It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

The meme that we use to share what we read this past week and what our plans are for the upcoming week. Now hosted by The Book Date.

Last Week

I’ve managed to finish some books finally, I feel like I’m always working through 6 books at a time, and it takes me ages to get anything read. Time to rethink that strategy, but I’m always saying that. I did finish two  good ones though:

Opal Charm: The Path To Dawn by Miri Castor is the first book in a fantasy series about reluctant heroine Opal Charm, who struggles with life and family as it is, but then her new friend Hope Adaire let’s slip that Opal is the only one to save Hope’s world from destruction. Poor Opal! A very readable fantasy novel and I’ll be reading the sequel when it comes out. 

Unhallowed Graves by Nuzo Onoh is a Nigerian horror collection and I did my best to read it in daylight but it’s much more fun to read at night by candle light. Fantastic settings and use of mythology, do read if you’re into the creepy stuff! 

Since it’s also finally fall, my favorite season, I went to the pumpkin market. Most of these will make excellent dinners as well as pumpkin bread and cookies!

Currently

Reading some more excellent books at the moment. I have too many on the go, but here’s what I’m mostly focusing on:

Daybreak Rising by Kiran Oliver. A YA/NA fantasy book about a failed hero with the chance at redemption. So far I’m really into the anti-normativity of the characters and the story’s politics. And finally someone who knows what demiromantic is and yeah that got my attention, so here I am reading a book with lots of romance elements. 

Hen & Chick by Tristan J. Tarwater, another YA fantasy. Kinda proud of myself for exploring more YA! Also, this one has pirates AND magic! How could I resist? Add to that brown girls kicking ass and a focus on mother-daughter relationships. 

Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, a wonderful collection of poetry. I’m working my way through it at the moment, since it’s LatinX Heritage Month and check out all the amazing LatinX things going on at Naz’s Read Diverse Books!

Soon

It’ll be October soon and I’m very excited for the Diverse Detective Fiction Month hosted by Silicon and myself. More info here, including sign-ups. The only requirement is to read 1 #DiverseDetectives book and write about it on your blog/goodreads/bookstagram. Won’t you join us?

What have you all been up to? Have a great week!

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week.

Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists

It’s been ages since I’ve participated in this meme, but it’s lovely to see that it’s still around. You’ve probably noticed it’s been a bit more quiet around here and many know I’m one step away from graduating, but I need to concentrate on studying and so I thought I’ll leave you with bookish envy until I return August 4th.

Usually, I don’t get that many books in my mailbox but this week has been lovely and added three exciting works to my shelves:

The Feminist Bookstore Movement: Lesbian Antiracism and Feminist Accountability (Kristen Hogan)

From the 1970s through the 1990s more than one hundred feminist bookstores built a transnational network that helped shape some of feminism’s most complex conversations. Kristen Hogan traces the feminist bookstore movement’s rise and eventual fall, restoring its radical work to public feminist memory. The bookwomen at the heart of this story mostly lesbians and including women of color measured their success not by profit, but by developing theories and practices of lesbian antiracism and feminist accountability. (Amazon)

On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (Sara Ahmed)

What does diversity do? What are we doing when we use the language of diversity? Sara Ahmed offers an account of the diversity world based on interviews with diversity practitioners in higher education, as well as her own experience of doing diversity work. Diversity is an ordinary even unremarkable feature of institutional life. And yet, diversity practitioners often experience institutions as resistant to their work, as captured through their use of the metaphor of the “brick wall.” On Being Included offers an explanation of this apparent paradox. It explores the gap between symbolic commitments to diversity and the experience of those who embody diversity. (Goodreads)

The Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead)

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hellish for all slaves, but Cora is an outcast even among her fellow Africans, and she is coming into womanhood; even greater pain awaits. Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her of the Underground Railroad and they plot their escape. (Goodreads)

The first two books I splurged on when Duke UP had a 50% sale and I’ve been wanting them for quite some time. Sara Ahmed is one of my favorite activist academics even if she is intimidatingly smart and I love the intro. Hogan’s books sounds amazing and it’s a topic I wish I knew more about. It’s written by a white woman but I’ll be interested to see how she works the antiracism angle. And finally @BlackBrainFood (must follow for amazing tweets on Black culture) over on twitter send me their copy of Whitehead’s new book, I’m so excited to read this!

