Concrete Rose

~ rachelbenzine ~ Leave a comment

Plot:

Maverick is seventeen years old. His dad is in prison, but the gang he joined gives him the protection he needs. Dealing drugs allows him to help his mom make ends meet. Life’s not perfect, but he’s managing well… until he finds out he’s a father. And now he’s supposed to juggle school, caring for his kid, helping his mom, and staying alive. Concrete Rose is the prequel to Thomas’s smash hit, The Hate U Give. You wouldn’t need to read that one first, but you should absolutely read both of these amazing books ASAP. Move them to the top of your TBR list.

What I loved most:

Books featuring teenage parents are rare… but books featuring teenage single dads?! Concrete Rose is basically a unicorn. I loved seeing the way Mav rose to the challenge of fatherhood. Thomas doesn’t glamorize teenage parenthood in any way… being a parent is hard, and Mav struggles with it. But the growth we see throughout the book just WARMS MY HEART, y’all. Absolutely beautiful.

And because I loved too much about this book to contain it to one paragraph… this book does a fantastic job of digging into generational cycles that continue to last. Mav’s dad dealt drugs and ran a gang, so it’s the only life that Mav knows. He joined the gang when he was young, and leaving isn’t an option if he wants to stay alive. Dealing drugs keeps the water bill paid and the electricity on. When Mav does try to stop dealing, and gets a job as a cashier, he can’t afford to help his mom pay the bills, plus buy the things his son needs. He sees dealing as the only feasible way to keep his head above water. It’s absolutely impossible to read this book and judge the choices that Mav makes. Bottom line: read this book.

Read this book if you like:

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (obvi), deep dives into personal development, not judging on surface level characteristics but actually taking time to get to know someone, social and emotional learning, social justice, the #WNDB movement

Book details:

  • Author: Angie Thomas
  • Publisher: Balzer + Bray
  • Date of Publication: January 12, 2021
  • Interest Level: High school and up

From My Balcony to Yours

~ rachelbenzine ~ Leave a comment

Plot:

No one expected 2020. No one expected a global pandemic. No one expected lockdowns and stay at home orders and endless days of quarantine. In From My Balcony to Yours, Nino Gugunishvili reflects on the early days of when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States. She talks about kinship and loneliness and isolation. She explores social media and television and all of our great plans for the hobbies we were going to learn in quarantine and totally didn’t. In essays spanning March 2020 through September 2020, Gugunishvili shares her personal stories of living through the era of the coronavirus in America.

What I loved most:

If I’m going to be honest… I was a little nervous to read this book. The pandemic has just been such a weird time, and I didn’t know if I would like bringing myself back to the early days of when everything was so up in the air. But it ended up feeling really cathartic to remember back to March and April and the first stay at home order and how far we’ve come since then.

We’re sitting in our homes, glued to our phone and computer screens, holding our breaths and waiting for what’s going to happen next. What’s the plan? What’s the scenario? What’s the future? For how long are we going to stay home? When is the self-isolation going to end? We need to know because we think we can control when we know, and when we handle, we can plan, and planning means going back to normal. But what if all this Coronavirus story is about shifting the focus and not being so obsessed with planning and controlling and wanting to know what’s next? What if it’s all about enjoying what we have right now, at this very moment, and not worrying about the future? Not worrying about what we weren’t able to do because of the pandemic, but enjoying what we did nevertheless while our plans were ruined?

From My Balcony to Yours, pp 16-17

I mean, isn’t that beautiful? I’m HERE for finding the good in every situation, for taking the time to breathe and reflect and choose to look at positives.

Read this book if you like:

Reflecting on current events, growing, positive mindsets, genuine feelings, vulnerability

Book details:

  • Author: Nino Gugunishvili
  • Publisher: Self-published (Holla for authors making books happen on their own!)
  • Date of Publication: October 14, 2020
  • Interest Level: Adult

I received a free copy of this book from the author, but all the thoughts in this review are my own. I only write about books I enjoy, and was not financially compensated for this post.

Let the People Pick the President

~ rachelbenzine ~ Leave a comment

Plot:

Let the People Pick the President has a subtitle that sums up its content well: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College. In this insightful book, Jesse Wegman explores the system that we use for electing the highest leader of the country. Although mayors, governors, senators, and other representatives are chosen by popular vote, the president is elected using a complicated system of electors based on, but not proportionally representative of, a given state’s population. Through an examination of the creation of this system at the time of the country’s founding, to a discussion of the current implications of the way the system works, Let the People Make the President presents a convincing case for moving to a popular vote election for president of the United States.

What I loved most:

Let’s be real here… does anyone actually understand the electoral college? Before reading this book, I was confident that I could explain the general way the electoral college works to a first grader… but also confident that I couldn’t explain satisfactorily to a high school student why two out of the last six presidents did not win the popular vote. The concept of a popular vote made sense to me, since it works for literally every other position we elect in this country, but I didn’t understand the electoral college enough to be able to make a solid argument for abolishing it. Wegman makes this seemingly-complex topic accessible to a wide audience. Even if you are pro-electoral college, this would be an interesting read for the exploration of the Constitution’s creation alone. It’s definitely worth your time!

Read this book if you like:

Politics, thinking through long-standing ways of doing things, democracy, learning from history

Book details: