Hi everyone, my name is Cynthia let's
talk books. And today I'm here to talk
about all of the books that I read in
August.
I am still keeping up with,
kind of the different categories and the
diversity in the books that I'm reading
but I haven't figured out a great way
to share that with you all without just
like listing things. I want to create
like a nice little graph
and it's actually not that difficult but
I just haven't sat down and done it.
So for now I'm just gonna go ahead and
share the books that I finished
in August starting with Whose Body? by
Dorothy Sayers. So this is the first
in the Lord Peter Whimsy
series. So Kazen was actually the one
who
recommended these books to me because of the audiobooks.
She said that the first one is
actually not
narrated, narrated by the same person in
the audiobook so I went ahead and got it
in
physical form and this one was okay.
I think it was just such a shift from
what I was reading at the end of the
previous month.
The mystery novel like just the pacing
was
lower and you know I
used to read a lot of Agatha Christie
and I haven't in a while, so I was just
not used to the style.
So I ended up giving this 3 out of 5
stars.
So I will be continuing with
the Lord Peter Whimsy series but I'll be
checking them out
in the audiobook.
The next book that I finished in August
was Bone Crossed
this is book number four in the Mercy
Thompson series.
This was a good book. What did I
give it? Four stars
because it was action-packed okay. If you
like plot in your books the Mercy
Thompson series has
tons of plot. This one had maybe
a little too much plot but I love the
characters, I love the dynamics, I love
just everything about it, so
it still hit the spot. But I did have to
take breaks while reading it
so it was just there's a lot going on 
and so I took breaks while I was reading
it. Where usually these books are ones
that I can just pick up and like read in
one sitting kind of a thing.
Next up is from the Love Sugar Magic
series
by Anna Mariano, A Dash of Trouble.
This is a middle grade Latinx story
about brujas.
And everyone who talked about this,
recommended this book, was
absolutely 100% right. It is an adorable
wonderful book. Be prepared to
be hungry while reading it. The family in
the story owns a bakery
and so I have had such a craving for
pan dulce.
It is just, I'm gonna need to get my
hands on some
soon. But so you follow this little
girl who
is seeing her family keeping secrets
from her and she's gonna find out
that they are brujas.
Next on my list of books I read in
August was Medical Bondage: Race, Gender
and the Origins of American Gynecology
by Deidre Cooper
Owens. If you're interested in the
history of medicine
and those kinds of topics, I would
recommend this book is short
some chapters are a little bit heavy but
I do feel like the first couple of
chapters
are the most important and that is where
Cooper Owens goes into some of these
"founding fathers"
of the gynecological field in the US
and shows us that the Black women they
used, the Black slave women they used for
their experimenting for their surgeries
that, you know, that made them famous were, were slaves right. That these women
didn't have the ability to give consent
to be part of these experiments and that
they were actually
really important in the development of
this field
and they have not gotten the credit. It
also
also speaks to this theme of the way in
which Black
female bodies have been used throughout
history to
develop a kind of, very white
washed professions and ideas
and the injustice of it all.
This, she also goes into, in the last
chapter she goes into
the way that after the end of slavery
why
people who were doing these kinds of
medical experiments needed a new group
of vulnerable people to experiment in.
That
Irish immigrant, immigrants became
kind of, the source of that
and you know, basically the exploitation
that has been inherent in a lot of
medical developments. Yeah I will be
talking about this book and these topics
in one of the classes that I'm teaching
this
this semester. I'm teaching class on
the history of reproductive rights
and so I will be making race and class
really important elements of it because
it just, it has always, these themes have
always been
present in this history. So I do
recommend this book.
The next book that I finished in August
was That Could be Enough by Alyssa Cole.
I love Alyssa Cole! If you like Hamilton
the musical and all those stories,
you will probably like this book. This is
following
one of the women that helped
Hamilton's wife write like his memoirs
and preserve his legacy
and as she falls in love with another
woman.
And it was cute and
it didn't hit the spot quite the way
other Alyssa Cole's books have for me
but this was was quite good. So I gave it
3 out of 5 stars
and it's a novella, it's short so I
really recommend it. Especially
like I said, if you're really into
Hamilton, that time period and you want a
good sapphic romance.
Next I read Reproduction on the
Reservation:
Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in
the Long 20th Century by Brianna
Theobald.
This is such an important book the field
of like native studies.
