hello and welcome back to my channel I am Jourdan and today I am here with my
Wrap up! Fun fact I found out half of you guys who watch my videos are actually
not subscribed so go ahead and just subscribe but also for engagement wise
please make sure you thumbs up this video you guys who've been rocking with me for a
minute like the OGs, the real ones, you guys know like my channel was
founded on sharing art and works for black people and you know I recommend
books by black authors and minority -- other minority authors and that's really
the vision of this whole channel and I just want to get the information out to
as many people as possible! I'm gonna continue doing that vision for.. until the
playing field even and equal that's that's that's just what you get when you
come here um yeah! So hopefully you know.. I don't know? We might be here a minute
we might not but all that being said let's get into this book wrap up of the
books I read in June and actually I think I'm gonna do something different
I'm gonna start with my five stars and work my way down
so that way you guys at least hear my favorite books this month
first if you guys don't finish the video but the first book that we have up is
the vanishing half this is by Britt Bennet and my god this is so good. It's
crazy because this book is all over bookstagram! At least I think it's all
over bookstagram. It's a top seller but it's interestingly not really on
YouTube, so that's very interesting to me but I'm definitely gonna be doing a
standalone review! This book is about two twin sisters who come from this town
where everybody's intentionally light-skinned one we'll get into that
more in my standalone review but they decide to live two separately different
lives one of them decides to go live as a black woman the other one as a white
woman and it's just so interesting this is where it's very reminiscent of Nella
Larsen's "Passing" you guys know I already talked about that it's also very reminiscent of
Toni morrison's "God helpThe child" which I
also talked about because it's not only navigating the lives of these two
sisters and the lives that they chose to live but also the ripple effects of
their decisions and how that translates to their children and it is like it's I
say it's reminiscent of those two books but it's that sprinkled with a lot of
other gems! Just know that I loved it, it was amazing. It touched on racism
classism transphobia love so many topics all in one book I'm not trying to be the
hype queen but 5 stars, 5 stars, 5 stars, for that one. So my
next five stars goes to all boys aren't blue you guys probably already have
listened to the podcast episode which, we're now on Apple and Spotify "LeftOnREAD"
no spaces! check for us on Apple and Spotify and also I'll link the video
above because we have the video out but Duane and I talked about this, but this
book, I can't emphasize it enough how good of a memoir-manifesto it is. It is
George M Johnson's manifesto memoir where he is discussing themes of... really
it touches on being black and being queer in America. Like being a black
queer man in America and those dual identities navigating through family
relationships friendships almost like a coming-of-age story at the same time
because you're following him through adolescence literally from birth to
college and everything in between and it touches on so many themes and I just
think it's invaluable I think I said this during the podcast but
the book starts off strong and it's good and then it gets amazing like when I
first was reading I was like okay this might be a three and a half or four stars
as it went on it just got even better the author is an amazing storyteller and
I'm so excited because #1 it's going to be adapted into a series which I love
that Gabrielle Union got the rights for it, and then #2 you guys saw I started
#BookAsAPlaylist which is a little concept in my head that I cooked up and brought
to life and yeah I did a whole playlist that was inspired by this book I love
this book I read this book yeah I'll stop the gushing. The next book that I'm
talking about is really a commencement speech this is from Jesmyn Ward
this is navigate your stars and it was her commencement speech that was turned
into a book and I read this via eBook and the images gorgeous, the e-book was
done beautifully, the illustrations to this, Uh-mazing! like I read the e-book and
it was just beautiful but also the words are beautiful Jesmyn Ward just has a
way with words! There's nothing really much more to be said maybe Duane and I will
do a podcast about this particular commencement speech because it's just
beautiful yeah yeah so that rounds out my five stars so next let's get into my
three and a half, if you guys want, y'all can round up to four stars but they
weren't quite four stars for me first one is clap when you land by Elizabeth
Acevedo I love Elizabeth Acevedo's work you guys know I raved about the poet X I
loved with the fire on high oh my gosh I had so much hype going into this
one and maybe that has something to do with it being a good book but not on the
same ""ah fan girl" moment as the other two. It is still a solid good book. Clap
when you land by Elizabeth Acevedo and this is actually the story of two
