Author: booknutgirls

booknutgirls http://thebooknutdotcom.wordpress.com I read. I blog. I sell books. I chauffeur my kids. What more do you need to know?

Realm of the Blue Mist

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by Amy Kim Kibuishi
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There are some disturbing images and some violence. it’s in the middle grade graphic novel section of the bookstore.

Tabby’s father was obsessed with a tree in their town, a tree where mist comes out. And where he died, his body having been mysteriously aged 200 years. Tabby has become obsessed with her father’s death and hangs out at the tree even though her mother has forbidden it. It’s there aht she sees Philip, a Keeper from the world Rema. She follows him through the portal in the tree and discovers a world where there are people with powers who are ostrcsed, and nothing is quite what it seems.

It’s very much a set-up book, introducing Tabby to the world and us to TAbby and Philip. there is a slight friendship? Romance? between them that doesn’t quite feel justified (i mean he’s cute, but that’s it, really). I wasn’t sure that I was going to like this initially, but as it went on git got more interesting. So, I am quite possibly invested in where this series is going to go. We’ll see. For now, I’ll call this a tentiteively good start.

Audiobook: Radical Love

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by Zachary Levi
Read by the author
Support your local independent bookstore: Buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is a lot of swearing, plus instances of verbal and emotional abuse. it’s in the Self-Help section of the bookstore, but it really could have been put in Biography or Thought/Religion.

I have a fondness (call it guilty pleasure) for celebrity memories, especially when read by the author. I adore them. I want to sit and listen to them tell their story. So, when I saw that Zachary Levi had one out, I jumped on it. I like him well enough though I know him best from his Operation Smile NerdHQ he used to do at Comic Con (back when i was obsessively watching that kind of stuff), though my kids loved him as Flynn Rider in Tangled (as did I).

What I expected – Zachary Levi seems like a pretty cheerful guy – was not what I got. He’s had a rough life, and the purpose behind this memoir is to be open about his struggles with mental illness and the in order to hopefully make discussing mental illness more mainstream. I did enjoy hearing his take on things – from living with a bipolar, narcissistic mother to acting to his failed marriage and his breakdown – especially since he’s a lot more spiritual than I expected (I don’t know why it surprised me when actors talk about God, but it does. It shouldn’t: they are people with beliefs too!). I liked that he was candid about everything, from having suicidal thoughts to how hard maintaining a healthy mental state is. He’s honest and candid and it is good that there is someone like him (pick one: white, male, famous)honesttalking about mental illness and the importance of mental health. The biggest disconnect was hearing this cheerful voice talk about non-cheerful things. But he was even honest in his reading, choking up a couple times.

So, while it wasn’t what I expected, I liked what I got.

Audiobook: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

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by Gabrielle Zevin
Read by Jennifer Kim and Julian Cihi
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: there is swearing, including multiple f-bombs, on-screen instances of some pretty unhealthy BDSM, and some violence. It’s in the Fiction section of the bookstore.

For reference about the title.

It’s really kind of hard to sum this on eup. There is a plot: Sadie and Sam are friends as children, they fall out and meet again as students at MIT And Harvard respectively, and end up making video games togethre with Sams roommate, Marx. But that doesn’t really do this novel justice. It’s really about friendships and all different types of love, and the relationships we make and break and make again. It covers about 40 years, and all the ups and downs in Sadie’s and Sam’s life, set against the backdrop of the games that they have made together over the years.

It didn’t always work for me; I found it to drag sometimes, and at other times I was bored with where the story was going. But in the end, I found it to be sweet and touching, and quite insistent that romantic love, at least as we all think about it, is not the Best Thing Ever, that people can live and thrive with other relationships in their life. It was definitely refreshing in that sense.

And the narration was quite good. She didn’t always do the voices, but I was able to follow the story.

And the narration was lovely. She didn’t do all the voices, but the writing was good enough that I could usually tell who was talking no matter what.

I didn’t absolutely love it, but I really liked it.

