I didn‘t want to read this book but I decided to do it to see what Vance had to say before he sold his soul. I‘ve read about many other experiences from people of color and didn‘t think I would find anything remarkable here; I didn‘t. Vance had a rough childhood and adolescence which he is very open about in this memoir, but it doesn‘t justify the monstrous policies he now supports or the vile thing he has become. Maybe I‘m wrong, but I think⤵️

I loved this book. I understand why some people have a hard time with magical realism but it worked perfectly for this story, and I absolutely loved that Harriet Tubman makes an appearance.
When Hiram discovers his gift and decides to make his exit from a life of enslavement, he uses it to help others. A story of courage, resilience, and finding the magic within the self. I can‘t wait for the screen adaptation!

In this book, the author goes deep into the history of interracial relationships during the days of enslavement in America, to try to make sense of what still lurks in the present. It has everything to do with misogynoir and the deep stain of slavery. Worth a read.

I think we all think about the end of the world or ourselves, if only briefly, at least once a day. We imagine how it will happen—quick, painful? With warning, time to prepare and make final rounds? We consume film, literature, and headlines that talk about it—because we love it. We think we will get the time off from work, lose our worries, lose our financial debts, our jury duties. If we lose these things, will we also lose our sense of⬇️

The second half of the title for this book is misleading. Yes, a white woman brought down DC Stephenson—a man with strong roots in the KKK…but not in the way you think. If I say more, I‘ll give it away. Remember: privilege.

This book moved me in ways I didn‘t expect and brought up a lot of my own trauma to the surface. It is one of the best books I‘ve ever read, and so important to read. The author describes heavy domestic violence and multiple levels of abuse that occurred when he was growing up. Only after digging deep into his family‘s history could he find the reason why it occurred and what had to be done to finally break the cycle.

I have no idea how to explain what this book series is about, but I can list the themes! Stunning art that will stay with me forever is what compelled me to pick it up to begin with. Don‘t expect the screen adaptation to be good, because you‘ll be disappointed. Themes: death, grief, pagan lore, incarnation, the soul, plagues, bonds of love. Some elements of the story made me wonder if the author was referencing Alzheimer‘s.

I hesitated to read this at first, because I‘m not into romance. I like it dark. But I decided to give this a go, and I‘m glad I did. Nora works in the death industry but can‘t accept death in any other capacity. What happens when you fall in love with the ultimate death doula? A cute book with bits of grim humor, but also hard truths. Excellent for a death cafe discussion!

The author lays bare the years of struggle she faced without a real and accurate diagnosis of the unrest in her brain that stole her life: schizophrenia. She went through hell…writing and publishing this memoir was an act of courage. Our ills may be a part of us, but they don‘t define who we are.

I can‘t even begin to say how much I loved this book. It isn‘t just about food, but how it brings us together, especially during times of grieving. It is also about memory, and how what we smell, taste, and prepare burrow in the deepest places of our souls. In this memoir, the author tells the story her father wanted her to tell. In the darkest times, the memory of something to eat was always there. Highly recommend!

This small book is a profound memoir about grief, how we allow ourselves to feel…and how we don‘t.
Written gently but deeply. Recommended.

14 more check outs today…
And I am so behind on reviews! 181 pages left in The Water Dance, then I can tackle this stack!

Books given to me today by a fellow book nerd 📚🩶

Link to read/listen…https://www.live5news.com/2025/05/13/man-burns-100-library-books-jewish-african-american-lgbtq-topics-officials-say/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR7PtvU_qixF5hSP6JFOutcWYsJEqmQa2dnOm8pYSAClYPoB9eqZ_vjWK2JD8A_aem_lZp8l7-DEvHfauamX5rfFw#

A conversation with the author about his latest book.

Link to listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-book-club/id1158913265?i=1000652169412

This is a wonderful little guide for what to say and what not to say (and what to do/not to do) when someone is going through a hard thing. I‘m a medium, hospice volunteer and an abortion doula—and there is always something new I learn. A favorite word: Kummerspeck: grief bacon. It means, eating your feelings. We all experience Trauerklob sometimes; we must acknowledge it when others do to, but gently approach it. This book is great for ⬇️

The story of a mysterious plague and the ties that bind a small girl and her odd guardian continues and thickens in these volumes…heavy snowfall and death await.

