Laurel M. Stevens's Blog, page 7

A Look At May’s Reads

In the month of May I read 16 books, and for a full list of all my books read this year so far feel free to visit my Goodreads profile.

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My Least Favorite of the Month:

Love & Misadventure by Lang Leav

Here’s Why: I am a fan of Instagram poetry, and short biting verses. I had heard great things about Lang Leav and was excited to pick up one of her works, but I had to drag myself through it. I can’t put my finger on the precise reason, but I couldn’t connect with most of the pieces here. I ended up putting it down, picking it back up, and in the end just speeding through it just to finish it – which isn’t what I want to do with poetry.

I’ll try another of hers because I don’t want to give up after just one, but Love & Misadventure wasn’t for me.

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My Favorite of the Month:

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu

Here’s Why: In a short story collection there is always at least one that doesn’t jive with me, at least until I read this collection. From wuxia to steampunk to magical realism and science fiction Ken Liu manages to introduce an impressive range of genres in the collection but it doesn’t seem mismatched at all.

I adored all of these, although I definitely had favorites, and would recommend any one of these short stories to another reader.

Between class, book clubs, and for fun reading I had quite the assortment of reads over the month of May. I finished the full collection of John Milton’s works which I started my way through early in 2019. Network Effect by Martha Wells, which was released early in the month, lived up to all of its prequel novellas and gave me a thrill. Murderbot, the narrator, captures the true beauty of sass and sarcasm. Here is an example of the pure sass that is present in The Murderbot Diaries:

“They were all annoying and deeply inadequate humans, but I didn’t want to kill them. Okay, maybe a little.” – Rogue Protocol (Novella #3 of The Murderbot Diaries)

Murderbot sass aside I was pleasantly surprised by the conversational tone in Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman. What We Talk About When We Talk About Books by Leah Price had a few great chapters and a few not so great chapters, but overall an interesting conversation on books in general. I think being stuck inside has me reading even more about books than usual since I haven’t been having my regular in-person conversations about books. In the Dream House, a memoir by Carmen Maria Machado also managed to be both beautiful and heart-rending. The way it played around with form made my literary heart happy even as the situations themselves were terrifying or lonely.

May’s Books

The View From the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction by Neil Gaiman The Complete Poems by John Milton In the Vanisher’s Palace by Aliette de Bodard The Paper Menagerie & Other Stories by Ken Liu Love & Misadventure by Lang Leav What We Talk About When We Talk About Books: The History and Future of Reading by Leah Price Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future if a Multibillion Dollar Franchise by Chris Taylor Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated: 125 Ways to Enhance by William Lidwell, Jill Butler, Krit Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books by Leah PriceWhy We Read What We Read: A Delightfully Opinionated Journey Through Bestselling Books by Lisa Adams & John Heath Network Effect by Martha Wells Star Wars Heresies: Interpreting the Themes, Symbols and Philosophies by Paul F. McDonald Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life by Michael Dirda In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado Guardians of the Whills by Greg Rucka

Books About and By Black Voices

Protests are burning through the world right now in the wake of George Floyd’s death – far from the first senseless death of a black person at the hands of the police this year in the United States of America. It is always important to support minority group content creators and voices, but I wanted to highlight books by black authors and books about the black experience in wake of this event.

This list is a mix of both fiction and non-fiction, and this is nowhere near a comprehensive list. I have dozens more on my own to-be-read list alone, but these are books that I have read and highly recommend. Please take the time to check some out and support black voices.

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Between the World and Me

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Coates has a way with words and Between the World and Me is written in an epistolary format that resonated with me as a reader, even though I am not the son of a black man living in modern America. This work pulls no punches and gives important perspective to readers who may not know or interact with black people. It is a great start in understanding the viewpoint of someone different from you and just the beginning of hearing about the black experience in America.

There are dozens of quotable lines in here, the most powerful for me being: “So you must wake up every morning knowing that no promise is unbreakable, least of all the promise of waking up at all.”

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For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf

by Ntozake Shange

Choreopoems combine dance, music, songs, and poetry – so reading one can be a little like reading a play in that there will be things that are just plain better when presented with the accompanying audio and visuals. I was lucky that the copy I picked up had some photographs within that really added to the experience of reading this piece, but regardless of not having the accompaniment intended the language within remains evocative.

This particular work is a great one to use to start discussion on a multitude of different topics and one that lends itself to interpretation across a variety of mediums.

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We Should All Be Feminists

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This read is short and can be seen as a Ted Talk on YouTube if you’re interested, but it packs a punch. Adichie has a way of making this basic and straightforward in a way that is hard to argue with and will equip you well for conversations with people who aren’t quite convinced. The focus of this book is inclusion and awareness on a multitude of levels, a message that bears repeating even if you already consider yourself a feminist.

The brevity of the work and the clever prose also means that this work is easy to share and draw others into.

