Coo

Leave a comment

by Kaela Noel
First sentence: “April breezes, warm and mild as clean laundry, fluttered across the dark rail yard.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: It’s a long book, but the print is fairly large and there’s a lot of white space, so appearances are probably deceiving. It’s in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore. It would make a good read aloud for younger kids.

Coo was abandoned as a baby in an alley and discovered by a flock of pigeons. Who carried her to their rooftop and raised her, teaching her their language and feeding her. In return, she helped them when they were injured. She never left the roof, though. When she was older (11 maybe?), her favorite pigeon, Burr, was seriously injured, and the pigeons got Coo to go down an give him to Tully, a woman who came to feed them and helped when they were seriously injured. She saw Coo, and realized something needed to be Done about her. She tried the police, but they didn’t believe Tully that there was a child living with the pigeons.

Eventually, Coo went to live with Tully, learn English and more about the human world. However, when her flock is threatened by the mayor’s plan to eradicate pigeons, Coo rushes in to save them. Because family — especially found family — matters.

It’s a sweet story, if an odd one. Noel is tapping into some heavy themes: child abandonment, animal cruelty, survival, but she does it in such a way that it doesn’t seem heavy or inaccessible. Coo is an interesting heroine to follow, and her love for her flock of pigeons, whether they be the stalwart Burr or the chaotic Roohoo, is definitely palpable. There’s a lot of unnecessary conflict (from an adult perspective), but it kept the story flowing, and I think kids will enjoy following Coo and Tully as they try to figure out their predicament.

It’s an interesting take on the “raised by wolves” story, and one that’s worth reading.

Aurora Rising

2 Comments

by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
First sentence: “I’m gonna miss the Draft.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There is a lot of violence and some mild swearing. It’s in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

I have this friend who adores long and intricate books, and who is also a big fan of Kaufman and Kristoff. I (finally) read Illuminae series on her recommendation, and she pointed me in the direction of these. I didn’t get around to reading them, though, until I saw that Kaufman and Kristoff were doing a read-along on Instagram during the quarantine, and I figured now was as good a time as any.

It’s the far future, and Earth — Terra — has branched out into space, discovering new world and forming alliances with new species. The inter-planetary diplomatic corps is the Aurora Legion, to which six of our seven main characters belong. There are different paths in the Aurora Academy, and the six of them come together to form a squad: Tyler, is their leader; his twin, Scarlett, is the diplomatic Face; Cat is their pilot; Zila is their science brain; and two aliens — Finian, a Betraskin, is their tech; and Kal is their Syldrathi weapons and tactical man. The seventh character is Aurora, a Terran girl that Tyler rescues from the Fold (it’s the way they space travel in this world), who sets in motion the events of the book.

And it’s a ride! The chapters alternate in viewpoint between the seven characters (I adore Zila’s chapters; they’re often less than a page, but that says SO much about her personality), and help the reader get to know each person while advancing the winding, twisting (in all the good ways) plot.

Yes, it’s the first in a trilogy, and yes, I am invested in these characters and the conflict that they have put themselves in the middle of. It’s a crazy, wild, fun ride, and I can’t wait to see where Kaufman and Kristoff take me next.

Monthly Round-up: April 2020

Leave a comment

I was in a bit of a slump at the beginning of the month: stress, anxiety, everything shifting so much, and just trying to adjust to our new normal all made it difficult to focus on a book. Thankfully, audio books came to the rescue. (If you look down, I listened to — and finished — FOUR this month!) I would sit and listen while I worked on a puzzle for hours. It helped get me escape — though a lot of what I read was nonfiction — and gradually I was able to pick up a real book again. Yay!

My favorite this month was:

Fireborne

A fantastic dragon book. Seriously. I can’t wait for the sequel.

As for the rest:

YA:

Little Women
The Hand on the Wall
A Heart So Fierce and Broken

Adult Fiction:

The Knockout Queen
Pretty Things (audio book)

Nonfiction:

Stop Missing Your Life (audio book)
Southern Lady Code (audio book)
Recollections of My Non-existence
Catch and Kill (audio book)
Stamped From the Beginning

How are you doing with reading? Did you have a favorite this month?

