For the Love of Books: May 2020

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Long before I found my imagination and love for writing, I still loved words. Reading was my gateway before I even knew what a gateway was. Reading has been a love that’s come down at least two generations from my nana to my mom and now me.

In times like this were there are such big events going on in the world that I feel like I can’t contribute to to make better or worse, or even when I’m struggling personally, I’ve always noticed that I start reading more and more.

Right now, I’m on a reading kick. I finished three books in about ten days, almost and kept going. This time it snuck up on me and I wasn’t really anticipating it, but it was nice.

Most of April, like the first two weeks, I spent reading The Silent Patient. The book has a cool twist at the end but I found the narrator to be a bit insufferable. It was an okay book and I know lots of people loved it, but I wanted more about the patient, not the narrator.

However, this was the weakest read out of all of them and it was still a decent book. After that, I read The Last Time I Lied. This book came home with me during my trip for Memorial Day Weekend. It took me four days to get to page 100 while I was at my apartment here in Austin and then two days to finish the other 290 pages because I sat on my parents’ couch all weekend talking and reading.

Originally I was planning to read A Stranger in the House by Shari Lapena, but when i was packing to go home, I grabbed a different book from her, Someone We Know. I read that one in three days and half of it in a massage chair at the nail salon. Shari Lapena has quickly become one of my favorite authors in the last year and A Stranger in the House is the last book I have from her to read.

This month I’ll be tackling a few different reads. First up in a nonfiction book, Bad Blood, about Theranos. After that, I’ll be reading the Unsub series and I’m looking to read White Fragility. It’s about white people talking about race. I grew up in a really white suburb, so as a kid, I didn’t talk about race as a real, living thing. Race and racism were a part of history class and the more racism becomes so obvious both in the world and just as me growing up and becoming an adult, I know I need to learn more and learn how to be better than just “not racist.”

I love reading as a great escapism but I also know reading is one of the most powerful tools we have in educating ourselves.