Which books are new on your shelves? Bought or otherwise acquired.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

The meme that we use to share what we read this past week and what our plans are for the upcoming week. Now hosted by The Book Date.

Last week

There was all the excitement about #DiverseBookBloggers and our directory. Make sure to add your blog and grab a blogger/ally badge!

I also really started on my exam prep and so most of my reading is secondary literature at the moment and excerpts from academic books about Chicana feminism. But I also read a fantastic novel:

Isn’t that the most amazing cover? Go read it now! Especially if you’re a brown girl, lesbian or interested in racism in feminism.

Currently

Still slowly making my way through Borderlands, and might be for a while yet. It’s still amazing!

And then during the weekend I also got back into A Stranger in Olondria, and I’m finally really into this world and loving the slow, detailed way in which the story unfolds.

Soon

I got so many fantastic recommendations for audiobooks from you all, but Scribd didn’t have that many of them, but I put them on my audible wishlist! Since I had to redeem a credit, I chose to go with this one, which comes recommended by Naz from Read Diverse Books.

What are you all up to? And what are you reading?

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

The meme that we use to share what we read this past week and what our plans are for the upcoming week. Now hosted by The Book Date.

Last Week

Exciting things were happening last weekend! Perhaps, if you’re on twitter, you noticed w had some great conversations going on under the #DiverseBookBloggers hashtag. It was wonderful to meet so many non-white, queer, non-Western and differently-abled bloggers and talk about what we want out of diversity in blogging and publishing! Check out the complete storify here.

“A conversation between @demelzagriff95 and @_diversebooks resulted in the creation of the #DiverseBookBloggers hashtag. Since May 17, the hashtag has exploded, resulting in more than 1,000 tweets from a wide variety of bloggers and Twitter users. This is just the beginning of the hashtag’s impact.”

I also finished two reads I’d been making my way through quite slowly, I don’t have a long commute at the moment and in my case that means audiobooks take ages.

We Need New Names was such a great read though I would have preferred to read it instead of listening to it, to follow the story better. I read this one for my reading more African lit challenge, though this is my second Zimbabwean novels, I need to branch out.

Obesity.The Biography is my second book from the autobiography of illness series, which is wonderful so far. Gilman’s work is usually amazing, but I would have liked a more in-depth discussion. Might try Gilman’s Fat.A Cultural History though.

My favorite read last week was Anne Chebu’s Anleitung zum Schwarz sein /Instrutions for Being Black, an introduction about racism experienced by Afro-Germans for Afro-Germans and it should be a good learning experience for white Germans. I fall somewhere in the middle and could relate so much, it was wonderful to find such a book for the German context. Sadly there seems to exist no translation, but if you speak German, definitely read this book!

I also got some blogging done, posting a reading list for International Day Against homophobia and posted another instalment of my 5 On a Theme series, this time on Chicana and Latino/a Speculative Fiction.

Currently

I’m still trying so hard not to get distracted by shiny new books because I’m starting exam prep and will be reading Chicana literature and secondary lit in June. Don’t distract me with awesome blog posts about amazing books! ;D But you’re all welcome to join me in my reading!

What are you all reading? Let me know in the comments!

Non-Fiction Friday: Critical Food Studies and Intersectionality

Here’s the next round of non-fiction reads and I have to confess there are lots of academic texts in this post. Funny thing is, for all that my city’s library is so badly stocked, I have access to a university library and cheap ILL. That means it’s often easier for me to get my hands on academic books than the latest fiction and so I like to indulge. Of course it takes me ages to actually read them cover to cover, but don’t worry, I’ll soon bore you with a review. But never fear, it will involve dinosaurs! (yes I never grew out of that phase)

