Stephany Writes

Categories: Books

My Reading Themes

A few weeks ago, the hosts of the Currently Reading podcast had a great episode about the themes of their reading lives. We always talk about the genres we like to read or the types of books we like to read (short books, long books, plot-driven, character-driven, etc), but have you ever stopped to think about why you like to read the books you like to read? When you take stock of the books you read, are there any strong themes that emerge? I loved this post and the way it made me stop and think about the types of books I gravitate towards. Why do I love the romance genre so much? Why is reading diversely so important to me? What themes do I need to really sink into a book and fall completely in love with it?

It took me a while to come up with my reading themes, but I finally came up with three buckets:

Gaining a New Perspective

I am a sponge for information and I love learning new things from what I’m reading. Even more than that, I love when a book can provide me with an entirely new perspective and force me outside my comfort zone. Whether that’s learning how gay teens in the 1980s were dealing with the AIDS crisis (Like a Love Story), or reading about a little boy growing up in the Midwest who wants to be a girl (This Is How It Always Is), or reading stories from the disabled community about what it’s like to be in their bodies (Disability Visibility), or learning about the racial caste system of the United States (Caste). I read to expand my worldview, gain a new perspective, and get out of my white, cis bubble. Reading diversely is important to me because I don’t want to only read books written by and about white people. I want to read books that are going to challenge me, that are written by and about marginalized communities, and that give me a perspective entirely different than my own. In doing so, I hope I am developing a greater sense of empathy for the people around me and a broader worldview than you might expect from a white girl growing up and living in Florida.

Delightful Happy Endings

My reading life isn’t always so serious, though. Sometimes, I just want to read a lighthearted romance novel that gives me a happy ending. I’ve been thinking a lot about why I love the romance genre so much—what does it give to me, considering so many people (women, especially) don’t love the genre? And I think what I love so much is the predictability of romance novels. I love knowing there will be two people falling in love and, at the end of the novel, they will find happiness with each other. It’s the journey to that final destination that we’re discovering, not some wacky final twist at the end. Romance novels are about the human experience. And they’re also about women finding their voices, men learning how to be vulnerable, people conquering their fears and coming to terms with their past. They may be plot-driven, but the good romance novels are the ones that make you care deeply about the main characters at the heart of the story. You laugh with them, cry when they get hurt, and get butterflies in your stomach when they kiss.

Delightful happy endings encompass a lot more than the romance genre, too. After all, this is a theme in my reading life so I’ve found these stories in YA (Tell Me Three Things), in commercial fiction (Other People’s Houses), and in historical fiction (Cocoa Beach). Sometimes, a lighthearted story with a happy ending is exactly what my heart needs.

Meaningful Character Connections

I had a hard time naming this theme (and I still don’t really like the name) and it’s one that I feel can be the hardest to describe. I’m not talking about character-driven stories here, but rather, I love books where I can feel meaningfully connected to the characters. I want to fall in love with the characters, so much so that finishing the novel feels like leaving some of my best friends behind. I want stories that connect me to people—their histories, their experiences, what they love and hate, who they love and hate, the things that have shaped them. The last book I read where I felt a palpable connection to a character was Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson. I loved Jade, the main character, so damn much and the last 30 or so pages had me tearing up because I was so happy for her and the goodness in her life. I was so sad to finish the book and leave Jade behind.

Character-driven stories tend to provide the most meaningful connections (Writers & Lovers certainly did that), but plot-driven stories can do the same (The House in the Cerulean Sea, most definitely). In fact, there’s really something special about a plot-driven story that allows you to meaningfully connect with the characters because those books can sometimes rely more on story than on characters, and I love when a book can express both beautifully.

What are your reading themes?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (2.21.22)

Happy Monday, friends! I am jealous of anyone who is enjoying a long weekend today. 🙂

I have two wonderful book reviews for you today! While I finally had my first non-5-star read of the month this week, these books were still ones I enjoyed. They just won’t be making my favorites list at the end of the year! Let’s dive in.

