Book 30 (Again!) Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older
Okay, so, first, my confession. You may notice this is my second post marked book #30. The thing is... I was thinking more and more about Cairo by G. Willow Wilson. That was the second book I read this year that was illustrated by a PoC, written by a white person. The first one, Rhymes With Lust, was a great read and really advanced my project. The illustrator was famous, and I learned something about the history of comics... well, you probably read my summary.
Anyway, I didn't feel that way about Cairo. While it's true that the illustrator is Middle Eastern, I just didn't get that much out of the book as far as the project is concerned, and the author is white. So, I decided to drop it from my final list, because I was (and am still) pretty sure I'd finish out reading more than 50 books. So hence we have #30 for the second time.
Has anyone else done anything like that? I might still include it in a list of "related books" but I just... well, in the end it just didn't feel like it counted, if that makes any sense.
Shadowshaper is an amazing book, one of the best I've read for this project. The protagonist, Sierra, is a teenage Carribbean-American girl. It's so lyrical, and really different than anything else I'd read so far. (It does remind me of a great book I read before I started the project, Gabi: A Girl In Pieces by Isabel Quintero.) I had read 20-30 pages of Half-Resurrection Blues by the same author but it didn't really grab me. This book, however, was amazing from page 1. So amazing that I'm considering giving Older another try with Salsa Nocturne, which is a collection of short pieces.
This book is short, partly due to its status as a YA novel. It's just come out this year. It does include some fantasy elements and there is some violence. I enjoyed everything about it.
Anyway, I didn't feel that way about Cairo. While it's true that the illustrator is Middle Eastern, I just didn't get that much out of the book as far as the project is concerned, and the author is white. So, I decided to drop it from my final list, because I was (and am still) pretty sure I'd finish out reading more than 50 books. So hence we have #30 for the second time.
Has anyone else done anything like that? I might still include it in a list of "related books" but I just... well, in the end it just didn't feel like it counted, if that makes any sense.
Shadowshaper is an amazing book, one of the best I've read for this project. The protagonist, Sierra, is a teenage Carribbean-American girl. It's so lyrical, and really different than anything else I'd read so far. (It does remind me of a great book I read before I started the project, Gabi: A Girl In Pieces by Isabel Quintero.) I had read 20-30 pages of Half-Resurrection Blues by the same author but it didn't really grab me. This book, however, was amazing from page 1. So amazing that I'm considering giving Older another try with Salsa Nocturne, which is a collection of short pieces.
This book is short, partly due to its status as a YA novel. It's just come out this year. It does include some fantasy elements and there is some violence. I enjoyed everything about it.