After focusing on the body in my last post, I want to list some intriguing titles from critical food studies. I almost went into that direction with my thesis, but it’s a pretty new field over here and I would have had no guidance. Didn’t keep me from ogling food studies publications though. Critical food studies is an interdisciplinary field of study in the social sciences and humanities, examining food-related issues from cooking and eating to production and foodways. Important work also pays close attention to how gender, race and class amongst other axes of oppression are implicated in these issues. Thus, necessary systemic critique comes from feminist and anti-racist directions in critical food studies and subsets further connect with animal studies. My own interest comes in at these intersections of intersectional feminism and critical food studies. This is not an introductory reading list but just 3 works from different directions that have caught my interest:

Sugar. A Bittersweet History by Elizabeth Abbott is a social history of one of our most important food products today. I have a soft spot for these microhistories that take one product/aspect as a critical entry point to demonstrate that these can never be taken outside of the social context. Like chocolate, sugar is an important aspect of the world’s history of racism and slavery. This is a Penguin publication but I’ve heard people saying the writing is somewhat dry. I can’t really say that I agree, but maybe I have a high threshold or the history of racism is never dry to me. Perhaps readers should know that this is a history of the slave trade, examined through sugar. Consider yourselves warned I guess.

Racial Indigestion by Kyla Wazana Tompkins, too, focuses on the food-related racial history of the 19th century. However, Tompkins takes a literary and media studies approach to this. As the title reveals, she focuses on consumption and calls for a turn to “critical eating studies.” Can you hear the echo of bell hooks’ “Eating the Other” in this!? Tompkins analyses case studies where Black Americans and especially Black women become posited as consumable in the eyes of white supremacy. I’ve only read excerpts of this text but I’m looking forward to having the time to finish this one. You’ll like this one if you enjoyed Building Houses Made of Chicken Legs.

Cultivating Food Justice is a collection about food production and distribution, focusing on how low-income and communities of color are disproportionately hit by current policies of the industry. Thus, the food system reproduces hierarchies of race and class and these effects can be see in access to food, health and environmental issues. By and large the face of the food movement had been presented as white  and this collection seeks to challenge this image and bring a social justice perspective to food studies. I especially like that this book gathers work from activists who work in the food justice movement and not just academics!

What are your favorite food-related non-fiction reads? Let me know in the comments!

Note: I wanted to make non-fiction post something regular and while googling about non-fiction in the book blogosphere, I stumbled on the wonderful Non-Fiction Friday series by DoingDewey. It seemed perfect and so here I am joining in on the non-fiction love.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

The meme that we use to share what we read this past week and what our plans are for the upcoming week. Now hosted by The Book Date.

Last Week

Readathon! I had a blast following everyone’s progress on instagram, I guess I do have a preferred social media app. Pretty happy with the books I managed to read, even if I slept a solid 7 hours and spent 3 more cooking and cleaning the kitchen. Maybe I’ll lock myself in next time, but the quiche was definitely worth it and this time I managed to get a picture:

Here’s my readathon wrap-up picture.

My faves in order:

Nimona – so much love for this perfect comic

Ghost Summer – I read the novella and it was wonderfully creepy and atmospheric

Bitch Planet – such an amazing feminist comic! Bit violent for my taste, but fits the subject

Every Heart a Doorway – such wonderful imagination, loved the imagery and asexual mc

Uglies – super readable and love the discussion of beauty and norms, not sure I’ll read the sequel though

Currently

I’m making my way through the rest of the short stories in Due’s collection. She’s made me a fan of the Southern gothic.

I’m also read Paper Girls Vol.1, whoa the colors are amazing!

And then i need to get through all my non-fiction reads, so this week I want to concentrate on this one, cause dinosaurs 🙂

Soon

Deepika’s readalong of RK Narayan starts next Sunday, so there’s still time to join in on the fun!

And then I’ll also start making my reading list for my oral exam, so be prepared for Chican@ lit!

What are you all reading? Let me know in the comments!

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

The meme that we use to share what we read this past week and what our plans are for the upcoming week. Now hosted by The Book Date.