Mother Brain

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by Chelsea Conaboy
First sentence: “What does it mean to become a mother?”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: September 13, 2022
Review copy provided by the publisher
Content: It’s very science-y and gets in the weeds with the science sometimes. It will be in the Science section of the bookstore.

I picked this up because my boss pulled it off the ARC shelves at work, and asked if I would be willing to give it a look-over and maybe nominate it for IndieNext. I figured I’d just read a few pages and give it a look, but I soon found myself engrossed in it.

The basic premise of the book is Conaboy’s experience being a pregnant person. She didn’t have the “ideal” and “expected” experience with pregnancy and mothrehood, and that lead her to look into the science of it. She’s not a scientist but rather a journalist who covers health and science, which gives her an interseting angle into the subject.

learned so much, and felt so validated with my own experience being a pregnant person. There were a lot of times that I underlined and dog-eared the pages because what she wrote resonated with me. It was so validating to know that the science – as little as there is – validated what I was feeling, that there isn’t one way to be preganant and a new parent.

I’d put this up there with Invisible Women as an important science book that just proves the need for science to include non-cishet men in their studies, in order to get broader picture of what it means to be human.

Highly recommended.

Audiobook: Counterfeit

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by Kirstin Chen
Read by Catherine Ho
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There was some swearing. It’s in the adult fiction section of the bookstore.

Ava Wong has lived a safe life: the daughter of Chinese immigrants, she chose the safe occupation (lawyer), married well (he’s a doctor) and has a child (he’s two), and is living a “good” life. Except, she’s supremely unhappy. Enter Winnie Fang, Ava’s former roommate at Stanford. She is a woman of the world and has developed a counterfeit scheme where she buys knock-off designer bags from China, purchases the same designer bag and returns the counterfeit to the store, selling the original on eBay for a discounted price. It’s made her, well if not millions, then at least a good living. She sees Ava’s unhappiness, and invites her into her world. The whole book is framed as Ava’s confession to a dective, having been caught out in the scheme, and is taking the fall. Except: is she?

To be honest: I wasn’t all that invested in Ava or Winnie’s story. I liked parts of it, and Ho kept me entertained, but I didn’t really feel connected to the story. It’s not that it wasn’t enjoyable (stick around: part 2 makes part 1 worth it), but in may ways, I felt like it was Rich People Problems, which are very uninspiring right now. . So while it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t all that great either. At least it helped fill the hours at work.

Monthly Round-Up: June 2022

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Another month not reading a ton, another month when my TBR pile grows larger (though I een did a purge this month) and I think about all the things I’m not reading.

My favorite this month:

Iona iverson’s Rules for Commuting

Seriously: we need more Ionas in this world.

And the rest:

YA:

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea

Adult:

Yerba Buena (audiobook)
Spear
Flying Solo (audiobook)
Finlay Donovan is Killing It

Non-fiction:

Easy Beauty (audiobook)
This is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch

We’ll see what next month brings, won’t we?

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea

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by Axie Oh
First sentence: “The myths of my people say only a true bride of the Sea God can bring an end to his insatiable wrath.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s some violence. It’s in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

Mina is just a girl in a village, one who was never supposed to be given as the Sea God’s brie But when her brother’s beloved, Cheong, was chosen for the sacrifice, Mina knew she must do something to save her brother’s happiness. So, she jumps into the sea, sacrificing herself in Cheong’s stead. what she finds in the Sea God’s kingdom is a whole world of gods and demons, of betrayal and friendship, and a puzzle as to what will wake the Sea God.

This is not something I would have picked up on my own, but a customer I really like gave it to me, and I have to admit that I really enjoyed it. It was a bit too formulaic for my tastes (I guessed the twist ending) but Oh’s writing was evocative, and it wasn’t a bad story. There were some genuinely tender moments, and I did like the tales that Oh spun.

Give this one to kids who like fairy tales.

