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I can’t wait to get into that one this year. I hope that one reads better than Black Cake did for me. I could never get into it like I wanted to, I liked the show though. Happy Reading friend and keep us posted🤗🩷

I ate the 7 year slip right up !! It’s in my top 10 of 2024 as well ❤❤ a lot of the other books you mentioned are on my 2025 tbr

Hey I’m new to your channel 😊I love your videos . I have this on my kindle list to read next month.

I totally forgot about wanting to read that book

She was just in my city talking about the book and I missed it 😭

Friend this has been on my kindle and I just downloaded it. I said I’m going to wait to read it next month. We on the same vibes with this one friend.

Thanks for this review. I think you just solidified that I will pass on Normal People

I’ve been waiting on you to talk about Normal People, because like you, I watch Diamond’s channel and see her talk about the author a lot. I want to chat with you more about this book, but I want more insight that may include spoilers. Lmao! Because to me, what you’re describing is “normal” but as our generation grow we now realize that there is help out there for us and we utilize our resources. A lot of people didn’t believe in getting mental help. But again… I probably need more insight that requires spoilers. I have Intermezzo by her and plan to read it with my bookclub.

I just bought “Reel” yesterday, I can’t wait to get into it.

Hi Mara, glad you had a good week of books. I know I've got to get to your Tananarive Due, you make a compelling case for it. I used to do services at Maxie Boys Home back in my ministry days. I have nothing but good things to say about the youth prison program, at least up here in Michigan. For years a few brothers and I would go to Maxie every other weekend and I never met a staffer (even the uniformed officers) who were not compassionate and committed to helping those young kids in whatever ways they could. Obviously that was NOT at all the case in my day job as a uniformed officer at the regular men’s prisons I worked at. I see that on his way out the door President Biden handed a get out of jail free card to Michael Conahan, he was that corrupt judge who got himself convicted of taking bribes to sentence juvenile offenders to privately owned and operated youth prisons. Have you ever read The Inferno by Dante Alighieri? Dante postulates that there are some 33 Cantos of Hell. But may I submit to you that a judge who would send children to jail for money as Michael Conahan did may be worthy of a 34th Canto.

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loved thse recs, also you're so gorgeous!!

Adding a bunch of these to my list 🎉

I’m a memoir lover too. Suggestions: Viola Davis-Finding Me, Every Little Step I Take-Bobby Brown and Patricia Williams-Rabbit: The Autobiography of Ms. Pat

The last memoir I read was Cyntoya Brown-Long's book Free Cyntoya. It's been a while since I read a memoir, I've been into novels heavy but would like to read more this year. The Whoopi book looks really good.

You make me want to pick up Baracoon. I lovedddd a piece of cupcake. One of my favorite memoirs ever. That and Rabbit. The color of water sounds great!

Whoopi’s was my fave in 2024. It was like talking to her on the phone. When i was done, I wanted to start it over 🤣🤣 The additional commentary we got while she was reading, is one people will not get in a physical copy.

I read that Cupcake Brown book years ago & I was blown away! Her story was so inspirational. I’ve always hoped they would make her book into a movie.

Hi Mara, sounds like a great batch of reads. I just added Bits and Pieces to my TBR, Whoopi is my girl, what with her heavy duty dyslexia and all she's a big one for audiobooks. I realize narrated works aren't for everyone but for those of us who are not blessed with the correct kind of mental hardware or software or both to read the printed word they are truly invaluable. I would posit that everyone could stand to gain from learning to enjoy books on tape both for entertainment and light reading while engaging in mundane tasks and for ‘immersive reading’ (not my term but I like it, thank you Lady Jane) to help us who are monolingual get through difficult foreign texts like my blessed Russians (I don't believe there is one single Tom, Dick, or Harry to be found anywhere in War and Peace or Anna K. or The Brothers K. or in Crime and Punishment. You do however find Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov and a treasure trove of wisdom. Still love your James McBride! Wilson W. Brown, I bet that was good read also. I loved Solomon Northup too. Ever read any of the Fredrick Douglas autobio’s? He was a light skinned mulatto brother like myself, a dangerous thing to be in the antebellum South, so glad things have gotten…”better”... maybe…??? My white grandparents used to own the Monroe House here in town when I was little. It’s been turned into a very nice Bed and Breakfast by the couple who owns it now. It was famously used as part of the underground railroad back in the day. Supposedly there used to be a smuggling tunnel from the main house to the carriage house but I never saw it myself.🎶 ‘Follow the Drinking Gourd’🎶 God bless Peg Leg Joe and Pete Seeger and his Weavers, and all those old white Quakers who had the courage of their convictions and helped us. Sitting only a block south of US 12 which was a main thoroughfare across the state ever since the last ice age, it must have been a real blessing for many of our people on their way to freedom in Canada, kinda sucks when you have to run away from your own country to find freedom, what were we just saying about those H-1B Visas and Leviticus 19:34?

