I thought I was picking up a sports book with race as an element, but instead it Running While Black is a race book, with sports as a context. Ultimately I was glad about that, but it took me a second to switch gears. I prefer the biographical focus actually, to less embodied nonfiction. 

Desir is a Haitian- and Colombian-American overachiever who finds herself aimless after graduating from Columbia with substance dependency, as well as her degree. Training for a marathon helped her with some issues but woke her to others. I mean, not woke her to race and racism because she was an activist from childhood, teaching her classmates and teachers about Black history, historical figures, and perspectives. She gets her badass back as she struggles to find Black community in distance running. When she doesn't find it, she pretty much creates that culture in Harlem, even as she struggles with Black men to make shit happen. White people are a much bigger challenge, of course, and how Desir and other collaborators of color could survive clueless DEI efforts and eventually improve them is miraculous. 

If you're fascinated by ballet and ballet dancers like I am, you'll probably appreciate this book. It gives you a good look inside ballet life, at least as far as I can tell. The author chooses to change voices--1st, 2nd, and 3rd person, which maybe means she's reprinting other work, and/or the voice choice speaks to how she relates to the section. I'm not sure I connected to that convention, but I didn't hate it. 

A Black couple, Bernadette and Melvin, flee to Ghana from Jim Crow American after a bad thing happens. Melvin had gone to college with President Kwame Nkrumah and is counting on him for help. Whelp, Nkrumah is busy surviving coup attempts, so that doesn't go as planned. Nothing does, really, not even with their highlife musician friend. 

I don't know what to make of this book. I loved the last book I read that was this dire, but somehow this one was less compelling? 

Laura/Yuyang was born in Wuhan, China, and raised mostly in Coppell, Texas. Yep, Wuhan, so Covid for her was kind of like being Arab after 9/11. Most of the memoir, though, is about her coming of age and growing into her identities. In college at U Penn, she learns that Asians are cool, and she realizes she's that she's queer. She moves to San Francisco after college and finds he way back to her birth family and culture. 

In the third Zodiac Mysteries installment, Julia Bonatti is temping a week at the San Francisco law firm she worked at before her fiancé was killed in a hit and run, and she discovered her affinity for using astrology to solve murders. The storytelling is compelling, and I like that there's a through line about Bonatti's decease lover binding the series together, though you can definitely read them as standalones. Mild complaints are that I couldn't keep all the characters straight in this one--and that for a SF novel, it's pretty straight and a little prudish. 

The Black kids at a British boarding school have some stuff to work out between them, and some shit-stirring white kids are stirring some shit. There's a mystery in this story, but the real function of it is for cousins Iyanu and Kitan to rekindle their friendship after they join different social circles. This book has all the ingredients of a YA novel I'd love--racial, ethnic, and sexuality diversity; boarding school setting; nerds and jocks coming together, etc., but sadly, I didn't find it compelling. 

Best friends Rae and Vic want out of their Kentucky town. They're going to room together in college and never look back. Rae lives in a trailer with her alcoholic mother and codependent father. She works at the town's one diner to buy gas for her car and save for college. Vic is newish to the town and stands out because of her brown skin. Both girls have secrets that come out as they explore different colleges around the state. 

It's a lovely friendship book, and there's also heterosexual romance (apparently author Dahlia Adler hadn't come out in print yet). 

I hadn't watched Robertson's Bachelor season before reading her book, so I was prepared to take her at her word about how her time in the house went. In fact, Robertson was pretty honest about her snarky comments, maybe because they were captured on tape, so she couldn't pretend they didn't happen. 

Now that I've watched a few episodes, I sympathize with the cast members who thought Robertson was a sociopath. Still, it's a fun read (listen), and whether or not Robertson was a true villain, I believe her that Bachelor Ben was a dick. 

In this follow up to Loveboat Taipei, fashionista Sophie and poor little rich boy Xavier are given another chance at love, Taiwanese style. Sophie, in her first year at Dartmouth is trying to build an AI app to help people find clothes with less effort, and Xavier is tortured by his extreme dyslexia, now as a super senior at a new private school in LA. It's a will-they-or-won't-they, which is possibly my least favorite romance tropes, but still a fine read. I'll probably read the next one. 

Aiden and his fellow "Flaming Arrows" troop spend the last few weeks of summer at camp weaving baskets and following maps. Aiden is a nerdy kid, frequently called a fag by the tough guys, but he's just weird, right? 

The art in this gn features lots of flames and reflections of flames and smoke that are rendered sensitively. And note to self: the clove hitch drawing on page 64 might be good for the tattoo I want to get. 

Another thing that's not central to my description of this book, which is a poignant fictionalized graphic memoir, is the discussion of true north and magnetic north and how there should also be a Manhattan north because the island is on a distinctly NE angle.