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::belts out:: “’Cause this is thriller, thriller night!” … Ok, that’s not the reason why we chose When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole for April’s Virtual Book Club. Neither was the possibility of learning that Michael Jackson music video dance of awesomeness. But, no matter what the reasons, we’d love for you to join us in discussing our first THRILLER on Friday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m. CST! It’s imperative for you to sign up here!

Ashley IN MEDIAS RES

• Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust
• A Year of Positive Thinking: Daily Inspiration, Wisdom, and Courage by Cyndie Spiegel

Nikki IN MEDIAS RES

• The Toni Morrison Book Club by Juda Bennett, Winnifred Brown-Glaude, Cassandra Jackson, and Piper Kendrix Williams
• The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin

Ashley FIN

• An Unconditional Freedom (The Loyal League #3) by Alyssa Cole
• A Hope Divided (The Loyal League #2) by Alyssa Cole
• Wings of Ebony (Wings of Ebony #1) by J. Elle
• Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
• We Should All Be Millionaires: A Woman’s Guide to Earning More, Building Wealth, and Gaining Economic Power by Rachel Rodgers
• Legendborn (The Legendborn Cycle #1) by Tracy Deonn
• Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America edited by Ibi Zoboi

Nikki FIN

• Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust
• Wings of Ebony (Wings of Ebony #1) by J. Elle
• The Dream of You: Let Go of Broken Identities and Live the Life You Were Made for by Jo Saxton (audio)
• Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
• Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? By Martin Luther King, Jr.
• House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) by Sarah J. Maas
• Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff by Dana K. White
• Legendborn (The Legendborn Cycle #1) by Tracy Deonn
• Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America edited by Ibi Zoboi
• Tools of Engagement (Hot & Hammered #3) by Tessa Bailey

Before I really looked at my February reading list, I thought I failed my goals.  I’d intended to binge Black authors in between reading our books for posts.  While I didn’t exactly binge anything this month, I’m still eight books ahead on my Goodreads challenge, and with the exception of the book for Thursday’s post (hint hint), I only started books by Black authors this month, so I’m going to take that win, and stop shoulding on myself.  If I name what matters about my goal, my real intention (thank you Kendra Adachi) was to read authors whose life experiences are different than mine, specifically those who are Black.  While I did have a lot (for me) of unfinished books starting out the month, that and my life not accommodating the number of books I wanted to consume is really the only piece of my goal that wasn’t realized.  So, I’m going to take this as a lesson and be a bit more conservative in the number of books I can realistically get through in a month (even though I’ve mostly got my daily page average down) and I’m going to remind myself that my reading life serves to provide pleasure, relaxation, and insight for my real life, so really, it’s all fine, and I don’t mean in that dumpster fire kind of way, but genuinely.  

I want to share with you a bit about the books I read this month that weren’t (or won’t be) reviewed here.  If you haven’t recently read anything by Martin Luther King, Jr., please put something on your TBR that will come up soon.  Revisit an old favorite or pick something new.  Where Do We Go From Here was new to me, and I needed the reminder that we really haven’t come so far in the last 55 years.  It’s ridiculous, awful, and real, and we need to own our history and the trauma it has and continues to inflict upon Black and Brown people before we can begin to truly heal our still divided house.  Along similar lines, The Toni Morrison Book Club claims to be a group memoir of four friends of how they see Toni Morrison’s novels reflected in real life.  It is that, but what the marketing copy doesn’t say is that these friends are all college professors, which amps it all up several notches.  Do not skip the introduction which explains how the work came to be in a very relatable way.  These texts are real, vulnerable, and deep, at least the 47% I’ve read so far.  Take it slow, and wade in the waters to learn through these musings on life, book club, and relatable fiction.  

Decluttering at the Speed of Life was the book I didn’t know I needed to explain to me why I was thinking all wrong about decluttering.  Read the whole thing or just read her philosophy, whatever works for you, but it’s a very palatable book around how to declutter in baby steps and it feels like the Lazy Genius guide to decluttering.  

While I should have known I needed Jo Saxton to preach to me for six-ish hours this month, I didn’t.  I’ve adored Jo since I first heard her speak at IF Gathering in 2015 and adore her podcast with Steph O’Brien, Lead Stories Podcast.  (I refer to her as Jo because I was introduced to her as a speaker, not out of disrespect).  Do note, If you’re not ok with references to the Christian Church by two pastors, skip the podcast.  If you don’t want to deep dive identity through stories in the Bible, skip The Dream of You.  Jo takes stories of Biblical figures living into their identity and relates them to stories of real women pushing to figure out who they really are.  I’ll confess I don’t know that I’d have enjoyed this as much on the page unless it was done as a small group study.  I did bury the lead a bit though.  Jo is the daughter of Nigerian parents and she grew up in the UK before moving to the US in her 30s.  Yes friends, Jo is a Black female author / pastor with a British accent, and it made doing the dishes SO much better!  

What part of your reading life recently did you not know you needed?

~Nikki 

My mother asked me during our phone call on Sunday what my number is for the year. I said , “I’m at twenty-one books.” Her response, “What’s Nikki at?” ::goes to GoodReads:: “Twenty Four.” “Hm.” My mother is making my reading life into a competition, but this is not a surprise because she’s the one who happily took me to get all those Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizzas during the Book-It program. I’m six books ahead of schedule and ya girl was struggling to get her books read this month. Like, super struggle bus. It was, truly, the big pile of Young Adult novels we have read in the past few weeks. Most of them were very good and enjoyable, but unlike when reading romance novels, in YA the sexual tension has no where exciting to go. They just hold it in or kiss it out. Obviously, that’s not enough for me and I have much different expectations than the primary customer of young adult novels. (Young Adults. Yes, I know. I was reading romance novels in middle school, I’m the reader that gives my friends with young’uns nightmares.) I can read YA but I probably need to avoid doing about 6 weeks of those books for the blog in the future.

So, what I did this weekend, instead of jumping right into reading our next book for the blog, I decided to finish up The Loyal League Series by Alyssa Cole. Yeah, I read 2 books in 3 days because I needed that mental break. Reading those two books was excellent for my book count and for my mental health. When you realize you’ve watched Encanto more days than not this past week… I needed something else that’s predictable but perhaps slightly more adult in nature. Also, reading Alyssa Cole allowed me to focus on the thing that mattered for my reading life in February, which is reading books by Black authors. I did that and I’m happy about it, and I can get ready for other themed months…with perhaps slightly more adult topics. I did have four other books downloaded from the library, including The Toni Morrison Book Club that Nikki mentions above, but couldn’t get in the right headspace to read them. And that’s important to note, too. I did read We Should All Be Millionaires: A Woman’s Guide to Earning More, Building Wealth, and Gaining Economic Power by Rachel Rodgers as my nonfiction title for February. I wanted to mention it specifically here because it’s currently available for FREE through Prime reading on your Kindle. This is for any Amazon Prime member – you get up to 10 free books to download at a time. (Please note that even if the book disappears from the Prime Reading list, your book won’t disappear from your collection until you return it!) I liked it so much and I think it’s so important that Nikki moved Rodgers’ book up the TBR and possibly put it on the blog calendar. 😉

Remember, darling readers, our Reading Lives are to bring us joy, not add stress. (Except the stress of deadlines where books are due at the library, that’s an OK stress…because for me it’s either that or the stress of an empty bank account from buying too many dang books.)

~Ashley

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