nonfiction

Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day / Kaitlin B. Curtice

/ Alisha Helms / Leave a comment 
Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day
By: Kaitlin B. Curtice
Genre: Nonfiction, Self Help
Number of Pages: 208
Published: March 7, 2023
Publisher: Brazos Press
Dates Read: August 2, 2023 - August 5, 2023
Format: Library Book / Hardcover

Living Resistance is about resistance and how you can use it in everyday life and not just at protests or boycotting things. Kaitlin B. Curtice looks at resistance in different realms: the personal, the communal, the ancestral, and the integral. She explains each realm at the beginning of each section to help the reader understand it more thoroughly. 

I was kind of excited about this book. I’ve been trying to get into reading more nonfiction and I thought this would be one I would enjoy. Maybe it just wasn’t really for me.

I felt like it was a bit repetitive, which makes sense because it’s about life and life is messy and isn’t always straight forward, but when I’m reading a different story with the same message at the end, it gets a bit boring.

It was also a bit more religious than what I was looking for, not so much spiritual.

I feel like a lot of people will be able to take from this, but it just didn’t speak to me as I would hope it would.

I will say, it did make me think about how I want to look to my descendants as their ancestor and what I would want to leave behind for them.

*Thank you Brazos Press and NetGalley for a digital advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

83 Days in Mariupol: A War Diary / Don Brown

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83 Days in Mariupol: A War Diary
By: Don Brown
Genre: Graphic Novel, Nonfiction, YA
Number of Pages: 128
Published: May 16, 2023
Publisher: Clarion Books
Dates Read: July 16, 2023
Format: Library Book / Hardcover

83 Days in Mariupol: A War Diary is a young adult graphic novel about the war in Ukraine, especially focusing on the siege of Mariupol between February 2022 – May 2022. 

I’ve been trying to make sure to read books I find about the war in Ukraine. It’s not something that I keep up on within the news daily (truth be told, I try to stay away from the daily news in general), but I don’t want it to be something where I find out years and years later what happened or what it was like.

At first I was a little put off by the art style. I like my graphic novel reads to be full of color and usually bright palettes. But, the pen and ink art in this novel goes amazing with the setting of urgency, the brutalities and horrors of war, and the human spirit during such cases.

This is an important read, especially to the Young Adult audience it is aimed at as it gives a lot of information that, alongside the illustrations and art, can be used as a valuable resource to tell those about the war in Ukraine in a way that is more visual and memorable.

Queen in Comics! / Emmanuel Marie, Sophie Blitman

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Queen in Comics!
By: Emmanuel Marie, Sophie Blitman
Genre: Graphic Novel
Number of Pages: 176
Published: May 3, 2023
Publisher: NBM Publishing
Dates Read: May 2, 2023 - May 3, 2023
Format: ARC / eBook

The history and making of the world famous band, Queen, in graphic novel form.

This is a great graphic novel about the highlights of the band Queen’s journey.

I enjoyed having bits in graphic novels and then covers in regular text format – it allowed me to read and get more about the band than one tends to get while reading a graphic novel.

Queen is one of my mom’s favorite bands, so it was nice to kind of read up on them more to see their history. Freddie Mercury is a legend.

*Thank you NBM Publishing for an advance digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

Satisfying Stitches: Learn Simple Embroidery Techniques and Embrace the Joys of Stitching by Hand / Hope Brasfield

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Satisfying Stitches: Learn Simple Embroidery Techniques and Embrace the Joys of Stitching by Hand
By: Hope Brasfield
Genre: Nonfiction, Crafts
Number of Pages: 128
Published: November 15, 2022
Publisher: Quarry Books
Dates Read: March 1, 2023
Format: Library Book / Paperback

I started dabbling in embroidery during Covid lockdown – that was my picked up craft thanks to my sister getting me set up and started with a kit. I still love doing it, but I’ve found a lot of my designs that I’ve wanted to do are a little more tedious than I originally thought and therefore, I get a bit bored doing it.

There are a variety of designs that include things such as florals, butterflies, fish, landscapes, and my favorites: houseplants and mushrooms. The stitches featured in this book are super easy, but also super cute and range from levels 1-3. They’re smaller designs, but I can see myself putting these onto clothing items and not just hoops.

The instructions are clear and step-by-step with photos.

One of the other things I enjoyed about this book is that the author gives the colors of the threads with a decent size circle so you can match the thread colors. I don’t always have the exact number that’s given in some books, and if there is a color example given with it, it’s super small and you can’t match the threads very well.

I can’t wait to get started on some of these designs!

– Quick note, the author’s website is different than the one listed in the book, it’s now https://www.hopebroidery.com/