Two Rogues Make a Right by Cat Sebastian (★★★☆☆)

I’m generally not a fan of slow-burn romances, but I decided to give this one a try because I wanted to finish out Sebastian’s Seducing the Sedgwicks series. And it was fine. Not life-changing, not particularly memorable, but fine. It’s a queer historical novel following Will and Martin, who were best friends as children but grew apart when Will was sent away by Martin’s father. When the novel begins, Will is nursing Martin back to health after finding him convalescing in his brother’s attic. Martin has consumption (in today’s terms, tuberculosis) and he has spent his life knowing that he may never live a long, full life like other men his age. It could make a book feel morbid but I appreciated an entirely new perspective (especially in a romance novel!) and the sweet ways in which Will cared for him. Their love story was slow-moving, but they found a way to be together in a way that felt natural and right and beautiful. (e-book, Libby)

Side note: I did a lot of research about consumption/tuberculosis after reading this book. Some facts:

  • Tuberculosis is the 13th-leading cause of death worldwide.
  • It’s the second-leading cause of death of infectious diseases worldwide. (I’ll let you guess which infectious disease is the first.)
  • It’s possible to be infected with TB bacteria and not know it—a third of the world’s population has a TB infection—but it is only transmittable if you fall ill with it. (It’s transmitted from person to person through the air after someone with a TB illness coughs, spits, or sneezes, propelling TB germs through the air.)
  • There’s only a 5-10% chance of falling ill with TB after being infected. Those most at risk are people with compromised immune systems.
  • TB is curable and treatable—since 2000, 66 million lives have been saved with TB treatment.
  • People with HIV are up to 21 times more likely to develop an active TB disease than those without HIV.
  • Sanatoriums were notorious for helping people with TB illnesses in the early-to-mid 20th century, giving them a place to recover, be in fresh air, and even have their lungs collapsed or partially removed.
  • In 1949, a TB patient received the first-ever TB treatment, and the patient was cured. After much research and patient trials, three different antibacterial medications were developed that had a cure rate of up to 90%.
  • Treatment for TB is long; most patients will need to take antibacterial medication for 6-12 months.

Stats from World Health Organization, the American Lung Association, and National Jewish Health.

Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell (★★★☆☆)

This book was a fascinating exploration of linguistics and how culture shapes language in so many different ways. Montell covers a wide range of topics in this book, going far beyond what I expected of a book about linguistics. She discusses the gay voice, vocal fry, using the word “like” in conversation, personal pronouns, cat-calling, women who curse, how we talk about our genitalia, and so much more. What I learned most from this book is how patriarchal language is, how it has been standardized and continues to be standardized by men, and the ways in which women and non-binary people are working towards making language less patriarchal. All that said, I can’t say I loved this book. I thought the writing was a little weak and I wanted it to be a bit more scientifically based than it was. (Surveying your Facebook friends does not count.) I also felt like the book could have used a more diverse perspective (Montell is a straight white woman) because there was a lot about language and the way it is used against marginalized communities that were missing from this book. But all in all, I gave this book 3.5 stars and it’s one I’d happily hand off to other readers. (print, Amazon)

Think of people’s pronouns just like you think of their names. You can’t tell a person’s name just by looking at them: if you want to know it, you have to ask, and to argue with their answer would be weird and rude. Everyone has their own individual name, and it may be difficult to remember or pronounce, but it is common courtesy to try your best to learn it.

What I’m Reading This Week

  • When We Left Cuba by Chanel Cleeton (audio) – I am halfway through this audiobook that takes place in 1960s Miami, about a Cuban woman intent on avenging her brother’s death at the hands of Fidel Castro. It’s really engaging so far!
  • The Bastard’s Betrayal by Katee Robert (e-book) – Katee Robert’s romances are always a bit on the darker side, which I don’t normally enjoy but I just can’t get enough of her mob families and their romances! I’m a sucker for them. This romance is hot, hot, hot and I am here for this enemies-to-lovers trope.
  • All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle (print) – This book came highly recommended by Kaytee of the Currently Reading podcast. It has strong A Man Called Ove vibes, which is a novel I loved, and I’m really enjoying this novel so far.

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (2.14.22)

Happy Monday! I have today off work because I always take the day after the Super Bowl off. It’s my own special holiday! I am debating between using today to do my monthly 5K or get some things done around my apartment. I’m going to play it by ear and see how I feel!

Last week, I finished two books and both of them were five-star reads. There’s a really good chance they’ll make my favorites list at the end of the year, too. So far, February has been an all-star reading month for me! Here are the reviews of what I read:

Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson (★★★★★)

I couldn’t have loved a book more if I tried. It was the kind of book I just wanted to hug when I finished it because it touched me in such a deep way. Jade is a high school student who goes to a private school on scholarship. She has to take the bus to school because she lives in a different area of town, and deal with being one of the few Black students (and one of the few poor students) in her school. When she gets an opportunity to join Woman to Woman, a mentorship program for Black teen girls, she is paired with a mentor, Maxine, who will change her life for the better. This is the kind of book that places a sharp focus on Black excellence and Black joy without shying away from topics like racism, police brutality, the “angry Black woman” trope. It’s so well-written and beautiful, and I highly recommend it! (#ownvoices, print, Amazon)

Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian (★★★★★)

This YA novel was deeply impactful. It follows three friends as they navigate relationships, family, racism, and homophobia with the backdrop of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Reza is new to NYC, having moved with his mother from Toronto to the home of his new stepdad. He’s navigating a new school, a new family, and his sexual identity as a gay teen while also seeing so many articles about AIDS and how being gay can be a death sentence for some. He meets Art, another gay teenager, and his best friend Judy on his first day of school and they quickly form a close bond. And then Reza starts dating Judy in an effort to remain closeted and stifle his growing feelings for Art, and things grow increasingly complicated for the trio. This book was a masterpiece that puts a new face to the AIDS epidemic: how it affected young, closeted gay teenagers who were seeing so many gay men die from a disease and how the public interacted with people with AIDS. It’s beautiful in its exploration of queerness, the way family can support you and disappoint you, which is something I am intimately familiar with, and I was just rooting for all three of these crazy kids from beginning to end. A must-read, in my opinion. (#ownvoices, audiobook, Libby)

What I’m Reading This Week

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (2.9.22)

Happy Wednesday, friends! I know I promised to re-start my weekly reading recaps on Monday, but I needed another day to finish the two books I’m reviewing below. One of the reasons I stopped doing my weekly recaps is that sometimes I felt like I was rushing to finish books so I would have something to write about on Mondays. I’m going to try not to do that, which means these recaps may be later in the week than I planned. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s dig into the books I just finished. Both were 5-star reads for me!

Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope by Megan Phelps-Roper (★★★★★)

This memoir from a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church (she’s the granddaughter of the founder) is our February selection for book club, and it was fascinating. I’m sure everyone knows about WBC and their horrific picketing outside of events and military funerals, even the funerals of the children killed at Sandy Hook. Their signs are upsetting so I won’t repeat any of them here, but suffice it to say that WBC believes that any terrible event (like a mass shooting at an elementary school) was from God because we have gravely sinned. Megan Phelps-Roper left the church when she was 26 after spending her entire life entrenched in the cult-like atmosphere of WBC—she started picketing at a startlingly young age and eventually became WBC’s premier voice on social media. It is through social media and meeting people who wanted to genuinely converse with her and challenge her beliefs that she started to really question WBC’s mission and what she truly believed. I truly commend Megan for leaving the church because that takes a level of bravery and courage that most people don’t possess—not only to change what she believed, but also to lose almost her entire family in the process. (Those who leave WBC can no longer be in touch with people inside WBC, so Megan hasn’t spoken to her parents and many of her siblings since she left a decade ago.) In the book, Megan talked a lot about free speech and how even hate speech is protected under the First Amendment (she’s firmly in the camp that hate speech should be protected). It was reallllly uncomfortable for me to read this part of the book, to recognize that even people spewing truly hateful rhetoric are essentially protected under law. I’m still gathering my thoughts about what I think about this because, on the one hand, I can see where Megan is coming from and understand the slippery slope that can happen when we start placing limits on free speech. On the other hand, hate speech can lead to serious violence and cause serious harm to those who are being talked about. That is also a slippery slope. In any event, I think this will make for a very lively book club discussion!

A Wicked Kind of Husband by Mia Vincy (★★★★★)

Self-published romance novels are usually a miss for me, but I gave this one a chance because Anne Bogel raved about it on her podcast. The cover is completely ugly, haha, but this is a good lesson to never judge a book for its cover! This book was phenomenal! I just loved every minute I spent enmeshed in the worlds of Joshua and Cassandra. Their banter was perfectly written and the way they moved from enemies to cautious friends to lovers to husband and wife was so beautiful. There was something so sweet about their love for one another, especially considering they both had their own demons to face before they could fully commit to each other. Their meet-cute was also something I’ve never seen in a romance before: what if you had married a man and only spent one night with him before he left you for months… and the next time you see him, neither of you even recognizes one another? AHH! So good! This is one I want to press into the hands of every historical romance lover I know!

What I’m Reading This Week

  • Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian (audio) – I have just a few hours left in this YA novel about two gay teenagers growing up in the late 1980s and how the AIDS epidemic affects their love story. I am really worried the ending is going to rip me apart.
  • Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson (print) – I just started this novel (another YA!) yesterday and I’m flying through it. It’s so well-written!

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I Read in January

Happy Wednesday, friends! I had a very good reading month to kick of 2022 with 11 books read. There were a lot of 3-star reads in the mix, so it wasn’t a total knockout month, but I’m okay with that. Hopefully, things will get better as the months go on.

Also, to the surprise of maybe nobody, I’ve decided to bring back my weekly reading recaps. I know, I know. How many times am I going to stop doing them, only to bring them back? One of the reasons I stopped doing weekly reading recaps is because I wanted to do a monthly reading wrap-up post and thought it might be overkill if I did weekly recaps and a monthly wrap-up. But… so what if it is? This is my blog and I get to write about what I want! So starting next week, you’ll start seeing weekly reading recaps on Mondays and at the end of every month, I’ll post a wrap-up post where I’ll reflect on what I read and give some updated reading stats.

Alright, with that out of the way, let’s dive into my January reviews:

Overall Favorite Read of January

The Banker’s Wife by Cristina Alger (★★★★★) – This thriller was phenomenal! It was smartly written, propulsive, and filled with characters who were easy to root for. (Who else is tired of the unreliable female narrator? *raises hand*) When the novel begins, Annabel has just been informed that her husband has been killed in a plane crash, but the more she learns about the crash and her husband’s life as a banker, the shadier things seem. Meanwhile, Marina is working on the story of a lifetime with her mentor when tragedy strikes, and she has to decide if the truth is worth the pain. It’s a fast-moving thriller that taught me a lot about offshore banking and the secret business dealings of the supremely rich, and the conclusion was super satisfying. Give it a try!

Favorite Romance of January

Battle Royal by Lucy Parker (★★★★☆) – Lucy Parker is probably my all-time favorite romance novelist. All of her books have been 4- or 5-star reads for me. She just knows how to write funny banter, great characters, and hot sexytimes. And there’s just a way she writes her male characters that just makes me fall head over heels for them. This book was no different! In Battle Royal, Dominic and Sylvie are enemies who have competing bakeries located across the street from one another. When Princess Rose announces her engagement, Dominic and Sylvie are now not only fighting in their bakeries, but also for the most lucrative cake-baking contract of all. I loved every single thing about this novel: the banter between the characters, all of the fun baking anecdotes, and how Dominic and Sylvie fell in love. These two crazy kids are going to make it, I think.

