Freaking FANTASTIC. I don‘t like poetry because I have never taken the time to learn how to analyze it... so that‘s on me. But I got it! The poems that Nikki selected for this compilation and then the way that she bounced off of them felt familiar. These poems are not airy fairy, they felt like spoken word, raw and powerful.

I think not being Christian puts me a little bit of a disadvantage when reading this book, in some ways I understand the suffocating need to be right and moral and not to sin, but I keep asking myself why John just keeps excepting? About halfway through and I am loving James Baldwin‘s voice!

Our class has be doing a unit in inventors for Black History month (started a bit earlier). In order to transition us from our simple machine unit our first inventor is Benjamin Banneker, invented the first clocks in the Americas.

Good book, very redemptive and full of good lessons like perseverance, but it was too long. It could have been edited down more! 4.5/5📚

TOP KIDS BOOKS (read in2020)Clockwise
Julián Is A Mermaid-Jessica Love
Dragons Love Tacos-Adam Rubin and Daniel Salmieri
I Am Perfectly Designed-Karamo Brown, Jason Brown, and Anoosha Syed
Breathe Like A Bear-Kira Willey and Anni Betts

Loved it. Plain and simple. I think it was a great introduction to Chicano culture and the LGBTQ+ community. This is meant for young teens and I feel it gave a realistic yet not graphic reality that many LGBTQ+ members face regardless of their heritage and culture. I wish there was more depth given, to the story as a whole, however I can see how hard it would be to do when its set over three nights and there is a lot of plot to describe first.

After reading Born A Crime by Trevor Noah, I still can't help feeling in the lurch. I was curious about how he made his transition from selling bootleg CD's to moving in to comedy. The feeling that I got from this book was, “This is how life is.“. It was such a vastly different upbringing then I ever had, however the themes I could connect to. Not Black enough, not White enough. Too much of this, not enough of that... In all I'm still thinking.

I can not begin to describe how grateful? happy? I am that I read this book. It filled me with a sort of soft lightness with every page I read. My favorite part of the entire book and one I frequently reflect back on is in Book Three. The curious and suspicious act between three beloved friends in the quest to satisfy their refined pallets in the face of strict, patriotic, Stalin ruled, Russian cuisine.

CONTINUED However I need to do better! I need to read a significantly more books from non-binary authors. I need to read more POC authors and I need to read more books with POC protagonist. Although 2020 sucked, that didn't stop people from creating, and what people have written is amazing and powerful. So this year there should be absolutely no excuse for the lack of diversity in my reading! 2021, HERE I COME!

This past year I made my reading goal, read 20 books. I didn't include all the picture books I have read, ( because holy cow that is a lot, I'm a preschool teacher) or the fanfiction I absolutely devoured, so all and all I did quite well! Some statistics I am proud of include: the diversity of genera I read, the score of books I bought from indie book stores and even the 50/50 split of male v.s female authors I read!

For my O.W.Ls reading challenge!

Wow did this make me uncomfortable!!!!!! 3.5/5📚

Miy favorite stories from this collection was the third to last and the last one! 3.5/5📚

Back to my childhood, my 5 year old sister and I are finally into chapter books. She made me read the whole thing in one sitting! Building up that love of books #support your local library
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This was so good! I can‘t explain how much this book spoke to me. It made me think of my own depression, all my mixed and Persian friends and it had Bahaí representation which I have never read in a book before! 5/5?

Well... he definitely reads as a fanciful, idealistic, 24 year old heroistic know it all

However it is an interesting read between his friend and himself. 2.5/5📚

Y‘all these stories are so sweet! Finished the first Amin a day and a half now on to the next

This is so incredibly sweet! And I get 8 more books!!!!!!!!!!!! #fantasy #dragons #naominovik

This was such a refreshing read! I also felt so connected to the main character ethnically I don‘t think I have ever related so much to a main character before! #ya #acevedo #afrolatina #teenmom

YALL I GET IT. I get why this book was so hyped. I don‘t read ya but I feel I need to get back into it as i am now officially a high school teacher. #ya #nicolayoon

#moonpalacebooks #minneapolis book haul!

LOOK

I DIDN‘T KNOW THE VORHH WAS A TRILOGY AND I HAVE BEEN PINING FOR A READ LIKE THE VORHH #tbr #thevorhh #fiction

My annual Dostoyevsky reading. I tend to read one ever year and a half as it takes me about a year and a half to get through one! But this one should be pretty fast, being only 280 v.s 700 pages #dostoyevsky

I felt the need for comfort today #the hobbit #bilbo#baggins #tolkien

Yes, I know I‘m late to the party! #homegoing #yaagyasi #fiction 4.5/5📖

Selin, a Harvard student, stuck thinking about language and its relation it has to expressing thought and more distinctly, Love. #theidiot #fiction I‘m not sure what to think of it, except, I couldn‘t put it down. The book wasn‘t deeply thought provoking, nor relatable due to the incredible privileged life style she lived. But the sends of numbness and pain of being lead on felt relatable. 3.75/5📖

This was a really great and comprehensible text on the history of tea. It does a great job of giving you a taste of each important aspect about tea‘s long history while calling out the atrocities that the tea “trade” incited. #tea #teahistory #nonfiction 4.5/5📖

Ate this book up. Murakami‘s style of writing feels so familiar. Meaning to say that there is a sense of speaking with an old friend, which lends its self well to this book. Tsukuru Tazaki goes on a journey to uncover the truth of his banishment and deals with the idea of pure and painful loneliness. 4.5/5📖 #Murakami #colorlessTsukuruTazaki

Well that was the oddest book I have ever read!

