The Tradition

I don’t read a lot of poetry. I never really have. And though I’ve picked up and loved a few collections over my years on this blog (notably: If They Come for Us and Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings), I haven’t really been what I would consider “converted” to the art form. However, as is…

How We Get Free

This book was chosen by a friend as the first book of an Anti-Racist Book Club that she started. I know that the reactions to white people, white women, starting book clubs like this to address racism is very understandably skeptical as an empty gesture that will soon be moved on from… All I can…

Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

I am not sure where I first heard about this memoir, but the title, and knowing that it was written by a queer woman, had me adding it to my TBR without knowing much more. Then I actually bought it for myself in my Holiday “gift to myself” book haul in January. As I was…

Gideon the Ninth

Well, I think we could all agree that I knew I’d be reading this one. Tagged as lesbian necromancers in space, there was really no more I needed to know. And all the awards it’s been nominated for since then really only reinforced what I already knew. In fact, this was in the stack of…

How We Fight For Lives

I’d seen a couple reviews for this memoir that said it was very powerful, and I was interested in reading it, but I can’t necessarily say it was super high on my TBR, objectively. However, it was one of the books I managed to grab in my last library haul before the closures for COVID-19.…

Beneath the Sugar Sky

Y’all – I was feeling stressed and anxious from all this pandemic situation and I was looking for something to take me away a bit, in a nice happy way. And I can’t believe it took such a drastic situation to pick up this third installation in this series, because I LOVED the first two…

Girl, Woman, Other

I had never heard of Bernardine Evaristo before this novel won the Booker Prize this past year (and yes, I am going to choose to believe that she won it singularly, for many reasons…agree or disagree, that’s my stance). In any case, I knew that I wanted to support Evaristo, so I went ahead and…

The Darkest Part of the Forest

I have had “read something by Holly Black” on my TBR for years. I have a huge soft spot for fairies in fantasy and that seems to be her sweet spot. I actually have had The Cruel Prince on my shelf since it was published, but I get weird about trilogies and have kinda been…

The Confessions of Frannie Langton

As I was looking for a book that would fit The Reading Women Challenge 2020 prompt #1, an author from Caribbean or India, I remembered this novel that a few of the Caribbean-based bookstagrammers I follow (particularly Cindy at @bookofcinz) had talked about last year when it came out. It sounded pretty interesting and really…

The Deep

Just about two years ago I read Solomon’s debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts, and was so impressed with the world-building, the diversity of the characters, the writing…it was a fantastic debut. And it was before I really had any idea about Afrofuturism as a genre, so it felt truly groundbreaking to me. I am…