Time for a reading catch-up! In all of the weirdness and scariness that is our world right now, blogging definitely fell quite low on the list of priorities. But I have plenty of thoughts to throw out into the internet void-- to begin with, some thoughts on what I've been reading lately.
In the months of March and April, I managed to read these books:
The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
Five Feet Apart by Rachel Lippincott
This book is actually a reread for me, but looking back, I realized that I didn't talk about any books that I read in 2018. So I'm talking about it now!
I read this book with students in my YA Fiction class just before quarantine started. Our focus was on death and celebrating life because the whole concept of this book is that Stella and Will both have a form of Cystic Fibrosis (CF), though Will's case is the much more advanced and dire form call B. Sepacia. Before reading this book, I had watched videos created by Claire Wineland who was also a CFer, so I had a basic understanding of the disease and I had a perspective from someone who lived a life with CF.
One thing that was really interesting for me to think about was how one can have a condition that will ultimately be the end of you but how you can still create meaning in your life. This was a process for Stella, who was very tied to her treatment regimen without fail, and a balancing act of sorts for Will, who just wants to live life since he knows there's likely no hope for a treatment for him. For both of these people, they will never not have CF but can only do treatments to help make their life a little bit easier. Yet, these two young people go on to find love and eventually adventure. I think this is a beautiful book and both the book and the movie made me cry at the end (but not for the reason you might expect from a book revolving around CF).
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
I love this book and I love everything Elizabeth Acevedo writes. She also wrote "With The Fire On High," which I adored and read in July 2019, but didn't actually review. Perhaps in the future when I inevitably reread it. But I digress. I love that this book is written as narrative poetry with every poem being a conversation or a thought that Xiomara has or something like that. It's wonderful and I have found that students respond well to stories like this. It doesn't require a lot of attention and yet it grabs your full attention anyway.
This story revolves around Xiomara's experiences with double standards for men and women in her culture and her struggles with religion and her mother in particular. The book doesn't shy away from these big topics or dance around them and partially cover them, but shows how these things can and do actually affect a person. It's a really powerful read. This is one of the books that I recommend the most to students. I hope Elizabeth Acevedo writes a million more books. I will read every single one of them.
Motherhood by Sheila Heti
This was such an interesting book to read while pregnant. The whole premise is that the author is debating with herself if she would like to become a mother. She's feeling a lot of pressure to make the jump but isn't sure if this is something that she genuinely wants or just thinks she's supposed to want. And really, this is such a good question to ask yourself before attempting to become a parent. Why do I want this? It's a permanent choice and that's such a scary thing to decide. I definitely felt that anxiety while waiting for my son to be born. And I'm someone who discussed having a kid for a long time with my partner and worked with my doctor to make it happen. Those doubts still came to mind about whether or not I was ready to take on this job and care for a whole new person for the rest of their life. It's a really scary precipice to be standing on, so to speak. And it's not something that I would just want to "follow the river" and do without putting thought into it. But I guess not everyone does think about it the way more people probably should. I guess this book made me feel a bit more secure about my choice to become a mother because some of the fears that she had I either didn't share or if I did share them, I had come to terms with them. It's a really interesting read. It gave me a lot to think about, which is really all I can ask from a semi-fictional book.
Thanks for Reading!
--Jude
In the months of March and April, I managed to read these books:
- Coraline by P. Craig Russell and Neil Gaiman (graphic novel, not the original)
- Kiss Number 8 by Colleen A.F. Venable and Ellen T. Crenshaw
- Solo by Kwame Alexander (reread, 2017)
- The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
- Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott (reread, 2018)
- We Got This by Cornelius Minor
- The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (reread, 2018)
- Motherhood by Sheila Heti
I love that I got to revisit some great reads during this time. There are a couple that I just today realized I have never written about on this blog before but I've documented as reading before on GoodReads. Not sure what happened there... so I suppose I'll be writing about them now!
Side Note: I read Solo by Kwame Alexander with students in my spring elective class and they loved it. They liked that it was poetry and the story and characters were really engaging for them. If any educators out there are curious :)
The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
This was one that I got for either Christmas or my birthday. It's a graphic novel and I was looking to get out of a bit of a reading slump and this one really did the trick. It's not a light read, because it's the story of her parents coming to the U.S. from Vietnam and escaping danger. Part of what makes it a heavy read is knowing that this is a true story and seeing how much her parents struggled to keep their life together and just keep pushing forward. You can't help but admire their resiliency but then feel taken aback that they would have to show this much resiliency in the first place.
