Rainy Day Reads

Challenges:   Diversity Bingo 2017: Contemporary World Arranged Marriage This book follows Dimple, an Indian-American, who struggles to break free from her family’s traditional expectations and follow her dreams of coding. Surprisingly however, her parents allow her to go to a summer camp sort of thing that’s all about coding and building your own app. When she gets there she finds out the real reason her parents were so happy to let her go. Her intended husband is also attending this camp… We follow both Dimple and Rishi’s perspectives and I really liked seeing the story from both sides. Dimple is the “rebellious” one who wants to break free from the Indian traditions concerning marriage and family life, while Rishi is quite traditional, and wants nothing more than to get married, have kids and provide for his family in a stable job.  I really like the friendships in this book and also the family relations. There are definitely conflicts, but the way they...

Challenges:   Diversity Bingo 2017: Own voices In this book we follow two perspectives. We have Natasha, a young girl who is set to be deported to Jamaica with her family. Then we have Daniel, the son of immigrant parents from Korea. Natasha is desperately trying to stop her family from getting deported to a country she barely remembers, while Daniel is struggling to reconcile his family’s expectations with the life he wants to lead.  They meet, and with Natasha’s flight set to leave that same evening their relationship instantly comes with a timer that is running out quickly. Daniel wants to prove that love can happen in that time span, while Natasha is adamant that it cannot. For the sake of science she decides to give it a go, though. So while Natasha is meeting lawyers and Daniel is prepping for a Harvard interview they set about falling in love, scientifically.  I really enjoyed the writing style of this book. We had not only Natasha and Daniel’s persp...

Challenges:   Bingo: Night by Elie Wiesel Diversity Bingo 2017: Jewish Main Character This book is set during World War II and our protagonist is Eliezer, a young boy living in Transylvania with his family. Soon the Nazis make their arrival and Eliezer and his family are first forced to move into a ghetto with other Jews and then they are moved to a camp.  This book is told from the perspective of Eliezer, and we follow his struggle with faith as these harrowing things unfold. He started as a devout Jewish scholar who wanted nothing more than to study the Jewish mysteries, but at the end of the book he is deeply questioning his faith.  This book is quite short but very powerful and while there are many books dealing with the Holocaust I think this one has a bit of something more, as we follow Eliezer’s internal struggles with faith and morals as well as the external struggle to just survive.  I gave this book 5 stars out of 5. 

Challenges: Diversity Bingo 2017: Biracial main character This book is about Rachel who literally falls from the sky one day. Her mother takes her and her two siblings to the roof and Rachel is the only survivor. Throughout the story we follow a number of characters as people try to make sense of what happened. Rachel tries to adjust to her new life living with her grandmother and struggling to find an identity when people don’t consider her as belonging, because she is considered alternately white or black. We also slowly figure out what happened to bring her mother to the roof with her children that day. As for the challenge this book fits perfectly. Rachel is half black and half white and there are a number of instances in the book where this issue comes to the forefront. Having said that I do wish we saw more of Rachel’s struggles with it. It is like she just brushes it off when the black girls at school call her white or other people tell her she is not like “ot...

Challenges:  Diversity Bingo 2017: Main character with underrepresented body This book follows a soldier who wakes up in hospital after a bomb has hit his posting. Slowly he realizes that he is deaf and blind, and then to his horror he discovers that he has also lost his arms and legs. We follow his musings as he slowly comes to term with these findings and tries to find a way to deal with it. He spends a lot of time trying to figure out how to keep time and then he tries to find a way to communicate with the world around him, but the world doesn’t seem too interested. In between his hard work to communicate he dwells on memories of his life before the war and daydreams about his family finding him again.  This book was absolutely heartbreaking. Here is this man who has been saved when everything else around him crumbled to dust, but the people who saved him (or condemned him to a life trapped in his own mind) aren’t interested in him as a person, onl...

Challenges:  Diversity Bingo 2017: Displaced Main Character Everyone has raved about this book since it came out and once again I am disappointed. The premise was interesting but it just didn’t work for me.  We follow two half-sisters, however they don’t know they are sisters and they never actually meet in the story. Each chapter tells the story of one of their descendants, so we only get to know each characters for quite a short while in their lives.  At the beginning of the story set in 18th century Ghana one of the sisters is married to a wealthy Englishman, a commander at the fort, while the other sister is taken and sold as a slave in America. As mentioned we follow their descendants through time and see how life pans out for them right up until present day.  As for the challenge there were certainly a number of displaced characters. The sister sold as a slave is of course forcibly removed from her homeland, but a number of the othe...

Challenges:  Diversity Bingo: Main character with an invisible disability.  This story is told from Griffin’s point of view, Griffin who has just suffered a major loss. His ex-boyfriend Theo has died, and while people think it’s tragic they also seem to think that Griffin should move on, because after all they were EX-boyfriends and Theo had found someone new. But Griffin always considered himself and Theo endgame, so the loss hurts just as much as if they were still together.  We follows Griffin’s struggles with grief and his escalating OCD, while all his relationships tangle and untangle around him. He meets Theo’s new boyfriend Jackson, who is just as crushed as Griffin, and while they at first seem to be competing in grief for Theo they soon find out that the other one is the only one who can really understand them and they become tentative friends. Meanwhile Griffin and Theo’s old friend Wade tries to help Griffin, but Griffin rejects him.  ...

