It was a lot of fun to go back over my reading year, but one thing really struck me, most of the favorite books I read in the beginning of the year. And although I have read the most I have ever in my life in one year (101 books!), that did not equate to quality. Lesson learned, but also that makes a lot of sense. In a crowded year, it had to really stand out to make the cut. Plus my brain short circuited around May until like, well it’s still going I think, so I think that could be a part of it too. Which makes sense, because we moved in May. In 2023 all I want is to read what I own and DNF with abandon. I live near an amazing library that is well stocked, there is no reason for me to keep buying books. I’m honestly grossed out by how much I own and need to remedy that, especially with what’s coming on the horizon….Onwards to 2023. Happy New Year Book Community, you’re still the best place on the internet.

Listed Books are:

• Fiction that made me cry:
• The Seed Keeper
• Stay With Me
• The Swimmers
• The Arsonists City
• Beloved
• What Storm What Thunder
• The Vanished Birds

Jaw Dropping Fiction:

• Babel
• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

YA Page Turners:

• Iron Widow
• Bloodmarked

Unforgettable Nonfiction:

• What My Bones Know
• White Negroes
• All That She Carried
• Paradise
• Grass
• Welcome to the Terrordome

Poetry:

• Deaf Republic
• Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems

Middle Grade:

• Shirley and Jamila save their summer
• The Tryout
• Ghost
• I Can Make This Promise
• Ophie’s Ghost
• All Thirteen

#BestOf2022 #BestBooks #Fiction #Nonfiction #LoveReading #ReadMoreBooks #AlwaysReading #Bookstagram #YearWrap #YearlyWrapUp #BooksBooksBooks #BestBooks #MiddleGradeBooks #poetry

I used to be someone who always thought nothing of sports. “Oh, I’m not involved and I don’t watch it, so how could it effect me?” Well boy was I wrong. Just like everything else in life, sports are political. With all the controversy surrounding the World Cup and honestly FIFA in general, I keep thinking of this book. The essays in here really bring into focus how even if you don’t play sports or watch them they shape the politics around you in ways you probably don’t realize. Looking at sports through the lens of race, class, gender, and more Dave Zirin examines how sports shape much of political life outside the field. I think this book could make a great holiday gift for your fellow sports lover, or even a novice. The essays “Béisbol: How the Major Leagues Eat Their Young,” “The Uses of Sports: How People in Power Exploit the Games,” and “Relearning Roberto Clemente” have stayed with me in particular.

[ID: The essay collection Welcome to the Terrordome by Dave Zirin rests on a table with a mini succulent garden pot]

#sports #sportsandpolitics #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #welcometotheterrordome #essaycollection #baseballwriting #basketballwriting #nonfiction #readmorebooks #themoreyouknow🌈

December hopeful. I know we don’t typically see this dude in these parts of #bookstagram but I’m reading it with my husband and it’s really enriched the experience. You gotta have range right? #doorstopperbooks never intimidate me. I am hoping once we finish this series I can convince him to read The Fifth Season or another fantasy book written by an author of the Global South. Got any recs for us? Let me know! He enjoys horror too! Pictured is the book Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson on top of a circular black metal table. #buddyreading #bookclubs #wordsofradiance #TBR #fantasy #bigbooks

By far my favorite reads of the month are The Seed Keeper, Stay With Me, and Bloodmarked. Those really knocked it out of the park for me.

I was less impressed by How Much of These Hills is Gold honestly, while I appreciate the story being told, I felt like the flowery language made it so detached and it didn’t give me the emotional resonance that Stay with Me, or The Seed Keeper did. The Seed Keeper also had these gorgeous descriptive passages, but it forced you to slow down and it was so simply done, it was elegant.

Thank you to @thatgoodgoodbook for gifting me Uphill by Jemele Hill. I love the NBA and Hill is someone I have always admired. I remember when she tweeted about that awful president and how it was received, so it was interesting to hear her side of the story. She has led a very interesting life, and I thought she told her story really well. I was engaged throughout. And Indigenous Peoples History was a heavy read, and it’s meant to be a textbook. It did not have that narrative quality that makes nonfiction engaging, but again, I don’t think that is its purpose. It is to inform you of the truth laid bare, and I think it’s really important to have out in the world.

Invisible was a great graphic novel about Spanish speaking students that come from alllll over Central and South America, coming together in a common cause. A great one. Indian No More was pretty good, glad it exists in the world, and it’s an important story to tell. I can see myself using this as an anchor in social studies lessons.

Have you read any of these? What did you think?

#bookstagram #monthlywrapup #fiction #nonfiction #middlegrade #alwaysreading #readmorebooks #readers #greatbooksfor2022 #bookstagrammer

GIVEAWAY

Welp, this is 35. Another year, a lot of changes, and I’m just happy I would probably make little Viv proud. Cheers to another one.

Thanks for being here with me. To celebrate I’d love to give one lucky winner a $30 gift card to Birchbark Books. Only open to US and Canada. To enter simply comment and tell me one book you hope to read by the end of the year. Giveaway closes December 1st at noon.

In the next pictures, I have some suggestions for you if you’re still looking for some books by Indigenous American authors. I am hoping to read The Seed Keeper. Books pictured are: Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, Motorcycles and Sweetgrass by Drew Hayden Taylor, The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson, The Barren Grounds by David Alexendar Robertson, Mamaskatch by Darrel J. Mcleod, Sabrina and Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson, Dogflowers by Danielle Geller, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Black Sun and Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorsem and Even As We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle.

[ID: Viv a half Filipino woman with her arm up on a stack of books.]

#bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookgiveaway #ReadIndigenousWriters #ReadMoreBooks #KnowTheRealHistory #LosAngelesReader #readersofinstagram #AlwaysReading #TBR #NonFictionNovember