With all the craziness of the world, I have pretty much tuned out to video media. I haven’t turned on the TV screen for over six weeks. I am sure it’s a passing thing, but I am listening to more podcasts and getting in more reading time.
I have also started listening to more audiobooks this summer. (Blame it on my BFF/Navy buddy. Thanks, Cathy!) However, I also read almost every night before I go to sleep and for that I prefer physical books. Words on the page are somehow more comforting than a voice in my ears and I like to get my eyes off the screen for a bit before I close them for the night.
The titles on my reading lists do not conform to any single genre. While my preferred genres tend to fall under SpecFic (Fantasy, SciFi, Paranormal), I have always been a voracious and eclectic reader. That means, I read what interests me, and I often focus on things I want and/or need to learn. Right now, that includes digging deeper into my white privilege.
Here is a list of the books I have recently finished and/or am reading:
Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi (Audiobook)
I finished this one recently. Wow! I thought I knew somethings, but I was gobsmacked by the wrongness of the version of history I had ingested and the “nuanced” racism I fully missed in a number of things I have consumed in my life. Now, I need to read Kendi’s original, and deeper, work: Stamped from the Beginning. Also, Reynolds does an amazing job of narrating.
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert (Audiobook)
I picked this up as a writing craft booster. Also nicely narrated by the author. Some really good stuff in this one. Especially the part about how to handle the really negative critics (read: trolls): “Smile sweetly and tell them to go make their own f**ing art.”
So, You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo (Audiobook)
Listening now. I love, love, love how Oluo explains things. She makes the hard truths easier to take in, and she is honest and sincere and doesn’t let herself off the hook, either. I am learning so much.
A Blade so Black by L.L. McKinney (Physical)
This is a new take on the Alice in Wonderland stories by Lewis Carroll. I am reading this as a mentor text for my craft. Looking at the ways other authors handle retellings/twisting known stories into new as I work out the kinks in one of my works in progress.
My CURRENT Reading (a Bit at a Time)/To Be Read (next) stack includes:
The Autobiography of Malcolm X as Told to Alex Haley
The Kick-Ass Writer by Check Wendig (Reading sections piecemeal.)
The Adventures of Damnation Kane, Vol. 1 by Théoden Humphrey(Reading chapters as serial episodes.)
Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina
Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi
How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera
And a slew of books I still need to read to compete this year’s Reading Women Challenge.
Yes, I do read more than one book at a time. No, I do not get confused by doing so. I have been doing it since I was a kid and it is just the way my brain likes to take in information, which is super helpful for my book coaching/developmental editing work.
Here’s to a wonderful word-filled summer in whatever way works for you!