The Weekly Wrap: April 5th to April 11th

Weekly Review

1. What I’ve Read This Week
2. My Reading Progress
3. Want to Read Updates

Upcoming

4. TBR for the Upcoming Week
5. Looking Forward

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This weekend confirmed I’m 100% a stress reader! I had a big deadline on Saturday night and leading up to it, I read nine books while working on the project 😅. Whatever works, right? The unplanned spike in the books I’ve read has also pushed my 2021 Reading Challenge so that I’m finally “on track” for the first time this year. It’s not that big a deal since I’m very much so a binge reader (therefore, meaning, being “behind” in my reading challenge isn’t that big a deal) but it’s pleasing to see the update on Goodreads.

I’ve read 100 books so far in 2021 – which also means yesterday was the 100th day of 2021!

Last week I finally posted my review of The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor (see here). It was incredibly informative and provided great insight through the breadth of sources Sonya included. I greatly appreciated how a priority of The Body Is Not an Apology was the real-life application of Sonya’s concept of radical self-love.

I also wanted to mention a superb historical romance I read last week: The Heiress Effect by Courtney Milan. It was so funny, so romantic and flat-out entertaining. I loved how Milan created every single character with dimensionality–there were no caricature villains in this novel. Also, the Heroine’s sister’s side-romance was so freaking cute! There are also sub-plots within the novel that address and discuss the elitism, classism, racism, colonialism, and discrimination that existed when The Heiress Effect (1867). The book also engages with feminism, however, there is no mention of Black women’s involvement. If you’re looking for a opposites-attract, historical romance (where the Heroine is the moneybags), go read this book!

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You will like Disability Visibility Edited by Alice Wong if you appreciate:
✨ Essays
✨ Explores the complexity of the disabled experience
✨ Calls upon readers to question their assumptions about disability
✨ Celebrates disability culture in the present (c. 2020)

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You will like Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour if you appreciate:
✨ Literary Fiction
✨ Debut exploring ambition and race
✨ Frankly address the US’s workforce (ahem neoliberal capitalism)
✨ Hilarious bitting humour

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You will like So Sad Today by Melissa Broder if you appreciate:
✨ Personal essays
✨ The definition of MIXED REVIEWS
✨ Described as vulgar, sex-centric and self-absorbed as well as brave, insightful and thought-provoking

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Wow, I have so many books I want to read this week! I’m currently reading Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay and The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi. I appreciate how short each of Roxane’s essays is – it makes the book a perfect one to slowly work my way through.

I’m struggling with The Henna Artist. I have always gone on (and on) about how much I love character-driven novels. Unfortunately, I think The Henna Artist is going to test that declaration. I’m finding it a hard book to get into, but hopefully, since I’ve only read a small bit of it, my feelings change soon.

In addition to these two books, I now have one week to read the first two books in Jennifer L. Armentrout’s Blood and Ash series, since I’ve agreed to a buddy read of the last book.

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This is the first time I’m posting my Weekly Wrap a day late but last week (and yesterday) was so busy. My semester is wrapping up so I have many final projects to submit. As a result, my plans for the rest of the month concern the Blog and Instagram are up in the air – I’ll post when I can and when I want.

Moving on: this week has seen so many new releases that are on my Anticipated Upcoming Releases page!

One of my most anticipated is Love in Colour by Bolu Babalola! It’s the author’s debut, a collection of short stories that reimagines and decolonizes love stories from history and mythology. It released yesterday (April 13th)!

• On April 13, 2021:
  • The Prison Healer by Lynette Noni
  • When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain
  • Second First Impressions by Sally Thorne
  • What Comes After by Joanne Tompkins
  • Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

• On April 15, 2021
  • The Hellion by Harriet Young