Stamped From the Beginning

1 Comment

by Ibram X. Kendi
First sentence: “Every historian writes in — and is impacted by — a precise historical moment.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There is some swearing, including a few instances of the f-bomb and many of the n-word. It’s in the history section of the bookstore.

I picked this one up after listening to Stamped, which is a remix for younger readers of this history. I didn’t know what to expigect, but what I got was a book that made me rethink my perceptions of race, race relations, and class, and rethink what I was taught in history classes.

The basic idea that Kendi sets out to demonstrate is this: racial discrimination leads to racist ideas which lead to ignorance and hate. It’s the reverse of everything I had been taught which is: ignorance and hate lead to racist ideas which lead to discrimination. It’s a lot to wrap a (racist) brain around at first, but over the course of the 500 pages, Kendi does an excellent job showing how, throughout history, racism starts with racist people being self-interested and creating racist policies. I learned a ton.

I don’t know if there are any solutions to be found in the book. Except for the conclusion that self-sacrifice (of Blacks) and uplift suasion (Black people being “more like White people”, which is a racist idea), and educational persuasion (if white people just had “all the facts” about racism they wouldn’t be racist) don’t work. It will take a concerted effort of White people and Black and Brown people to realize that it’s in the best interest of ALL people to do away with racist policies.

I don’t know what the political and economic solution for this is (except maybe tax the wealthy and refund all the social programs that have been axed over the years). But I do know that it is important for corporate media (!) and White people to stop generalizing and stereotyping Black people.

As for me, this book made me rethink ideas I’ve had in the past, rethink the way I interact with the media and politics, and perhaps made me a little more antiracist. I can only hope.

Audiobook: Pretty Things

1 Comment

by Janelle Brown
Read by Julia Whelan, Lauren Fortgang & Hillary Huber 
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen on Libro.fm
Content: There is a lot of swearing, including many f-bombs, as well as non-graphic depictions of sex. It’s in the Fiction section of the bookstore.

Nina Ross has always been at the mercy of her mother’s lifestyle. They’ve moved over and over again, never quite getting ahead. Mostly because her mother really couldn’t hold down a job, preferring to con rich men out of their money. It’s not been a great life, except for that one year when she lived up in Tahoe, and met Benny, but was put off by his uber-rich family (including his sister, Vanessa). But that was all in the past, and Nina herself has resorted to conning and stealing with her boyfriend to help pay her mother’s medical bills since she came down with cancer.

Vanessa is the privileged daughter of a once uber-wealthy family. She wanted to make her own mark on the world, though, so she tried out several things (losing a lot of her trust fund) until she settled on being an Instagram influencer and all that comes with it. But her mother committed suicide, her brother is in an asylum because of his schizophrenia, and her father died and left her the family home, Stonehaven, at Tahoe.

Which is where Vanessa and Nina’s lives intersect: Nina and her boyfriend head up to Tahoe to con Vanessa out of the money Nina is sure is in the house safe. But will they succeed?

Alternating Vanessa and Nina’s viewpoints, this one kept me thoroughly engrossed. I don’t know if it was in part because the narrators were so fabulous (So fabulous!) or if it was the story that kept me interested, but I would sit for hours (working on puzzles) listening to the tale of Vanessa and Nina unfold. There’s a lot in there as well: class issues and privilege and perspectives and how we do or don’t trust and believe in people. Ultimately, it is the story of two women figuring out how to believe in themselves.

Definitely worth reading.

Audiobook: Catch and Kill

Leave a comment

by Ronan Farrow
Read by the author
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: This book is about sexual predators, and Farrow doesn’t pull back from descriptions of sexual harassment, assault, and rape. It’s not prurient and it’s not graphic, but it may be triggering. There is also swearing, including multiple f-bombs. It’s in the True Crime section of the bookstore.

I heard a story about this book somewhere, in a report about the Harvey Weinstein trial. The report said that they were having trouble finding neutral jurors, mostly because so many of them had read this book and had already made up their minds about Weinstein.

And they’re right. You come out of this book knowing that not only is Weinstein and evil man, every single person, corporation, or entity that protected him and enabled him (and other predators, like Matt Lauer) are also completely and totally corrupt.

