This post is part of a series in which I describe the twenty-four books I read in 2019 for Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge. 

Task: Read a humor book. 

In 1999 or maybe 2000, I was at a dear friend’s house (at the time, he was in the high school boyfriend iteration of said friendship – long story with many revisions). We were high school kids with driver’s licenses and big dreams in a small town in Arkansas eating pizza pockets in front of his parents’ TV on a weekend night, when we channel-surfed into Eddie Izzard’s Dress to Kill HBO special.

This wasn’t just any TV. Matt had satellite TV. He had so. many. channels, including MTfreakingV (my hometown’s standard cable package was a VHI-only deal, which is part of the reason I’m so well-versed in 1980s one hit wonders). Keep in mind that these were pre-YouTube and pre-Napster days. Discovering new music often involved shelling out for an actual $9.99 CD, which would then be lovingly installed in my six-disc changer and listened to obsessively while poring over the liner notes. 

Anyway, watching TV at Matt’s house was a big deal.  

And so we were surfing the mind-boggling number of premium channels in his satellite package when we came across a British comedian wearing thick eyeliner, bright blue eye shadow and heels, but who also appeared to be a man.

You need to understand that at the time my understanding of transgender identity was largely informed by Silence of the Lambs, Ace Ventura, and, mercifully less damagingly,  Wanda in The Sandman (because we were cool kids, mind you). So I was confused by this person so confidently and unapologetically coloring outside of the lines.

I hadn’t had much exposure to his style of comedy either. It bounced around wildly between cerebral, ridiculous, surreal, and big-hearted. 

I’d never seen anything so funny in my entire life. 

This post is part of a series in which I describe the twenty-four books I read in 2019 for Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge. 

Task: Read an epistolary novel.

I’m trying to fill in major gaps in my understanding of American literature, since I’ve read an appallingly low number of major works by black writers. I was excited to read The Color Purple, especially since I kept coming across references to it after reading Their Eyes Were Watching God a couple of years ago. I knew the title The Color Purple, I knew Oprah and Whoopi Goldberg were in the movie, and I knew the musical was a big deal. Other than that, I walked into this book completely blind. Just a heads up: there are going to be a lot of spoilers in this post, and if you have also managed to remain ignorant about The Color Purple, I highly recommend you go read it without knowing anything about it.

I expected it to wrestle with race and gender, but I had no idea it also dove straight into same-sex relationships and stark criticisms of American Christianity. There were a lot of “so THAT’S why it’s banned all the time!” moments while I was reading, with the parallel thought, of course – “so THIS is why everyone should read this book!”

Now, I was also aware of a thorny literary controversy about Alice Walker recommending a book generally perceived to be anti-Semitic in a New York Times interview in December 2018 (I’m not trying to be cagey with that “generally perceived” bit – I just don’t know much about it). Here’s a link to a Vox article about the whole thing, which also includes a disappointing rundown of the trend of anti-Semitic threads in Walker’s recent output.

I’m not sure how to comment on this, and I think I’m going to leave it here: The Color Purple is an astonishing book that’s at complete odds with bigotry. That may not mean that its creator is free of it, though.

Anybody who loves Ender’s Game  or Roald Dahl’s work knows the drill, I suppose. Still, it’s jarring.

This post is part of a series in which I describe the twenty-four books I read in 2019 for Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge. 

Task: Read an alternate history novel.

This is my third round of the Book Riot Read Harder challenge, and I recommend it to everyone I know. Reading more widely and posting here about it has done a lot to improve my reading (comprehension, retention, and enjoyment), which of course is nothing but a positive for my writing as well.

I’ve been reading more, generally, outside of my challenge books, and it’s been wonderful to finally get a grasp on the book world again. This process has also involved setting some limits on my phone. I’m happier and I get more done when I’m not constantly and  mindlessly scrolling, and I’m a better reader for it. I haven’t gone to extremes like deleting all social media from my phone, but being just a teensy bit more aware of how often I’m staring at a little beeping buzzing LCD screen has helped me reclaim more reading time than you’d think a parent with a full time job could scrounge up.

But even apart from (sort of) untethering myself from my phone, I believe that doing these challenges has helped me become more curious and willing to jump into material I may not know anything about or have any sort of experience with. It’s brought a lot of the pleasure of words back into my life, and so yes, I’m going to keep doing this, and yes, I’m going to keep blogging for my mother about it.

Which brings me to my first Read Harder book this year, which is wall-to-wall feral hippos, pregnant Latina assassins, and nonbinary explosive experts. Weeeee!