State of the TBR Pile: February 2022

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Here’s what the pile on the nightstand looks like right now:

Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez
Aurora’s End by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski

That’s pretty white, isn’t it? *sigh*

I am listening to two audiobooks that are diverse:

Four Hundred Souls by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez

I’m enjoying both immensely.

And because I got a comment asking how I manage to keep my TBR pile reasonably small, here’s a pic of the backlog of books I want to get to. Someday. Eventually. Maybe.

What are you looking forward to reading this month?

Love & Saffron

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by Kim Fay
First sentence: “Dear Mrs. Fortier, I hope this letter finds you well.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s really nothing objectionable. It’s in the adult fiction section of the bookstore.

I haven’t read a good epistolary novel in a long time, and this one fit the bill: short enough to read in an afternoon, and charming enough to keep me entertained.

The correspondence takes place in the early 1960s between two women, Joan – a 27-year-old single woman living in LA, and Imogene, – a 60-something woman living in the Seattle area. They start corresponding because Joan writes a fan letter to Imogene who writes a column for a national magazine. From there, they develop a deep friendship that lasts years, sharing details about their lives and bonding over food.

It really is a charming little novel. I know the title is “Love & Saffron” but it made me hungry for tacos. It’s a love letter to food and friendship and definitely worth a couple hours to enjoy.

Monthly Round-Up: January 2022

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I was laying in bed, reading, when I thought to myself: hey, tomorrow’s the last day of the month, I should write a blog post. And then I realized, no, TODAY is, and my post that usually goes up in the morning just didn’t.

Call it January. I read a lot, but most of it was or the Cybils, so y’all don’t get to hear about it until after February 14th.

My favorite (of the ones I can talk about):

Gallant

It really is quite amazing. Schwab is a fabulous writer.

And the rest:

Middle Grade

The Last Cuentista

Adult Fiction

Artificial Condition
Rogue Protocol
Goliath (didn’t finish)
Devil House

What did you read this month?

The Last Cuentista

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by Donna Barba Higuera
First sentence: “
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There are some intense moments and suggestions of killing. It’s in the YA section (but will be moved to the Newbery section, since it won the Newbery medal on Monday) of the bookstore.

Petra wants to be a storyteller like Lita, her grandmother. But the world is ending, and her family is one of the few that found a space on the departing ships because they are scientists. She is put in stasis, which kind of goes wrong, and when she wakes up 380 years later the world has gone sideways. A group called the Collective has taken over the ship, and it’s nothing like Petra — who can still remember Earth — was expecting.

What she found is a ship full of “shrimp” people, who eat this nutritious “biomass” block every day, who have tonics who alter their moods, and who don’t question the word of the Chancellor. All diversity, all difference, all remnants of Earth life have been erased.

In many ways, this is the same old story: diversity is what makes us strong; the acts that get us to sameness are despicable. Butt his adds a layer. Petra is a storyteller, a person who loves to tell the stories that she grew up with. And stories, more than anything else, are what connect us to our past. I loved that Higuera emphasized the importance of stories in addition to knowledge.

There was so much to love. It’s a brilliant world Higuera created, one that I would love to know more about. And she knows how to ramp up the tension. I was quite anxious several times in the story, not knowing how it was going to go. The stakes were real without being harsh. You do have to suspend your disbelief a bunch – can a 13-year-old who has been in stasis for 380 years really do this? – but other than that, it’s an incredible book.

I’m glad I read it.

Devil House

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by John Darnielle
First sentence: “Mom called yesterday to ask if I was ready to come home yet I went directly to San Francisco from college, and I’ve been in Milpitas for five years now, but she holds fast to her he story that eventually I’m coming back to San Luis Obispo.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy passed along to me from my boss.
Content: There is some mild swearing, including a few f-bombs, descriptions of grisly murders, and domestic abuse. It’s in the Adult Fiction section of the bookstore.

The problem with a book like this is that the plot is secondary. The why you need t read the book, the reason to keep coming back, is for, well. Hm. I was going to say the story, but that’s what the plot usually is, right?

The “plot” is following true-crime writer Gage Chandler, as he works to unravel the mystery of a set of grisly murders in the “Devil House” in Milpitas in the mid-1980s. But, it’s more meandering than that. It explores the story of Chandler’s first book, about the White Witch, and the story of the Devil House murders, with a side detour through a weird medieval section.

But, while the story was interesting, and kept me engaged (they usually say “nonfiction that reads like fiction” but this was “fiction that reads like memoir”), I think it was the slow burn that kept me coming back. I wanted to know where Darnielle was going to take me next, what thing Chandler was going to think or find or reveal. And in the end, I realized this book was about the myriad of ways we look at each other, and about who is entitled to tell someone’s story. And maybe that’s what kept me coming back and turning pages.

Whatever it was, I found it fascinating to reflect on, and interesting to be immersed in. Definitely worth the time.

