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I’m thrilled to be starting a brand new series here on the blog…book reviews!
If you’ve been joining me for a while here, you’ve likely been seeing this coming (and many of you have been asking for it too) is Book Reviews of Body Acceptance and Self-Love books! I’ve got so many planned for you and am excited to gush about our favourite Body Love books together!
For the last year I’ve been on a big kick of reading book that dig into exploring loving our bodies more. They have been a big range, from more academic books to lots and lots of memoirs of folks path to self-love & body love (my favourite genre).
I feel pretty grateful to be able to live in a city where our library system is big, with amazing librarians who get these kinds of books into the system.
But every so often there is one that I get from the library and just have to go out and buy as I just don’t want to be without it. The book I’m going to share a bit about today is one of those. Even its cover alone made me say ‘Heck Yes’!
This amazing book is called Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love & Fashion edited by the amazing Virgie Tovar, a fat activist & sexologist. This year she started the #losehatenotweight campaign which totally sings to my heart!
So when I recently saw that Virgie was inviting people to check out the audiobook version of the book, I jumped on it. I had read most of the stories in book form but I have also been on a BIG audiobook kick lately, so was excited to check it out.
I loaded it onto my phone, clicked play and immediately squealed when I realized who’s voice that was narrating the book: Joy Nash. Have you heard about Joy Nash? You might have seen this awesome video called A Fat Rant that went viral a while back.
I’ve been listening to the audiobook as I went about my days over these past few weeks. One of the things I loved most about it was the way Joy was able to bring the writers voice through. Its not as though she changed her voice at all as though she was taking on the ‘character’ of the writer at all, but rather, having someone who is deeply passionate about the topic of the book and the stories brought that passion in the writers words through. You could just hear the passion in her voice as she said the writers words.
The experiences shared in this book are vary, which is something I really appreciated about it. Some of the stories brought me to tears, some felt like they were speaking my story, others felt more like I was listening to an experience I hadn’t lived myself and wanted to just listen as though a friend was sharing her story with me (and one of the biggest ways we can be an ally is to listen and learn from others experiences, right)! That is part of the charm of audiobooks, is that it feels much like a conversation, listening to a friend share her vulnerable stories or tell us a tale of how she found her way to see her body & herself in a new way.
I loved that there was a story from a woman in her 80’s alongside much younger folks experiences and so many in between. As with so many books, there is always room for more voices, more diversity, but I thought this one contained a beautiful mix.
And guess what…Virgie has given me a copy of the audiobook to giveaway to one lucky winner! Yup…this is a giveaway!!!
To enter the audiobook giveaway just leave a comment on this post.
Note: If you don’t see your comment immediately, don’t worry…with the way my comments work I often need to approve comments so it will indeed appear soon after you post it!
I’ll be picking the lucky winner this Sunday at 5pm Pacific time.
Of course, if you don’t want to wait another minute to dig into the audio book, you can purchase it over here!
Lets embrace our fierce fabulous selves!