 

Last Week

It’s been a busy week, I had lots of paperwork stuff on my list and I’m starting to prepare for my defense and oral exam. So you might soon find my reading following some themes not part of a challenge 🙂

I got some baking done and found the perfect mix of glutenfree flour. So yay bread is back on for breakfast (I’m German so bread is life! 🙂 ) and nope I’m not gluten intolerant just have to watch what I eat. It doesn’t look as pretty as normal bread loaves, but it tastes pretty awesome:

On the reading front, I managed to finish two books and that means my book juggling is slowly getting more manageable:

Gut was a quick and easy read, despite it being non-fiction. Enders presents a quick informative overview of the gut and its importance to our health in general but also with regard to bacteria influencing mental health. Who knew! It’s written in an accessible style and accompanied by charming illustrations made by the author’s sister.

Brown Girl Dreaming was a tougher read with regard to the subject matter but I absolutely love it. It’s written in verse but I dare say it will appeal to non-poetry people as well. I listend to the audiobook narrated by the author and it was such a cool ‘reading’ experience. Highly recommended!

I also got some blogging done though I dropped the ball on my schedule. Oh well, so many of you were nice enough to drop in anyways! I posted a list of books that make for perfect uninterrupted weekend reading, so if you have a free weekend soon take a look at my post. And then I also recommended lots of novellas for Saturday’s readathon or in case you want to get some quick reading in.

Currently

So this morning I realized my only fiction read was the Issa Rae memoir as audiobook but I only listen to it before bed. That means I can finally get to my Once Upon a Time book list and it’s about time as I’ve only read 1 out of 5! I started with Somatar’s book and so far I’m really enjoying it.

Soon

So soon, in fact next Saturday: It’s readathon time, yay!

Hope lots of you are joining in, it’s such a fun event! You can still sign up here.

Also, I will soon (probably in May) start with my uni reading and one of my topics is Chicana lit. So anyone wanting to drop some recommendations or join me in my prep reading, let me know in the comments. I fear I’ll have to stick to the classics but we’ll see.

Hope you’re all having a great start to the week! We actually had a nice sunny but not too warm day over here and I spent some time reading in the garden. What are you all reading?

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

The meme that we use to share what we read this past week and what our plans are for the upcoming week. Now hosted by The Book Date.

Last Week

Yay, I finally managed to finish some books! I’m feeling much more acomplished as a result 😀 My fiction read was Liu’s The Three-Body Problem, such an intriguing book so I’m glad there’s a sequel. Then I also finished one of my audiobooks, the short but powerful Citizen by Claudia Rankine.

On the blog, I stuck to my three posts a week schedule and I think it’s working out well for me. How often do you blog? And often do you like to see new posts? Last week I posted IMWAYR of course, but also a review of Coffee Will Make You Black by April Sinclair and for the first time joined Non-Fiction Friday and posted about three works that examine the body through a  cultural history lens.

In other news, last week I baked more vegan cupcakes for a friend’s birthday party and finally discovered a great vegan quiche recipe. Sadly no photos cause my non-vegan family eats everything!

Currently

The embarrassing juggling of too many books is still ongoing, but there’s a few new ones at least. My current audiobooks are still Issa Rae’s memoir and for the Reading Africa challenge I started We Need New Names. I’m also still reading the two non-fiction books about Monsanto and Dinosaurs in political anthropology. Because obviously that is not enough I started two other books. I think that makes four non-fiction reads currently, yikes! I’ll soon be graduating but it looks like this only exacerbates my interest in non-fiction reading.

With chronic illness you find that lots of doctors aren’t always as much help as you’d expect, this is doubly true for gastroenterology which has now finally taken notice of the gut, prebiotics and bacteria that natural healers have emphasized for ages. Thought I’d learn and laugh at the same time, thus Enders’ book which was a huge success in Germany.

And then posting about non-fiction works about the body reminded me that I really enjoyed two of Gilman’s books and also love the Oxford UP biography of illnesses series. Which is why I started Obesity, which is a quick first overview of the history of obesity as a concept and the different attitudes towards it. At least I’m halfway through both of these.

Soon

I have neglected my Once Upon a Time reading and so I plan to turn to these books soon:

Are you doing this challenge, too. What’s on your reading list?

How have you all been? What have you been reading? Let me know in the comments!

