This is My Story, This is My Song

This is Our Story has more to do with this than this.  Although it is MUCH more macabre.  Again, I put 4 stars instead of 5 on a book by Ashley Elston and I just can't put my finger on why.  Probably just the length.  Because the book is written so well.  And I did buy this on audible and I will buy another!  Maybe I think that Elston is such a great writer, I just wish her editor were better.  Or she just wrote short books for losers like me!  Really good book though.  Really good.

Why?

I know there is no point in asking why we do horrible things to one another.  Human nature is prone to such horrors.  Ones that sicken us.  Horrors done to groups of people, horrors done to individuals.  The essays in Not That Bad:  Dispatches from Rape Culture show this to be true with each account.  It is edited by the incomparable Roxane Gay. 

I don't know how to comment on these stories.  Some of the writers say that they don't want to be called "brave" or a "survivor" and some don't want to hear that people are "sorry for what happened" but some do.  I want to respect that.  I want to just give to them as much respect as I can.  So all I can say is that I am very thankful for their words and willingness to share.  I simply want to offer to them all that is within me and that my heart and soul can give, as respectfully as I can.  I absolutely recommend this book.  

Angela's Church

I really loved Release.  Adam's part of the story.  I really, really loved it.  I love books that show that there are, indeed churches that actually follow Christ when it comes to homosexuality.  Angela, Adam's friend, attends a church in which an 80 year old lesbian couple were married.  I remember officiating my first same body part wedding.  The couple had been together for thirty years.  They were in love with Christ as their Savior and with one another.  There was much rejoicing.  While Adam's family holds non-Christian beliefs regarding homosexuality like Marley's in A Very Bad Thing, I love that Patrick Ness recognizes that those who are really trying hard to follow Christ on the issue don't have this problem. (We all have lots of problems, this just happens to be one we don't have!)  I loved Adam's brother, too.  I didn't understand the other story, the magical realism-y/fantasty one involving the gal who was murdered.  I also never read Mrs. Dalloway, so I can't say I saw its influence here, but I did get the sense of the Forever influence, even though I am not a Judy Blume fan!  Very good book.  I would not be upset if it received a Printz Honor.  I would not be upset at all.  But I really, really didn't get the other part of the story.  My fault.  I am going to dig around online and see if I can find an explanation.