A Rare and Beautiful Bird

Birdie author, J.M.M. Nuanez is proof that writers just seem to have a certain something that others don't...besides the ability to write, I mean!  I have read some really great books this year.  Ones with characters who don't fall into "normal" places and spaces.  Books written a while ago, like Stripped, that were far ahead of their time.  And brand new books like Three Things I Know are True that have address real problems and issues with care and subtlety.  Oh and The Best at It.  Just some great, great stuff. 
Birdie is just beautiful.  I like the way in which the little goodread blurb refers to Birdie as being "gender creative."  Ah how I wish the world would try to be just a little more Jack-like.  Excellent, excellent book.

Such a great book

The 57 Bus:  A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime that Changed Their Lives is SO well done.  Wow.  Just such a fantastic book about this case.  It is a real-life example of living in the grey.  I can't recommend this book enough. 
It is VERY hard for me to believe that this book was the winner of the YALSA Non-fiction Award and The 57 Bus was a finalist.  1954 all over again.  For sure. 

Symptomatic

I know two people who were born in the wrong bodies and have gender reassignment surgeries.  One was a man when I married him to his wife and now she and her wife are still, indeed married, for love for them is about hearts, not parts.  And both ladies are very happy.  So I am somewhat (a very little) informed about the struggles that go along with being transgendered.  I don't know much, or anything, really about being gender fluid, as Riley is in Symptoms of Being Human.  I am quite sure that gender fluidity has always been around, but there was no name for it.  And now people who are gender fluid can put a name to their feeling and share their feelings with others.  I hesitated when I wrote that last sentence.  I was going to put "suffering from" but then I thought, is it really "suffering?"  I don't know that answer, as I would think that some people "suffer" as a result of their gender fluidity and some people don't.  I, in no way, meant it to be disparaging.  It was just that in this book, Riley does seem to suffer.  Now, I don't know if that is because of Riley's concerns about society's treatment of him or her?  I mean, if the world were truly a loving place, then Riley wouldn't have to worry about whether or not today was a female day or a male day.  So I guess that the suffering comes from society's failure to love as Christ loves us.  So it isn't Riley's gender fluidity that is a "disease" or something from which Riley "suffers" it is because we refuse to love others.
Great book.  I learned a lot, too.