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

The meme that we use to share what we read this past week and what our plans are for the upcoming week. Now hosted by The Book Date.

Last Week

I finally read Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown, and despite extremely high expectations I was still blow away. One of the best ways to spend a Sunday hough I cannot wait for book 2 now! Also, I think this one might count for the Once Upon a Time challenge.

Then the weather was more spring-like over here and I spend lots of time shoving my phone camera into my cats’ faces. Oh well, they are too cute not to play paparazzi 🙂

On the blog, I posted the second installment of my “5 On a Theme”- series on Queer Horror and a review of The Liminal People.

Currently

I’m still juggling way too many books at once, and as a result it’ll take me ages to finish any books But they are all so fascinating! Do you read one book at a time or are you a juggler as well?

I’m nearly done with The Three-Body Problem, definitely recommend it if you’re into sience fiction and physics. And then I started another non-fiction, which I talked about in my non-fiction post:

Definitely an important read if you care about the food supply, health and environmental issues and how they are connected. And since I’m only listening to two audiobooks at the moment, I also started a third. It’s a bad habit. But also because Whitney of Brown Books & Green Tea highly recommended it.

Soon

It’s very exciting, my good friend Deepika over at Worn Corners is hosting a readalong of the works of RK Narayan the first two weeks of May! Check out the details here. I want to read 2 books for the readalong:

Hope you’ll all join us!!

How have you all been? What have you been reading? Let me know in the comments!

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

The meme that we use to share what we read this past week and what our plans are for the upcoming week. Now hosted by The Book Date.

 

Last Week

Time flies! But I did get some reading done, some comics especially since those don’t use up credits on Scribd.

I finished The Liminal People for Julianne’s #weirdathon and I’m so glad I gave it a shot, If you’re at all into superpowers/X-Men stories and don’t mind violence noir style, give it a try. I’ll post my review this week,

I also read through #2-4 of Princeless, one of my favorite finds last year, so now I’ve completed Volume 1. These are adorable, important and fun stories with a Black girl protagonist that poke fun at gender stereotypes in fairy tales. I feel like I need to get a kid cause I want to share these comics so badly 🙂

Also managed to finish one of my 3 or 4 audiobooks, yay me! Not sure yet what to think of The Vegetarian. I wasn’t blown away by parts 2 and 3, they seemed completely different from the first part of the book, which started out great.

Thanks to Jenny and Sharlene for the rec, this one was pretty awesome. I wish I had access to more than #1 though! Genius #1 started with a bang, I hope we’ll get more social commentary with the violence in the following issues, but I really liked the story so far and the protagonist is brilliant.

I think I’ll probably stay away from comics that are set in the larger Marvel universe, which I’m not familiar with and then have no idea who is who and what is going on. The story of X-23 was intriguing enough but the representation of most female characters was awful, of course the Sinister (ha so much ha) villain runs around in stripper-like underwear. Also, I think those reads combined had too much violence for me for one week.

Got some blogging done: I posted about my challenge reads here and my top 5 nonfiction tbr books here!

Currently

Happy Easter/hopefully free weekend to you! We’re not religious but opportunists of bank holidays and themed cookie parties, so there was lost of food at our house. I also spend way too much time near the chocolate eggs and might have to abstain from sugar for at least a week 😀

I’m still listening to way too many audiobooks, any recommendations how to get through them faster? I end up going to bed earlier and earlier just to get in more listenting time! But I also have a few ebooks on the go:

Chinese science fiction? Hell yeah! I’m only 15% in but I already love the context of the cultural revolution and physics. Also thankful that the author obviously didn’t want to alienate (heh) non-science-y people like me.

And then my current non-fiction book is a new study of the cultural and political history and ramifications of the role of dinosaurs in our society. This is a review copy, but the book will be out soon, in May I think. Obvious reason for reading: DINOSAURS! I just never grew out of that phase 😀

Also, it’s spring and I signed up for Carl’s Once Upon a Time X challenge and for Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon in April! Are you joining us?

Hope everyone had a good week and a wonderful bank holiday! Are reading anything good at the moment? Let me know in the comments!