My reading wrap-up post is late and I’ve only got three books to tell you about this month. My day job tasks have been such that I can’t listen to audiobooks while completing them, so that’s one reason why it’s taking me forever to read The Well of Ascension. I’m on my second borrow of it and probably won’t finish it this time around either lol! So given the lack of book content for this post, I’ll uplift a booktuber whose channel I’ve recently found.
So, here’s what I read in June!
The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan
First series finished! Overall, it was a great ending and even though I had some issues with the execution, there was still enough that I didn’t see coming.
Chronos is completing his rise to power and launches his invasion of New York City. Percy and the other demigods fight a long battle against them, loosing many to save Olympus.
So my primary issue is the over reliance on the dream exposition device. Percy passes out or sleeps like 20 times so we can get a significant amount of backstory for other characters. Even in a series where using dreams as exposition is valid, this was way too much. I also didn’t care about many of the minor characters, so I wasn’t too hung up when some of them died.
But I did like pretty much everything else and that’s all I’m gonna say because spoilers! I’ll be reading the next series but I’m gonna take a break from PJO for a bit.
Also, I think I might try reading the books instead of the audiobooks if it’s the same narrator for the next series. This narrator uses the stupidest voices for some of the characters and I’m wondering if that’s part of why I can’t connect to them. I can tolerate it when the characters are little kids, but now they’re 16 and they need to stop sounding like caricatures. Also, he often puts very bad accents on POC when the text never actually says they have an accent. I’m not into that at all.
We Are Okay by Nina Lacour
Marin left for college without telling anyone because she had to leave. When death or mystery comes to take away your last anchor, you just want to start over. But your grief doesn’t let go as much as you want it to. So Marin gears up to spend Christmas alone on campus because she has no one to go home too, but her ex-girlfriend and best friend Mabel is flying 3,000 miles to spend three snowed-in days with her where Marin will finally tell the truth and remember.
I have so many feelings. This book gave me the same nostalgic loneliness I get when a sad lofi hip hop track reaches into my soul. College was an extremely lonely and painful time for me too, and even though my details are different, I can pinpoint specific experiences that parallel the relationships in this book. I loved it so much. And I’m not usually a fan of books making the characters clear fans of literature, mostly because they always seem to choose Jane Austen, but THIS book engages Jane Eyre and I am HERE 👏🏻 FOR 👏🏻 IT👏🏻. Also! Mabel is Mexican and aside from one scene that Marin instantly calls out near the beginning of the book, I didn’t get the impression that she’s exotified in any way.
Listen, this book contains the 3 S’s: sad, sweet, and sapphic. It’s an entire mood.
A Black Theology of Liberation by James H. Cone
I’ve been fed Black liberation theology and other liberative theologies since college and especially during my time in the United Church of Christ, but I’ve finally read an entire source for it front to back for myself and I have to say that the entire thing is relevant today, which is both sad and profound. Sad because it came out in 1970 but profound because it’s talking about God’s work of liberation. James Cone recontextualizes Christian theology to remove its oppressive and colonizing elements and show how the gospel is about liberation for Black people. Much of Cone’s work in this book is provocative and if you’ve never encountered liberation theology before, you might find a lot of it shocking, especially if you’re white. But I think it’s a highly important read to begin seeing what anti-racist work looks like specifically in Christianity.
I picked up my copy from a clearing out of the late Rev. John Deckenback’s library. Long-time UCC people may know him well. I’m sad that I only got to meet him a few times before his sudden death, and that I didn’t get a chance to work on the CAC Board of Directors with him, but his library was full of liberation theology and he really lived into what he believed.
I think it’s funny that James Cone said “the caucasity” in 1970. 😂 There’s a section where he mentions two white authors who wrote whole books about how Black people should secure their rights and the root of the problems for Black people or something like that and Cone said “the white audacity!” in response.
Although I think you can understand this book without much background knowledge, you might find it helpful to get a quick primer on liberation theology in general. So I recommend Liberation Theology for Armchair Theologians for that. It’s pretty short and it has pictures. It gives an overview of the history of liberation theology and different writers from different contexts who have done that work.
Booktube Recommendation: The Artisan Geek
I keep going down the booktube rabbit hole, but I’m glad for it because I’ve found so many cool people to watch for opinions and recs. One of them is Seji, or The Artisan Geek. She mostly focuses on classical literature and often covers obscure books or books from a variety of countries that don’t normally make it into the “Western” cannon. I’m really enjoying her channel so far, even though I don’t read a lot of classic literature myself. However, knowing about diverse classics is helpful to me in my day job because many times we need to source reading passages from the public domain. Already, Seji’s recommendations have helped me diversify a giant log of public domain resources that my company is creating. Definitely check out her channel, especially if you like classic literature.
Also, she always wears the cutest outfits and has such a pleasant voice. I feel like she should be a podcast host or narrator.
That’s it for June 2020!