Here’s a list of books I’ve read. When I have a lot of thoughts about a book, I’ll plan to write a separate post about it.
1/6/26: The Brightest Night (Wings of Fire #5) by Tui T. Sutherland. Read.
1/17/26: My Remarkable Journey by Katherine Johnson. Read. Amazing! I’m sad it’s done. She really did have a remarkable life. I’m grateful she, with help from her daughters, decided to share her life story with us. And there are photos at the end, which I hadn’t expected.
1/20/26: Solimar: The Sword of the Monarchs by Pam Muñoz Ryan. Read.
1/27/26: Moon Rising (Wings of Fire #6) by Tui T. Sutherland. Read.
1/31/26: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Listened. Also read parts. Absolutely transcendent. It may take me a while to articulate just how mind expanding, and also validating, this book was.
2/17/26: Winter Turning (Wings of Fire #7) by Tui T. Sutherland. Read.
2/21/26: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. Read. Amazing!!!! I see the connection to Ta-Nehisi Coates. Baldwin as influence.
2/22/26: Make Good the Promises: Reclaiming Reconstruction and Its Legacies. Edited by Kinshasha Holman Conwill and Paul Gardullo. Forward by Eric Foner. Preface by Spencer R. Crew. The book is a companion to an exhibit of the same name (link) at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Published in 2021. With contributions by Thavolia Glymph, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Kidada E. Williams, Katherine Franke, Mary Elliott, Hasan Kwame Jeffries.
3/2/26: This Stops Today by Gwen Carr. Read. Amazing! I am working on a blog post about it.
3/3/26: The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill. YA. Read. So sweet and enchanting.
3/3/26: Invincible: Fathers and Mothers of Black America by Wade Hudson, illustrated by E. B. Lewis. Children’s picture book. I really liked the supplementary text at the end that wasn’t part of the picture book.
3/22/26: Escaping Peril (Wings of Fire #8) by Tui T. Sutherland. Read.
3/23/26: We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story by Simu Liu. Read. Ugh. Had so much potential. All the stories from China were amazing and very interesting and engaging. In Canada, it dragged. So much detail about his school, extra curriculars, college, internships, interviews, first job. And he did a bait and switch. He didn’t even talk about what it was like playing a Marvel superhero. The book literally stopped just before.
4/5/26: You Are Here: Connecting Flights by Ellen Oh with Linda Sue Park, Susan Tan, Christina Soontornvat, Grace Lin, Mike Jung, Minh Lê, Mike Chen, Randy Ribay, Meredith Ireland, Erin Entrada Kelly, Traci Chee. It’s a young adult anthology about 12 middle school aged Asian Americans in a Chicago airport. The stories deal with identity and the discrimination and stereotyping they experience. It was incredibly touching. The lessons of the stories were a little too after-school-special style, but it’s YA, so maybe that’s common. I loved most of the writers so much that I added other books by them to my reading list!
4/18/26: The Unicorn Quest by Kamilla Benko (11:15 pm). YA fantasy book. I read the entire second half today. The first half was pretty slow and needlessly confusing. The second half got more interesting. The end was fine, but then I made the mistake of reading the epilogue, which sucked. I guess it’s meant to be the lead in to convince people to read the second book in the trilogy. Instead it convinced me that I want nothing more to do with these books. I was trying to figure out how I had stumbled upon it. The description said it was recommended by A Mighty Girl. I love their content on Facebook so I figured this was going to be good. I was wrong. The main character Claire was lovely and I really liked her. I didn’t particularly like anybody else. My next favorite character was the rock monster that she ended up being able to communicate with. There were no other truly likable characters. That’s not great. I was able to motivate to finish it because I discovered that someone has a hold on it and it is due tomorrow morning.