Goliath

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by Tochi Onyebuchi
First sentence: “Before his flight to Earth, they had warned Jonathan about the “gangs”.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There is swearing, the use of the n-word, violence, and references to sex. It’s in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the bookstore.

Let’s see if I can figure out a plot: It’s the future, and white people have ravaged the Earth and left it to rot while taking refuge in space. Then one of them, Jonathan, decides that life in space is not worth living and comes back. There he finds that a sort-of community has built around what little there is left. There are still haves and have-nots, but for the most part, people are living.

And honestly, that’s all I’ve got. I was thinking, when I started, that this feels a lot like Octavia Butler’s future, just farther along – the people have left the earth for dead and have gone into space, but it’s just the white people. Like in all good science fiction, Oneybuchi is taking the problems of gentrification and climate change and projecting into the future. It’s a bleak one, too. But, then, he takes a left turn at the section titled “Fall” and he lost me. Up to that point, I was, maybe not really enjoying, but rather, getting, what he was doing and I respected it. But Fall takes the book off the rails. It moves from thirst to first person with a bunch of found documents that are supposed to be news stories (?), and I just didn’t get it. This book is definitely for someone smarter than me, and one who is more willing to follow where Onyebuchi leads. He’s a good writer, but maybe not one for me.

Rogue Protocol

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by Martha Wells
First sentence: “I have the worst luck with bot-driven transports.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series:  All Systems Red, Artificial Condition
Content: There is some swearing including a handful of f-bombs. It’s in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the bookstore.

Murderbot is traveling again, looking for more information about the GrayChris corporation, information that they are breaking laws and illegally mining for alien material on planets. This means it has to head to yet another planet, one with a closed “terraforming” project, on yet another bot-driven transport. (All it wants to do, though, is watch entertainment media it has downloaded. It’s a hard thing it’s doing.) Once on the planet, though, Murderbot gets roped into being a security consultant/SecUnit (not entirely against its will) as the people on the ship are suddenly faced with life-threatening situations.

Summing these up really doesn’t give you a sense of how fun they are. Yes, it’s’ hard SciFi, but they are smart, funny, and a pretty good thriller. I laugh aloud, I want to read parts aloud to people, and I have to put the book down because the tension is so high. In short: They are perfect and I wouldn’t change a thing.

On to the next one!

Gallant

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by V. E. Schwab
First sentence: “The master of the house stands at the garden wall.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: February 2, 2022
Review copy pilfered from the ARCs at work.
Content: There’s a lot of narration, and not a lot of external action. It’s mostly an internal book, which may turn off younger readers. It’s in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore.

This book is many things. It’s about an orphan — Olivia — being summoned to her family’s home (a family she never knew she had). It’s about standing up for yourself, and finding a place in life. It’s about found family, and belonging. The plot is simple: Olivia is in an orphanage, and gets called home to Gallant — where there are secrets she has to uncover.

What it really is, at its heart, is a Gothic Novel. I din’t realize this while I read reading it; I just felt a vague sense of being unsettled while reading. It’s not gory, it’s not “spooky”. There are monsters, but they are shadows in the night, and you don’t really understand them. No, it wasn’t until I was helping my youngest with an assignment on Gothic novels, that I realized that Schwab has capitalized on a main element of the genre: an uncertainty on the part of her main character. She keeps Olivia in the dark to help build tension (and it works) and to give the climax that much more punch (and it works).

It’s a very, very good story told by a very, very good storyteller. I loved it.

State of the TBR Pile: January 2022

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It occurred to me that I had forgotten to pt this up yesterday (I did on Instagram and Facebook; you’d think I’d forgotten I had a blog!)

Anyway, my “for fun” pile looks like this:

The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez
The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera
Aurora’s End by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski

Yes, they are all holdovers from last month. I may get to them. I am still reading, though I will be quiet over here for a while because I’m reading these:

I’m a second-round judge for the Cybils Graphic Novels category. There are a lot of good books here, and I’m enjoying reading them. You’ll just have to wait until after February 14th to hear what I think of them.

What are you looking forward to reading this month?

Artificial Condition

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by Martha Wells
First sentence: “SecUnits don’t care about the news.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: All Systems Red
Content: There is some violence, and a small handful of swear words, including a couple of well-placed f-bombs. It’s in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the bookstore.

Picking right off where All Systems Red left off, Murderbot is determined to figure out what happened in its past that made it kill 57 people. Was it because it hacked its governor module? Was it because it was following orders? It figures it needs to go back to the scene of the crime, that there will be answers there. So it hitches a ride on a research transport ship, that happens to have a super-intelligent, curious bot on it, which Murderbot nicknames ART (for a-hole research transport because the bot just won’t shut up). Between the two of them, they manage to get Murderbot a job as a security consultant for some humans with what Murderbot calls a “death wish”, and start to figure things out.

I adore this series. I adore Murderbot as a narrator; it is sardonic and blunt and so very funny. They are tight thrillers, with some good twists and turns. I adore that they’re less than 100 pages; there are no extra words in here, just some tight, fantastic storytelling.

I can’t wait to read the next one.