five things Friday: September TBR edition

This month's selections are 3 parts reading down my physical bookshelves, 1 part getting on a library hold before I lose it, and 1 part filling in a category on my MMD 2020 reading challenge list. Read on to learn which is which....

 

The Death of Vivek Oji was my BOTM pick last month (I'm all about picking the BIPOC authors that they offer, even if they haven't always offered enough - staying with the membership and voting with my dollars out of the 5 monthly selections!), and Dominicana was in my birthday haul, and I want to make sure to get to reading them this month as they both sound excellent. And By the Book is one that has been sitting on my physical shelf for a while after I snagged it from a remnants section at a bookstore (ahhh remember going to bookstores?) because I'm a sucker for books about bookstores/writers/English majors. But now I realize it's actually a retelling of Persuasion?! Which actually might be my favorite Jane Austen book, so I have got to read this pronto.

A Love Hate Thing is the library hold that I need to read before I lose - it's YA, enemies to lovers romantic plot, and BIPOC author/characters. Excellent sounding combo!

And finally, for the "a book by a local author" category of the MMD 2020 reading challenge, I decided to select a book by Gary D. Schmidt that I haven't read yet (Pay Attention, Carter Jones, his most recent release). This author is a professor in the English department of the small liberal arts college I went to, and lives about 45 minutes from where I do now - plus, his middle great books are great. If you haven't read The Wednesday Wars and the follow-up Okay for Now, I highly recommend.

A quick recap of August's list: 

• A Nearly Normal Family (reviewed here) was an intriguing legal/family psychological drama, even if a bit stress-inducing to read at times.
• White Fragility, if a bit dense-feeling at times, is a very helpful overview of why white people have such a hard time talking about race, and about how racism is a systemic issue from our country's founding that lasts through the present and that all whites are complicit in. We can't just blame "bad" people for it, or think that we're "beyond" race now that the Civil Rights era is past, but our reactions when our ideas about race/racism are challenged tend to be counterproductive and actually maintain racial inequality. Much of the basic framework of this book was not new to me, but it was still convicting, especially when the author points out where "progressive whites" are still part of this racist system. Not sure I would have picked this one up if it hadn't been sent to all staff members by the business school dean (trying more to read work by BIPOC authors), but it was worth a read to remind myself that though I'm more on one end of the continuum than the other in terms of my understanding of racism, I still am part of the system and always have more work to do to understand this about myself, and to help break the system.
• If Beale Street Could Talk was my selection for "a classic you missed in school," and I suspect that this one will get missed by pretty much any student, as it's not exactly part of the dead white guys canon. This modern classic was a very engaging and powerful read, a love story about teenagers and the hopes and fears that they face when the young man is falsely accused of a crime and imprisoned for it. Though it's written by a man, I was impressed by how the first-person narration of an 18-year-old girl felt so real, and captured so well the tumult of being a young person in love, and even the feelings of being a pregnant woman. Overall, the novel felt like it really encapsulated some aspects of being Black in America, from unjust dealings with the justice system to everyday racism experiences to the communal bonds/shared identity, illustrated in the family relationships. It's sad how timely the racism/injustice part of this story about a falsely accused black man being sent to prison and how the system is against him is - and it's a very interesting companion to have next to some more contemporary stories I've read recently, like An American Marriage - I wish I had been exposed to James Baldwin's work earlier so that I would have more of a literary base for where contemporary authors are coming from. Also a very interesting companion to things I have read/watched recently about the racist problems of the American justice system: Just Mercy and 13TH.
• And Running and Dear Martin were both enjoyable issues-focused YA reads; Running about high schoolers finding their political voices, particularly on environmental/climate change issues, and Dear Martin about a high school boy grappling with racism, both in terms of personal experiences and seeing larger issues at play in society, like frequent reports of police officers shooting unarmed black men. Stay tuned for blogger book club with Dana on September 6 for a full review of Dear Martin!

Now I want to hear about your TBRs - what did you cross of in August, and what's on the agenda for September?