2012

Red Glove

2012, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

When we started listening to Red Glove, it took a few chapters for me to remember what happened in White Cat and who all of the characters were. Once I settled into the story, I started wondering whether this was a trilogy or a longer series. It IS a trilogy and this might be the best “second book” ever – I sure liked it more than White Cat and now I’m really excited to read Black Heart.  Poor Cassle. And what the heck is going to happen to his mother, because that’s one heck of a job she pulled on the Governor…

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Team Human

2012, Books in Bed, Favorites, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

I put off reading Team Human for a long time because I am not a Justine Labalastier fan. I don’t hate her I just don’t love her and sometimes she makes me grumbly. But it was on the shelf and I wasn’t finding anything else that I thought I could focus on so… Team Human it was.

And it was fantastic.

I loved it. I loved every character. I loved the relationships between the characters. I was tempted to start right back over at the beginning and read again. I hope there’s a sequel. I want to know more about Kit and Mel. I want to know more about Kit’s mom. And how he came to be on that doorstep. (So I want a sequel and a prequel? Or something?) What happens to Toby and the soccer player? Anna and her mom? Francis and Cathy?

Let’s see them all go to college … well not some of the moms. But you know what I mean.

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The Color of Tea

2012, Adoption Reading Challenge, Books in Bed, Fiction, Women /

The Color of Tea started off really dark and depressing – and slow. That was the worst part, it was so slow that I read a chapter and put it down and each night I considered just stopping and starting something else. If there had been something on the shelf I was dying to read, I’d have done that. But no, I muddled through. And I’m glad I did because about the time Grace decided to get out of bed and build a café was the time it lightened up and moved. Which makes sense.

I loved Café’ Lillian. I loved the women who made their lives there.

I can’t decide how I feel about the end. I knew it was coming – an infertility story that was going to turn into an open adoption story… Grace gave birth to the macaron café and GiGi gave birth to Faith and then they… swapped. That’s how it felt and that’s why I can’t decide whether I liked the ending. Which is pretty much how I feel about adoption in general, I guess.

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Spy Mom: The Adventures of Sally Sin

2012, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Women /

A few weeks ago, Sassymonkey asked me if I’d read (heard of) the Sally Sin books. I hadn’t but they looked interesting, so I reserved them. TW read the second book and then realized that the other book actually contained two separate books under one cover. Cool – I took book 2 back and picked up Spy Mom a couple of days ago, and could not put it down. Totally fun. I love Sally Sin. I mean Lucy. I hope to goodness that there’s another book coming because I really need another book.  

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Cottage at Glass Beach

2012, Books in Bed, Chick Lit, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

I thought The Cottage at Glass Beach was going to be a summer chick lit type read. It was a little more fantasy and myth than I expected. Selkies and such. I liked it, though I had a hard time caring about any of the characters for the first 50 or so pages – but by the end, I liked them all. I’d rather have read the story of the generation before Nora’s – that seems like the more interesting one. Maeve & Maire… sisters. Much more interesting than the only child Nora with daughters of her own…

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Breadcrumbs

2012, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

We listened to Breadcrumbs on audio and I liked it more than TW did. She found it a little tired – retelling of fairy tales. So yea, been there, done that, but I still liked it. I liked Hazel. It was a little slow, particularly for audio, but I definitely enjoyed it.

Good Cybils middle grade fantasy. Not the best but worthy of the shortlist for sure.

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The Soiling of Old Glory

2012, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction /

I should probably have skipped reading The Soiling of Old Glory during the RNC – politics all day and then a book about busing, race and class made for a pretty depressing week. The book was good, it was just really bad timing. I should have read it a month ago, before the ugly election politics really got going.

Read it but wait til next year, unless you need to get fired up about race and class issues. Then this would probably help you right along.

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With a Name Like Sparkle Hayter….

2012, Books in Bed, Fiction, Mystery, Women /

I reserved Nice Girls Finish Last and Revenge of the Cootie Girls because I saw the cool pulp fiction-y covers on the library’s recently reviewed spinner. I am a sucker for a good pulp fiction style cover. And once they arrived, I noticed they were written by Sparkle Hayter. Hahaha. I love her name. I love it so much that I actually own Naked Brunch (but have never managed to read it.)

I was a little unhappy when I realized Nice Girls Finish Last was not the first book in the series. I do not like reading books out of order. But, I didn’t have anything else handy that I really felt like reading and I figured I’d take a shot. I still wish I’d read them in order but I enjoyed both of these books a lot. Enough that I’m thinking about reserving the rest of the books in the series. I like Robin. She’s a great character and her supporting cast is pretty darn good, too.

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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

2012, Adoption Reading Challenge, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction, Queer /

I love Jeanette Winterson and that’s pretty much all I knew when I grabbed Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? From the library shelf. It was obviously non-fiction, with a picture of a child who had to be a young Winterson – so I figured it was a memoir. Or maybe not a memoir but something about coming out . Whatever. It didn’t matter. Winterson wrote it, I was going to read it.

And I did. Not quite straight through, because I started it very late one night, but pretty darn close.

Winterson writes in true Winterson fashion about her adoption and early childhood with Mrs (and Mr) Winterson – it wasn’t pretty, to say the least. Mrs Winterson had some big, big problems and Mr Winterson had a few of his own, (war related, poverty related, his own childhood related, and of course – Mrs Winterson related.)  Then, she jumps ahead 25 years – to her nervous breakdown and the realization that she needed to look for her birth mother.

At that point, I was left wishing I knew a little bit more than I did about the missing 25 years.

Let me spoil it for you… Winterson finds her mom, an aunt, a half brother, more family members. They don’t mind her queerness, they want her to be part of their family but… it’s hard. Of course. Adoption is hard. Finding your birth family is hard. Figuring out what happens next is very hard. And when you throw in the childhood, the rough 25 years, the celebrity, the breakdown, the very thing that is Jeanette Winterson… it’s all going to be hard.

I’m fascinated by the Amazon reviews/comments. The people who thought it would be a self-help book. The people who find Winterson unlikeable. The people who find her treatment of her birth family untenable. The people who don’t recognize Winterson’s mentions and quotes from her novels as important to this story, to understanding what led her to be the person she was. Fascinating. This is a book for those who are thoughtful – It’s not self-help and Winterson doesn’t want you to like her. She tells you that here. She’s been telling you that in every novel she’s ever written. She doesn’t want you to like her because… she does not deserve it. Mrs Winterson (and the circumstances of her adoption) taught her to believe that…

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