If you‘ve ever been curious about mediumship and communication with persons who have died, this may be a book for you. It aims to answer many common questions. I agree with a lot of what he says, as my mediumship experience is similar. However, there are differences. Everyone isn‘t always at peace on the ‘other side‘…I‘ve seen too much to say that they are. I do want to say that I wish mediums would stop using these cheesy covers on their books!

Sexual assault is something not many people know how to talk about. It‘s been around a long time, and so has its stigma. The ‘rape kit‘ is no exception. Mary/‘Marty‘ Goddard invented it because she was tired of the (still persisting) problem of the police not taking SA seriously. It isn‘t surprising that her kit was named after a man, not her. Kits have evolved and become better. Men have not stopped raping us, however. Read on for more.

A conversation with the author: ‘Why now is the time to find power in otherness‘.
Looking forward to reading this memoir!

Link to listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/code-switch/id1112190608?i=1000704454860

An intimate conversation with Ocean.

Link to listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736?i=1000705949596

There is a chapter in which the author describes seeing a dead bird, and she comes back to its different phases of decomposition over the next few days. On the final day, she sees it and says: It should be a repulsive image, yet I find it consoling: this bird, who met its unforeseen ending with a meal half – consumed, now devoured in a riotous jitterbug. May my own death be just as sudden. Spare me the crematorium. Put me straight into the soil.⬇️

Everybody wants to die naturally, you know.

But not so soon. Not so soon.

People die. On the descent to JFK airport one day after Tony‘s death, I stared from my airplane window at the closed-pressed houses of the Queens borough: I have this in common with every single one of all the thousands of people down there, living their varied, vivid lives. We might have not one other single thing in common, but we‘ve got this. We will all die. We will all grieve.

Southwestern Advantage sells books…and it‘s kind of culty. Hear a story from someone who was in it and got out, in this episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/was-i-in-a-cult/id1582863762?i=10007042786...

Sometimes our parents are full of love, and sometimes they are full of anger. This love and anger come not only from them, but from all previous generations. When we can see this, we no longer blame our parents for our suffering.
—Thich Nhat Hanh, Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child.
(Chapter 49, introduction)

So that explains the mysterious, soothing, addictive smell we love! I want to know more about this.

Interview with the author about this amazing memoir.

Link to listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/totally-booked-with-zibby/id1366633318?i=1...

I want to be a good friend, but when Cindy announces that we‘ll be busing through the night, something bursts inside me. I know she needs me to act like a supportive participant, an adult, a normal human being, but a toxic sludge is leaking into my limbs. I start to shake. Fear rises in my chest. I cannot go on a bus. A bus is too much like a train and a train is really just a cattle car and since my father made the reverse journey, from ⬇️

My composure is fragile. No matter where I go, home or away, I am instinctively circumspect about my identity. I carry a fear of cops and soldiers and customs officers—anyone with a severe haircut and a uniform—in my blood. Never do I walk around telling people I‘m Jewish.

My hold came in…I‘m so excited to dive back into this strange story!

Another episode featuring a chat with the author!
Link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-podcast-will-kill-you/id1299915173?i=...

A book nerd friend is moving and gave me first dibbs on her books she‘s okay with giving away. Many more shelves to go through. I chose these yesterday.

