Author: Katisha Smith

Welcome to Read This Book, the newsletter where I recommend a book you should add to your TBR, STAT! I stan variety in all things, and my book recommendations will be no exception. These must-read books will span genres and age groups. There will be new releases, oldie but goldies from the backlist, and the classics you may have missed in high school. Oh my! If you’re ready to diversify your books, then LEGGO!!

It’s the first day of the 2020 Republican National Convention. While last week’s Democratic National Convention included a powerful and poignant speech from former First Lady Michelle Obama, speakers at the 2020 RNC will include the St. Louis couple who pointed guns at peaceful BLM protestors.

The 2020 election is critical and will determine America’s future trajectory for generations. Will we continue on the path of embracing bigotry in all of its many forms or will we return to a progressive path focused on inclusion and equity? Today’s book recommendation is apt for this time where we are on the precipice of re-electing a president who will do anything and everything to stay in office.

All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward tells the behind-the-scenes drama during the Watergate investigation, the biggest political scandal in US history. Beginning with an article about a botched burglary at the Democratic headquarters in The Watergate Hotel, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward delivered headline after headline of the most devastating political investigative journalism of the 20th century. It lead to a Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post, toppled a president, and inspired generations of aspiring journalists.

I read All the President’s Men when media was focused on the Mueller Investigation. While reading about an administration that constantly battled journalists and the freedom of the press, gleefully flaunted their bigotry, and did whatever it took to keep their political power, I wondered if this story was about the 1970s Nixon Administration or the current Trump Administration. The similarities in the corruption surrounding both men are glaring and unsettling.

Like his predecessor, Donald Trump cares nothing about the people and only about the power that comes with being president. In the words of philosopher George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Unless we learn from the Watergate scandal and the subsequent downfall of the Nixon Administration and reject a second term for President Donald Trump, we will be doomed to suffer the unprecedented consequences of an unethical president with unchecked power.

If you have never read All the President’s Men, then there is no time like the present. Our future depends on it.

Until next time bookish friends,

Katisha

Find more of me on Book Riot.

Find more books by subscribing to Book Riot Newsletters.

Welcome to Read This Book, the newsletter where I recommend a book you should add to your TBR, STAT! I stan variety in all things, and my book recommendations will be no exception. These must-read books will span genres and age groups. There will be new releases, oldie but goldies from the backlist, and the classics you may have missed in high school. Oh my! If you’re ready to diversify your books, then LEGGO!!

On Saturday, the book world will mark the would be centennial birthday  of beloved author, Ray Bradbury, born on August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois.

Ray Bradbury is one of the most celebrated American writers of the 20th century with literary works in genres from fantasy and science fiction to mystery and horror. In fact, The New York Times called Ray Bradbury the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream.  When he died in 2012, Bradbury fans were comforted by turning to his many engaging stories, where his words and the reader’s imagination met and married.

Stories like The Veldt or The Martian Chronicles may immediately come to mind when super fans think of Ray Bradbury, but most people know Ray Bradbury through Fahrenheit 451, the novel included in many high school reading lists. Despite being another required book to read by a dead white guy, Fahrenheit 451 is still one of the all-time favorite books among American high school students.

Nevertheless, if you are like me, one of the few students who missed reading Fahrenheit 451 in school, then you may be reluctant to add this book to your TBR. If you’re wondering, “What’s the point of reading it now?!” My answer to you is, “The best time to read a good book is now. The second best time is next.” Also, Fahrenheit 451 is one of those classic books that feels contemporary.

In a world where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen don’t put out fires. They start them. Guy Montag is a fireman whose job is to destroy the most illegal commodity, the printed book, along with homes in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the purpose of his job or the destruction it causes until he meets his young neighbor, Clarisse. She introduces Montag to a past where people did not live in fear and shows him the possibility of living in a world where people seek books instead of the mindless chatter of television. When his wife Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.

Honestly speaking, I didn’t love Fahrenheit 451. For me, it was a case of an intriguing concept that wasn’t well executed. However, I would still recommend this book to others because one person’s 1-star book is another person’s 5-star book. Fahrenheit 451 is more like a 3-star book for me. In the end, I just felt “meh” about it. I first read Fahrenheit 451 years ago, so it is possible I would feel differently reading the novel now. However, I doubt I would fall in love the second time around. Even with my lackluster feelings about Fahrenheit 451, I still think it’s a must read for any book nerd and especially for book nerds who love science fiction, speculative fiction, or dystopian narratives.

Like other books in this genre I’ve enjoyed in the past, what I like most about Fahrenheit 451 is how relevant the story feels. As technology continues to become more ingrained in our lives, reading Fahrenheit 451 (where flat screen TVs take up entire walls and tiny wireless earbuds are household staples) made me think Ray Bradbury was a prophet. Even the disregard and disdain for information and knowledge in the novel feels like Bradbury is providing insight and commentary on our current society. Fahrenheit 451 was published over 60 years ago, but reads like it was published last week.

