What I've been reading - Poetry, Mythology, and WWII spying, oh my?

 "Wild Embers - Poems of rebellion, fire and beauty" by Nikita Gill. I have struggled since forever to find poetry that speaks to me, I just feel like I should have poets or poems that I like and I've not been able to find a collection or poet that really speaks to me. Enter Nikita Gil. A poet I found on, wait for it, Instagram. Super short, powerful, feminist poems lend themselves easily to Instagram. I was not even through this short book when I was on my library website ordering her other books and hoping online to buy copies of this book for all of my friends that are having summer birthdays. Love love love. 

Also by Nikita Gill "Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths and Monsters". Lovely lyrical prose and short poems about some familiar (Medusa, Hera, Aphrodite) and some less familiar, along with some personal favorites (Persephone, Hecate) from the lore of Greek and Roman mythology. Mythology doesn't always value women (looking at you, Zeus, you horrible thing) but this book elevates these women and goddesses and tells their stories which so often get swept aside. Also, loved loved loved.

"Transcription" by Kate Atkinson. If the name Kate Atkinson sounds familiar it's because she wrote the INCREDIBLY popular book "Life After Life". I was picking up some library holds and walked past an endcap and saw this book and thought I'd give it a shot. It follows a woman named Juliet Armstrong throughout 3 different time periods - 1940, 1950, 1981. Juliet gets pulled into the world of domestic spying with a mysterious boss, a dog that is being held as ransom, and some home-grown Nazis who are making plans if the Nazis to succeed in crossing the channel. I thought one of the most interesting things about this book was the 1950 setting, you don't hear much about Britain immediately after the end of the war and what the adjustment out of wartime feels like. 

"The Deep" by Rivers Solomon. I heard the premise of this book and was immediately drawn in - it was interesting to me that you could take such a heartwrenching idea (pregnant female to-be-slaves were thrown over the sides of ships that were transporting them from their countries) and turn into something mystical and ethereal (like the babies from these women survived their attempted murders and became sea creatures who have the memories of their ancestors. It has some decidedly Giver vibes. And it's a short story so it's a super fast read! 

"What Should Be Wild" by Julia Fine. A little girl grows up isolated in a crumbling old estate with her dad. They are isolated because anything alive that she touches will die or anything dead that she touches comes back to life. Which you know is problematic but then the more I thought about it the worse it got - uh wooden spoons coming to life? Leather car seats? Eeeeeek. The story is a little convoluted - family curse, something evil in the woods, alternate universe things, CW for torture. Kinda felt like it wasn't as interesting as I wanted it to be, but it has potential.