February Wrap-Up

A lot of speculative fiction this month, and I needed it. Also, rereading two of my favorite fantasy novels, Graceling and Bitterblue, in preparation for the next in the series, Winterkeep, which I am eagerly awaiting---5 of 34 on the library waitlist! It was my first reread of Graceling since I first read it in 2012 (!) but I own Bitterblue and have read it many times. I'm glad she's going to be a character in Winterkeep. A Traveler in Time is a book I picked up at a Chicago library sale, and have had for a while, but I finally read it. It's such a cozy story about time travel into the 1600s, but it was written pre-1930s, so for me, it's like time-traveling twice. The two Kevin Emerson books are the second and third in the middle-grade science fiction Dark Star trilogy which offers alternatively irreverent and profound interpretations of the space/time continuum, plus a meditation on personal and collective responsibility. 

 Books Read This Month

1. A Traveler in Time by Alison Uttley
2. Graceling by Kristin Cashore
3. Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore
4. The Oceans Between Stars by Kevin Emerson
5. Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
6. The Shores Beyond Time by Kevin Emerson

Featured Book This Month

Graceling and Bitterblue are two of my all-time favorites, but I want to focus on a new book I read this month, Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. It's not a book I would have read on my own, especially considering my escapist reading trend lately, but one of my book clubs picked it for this month, so here we are.

Just Mercy was one of the best written works of nonfiction I've ever read. The author's incredible kind generous spirit shines through every page. He spends his life defending people in horrifying conditions and situations, and he invites them into his home, holds them in his arms, takes their cases because no one else will, and stands with them during terrifying deaths. The book is about other people's cases, and one case in particular of an innocent man put on death row due to an incompetent and racist justice system, but the small acts that we see Stevenson engage in, traveling to family's trailers in the woods, holding a child brutally assaulted in adult prison, even taking care of a former client in his own home, show how much he believes and practices what he's saying. People deserve mercy. We are all human, we are all broken, we are all more than the worst thing we have ever done.