never met?  Well this story is about a gal in desperate need of an affordable flat and one comes along but the agreement is that she would get the flat and bed from 6p.m.-8 a.m. and her flat mate would get the flat and bed from 8 a.m.-6 p.m. since he works as a third shift nurse.  Their relationship starts with notes they leave around the flat and they don’t see each other for a while.  It was so cute and fun.  The ending is a little much, but I loved most of the book. 

His Fair Assassin Series (Books 1-3)-  I binged this series like a crazy woman.  They were all available and I just read them one after another.  This is a historical fiction fantasy.  It’s based in the fifteenth century and the first book starts out with a young woman who is escaping a marriage and finds herself in a convent.  In the convent she learns that she is a daughter of Death, and she will train as an assassin to serve him.  Each of the three books in the series follows three girls from the convent.  Throw in a kingdom, war, gods and goddesses, and secrets galore.  I really loved the first two but the third one got a little weird.  Overall it was escapism at its finest. 

One Sentence Summaries-

By the Book- A YA story about a young teen who loves classic literature and seeks to help her friends navigate relationships with guys by labeling after classic lit characters until her game backfires. 

Saving Ruby King- A book that alternates different perspectives, including the perspective of a church, as the characters seek to find out how and why a woman died.

Majesty- Second book after American Royals and we follow the four young women of the first book as the kingdom of America seeks to move on after the King’s death. 

September 2020

This month was awkward.  I prefer months where I love most or all of my books.  This month was mostly books that were just fine.  Sometimes I just need to tighten up my choices and not be afraid to quit books.  I’m pretty good at knowing what I’d like, but sometimes I get carried away with what is available to read or what I think I should read. 

Books I loved-

A Long Bright River- A gentle and powerful family story plus mystery.  We follow a policewoman who is looking for her sister.  The store weaves past and present and explores issues like family, loyalty, love, prostitution, addiction, recovery, and abuse of power, and corruption. The mystery element is zero on the graphic level, same with scariness or suspense.  I knew what was going to happen and loved every minute being guided through the story to find out how everything was going to happen.  The ending rings with hope even as the story itself deals with some very heavy themes.  My kind of mystery for sure.

Look Both Ways-  Right now, if I could press any author to anybody it would Jason Reynolds.  His books are for kids and grown ups alike.  If you aren’t a Middle Grade or YA reader but you are curious give one of his books a try.  Look Both Ways would be an excellent choice.  In this book he weaves ten different stories about  kids leaving the same middle school on the same day and walking home.  It’s full of beautiful stories.  I laughed and sobbed.  Each story is so rich and full of life and meaning.

Say Yes to Middle Grade-

Clean Getaway- A black boy’s white grandma takes him on a road trip.  She is taking him on the same route she went on with her black husband in the sixties.   She relives the highs of remembering the husband she loved and the lows of remembering how much their relationship was hated by others. He loves his grandma, but he soon realizes that the trip isn’t what it seems to be. 

Amal Unbound- Amal is a Pakistani girl who is forced to abandon her education to go into a life of servanthood to pay off her family’s debt.  Life at the wealthy home she works at isn’t all that it seems and she finds herself needing to make some choices that will impact the whole household.

Prairie Lotus- If you are a lover of Laura Ingalls Wilder this is for you.  The main character is a young girl whose mother was Chinese and whose father is White.  After her mother dies her father and her travel to the wild frontier.  There she is faced with the racists ideas of their new town, all while her father tries to start a new business.  It’s heartbreaking and lovely and peeks into a history largely unexplored. 

First Rule of Punk-  Our young lady protagonist is half Mexican and half white, hates cilantro, and loves Punk music.  Finding herself on a cross country move and a new middle school, she seeks to find her identity.  It’s cute and fun and I loved the exploration of what it means to be biracial.

One Sentence Summaries

One to Watch- A plus sized social media influencer becomes the next bachelorette on the popular dating show

Still Life- A detective is sent to a small Canadian town to solve a mysterious killing involving arrows, art, and friendship.

