March 2022 Reading

One more month of reading done.  I read ten more books (or book-like objects) in March.  One of them I already wrote about on my fitness blog here.

I read one picture book this time, Alastair Chisholm’s The Prince and the Witch and the Thief and the Bears.  It was recommended by my friend Jackie and she was right on.  I read it as soon as it came, found my kid (sure, he’s technically a grown-up, but whatever) and read it to him.  The next day we read it again.  The story is hilarious, as a dad adjusts to the requests of his child in the telling.  The pictures made me laugh out loud.  Bonus points for varieties of representation and a very cute little frog.  I would give this as a gift.  And no, not my copy because I’m keeping it.

 

Apparently this was my month to read recommendations.  My friend Erica recommended Sarah J. Maas’s book A Court of Thrones and Roses, so I of course read the next three in the series as well (A Court of Mist and Fury, A Court of Wings and Ruin, and A Court of Frost and Starlight).  I was reading one of them in the airport and a woman came up to me to tell me how much she loved these books.  Spicy fantasy is not my usual genre, so I don’t have a lot to compare these books to, but I enjoyed them.  I particularly liked the second book.  The characters are interesting and PTSD is a real thing in these books, which is refreshing and useful. 

 

While I broke up with football several years ago, I still love the game.  I would start watching again if only it weren’t so damaging to the players and so resistant to positive social change.  One part I loved, up until he retired from broadcasting, was listening to John Madden.  So when ESPN put out a memorial magazine, I bought it.  It was touching and joyful and sad.  It is a rare thing to find a person who so clearly lived his best life and enjoyed it in the process.

 

I read Assata, Assata Shakur’s autobiography to continue to fill the gaps in my education.  What a tough read, from a content perspective.  Her writing is lovely and lyrical and flavorful.  Her experiences are dreadful and I am ashamed of the way our justice system treated her and continues to treat people of color.

 

Writing the Other by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward is another book I read to help me dismantle the mechanisms of white supremacy in my own mind and education.  Learning how to write difference with respect is an important skill and this book is full of practical advice and useful exercises, as well as a reassuring attitude that we all screw up while we are learning.

 

Finally, my church book group read Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler.  Bowler, as a new mother, was diagnosed with cancer.  She’s a professor of divinity who does work on the prosperity gospel (that theologically questionable bunch of churches that think God wants you to have a Mercedes or two or ten).  How she copes with the specter of death in the context of a life she very much wants to live and in the context of groups that look on illness as some kind of problem between the person and God makes for thought-provoking reading.  Spoiler alert:  she does not die.  She has a particular genetic variation that makes her suitable for a treatment that essentially pauses the cancer. 

 

Month total:  10

Year to date total:  37