May Reads

It’s time for my monthly reading post! I honestly feel like I don’t have too much to say this time around so I’ll make this quick.

My fiction book for the month was Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. I truly feel like this book is one of those huge classics like Les Mis or War & Peace (even though I looked it up and both of those books are longer than Gone with the Wind and ironically I’ve started both but never finished them lol) that you have to read at some point in your lifetime. The best way I can describe it is a very long, drawn out emotional experience that also vastly educates you on a pivotal time in history from a perspective that you don’t normally hear from, the South during and after the Civil War. While of course this book has it’s problems, I would recommend reading it and appreciating it as a relic of history and using it as a tool to understand perspectives of the past. The character development in this book is also excellent, and has some of the most iconic characters of all time (hello, Scarlett O’Hara! And Rhett Butler who I totally love.) Scarlett goes through so much in this book and because the book is so long and goes into so much detail you truly feel like you’re suffering along with her, even (perhaps especially) when she does rather morally questionable things. It’s fascinating how the author helps you get into her head and see how she justifies the things she does until you’re at least seeing the issue from both sides. Anyway, there are probably a million things I could say about this book. I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed it and definitely cried buckets at the end because the ending is SO SAD oh my gosh. But you should still read it.

My non-fiction read for this month was a little different. I read The Next Mormons by Jana Reiss which is basically a research book that presents the findings from a study that was done on current and former members of the LDS church across all generations. As a member myself, I found this extremely informative and fascinating. It covered a whole range of topics about the church and how opinions about these topics varied across the membership and largely focused on the differences between generations, specifically Baby Boomers, Gen X and Millennials, and how these differences have affected the way they practice their religion. Obviously this is a very niche interest (I’m fascinated by the cultural impacts of religion in general) so I don’t expect many people to be interested, however I do want to add that if you are a member of the church and you’ve been affected by the recent racial justice movement and are looking for a ways to be more informed about racism, I would actually recommend reading this book, specifically the chapter on race to learn more about the church’s part in all of this and what we can do to help racial minorities feel more welcome. As a side note, I also recommend following @ldsequalityproject on Instagram for more ideas about how to promote equality and inclusiveness within church culture. K I’m done with my little sidebar. Hope you have an amazing week!