Fahrenheit 451 could be your next 5-star read, but you’ll never know until you put it at the top of your TBR. Do it now. Thank me later.

Until next time bookish friends,

Katisha

Find more of me on Book Riot.

Find more books by subscribing to Book Riot Newsletters.

Welcome to Read This Book, the newsletter where I recommend a book you should add to your TBR, STAT! I stan variety in all things, and my book recommendations will be no exception. These must-read books will span genres and age groups. There will be new releases, oldie but goldies from the backlist, and the classics you may have missed in high school. Oh my! If you’re ready to diversify your books, then LEGGO!!

I know it’s been a couple of weeks since the announcements of the 72nd Emmy nominations, but I’m still celebrating the record number of Black actors who were nominated! Although, the number of Latinx (and Asian) actors nominated was lacking, so there are miles to go until we have proper representation when recognizing the diverse acting talents on the big and small screens. Books were also part of this #BlackExcellence celebration with Kerry Washington being nominated as Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her portrayal of Mia Warren in Little Fires Everywhere.

Set in Celeste Ng’s hometown of Shaker Heights, Ohio during the late 1990s, Little Fires Everywhere is a novel about two families brought together through their children. Mia Warren along with her teenage daughter, Pearl, live in the Richardson Family’s rental home. Moody Richardson quickly befriends Pearl and introduces her to his family and the established home life that is the exact opposite of the life Pearl shares with her artist mother. Soon, all four children are drawn to both Mia and Pearl.

When the Richardson’s old family friends seek to adopt a Chinese American baby, a custody battle erupts and dramatically divides the placid, progressive suburb of Shaker Heights with mothers Elena Richardson and Mia on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives in the custody case, Elena uses her journalist training and personal connections to uncover the secrets of Mia’s past. However, her obsession comes at unexpected and devastating costs.

What initially drew me to Little Fires Everywhere was the setting. Although I am not from Cleveland, I have lived in the area for the past decade. The only thing I know about Shaker Heights is it’s on the east side of Cleveland. It was interesting to learn a little history about Shaker Heights being a community that was planned with a purpose. I wasn’t the only Cleveland resident interested in this story. Not only was Little Fires Everywhere the one book at the top of my wish list, it was one of the most checked out books at the Cuyahoga County Library!

Although I don’t have children, the duality of motherhood in Little Fires Everywhere was compelling and had me constantly wondering. If I was a mother, would I be more like “Go with the flow” Mia or Elena, the mother who lives by rules and structure as a way of life. By the end, my heart was aching for both Mia and Elena, even though I thought they both deserved the consequences of their actions. Another aspect I absolutely loved about Little Fires Everywhere was being satisfied with the ending of the story while also yearning for more story. You know a book is really good when it leaves you wanting a sequel!

If you haven’t read Celeste Ng yet, Little Fires Everywhere is an excellent start. If you’ve only read Ng’s debut novel Everything I Never Told You, then don’t stop there, give her sophomore novel a read as well.

Until next time bookish friends,

Katisha

Find more of me on Book Riot.

Find more books by subscribing to Book Riot Newsletters.

Welcome to Read This Book, the newsletter where I recommend a book you should add to your TBR, STAT! I stan variety in all things, and my book recommendations will be no exception. These must-read books will span genres and age groups. There will be new releases, oldie but goldies from the backlist, and the classics you may have missed in high school. Oh my! If you’re ready to diversify your books, then LEGGO!!

Weeks after Brit Bennett’s sophomore novel The Vanishing Half was published in June 2020, Rioters were singing its praises, and HBO announced it won the heated auction to adapt the novel into a limited series. When it comes to writing critically acclaimed books Hollywood is eager to adapt, Brit Bennett is two for two. Her debut novel, The Mothers, was optioned by Warner Bros. with Kerry Washington as the producer less than a year after it was published.

In Brit Bennett’s The Mothers, Nadia Turner should be reveling in her last year of high school. Instead, the rebellious seventeen-year-old beauty is grieving her mother’s recent suicide. During this summer before college, Nadia splits her time between her God-loving, best friend, Aubrey, and the local pastor’s son, twenty-one-year-old Luke Sheppard, the former football star now waiting tables following a career-ending injury. Nadia and Luke’s summer romance results in a pregnancy and subsequent cover-up that will impact the rest of their lives. As the years pass, Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey become adults living in debt to the choices they made that one fateful summer.

Standouts from The Mothers are without a doubt all of the insightful quotes that will linger on your brain long after you’ve finished the book. Bennett’s beautiful prose will have you unable to put this book down until you learn how this love triangle between Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey will end. It’s why I devoured most of this book during a two-hour plane ride! I needed to know if any of these relationships were strong enough to survive all the secrets and lies.

