March - Women's History Month

 

To wrap up Women's History Month, I'm featuring some backlist reads.
We Are the Brennans is an easy, quick read, TV drama style. Sunday Brennan wakes up battered in an LA hospital from a drunk driving accident which she caused. She returns home to her family & ex fiancé in New York who she left 5 years ago without a word.
There's the troubled pub, the family business, fighting brothers, and a mystery man from Sunday's past. It's the type of story that would be great to listen to and see on screen.
(Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Fiction & Nominee for Best Debut Novel 2021.)
☘️

I enjoyed the interesting storyline, and learning about the historical time of Korean workers in Hawaii in The Picture Bride. Teenage brides were recruited for Korean men working in Hawaii from 1910-1924. The hopeful grooms, workers on sugarcane plantations, sent a pictures through a matchmaker. The picture brides wished to escape poverty and achieve prosperity & freedom in the distant land.
This new type of story was told well through the eyes of Willow. She details the arduous journey she & other brides took across the Pacific, and the disheartening realizations of starting a new life with an often deceptive stranger.
🖻

"Floss was not concerned about the people in front of her; Floss was concerned about her followers."

Taking place in 2016 and 2051, Followers predicts a scary dystopian future with a device that has even more invasive control over users. Millennials now have dementia from all that screen time. The new screenless & soundless device works on brainwaves.

"Your followers are your friends - your very special friends. The happier & brighter you act, the more special friends you'll get.."

The main characters weren't especially likable; I smh about the circumstances they put themselves in.
Sounds creepy & isolating, this potentially true future.
"They might have had all the followers, but they were never finished chasing."
🙅‍♂️🙅🙅‍♀️

In The Family Gathering, military man Dakota Jones takes some time to visit his siblings in small town Colorado before his next assignment. There's plenty going on here; romance, mental health, family dynamics, stalking and adoption.
I appreciate how feminism is inserted "Women really took a hit for all the same things that tended to make men look like studs" thinks Dakota. He also passes off the notion that women don't report crimes because they're afraid or just want to forget it happened. It's refreshing to see this masculine character with feminist qualities.
Although it's # 3 in Sullivan's Crossing series, I read it as a stand alone.
⛰️

Utterly disgusted. Highly offended. Deeply disgraceful. Words divorce attorneys use. Such is the language of divorce. However, The Language of Divorce isn't the downer you might expect. Hannah & Will suspect one another of cheating, it gets taken to social media, and their pending divorce becomes news. They agree to appear on a divorcing couples reality show on a beautiful secluded island. Told in multiple POVs, this novel is honest, relatable and complex. It's re-released under Their Last Chance.
👩‍❤️‍👨⚮

All books were won in giveaways.

Until next time, 

~Kara

Awesome audiobooks Black History Month

Audiobooks continue to be the ideal way for me to absorb books.

Besides being given the contemporary fiction genre, The Other Black Girl is also tagged as a thriller & mystery, creating more intrigue.
Nella Rogers, 26, is tired of being the only mid-level Black employee at Wagner Books in Manhattan. So she has high hopes when another Black editorial assistant, Hazel from Harlem is hired. But newbie Hazel quickly becomes the favourite, & Nella starts to receive threatening anonymous notes "LEAVE WAGNER. NOW." Nella questions Hazel's intentions & begins investigating the notes.
Debut author Dalila-Harris got the cringy competitive office dynamics down, & the dialogue was skillfully nuanced. I was impressed with Nella's ability to control her thoughts & feelings and not lose it on her boss & co-workers. She figured out how to navigate her isolating workplace filled with microaggressions.
I'm eager to watch the series!

What a joy it was to hear Antonio Michael Downing narrate his poignant memoir Saga Boy: My Life of Blackness and Becoming.
With poetic detail, Downing shares how he was sent from Trinidad to a small indigenous community in northern Ontario after his grandmother's passing. He takes us through his childhood trauma & isolation, detailing the racism,
family dysfunction & colonialism he dealt with. It was a treat hearing some of what I grew up with & from in-laws, the folklore (Soucouyant), the "granny" phrases (Who don't hear will feel!) & lovely snippets of hymns. Listen to this to hear his sing-song Trini voice! Saga Boy's search for home is a common quest. It's about resilience.
My Trinidad raised Mr. also listened to this, & we've been enjoying his music.

