I love a good reading month! Having pneumonia this month gave me a lot of time when I had to be home resting, and once I felt slightly better I was able to read a lot. This month I read:

• Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi – My work friend Lisa loaned me this book (and the next two in the series). At first, I thought she was crazy but it was so fantasy/dystopian/ YA drama-filled with insanity, but then I became invested in the characters and the storyline. We meet Juliette, who has this awful (or maybe good?) power to hurt people with her touch. She is trapped in an awful institution because of her powers. Then Adventure ensues and Juliette has to decide who she can trust and how to use her powers to help or hurt.
• Paper Names by Susie Luo – I chose this from Book of the Month sometime last year and knew I would like it when I was in the right mood. This is a literary fiction book centered around a Chinese-American family. We follow this family across generations, immigration, and race and class-related experiences with White Americans, all while considering how parents show love to children, how parents work to make the next generation more successful, and how we treat people who we know or perceive are different than us. This was a beautiful, bittersweet story full of rich, flawed humans living the best life they can with what they have.
• Dancing at the Pity Party: A Dead Mom Graphic Memoir by Tyler Feder- I heard this mentioned on the Currently Readng podcast by a sometimes host, Mary, whose father passed away this past year. Knowing she enjoyed reading this in her early grief made me think I might appreciate it. Even though I lost my mom 12.5 years ago, I can still cry about how much I miss her, and I can still hate being anywhere near social media or a card store near Mother’s Day. This was a beautiful graphic novel memoir about a young woman whose mother died of cancer when she was 19. I loved her honesty as she hits on the awkward ways people talk or don’t talk about death and cancer, and how quickly they all disappear when we still want to talk about our lost parent. She shares elements of the Jewish faither (my mom LOVED the tradition of sitting shiva when someone dies) and I appreciated learning about those elements (leaving a rock on a grave as a part of you). This gave me a good cry.
• One of the Good Guys by Araminta Hall – I LOVED this fast-paced, propulsive mystery! I don’t want to give anything away with specifics, but this story follows Cole, his wife Mel, and some important side characters trying to ensure people understand the seriousness of violence against women.
• The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Changes by Michelle MiJung Kim [audiobook] – I heard the author speak at the SDCOE Equity Conference last month and loved the title of her book. I appreciated that she shares her stories as a queer immigrant Korean-American activist. She goes deep into the realities of the white supremacy air we all breathe every day, and how to begin to get out of our own fog. I appreciate her perspective and the ideas she shared.
• The Plea by Steve Cavanagh – Now that I’m into the Eddie Flynn series, I love it! Eddie is a former hustler turned lawyer who keeps getting himself into impossible situations. With a lot of sneaky tricks and last-minute saves, and a lot of blood and fighting, he manages to escape the worst of it all, while saving his estranged wife and daughter.
• Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent – I loved Unraveling Oliver by Nugent and once I heard about this one on the Currently Reading podcast, I knew I would love it too! Sally Diamond is introduced to us after she burns her recently deceased father’s body in their home incinierator, because he had told her “Just put me out with the trash when I die”. Sally takes everything literally because of her deficiency. As we get to know Sally, we learn of her history, with her adoptive family, and her family or origin. There is a lot of darkness and evil mixed in with found family who surround Sally as an adult and who help her become whole. I LOVED this story!
• Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum by Antonia Hylton – My friend Shera, who is a psychologist, asked me if I wanted to read this book with her, so we did a buddy read long-distance. This is a sad history of the Crownsville State Hospital, which was an insane asylum built for and by Black men in the 1800’s. The long history details what I’ve read in other accounts – that Black men were forced into indentured servitutde, and often put into the hospital instead of jail or support, whether or not there was a mental health need. The author, who has family members who suffer from mental health illnesses, tracked down as many former patients and staff members as possible, to get to the facts about how brutal and underfunded life was in Crownsville. The details were awful to read about, especially knowing that the state did some of it on purpose, drawing clear racial lines between support offered to white hospitals. Families are still scarred from what happened here. There was lessa bout the actual mental health aspects that I was hoping for, but my friend and I still had some interesting discussions about the book as we read.
• Family Family by Laurie Frankel – This has been my favorite book of 2024 so far by far! I LOVED this book, just as I loved the other two Frankel books I’ve read. She has such a gifted way of weaving detailed stories about complex characters who are so real, making hard-to-discuss topics relateable. In this story, we meet Fig and her twin Jack in the present timeline, and we meet their mother India starting in high school in a separate timeline. The story is about adoption, and how adoption is a beautiful and wonderful choice for people, and how accurate and true representation matters. This was delightful and heartwarming and I wish I could have the experience of reading this again for the first time; it was that good! During our book club, there were some adoptive mothers who had a very different view of this book. It certainly made for an interesting discussion.
• Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurdardottir – I have heard the Currently Reading podcast discuss this Icelandic author for awhile and I finally got the first book in the series from my library. Thora is a lawyer who is asked to support a German family whose son was murdered. While the police have a suspect in custody, the family doesn’t believe they have caught the right killer and they want Thora, as a local, to help. With no investigative experience, Thorsa partners with Matthew, a family friend, to uncover the seedy and depraved world of the deceased and his graduate school friends. This was dark and messy but propulsive and intriguing.
• The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy – This was a quick read, and a fast-paced thriller. We meet the May Mothers, a group of women who all had babies in May. By July they are ready for a girls’ night out, only one of their baby’s goes missing and everyone becomes a suspect. This was a look at new motherhood, stress, depression, working mothers, and more. I enjoyed the story.
• West with Giraffees by Lynda Rutledge – A work colleague loaned me this book, knowing I have loved my African advantures. I LOVED this sweet, beautiful story! This is based on the true story of the female San Diego Zoo owner hiring a man to bring two giraffees to San Diego after they survive an ocean hurricane. We follow Jones and the Okie orphan he picks us as a driver, Woody, from NYC all the way across the country, taking care of two giraffees in 1938. This was a hapy adventure with lots of twists and turns!

Favorite Books of the Month

Fiction: Family Family, West with Giraffees and Strange Sally Diamond

Nonfiction: Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum