Stephany Writes

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’m Reading (10.4.21)

Happy Monday, friends. I think this might be my last “What I’m Reading” post. Of course, I’ve said that before and brought these posts back, so never say never. But as my reading has slowed down from the frenetic pace I was reading in 2020 and 2019, I find myself struggling some weeks to finish a book so I can write these posts. Instead, I’m going to move to a monthly reading recap. I’m making this change mostly to take the pressure off myself to finish books quickly so I can post about them in this recap. Reading is supposed to be fun, a hobby, not something that I put pressure on myself to do.

Maybe my reading will pick up again and I’ll bring these posts back, but for now, this is the last weekly reading recap, and I only have one book to review! So this will be a quick recap. 🙂

Rising Star by Susannah Nix (★★★★☆)

This Hollywood romance follows Griffin, an actor who is finishing up his role in a long-running medical drama, and Alice, a Ph.D. student who is taking some time off from finishing her dissertation and picks up a job as an extra on the show. When Alice gets kicked out of her apartment and Griffin needs a dog and house sitter for 3 months while he films a movie, the stars align for them and she becomes his roommate. And we all know what happens from there: They fall in love, of course! It’s a slow build to the romance, which I really loved because it made the moment they finally put their feelings on the table that much sweeter. It was a sweet romance with a lot of heart, and I enjoyed my time with it.

What I’m Reading This Week

I’m currently reading One Two Three by Laurie Frankel, and only have about 100 pages to go until I’m done with it. I am enjoying this novel so much! It’s written in such an interesting way (from the perspectives of 16-year-old triplets, and the chapters alternate between them) and I’m breezing through it.

After I finish that, I’m going to pick up The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrick Backman. I’m also going to start Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig on audio.

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (9.27.21)

Happy Monday! This was a big family-focused weekend, and it was really lovely. I went to my nephew’s birthday party, which took place at a big trampoline park, and I even got on the trampoline for a while, which was a whole lot of fun! I also got to see Mikaela for a writing date, although we had a shortened meeting since the Panera we went to closed at 7! (Our writing dates are usually two hours long, and we arrived at 6.) It’s so weird to see how staffing shortages are affecting companies like Panera. The Panera nearest to me closes at 3 p.m. every day! Crazy. Sunday was spent with the fam, watching football, which was delightful as always.

I finished two books last week, and I’m hoping my reading pace will pick up a little now. I was slowly reading through Caste (25 pages per day) and A Place for Us was a nearly 400-page book that really felt like a slog for me.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (★★★★★)

This book is truly excellent. It is so well-researched and well-written, and some of the research truly blew my mind. In this book, Isabel Wilkerson posits that there have been three caste systems in place: the original caste system of India, the caste system established by Nazi Germany, and the caste system in the United States that puts white, wealthy people at the top of the caste and Black people at the bottom (originally established during slavery and continues to this day). The comparisons to the U.S. caste system and Nazi Germany’s were especially chilling—like the fact that the founders of the Nazi party used U.S. race laws as a basis for developing Nazi laws. And even for them, some of our laws (like the one-drop rule) were too harsh. There was also a passage about how people in the U.S. would gleefully send postcards to family members to show and describe lynchings that were happening near them. Or how in Germany, former Nazi leaders aren’t revered. There aren’t statues of them. And, in school, teaching about the history of Nazism is super important. All of that seems pretty obvious things that should be done, and yet, in the United States, we are just now reckoning with all of the Confederate statues we have and the Confederate leaders whose names line streets and schools. Not to mention, even talking about slavery and race is becoming illegal in schools (critical race theory, anyone?). Anyway, this book really blew my mind. It was a hard read but an incredibly important one, especially for white people. We have to read these stories. We have to better understand how we are complicit in this system.

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza (★★★☆☆)

Gosh, this book was such a slog for me! I expected to like it more than I did since it’s gotten rave reviews from everyone on my Goodreads list, but it just wasn’t for me. The novel focuses on an Indian-American Muslim family as they gather to celebrate the wedding of their oldest daughter, Hadia. She’s invited her younger brother, Amar, who has been estranged from the family for three years. The novel jumps back and forth in time, spanning decades as we learn more about this family and how Amar came to be estranged. The book read more like a series of vignettes, dropping us into a different time and place every few pages and from the point of view of either Hadia, Amar, or their mother. I think where the novel lost me, though, was in the last few chapters of the book, which take place nearly a decade after Hadia’s wedding and is just a series of navel-gazing chapters from the father’s point of view and honestly, I didn’t care to hear from him at all. Maybe it’s my own father issues at play here, but it felt like a redemption arc that I wasn’t here for. I basically skimmed those chapters and by the end of it, I really think that section could have been removed and the novel would have been just fine. Maybe even better. Anyway, not a favorite for me but most people rave about it, so I am most definitely in the minority here!

What I’m Reading This Week

I’m currently making my way through Rising Star by Susannah Nix, a contemporary romance that takes place in Hollywood, which is one of my favorite settings, especially for romance. Either today or tomorrow, I’m going to start One Two Three by Laurie Frankel. Her previous book, This is How It Always Is, is one of my favorite books but I’m trying to temper my expectations for this one. Surely it won’t be as good as that one, right?!

What are you reading?