BookOwl

      5/5 stars   *Spoiler alert!*   Our History Has Always Been Contraband is an interdisciplinary collection of contemporary and historical essays, edited by Colin Kaepernick, Robin D.G. Kelley, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Its aim is to defend the importance of studying and including the Black experience in curricula all over the United States and world, in response to a series of book and curricula bans that brand Black studies as radical and racist (looking at you Florida though it’s not alone in this by any means).   “To talk about the importance of teaching Black History… we must be honest about ourselves and talk about values; values shape what one thinks is important to preserve. The history of Black people throughout the African diaspora has been riddled with stereotypes, myths, and miseducation… Marcus Garvey … who rallied for Black people to move back to Africa, had a mindset that Black Americans were going back to the Motherland to civilize...

3.5/5 stars   *Spoiler alert!*   I’ve been on a bit of a hockey-themed romance tear this month— no, I don’t know exactly why. Canadian Boyfriend was the second of these after Icebreaker , and was a mixed bag for me, earning it a (very subjective) 3.5 out of 5 stars.   “I can't go to prom; I'm going to be out of town visiting my boyfriend in Canada.”   One of the things that I appreciated about both Icebreaker and Canadian Boyfriend were candid descriptions of mental illness and the therapy process. Open discussions about mental health and mental illness in books? Characters bettering themselves through the tough process of therapy and healing? Sign me up!     Perhaps the 3.5 stars instead of 4 stars rating was due to the overreaction I felt one of the characters had to a revelation another one of the main characters gave, one that originated during her lonely teenage years.    Aurora Evans once worked at a coffee shop in the Mall of America,...

4/5 stars    *Spoiler alert!*   Mobility was one of those books that’s brutally honest and doesn’t let go of that. Featuring a heroine that was complicated and gray, it tells one woman’s story of her upbringing in a diplomatic family in locations around the world and the consequences of her life choices as a privileged white woman on the world around her. Particularly as it concerns the climate crisis.   “We don’t think in economic cycles, we don’t think in election cycles … in this [oil] industry, we think in earth time. Geologic time. There’s no short-term problem we can’t wait out.”   In 1998, Bunny (real name Elizabeth) Glenn is a teenager celebrating Fourth of July with abandon. Her father, a diplomat, is posted in Azerbaijan, where readers get to see the greed at work after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, greed in particular by American and other Western companies looking at snatching up oil resources. Bunny doesn’t know much about the world...