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Citizen: An American Lyric

by Claudia Rankine

Poetry speaks differently than prose and Rankin’s words in Citizen carry a heavy weight. From pop culture and sport events to someone’s every day experiences the events in the poetry here draw a common ground with almost any American and then shows you the error in your assumptions. Poetry can go places regular prose often has difficulty with and Rankin’s work here highlights fantastic passion and creativity.

I would recommend this not only to poetry lovers but to those who tend towards essays and other political readings.

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Hunger, Difficult Women, & Bad Feminist

by Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay’s writing is deeply personal, even the fictional short stories in Difficult Women. Her writing is also ridiculously readable in that it feels like a conversation. If you are hesitant about reading a collection of personal non-fiction essays Gay is a great place to start. My personal favorite of the three is Bad Feminist simply because more of it resonated with me, but each one has much to recommend it.

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The Broken Earth (Books 1-3)

by N. K. Jemisin

Jemisin’s world here steals your breath away. Readers of both science fiction, fantasy, and fans of characters studies will find goldmines in this series. If you think you are worn out with epic worlds and aren’t a fan of high fantasy I would challenge you to at least pick up the first in this series, The Fifth Season. There is a reason each book in the series won a Hugo award. The talent that it took to craft this amazes me.

Go forth and read! I hope this list gave you a place to start on reading more black voices, and I recommend finding even more – there are so many great books out there, this is barely even the tip of the iceberg.

5 Books Recommended to Me

…that I perhaps haven’t gotten to yet.

I love hearing about books, especially books that had friends and family thinking of me. So, of course, I love getting book recommendations! Sometimes the recommendation might be as simple as, “Hey, this book has a dragon on the cover, I think you might like it!” and other times it can be closer to, “I just finished this book and the main character’s journey of self-realization is something I think might resonate with you.”

Regardless of why, if a book makes someone think of me I want to know.

However, I run into this perennial problem of the amount of books in this world far surpassing the amount time I have to read them. I am sure it is an issue near and dear to your heart as well. (If it isn’t perhaps you can stomach pretending, even if just for the duration of this article?)

So, my sister texts me a book recommendation the same day a friend passes me a book on the same day a librarian shoves a new release that “You’ll love!” into my hands. Uh-oh.

Hence my problem – sometimes, and I feel like I should whisper this, I get recommended a book and then I don’t immediately go read it. Yup. And sometimes, it might be years before I get around to it, even if it is a book that I think sounds amazing and was recommended by someone whose book opinions I trust.

So without further ado – the top 5 books that I have been recommended, that I want to read, and just have yet to get to.

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

I have been hearing about this book since shortly before it came out, and yes – it sounds like something that I will absolutely adore. I mean, magic, hardcore world-building, vengeance, and from what I hear some gripping action? Sign me up!

Oh, and the kicker here? I got it as a Christmas gift. I literally have no excuse as to why this one is still sitting in my tbr pile instead of my finished pile. I really don’t.

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2. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

I have a true weakness for a book that get this, has books in it. Lucky me, I also have friends with that same weakness. The Historian was the first book recommended to me by a friend that has recommended several other largely enjoyable titles about books. The summary involves an old library and Vlad the Impalar, both of which are high on my list of ‘interesting things to read about’.

Opinions about this one tend to fairly polarizing as well. I have heard everything from it being an absolute favorite to trash. So it needs to creep up my tbr list so I can chime in with my own opinion.

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3. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

This one has been on my tbr list the longest (about 9 years to be exact). A near perfect stranger initially recommended it to me when I helped her move into my neighborhood. She even lent me her copy, which I returned almost 4 years later after I found it under my bed. I am not even sure why I didn’t read it while I had it.

Within 2 years of returning it I have been recommended it another half dozen times easy (one of those from my brother with impeccable taste). So quite a large number of people are convinced I should read it, including myself. I recently found a copy at a used book store and snatched it up. I am determined to add this one to the finished pile this year.

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4. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

Non-Fiction recommendations can be a bit of a terrifying abyss, but when several people who aren’t history buffs recommend a history book I tend to pay attention. And hey, if it was a best-seller chances are it is at least a book that can be fun to read (not a guarantee, but still a high likely hood). Not to mention that any book that attempts to look and the world and ask “Why?” and then provide evidence supporting their answers is always worth a read.

So yes, this book has been in my tbr list since it first pinged my radar early in college. One day I will be craving a historical analysis and give this a start. Whether or not I gulp it down or break it into tiny sips remains to be seen.

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5. Magician: Apprentice by Raymond E. Feist

I acquired a romantic partner through book recommendations, and I’ve adored almost all of his recommendations. However, for some reason every time I have started this one (he keeps recommending it when I ask) something else distracts me and I put it down. Then I try to pick it up a year or two later and have to read the first couple of chapters before I inevitably wander off again.

I’m not completely sure why as it seems to be one I would enjoy finishing. Perhaps one day I will simply pick it up and power through it like the other fantasy books I pick up. Until then it shall sit innocently as a highly-recommended book in my tbr pile.

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Perhaps this post shall finally guilt me into reading some of the oft-recommended (and I’m sure, absolutely fabulous) books.