The Vanishing Half-A family saga or race, family, and belonging that takes place over generations.

Stay With Me- A cultural novel of marriage and children and what happens when neither looks like you hoped.

The Memory Police- A sci-fi novel about an island where objects are erased from memories, but not everyone forgets.

Winter- The last book of the Lunar Chronicles that is a Snow White retelling.

The Book of Lost Names- A World War II story about saving Jewish children.

A Song Below Water- A very strange YA Sci-fi Fantasy books with bizarre magical creatures who are also teenagers. 

August 2020 Books

Middle Grade for the WIN

From the Desk of Zoe Washington

This is such a perfect Middle Grade Book to introduce institutional racism within the criminal justice system.  Zoe’s biological dad is in prison and Zoe finds a letter in her mailbox from him. She starts corresponding with him and finds out he is innocent of the crime he was accused of and starts to investigate.  Zoe has to struggle with her assumption that if someone is in jail they must be guilty.

The One and Only Bob

Fans of The One and Only Ivan will love this sequel.  It  is formatted the same way as The One and Only Ivan with Bob, the dog, as narrator.  The reader gets to catch up on the characters they loved in the first book and Bob gets to be a hero in the face of a natural disaster.

YA for the WIN 

All American Boys

I read this on audio and it is so good.  It’s a dual perspective between a black teenage boy who is a victim of police violence and a white teenage boy who is a witness to the incident.  It’s complicated and intricate. The characters have depth and history.  Some of the questions that are wrestled with are “What happens when someone who is “good” does a bad thing?”  “What is the downfall of categorizing a group of people as good or bad?”   

Slay

A Black girl who invented a video game specifically for Black People has  come to grip with her intent and impact when real life intersects with the game and someone loses their life.  If you loved Ready Player One this one’s for you.  No need to love or know anything about video games for you to love this book.  I loved the exploration of safe spaces for Black people and the entitlement of white people.  I also found it really interesting that the author also includes some toxic ideas within Black culture as well. 

Poet X

Elizabeth Acevado is one of my top favorite authors this year. Poet X was her first book, but my third of hers that I’ve read.  I love her inclusion of Dominican Culture, complicated family relationships especially mother/daughter, and the intensity of identity as a teenager.  It is a novel in verse and I highly recommend listening to it. 

Not the Best

The Water Dancer

So Ta-Nehisi Coates has a really good reputation as a journalist and writer.  I struggled with his first book, feeling like I was smart enough to read it.  But, with this one being fiction, I decided to give it go. It is a historical fiction/fantasy about slavery and the underground railroad. The first half was so good and then it slowed way down and the ending didn’t go the way I thought would go.  It wasn’t as gripping as it could have been. 

Meg and Jo

I really wanted to love this book and I just didn’t.  I enjoyed the Jo storyline enough. Meg’s story really irked me in a few ways, but then ended up playing out fine.  It was overall fine, but forgettable.  

One Sentence Summaries

Code Name Helene- A lady spy in Nazi occupied France navigates gathering resistance soldiers and carrying out sabatoge.

Most Likely- Out of four highschool best friends one becomes the first female president and the reader flashes back to find out the story of the best friends and who is the one who becomes president.

Dominicana- A young fifteen year old girl from the Dominican Republic is married out to an older man in New York City for the purpose of bringing her family to the United States. 

Ghost Boys- A young black boy is killed by a police officer while playing with a toy gun and his ghost is set to help the police officer’s daughter.

Words on Fire- During WWII a Lithuanian girl discovers the importance and danger of books.

Cress- The third book  in the Lunar Chronicles follows Cress as she escapes from her satellite prison and joins the other characters in their plan to save the Emperor. 

July 2020 Books

July just kept going on and on and on.  I wanted to read about three books slowly and I did, but I filled in with a large variety of two audio books, one graphic novel, a middle grade, a couple YA, a couple mysteries, and a few quiet gentle reads.  I even took the last few days of the month off and rested my reading self. 