Slightly creepy story about a boy who is stuck in a library and becomes friends with a voiceless girl and a sheep man. 3.5/5📖

#harukimurakami #libraries #thestrangelibrary #murakami #shortread

I am blessed enough to work next to #boneshakerbooks which I swear only stocks the most beautiful edition of books.

Lovely book, lovely contents. There is a lot to think about with this book. I feel I'm going to need to read through it a couple more times.

4.5/5📚 #hermannhesse #siddhartha

Yah, at this point Teju Cole has become my new favorite author.

After reading his other two books #opencity and #knownandstrangerthings I this this one is my least favorite.

Cole'd main character heads back to Nigeria for a few months and reflects back on life in Lagos as he was a boy and now.

This story feels like a continuation from Open City only with less philosophical ideas to grapple with.

3.7/5📚#everydayisforthetheif #fiction

The third Dostoyevsky book I have read. The Idiot is about a prince who has epilepsy and because of this all the characters around him believe him to be an idiot. In reality he is the most wise and kindest of all the characters. Due to his kindness he becomes trapped in a hero complex that makes him want to "save" the "mad" and beautiful Nastasya Filippovna from insanity. 4/5?#dostoyevsky #theidiot #fiction

Comforting and philosophical read. About a man pondering his childhood, culture and race. 4.5/5📖#fiction #tejucole #opencity

#thebulletcatchersdaughter
Was alright, wasn't too much mystery to it 3/5📚#steampunk #fiction

A book about a writer who commits suicide before his last book can be translated and the book's ability to inflict grief and misery and eventually suicide to every translator there after.

Again, Banana Yoshimoto creates a story which fills the reader with suspense yet peace, grief and yet utter bliss. 5/5📖#np bananayoshimoto #banana #yoshimoto #fiction #japaneselit

I really liked this book, here's why. I felt intrigued with what was happening to every character in the book, which doesn't often happen. Each character had an observably different voice. The authoralso didn't make this a sob story, meaning to say she gave the characters dimensions and didn't make the reader pity her characters. She made the reader see them as humans with complex lives. 4/5📖#fiction #boo

.... um ya. That sucked to read. I have no clue what I just read. It was the most frustrating read if my life. #paulofreire #education

I'm in a reading group and one of the members chose this for me to read this month! #nonfiction #bestseller #katherineboo #bookchallenge

My dad picked this up for me because he believes every young American should read this. Thanks dad! #classics #thoreau #walden

So cute! Oh! And the cover is cute too ;) #childrensfiction #fiction

THIS IS THE SWEETEST BOOK EVER! I'm in love! #fairies #moonchild #swampcreatures #witches #magic #fiction #childrensbooks

?What do you guys think about this quote?! How do we define "rebellion" now a days? AND who is labeled rebellious and why? What connections do y'all make to the present day? #questions #discussions #rebellion #thomasjefferson

First purchases of the year! Assata is mine and the other is my friends!

We went to Mayday Books in Minneapolis, very old school.

#assatashakur #williamdavies #thehappinessindustry

🎉🎉🎉🎉Happy New Year🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

Starting the new year off with a chapter from each of my 2017 intimidating reads!

I hope your year is filled with happiness, compassion, good food and even better books!

#theidiot #dostoyevsky #howardzinn #intimidatingreads #happynewyear

And that my friends is a wrap of 2016 reading... well completed books.

Again another fantastic compilation on teaching. This time it focused on the need to a) recognize the dialects used around us b) recognize the worth and beauty of Ebonics, especially in the classroom and c) that the use of Ebonics does not in any way mean an "inferior" use of English. It does not mean "uneducated". 5/5?

Must read. #lisadelpit #education

The second to last book of the year has been finished!

It was my least favorite of the Hitchhiker's Guide "trilogy". Some of the most beloved characters were not in it and unlike the others, where you could follow the story plot a little, this one was completely different.

I must say I was a little disappointed and incredibly sad. 3.6/5?
#douglasadams #mostlyharmless #hitchhikersguidetothegalaxy

A friend and I went on a walk, found ourselves at Half Price Bookstore. When we got there, there was a 20% off sale!!! #N.P #bananyoshimoto #dianawynnejones #burmeselives #invisible cities #decemberbookbuy

I read this fairly quickly and I think I missed a lot of its beauty, like why it's structured and the composed the way it is.

This books is a story of an extraordinarily strong woman who crosses to the U.S to find her brother and bring him home.

It reads like poetry and is very dark and almost morbid. I really liked it 4.5/5📖