If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

I, Tina by Tina Turner with Kurt Loder

Triangles by Ellen Hopkins

Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by Gail Honeyman

In the Body of the World by Eve Ensler

I've long had an obsession for anything Eve Ensler does. It was interesting reading more straightforward stories from her life. She is a phenomenon.

All in Pieces by Suzanne Young

From the author bio: "Suzanne moved to Arizona to pursue her dream of not freezing to death."

(Apparently, that's the most notable thing about this book. I remember reading it on a roadtrip to Colorado in March. That's about it. Whoops.)

Small Admissions by Amy Poeppel

"But speaking of apparel," she said suddenly, "clothing can actually be germane to a discussion of pedagogy. What does a uniform say about the culture of a school, for example? What does it tell us about the framework or fabric, if you will, of an institution? AN intentional limitation of choice shows a value being placed on a willingness to conform, but to what exactly? Nd does the uniform mold the child or does the child need intrinsically to fit into a certain mold? And in either case, what are the psychological ramifications in an adolescent as he or she develops autonomy? If I were considering this school, as a student I mean, I would seriously ask myself, 'If business attire is required, is this the right place for me? Do I want to get dressed up every day like I/m going to a Michelle Bachmann rally?' and personally I think my answer would be "No,' no offense to Hudson, of course. The kids I saw in the lobby look very professional and hardworking. Las-abiding. Self-motivated. Something tells me that hyperactive fee spirits who are lacking in impulse control, having problems with executive function skills, and struggling to reach Piaget's formal operaitonal stage wouldn't do too well at a school like this, am I right?"

A Map of the Dark by Karen Ellis

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

We Come Apart by Sarah Crossan and Brian Conaghan

The Princess Saves Herself in This One by Amanda Lovelace

Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

A Darkness More Than Night by Michael Connelly

Genuine Fraud by e lockhart

The Perfect Stranger by Megan Miranda

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Fred Hampton.
Marcus Garvey.
Bobby Hutton.
Nat Turner.
Huey Newton.
Emmett Till.
Khalil Harris

"You know none of this is your fault, right?" Momma asks. 
How in the world did she do that? "I know."
"I mean it, baby. It's not. You did everything right."
"But sometimes right's not good enough, huh?"

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

Captivating. Intriguing. Spellbinding. This book was all of those things. For about the first three chapters. Then I spent too much time trying to figure out what the twist of the book was. All of the media and publicity surrounding The Wife Between Us focuses on assumptions and the inevitable (but supposedly incorrect) conclusions the reader may make. SPOILER ALERT: it's not so innovative. Seriously over-hyped. After 150 pages I didn't care anymore, and only wanted to finish so that I could be in the know.

"One of my psychology podcasts featured the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. It's when you become aware of something - the name of an obscure band, say, or a new type of pasta - and it seems to suddenly appear everywhere. Frequency illusion, it's also called."  This first happened to me when I was moving from Chicago to Lake Powell, Utah.  My friend, G, pointed it out. He didn't know the fancy Baader-Meinhof term. I'm gonna try to lock it in. Ditto "gaze detection," which I've been secretly trying out on my students.

Speaking of students, I teach preschool. So does one of the main characters of this book. That was simultaneously fun and tedious for me.

Otherwise, I would be interested to find out how the authors collaborated on this - did they write together, alternate chapters, take a specific character's POV...? Hrrm.

Still Me by Jojo Moyes

You Can't Touch My Hair (And Other Things I Still Have to Explain) by Phoebe Robinson

To say that I am a fan of Phoebe Robinson is a gi-nor-mous understatement. Listening to 2 Dope Queens is one of my very facorite things to do. And redo. And I wish I still had a bus commute so I could do it morrreee. Ditto Soooo Many White Guys. (If these are things you don't know, GO FIND THEM NOW. Like, why are you still reading this? Go listen to some podcasts, yo!)