Books that Changed My Life-

Be the Bridge by Latasha Morrison- I’ve read so many books on race, but this one with its intersection of faith and race is powerful.  It focuses heavily on personal responsibility on learning history, lamenting, and confessing.  If you are wondering what to do next in your journey learning about race, this book has very personal challenges in it. 

Give them Grace by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson-  My view on grace completely was blown up with this book.  I realized that there is nothing about me trying that has to do with God’s grace.  This book also thoroughly explores the fact that our kids are not able to do what is right, which paired with God’s grace offers much freedom when it comes to parenting. 

Parenting by Paul David Tripp- This book addresses 14 principles that need to be viewed through the lense of the gospel.  Much like Give them Grace, the perspective in this book has greatly impacted what I want my parenting to look like as an ambassador of God’s grace to my children.

Must Read YA and Middle Grade-

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo- I will read anything Elizabeth Acevedo writes.  This is a novel in verse which if you haven’t read many this would be a lovely one to start with.  Two girls in two different countries learn their dad has died, but don’t know about each other.  This novel explores family, belonging, the complexities of humans, culture, and love. 

When Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed-  Being a refugee is something that someone who has been born and lived in a stable country has a hard time wrapping their mind around.  I think there is a temptation to place blame on the refugee for their circumstances when the truth is everything that they have experienced has been horrifically unasked for.  This graphic novel is a lovely, gentle way for middle grade kids to get exposed to what it’s like to be a refugee.

Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart- Coyote’s life changed dramatically five years ago and now her and her dad drive around the country in an old bus. Something comes up and she is desperate to get back to her old hometown.  This is of their journey home and the people they meet and the adventures they find.  It is a story of healing of family and of love. 

One Sentence Summaries-

Risen Motherhood by Emily Jensen and Laura Wifler-  A lovely book that brings the gospel to different parts of motherhood, much like their podcast.

The Good Immigrant by Nikesh Shukla-  A compilation of authors and their experiences with immigration which leads to greater understanding and compassion for those who seek to live in the United States. 

The Passengers by John Marrs-  Self driving cars are hijacked and the drivers are put up on social media to beg for their lives and social media votes on who will live.

Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister- Part Where the Crawdads Sing and part The Great Alone this book has a powerful natural setting and a young girl without exposure to the outside world who connects scents to stories and life. 

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer-  Second book in the Lunar Chronicles and a fabulous Little Red Riding Hood complete with genetically modified wolves, a stolen spaceship, and runaways.

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander-  I listened to this powerful book that chronicles the rise of the criminal justice system as a form of keeping black people, especially black men, from actively living and participating in society. 

The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall-  Two couples, with various forms of faith, find themselves called as pastors and wives to the same church where their lives become significantly intertwined. 

Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner-  A plus size social media influencer finds herself in her ex-best friend’s lavishly expensive wedding, where a mystery unfolds. (this book had about three pages I had to skip on by due to a little more open door than I’m comfortable with) 

Find me on Instagram @marlainmontana.reads

Let me know what you’ve been reading!

June 2020 Reads 

Reading to Learn-

The Girl with the Louding Voice-  This book is so carefully and cleverly crafted.  Adunni is a young teenager in Nigeria.  The author Abi Dare, uses such a powerful voice for Adunni to really capture her experience in a rural Nigerian village.  Adunni is on the verge of being pledged to a very old man to be his third wife.  The book follows her journey as she attempts escape and finds herself in Lagos where she has been trafficked for manual labor in an affluent household.  Each chapter starts with a fact about Nigeria most of which blew my mind.  The story powerfully addresses many social issues.

A Thousand Splendid Suns- This back list book captures Afghan culture in Kabul over several decades.  The reader follows Mariam who is pledged at a young age to an older man.  After establishing that story line the author introduces Laila, a young girl, who lives down the street from Mariam and her husband.  The two women’s lives intersect in a complicated, horrible way.  They are forced to choose between being enemies or allies and friends.  Their relationship is the foundation of the book and speaks volumes on love and sacrifice. A Thousand Splendid Suns also explores Afghan culture and history so well. 