Finlay Donovan is Killing It

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by Elle Cosimano
First sentence: “It’s a widely known fact that most moms are ready to kill someone by eight thirty a.m. on any given morning.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There is swearing, including some f-bombs, talk of sexual assault, and (of course) death. It’s n the mystery section of the bookstore.

Finlay Donovan’s life is falling apart. Recently divorced, she is spending so much time taking care of her own children that she can’t finish the mystery book she’s supposed to have already had into her editor. Her ex-husband (and his fiance) is no help; he begrudgingly helps her bills when they get too big, but he’s had his lawyer file a motion for sole custody of the kids (even though he doesn’t really want to deal tih the everyday grind of raising them). Nothing seems to be going right.

Then, at a meeting in a Panera with her editor, a woman overhears her talking about the plot of her new book and mistakes her for an assassin. She hires Finlay to off her husband, offeringto pay enough to cover Finaly’s bills for quite a while. Finlay is determined not to dot his (she’s not a killer after all!), but when she’s checking the husband out, he accidentally ends up dead (seriously). Everything goes off the rails after that, with Finaly’s former nanny (who had quit because Finaly’s husband was sexually harassing her) getting in on the deal, and the two of them attempt to figure out who killed the husband while keeping the cops off their trail.

I needed something fluffy that wasn’t a romance, and this definitely delivered. It’s an incredibly smart and funny book, full of twists and turns, while also being a critique of how we look at motherhood and single/divorced moms. It was a lot of fun and the plot was good enough that kept me guessing.

I’m glad there’s a sequel so I can enjoy Finlay some more.

Audiobook: Flying Solo

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by Linda Holmes
Read by Julia Whelan
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There’s swearing, including a couple of well-placed f-bombs. There is also off-screen sex. It’s in the adult fiction section of the bookstore.

Laurie grew up in a small Main town, and couldn’t wait to get away. She didn’t return often, and once her immediate family moved away, there wasn’t much reason to return. That is, until her Great-Aunt who had no children of her own, passed away. Suddenly, it became Laurie’s job to go through Aunt Dot’s house and get it ready to be sold. Once there, she discovers a wooden duck in a blanket chest, and that starts off a chain of events that leads Laurie to a greater understanding of her aunt. Along the way, she reconnects with her old boyfriend, Nick, who is recently divorced.

I liked that this was a less-than-traditional romance. While it’s still about people falling in love, it features a heroine who called off her wedding because she didn’t feel right about it. She’s nearly 40, she’s she’s a larger woman; Holmes mentions “size18” and “larger body”. Laurie is a woman who knows that she wants to live alone and that maybe being married isn’t for her. She’s bucking societal norms, not doing things the way things are “supposed” to be done. I really really appreciated that. And honestly: it was this embracing of non-traditionalness that made the book a really good one for me.

Whelan is still a delightful narrator; she makes the listening experience super engaging and enjoyable. I will have to listen to her read more! In short: thoroughly enjoyed this one.

Spear

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by Nicola Griffith
First sentence: “In the wild wast, a girl, growing.”
Support your local independent bookstore: by it there!
Content: There’s some violence and off-screen sex. It’s in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the bookstore.

One of my co-workers sold this to me by saying “It’s Arthurian legends, but gay” and honestly, that’s all it took. Griffith is taking the world of King Artur, planting it in 6th-century Wales, and making one of the knights, Peretur (or Percival) a woman. It’s familiar (to those of us who have gone through Arthurian obsessions), and yet, it’s also new. Making Peretur a woman updates the myth without sacrificing its ancient origins. I adored Peretur, and the journey she went on, from growing up in the wild with her mother to her quest to become a knight of KIng Aruthur. Her kind heart and fierce nature were balanced so well. I felt that Griffiths’ writing gave the book an ethereal quality, making it seem like a story that’s being told around a fire. It’s short, so I felt like Griffiths was able to get to the heart of the matter, without there bieng a lot of extra.

In short, It was exactly everything I wanted from an Arthurian tale.