This book is Farrow’s story about getting his 2017 New Yorker article about Harvey Weinstein published. See, it didn’t start out as a New Yorker article; Farrow was an on-air reporter at NBC news when he first started looking at leads and conducting interviews about Weinstein’s history of sexual predation. Farrow interviewed several women, corroborated their stories, and was set to put something on air, when NBC pulled it. It goes deeper than that: Weinstein had private investigators tailing Farrow, looking for dirt that he could use to kill the story. NBC has its own history of talent and others harassing, abusing, and raping women in vulnerable positions. It all adds up to not only a toxic male culture, but one in which I end up mistrusting corporate journalism. I don’t blame the journalists — Farrow (and others) did his job to the best of his ability. But, at many points, his bosses were telling him to cancel interviews and tried incredibly hard to kill the story, and if Farrow hadn’t 1) been a male and 2) he hadn’t had a couple people on his side urging him to keep going. It’s so easy for corporations and advertisers and powerful individuals to kill stories they don’t like.

It wasn’t an easy book to listen to because of the subject matter, but Farrow was a compelling writer and an excellent narrator. I know it sounds odd to say I enjoyed every minute of this, but I really did. I kept wanting to know what happened next, and Farrow’s narration kept me engaged.

It’s not only an important book, it’s a good one.

Fireborne

2 Comments

by Rosaria Munda
First sentence “Later, he would be known as the First Protector, and under his vision the city would transform.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is a lot of violence and some mild swearing. It’s in the YA section (grades 9-12) of the bookstore.

This book has been on my radar for a while. One of the teens in the teen review group I run at the bookstore loved it. And then it won the Young Adult Speculative Fiction Cybils. And I finally got around to reading it (thanks, COVID19!)

Lee is the son of one of the former rulers of Callipola, the same rulers that were overthrown in a revolution ten years ago. Lee’s kept his memories (he was only seven at the time) to himself as he grew up in an orphanage and then, later, as one of the chosen dragon riders. Annie is the daughter of Highland farm workers, who were heavily taxed and then murdered by the former rulers. She landed in the same orphanage as Lee and also became a dragon rider, and became Lee’s close friend as they grew up.

Fast forward ten years and Lee and Annie are vying for the position of Firstrider, leader of the dragon fleet and on their way to becoming Protector. Lee seems to be the obvious choice: he has talent and skill and charisma. The problem: his exiled family has shown up and wants to take their position back as Rightful Rulers of the island, and they want Lee to help. The question: will he join his family? Or will he stay true to the values of the new republic he has chosen to serve? And for Annie: can she rise to the situation she is constantly being told she’s unworthy of? And will her knowledge of who Lee is get in the way?

This really is fabulous. Incredibly well-told and captivating, I found I couldn’t put it down. Both Lee and Annie, as well as most of the minor characters, were well-developed, and had incredible arcs. Munda thought through her characters well, and I found them to be complex interesting people to spend time with. I loved the slow-burn romance, even if I could see it coming, enjoying the circuitous path Munda took to get her characters there. I loved her version of dragons; it felt more Anne McCaffrey than anything else, but it was also its own thing. Munda took her time to create a lore of her world, and I found myself wanting to know more.

It was an incredible read I can’t wait to see where Munda takes these characters and this world next.

A Heart So Fierce and Broken

2 Comments

by Brigid Kemmerer
First sentence: “I miss knowing exactly what time it is.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: A Curse So Dark and Lonely
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There are some moments of violence and mild swearing It’s in the teen section of the bookstore.

This picks up where the first book in the series left off: Rhen and Harper have put off their enemies to the north in Syhl Shallow, but that seeded unrest in Emberfall. There are rumors that there is another heir, someone more suited to the crown than Rhen, and that his former Commander of the Royal Guard, Grey, knows who it is. But, Grey is refusing to tell. Meanwhile, one of the daughters of the Syhl Shallow queen, Lia Mara, would rather have peace than war, but instead of negotiating, Rhen imprisons her. She and Grey fall in together (after a series of incredibly vicious circumstances) and try to broker peace between the two countries.