It is difficult to discuss in detail exactly what I love about The Mothers  without giving away important plot points because the interaction between the characters is really what drives the story. Overall, I love the focus on relationships between friends lovers, and family and how secrets affect those relationships. Often, we think keeping secrets from the people we love is for their own protection. However, if we’re honest, we would admit it is really to protect ourselves. That is very much evident in the Luke-Aubrey-Nadia love triangle.

Also, like many books I have thoroughly enjoyed, the ambiguous ending to The Mothers left me wanting more. I will always give my seal of approval to a book that leaves the me wanting more story. I want a sequel about how Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey are dealing with middle age life. Have they healed from the pain they caused each other? Are they even still friends?

I was engrossed in The Mothers from beginning to end. When I finished, I wished there was just one more chapter. Now, I am just “patiently” waiting for that adaptation.

Until next time bookish friends,

Katisha

Find more of me on Book Riot.

Find more books by subscribing to Book Riot Newsletters.

Welcome to Read This Book, the newsletter where I recommend a book you should add to your TBR, STAT! I stan variety in all things, and my book recommendations will be no exception. These must-read books will span genres and age groups. There will be new releases, oldie but goldies from the backlist, and the classics you may have missed in high school. Oh my! If you’re ready to diversify your books, then LEGGO!!

August 9th was National Book Lovers Day, the unofficial holiday to celebrate reading and literature while encouraging people to spend some quality time with a good book. For bibliophiles like you and me, everyday is Book Lovers Day! We devour books like there’s no tomorrow because our TBR is as long as a CVS receipt.

This year, I celebrated Book Lovers Day by spending the day nose deep in the book I’m currently reading, Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, the sequel to today’s book recommendation, The Hunger Games. The nation of Panem lies in the ruins of a place once known as North America. The Capitol keeps the surrounding twelve districts in line with the annual Hunger Games where one boy and one girl from each district fight to the death on live TV. Not only are they entertainment for citizens of the Capitol, the Hunger Games also serve as punishment for past rebellion against the Capitol. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen knows it is a death sentence when she volunteers to take the place of her younger sister, Primrose, in the 74th Hunger Games.

When The Hunger Games published in 2008, I was in deep grad school mode. As a 3rd year PhD student, the only things I read were scientific journals and the back of my eyelids. My introduction to The Hunger Games was through the adaptation, which I absolutely hated! Two words: Shaky cam! However, I did enjoy the second movie. The more political overtones of that story increased my interest in the series, but The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 quickly quelled that excitement, and I never watched Mockingjay – Part 2. Despite my roller coaster experience with The Hunger Games adaptations, I finally decided to cross this international bestselling YA dystopia off my TBR because I know to never judge a book by its movie.

What is interesting to me about reading a book after watching its adaptation is I always imagine the characters as the actors who portrayed them in the film. The Hunger Games was no exception. I saw Lenny Kravitz in Cinna, I saw Woody Harrelson as Haymitch, I saw Elizabeth Banks in Effie. I even saw Jennifer Lawerence as Katniss. I was also plenty pissed when I remembered book fans being upset about Amandla Stenberg being Rue and Dayo Okeniyi being Thresh, when both characters are obviously Black in the book. I even caught on to them being Black when I read the main industry for their district was agriculture. *cough* Slavery *cough*

After being so disappointed with the film version of The Hunger Games, I was actually surprised with how much I enjoyed reading the novel. The writing isn’t amazing, but the story is engaging from beginning to end. While I will never turn my nose up at beautiful writing, all I really need in a book is a good story. The Hunger Games gave me a good story.

Despite the darkness surrounding a story about a bunch of kids ordered to kill each other, I didn’t feel that overwhelming darkness while reading the story. Of course there is violence, but it is limited and not overly graphic. Also, the story is told solely from the point of view of Katniss, so the reader only knows what Katniss knows or is told. All of this makes The Hunger Games feel more like a hero’s journey than the story of a bloody battle royale.

Until next time bookish friends,

Katisha

Find more of me on Book Riot.

Find more books by subscribing to Book Riot Newsletters.

Welcome to Read This Book, the newsletter where I recommend a book you should add to your TBR, STAT! I stan variety in all things, and my book recommendations will be no exception. These must-read books will span genres and age groups. There will be new releases, oldie but goldies from the backlist, and the classics you may have missed in high school. Oh my! If you’re ready to diversify your books, then LEGGO!!

Did you know the first Sunday of August is National Sisters Day? Did you remember to give your big or little sis a call? Did you catch up with your sister from another mister? If you didn’t, it’s not a problem. You can give them a call right now! If you’re looking for a book that is not only about sisters, but also feels relevant during this current iteration of the Black Liberation Movement, then look no further than Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. In this debut novel, Gyasi takes the reader on a sweeping and powerful journey that traces three hundred years of the African Diaspora through two sisters separated by circumstance.