Reading to Have Fun-

Cinder-  How can you pass up a Cinderella retelling where Cinderella is a cyborg?  Throw in a Lunar Nation on the moon with an evil queen, a handsome prince, and a mysterious disease and you have a fun fast paced read. 

Dread Nation- An alternate timeline where the dead rise as zombies at Gettysburg.  The Civil War never finishes as everyone seeks to solve the problem of zombies.  Black women are trained in schools on the art of killing these zombies.  The main character finds herself in a western town masquerading as an utopia safe from zombies where things are quite as they seem.

Reading Kids Books-

New Kid-  What happens when you are the new kid in middle school?  Jordan Banks is the main character in this book that explores the complexities of a Black boy heading out of his neighborhood to attend a private school.  Jordan experiences a new school culture that often results in confusion and hurt.  The book does a great job at addressing microaggressions that Black face in largely white spaces. Despite encountering racism and adult authority figures’ biases, Jordan learns and grows and makes new friends. 

The One and Only Ivan-  Ivan is a gorilla in a zoo that is in a mall.  His best friend is Stella, an Elephant that lives in the cage next to him.  The story is told from Ivan’s point of view and the reader gets Ivan’s present day happenings as well as his back story on how he came to be in his domain in the mall.  It is a lovely, sad, beautiful story and the animal characters make it all the better. 

One Sentence Summaries-

Home of the Brave- Such a tender story of a refugee boy from Sudan and his relocation to his aunt’s home.  He navigates new friendship, learning English, a new school, haunting memories, and finding purpose. One of my favorite type of middle grade books.

Counting by 7’s- A very intelligent girl who defies norms goes through a terrible tragedy and is helped by an unlikely group of near strangers. 

The Body Keeps the Score- A thorough exploration of trauma’s impact on the body. (An important book but the only way I got through it was on audio at double speed.)

A Snicker of Magic- A young girl who sees words moves with her family to her mother’s magical hometown.

American Street-  A Haitian girl navigates and adjusts to living in Detroit after being separated from her mother at customs.

The Confession Club-  A group of multi generational women get together and confess things they are ashamed or guilty of and helping each other through life’s transitions.

May 2020 Books 

Change your Life Books:

Are My Kids on Track?-  This parenting book is full of gold.  It addresses emotional, social, and spiritual milestones that kids need to work on.  Each milestone is separated out in gender.  They give great tips on how to introduce, practice, and talk about each skill.  This is one I will be coming back to over and over again.  There is also a podcast that accompanies each chapter at Raising Boys and Girls Podcast.  

Stamped- A while ago I read Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi.  It’s long and he uses lots of words.  The information is so phenomenal, but I just kept thinking ‘I’m not smart enough for this’.  Enter Jason Reynolds:  He takes Kendi’s book and puts it in a format for YA readers.  It is like the best cliff notes ever.  I loved his explanations and his voice throughout.  It clearly lays out assimilation, segregation, and anti-racism throughout history.  The thing that hit me with both books was I kept thinking that as the timeline of history approached present time that antiracist ideas would prevail that the policies that promote assimilation and segregation would end and they don’t.  They continue to exist.  That’s the whole point.  This is just over 4 hours on audio and the kindle version is available.  The actual book is pretty expensive, on demand, and often sold out right now. 

Learning from Fiction:

Such a Fun Age  investigates different levels of racism from overt to covert. A 25 year old black babysitter of a young white girl gets accused of kidnapping and the incident is filmed.  It explores relationships between a black employee and white employer, a black girl and her white boyfriend, a black girl and her friends.  Lots of layers to this book.

