Calendar Girls: February 2019

Hey all, Dani here.

Well, it’s the first Monday of the month, which means it is once again time for my Calendar Girls book pick post. I have absolutely enjoyed all of the bookish conversations each month with the other Calendar Girls participants, though it has made my TBR even more massive. Oh well.

Calendar Girls is a monthly blog event that was started by Flavia and Melanie, but is now being hosted by Katie and Adrienne. They are all wonderful ladies, and you should check out their lovely blogs. Oh, and if you go to either Katie or Adrienne‘s Calendar Girls post each month, they will have links to all the other wonderful book bloggers participating in this event.

First, more about the Calendar Girls. It is designed to ignite bookish discussions among readers, and was inspired by the 1961 Neil Sedaka song, Calendar Girl.

Just like the song, each month has a different theme. Each blogger picks their favorite book from the theme, and on the first Monday of the month reveals their pick in a Calendar Girls post. Make sure to post back to the hostess’s post, and both Katie and Adrienne will make a master list for the month. The master lists allow everyone to see the other Calendar Girls’ picks and to pop on over to their blogs. Thus, we all get to chat about books and even make some new friends!

Oh, and you don’t have to identify as female to join the Calendar Girls. We welcome readers of all types. So if this sounds like fun for you, join us in all of the fun bookish conversations.

All right…I do believe that is it for all of the introductory information. Now let’s jump into February’s theme, followed by my honorable mentions and my pick for the month.

The theme for February is…

Black History Month

Favorite Book by a Black Author

Can I just say that this was a difficult theme for me? I realized that a decent number of reads that I liked that happened to have black authors were more classic reads. When it comes to more recent releases, there certainly weren’t as many.

So more classic literature, such as The Color Purple by Alice Walker, or Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, or Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Z.Z. Packer, or poetry by someone Langston Hughes, are some of what I have read that fits this category.

Then I end up with books like The Hate U Give or Pride–or Akata Witch, which are written by black authors, but are still on my TBR, so I can’t call them favorites. Or there’s something like Dear Martin, which was good, but I wouldn’t call it a favorite. Miles Morales: Spider-Man was a really good read, but again, I don’t exactly think it is my favorite.

I almost had Children of Blood and Bone as my winner for this month. The book is outstanding, and I flew through it. This book will probably get a re-read before the sequel is released, too, because I enjoyed it that much. But can I admit to being a little frustrated by some of the author’s social media missteps? Well, yes, I am human, and sometimes I can’t fully separate the author from their creation. Okay, and yes, probably those social media missteps are due to being relatively new to understanding how the publishing industry works, but–come on, suggesting that Nora Roberts used a title to try and get sales because of the success of CoBaB is just a little off. Ahem, sorry about the mini-rant. I still love and recommend this book though.

Thankfully though, I realized that I had another option that I could pick as my winner for this month. So I’ll just go ahead and reveal my book pick for February.

I need to read more N.K. Jemisin. I’ll just go ahead and say that right now. This is actually the only book of hers I have read. But they all sound amazing. She has won numerous Hugo Awards and Nebula Awards, if that doesn’t tell you how great her stuff is. Actually I just picked up this whole trilogy in a bound omnibus, and I plan to buy up all of her other books pretty soon as well.

Now comes the part where I have to be honest. I read this book back in January 2014. I gave it a 4.5 star rating on Goodreads, and my picking this has to do with my moderately short review as well as the vague memories I have of reading this. I’m planning on picking it up again in the near future.

But according to my review, I really liked the characters, especially because sometimes you didn’t know if you could exactly trust them or not. There were some mysteries in the book that were drawn out to the very end, and I obviously didn’t predict the outcomes. And the romance was a bit of a slow-burn, which is not a bad thing at all.

So there you have it…my winner for the month of February. I promise that once I read this book again, I will have a better formulated review up on the blog. But I know that the reviews for N.K. Jemisin are pretty darn positive, and a lot of people hype up her works.

All right, that’s all from me today. If you have any books by black authors to recommend, let me know in the comments. Clearly I need to look for more diversity in authors, not just the characters and content within a book. I’ll be back soon with more bookish content.