There's still a lot of work to be done
to fully understand everything
of this history. This one in
particular really
kind of emphasizes that the kind of
eugenics that was developed in the US
didn't just use immigrant women like
if you've seen the documentary film
No Mas Bebes, you
will know that the field of eugenics
was that, cCalifornia was at the forefront
of that field and a lot of,
there was a lot of forced sterilization
of especially
Latinx immigrant women
and what this book is adding is that
this kind of um experimentation, eugenics
type of things were also affecting
women on reservations and 
the context is, is quite different
because of the kind
of power and colonialism
that was going on in the restorations, is
still going on in the reservations
and it was just, it was a fantastic read.
I also,
it also goes into some of the native
women that became
nurses and that really helped to
bridge the gap between scientific
medicine
and native practices on reservations and
it's just such a well-told story. I
found it quite accessible to you for
non-academics
so much so that I will be assigning a
chapter of this book to my students
and it's just ,if you're interested in
topics of reproductive rights
this is one of those fantastic books
that
I am highly recommended .It does really
good history,
just excellent. The next book that I
finished in
August where to go
was Always Running: La Vida Loca Gang
Days in LA by Luis Rodriguez.
This is another book that I'll be using
in one of my classes. I don't have a
choice on this one actually but
it turned out to be a really good book.
If you're looking for a book 
that is a kind of memoir of somebody's
life
in in the gang world, I think this this
does a fabulous job of taking you
through that. It also gives you
a really, a window into East LA
at in the 60s. That is one of
my takeaways from, from this.
Content warnings, a lot of content warnings
for violence,
for rape, sexual assault,
gun violence, just a lot of that was
happening and the author takes you
through his experiences with that. But
also through the activism
that a lot of Latinx and Black students
had to develop in East LA in order to
get
simple things like, you know, brown and
Black teachers in the school district.
Most of the teachers teaching at the
public schools were white
and most of the student body was not and
that created a lot of conflict
and a lot of injustice because the
racism from the white teachers
really really came through and you
really see that here.
So I do recommend it, you see all my
tabs in here because i'm going to be
reading this with
one of my classes but it's a good
book.
I think i gave it, what, four, so it's
probably more of a 3.5 out of 5 stars
but 
I do recommend it, if you're looking for
something like this for
Latinx heritage month which is coming
right up.
Okay the next book was Bloody Bones. This
is book number five in the Anita Blake
series. I can't talk much
about some of these books that are you
know like four, fifth in a series but
the Anina Blake series is really
it's really nice. I'm just, I'm really
enjoying it. This was another one of
those super action-packed, I gave it
three out of five stars because I didn't
like it as much
as some of the earlier books. So this
kind of like
took the series in a little bit of a dip
for me but
yeah but I'm going to keep reading
because I'm really into into the
characters. This, this kick-ass
woman who raises the dead and
can do other things, who can do lots of
other things. There's also a love
triangle
in this one that I already know is going
to be developing
in a really fun way.
So that's all I will say here.
This was a fun mystery
of the week kind of story and I
am really looking forward to see where
the rest of the story goes. So I'm moving
on to the next book.
Next was a buddy read that I did with
Shannon over at That's So Poe.
We read The Beautiful Ones by Silvia
Moreno-Garcia.
So if you've been watching my channel
for any period of time, you know I
am really enjoying Silvia Moreno-Garcia's
books. This is one of the few books that
I hadn't yet gotten to.
And it's really, one of the things I love
about her as a writer is that
she's not afraid of just switching
genres. Like her books are all like
different sub genres and she does such a
fantastic
job in each one. This one
was earlier in her career and I can see
where she was developing certain things.
It's set in 19th century Paris, kind of
a turn of the century when there's lots
of things changing. There are lots of
things in flux in society.
We're following a main character who is
kind of a social climber. So it's a kind
of social climber story
he's been in love with this woman his
whole life but she
has married into the aristocracy, she was
a member of the aristocracy,
and now she's inaccessible to him except
for her husband's
cousin. Yes her cousin, who is
just entered the marriage market and
he sees her as his way into his ex's
life. Lots of social
drama ensues. This is one of those books
where there's not a lot of
action. There's a lot more character
analysis and character development.
Shannon did talk more about what some of
her critique of this book
was and so I will link her video
down below for you to check out.
I really enjoyed this book because it
really
fits the genre of romance quite a bit
and
it was just what I needed when I started
to read and I recognized
some of its flaws here like
there are, there's characters that could
have been handled a little bit more
complexly,
things that could have been a little bit
more unexpected than they ended up being
but but it really hit the spot for me.