The Book of Unknown Americans follows a family immigrating from Mexico to the United States due to the daughter’s health.  The chapters alternate between the daughter’s mother and a new friend she meets in their apartment building.  My favorite parts were the chapters in between those perspectives highlighting the stories of the other people, all immigrants, in the apartment building. Stories matter!

With the Fire on High  is about Emoni, a high school senior, with a two year old daughter, navigating being a mother, a granddaughter, a daughter to a dad who left, and a friend.  She also has super power skills in the kitchen and I wanted to eat everything that she made.  I loved the selflessness that was portrayed in her role as a single mom co-parenting with her grandmother and the father of her child. I was rooting for her the whole book as she is faced with choices about her future and how much she should follow her dreams and talents. 

Song for a Whale is about Iris who is twelve years old and deaf.  She goes to a school she hates and in her free time she restores old radios because she can tinker well and feel the vibrations of the frequencies.  When she learns in science class about a whale whose calls are at a lower frequency than other whales and spends life alone, she works to write the whale a song he can understand. 

One Sentence Summaries:

Furthermore- A Middle Grade Fantasy of a colorless girl looking for her missing father in a world where color is power . 

The Flight Girls- A Historical Fiction book about the women who tested, transported, and trained planes and pilots during WWII.

Tears of the Desert- A personal memoir of a doctor who experience the horrors of war and genocide in Darfur. 

The Martian- Mark Watney is an astronaut/biologist stranded on Mars, seeking to survive, contact earth, and somehow get home. (yep I thought of Matt Damon the whole time)

Words in Deep Blue-  Two former best friends get reacquainted as young adults amidst tragedy, heartbreak, misunderstandings, and books. 

Thirteen- A famous actor is framed for murder and the serial killer is on the jury.  

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat- This cookbook scientifically explains the role and importance of using appropriate amounts of salt, fat, acid, and heat while cooking. 

Long Way Home- A prodigal son story told in both present and past timelines about a young musician seeking fame in Nashville and his story of tragedy, heartbreak, and forgiveness. 

April 2020

This was a fun and an excellent reading month.  I’m still heavy on YA and Middle Grade but I’m not complaining.  I am going to do fun favorites, serious favorites, and then some one sentence summaries. 

My favorite book this month was The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani.  This is a Middle Grade book that takes place in India during 1947 when India split into Pakistan and India along the lines of Muslim and Hindu.  The book follows twelve year old Nisha and her family as they are displaced and forced to migrate in dangerous conditions.  I enjoyed learning about a time in history I knew nothing about from the perspective of a young girl. 

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow has such a stunning cover.  I’m pretty practical when it comes to covers, I use them to identify books I’ve read and books I want to read.  I usually don’t read books because of covers but this one is captivating.  The book itself is also stunning.  It was slow for me but once I was about 35% in I was hooked.  January is a seventeen year old who is discovering that her life is not what it has seemed to be including doors that open to different worlds.  I really loved the magic and the imagination. 

Alright let’s dive into my serious pairing of How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and March Two by John Lewis.  Ibram X. Kendi is a marvelous voice when it comes to racism and the history or racism and racist policies.  In How to be an Antiracist he has graciously put himself out there with his own personal story to discuss race through the lens of different categories including ethnicity, gender, class, space.   The reader witnesses him work through his own racist ideas which is really powerful and helps me understand how I have adopted racist ideas in my own life.  Soon after I read this book I started following Kendi on Instagram and he posted about the protests against government shut downs specifically in Michigan where protesters carried weapons into the capitol.  His post stated how he was thinking about what if the protesters had black and brown skin.  It got me thinking about the March Book Two graphic novel which has strong depictions of the Civil Rights Movement and the violence the peaceful protesters faced.   I also thought about how not that long ago brown and black football players knelt during the National Anthem and were hailed as unpatriotic troublemakers.  Yet, these most recent protesters with guns are described as Rosa Parks and national heros standing up for their rights.  I have strong thought about all of it but I think it’s profoundly powerful to think about what would happen if the protesters with guns were the ones that were black and brown.   The answer to that question clearly points to the racial inequality of our country and the privilege that has been built for those of us that are white.    

