jvanfosson's reviews
150 reviews

Seeking Slow: Reclaim Moments of Calm in Your Day by Melanie Barnes

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informative fast-paced

3.0

skin & bones by Renée Watson

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

In skin + bones: a novel Renée Watson debuts her lyrical writing for an adult audience. A prominent writer for children and young adults, this novel confirms what readers of her writing for young people already know: Watson is one of the greatest lyrical writers of our time. Watson writes in such a way that you don’t know when she is writing prose and when she is writing poetry. Spoiler alert: it is always prose and always poetry. Always.

This novel, told in fragments and vignettes and maps made of words and poems and definitions and even a recipe, follows Lena, a fat Black woman living and loving and mothering and working in Portland. We see how her intersectional identities inform so much of her lived experiences in ways that provide meaningful representation.

I can’t share enough love for this book and this writing. This is the first book I completed in 2025, and it has set the bar so incredibly high that I doubt I’ll read another book as well-written and as beautiful as skin + bones.

Today I Noticed: A Little Book of Mindfulness that Will Change the Way You See the World by Willow Older, Deborah Huber

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funny hopeful reflective fast-paced

4.0

Today I Noticed…this is a beautiful book that models presence and mindfulness in an accessible way to promote creativity, gratitude, nourishment, and empowerment. (Though the authors do so in a much more direct way than my writing of that fist sentence!) The book opens with a letter from the authors explaining the history of the book, their approach to Today I Noticed (TIN for short), and the benefits of engaging in a TIN practice. Then, the book provides examples from their own notebook of both big things the authors noticed (when you love someone, their excitement is your excitement) and small things the authors noticed (it is very hard to mindfully meditate when I can smell the potatoes in the oven starting to burn). The book concludes with tips, tricks, and prompts to get you started on your own TIN practice and blank pages to try it out.

The illustrations are beautifully rendered. I felt like I was reading the authors’ actual journals in real time because of the simple drawings that make art feel accessible in my own practice. The simplicity of the drawings, too, creates the sense that these were sketched in five minutes at the end of the day in reflection, and that style creates an intimacy between the reader and authors as if we are getting a behind-the-scenes look into their lives.

In our culture obsessed with speed, this book reminds us to slow down and savor the moments that make a life. This book has the potential to change how people think of meditation and mindfulness. Yes, mindfulness is sitting on your cushion with your eyes closed paying attention to your thoughts, but we can find mindfulness when we decide where to give our attention and train our attention on often overlooked elements of our lives. This book, while small, is mighty.

F*ckface: And Other Stories by Leah Hampton

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medium-paced