Jen > Recent Status Updates

I am not finishing this book at this time. Because of some extremes in my recent past and in my everyday life, the things that I am socially anxious about are current realities, not past, imagined, or exaggerated. This book doesn’t allow for that in the first few chapters.

This book read like nonfiction. It wasn’t bad, but the style felt more like nonfiction than novel, so I read the Wikipedia article on Mary Mallon instead of finishing.

I am quitting, but not exactly because the book is bad. This book is important to the history of our national discussion of race and slavery. But it’s long. And, IMO longer than it needs to be. My reading time needs to be used in other ways.

Printz Honor 2025

Listened to about 30%. Stopped for now because both the main character and the new principal/former love interest are so cringingly rude, and as a teacher, I just can’t make the school interactions make sense. A principal new to a school says, “Teachers are expendable.” ???? What??? And the school politics is making me anxious. So. It’s not a book I can listen to. I will try to finish in print.

My copy is called "The Whispering Wars" and was published in 2019 by Arthur Levine imprint. I'm not sure why I was unable to locate the edition I have, but I'm assuming it's basically the same book!