by Phil Bildner First sentence: “Let’s do this, Silas,’ I say to myself.” Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there! Review copy provided by the publisher. Release date: February 25, 2020 Content: There are some awkward moments. It will be in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.
Sixth-grader Silas Wade has a loving family (though his parents work too much and his younger sisters are sometimes annoying), and a great best friend in Zoey. He loves playing baseball with his team, the Renegades, and and his coach, Coach Wade, is the best. But Silas has a problem: he has realized that he is gay, and doesn’t quite know how to tell everyone.
Enter a report on Glenn Burke: a real-life professional baseball player (and the inventor of the high five!) in the 1970s who was run out of the major leagues after he came out as gay. Learning about Burke gives Silas the courage to come out to Zoey and then to Coach Wade. It’s not all roses, however. There are ups and downs to this process as Silas figures out how to be his authentic self.
This is a really good book as well as being an Important One. I think there needs to be more sports-oriented books that have LGBT themes, partially because I think there still is a stigma about being LGBT and playing sports. (It’s probably less than it was, but it’s still there, I think.) It’s good to have a book — and one that is written so that kids can grasp what’s going on — that shows that an LGBT kid can play ball well and be gay. And not necessarily fit all the stereotypes that normally come with being gay. I also appreciated Silas’s growth arc; he starts out terrified that people will find out his secret, but as the book goes on, he becomes more and more comfortable with himself.
Bildner knows how to write for kids in a way that makes all of this make sense. And perhaps that’s the most important thing.
by Sandhya Menon First sentence: “Just outside Aspen, Colorado, nestled between the sentinel mountains and an inkblot lake, lies St. Rosetta’s International Academy.” Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there! Review copy provided by the bookstore. Release date: February 18, 2019 Content: There is some talk of teenage drinking and swearing, including a half-dozen or so f-bombs. It will be in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore, but I’d give it to a younger kid if they were okay with the language.
One of the perks of working at a bookstore is the galley shelves in our basement. All the ARCs that come in (and aren’t nabbed and never returned) are put on these shelves for booksellers to pilfer through. I was down there a week or so ago, looking for something new to read (because it’s not like I don’t have enough on my shelves; it’s just that there was nothing on my shelves I really felt like reading. You get that, right?) and I stumbled across this one. I’ve read her before, and enjoyed it well enough, so I took this one home.
And was I glad I did! Jaya Rao is a “princess” of a small state in southern India. She’s basically the ruling class, and takes her responsibility of being the heir incredibly seriously. Grey Emerson is the son of a British lord, whose family used to be part of the British Empire in India. In fact, the Emersons stole a precious ruby from the Rao family temple when they left India in 1947. And Jaya’s great-great grandmother cursed the Emerson line.
So, when Jaya and her sister Isha are forced to go to a new boarding school because of a scandal involving Isha, a couple of boys, and Isha’s desire to be a mechanic (which is not a very princess-like thing to do), and they end up at the same school as Grey Emerson, Jaya decides to get revenge: make Grey fall in love with her and then break his heart.
Of course (of course!) it’s not that simple or easy. But it is thoroughly delightful. Switching between Jaya’s and Grey’s perspectives allowed the reader to get the full perspective, and the fact that both Grey and Jaya are conflicted about their position in their respective families as well as their future helped deepen the characters. And even though they were surrounded with the children of the rich and elite, Menon made pretty much everyone Jaya came into contact with a three-dimensional character. It’s a fluffy romance book, sure, but it’s a fluffy romance book with LAYERS. Which is the best kind.
by Katherine Arden First sentence: “It was late winter in northern Rus’, the air sullen with wet that was neither rain nor snow.” Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there! Content: There is a lot of violence and some sexual content. It’s in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the bookstore.
The plot of this one is hard to describe: it’s Russia on the cusp of when Christianity is becoming more accepted, but the Old Ways are still in play. There are demons keeping the Big Demon — known as The Bear — at bay, but due to priests, the people are beginning to neglect the Old Ways. Everyone, that is, except for Vasilisa. The youngest daughter of a northern lord, she sees and talks to the demons that keep the hearth fires burning, the stable animals quiet, and the lands safe. And when her father remarries a woman who is paranoid about the Old Ways, Vasilisa is the only one who keeps the village and the lands safe.
It’s a slow start, this one, but once it gets going — about halfway through — it really takes off. I mostly liked Vasilisa as a character; she is headstrong and not traditional and doesn’t keep anyone’s advice but her own. I really enjoyed the magic and the contrast between the Old Ways and religion, and how the priests believed that the two couldn’t co-exist. Arden is exploring interesting themes and I’m curious to see where the next one goes, since this one felt like a stand alone.
So, I’ve had a blog for 15 years (!) and I’ve been doing best of reports since 2010. Not quite a decade, but I thought it would be interesting to see how I fared in the 2010s.