Like it was just exactly what I needed
as I was
getting more and more stressed trying to
prepare for the for teaching  in the Fall
semester remotely.
All my teaching is online and it's the
first time that all my teaching is
online.
So you know yeah, it was a lot of, a lot
of pressure
and this book was a very, it was just an
excellent companion.
The next book that I read I
am gonna limit what I say on it because
I'm gonna do another
video on it it is, Lobizona
by Romina Garber. This is a recent
YA Latinx inspired
book and it's about
a where, a female werewolf, a teenage
werewolf
who doesn't know she's a werewolf. Every
month, she takes pills that kind of
send her into a bit of a coma so that
she doesn't
experience like the full transformation.
The theme of immigration is very
related here. She's an immigrant from
Argentina, so is her mother. She's
undocumented
and the fear of that really
overlays or is intertwined with the fear
of what she goes through every month. I,
it's a really really nice story. It has
flaws. I think this is this might be the
author's debut
so like not everything was evenly
paced.
There were some, like the theme of
immigration
was just a little like knock you on my
head with it.
But it really plays with important
themes and one of the things that I
think
it does really wonderfully is the way it
talks about menstruation
and it's not something I see every day
in books. So the
the next video I'm going to do is
actually going to talk all about
menstruation and fiction
and largely inspired by my reading
of Lobizona.
The next book I finished was Who Fears
Death?
by Nnedy Okorafor. Okorafor has now
become
like a must read, I need to read
everything she has ever written
because I have really enjoyed and loved
everything that she has written.
Everything I've read from her. Who
Fears Death?
is one of the longer books I've read of
hers.
I didn't realize how long it was because
I read it on ebook but
it is an amazing story about, it's this
like post-apocalyptic
African set story in which you follow
this character who
whose mother was
raped. She was raped by a kind of
colonizer group of men and
on purpose. Like the purpose was to rape
her and the child we follow,
you know, we're seeing how her life is
affected by being the product of this
rape.
How how she doesn't fit into a
society in which she is
clearly the product of rape
because of her skin color. She's got
lighter skin
and so obviously doesn't fit in
but how she tries to. There's a lot of
magic involved in here, a lot of kind
of
almost like religious practices involved
in the magic.
And it's also about kind of
parenthood and parent-child
relationships,
a found family. It's
just a really beautiful book. Obviously
lots of content warnings for
you know, the on the page rape which is a
continuing theme throughout the story,
for violence, for a lot of misogyny,
a lot of sexism, a lot of racism.
All of that is in this book
but I thought it was very beautifully
beautifully handled
by Okorafor. Next
I will i'll try to not say too much
about You Had Me At Hola by Alexis Daria
because I just posted a full review of
it. It's a
latinx romance novel and it is
fantastic. If you need a little joy in
your life,
pick up You Had Me At Hola because it's
gonna give you
that and then some. There we go!
Lastly, right on time to fit into this
wrap up, I read The First Rule of Punk
by Celia Perez, this is another, okay if
you need
joy and a fast easy read this.
This is the book for you! The First Rule
of Punk follows
a young Mexican-American woman who's
really into punk music because of her
father .Like he introduced her to it.
Her mother is a professor of literature
and she just got a job in Chicago. So
off she goes to Chicago with her mom and
she is having to make friends in this
new school
and figure everything out and she
doesn't feel
connected to her Mexicaness
even though her mom keeps kind of like
pushing her on it.
And it's about, you know ,one of the
themes is that there's no right way
to be a Mexican-American and I just,
it filled my heart with love to read this
book.
Yeah, just really hit home even though
I'm an immigrant, so I'm, you know, I'm not
first or second generation like the main
character.
But that idea of finding your, your
people, your community,
finding where you belong and merging all
the different parts
of who you are right...
yeah it's just beautiful and if you love
punk
music you're gonna love this probably
even more because there's a lot of fun
happening in here. Personally I'm not
but like I could appreciate how the
author was bringing it
in. It was just so fantastic. So
that's it, that's it, those are all the
books that I read in
August and overall I had a really
great
reading month even though
it was not as much as I usually hope
to read
but I was also doing all the preparation
for classes. So that
every September, every August, this
happens. I start reading a little bit
less
because I'm focusing on my students and
I'm setting everything up for them but
let me know if you've read any of these
books. I would love to chat with
anybody that's recently read Who
Fears Death? I really want to chat to
someone about this book
or any of the other ones, Lobizona keep
an eye out for that
that video coming up next. But 
thank you so much for watching and I'll
see you in the next one. Bye.
