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