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The Sunday Post is a chance to recap the past week, talk about next week, tell you what I’m reading, and share news. It’s hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer, Readerbuzz, and Book Date.

The Sunday Post #340

On The Blog Recently

• Really Good Books That Need A Bigger Spotlight
• August 2023 Book Releases
• Recent Additions To My Book Wish List
• My Book Buying Ban: One Year Later
• Nature Books I Want To Read

In My Reading Life

Here's what I've read recently:

I finished My Mother. Barack Obama. Donald Trump. And The Last Stand Of The Angry White Man by Kevin Powell. The author is a pop culture journalist who has interviewed some of the most influential (and controversial) public figures in modern time. Most of the essays in this book focus on famous musicians and athletes. The author tells the celebrities' life stories and offers his thoughts on how American culture shaped the celebrities and propelled them to stardom. There are essays on Prince, Tupac, Cam Newton, JAY-Z, Muhammad Ali, O.J. Simpson, Harvey Weinstein, and more.

This book confirmed that I'm not interested in famous people. The author does deep dives into their personal lives and work, and I had a hard time staying engaged. I think I would've gotten more out of the essays if I was already a fan of the people in them. The author does a lot of name dropping. I don't know the majority of the people he mentions, so I felt my brain shutting down. Too many names!

I was interested in the author's observations about how racism, sexism, and money influence people's lives. For example, he talks about how there are a lot of Black entertainers and athletes, but the people controlling those industries from behind the scenes are overwhelmingly white. Are the Black entertainers able to be their authentic selves, or is this a minstrel show? Are they "preforming" Blackness in ways that are scripted by white people to please white audiences?

I've never thought about that stuff because I pay zero attention to sports or music.

I think you'd like this book if you love sports or music and want to know how those industries influence (and are influenced by) American culture.

Then I read Down Among The Sticks And Bones by Seanan McGuire. This is the second book in the Wayward Children series, and I love it just as much as the first. The series is so creative!

Wayward Children is a portal fantasy that follows a group of teens at a boarding school. The kids have all traveled through portals to hidden worlds. Then they came back. They ended up at the school because they can't cope with life in our world. They're desperate to find their portals again.

Down Among The Sticks And Bones is the story of Jack and Jill, two twins who discover a secret staircase inside an old trunk. Jack becomes the apprentice to a mad scientist. Jill joins a vampire coven. It's quirky. It's quick to read. It shows the dangers of forcing your kids to be what you want instead of letting them be themselves.

I wish these books were longer so we could get more world building. I need the next one right now.

I read One by Sarah Crossan. The plot of this young adult novel-in-verse is extremely predictable, but I couldn't put it down. I went to work exhausted for several days in a row because I stayed up late reading this book. It's just too compelling! The characters are fascinating.

The story is narrated by Grace, who is a conjoined twin. She does literally everything with her sister, Tippi. The twins have separate minds and personalities, but since they share a body, they have to compromise on their goals. The book is mostly about the twins living normal teenage lives. They go to school, play sports, have family drama, get crushes, etc.

The side characters are where this story shines. None of them are perfect. They accidentally say insensitive things or project their own feelings onto the twins. They don't understand that there are worse things than being conjoined. Grace and Tippi love each other and don't want to be separated.

Like all novels-in-verse, I didn't always understand why the author put the line breaks where she did. The poems would have been just as impactful as paragraphs. I want poems to have a reason to be poems. That's probably a "me" problem, though. I've never understood poetry.

This is an awesome book about the bond between sisters. Read it if you love contemporary young adult fiction.

In The Rest Of My Life

Five things that made me happy recently:

1. It was this blog's 10th blogiversary. You can probably tell because the blog looks 10 years old. It badly needs a makeover. (It's not getting one.) In the past 10 years, I've written 1,512 blog posts. People have left 31,633 comments. Lately, the blog has been getting over 1,000 pageviews a day. Thank you, internet strangers! I appreciate you all.

2. I won "employee of the year" at work. I wish my reward was money or paid time off, but a plaque and sandwich are nice too. It was a pretty stellar sandwich.

3. Speaking of work, here's a bunny sleeping in the shade by a patrol car. I promise it's not dead! It's just so hot that it's given up on life and looks dead. I can relate. I look the same.

4. Listening to the nighttime animals with Baby Brooklyn. It's ungodly hot inside the house, so we've been sitting outside in the dark and listening for creatures. We've heard crickets, cicadas, toads, owls, dogs, and humans.

5. Have you ever seen something that slightly altered your perspective of yourself? Since I have no life, the only places I go regularly are work and the gym. Park rangers and gym girlies tend to be extremely fit. I am not. Next to other people, I feel like a baby whale that accidentally got sloshed onto land.

The only fitness person I follow on social media is Susie J Todd because her workout challenge videos are hilarious. I knew she was the same height as me, but in this video, I learned she wears a US size 10, which is the same size as me right now.

My mind was blown. Susie is a professional fitness influencer (whatever that is) with 900,000 YouTube subscribers. Maybe I'm a slightly fitter whale than I thought.

Hello? I Need Friends

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Take care of yourselves and be kind to each other. See you around the blogosphere!