Challenges:  Diversity Bingo: Main Character on the ace spectrum This book is about Frances who finds herself playing two different roles in life; School Frances and Normal Frances. These two are very different, but she prefers not to mix the two halves of her life. When the creator of her favorite Youtube-podcast contacts her to start making art for the show she is ecstatic, and her accepting is the start of a new life where School Frances and Normal Frances begin to merge and coalesce into one person.  As far as the challenge goes I have to say I don’t really think this fits 100%. You have to accept that Frances is not the only main character at least, and I don’t know about that. But one of the more important characters is on the ace spectrum and while it takes a while for them to “come out” we do get an explanation of what it means and the relationship they are in also seems like a good representation of asexuality. Aside from that this book is quite div...

Challenges: Diversity Bingo: Romance with a trans main character This book follows Amanda who used to be known as Andrew. She moves to a new school after she no longer feels safe in her old town due to an attack in a women’s bathroom. She moves from her mother’s house to her father’s and her father hasn’t really talked to her or seen her since her transition, and he struggles a little bit, but he does his best.  Amanda starts her new school and soon she finds a group of friends and a potential new boyfriend. She struggles to decide if she should tell these people her secret, but knowing who to trust is hard and trusting the wrong person can turn out to be dangerous.  I found this entire story interesting and enlightening. We see things from Amanda’s point of view and that gives us an insight into the thought processes that brought her to where she is today and her struggle trying to decide just who to trust with her secret, if anybody. I found all the ch...

Challenges:  Diversity Bingo 2017: Visually impaired main character 52 Books Around the Year: A New York Times Best Seller This book is set before, during and after World War II in France and Germany. We follow two perspectives; Marie-Laure in France and Werner in Germany. Marie-Laure goes blind at a young age and her single father makes a monumental effort to teach her how to navigate her world, building her a model of their entire neighborhood to help her find her way. Meanwhile Werner lives at an orphanage dreaming of escaping the small town and the coal mines that will swallow him up as soon as he turns 15. His extraordinary capabilities with radios and mathematics gives him a ticket out, but he soon learns that that ticket comes at a heavy price. When war breaks out Marie-Laure and her father must leave Paris, and with them they bring something that will make them a target for the German forces.  This story is definitely a slow burn. I liked it, but not...

Challenges:   Around the Year in 52 Books: A book that is a continuation of a book you’ve already read Diversity Bingo: A book with a person of color on the cover This is the second book in the “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” trilogy and it follows Lara as she and Peter start up a real relationship. It turns out to not be so easy when real feelings are at stake and a scandal at school does nothing to make it easier. At the same time they must deal with ex-girlfriends and old crushes and soon things start to unravel.  I liked this book. It was fun, but that was about it. Lara stepped a bit out of her goody-two-shoes character and started asserting herself, which I liked. But then she was all over the place with the boys, but I guess that is believable when you take teenage hormones into account. I had a little trouble with Lara and Peter’s relationship, because it mostly felt a little jarring, like they couldn’t find a common beat, and never really had ...

So in order to get cracking on my newfound reading resolutions I went to the library today and picked up a bunch of books. To be completely honest I had some of these books lying around from my last trip to the library, but I figured I would just make one big haul.   I’ve divided the books into 3 groups; Diversity Bingo, Around the Year in 52 books and others.  Let’s start with the books I’ve managed to get for Diversity Bingo:  First up we have “NIght” by Elie Wiesel. This will go towards the challenge of a book with a Jewish Main Character. It’s part of an autobiographical novel trilogy about the author’s experiences during WWII. I have high expectations for this one, since some of my favorite books are set during wartime and I have heard good things about this book.  Then we have “P.S. I Still Love You” by Jenny Han. This will be my book with a person of color on the cover. This is the second book in the “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before”...

We are at the midpoint of the year and I’m starting to see all these reading goals assessment videos popping up on Booktube. People talk through the goals that they set at the beginning of the year and tell us how far they have come and how well they are doing.   This has inspired me to do a little assessment of my own. My only reading goals for this year have been reading 85 books and completing my bingo board challenge. I am 1 book behind schedule as far as reading the 85 books goes, but I have confidence that I will catch that up soon. However, there is no saying that I won’t lag behind again, as work is crazy busy, but I will do my best to keep it up.  As far as my bingo board is concerned I am doing horrendously. I’ve read 3 books out of 20, so that’s pretty dire. I’m hoping this fresh burst on inspiration will help me tick a few more off my list.  You might think that since I am struggling with the two challenges I’ve set myself I shouldn’t start any ...

I recently decided to start this challenge because I do want to ramp up my reading. I was just too lazy at the start of the year, to bugger down and do this. So I don’t plan on finishing the entire thing this year, I’ll just see how many I can cross off and maybe carry it over into next year.   Sorry about the blurry quality. There are links to the original at the end of the post This is the list of all the topics. The books listed below each challenge are either my options I’m considering reading or the ones I have actually read. The ones I have read will be bold and contain links to my reviews, and my options will be in cursive .  Now, as for the books I haven’t read yet, I obviously can’t tell you if they are good or if I think they fit the challenge. If I read a book that I don’t think fits, I will remove it and try to find another one that fits better. But if you see something completely off on this list, please feel free to let me know :)  Disc...