The Other Daughter is another great novel from Lauren Willig. I enjoyed it so much, I didn’t want to put it down. Rachel is a great character (and so is Vera.) I’m very glad everything turned out the way it did for Rachel and for the other characters. Except for CeCe, poor CeCe. We should have a book about CeCe, that would be fabulous.
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I’ll Give You the Sun started slowly and the chapters are really long but I got hooked really quickly and could not put it down. I love both twins and the other kids and adults in the book. Great characters. Well done, well done.
We listened to Noggin on audio and enjoyed this one, too. Poor kid. Seriously. I cannot imagine. I even mostly liked the ending, though for awhile there I was afraid it was going to be stupid. I should have known better, obviously. That whole Travis and Cate thing… gah. Also, I’ve decided I wouldn’t opt for having my head cryogenically frozen. Nope. Not doing it.
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I wasn’t sure about Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood. I was either going to love it or hate it, and I was pretty sure it would be the latter. Turns out, I loved it.
It’s a quick read and it didn’t take more than a few pages for me to fall in love with Abby and her mom and her grandparents and her friends. It took me longer to fall in love with Abby’s dad, but that’s to be expected.
I did a lot of talking out loud to the book. I gasped when Abby talked to the reporters towards the end. TW was confused by my vocal engagement with the book. I couldn’t help it, I felt compelled to talk to or commiserate with Abby.
Who would have guessed?
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TW said Finn Fancy Necromancy was good, so I read it. And it was totally good. So much fun. I love Finn. I love the idea of going into “exile” and returning 25 years later with all of the 80s references. Imagine being “good at programming on your Commodore 64” and then coming back 25 years later to find … iPhones, Google, email! Poor Finn. lol.
Such a fun book.
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Yes, I’m a Nirvana fan and not just because Christopher LOVED Nirvana when he was a little kid. I don’t have HBO so I haven’t seen the documentary yet but just as soon as it’s released on DVD, it’s MINE!
The book, Montage of Heck was excellent. Kurt’s art plus animation stills plus interviews = everything a Kurt Cobain fan could want, and more.
I found an awesome chicken coop and garden on Pinterest (I think that’s where I found it, maybe it was on Houzz?) and in the post the blogger talks about the book Free-Range Chicken Gardens so I had to check that out.
It’s amazing.
Elly and I totally agree, it’s chicken porn and chicken coop porn and chicken garden porn and we loved everything about it. Every single thing except our inability to have all of the chickens and all of the coops and all of the gardens.
I might have to buy this book next year.
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I had to take a little break from reading When I Was the Greatest because I was afraid things were going to go very very wrong for Ali, Needles and Noodles and I just didn’t feel like I could deal with that the day or two after the Charleston shooting.
I did eventually go back to the book and really enjoyed it. Things did go badly for the boys but not THAT badly. It could have been so much worse.
Interesting story — interesting characters. Well worthy of the Cybils shortlist. Pst, there’s knitting in this book!
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We very much enjoyed listining to Gabi, A Girl In Pieces. I loved Gabi, her family and her friends. I loved the honesty in this book. It felt very realistic, to me. I can see teen girls feeling all of these things. I can see teen girls being confused about all of the same things. It was also a YA trouble book that didn’t leave me feeling like the author just threw in all of the possible teen problems just to throw in all of the possible teen problems, as so many YA books do.
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This is hard.
I read Freedom Summer Murders because it was on the Cybils shortlist. It was a good book for kids who don’t know much about Freedom Summer. I was glad I read it.
I also got sucked down a hole of thinking about education in South Carolina which led me to spend a good bit of time on Wednesday evening looking at articles about the history of education in South Carolina.
All of that caused me to be somewhat amazed by the fact that I had any black teachers at all… growing up in Charleston, SC. It caused me to think more kindly upon a black teacher I had, who really — wasn’t a great teacher. It caused me to think even more kindly about a black high school English teacher that was a good teacher, though I liked nothing more than to complain about her when I was in her class.
It also caused me to spend more time thinking about how people should know more about Septima Clark. We rarely hear her mentioned when we read about the fight to end segregation. It also caused me to wonder if Crosstown in Charleston was ever officially re-named for her. (It was.)
And shortly after all of that wondering and thinking and stuff… I saw the news about the shooting at Emanuel AME and … how can we be here in this time, after all of these amazing people fought so hard. After people gave their lives. How can my home state and our country still be so steeped in racism that this can happen? How?
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I was between books and TW said Citizens Creek is really good so I gave it a try. It was really good.
The story of Cow Tom, born into slavery and sold to a Creek Indian chief. How he bought his freedom and the freedom of his family, became Chief Cow Tom and then the story shifts to those of his children/grandchildren after his death.
Chief Cow Tom was a real person and novels around real people can be problematic. Luckily, in this case it worked well. I’m really glad I read it.