I read the most books in 2012 with 188 total! My worst year was 2017 with “only” 133. (Still. That’s a 55 book difference between my highest and lowest years!) And because I’m a dork, I made a chart with all my numbers for the past 9 years. Because why not? (I think it’s fascinating.)
A few other things of note: – I started counting authors of color in 2014 (with 12), and I’ve increased (mostly) every year with 42 in 2018. – The last time I really had fun with “awards” was in 2015. – The best award I ever gave (well, the one that made me smile when I was looking through, though I have to admit my various awards for “wink wink, nudge nudge” and “blush” books were pretty great too): Indulging in my desire to carry around a photo of Nathan Fillion (2013).
It’s been fun to look at the past to see how I have (and have not) changed.
At work, they asked for my top three of the decade. After much soul-searching (I’ve read 1665 books over the past 10 years!) I chose these three:
There were many more I could have chosen, but I’m content with these.
by Michael Palin Read by the author Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there! Or listen at Libro.fm Content: It’s a journal travelogue, so it’s probably only interesting to people who like Palin or are interested in North Korea. It’s in the Current Events section at the bookstore.
I haven’t seen the BBC special this journal is based on, but I don’t think it’s really necessary. Palin is an incredible diarist, and this is based on his experience gaining access to North Korea to film a travelogue and then his experiences during the two weeks he was in North Korea.
It’s a fascinating story: I don’t know much about the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which is its official name) besides what we hear through the media, which (to be honest) isn’t much. Palin didn’t get a whole lot of access to the “common” people and when he tried to strike up political conversations, he was immediately shut down. What he did wasn’t often edited, but sometimes — like in the instance when he wanted to be filmed sending an anti-American postcard to Terry Gilliam — they preempted things from happening. The “minders”, as Palin called them, wanted to show North Korea at its best, so he wasn’t really allowed free access to the country. There’s an interesting postscript on the book written by one of the directors (I think; I can’t quite remember now) about the negotiating that needed to happen before they could even start filming, and how it was difficult to get across that they wanted to see “everyday” life, not just the Best of the Best.
It’s a fascinating book (and a short one!) and Palin’s delightful to listen to.
Highly recommended. (Now, to go see if I can find the show somewhere.)
by Terry Pratchett First sentence: “The wind howled.” Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there! Others in the series: Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies Content: There’s some reference to sex, because that’s just who Nanny Ogg is. And some creative swearing. It would be in the science fiction/fantasy section of the bookstore if we had it.
Ah, I have come to adore Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg. Sure, some of the witches books are better than others (my personal favorite is still Witches Abroad), but I do adore the combination of Granny and Nanny taking on the world.
In this one, they head to Ankh-Morpork to tackle the opera. It seems that one of Lancre’s own, Agnes Nitt (aka Perdita X. Nitt) has moved to the big city to try and make her fortune, and has fallen in with the opera. That has a Ghost who seems to not only be haunting the opera house, but is murdering members of the cast and crew.
So, if this sounds vaguely like Phantom of the Opera, you’re probably right. Except — like a few of the other ones in the witches series — Pratchett takes the familiar bones of the story and overlays a funny and clever and insightful story with Granny and Nanny being their amazing selves. There’s a mystery in this one that they manage to solve (with some hilarious asides about being in the book publishing business), before getting Agnes to come back to Lancre and take up her True Calling as a witch.
Not my favorite of the series, but definitely fun! (I thought this was the last of them, but it turns out that there’s one more to go before I hit the Tiffany Aching series.)
by Cynthia Hand First sentence: “The first thing you should probably know is that Yvonne Worthington Chase was dead.” Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there! Content: There’s some mild swearing. It would be in the Christmas section if we carried it, but I’d also shelve it in the YA section (grades 6-8).
Holly Chase is dead. She was the recipient of “Project Scrooge” — which is based on A Christmas Carol, going around and finding callous individuals who need redemption — and failed. Miserably. She didn’t believe it was real, she didn’t believe she would die (granted: she wasn’t quite 17), and she ignored all the warnings. And ended up dead.
Now she works for Project Scrooge as The Ghost of Christmas Past. For the past five years, she’s stayed 17, and gone into peoples’ memories, searching for moments of good that could change them. But this year is different. The target is Ethan Worthington III who has a lot of similarities to Holly (and is super attractive too!): they both can pinpoint their increasing materialism and callousness to the point when they lost a parent.
I’m going to leave the rest of the story for you to find out. It was incredibly enjoyable; I liked how Hand echoed the Dickens book without coping it outright. It’s not a retelling of A Christmas Carol, but more a riff on it. Which makes all the difference. I enjoyed Holly as a character, even when she was being a brat, and Hand genuinely surprised me with the direction the story took.
An excellent addition to the world of Christmas books. Maybe not an instant classic, but very, very good.
The Book Nut 