The other thing about this book that I appreciate is that it takes the time to give background to what was happening in Vietnam at the time from the perspective of someone who actually grew up there. Thinking back, I think my only context on this war was from those who were drafted to fight in the war. But that is only one side of the story and it's a rather distorted side with no sense of humanity. Both of the people who went to fight and the people who actually lived there and frankly, who were killed.
I am looking to teach this book in the fall, so I will likely be reading this book again before the new school year starts. I look forward to rereading and diving a little deeper.
The other thing about this book that I appreciate is that it takes the time to give background to what was happening in Vietnam at the time from the perspective of someone who actually grew up there. Thinking back, I think my only context on this war was from those who were drafted to fight in the war. But that is only one side of the story and it's a rather distorted side with no sense of humanity. Both of the people who went to fight and the people who actually lived there and frankly, who were killed.
I am looking to teach this book in the fall, so I will likely be reading this book again before the new school year starts. I look forward to rereading and diving a little deeper.
Five Feet Apart by Rachel LippincottThis book is actually a reread for me, but looking back, I realized that I didn't talk about any books that I read in 2018. So I'm talking about it now!
I read this book with students in my YA Fiction class just before quarantine started. Our focus was on death and celebrating life because the whole concept of this book is that Stella and Will both have a form of Cystic Fibrosis (CF), though Will's case is the much more advanced and dire form call B. Sepacia. Before reading this book, I had watched videos created by Claire Wineland who was also a CFer, so I had a basic understanding of the disease and I had a perspective from someone who lived a life with CF.
One thing that was really interesting for me to think about was how one can have a condition that will ultimately be the end of you but how you can still create meaning in your life. This was a process for Stella, who was very tied to her treatment regimen without fail, and a balancing act of sorts for Will, who just wants to live life since he knows there's likely no hope for a treatment for him. For both of these people, they will never not have CF but can only do treatments to help make their life a little bit easier. Yet, these two young people go on to find love and eventually adventure. I think this is a beautiful book and both the book and the movie made me cry at the end (but not for the reason you might expect from a book revolving around CF).
The Poet X by Elizabeth AcevedoI love this book and I love everything Elizabeth Acevedo writes. She also wrote "With The Fire On High," which I adored and read in July 2019, but didn't actually review. Perhaps in the future when I inevitably reread it. But I digress. I love that this book is written as narrative poetry with every poem being a conversation or a thought that Xiomara has or something like that. It's wonderful and I have found that students respond well to stories like this. It doesn't require a lot of attention and yet it grabs your full attention anyway.
This story revolves around Xiomara's experiences with double standards for men and women in her culture and her struggles with religion and her mother in particular. The book doesn't shy away from these big topics or dance around them and partially cover them, but shows how these things can and do actually affect a person. It's a really powerful read. This is one of the books that I recommend the most to students. I hope Elizabeth Acevedo writes a million more books. I will read every single one of them.
Motherhood by Sheila Heti
This was such an interesting book to read while pregnant. The whole premise is that the author is debating with herself if she would like to become a mother. She's feeling a lot of pressure to make the jump but isn't sure if this is something that she genuinely wants or just thinks she's supposed to want. And really, this is such a good question to ask yourself before attempting to become a parent. Why do I want this? It's a permanent choice and that's such a scary thing to decide. I definitely felt that anxiety while waiting for my son to be born. And I'm someone who discussed having a kid for a long time with my partner and worked with my doctor to make it happen. Those doubts still came to mind about whether or not I was ready to take on this job and care for a whole new person for the rest of their life. It's a really scary precipice to be standing on, so to speak. And it's not something that I would just want to "follow the river" and do without putting thought into it. But I guess not everyone does think about it the way more people probably should. I guess this book made me feel a bit more secure about my choice to become a mother because some of the fears that she had I either didn't share or if I did share them, I had come to terms with them. It's a really interesting read. It gave me a lot to think about, which is really all I can ask from a semi-fictional book.
Thanks for Reading!
--Jude
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