Books

Book 911: The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison

Book cover of "The Bluest Eye" with Amazon Affiliate linkToni Morrison is one of those authors who have always been on my list, mostly due to the controversy around their books (stupid book banners), but I’ve never gotten around to reading them. Both The Bluest Eye and Beloved were on my The Classics Club list I created back in 2012 and I picked up physical copies sometime after that.

When Morrison passed in 2019, I told myself I would read her works and it took me this long to get to them thanks to always being distracted and just not making an effort. Both are relatively short so ended up on my Rando Book Selector spreadsheet using randomly generated titles from roughly 60 books to slowly chip away at my TBR pile and The Bluest Eye came up as I was planning for a recent vacation and here we are.

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Books

Book 906: Black Cake – Charmaine Wilkerson

Book cover of "Black Cake" with Amazon Affiliate linkWhen someone from the publisher reached out to me about Black Cake, it wasn’t an immediate yes or an immediate no.* I honestly had no idea what I was going to do, I thought it was a beautiful cover (even if I didn’t notice the woman on it for ages) and the multi-generational story drew me in.

What ultimately decided for me was that it was a debut novel, love those most of the time, and my reading list is seriously lacking authors of color and I’ve been saying for years I’m going to expand my reading list. And holy shit y’all I’m so glad I did, this book took me for so many rides.

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Books

Book 900: Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë

Book cover of "Wuthering Heights" with Amazon Affiliate linkWhat a difference eight-ish years makes between reads. I last read this in November 2013 and had some interesting comparisons to Pride and Prejudice and observations about my own love life.

I’m not planning to reflect on that this time, for a couple of reasons, mainly that this read I really felt that perhaps the better Austen comparison is Fanny Price in Austen’s Mansfield Park rather than Darcy. I mean the whole nature versus nurture argument and how responsible are they for what happens and how much of an impact does their upbringing have? SO. MANY. QUESTIONS (and thoughts).

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Books

Book 894: People Like Us (Winsford Green #2) – Ruby Moone

Book cover of "People Like Us" with Amazon Affiliate linkThis is the second installment in Ruby Moone’s Winsford Green series after Dances Long Forgotten. I started the series when I accepted A Christmas Miracle, the fourth book, from Gay Romance Reviews and am glad I started it.

I was really hoping each one would have a contemporary connection like the first book, but this one didn’t have it. That didn’t detract from the story, but I still felt it would’ve been a cool connection between each of the books even though all the characters seem to know/meet each other.

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Books

Book 879: Mr. Jingle Bells (Home of the Holidays #3) – Leta Blake

Book cover of "Mr. Jingle Bells" with Amazon Affiliate link

Three books later, I’ve finally gotten around to the ARC that I requested because it was an opposites attract fake boyfriend story—of course I was going to request it.*

This is the story of Walker, boring frat boy business man whose mom tried to set him up with Casey from Mr. Frosty Pants, and Ashton, glamorous social media rockstar whose sister tried to set him up with Joel from Mr. Frosty Pants. Since that book ended, Casey and Joel have married and Casey, Ashton and Walker have started a marketing company.

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