January 2024 - A book by a Palestinian author
I am participating in @the_fold's #readingchallenge again this year, and was excited to pick this book up as part of January's prompt: a book by a Palestinian author. I had requested The Called me a Lioness by Ahed Tamimi and Dena Takruri on @netgalley quite a while back but with the constant straining conflict in Palestine and Israel, it is one that I knew I needed to pick up.
I don't want to get into too much detail on Social Media about my personal feelings and opinions about this war, mostly because I do not feel educated enough to be commenting on it, but I do feel it is our duty to learn about the history and the problems and call for change and support. Tamimi does a fantastic job giving the important background details juxtaposed with the current atrocities occurring in recent years. Near the end there is a large paragraph that I highlighted and think really summarizes the book. Essentially, Tamimi asks readers to consider, what if this was you, your family, your country, how would you respond, and how will you decide what you will do now that you known the truth about what the Palestinians are facing. Learning is a great first step, but action is also important.
I would definitely recommend this book and would like to thank the publisher, @randomhouse and #netgalley for giving me the chance to read and review this book.
What other books should I read to learn more? I would love some recommendations! I also look foward to seeing what other people doing the #foldchallenge2024 read this month!
February 2024 - A Book that has been challenged in Canadian Schools
I went a little overboard with this prompt and spent the whole month read and reviewing banned and challenged books. Check out my journey in this separate blog post here: https://teachreadinspire.wixsite.com/website/post/banned-and-challenged-book-reviews
March 2024 - A Young Adult Mystery by a Racialized Author
I have been meaning to read The Queen of the Tiles by Hanna Alkaf since I was approved for it on Netgalley in February 2022... It has a prominent shelf placement in my school library (which is great!) and so I also see it at work almost daily and it reminds me of how I really should have prioritized it sooner! I'm really glad I did finally get to reading it, and the timing is perfect with this fold prompt!
The Queen of the Tiles takes place over the course of one weekend in a hotel/conference centre where a teen scrabble competition brings together a unique cast of characters still reeling after the sudden death of the former champion, Trina, exactly one year prior. Najwa and her fellow competitors are all vying for the coveted role of champion, and but can't help but be distracted when messages and instagram posts begin trickling in through Trina's account. How can someone who they all watched die suddenly start posting on instagram? And what secrets are these posts trying to reveal? Najwa knows her best friend is dead, but this unusual social media activity makes her start to question whether or not Trina's death really was an accident. And with everyone back together again, maybe now is the perfect time to find out what really happened that fateful day one year ago.
I really enjoyed this book. It is a fantastic clean YA, with enough twists and turns to keep readers interested without anything that might be inappropriate for younger YA readers. I truly was guessing as to what exactly happened to Trina right up until the end of the book. The characters were interesting and well developed and the writing was really well done. My only uncertainty had to do with the setting, as I may have missed or was unaware that it took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, so there was the odd word or description I didn't quite understand right away, but I love that it is set there and that it exposes readers (especially those like the ones at my school in North America) to stories set in other countries and featuring diverse characters!
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me the chance to read this fantastic book. My only wish is that I got to it sooner than I did!
April - A Book by a Sikh Author
Love & Courage (audiobook)
Jagmeet Singh
I was a little late finishing this month's selection, but was glad to cross it off my TBR as I had been planning to read this one for a while.
Recently one of my students, who is also Sikh, corrected me on how to pronounce his name. We had tried to get the pronunciation straight back in September, but I couldn't hear the difference between what he was saying and how I was pronouncing it. Eventually once he became pretty strong with the English vowel sounds in phonics class, he came to be and explained that the two As in his name both were pronounced like short u. Instantly I was able to better pronounce it and I helped the students with pronunciation too. It is too bad that it took me until April to figure it out, but I am glad that I can help other students and adults pronounce his name correctly going forward. As I was listening to Love & Courage, I learned that I had been pronouncing NDP leader Jagmeet Singh's name incorrectly. Much like my student's name, the a is pronounced like a short u sound so Jug instead of Jag.