It’s been forever since I read the first in this series, and from what I can gather over at Goodreads, that’s a good thing. This book follows Grey and Lia Mara, leaving Rhen and Harper to be background characters. I think if you read these two too close together, you get invested in Rhen and Harper’s story and there’s a bit of backlash with the change in narrators. As for me, I didn’t mind. I liked seeing the growth in Grey and Lia Mara’s quiet strength. I liked following their stories and learning more about characters where were background in the first book. I though it was an interesting development in the story, moving away from the fairy tale retelling and becoming its own thing. It’s probably not perfect, but I found it entertaining and am curious to see where the next book takes these characters.

Recollections of My Nonexistence

Leave a comment

by Rebecca Solnit
First sentence: “One day long ago, I looked at myself as I faced a full-length mirror and saw my image darken and soften and then seem to retreat, as though I was vanishing from the world rather than that my mind was shutting it out.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is some mild swearing and talk of rape, but nothing graphic. It’s in the biography section of the bookstore.

I had no idea what to expect from this book. I’ve never read any Solnit before, though she’s been writing for decades. I only picked this up because we have this Pick of the List program at the bookstore, and this was one of our picks (booksellers more sophisticated than me picked it!). What I got was a beautifully written, lyrical, loosely chronological memoir of a woman’s professional life. It’s not a strict memoir, per se: Solnit only briefly touches on her childhood, and it tends to jump around in time. “Recollections” is really the best word for it, as it feels as though she’s sitting with you just kind of musing about the paths her life has taken. It is a feminist work: the “Nonexistence” part is about how men have often tried to diminish her thoughts, her work, herself and her perseverance in the face of that.

It is so beautifully written though. A couple passages that struck me: “I believe in the irreducible and in invocation and evocation, and I am fond of sentences less like superhighways than winding paths, with the occasional scenic detour or pause to take in the view, since a footpath can traverse steep and twisting terrain that a paved road cannot.” I feel like this could be the book’s thesis statement. And yet, the paths she takes us down are both lyrical and interesting and I found myself wanting to take the time to wander with her.

A second passage: “I was arguing that the wars of the future and the past were overlapping in the present, and that they were largely unrecognized because of how we thought about things like war, and the West, and nature, and culture, and Native people.” Even with her musings, she is political and radical, and reminded me so very strongly of some of the Western writers I’ve read, like Terry Tempest Williams. I’m not hugely drawn to the West or the Southwest in writing (or in nature, preferring my lush green trees and water — and yes, humidity — of the East and South), but I admire writers like Solnit for their passion for wide open spaces and their understanding of how Native peoples fit into the larger picture.

I’m actually curious about some of Solnit’s other books now. And perhaps I will actually read them. I’m glad I read this one.

The Knockout Queen

Leave a comment

by Rufi Thorpe
First sentence: “When I was eleven years old, I moved in with my aunt after my mother was sent to prison”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Release date: April 28, 2020
Content: There is a lot of swearing, including many f-bombs, and some graphic sex. It will be in the adult fiction section of the bookstore.

When Michael moved to North Shore, California, he moved in next door to Bunny Lampert and her father. Bunny was the star of North Shore, tall, blonde, beautiful (even at eleven) and talented at volleyball. Even though Michael was none of those things — being, rather, a tortured, deeply in the closet gay teenage boy — he and Bunny became best friends. Not the sort of friends that hung out at school (or even after, really) but the kind that stays up late at night doing face masks and talking about all sorts of things. While they were not inseparable, they were devoted.

So much so, that Bunny is willing to go to bat for Michael when a girl on the volleyball team starts badmouthing him. Go to bat, in the sense that she beat the other girl into a coma. From there, Michael’s and Bunny’s paths irrevocably diverge.

This story is all told through Michael’s reflections as an adult, as he tries to figure out who he is, and why society is so deeply unfair to those who don’t have the money to make a decent life for themselves (his mother was sent to prison for defending herself against and abusive husband). He gets into abusive relationships because he’s deeply self-loathing, as is Bunny, and maybe this self-loathing is what ties them together? It’s not a happy narrative, but it is one that has made me think. About perceptions — did Bunny become the person everyone thought she was, or was she always that way — about class, about the things in our lives that affect us.

I’m not entirely sure I liked this book, but it is one that will stay with me for a while, and perhaps that’s worth something, in the end.