June Wrap Up

I finished more books in June, although one of them I'd been reading for a long time and several were rereads. A lot of poetry this month.

Books Finished in June

1. Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn
2. The Art of Showing Up: How To Be There for Yourself and Other People by Rachel Wilkerson Miller
3. You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero (reread)
4. Blue Horses by Mary Oliver (reread)
5. Diving Into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich (reread)
6. Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
7. American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes

Thoughts

I've been reading Wherever You Go, There You Are since March when we first started staying home due to COVID19. At first, I strongly disagreed with Kabat-Zinn's insistence on the unimportance of spirituality in meditation (he doth protest too much), but I found the meditations and writing practices helpful, of which I did one per day over the course of several weeks. Kabat-Zinn specializes in pain management, so his practices were pretty relevant for me. Overall, a helpful, practical read for meditation.

I've already talked about how much I enjoyed The Art of Showing Up, but I'm so glad I preordered it, and it certainly came at a good time. Highly recommend for self-care and emotional intelligence. 

Blue Horses, Diving Into the Wreck, and American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin are all poetry collections. I'd read the first two before and reread them quickly, but this was my first complete read of American Sonnets. I heard Terrance Hayes (literally) at the National Book Festival in 2013. I was walking by, heard him reading, and went and sat down. He's a powerful reader and I really enjoyed his poetry, so I made a note of his name and planned to buy poetry from him when I could. Several years later, I bought American Sonnets and started reading, but never finished. This time, I read it completely through over a few days. It's short enough that I could have read it in one sitting, but I wanted to take time to process the poems. He's quite brilliant, and this collection touches on the unfortunately still much too relevant theme of being a Black man in America in fear for his life. Highly recommend.