The Only Three Books I Loved This Year

So, I only read/finished 10 books this year. I guess I was a little hungover from last year's 50 book challenge. I don't think 50 will ever be possible for me, but who knows. Maybe I'll go on another reading tear in 2016. These are the three books I loved this year:

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander  

This novel in verse kept me turning the pages like novels-in-verse should. A story of basketball and family, love and loss, I was invested in the characters that weren’t stereotypes even though they were basketball-playing twin boys.

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay 

This collection of essays was a great way to restart my brain after it was taken over by sleep deprivation and all things maternal. Gay's conversational style makes every essay approachable and she writes about many things that I think about and write about: cultural appropriation in The Help, white privilege, feminism, sexual violence, and the internet. Mostly, her essays made me want to write essays about my multicultural feminist experience and how motherhood sharpened my perspectives on gender inequity and violence.

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson  

I devoured this novel in about a week. It took me a minute to get into the hyperbole and magical realism that the narrators play with, but ended up really loving the story and the way time and one event were the hinge on which the story folded.