State of the TBR Pile: November 2019

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I looked at my pile this morning, and thought to myself: “I must miss being on the YA Spec Fic Cybils Round 1, because that’s what I’m reading right now…”

Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett
Maskerade by Terry Pratchett
Let it Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle
Tarnished are the Stars by Rosiee Thor
A Blade So Black by L L. McKinney
Only Ashes Remain by Rebecca Schaeffer
The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
To Dance by Siena Cherson Seigel and Mark Siegel

What are you looking forward to reading?

Look Both Ways

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by Jason Reynolds
First sentence: “This story was going to begin like all the best stories.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There are some tough subjects, like bullying and parents with cancer. It’s in both the YA (grades 6-8) and the middle grade (grades 3-5) sections of the bookstore.

The format of this book is really the highlight: it’s a series of ten interconnected short stories, based out of a school, and following kids as they go home after school one day. One story for either one kid or a group of kids per block.

It’s a clever premise, and one that shuns the large (a school bus fell from the sky is the underlying “What?” of this story) in favor of the small stories. It’s the story of a girl writing in a notebook, observing things and collecting data on the way home (and a side note in another story about how she is “mysterious”). It’s about the troublemakers who are always stealing loose change, and where they go after school and what they do with the money. It’s about older siblings who have died, or kids getting beat up for defending a boy-on-boy not-quite kiss. It’s simple and deep and profound and lighthearted all at once. Which is why, I think, Reynolds is one of the brilliant writers out there.

Will kids read it? I don’t know. I hope so. It would be perfect for school book groups, and for parent-children discussions. And it’s a good reminder that everything — and everyone — isn’t always what it looks like.

The Toll

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by Neal Shusterman
First sentence: “There was no warning.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: Scythe, Thunderhead
Content: It’s very violent, but much of it is mass violence, which somehow doesn’t have the same impact (for me) on the page as it does on the screen. There is one f-bomb and some mild swearing.

Spoilers for the first two, obviously. If you haven’t read this series yet, you NEED to.

I’m going to try and do this with minimal spoilers for The Toll. It’s not easy. Especially since there’s SO MUCH going on in this one.

Endura has sunk and Citra and Rowan with it; the Thunderhead is only talking to Greyson, which makes him a “prophet” for the Tonists; Goddard has taken over as Overblade of the whole Merican continent, except for the Lone Start state; Faraday and Munira think they have found where the “fail safe” that the original scythes created is being housed. I think that’s it.

From there, though, this book winds its way through multiple timelines — sometimes I felt like I needed a chart to help put all the events in relation to each other. Sometimes I lost track of what was happening when. It was a lot to keep track of.

But, I think Shusterman juggles all his balls really effectively. He really is a master of revealing just enough information at just the right time in order for you to put all the pieces together just before he reveals what you just put together. It’s a good ending, too: he wraps up all the plot lines (even though K thinks it was a bit silly) and did one in such a way that made me tear up.

And because all good science fiction is a commentary on real life, this one has shades of what it would be like to live under a narcissistic dictator with unlimited power and funds. And the ways in which the public reacts (or doesn’t react) to that. It’s illuminating. And about halfway through I realized the brilliance of the title as well.. (Not going to spell that one out for you; you have to figure it out.)

It’s a solid ending to a fantastic series.

10 Blind Dates

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by Ashely Elston
First sentence: “Are you sure you won’t come with us?”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is kissing and some inference to sex (but none actual). It’s in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

Sophie’s parents are off to take care of her older sister as she’s bedridden with pregnancy issues, which means Sophie gets the run of the house over Christmas break. She’s supposed to be in Shreveport with her grandparents (and huge Sicilian family), but what she really wants to do is hang out with her boyfriend, Griffin. That is, until she overhears him saying he wants to break up with her.

So, she takes off for Shreveport, and once there her Nonna hatches a plan: 10 blind dates, each set up by a different member of the family, in between December 21st and 31st. Sophie may not find her perfect man, but it will at least take her mind off of Griffin, right?

This book is, at turns, super hilarious (oh my goodness, some of these dates!) and super sweet (okay, so the boy next door, Wes, holds a lot of appeal). But what I loved best about it was that Elston caught the huge family dynamic super well. They were loud and somewhat oppressive, but super supportive of Sophie and just a really great family overall. I loved the way the cousins and aunts and uncles all bounced off each other, had fun with each other, and humiliated and loved each other in turn. It was sweet and wonderful and made a very very cute YA romance that much better.

A great Christmas romance. Or anytime romance.

Monthly Round-up: October 2019

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Happy Halloween! We’re probably staying home and doing… something? I don’t know. All the kids have outgrown trick-or-treating, and looking at the weather, I think we might be getting less than our usual three trick-or-treaters. So, stay inside, watch a movie, maybe, and go to bed at a decent hour. I’m officially #old.

My favorite book this month was (it was hard to choose; there were so many good ones!):

The Starless Sea

It’s so so so very perfect.

As for the rest:

Middle Grade:

The Bookwanderers

YA:

Dream Thieves (link to an old review)
Raven Boys (this is my review for the bookstore which I wrote in 2012 and I’m still super proud of.)

Adult Fiction:

Red, White, and Royal Blue
The Power
Red at the Bone (audio book)
Witches Abroad

Non-Fiction:

Invisible Women
Running with Sherman
The Book of Delights

Graphic Novels:

Pumpkinheads
Stargazing
Guts
Kiss No. 8

Witches Abroad

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by Terry Pratchett
First sentence: “
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters
Content: There’s some violence, but nothing graphic, as well as some mild swearing. It’s in the science fiction section of the bookstore.

AhHA! I found Granny Weatherwax. So, now you know: it took until this book for Pratchett to really fully develop Granny and her spitfire ways and headology. And this one was such a delight.

When a nearby witch finally dies, she sends a package to Magrat (which I keep misreading as Margaret, poor girl) Garlick with her wand, deeming Magrat a “fairy godmother”. Her task: go to Genua (which kind of felt New Orleans-y) and make sure Ella does NOT go to the ball. And, oh, don’t bring Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg along.

Of course Granny and Nanny come, and of course the three witches have adventures getting to Genua where they realize that someone — Granny knows who, but isn’t saying — has made a “perfect” kingdom where everyone lives out their “stories” and ends up “happily ever after”. And, of course, the witches get involved to help the stories, well… stop.

Yes, it’s a spin on fairy tales — Sleeping Beauty, Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella among others — but it’s also a musing on those last three words: happily ever after. See, Granny doesn’t believe in happily ever afters. Or fairy godmothers. People ought to make their own happiness, and witches are there not so much to give people what they want, but rather what they know they need. And I appreciated that.

It was laugh out loud funny in some spots, and just amusing in others. It was delightfully chaotic, poking fun at those people who don’t quite know how to travel abroad. I have to say, it’s my favorite among the witch books I’ve read (Tiffany Aching aside) so far.

An absolute delight.

Kiss Number 8

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by Colleen AF Venable and Ellen T. Crenshaw
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s swearing, including multiple f-bombs, plus depictions of teenage drinking and smoking. It’s in the graphic novel section of the bookstore.

Mandy has been best friends with Cat for forever; through all of Cat’s ups and downs, and dates, both good and bad. Though Cat hasn’t had much luck in the dating arena. Most of her kisses happened when she was younger, and most of them were really kind of lame. Though, as they are in their junior year at Catholic school, things are beginning to change. Not the least a mysterious phone call that makes her dad angry, and sets off a chain of events that reveals a deep family secret.

This was an interesting graphic novel. I don’t want to spoil everything (though the tag kind of gives things away), but it’s dealing with the LGBT community and religion, or at the very least, religious people. But the story was a bit of a mess. As were Mandy and Cat (and I felt really bad for the third wheel, Laura). I kind of get why Venable and Crenshaw were framing this story through kisses, but I’m not entirely sure it worked really well. I did enjoy it when Crenshaw’s art told more than the words, bringing more depth to the story, the way graphic novels should.

It wasn’t my favorite I’ve read, but it was an interesting story.

Audiobook: The Book of Delights

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by Ross Gay
Read by the author
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: It’s irreverent and sweary, including multiple f-bombs.

I was having a week where I was angry at everything. Did not matter what it was, I was just in a constant state of pissed-off-ness. I was scrolling through my audio books, and I landed on this one. “Hm,” I thought to myself, “maybe I need this one.”

