BookOwl

  4.5/5 stars   *Spoiler alert!* I am not sure how The Poppy War didn’t win the Goodreads Choice Awards in 2018 in the category of fantasy or debut author. The first entry in the Sino-Japanese War inspired fantasy blew me away.   “Well, fuck the heavenly order of things. If getting married to a gross old man was her preordained role on this earth, then Rin was determined to rewrite it.”   Our protagonist, Rin, won me over quickly with her determination and persistence. (Notice how I say protagonist and not hero .) A dark-skinned peasant girl from the southern provinces of Nikan is slated to be married off by her criminal adopted parents and will do anything to change her fate. Her only hope of getting out of her home village is taking the prestigious national exam and testing into the tuition-free military academy of Sinegard .   Rin studies to the point of self-harm. But she passes the exam and tests into Sinegard , where she is thrown into a brutal academy to...

  “Knowledge, to light the path for humankind,” I said at last. “And this”—patting my rifle — “ to protect humankind when we lose that path.”   I emerge from my writing hiatus with a review for an awesome historical fiction title by Kate Quinn. Diamond Eye is a fictionalized account of a Soviet librarian turned sniper in World War II, Mila Pavlichenko . This fictionalized view of Pavlichenko’s life hews very close to the historical record, with a few twists to suit the narrative style of a novel. I can’t remember the last time I tore through a book so quickly!   Ukrainian-born, Mila had a son when she was barely fifteen years old. The father, Alexei, abandoned them early on. (Spoilers, Alexei really sucks.) So, Mila dedicates herself to her library studies in the hopes of securing steady employment for her and her son to live on. Early in the story, we see her earnestly trying to secure a divorce from her absentee husband.   She figures that it wouldn’t hurt to ...

      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...