End Of June Reading, Plus Halfway Through The Year Statistics

It's time for another reading post. Again, I feel like my end of June reading wasn't up to my normal standards but I did end up working almost full-time the entire month, plus three of us received our second Covid vaccines, and we celebrated Rachel's 10th birthday so it's not surprising I didn't have a lot of time to read :) However, read on for my thoughts on what I did end up reading the last half of June.

I've been wanting to read Jackie Robinson's autobiography for awhile now. For the past few years, around Jackie Robinson Day in baseball (April 15), I've taken this book out to read. This year, I finally got it done (but clearly not in April!). I really appreciated not only the baseball aspects of this book, but also how Jackie became active politically after he stopped playing baseball. It really brought home for me how one person (especially of a minority) can't speak for all people of that group. There were also parts of this book which were really hard to read, like about the death of Jackie's oldest son and some of the racism he encountered when he started playing baseball.

This was our book club book. I thought it was an okay book and likely, a very realistic interpretation of India. (I say "likely" because I haven't been to India, nor do I know much about it, so I can't say for sure.) This book wasn't what I thought it was and I ended up not really liking the main character in the end. That said though, this book was an easy read, and parts of it were quite funny. I'm getting Dave to read it because I think it will appeal to him.

This book was a really fun romantic comedy. There were parts of it which brought me close to tears (although not as much as Jiminez's first two books) and I loved getting both main characters' points of view. I'm not sure I love how neat and tidy the ending was but it was a fun book to read.

This book took me forever to read but I did think it was very interesting. It was written by one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement and I'd hoped it would talk a bit more about the history of BLM. However, that was only one piece in Garza's journey of being an organizer. I think if you were someone who loved to work with, or start, political/social justice organizations, you would find this book really interesting. I liked it but I didn't LOVE it. However, I do have some experience with working with social justice organizations so there were parts of it which really resonated with me :)

I didn't realize this was a book for younger readers. However, I thought it was such a good story about a younger transgender person and I'm getting both Sam and Rachel to read it. Every once in awhile they mention someone they know who "wants to change their gender" so I do think kids are more aware of these issues these days then I was when I was a kid. I want Sam and Rachel to know how to be allies for these kids.

This is the last book I read in June. I thought it was a good story, and a cute, light teen romance. Again, it's not one I loved but I would recommend it as a fun, romantic read.

And with that, we're halfway through the year so here are some reading stats for you:

Halfway through the year reading stats

Total books read: 107

Books written by BIPOC authors: 37

Non-fiction books: 26

Favourite books thus far. Please note, these books are in the order I read them, not in order of favourite, and I didn't have a lot of favourites from this quarter of reading.

The Skin We're In -- Desmond Cole

The House In The Cerulean Sea -- TJ Klune

Anxious People -- Fredrik Backman

And with that, I'm off to do some more reading. Now that I'm on summer break, my reading will likely pick up a lot since I'm not working. I have a huge stack of books from the library to dive into so I'm excited to get started on them. However, I always have room for more suggestions on my TBR so feel free to leave amazing book recommendations below!