We came out of the kitchen and wandered into the bar, where the soda gun glowed in the dim light. We shot Coke, Sprite, and tonic into tall glasses. We poured grenadine, thick and syrupy, through the little spout attached to the top of the bottle into a little metal cup on a stick. When I dumped the syrup into our glasses, the mixture that had been dull and brown turned a beautiful pink. I shook in Tabasco and grabbed maraschino cherries ⬇️

There was a lot of beauty in this childhood, but there was also a sadness inside me that I didn‘t understand. I was a lucky girl, born in a safe place, with tons of food and loving parents, yet I had stones in my chest, heavy and gray. As I moved through the ages Dad was during the war—nine in the first ghetto, eleven in Lodz, thirteen when he last saw his mother and sisters on the platform at Auschwitz—a voice from inside commanded me to ⬇️

Mom wasn‘t the type to fuss with a vegetable garden, but a rhubarb plant sprung up near our back fence every year. Julie showed me how to brace my feet on either side of the plant, grab a stalk, and yank upward. Careful, the leaves are poisonous! We wet crimson stems under the kitchen faucet and dragged them through the sugar drawer, the shock of sweet and sour making my teeth ache.

This is the second book I‘ve read by the author. This one was just as dark as the other. Filled with magical realism and ghosts, the story slowly unfolds, just like the slow but steady snowfall. Snow isn‘t just snow in this story. It‘s frigid and beautiful weather, yes—but the author also seems to use it as a blanket, hiding a dark and painful past, which is revealed a little at a time. I didn‘t know about the Jeju Island massacre⬇️

Nope🤣🤓📚📖📺💤

I don‘t know if this is what happens right before you die. Everything I have ever experienced is made crystalline. Nothing hurts anymore. Hundreds upon thousands of moments glitter in unison, like snowflakes whose elaborate shapes are in full view. How this is possible, I can‘t say. My every pain and joy, all my deep-rooted sorrows and loves, shine, not as an amalgam but as a whole comprised of distinct singularities, glowing together as ⬇️

Siri typos and predictions 🤣

Well, I got carried away again today when returning a book and checking into the room for tonight‘s Death Cafe…whoops🤣🤓📖📚

I fell in love with the cover of this book and was drawn to its premise of Faustian vibes. I‘ve always loved reading about the occult, but the excitement I felt in the first couple of chapters in this book quickly died down. The story dragged on without any real focus on the main event, and went into a love triangle instead. This book was more relationship than the dark vibes I was looking for…I didn‘t hate it but it wasn‘t what I hoped for.⬇️

🔥🔥🔥

⬇️⬇️⬇️

There was a fond smile on his face as she watched the librarian pore over Evgeni‘s collection. “You‘re looking at that library like you want to crawl into bed with it.”

She didn‘t quite share her husband‘s passion for antiquarian books, but she understood it. She understood that if you cracked Rhys open, he would probably have paperback pages inside him instead of organs.

Rosie Grant has a book coming out! She looks for recipes on gravestones, makes them, and is now working with the families to publish them in a cookbook!
Link to a podcast episode where she talks about it: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/death-happens-an-insiders-guide-to-dying/i...
Her instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ghostly.archive?igsh=MWR3cGgyc2dua252NA==

I usually don‘t read this genre, but since it had a library setting, I thought, why not? Ms. Finch is a librarian with a secret, double lifestyle. Bodies tend to pile up around her, and she didn‘t learn from Dexter…it‘s only a matter of time before her secrets are discovered.
I didn‘t love the ending, and the writing was okay, but, it was a cute book. If it were a movie or tv show, I‘d watch it. I did like the mean nature that popped out of ⬇️

What a powerful book this was! Featuring essays from different Black women, this book was likely seen as radical in its time (1970). We need these words followed by collective direct action, now more than ever. These voices discuss how all issues intersect with a lens that only Black Feminism can give.

A more in depth conversation with the author of the new book ‘Everything Is Tuberculosis‘. I can‘t wait to read it! 🩸💉
Link to listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/99-invisible/id394775318?i=1000695605705

I agree…they‘ve radicalized (educated) me!

Everyone is talking about this book and I can‘t wait to read it! I‘ve always had a weird fascination with this famous, deadly, and historical disease. *This is one of the many reasons why USAID matters, Musk be damned.
Link for this podcast episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nprs-book-of-the-day/id1587369865?i=100070...

I found this one in the YA graphic novel section at my library and knew it was an important read. I haven‘t read the novel and this was my first exposure to it. It‘s a story about a young boy‘s struggle after the death of his friend. Many people come to help him in the most difficult decision he‘s ever made.