My Week in Books // 3-30-21

I didn’t have a weekly update for you last week, and this one’s coming at you a day early! It’s funny how my reading life can ebb and flow – just like everything else in life. Sometimes I have a ton of time to read; other times, not so much!

I’ll have my March wrap up for you tomorrow (hopefully with a couple books I hope to finish between now and then!)

It was my birthday this past weekend, so instead of reading, I got to spend a lot of time with my family. It was wonderful and I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday – surrounding by the one’s I love the most!

*** Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge

Libertie started off strong, but as it progressed, it slowed way down and became harder and harder for me to want to pick up. I considered DNFing it due to the pacing, but read another review that said it was worth persevering…I wish I would have listened to my gut and put it down.

It’s not that the premise isn’t interesting – the book is about one of the first practicing Black physicians in what is now known as Brooklyn, NY. Cathy is light-skinned; therefore, she was able to “pass” as white and become a doctor. However, she is abrasive towards her daughter (I understand why), and it left me totally uninterested in the story overall due to her relationship with Libertie.

I didn’t find any of the relationships in this book convincing and that may be a large part of why I didn’t enjoy it. While the writing was great on a sentence level, overall it felt jumbled and incomplete.

*** Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo

What an incredible job Oluo did of mixing history with modern day examples to drive her points home! And while I mostly enjoyed this book, there were parts that I vehemently deny. While many will discredit my opinions and call it white privilege or white gaze or whatever else simply because I am white-skinned, I felt like some of her arguments were a little far-reaching. Having said that, I learned a TON from this book and I’m definitely going to dive deeper into many of the examples she put forth. Maybe I’ll change my mind with a little more education – and I would fully welcome that! This is a book I would highly recommend…in fact, it’s one I plan on rereading in anticipation of absorbing it a little different the second time through.