Reading Wrap Up: April 2021

Welcome to the April edition of, My Reading Wrap Up! 

And if you missed last month’s wrap up, check it out now! 

2021 definitely started out as a strong reading year for me; I read 10 books in January and 8 in February. But both March and April have been rough reading months. Unfortunately, I’ve had a lot of life stuff going on and work has picked up too. I’ve also just not been prioritizing my reading.

Audiobooks seem to be easier for me to get to, as I can easily combine listening to a book with walking Ellie or doing some chores around the house. But I hope in May I spend more time sitting down and reading. It’s nice to have that uninterrupted reading time. I remember doing a lot of reading on our balcony or at the beach last May, so I hope that happens again this year. Fingers crossed for nice weather!

All right, let’s get to the books I did read this month. Even though the list is a bit shorter than usual, there were still some great reads in April!

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You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey by Amber Ruffin, Lacey Lamar

Non-fiction (race/comedy), 240 pages, published 2021

“You may not know this but in many cases, nothing is harder than adding the name of a second Black person to a white person’s mind.”

This book is a non-fiction collaboration by sisters Amber and Lacey. Amber is a comedian who lives in New York while her sister, Lacey, lives in their home state of Nebraska. As the title alludes, the book is a series of stories that happened to Lacey (though a few of Amber’s stories are in there too) that showcase the kind of everyday racism she experiences. This book is both hilarious and heartbreaking and should be a must-read for everyone.

I found this book incredibly eye-opening. I’d find myself laughing at the way Amber was telling a story and then immediately thinking, “Wait a minute. Someone has to deal with this in real life on a daily basis? That’s really messed up.” Racism is nothing new but hearing it in this format, with a side of comedy that doesn’t detract from how frequent and horrible the racist actions are, is really unique. This book is a great way to open your eyes to everyday racism in a really approachable and endearing way.

I listened to this book on audio and really enjoyed hearing both Amber and Lacey’s voices. I think comedy books are great on audio, especially when they are read by the authors. I also got to hear some songs in the audio version. However, I did miss out on some of the photos referenced, so if that’s important to you, get a print version.

TW: racism (obviously)

Rating: 4.5/5

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The Bad Muslim Discount by Syed M. Masood

Contemporary fiction, 368 pages, published 2021

“Even Adam and Eve were immigrants. The first man and woman, the first ones to leave the place they were born.”

The Bad Muslim Discount tells the story of two people, Anvar from Pakistan and Safwa from Iraq, who both make their way to the United States but go on very different journeys to get there. I usually don’t love books that try to span huge amounts of time; I struggle to relate to both the child and adult version of the character. And I’m not a big fan of dual perspective books as I often enjoy one narrator more than the other. But after giving this one a few chapters, it totally hooked me!

At first, I struggled to keep the stories straight and kept confusing which families and side characters belonged to which narrator. But I think that’s more a comment on my forgetfulness and the fact that I often picked up this book in bed after midnight when my brain was foggy. But I really got caught up in both Anvar and Safwa’s lives and stayed up way too late to finish this book. I loved that while the book is obviously about race and religion, it’s also about relationships, family, identity, belonging – universal themes that aren’t specific to just immigrant stories. I also loved that this book showed so many different versions of being Muslim and practicing Islam. I am not Muslim nor an immigrant, so this isn’t a lived experience I can comment on, but it was a very interesting read for me.

TW: Islamophobia, torture (not graphic), sexual violence, domestic abuse, murder

Rating: 4/5

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Well-Read Black Girl by Glory Edim

Essay collection, 201 pages, published 2018

“But our stories are at the core of our identity, and if they don’t exist, in some critical way we won’t exist, either.”

Well-Read Black Girl is an essay collection edited by the founder of the Well-Read Black Girl book club, Glory Edim. Glory brings together a collection of Black women writers to share on the importance of seeing yourself in literature and the books that changed their lives. This book was joyful to read and I loved hearing about the powerful moments when these phenomenal writers first came to the written word. The writing is really beautiful. This essay collection also includes book recommendations by other Black women writers, listed by genre.

I kind of loved that this book wasn’t for me, in the sense that I wasn’t the audience that would get the most out of this. I can’t pretend to put myself in anyone’s shoes but I can imagine how inspiring it would be to read this book as a young Black girl.

I’m not the biggest fan of essay or short story collections. I find that as soon as I get used to the characters and into the story, it’s over. I mix up stories and don’t feel as fulfilled at the end because there isn’t an overarching plot throughout. It’s especially difficult for me when the essays are all written by different authors, with even less connective points between them. All that to say, this isn’t a fault with this particular book, just my own personal opinions on the genre (which probably explains my lower score). I also would not recommend the audiobook of Well-Read Black Girl, as it makes it even harder to follow along with the different essays – and I didn’t love the narrator’s voice.

TW: racism, trauma

Rating: 3.5/5

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Adventures in Opting Out by Cait Flanders

Memoir/self-help, 272 pages, published 2020

“If you want to change your life, you have to change your life.”

Adventures in Opting Out is part memoir and part self-help book by Cait Flanders, whose first book, The Year of Less, was all about her decision to not shop for a year. In this book, Cait guides readers through the stages of “opting out” of different conventional things in life, like drinking, eating meat, having children or living in the same place.

I thought this book was…okay. I’m not the biggest fan of self-help books as I find they can be insincere and preachy. I would much rather hear about someone’s firsthand experience and relate it to myself than have them directly tell me how I should be applying their lessons to my life. Throughout the book, Cait uses a hiking metaphor which I didn’t love as I’m not a hiker and often found the metaphor really had to stretch to capture her point.

I did enjoy the local references to Vancouver, as Cait is from Victoria and lived in Squamish, which made the book feel more home-y to me. And overall, the advice Cait was giving was pretty good. There were definitely a few gems I picked up (though there were others I disagreed with) and it wasn’t as preachy as I feared it would be. I think this book would be more helpful if you had a specific thing in mind that you wanted to opt out of, as applying the advice just generally to your life is abstract and less helpful. I do wish this was more of a memoir – I would have loved to hear more about Cait’s slow travel journey – but appreciate that wasn’t the book she (or her publishers) wanted to write.

TW: substance abuse

Rating: 3.75/5

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Best book of the month

Overall, my favourite book was You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar. I really thought this book was so well done! It made me laugh but also really made me think and made me feel. I’d highly recommend you pick it up, especially if you want to want to do some anti-racist reading with a less academic text.

Annual reading stats update

Here is a quick update on my 2021 reading stats!

• Total number of books read: 25 books
• Total number of pages read: 7,764 pages
• Fiction vs non-fiction: 5 fiction & 20 non-fiction
• Male vs female authors: 6 male & 21 female (some books have two authors)
• Diversifying my reading: Of the 27 authors I’ve read this year, 12 are BIPOC and just one is LGBTQ+.

 

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