Sunday Post – 6/07/2020

June 7, 2020 Sunday Post 3

The Sunday Post is hosted by the wonderful Kimberly, the Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news, recap the past week, take a look ahead, and showcase our new treasures—I mean books!

Last Week

It’s been another challenging, difficult, but also hopeful week for our country. Although I’m not out there protesting due to health concerns, I haved looked for ways to support the peaceful protesters, and worried about their health and safety. I deplore both the violence that has erupted from or in the shadow of some protests, and the many recorded incidents of police and other law enforcement forces mistreating and even brutalizing protesters and journalists. And through it all, the coronavirus continues to spread.

In the face of all this, blogging about my reading or my safe and privileged life seems trivial. Instead, this week I have tried to use this platform to add my voice to those calling for justice and reform. In the past, I have largely avoided politics on this blog, but I don’t see this as political in a partisan sense. The inequities and injustices in our country that have been laid bare in recent months should trouble everyone who believes in the ideals of justice and equality, regardless of party or religion. They should particularly trouble Christians, of whom I am one, because they are so antithetical to Jesus’s injunction to “love your neighbor as yourself.” And frankly, it’s appalling that the country as a whole is only now taking notice. The black community in particular has been trying to tell the rest of us what’s going on for a very long time, and we haven’t been listening. I hope very much that we will listen now, and learn and grow, and change things for the better for all people.

For me as an individual white person, that means working to uproot my own unconscious biases (because we all have them), listening to black voices (and other people of color), and being willing to be uncomfortable as I do both those things. As a reader and blogger, it means pushing myself to read and review more diversely, especially black and POC authors. As a crafter, it means consciously seeking out BIPOC designers and yarn and fiber dyers and buying from them. And it means doing these things not only now, in this moment, but in the future.

Last Week on the Blog

This Week on the Blog

  • Booked For Death, by Victoria Gilbert – blog tour, review
  • WIP Wednesday – 6/10/2020 – tentative
  • News & Notes – 6/13/2020 – tentative
  • Sunday Post – 6/14/2020 – tentative

What I’m Reading/Watching

Reading: I finished rereading This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart and I’m most of the way through The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge, but I have found it hard to read this week. I did start Booked For Death (Victoria Gilbert; ARC) for next Monday’s tour stop, which I plan to finish today. And I started reading Tracey Livesay’s forthcoming Like Lovers Do (ARC) for the COYER Quarantine Diversity Readathon, because a friend has been recommending her for years. I’m also reading This Book is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewell; it’s a middle-grade book.

Listening: I finished Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Next up is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the longest and my least favorite of the bunch (mostly because I loathe Umbridge.)

Watching: I finished the last of the Lord Peter Wimsey & Harriet Vane miniseries, Gaudy Night. We rewatched the first Adventures of Sherlock Holmes episode, “A Scandal in Bohemia” (from the Jeremy Brett series.)

We watched a slightly condensed, filmed stage version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (called Midsummer 90) from the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia. I highly recommend this theater: the acting company is diverse and extremely good, they make Shakespeare relevant and intelligible to modern audiences, and their performances are engaging, evocative, and fast-paced. The theater, the Blackfriars, is a modern replica of the indoor theater owned by Shakespeare’s company of actors, and the modern actors perform as Shakespeare’s company did: with the house lights on so they can see and interact with the audience, with no scenery and minimal props, and with costumes that suggest the characters, rather than historically-accurate costumes. If all that sounds interesting to you, the ASC plans to continue to offer digital presentations through their BlkFrsTV ticketed streaming platform once they reopen, so you can watch them from wherever you live. (Unfortunately, we saw Midsummer 90 on the last night it was available, and there are no shows currently available, so you’ll have to wait until the next one.)

And we watched Ava Duvernay’s A Wrinkle in Time. I loved the casting and some of the directorial decisions, but felt the movie as a whole didn’t quite capture some of the spirit and message of the original book. And frankly, I missed the whole sequence with Aunt Beast. I feel a reread coming on.

Added to the Hoard

For Review or Review Consideration

Book cover: Like Lovers Do, by Tracey Livesay

Many thanks to Avon for Like Lovers Do! (Click title for Goodreads link.)

Purchased (Kindle, print, or audio)

Kindle (sale): Aurora Rising; Lady Midnight; Lord of Shadows; Queen of Air and Darkness; This Book Is Anti-Racist (Click title for Goodreads page or my review.)

Stay safe, stay healthy, stay kind… and may you find books a haven in the coming weeks.

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