There are way too many highlights to capture them all, so I'll just generically slap some quotes up. But I'll also say that the first 30 pages of this book made me laugh out loud (something I rarely do), made me cry (another thing I seldom do), and made me think about things I've thought about before in a whole new way.

"Blackness is not a monolith. ...But some people don't want to believe that, because if varying degrees of blackness become normalized, then that means society has to rethink how they treat black people. In other words, if you allow black people to be as complicated and multidimensional as white people, then it's hard to view them as the Other with all the messy pejorative, stereotypical, and shallow ideas that have been assigned to that Otherness."

"i got into comedy partially because I was not hot. The other part was that I realized I could make people laugh with slick ans narky comments, but honestly, the not-hot factor played a huge role. I was always the girl that made all the boys laugh, and while that never got me any boyfriends, it got me male attention, which I was happy-ish to settle for while they all traipsed off with the better-looking, cool girls...It made me a better, more interesting person because I developed other skills to attract people, and one of those skills is my sense of humor and personality."

Perhaps the part that made me laugh the most most most is when Robinson makes a list of demands for Future Female President.

"3. OK, this is probably the most import request on this list, so if you can only do one thing, I beg of you that it's this: When you get sworn into office, yell, 'I'm a feminist,' and then throw your fist in the air like you're Judd Nelson at the end of The Breakfast Club.
   ...3A. I get that this may seem super aggressive and that politicians are not supposed to ruffle feather, but this would be the ultimate gesture to let women know you have their backs. Now, FFP, if you're Hilary Clinton, you're probably like, 'Can't people tell I'm a feminist because I wear Talbots pantsuits on the regs?' 1. Please don't say 'regs.' So not your stulye, and 2. No, because, your wardrobe screams 'very fancy judge at a chili cook-off in Minnesota' more than it does 'feminist,'so we need you to actually drop the F-bomb into the microphone. And when you do , so many crazy old white dudes are going to freak out that it'll seem like someone just told them there are only seven tickets remaining on StubHub for a Steely Dan concert."

on being one of two black girls in a predominantly white school: "There was always a tinge of loneliness that colored my high school experience. I didn't have a mirror, a soundboard, someone who knew the same things I did because we were from the same cultural tribe."

Robinson also tackles the history of black hair throughout pop culture, schooling me on Angela Davis, Res, and Erika Badu. She also hits many high notes of women on film that didn't lead with the pretty, but with their strength (see CJ Cregg, Felicity Porter, Denise Huxtable, Maxine Shaw...).

The Lying Game by Ruth Ware

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

Bring Me Back by BA Paris

Solo by Kwame Alexander

Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong

The Chalk Man by CJ Tudor

The Darkest Secret by Alex Marwood

We Are Never Meeting In Real Life by Samantha Irby

Listen to Me by Hannah Pittard

Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler

"...maybe it means we've forgotten ourselves. And we keep forgetting ourselves. And that's the big grown-up secret to survival."

"You're only beginning to learn what you don't know. First you must relearn your senses. Your senses are never inaccurate -- it's your ideas that can be false."

"Most of the girls I knew didn't get asked out on dates. People got together through alcohol and a process of elimination. If they had anything in common beyond that they would go out and have a conversation."

"Just what is it that people got accomplished on their days off? She seemed like a writer -- but she never spoke of specific projects. And she never spoke of writing, of sitting down with pen to paper.  ...'Hmm. A writer. I try to engage in the task of setting something true on paper. But if you take art too seriously you wind up killing yourself.'"

"You don't care about consequences? Then it's too late. That he's complicated, not in a sexy way, but in a damaged way. I could tell you damage isn't sexy, it's scary. You're still young enough to think every experience will improve you and in some long-term way, but it isn't true. How do you suppose damage gets passed on?"

