Library Thursday: On the Stack This Week

I make a goal every year to read a whole bunch of books.  This year, the goal is 100.  Almost all the books are audiobooks that I listen to while I work and drive, but I can never decide if it's cheating or not to have someone read to you.  Typically, I have one book for work, one for the car, and one in my bedroom for before sleep.  Sometimes, I have one more out in the living room for reading while feeding Tiny.

I just finished Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry in the car this week.  It was one of the books I read in seventh grade English (Hi, Mrs. Turner!), and I am starting to wonder if I paid any attention to this thing at all when I was 13.  The plight and the bravery of this family is just incredible, and it's really striking to revisit this story as an adult parent.  I'd forgotten that so much of the pressure was around the fact that they owned the land they worked, while all the other families around them sharecropped.  It's also striking to realize that Kiddo is now the same age as Cassie at the beginning of the book, which led me to imagine how she would handle this stuff.  The mind reels.  Kids are not as prepared for making grownup choices these days.  Oh!  And Lynne Thigpen does the reading, and that is never not awesome.  It was so fantastic to hear her voice again.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=roll+of+thunder+hear+my+cry&crid=38MUU7D5G0WC8&sprefix=roll+of+th%2Caps%2C235&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_3_10

The work book this week is Mary Boleyn--Mistress of Kings by Alison Weir.  You know when you're dealing with a woman in Renaissance history when one whole chapter is dedicated to figuring out when the central figure was born and where she was in the birth order of her family.  We're not up to full equality, but I hope that when someone writes a biography about a woman who was peripheral to history, they'll be able to declare a birth year, rather than guessing at a five-year range.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=mary+boleyn+mistress+of+kings+by+alison+weir&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

I just received Dear Mother:  Poems on the Hot Mess of Motherhood by Bunmi Laditan, who is also responsible for The Honest Toddler and Confessions of a Domestic Failure.  She is a motherhood hero of mine, modeling being an okayish mother with anxiety and other issues.  She is brilliant.  Any mother you know can connect to at least some of the poems in this book.  It's ten bucks in print.  Acquire it.  Share it.  Pass it around at those wine nights you call book clubs.  Love.  It.  So.  Much.

https://www.facebook.com/BunmiKLaditan/
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=bunmi+laditan&ref=nb_sb_noss_1