🤯Leila Mottley wrote Nightcrawling when she was just 17! This powerful story is inspired by true Oakland PD events in 2015.
It's all up to 17 year old Kiara. She must pay rent as her aspiring rapper older brother doesn't have a job, & a neighbour child is abandoned. She works the streets & is exploited by the corrupt police. With her expressive voice, she details her sex work, abandonment & social injustice. Quite a strong statement that she chose family over her own body. Narration by Joniece Abbott-Pratt, who also narrated TOBG,💯! 

I borrowed these audiobooks from the library (Overdrive). 

Until next time,

~Kara

L❤️ve People Use Things

Torontonians, can you believe this green January? 😮

Wow, did I ever select the right book in my TBR pile at the perfect time.
I started purging & donating excess clothing in 2020, and didn't buy clothes for 2 years. I moved on to decluttering all other household items as well, but came to a standstill last year.
What I needed was a push, a catalyst, & that sure came with L❤️ve People Use Things.

I realized what I was doing has a name, it's being a well organized hoarder, as author Joshua Fields Milburn explains.
You know, organizing, not getting rid of your stuff.
Keeping a well organized mess.
I thought of the fact that our society has storage facilities, container & closet stores for ALL OUR STUFF. Garages don't have cars, but store MORE THINGS. We alphabetise, colour code or label over flowing collections.
Fields Millburn & fellow Minimalist Ryan Nicodemus share their past experiences, & break up the book into thoughtful chapters with our relationships with stuff, truth, self, values, money, creativity & people. They give us useful questions we can ask ourselves at the end of each chapter.

Some gems that stayed with me:
💎Our memories aren't in our things.
💎The things we own end up owning us.
💎Consumption isn't the problem - thoughtless consumption is.
💎You can't buy a meaningful life - you can only live it.
💎Quality is greater than quantity.
💎Create consciously.
💎Contribute beyond myself.
💎Getting rid of the clutter is the 1st step.
💎 Instead of FOMO, consider the joy of missing out.
💎Minimalists don't focus on having less: they focus on making room for more.
💎More passion, creativity, experiences, contribution, content and freedom.

So now I'm tackling it again, making room for more.
It's a marathon, not a sprint.
I watched their documentary with my Mom, & listen to their podcasts. My Mr. listened to the audiobook.
As Fields Milburn said, the best time to simplify was a decade ago; the second best time is now.

❤️

I received L❤️ve People Use Things in a Goodreads giveaway, thanks!🙏🏼

Until next time, 

~Kara

Non Fiction November

 
It's Non Fiction November, and this time I have 2 very different books and two backlist audiobooks with sad similarities.

Fans who want more of #thecrown will enjoy Elizabeth & Margaret The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters.  I'm not a monarchist, but I like royalty series & movies because I'm intrigued by their unique fascinating lifestyles, so different from my own. Well known biographer Andrew Morton supplies quotes from royal insiders on HRM Queen Elizabeth II and her notorious glamorous sister Princess Margaret. I learned about how their closeness from childhood continued to the end, and about how Margaret loved a party and men. This tell-all biography will interest you if you can't get enough of the Windsors.

To say that Hunger and Heavy are difficult, essential memoirs is an under statement. Both authors Roxane Gay and Kiese Laymon share their childhood traumas, unhealthy relationship with food as comfort & protection, and ultimately learning to accept and love their bodies.
From a writing standpoint, Gay was often repetitive, and included a few very short, abrupt chapters. Hunger cannot help but leave a deep impact on every reader or listener, but with the trigger warnings, it's not for everyone.
Laymon's style is so unique, authentic and intense. Just the poetic way he begins admitting he wrote a titillating lie, but learned nothing, so started over, sends shivers. He puts it all out there, never holding back about the abuse he suffered from and his troubling complex relationship with his mother.
These books are surely forms of therapy for the authors. I'm interested in reading more of their work.

In Baek Sehee's debut Korean best seller, she documents her recorded conversations with her psychiatrist. This mental health memoir was not intriguing to me, but rather repetitive & gave off a self indulgent feel unfortunately. I found her dialogue to be too perfect. She used the exact lingo, which is curiously remarkable to have such insight right in your appointment. Her psychiatrist validated everything she said so perfectly. This non-fiction didn't work for me because I was uninterested in the author. I just couldn't get why I should read it and I wasn't able to make a connection with her.