I’ll leave you with some one sentence (maybe two) summaries:

Black Enough- A book of short stories written black authors for YA readers about different aspects about living life as a black teenager.

The Stationary Shop of Tehran- A love story that spans generations and continents in the context of some Iranian history.

American Royals- In alternate time line George Washington became a King and this book follows  Beatrice who is currently in line to be Queen. My high school Prince William loving self enjoyed this (VERY YA) guilty pleasure even though there is a cliffhanger because it is the first (and sadly only until this fall) in a series.

Dry- California runs out of water and everybody goes crazy, YA style. 

Piecing me Together- A poignant YA book that follows Jade and her life going back and forth between her neighborhood and her privileged white school. 

Me and White Supremacy-  This book is set up as a four week study to explore your relationship, history, and interaction with racism and racist ideas. 

Ember Rising- The third book in The Green Ember Series- Start with book one, it is a fabulous Middle Grade Series and the third book didn’t disappoint. 

March 2020

This is the month the world went nuts.  I know a lot of bookish people I follow are struggling to concentrate and their reading lives are tanking.  I am not struggling because it helps ground me to something normal.   

If you need a historical fiction story that has nothing to do with pandemics try:

The Fountains of Silence

The Fall of Marigolds

or 

Sold on Monday

If you need something light, fun, and predictable try:

Evvie Drake Starts Over

or

The Library Lost Things

If you want a based on a crazy true story about a boy who was kidnapped away from his family in India and then adopted to the United States try:

The Orphan Keeper.  

I accidentally stumbled into two sets of really interesting pairings this month.

The first pairing was The Warmth of Other Suns and March Book One.  The Warmth of Other Suns is a nonfiction narrative that follows the migration of Black People from the south to other regions of the country.  The book highlights three people one who moved to New York, one to Chicago, and one to L.A.  During the book the author also gives insight into the country and different times during the migration which covered tens of years.  One of the most impactful things the author notes is that the migration took place over so much time, it wasn’t organized, and it resembled the migration of refugees from persecuted countries in Africa.  The pairing with The Warmth of Other Suns was March Book One which is a graphic novel that documents the beginning of the life of Representative John Lewis.  He chronicles his attraction to the Civil Rights  Movement and his participation in peaceful protests.  I read the two books back to back without thinking about it and the similarities and complimentary themes were really fun to discover. 

The second pairing that was fun to come across was Exit West and the Beekeeper of Aleppo.  I have mixed feelings about Exit West, which was recommended by my brother Micah.  I actually appreciated it more when he shared his perspective.  I loved that it explores immigration, migration, and refugees in a really interesting new way.  Instead of migrating in the traditional sense the book includes some magical realism with portals that transport people to different and possibly safer parts of the world.  I wasn’t the biggest fan of the main characters, but I really appreciate what the author was trying to do.  The pairing, Beekeeper of Aleppo is a traditional refugee migration story out of modern day Syria.  The author based her characters on refugees from Syria that she met working in Athens.   I thought the book artistically and powerfully communicated the harsh realities and difficulties that refugees face in their home countries as well as during their journeys.  

If you are sensitive about CO-VID 19 don’t read Five Feet Apart.  It is not about pandemics, but it is about kids with cystic fibrosis which is a disease where the lungs deteriorate.  They have to stay six feet away from each other, they struggle breathing, and it takes place almost solely in a hospital. 

 I rarely finish books that I don’t like but Ask Again Yes was one after I was done I thought ‘I wish I hadn’t read that’.  If you like long multi year family dramas especially the relationship between two families and something really crazy happening and how everyone moves forward you will like this book.  I usually avoid family dramas that cover multiple years and this book reminded me why. 

I hope your reading has been encouraging, distracting, happy, and whatever you need it to be right now.   

Remember to virtually meet with your bookish people  and let me know what you’ve been reading!

January 2020 Reading