sisters who, quickly you find out that, their father passes away on a flight and
interestingly enough this can almost be seen as historical fiction because this
is a true event that happened where almost two months after 9/11 a plane
fell down in Queens and it was on its way to the Dominican Republic and this
rocked Elizabeth Acevedo's neighborhoods so she
always had in the back of her head that she wanted to do a book based on this and
that's where we get clap when you land and it's
these two sisters one who's in the States the other one who is in the
Dominican Republic with the same father who had double-- a double life and the
book itself is grappling between grieving and then also family lost all
of that intertwined and kind of a story that a lot of people do have, of parents
who have double lives, like it just is what it is, but I loved the areas when it
was based in Dominican Republic I love that a lot but the book does a lot of
back and forth between the two sisters and somewhere in between there where
it's good but it's a lot of grieving and it seems like there were periods where I
wanted them stories to move along a little bit faster but at the same time
once we got to the Dominican Republic it moved pretty fast where it was kind of
like whoa I kind of want to stay here for a minute so those were only the
areas why it was like I liked the book but I wasn't in love with the book if
you catch my drift if you guys read it tell me what your thoughts were below
and let me know if you want to standalone review because I can go
really in depth on that but this is just a wrap up the next book is actually
Felix ever after this is another three and a half stars for me this is by
Kayson calendar and this book is actually about a trans boy who is
navigating gender identity along with finding themselves on along with the
fact that they themselves although their name is Felix love has never been in
love and it's young adult it's a teen navigating some serious
topics I love this because of course I read this during Pride Month and
actually the book was based during Pride and I really liked the scene of that but
there's a lot of triggering topics in this book one of them is also someone
literally bullying the main character and utilizing that characters dead name
and outing them and all sorts of stuff that kind of transpires but it also
follows a budding romance and also defining their identity for
themselves you know - really claiming that and discovering that and how it's
kind of a never-ending journey of that identity I thought the book was
beautiful imagery I could imagine a lot of what was going on the areas where I
didn't exactly enjoy I didn't there's an element where there's a little bit of
catfishing going on and it's done in a way that I don't know I just didn't
really enjoyed that part of a book so that was my only gripe really with the
book the story itself the plot beautiful and clearly you can see by my smile that
I enjoyed the book so the next book I read is called liquid by Megan Gibbons
and this one is about a girl who's in college she's surrounded by debt not
only from school but also medical bills her from her mother not having great
health care and she gets this offer to participate in a experimentation that
she didn't sign up for but she really needs the cash and explore it's
basically taking advantage of a marginalized community and also
minorities particularly black people in the study it's pretty much all black and
minorities that are being subject to these different experimentations and
it's a very reminiscent of American history told almost in a modern today
way you know you can tie this all the way to the Tuskegee Experiment to just
the history of America in black bodies Henrietta Lacks you can think about
literally gynecology and the doctor that's credited for so much who
experimented on women without anesthesia and performed grotesque horrible things
this is one that I really would actually like to deep dive into the story itself
although it touched on these serious really good topics it was a really I
think solid debut certain periods throughout the way some of the themes
were tied it was tied in such a way where I'm not sure about the editing of
the book itself it kind of dragged on on so
periods and when I was reading it I can't say that I was enjoying it it was
enough to keep me engaged to want to come back I gave this three stars
because I really liked the ambition the ambition that went into tackling this
topic and the way that it was done and almost like a horror science fiction
like way but it wasn't necessarily perfect if that makes any sense
interesting nonetheless
so that is pretty much the books that I read in the month of June that was a lot
of books I'm so excited to go ahead and take on July specially ending a strong
reading month for June but I would love to hear you your guys's thoughts per
usual let me know comment below if you've read any of these books or if any
of these books are on your TBR and let's talk about them more in depth if there
were any that you ranked higher or lower and yeah let's keep the conversation
going love and light and I will see you guys in the next one bye