I vaguely knew about Gay going in because he visited the store, and a lot of the staff really loved him. (A lot of the customers, too.) But I wasn’t ready for this book back in April, when it came out. I did, however, need it now.

The basic premise is that Gay, a black poet, spent a year — from his 42nd birthday to his 43rd — writing small essays on the things that delight him. Sometimes they wander into memories, sometimes into ruminations on race or the nature of Joy. Sometimes it was just him expressing delight in a simple touch, or the sharing of a flower, or conversation.

Whatever it was, it was all particularly delightful, especially as read by Gay. His reading, for me, was everything. He made me think, he made me laugh, and he made me look for the delights in my own life. (If you want a sample of him reading, check out his poem To the Fig Tree on the Corner of 9th and Christian.)

This book is, simply, a delight.

The Bookwanderers

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by Anna James
First sentence: “
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: It’s not long and it doesn’t have a lot of hard words, though it does seem to lean in to bookish kids, even if one of the characters has a hard time reading because he’s dyslexic. It’s in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Tilly has grown up in her grandparents’ bookstore, Pages & Co. (a quick real-life interjection here: they have a bakery and a store, but no evidence of customers? How are they paying the bills? I know, I know, it’s a kids’ book…) surrounded by books. She is an avid reader, partially because you can’t grow up in a bookstore and not be and partially because it’s a connection to her mother, who disappeared when Tilly was little.

And now that she’s 11, something unusual has started happening: characters are coming out of books. And she’s been pulled into them, not just metaphorically, but literally. It turns out that her grandparents and mother are part of this group called Bookwanderers, people who can literally travel between the pages of a book. And now, Tilly and her friend Oskar find they can travel in books too, which means, maybe that’s where Tilly’s mother went? And maybe they can find her.

On the one hand, this is super charming. I was charmed by the presentation, by the idea of taking something metaphorical (getting lost in a book) and making it literal. I liked Tilly and her willingness to take chances, even though she had a good support system with her parents. I liked that it wrapped the story up, but also left a thread open for more books in the series.

But. I’m not sure how much kids are going to like it. (Which makes me sad.) Because of copyright issues, James can only use the classics, which makes sense, but I’m sure that kids would much rather read about falling into books they love, and not Alice in Wonderland, Anne of Green Gables, and A Little Princess. It makes sense why she used the classics, but it is a drawback, and one I’m not sure many readers could get past. Which means it’s more for adults who love reading and have a fond memory of reading as a kid, and that’s kind of sad.

Even so, I was happy I read it!

The Starless Sea

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by Erin Morgenstern
First sentence: “There is a pirate in the basement.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: November 5, 2019
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is some violence and some swearing, including a few f-bombs. It will be in the Fiction section (though I think it fits better in science fiction/fantasy), but I bet it’ll have some YA crossover.

I haven’t read The Night Circus since it first came out, though I own it and I was thinking I need to reread it, but I imagine my reaction to The Starless Sea was pretty much the same: Morgenstern may not have a driving plot to her books, but she can write! Oh, she can write. Such lovely sentences, such lovely pages. Such gorgeous, haunting, twisting, lovely words. (And I don’t usually read for words.) There were pages I wanted to highlight and copy and, yes, get tattooed on my body (and I’ve never felt that way about words before, not even Maggie Stiefvater’s words). And, truth be told, the way this book unfolded kept me interested until the end.

The plot is simple: Zachary, a fortune-teller’s son, found a magic door when he was 11, but didn’t go through it. Fourteen years later, he’s at grad school in Vermont and finds — entirely on accident — a book called Sweet Sorrows, that has a tale about a fortune-teller’s son who finds a magic door but doesn’t go through. That piques Zachary’s interest, and he begins a journey — one that starts in Manhattan and ends by the shores of the Starless Sea and involves a reformed hit-man and a painter who may or may not be immortal — to find out what, exactly, was behind that door he didn’t go through all those years ago.

But, really: this book is a book for all of us who love and recognize the power of stories. Who recognize that truths can be found in fiction, that there is a need to tell stories and believe stories and embrace stories. It’s a remarkable book, and one that will stay with me for a long, long time.