Keeping up with all these platforms is a trip lol. I completely understand 🤣. It's so easy to fall off track. Someone mentioned I should start a good reads but I have a storygraph account and have a hard enough time trying to keep up over there lol. Love the idea of digitally cataloging your library in Notion. I say go for it! Cheers to an intentional reading year!🥂

I couldn’t stand Queenie. I loved the cover and really hoped for more from her, but I think I just found her a bit too flighty. Honestly, I can’t even remember all the details, but I definitely didn’t enjoy it. 😅 Great video as always!

She’s baaaaaack! Hey girl! I missed seeing you, but I hope you are well rested had an amazing holiday with your loved ones! Happy New Year Girl! ❤ I keep seeing Yellow Wife and HAVE to get to it this year for suuuuuuuure.

Hi Mara, March 4th is just around the corner! Lex had recommended Americanah a while back, totally out of my wheelhouse, but what a great read! That was before all this swirl with Elon and Vivek and Trump over these H-1B Visas. Chimamanda really puts a face to the whole immigration issue and goes a long way to elucidating some of the real problems that are less obvious. I would issue one trigger warning and I critique though. Trigger warning: she does have a brief SA scene. It's short and not absolutely essential to the plot so if you have to just skip it, you could, but I wouldn't if I were you. Not only is it a well written scene, the whole book is well written, but Adichie does a nice job at fleshing out her own feelings and motivations. Including a down right painful admission of her own complicity and on a certain level ‘enjoyment’. Not the right word I know, but if you read Americanah you'll see how well she handles this extremely painful episode. I have only one critique of the story, and it's really more a critique of Chimamanda herself then of her very considerable writing skills. I'm hardly one who should be offering up a criticism of someone else's personal life (Matthew 7:5 thank you very much!) but Lex noted this too so I feel like I'm on pretty safe ground here…WTF girl! You had four of the best boyfriends any woman could ever ask for, three of them were rich, all of them were madly in love with you and wanted to marry you, then you're going to have an affair with a married dude?!? Every time she breaks up with one of her boyfriends you just want to reach right through the book and slap her LOL! 🤔 Hummmmm…could be a ME problem 🤣.

Abby is definitely that girl and is on my list as well. We got tons in common of course lol!

So funny, I recorded my anticipated release video yesterday and while editing this morning I noticed I said “Isaac Son” too 🤣🤣🤣🤣 can’t wait for that one and Hendrix story for sure!

I heard that No Ordinary Love gives off the vibe. I think someone mentioned that the song is mentioned in the book as well. 2:08

I also think of the 90's song no ordinary love by Sade. This book gotta give the vibes because it's on my anticipated reads list too!! I have Good Dirt, Can't Get Enough, and Love Lyric and Mama Knowles is the closest I think we gone get to a memoir from Bey for a while LOL 🐝

One of my goal is to practice DNFing books that I am not enjoying

Okay, first can we talk about how naturally pretty you are. Second, love the genuiness of your channel..

I haven’t really set any reading goals besides the number. My goal for last year was 50 and I read 64. So for 2025 I want to challenge myself to read 70. That is pretty ambitious for me lol especially considering I want to prioritize reading physical books. Hope your tracking goes better this year!

Hi Mara, I bet the future Mara will thank the past Mara for keeping better track of her reading. I've had so much fun chatting with you and Diamond and a few other BookTubers since last Fall 🍂 that my New Year's Resolution (if I made New Year's Resolutions) will be to find a local reading group. I live within an hour and a half of the University of Michigan and probably a dozen other colleges and I don't know how many libraries so it can't be that tough. Looking forward to your 2025 vids.

