Books I’m reading during Summer 2024

I’m enjoying a productive summer so far. Among the books I’ve read, here are Love Letters for Joy, by Melissa See; Marcelo in the Real World, by Francisco X. Stork; and The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig.
https://youtu.be/gZ3zEYKlbLA

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Thanks for Listening, by Molly Horan

This was a fun read. I appreciated Mia’s frustration with her friends for not heeding her advice, and enjoyed her solution, in the form of an anonymous social media account. Mia started out with good intentions, but it seemed as though, inevitably, her self-interests supplanted her altruism. I also read it with the cautionary idea that you aren’t necessarily as anonymous as you think you are online; Mia pretty much recognized every one of her friends who DM’d HereToHelp, in spite of the filters they used to mask their identities. I especially recommend this book for readers who enjoyed Love Letters for Joy by Melissa See and Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao.

Homebody by Theo Parish (free-writing prompt)

Over the summer I’ve been helping out in a high-school English classroom. Each morning, the teacher assigns her students to work from a writing prompt and I decided to tackle those prompts myself. We had a free-writing prompt for Friday, July 12, so I wrote about a graphic memoir that I had read recently, Homebody by Theo Parish.

Homebody, by Theo Parish

I adored this graphic memoir about a nonbinary person coming into their identity. Like the author, Theo Parish, I had to navigate arbitrary rules of gender, all while feeling like these expectations were inauthentic to me. 

Books like this offer much-needed representation for nonbinary individuals. At whatever age, we need to be able to find ourselves reflected in stories.

And as an autistic reader, I appreciate a note from the author's biography, that Parish is neurodivergent. While not specifically addressed in this memoir, our shared neurodivergence was one more reason for this book to strongly resonate with me.

Summer reading, 2024!

In my approach to youth librarianship, one important emphasis for me this time of year is to promote my public library’s summer reading program. Sonoma County Library is hosting its summer reading program from June 1 through Aug. 10, 2024. Readers of all ages can log their minutes spent reading via the Beanstack app or by completing a paper log.
https://youtu.be/Q701MRlc3A4