Other Favorites of January

Columbine by Dave Cullen (★★★★★) – I have never been so happy to finish a book than I was to finish Columbine. This book was hard, heavy, and I firmly believe contributed to my anxiety spiral early in the month. (As a highly sensitive person, books can affect me on a deep level.) It’s also insanely well-researched and well-written. Dave Cullen takes readers through the entire Columbine massacre, using police reports, journals and videos from the killers, and interviews. From the days leading up to the massacre, to what it was like to be in the school during it, to how the students, teacher, police, public, and media reacted in the days, weeks, and months after the shooting. It’s not easy reading in the least, but the subject matter is important and necessary, and I appreciate all of the hard work that went into researching and writing this book.

All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny (★★★★★) – What another fascinating mystery from Louise Penny. This series is just so good. This book is the sixteenth in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, and I know it can be intimidating to start a series with so many books in it, but man, I really recommend it. I’ve been very slowly working my way through the series (I read the first novel in 2017!) and I really enjoy them on audio. I don’t like talking too much about the plot because I feel like it can give away specific details that people who are reading earlier in the series may not want to know. Suffice it to say that there was so much to love here: a complicated father/son relationship, a sweet godson/godfather relationship, and a thrilling mystery with an ending that totally surprised me!

Miss Moriarty, I Presume? by Sherry Thomas (★★★★★) – Another mystery series! This one’s backlist isn’t as extensive as the Chief Inspector series. This book is the sixth—and latest—in the Lady Charlotte series. It reimagines Sherlock Holmes as a woman, and I have loved every single book in the series. They’re historical mysteries, so they have a really unique element to them that you don’t always get from the mystery genre. Also, this book had such a surprising twist near the end that made me want to speed up my audiobook listening speed so I could get to the conclusion faster. Whew!

More January Reads

  • While We Were Dating by Jasmine Guillory (★★★☆☆) – You guys, I’m just not a Jasmine Guillory fan. I read her first book and didn’t love it, but had heard good things about this book, so I gave it a try. And I was just mostly bored by the plot and spent more time editing the writing than enjoying the reading experience. I’m happy that Jasmine’s books are so popular because we need more Black romance writers, but she’s just not for me.
  • The English Wife by Lauren Willig (★★★☆☆) – This literary mystery had such a sense of place and I loved how everything was revealed, but it was verrrrry slow-moving and could have been at least 50 pages shorter.
  • The Bad Muslim Discount by Syed M. Masood (★★★☆☆) – This book was fine, but nothing outstanding. I found both of the main characters hard to root for, though I did enjoy the humor that was slipped in between some of the heavier moments.
  • A Lot Like Adios by Alexis Daria (★★☆☆☆) – Oof, I usually enjoy Alexis Daria’s romances, but this one was not good. I never felt a real connection to either of the main characters, and there was a fanfiction element that I could have done without.
  • A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi (★★★☆☆) – I was excited to read this YA love story, but it just fell a bit flat for me. I loved the Muslim representation, but the whole time I was reading this book, I felt annoyed with the main character and the choices she was making.
  • My Cone and Only by Susannah Nix (★★★★☆) – This was such a fun, best friends-to-lovers romance! The chemistry between the two main characters was sizzlin’ and I couldn’t get enough of them.

January Book Stats

  • # of books read: 11
  • Fastest read: While We Were Dating by Jasmine Guillory (6 days)
  • Slowest read: All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny (13 days)
  • Star average: 3.7
  • % of books by or about BIPOC or the LGBT community: 55%
  • Sources: Libby (6), library (2), Book of the Month (2), Target (1)
  • Formats: print (5), e-book (3), audiobook (3)
  • Abandoned books: 1 (I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson—I feel really guilty for abandoning this book, but it was just not working for me.)
  • Goodreads goal check-in: I set a goal of 135 books this year and currently, I am 1 book ahead of schedule!

What was the best book you read in January?