When I think I don’t have a lot of time to read but want to read something light but not TOO light or when I’ve had about all I can take with YA problem books I turn to authors like Adriana Trigiani. Luckily, I stumbled across Kiss Carlo at exactly the time when I was done with YA problem books.
It was as you’d expect, if you’ve ever read any of her books (particularly those not in the Big Stone Gap series.)
Woot! 21 books this month (is that my record for the year? I feel like it might be. Sad but yay!)
Here’s the breakdown.
10 YA
4 children’s picture books
4 middle grade
2 non-fiction
1 audiobook
10 Cybils
Reading in November Read More »
First, a Cybil, Still Life With Tornado was a book about a teen who has a breakdown triggered by some stuff that happened at school but also by stuff that’s happened at home. It was an interesting book, A.S. King does a good job with teens and dysfunctional families. I wasn’t all that thrilled about the art teacher and the student… I’m not sure that was necessary to the story line. Otherwise, I liked it and recommend it.
Next, Goodbye Rebel Blue. I liked it a whole lot more than I expected to. Misfit kid finds herself drawn to complete the bucket list of a dead schoolmate — a girl she didn’t really know at all. Good read, really.
Related: After I finished it, TW asked me what I thought of it. I told her I liked it and asked her what was on her bucket list. She said nothing. I said NOTHING? She said no, nothing really matters. I replied… are you reading Still Life in Tornado right now? (She was.) The juxtaposition between the two books was interesting, to say the least.
Don’t ask me why I picked up The Princess Diarist at the library. I am not a Star Wars fan and Carrie Fisher … makes me… uncomfortable. But whatever, it was on the shelf, I saw it was based on the diaries she’d written during the first (don’t start with that “third” BS) Star Wars and thought this might be something that would help me like Fisher more.
It didn’t. But it also didn’t make me like her less.
It also wasn’t quite the book I expected it to be. I expected more diary entries and less Carrie Fisher being Carrie Fisher. Silly me. As expected, the diary entries portion was my favorite portion of the book. The rest… sigh. Not my favorite.
The Princess Diarist Read More »
When you see an LGBT book mentioned, you never really know what you’re going to get when you read it. Unfortunately, it’s rarely really, really, really good — particularly when you’re reading an LGBT YA romance. Thankfully, Of Fire and Stars is freaking excellent. Thank goodness it appears as though it may be the first book in a series. We can hope. We can only hope.
We listened to When the Sea Turned to Silver on audio. It’s a Cybil finalist in the audiobook category so you’d expect it to be good, right? Well it was. It was very good. I think it was even better than Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (if you’ve read that.)
I highly recommend it on audio.
When the Sea Turned to Silver Read More »
Welp. I finally read Colorblind and it was exactly what I expected it to be.
Smart, well-written, and anger/sadness/frustration/anger inducing.
You are not colorblind. I am not colorblind. Nobody is or should be colorblind.
Post-racial politics is stupid. Stop it. There’s no such thing as post-racial any-damn-thing.
Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and Retreat from Racial Equity Read More »
Sharon and Chris joined us on Sunday for #FakeReadathon and it was fun. I also managed to finish seven books, which was also fun.
Happily Ever After: short stories about characters from The Selection series. It wasn’t bad, a lot of repeat of what happened in earlier books so the stories could be read as a stand-alone.
The Crown: The final book in the selection series. I’m glad it turned out the way I thought it would turn out.
There Is No Darkness: I finally finished this ebook that I started months (a year?) ago? I generally just read a chapter or two every time I traveled, while waiting for inflight wifi to kick in. Yesterday, I decided I was doing to finish it and I did. I don’t really love Science Fiction but I definitely enjoyed it. An interesting coming of age story. (Someone in an Amazon review said the Haldeman brothers wrote this in 1955, almost 20 years before Joe wrote The Forever War. I’m all… Wait, what!?! Goodness… Lorena wasn’t even born? Wait, what?!!! Is this true. Someone remind me to ask Lore about this.)
I checked four children’s picture books out of the library, two picture books and two board books (both Cybils), because I thought I might have a chance to read some new books to Pippin and Squshy when they were hear a couple of weeks ago. I also thought even if that didn’t happen, these might be books I would want to buy them for Christmas. Turns out… it was a mixed bag.
– Dinosaur Dance was boring. Unless your child really LOVES dinosaurs, in which case it’s still boring but your kid will still love it because dinosaurs.
– Look, Look Again was cute and interesting. It’s a fold out style book. The first page shows one… something (a mushroom, a strawberry, an apple, etc.) but when you fold out the connecting page, you see more than one something (and it’s actually a counting book.) Pretty cute. I liked it. I’d buy that.
– A Hungry Lion, or a Dwindling Assortment of Animals. This book is troubling… if you buy it or check it out of the library, read it before you share it with your child. It might be fine, it might not be. Great illustrations but the “hungry lion” eats the cute animals… after the story tricks you into thinking that’s not what is going to happen, it wants you to believe the little animals have just created a surprise party for the hungry lion. Jokes on you because, yea, the hungry lion at the cute animals after all. Very troubling.
– Strictly No Elephants was a good story. Again, great illustrations and nobody gets eaten. The beginning is sad because the child with the pet elephant isn’t allowed to go to the club or party or whatever that the other kids with pets go to. But the child with the elephant meets a child with a skunk who also doesn’t have anyone to play with. They build their own club and make sure EVERYONE is welcome. Really nice story. I’d buy this.
#FakeReadathon: 7 Books Read More »
The Witchfinder’s Sister is not the best book about witchhunts but it’s not the worst, either. The only real problem with the book is that I didn’t really care about Alice very much so I wasn’t invested in her life. I have no idea why I didn’t connect with her but I didn’t.
The Witchfinder’s Sister Read More »