National Book Award – Self-Love: It's Just Another Lifestyle Change

Around the Year #6: dual timeline
PopSugar #36: ghost story

I do what I can to fill out my reading categories using books I already have, whether they’re on Kindle or physically on the bookshelves. But there’s always a few categories that don’t readily lend themselves to that approach. PopSugar’s call-out to ghost stories this year is definitely one of those outlier categories, so I did what I usually do to make a selection: crawl the challenge discussion boards on Goodreads to get some ideas.

Between the good reviews (both on the boards and in the press), the National Book Award, and the resonance with my ongoing desire to keep reading more books by African-American authors, this seemed a book well worth the choosing.

And indeed it was.

Continue reading “Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward” →

ATY #1: Nominated for or won an award in a genre I enjoy
Book Riot #3: Book by a woman or AOC that won a literary award in 2018

I expect it’ll take me a few go-rounds to figure out exactly how I want to format this year’s “book reviews,” but I’m pretty sure I’ll keep using the same primary components:

a reminder about what challenge category(ies) the title checks off–or if it’s a bonus read
my thoughts/opinions about the book itself
any personally relevant stories or anecdotes about choosing the book or why it speaks to me

That last element is the least traditional, but I can’t see myself completely eschewing those sorts of stories. Especially when this first book has already gifted me with that kind of story: one about the power of unintended consequences.

Continue reading “The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart” →