What interesting non fiction have you read this month?
📓📔🎧🎧

I received Elizabeth & Margaret in an Instagram giveaway,🙏🏼thank you @arrow_reads Caroline. I received I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki in a Goodreads giveaway. 

Until next time,

~Kara

Run, Rose Run

Every song tells a story.

She's a star on the rise, singing about the hard life behind her.
She's also on the run: Find a future, lose a past.
Nashville is where she's come to claim her destiny. It's also where the darkness she's fled might find her. And destroy her.
🎸👢🎤🪕

I chose to give Run, Rose Run a listen because it was marked as thriller, suspense and mystery. And, who doesn't like Dolly Parton?! 😍 It only started to get a bit thrilling at Part 3. The focus has been on the Nashville music scene. The story is quite predictable, with scenes about stereotypical honky tonks and sleazy music producers you'd expect. But the witty dialogue of main characters AnnieLee, Ruthanna and Ethan is fun.
I'm enjoying Kelsea Ballerini cast as AnnieLee and the icon herself Dolly Parton narrating Ruthanna. I recently liked listening to Soneela Nankani narrate His Only Wife. Her formal voice with exact enunciation feels off here as the main narrator though. For the style of this book, her specific tone is not the right fit. I wonder why this part wasn't given to someone with a Tennessee twang. 🤷🏻‍♀️
Listening to a book about country music, you would expect the narrators to sing the song lyrics parts, right? It's disappointing they aren't.🧐
I figured there'd be some songs at the end to look forward to, but there aren't!😮‍💨
I'm at Part 4 now, and am compelled to continue to find out what happens to AnnieLee.
I've not read any of James Patterson's novels, they're not really my type. I'm afraid to say, this one doesn't make me want to read any more.
The album Run, Rose Run was released this March, and the movie is in pre-production, so country music fans can hear & see AnnieLee / Rose come to life. I'm curious and will check both out.
I haven't seen this on Booksta, has anyone listened to / read it?

I borrowed Run, Rose Run from the library (Overdrive). 

🎸👢🎤🪕

Until next time, 
~Kara

Beach Read

 

🔥👀Talk about a hot read summer!
This isn't your typical easy breezy beach read that you can get through quickly and leave behind. It's unique story and interesting characters are memorable. There's quick, witty dialogue and lots of fun back and forths between January and Augustus. Besides the cute notes they hold up for each other and some ♨️, Beach Read has moments of introspection and awareness. Bravo author Emily Henry! 👏🏼
If you haven't read it yet, you still have time, there's 22 days left of summer!🌞

I received Beach Read in a Goodreads giveaway, thanks!🙏🏼

Until next time, 

~Kara

Must listen audiobooks

🎧🍁If you haven’t already, you NEED to listen to these books on audio! Both are narrated by their authors, personalizing the experience even more, adding rich emotion.

Tessa McWatt does a deep dive into her multi-racial identity in her memoir Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging. She shares her encounters and experiences of growing up questioning her identity and colour through body part chapter titles like Lips, Nose, Hair, and Ass. What box do you tick when you have Chinese, Scottish, Portuguese, Indian, African and French ancestry?
Having a mixed racial background, and been asked “What are you?” throughout my life, I can relate. I also struggle with enjoying the dance-able Trinidad (my father’s homeland) Calypso / Soca music that unfortunately is problematically filled with sexual innuendo, and an overt focus on the female body.
It was also informative and interesting to learn about Guyana’s colonialism history.

🎧🍁
Disturbing and determined. Powerful and peaceful. From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way is this, and more.
Jesse Thistle’s subtle yet strong voice details his abandonment, abuse, trauma, addiction, and ultimately, redemption. His story is told without fear, and is truly inspiring. It’s one I won’t forget. He is the definition of a survivor!

I can’t recommend enough listening to both of these memorable audiobooks! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
What awesome audiobook would you recommend? I’m currently absorbed with Kiese Laymon’s intense and well, heavy memoir, Heavy.
I borrowed both these books from the library (Overdrive). 
🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦

Until next time,

~Kara