Along with setting an attainable number goal (50), I’ve made a list of 15 books that I want to prioritize in 2025. I want to get into annotating and get better at documenting some notes or details on my reads cause my memory ain’t as sharp as yours 😂. As much of a mood reader I am I’m also a mood reviewer so I’m trying to do better 😊

I believe i got 20 books from the sale.... they sold out of a lot of books I wanted, though. So happy with what I did get 😊

I love your videos and girlllll my goal is to be closer to god in to read 50 books this year ❤

If you just want to keep a list of your books you could use the notes app on your phone. I have GR, Fable, and now storygraph. Fable doesn’t have some of the books I read. I may delete it and stick with GR even though it’s not as cute as Fable.

I’m prioritizing reading more books than I did this year and more meaningful reads that I can learn from.

I enjoyed home is where the bodies are & I agree the cover is fire !

What camera do you use?

Heyyy!! New subscriber here. I just picked up the seven year slip from the library and now you got me wanting to DIVE INN! Yellow Wife is on my list. GIRLL Im today years old learning S.A.Cosby is a black male omggg

U made me laugh when u was like she was spiraling too lol yesss she def was but like u said it felt different

My priority in ‘25 is to simply - read. My love for reading got lost in me raising my kids, going back to school, working, traveling, etc. I purchased a Kindle in 2018 & only used it 5 times but that is about to change

I think answering these questions will be a fun little reflection activity for me today. I’ll have to see if I can get a couple of my bookish friends to answer so I can see their answers. I wanna prioritize all these fire books my book tubers have been loving and that have been on my TBR list too long. But I know that’s a lot. But I do want to prioritize books that have been on my TBR for awhile over new releases. Happy New Year girl 🎉

Hi Mara, great end of year tags! LOL! President Obama, “concerning” 🤣, a thousand political pundits never said it better! Did I actually vote for that guy, twice!?! To be fair, what were our options, OK. My auntie met him and Michael back in the day before he was President and said “Michael was a sweetheart, but Barack…well he was a politician”. Aunt Janet couldn't say a mean word about the devil himself. Incidentally her daughter, my cousin Natalie Baszile, is the one who wrote Queen Sugar, which would be my pick for your ‘best adaptation’ tag. Oprah made a little mini series out of Natalie’s book and while I'm not a TV kinda brother, Natalie said she was pleased with it. You know lots of times when an author agrees to allow their book to be adapted to film they don't get any say in its production and before they know it the whole story goes completely off the rails. You know how it is, if they thought it would sell more advertisements they’d re-write Moby Dick to somehow incorporate a car chase, a shoot-out, and a troop of cheerleaders. Go figure. 🤔 Queen Sugar is an excellent read, it's placed in modern day Louisiana (where her dad grew up) but it's a story pretty universal to the struggle of small farmers everywhere. She claims she wasn't thinking of my folks up here on their dairy farm in Michigan in the 70’s (we had the only black-owned dairy farm in the county back then) and she said she didn't even know I’d spent my whole career in Corrections (one of her best characters is a prison guard) but still. Great read, I'm not just saying that. Happy New Year Mara 🎊

I enjoyed this tag my girl 🫶🏽🫶🏽🫶🏽🫶🏽 I’m so happy to have met you via the bookish space this year.

I promise I’m reading this darn book next year. You and another person have influenced me 😂 10:35

Yes! We chatted about this and both agreed, sometimes we just need to read the book physically to grasp what’s going on. 6:21

Reel was an instant hit for sure! a few of the books in your favorites list are on my TBR for next year! Happy new year!😊

Hi Mara, WOW! You had a great reading trip around the sun. I loved The Color of Water. A dozen brothers and sisters and ALL of them finished college several even got into Ivy League schools. I thought it was so profound when that guy in his dad's congregation said how his father had worked so hard and been so faithful that after he passed away the Lord would take care of his family…and He most certainly did. James…you're right, what’s more to say? Ta-Nehisi Coates, that was a show stopper. I can't remember, did you say whether you’d read Roots? BTW, I know I said I was here for the books not the fashion, but the Pattaya Green 💚!