#readthemargin

booksforthoughts BPC: Read the margin

For @bibliophilicwitch‘s Sunday Tomes and Tea

A cup of jasmine green tea with StreetSlam: Wishes of A Broken Time by Leonard Langford

Synopsis: Aladdin from the jinni’s point of view 

(I swear this book is not as dramatic and angsty as the cover looks) 

Thanks to @heretherebebooks for recommending this!!! 

Slight spoilers ahead 

I did love Zahara, although I had a hard time believing she was thousands of years old, she felt much more like a teenage girl. 

Aladdin was a really great love interest. In YA, there’s often a fine line between glorifying toxic masculinity and boring male love interests, and he falls into neither of those categories 

There was no real love triangle and it would have been so easy to, so THANK YOU!!!

Caspida is my hero and I’m excited for her to get a larger part in the next book 

I just loved her arc so much

Female Robin Hood, yes please, who is secretly a princess (aka my dream book) 

Can she be aro please? 

I liked reading a book that was not set in a European style royalty system 

I loved the use of second person in the novel and the relationship between Zahara and Habiba

Darian and his dad are such douches 

But 100% done with Zhian and his dad

So here’s my teen Black History Month display. I didn’t realize until I was making the little author bios that I only have one male author. I promise I didn’t do it on purpose!! 

Nnedi Okorafor - Binti

Brandy Colbert - Pointe

Renee Walker - This Side of Home

Dhionelle Clayton - Tiny Pretty Things

Randi Pink - Into White

Tiffany D. Jackson - Allegedly

Imani Josey - The Blazing Star

Tanita S. Davis - Peas and Carrots

Octavia E. Butler - Fledgling

N.K. Jemisin - The Fifth Season

Jason Reynolds - All American Boys, When I Was the Greatest, The Boy in the Black Suit

I was suffering from something of a book hangover after A Little Life so I knew I needed something that would snap me right out of it. And so I turned to Donna Tartt who is basically a magician with words.

The Goldfinch has signature Donna Tartt elements running throughout; drugs, missing or disinterested parents, a general sense of haze, great but destructive friendships, and aesthetic beauty, to name a few. It was in a somewhat similar vein to The Secret History-- with the protagonist looking back at himself from a perspective gained only by experience and tragedy-- but not quite as impressive. It’s an 850+ page book and the problem I had was that sometimes I began to lose interest because things just seemed to drag on and on. My eyes would glaze over the pages and I would have to shake myself from the stupor that I kept falling into and read again. Other than that, I quite liked the book. And what really touched me to the core were the last few pages. I think I will be reading them over and over again.

Title: Dear Martin

Author: Nic Stone

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary

Publication: October 17, 2017

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 

Official synopsis:

Justyce McAllister is top of his class and set for the Ivy League—but none of that matters to the police officer who just put him in handcuffs. And despite leaving his rough neighborhood behind, he can't escape the scorn of his former peers or the ridicule of his new classmates.

Justyce looks to the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for answers. But do they hold up anymore? He starts a journal to Dr. King to find out.

Then comes the day Justyce goes driving with his best friend, Manny, windows rolled down, music turned up—way up, sparking the fury of a white off-duty cop beside them. Words fly. Shots are fired. Justyce and Manny are caught in the crosshairs. In the media fallout, it's Justyce who is under attack.

This book punches you in the gut, teaches you to check your privileges, and makes you open your eyes to a hard reality impossible to deny, because "walking arround pretending inequality doesn't exist won't make it disappear".

Dear Martin is a very important book that talks about racism, racial profiling, and police brutality. It's a very interesting read, because it shows different levels of racism: from the most evident ones (shooting deaths of unarmed black teenagers) to those that are more subtle (jokes, racial slurs...). They might be different, but all of them are important, all of them affect people, and all of them are acts of racism.

This book also makes you realise that PoC always find themselves in this kind of situations and it helps you understand the rage of marginalised groups, because sometimes it seems like things are never going to change, no matter what you do. However, Dear Martin is a story that gives you hope, too, and makes you want to keep fighting to make the world a better place.

My only problems with this book are that it was too short, and I wasn't very keen on the dialogue format, but it is a must read and I recommend it to everybody, specially to those who enjoyed The Hate U Give. If you're looking for a story that's easy to read (even though it's hard) and makes you think, don't doubt it and go for it!