Beyond learning how to pronounce his name, I learned a lot about his life growing up in Eastern Canada, with a father who struggled with alcoholism and financial planning as a result. Singh opens up about several challenging experiences like dealing with harassment, racism and other forms of discrimination and violence. Many of the lessons Jagmeet learned and shared in his story could be valuable to a variety of readers, who might connect with his experiences or learn from them. By far the most interesting and informative learning opportunities that can be taken away from this story are related to a better understanding of the Sikh culture and how his religion makes him the man that we see campaigning for a better Canada. It is common for people to have a lot of questions about other cultures and religions they are not familiar with, but unfortunately unanswered questions often lead to fear rather than curiosity or an urge to learn more. By sharing his beliefs, the reasoning behind choices he makes like not cutting his hair, and explaining the significance of cultural traditions like wearing a turban, Jagmeet answers the questions his readers may not have even realized they wanted to ask. To me, this is the value in the FOLD challenge and reading diverse books. The more we read, the better we understand the world around us, and the more diverse books we read, the better we understand people. If everyone diversified their reading, maybe we would see a decrease in conflict and discrimination. Anyway, I really enjoyed this memoir, and would definitely recommend it. The audiobook version was great and even though Singh only narrates the prologue, the other narrator is easy to listen to and did a great job with the narration.
May - Historical Fiction by a South Asian Author
The Perfumist of Paris - Alka Joshi
The last few days I have been looking back at my old reviews for the first two books in this series, while preparing to write a review for this one. I had requested this book on @netgalley last winter, but kept putting off reading it after I felt so disappointed with the middle book in the series. When I saw The Perfumist of Paris recommended as @the_fold 's May challenge, a Historical Fiction by a South Asian Author, I decided it was time to finally read it.
In this story we see Radha as a successful professional woman who creates perfumes based on formulas and scent profiles. She is married to a French man named Pierre and together they have two young daughters. Despite being several years later and in a new country, Radha will never forget the child she gave up or the life lessons she learned from her sister Lakshmi. Torn between finding success at work, and being the mother and wife she feels she should be, Radha in the 1970s expresses the same desires and concerns of many middle-aged women today.
I went into this one with a lower expectation than I did with The Secret Keeper of Jaipur, and unfortunately it met those expectations. At about 40% I paused and asked myself "what is actually happening in this book?". There were areas that were interesting, I liked learning about Paris in the 70s, about the job of a perfumist, and having an update on the characters I followed for two books now, but very little action took place. In the words of another reviewer on goodreads @lovefoundinpages : "is this book necessary? no. but is it a nice addition to the series? sure."
The Perfumist of Paris gets ⭐️⭐️⭐️ from me.
Thanks to the publisher @_mira_books_ and @htpbooks for giving me the chance to finish off this series.
June - A book by a Cree author
Life in the City of Dirty Water - Clayton Thomas-Müller
Omg... it's literally the last day of September, but I FINALLY finished and posted on this book!
Check out my full review and post here
July - A Translated Book by a Canadian Press
Sanaaq
Sanaaq
by Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk
Well I'm a little behind, as usual... It's October... but I finally got the chance to read and review Sanaaq. It was a pretty quick read but also one that I got a lot out of. Sanaaq is told in a series of short chapters, which the author refers to as episodes, it has a very large list of characters, but centers primarily around one family. Sanaaq is the mother of two children, and adopts a third. She lives in a tent part of the year and an igloo the rest of the year. Her family subsist primarily on hunting arctic animals such as belugas and seals.
The way of life in the arctic, including the danger, was so interesting. Simple elements in daily life such as getting ready for bed, setting up a tent, preparing food are things that we might not think about, but that can be entirely different depending where (and when) you live. The more harsh elements that are specific to the arctic, such as getting caught in a blizzard, hunting or fishing on thin ice, needing medical care, were of course very enthralling. I also appreciated the descriptions about elements of their culture, especially with families, including marriage and adoption.
The story includes some interactions with missionaries, but for the most part it is about Inuit lifestyle. I think it was pretty cool that the opening section also discussed the translation process, including the author's time working with missionaries as part of this process. I think that the relationship between missionaries and Inuit people is extremely complicated and cannot be described in any generalizations, but I also appreciated reading about those relationships both in the fictional story and in the foreword.
There were two pages that really made me pause and think. The first was a caution from one person to another about hunting animals that are unnaturally skinny. They explained that those animals could be a low weight because they are dying of a disease, making them not safe to eat. This just reminded me of how important the knowledge Indigenous people have and pass on through generations. This valuable information was lost through residential schools and other harms of colonization. The other section that made me think was a reflection on what happens when someone needed to be flown in to a town for medical support. The anxiety around losing a child and not knowing if/when they were coming back. Additionally, being in hospitals and treated by non-Inuit nurses and doctors meant difficulties with the language, the culture and food. That would definitely make the whole process more difficult.
I'm really glad I gave this one a shot, it was definitely a good fit for me and I learned a lot! Thanks to The FOLD for giving me the recommendation!
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