"I liked having answers. And of course he understood. Maybe that was what unsettled me, the way he spoke in decrees, but I was always aware that he was  a man. There were no shared sympathies between us. He didn't ever seem to have a question, and I don't mean curiosity, but a throbbing, existential, why-is-it-like-this question. He had already mastered the answer to that Why?"

"Aging is peculiar. I don't think you should be lied to about it. You have a moment of relevancy, when everything is speaking directly to you, expressing you exactly. You move toward the edge of the circle and then you're abruptly outside the circle. now what do you do with that? Do you stay, peering backward? Or do you walk away?"

"How much I had taken for granted...That was the full circle, wasn't it? Learn how to identify the flowers and the fruits so I could talk about the wine. Learn how to smell the wine so I could talk about the flowers. Had I learned anything besides endless reference points? What did I know about the thing itself? Isn't this what you dreamed of, Tess, when you got in your car and drove? Didn't you run away to find a world worth falling in love with, saying you wouldn't care if it loved you back?"

"The lilacs smelled like brevity. They knew how to arrive, and how to exit."

"You love the truth as it applies to everyone else."

"That was the morning I committed the first sin of love, which was to confuse beauty and a good sound track with knowledge."

"I loved his ghost. How impossible it is to forget the stories we tell ourselves, even when the truth should supersede them. That was why he adored me for a minute. Because I saw a beautiful, tormented hero. Rescue and redemption. I never saw him. All promise."

"But I see the marks on people. Strangers who sit at the bar alone and order a drink with intimacy."

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

When Paul Met Artie by G. Neri Illustrated by David Litchfield

"For months, that's all they do -- sit nose to nose in the basement, practicing every sound until it's perfect."

"They record themselves to hear their flaws until there aren't any left."

Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" The Authorized Graphic Adaptation by Miles Hyman

And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman

  This is a simple little nugget. At only 76 pages, it's easily consumed in one sitting. I spent the last 20 in near-uglycry. Written to help the author understand his own struggles with the loss and dementia of those close to him, this hit super close to home. My grandfather spent his last 15 years locked in by Alzheimer's and my dad is currently battling the middle stages of Parkinson's. Surely I'll use some of these lines to cope in the next few years. 

(*sidenote: i'm super impressed by the author's grasp of English. if i didn't know that he was Swedish, i wouldn't know. most works by Swedish authors, translated or not, are grammatically and idiomatically hogwash.)

  "Tell me about school Noahnoah," the old man says. 

  He always wants to know everything about school, but not like other adults, who only want to know if Noah is behaving. Grandpa wants to know if the school is behaving. It hardly ever is. 

  "Our teacher made us write a story about what we want to be when we're big," Noah tells him. 

  "What did you write?" 

  "I wrote that I wanted to concentrate on being little first." 

  "That's a very good answer." 

  "Isn't it? I would rather be old than a grown-up. All grown-ups are angry, it's just children and old people who laugh." 

"Almost all grown adults walk around full of regret over a good-bye they wish they'd been able to go back and say better. Our good-bye doesn't have to be like that, you'll be able to keep redoing it until it's perfect. And once it's perfect, that's when your feet will touch the ground and I'll be in space, and there won't be anything to be afraid of."

  "What does it feel like?" 

  "Like constantly searching for something in your pockets. First you lose the small things, then it's the big ones. It starts with keys and ends with people."

  "Are you scared?" 

  "A bit, Are you?"

  "A bit," the boy admits.

  Grandpa grins. 

  "That'll keep the bears away." 

  "When you've forgotten a person, do you forget you've forgotten?"

  "No, sometimes I remember that I've forgotten. That's the worst kind of forgetting. Like being locked out in a storm. Then I try to force myself to remember harder, so hard that the whole square here shakes."

"It's a never-ending rage, being angry at the universe." 

  "And I don't think you need to be scared of forgetting me," the boy says after a moment's consideration. "...Because if you forget me then you'll just get the chance to get to know me again. And you'll like that, because I'm actually a pretty cool person to get to know."