Trigger warning for sexual assault

In 18th-century Ghana, Effia and Esi are sisters born in different villages. Known beauty Effia intends to marry the future chief of her village, but rumors spread that she is barren. Instead of marrying a chief, Effia marries James Collins, the British governor of Cape Coast Castle. There, Effia lives comfortably in the palatial castle, unaware of the horrors occurring beneath her in the castle’s dungeons. Esi is the beloved daughter of renowned warrior Kwame and his wife, Maame. After her village is raided and her parents are killed, Esi is captured and imprisoned in the dungeon of the Cape Coast Castle where she is raped by a drunk British officer before being shipped off to America. One story thread follows Effia’s descendants through Ghanaian civil warfare and British colonization while the other thread follows Esi and her descendants in America from the plantations of the South and the Civil War to the Great Migration and 20th-century Harlem through the present day.

When I tell you Homegoing rocked me … Baby! I cried for almost an hour after I finished it. I usually enjoy most books I read, but it isn’t often that I read a book that moves me. Homegoing moved my entire soul. It made me feel seen as a Black American. It honored the strength and struggle of my ancestors. It reminded me of my transformative study abroad experience in Ghana. It’s been a few years since I read Homegoing, and I still find myself thinking about it from time to time. I constantly wonder when I will see this story adapted into a miniseries because Homegoing is Roots for a new generation.

I could keep going on about how amazing Homegoing is, but ain’t nobody got time for that! Instead, I will recommend adding Homegoing as the reading companion to Between the World and Me and How to Be an Anti-Racist on your anti-racist TBR because Homegoing uses an easily digestible fictional narrative that shows readers not just the horrors of America’s (and Britain’s) original sin, but how those sins are still alive and well in contemporary society. Like Kenya along with Kenan, Jay, and Sasheer have already told us, the simplest answer to any question dealing with the state of race relations today is “Because of slavery.” Homegoing also shows the beauty in Blackness. It is an unabashed celebration of our humanity and our spirit that is often overlooked and disregarded … because of slavery.

Until next time bookish friends,

Katisha

Find more of me on Book Riot.

Find more books by subscribing to Book Riot Newsletters.

Welcome to Read This Book, the newsletter where I recommend a book you should add to your TBR, STAT! I stan variety in all things, and my book recommendations will be no exception. These must-read books will span genres and age groups. There will be new releases, oldie but goldies from the backlist, and the classics you may have missed in high school. Oh my! If you’re ready to diversify your books, then LEGGO!!

In 2020, the book world will celebrate what would be the centennial birthday of English crime writer P.D. James, born Phyllis Dorothy James on August 3, 1920. Although she rose to fame with the Adam Dalgliesh detective series, I was introduced to James through her dystopian novel The Children of Men.

Set in England during the year 2021, The Children of Men takes place during the aftermath of global mass infertility. The last generation of people known as “Omegas” were born in the mid 1990s, and the last Omega to be born has just been killed in a pub brawl. Apathetic toward a future that in sense doesn’t exist since babies are no longer being born, Oxford historian Theodore “Theo” Faron spends most of his time living in the past and reflecting on the current state of affairs in his diary. It takes the bright and beautiful Julian and her group of unlikely revolutionaries who may hold the key to the survival of the human race to awaken Theo’s desire to live.

Although I enjoy reading different genres, my reading repertoire is lacking in the science fiction department. The Children of Men is the perfect book to read for someone who wants to delve into sci-fi books, but doesn’t naturally gravitate towards sci-fi books. What I enjoyed most is the story feeling grounded in reality since the birth rates in the United States have been declining by 2% each year, and the coronavirus pandemic will likely exacerbate that decline. With facts like these, the concept of the world population no longer being able to reproduce is science fiction I can wrap my head around. The Children of Men not only seems plausible, it seems likely to happen if current trends continue.

Yeah … that got a little dark, but sometimes, I like to embrace living in the Darkest Timeline by diving into books that reflect these bleak times. If you’re looking for an engaging book to do the same, then The Children of Men is an excellent choice.

Not only did I love the realistic sci-fi aspect of The Children of Men, I loved the political commentary within the story that touched on issues like immigration, the judicial system, elections, and human rights. Reading this book made me reflect on how I would behave in this forlorn society. I want to believe I would be revolutionary like Julian and the Five Fishes fighting against the government’s passive tyranny. However, I fear I would most likely be another curmudgeon like Theo living day by day with no regards for the future of humanity that is dying right before my eyes.

The Children of Men is not for the light of heart, but if you take the less traveled road to the disheartening parts of the literary world, then you will find a thought-provoking novel that will stay on your mind for years to come.

Until next time bookish friends,

Katisha

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