Fiction

Two Books in the Gender Secret Series

2018, Books in Bed, Feminism, Fiction, Young Adult /

OK books 2 & 3…kind of blended together because I read them back to back in less than three days.

In Book 2, Violet and Viggo reconnected in The Green and came upon Ms. Dale and some Matrus bad guys (gals?) … and they found another egg. And Violet found her brother. And some bad things happened. Also, new characters were introduced. Thinking about it like this, a lot happened. There was a lot of running and fighting and fear and stuff. Very fast-paced.

Book 3 was much slower. Viggo was unconscious for many, many chapters and there were a lot of interpersonal relationship types of things and just going about our day discussing issues rather than doing anything about them. And then, BAM – the last couple of chapters kind of exploded all over the place. The twist at the end was an interesting twist. I wondered if that was what would happen when Ms. Dale was confused about Desmond’s behavior and loyalties.

It will be interesting to see what happens in Book 4 (and 5 and 6.)

(PS. I’m getting a little tired of the Matrus vs Patrus, misandry vs misogyny stuff, lol.)

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The Book of Ivy

2018, Books in Bed, Fiction, Young Adult /

First in a post-apocalyptic fiction YA series, The Book of Ivy wasn’t too bad. It was slow in parts, particular Ivy’s character development. It was too quick in others, particular in Bishop (he was what he was and that was that.)

It almost felt like a book two that was created primarily to set up book three. Everything that (slowly) happened, happened just to get Ivy (and I assume Bishop) to where they are at the end of the book. Period, that’s it. I would like to read book two but … it’s not available in print from my library, and it’s certainly not worth buying. I’ve put it on my TBR list, should I ever find a way to get a print (or audio) copy… it may be a long wait.

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Highly Illogical Behavior

2018, Books in Bed, Fiction, Young Adult /

Huh. I thought Highly Illogical Behavior was a Cybil. It’s not. It’s very Cybil-like. The writing is good. The characters, I really liked (though Lisa made me angry from the first page.)

Anxiety + Severe Panic Attacks + Some OCD = Agoraphobia and Solomon hasn’t left his house in more than three years. There are a whole lot of problems with this book but it didn’t matter. I liked the characters enough to overlook everything else, (even all of the Star Wars Next Generation chatter), and ended up enjoying the book a lot.

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Full of Beans

2018, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction /

I really loved Full of Beans. It’s a Cybil from last year that explains how Key West went from being a dead, bankrupt town during the depression to a must visit tourist destination — and a 10 (?) year old boy tells the story. It event touches on the leper colony that was in Key West at the time, and handles it beautifully.

(TW was not quite as thrilled with the book as I was. I don’t know what her problem is, except that she doesn’t like children’s fiction. Speaking of which, I think it’s categorized as middle grade fiction but it feels pretty young, to me. So better for younger good readers or older reluctant readers.)

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The Last of August

2018, Books in Bed, Fiction, Young Adult /

I did not like The Last of August anywhere near as much as I liked A Study in Charlotte. It didn’t even feel like the normal book two set up for book three, well part of it did but not enough of it. I just didn’t like either Charlotte OR Jamie in this book and I definitely didn’t like them together. I preferred the brief bits with Jamie’s father and Charlotte’s uncle — maybe they need a series of their own, instead. I’m going to give the next book a chance but if I don’t love it and there’s a fourth, I’m not going to bother.

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The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane

2018, Books in Bed, Fiction, Women /

It’s been awhile since we read a Lisa See novel and I’m glad TW mentioned Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane. It was a good story, as See’s books generally are, and its take on overseas adoptions by white parents of Chinese children was a far cry from other books that include this topic.

No coincidence = no story — that’s the theme here, and it’s an interesting one. Very useful in making the coincidences seem less like coincidences that you’d never believe and more like a life of coincidences. I bought it (most of it, ok a lot of it and what I didn’t buy, I forgave because the writing and the characters were wonderful.)

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The Gender Game

2018, Books in Bed, Feminism, Fiction, Women /

Almost a year ago (?) I spotted a couple of interesting books on the new arrivals shelf at the library but I quickly realized they were books two and three of a series and I hate starting a series on anything other than the first book. So, I wandered back to the shelves looking for the first book, only to discover a whole bunch of books in the series but not the first one. So I took a photo of one of the covers and went home to reserve the first book.

Time passed and I wasn’t really moving up on the reserve list. More time passed and I started moving slowly up the list. Finally, it was ready to pick up — except I was out of town and I couldn’t get to the library in time to pick it up, so it went back to the stacks and I lost my hold.

I re-did the hold and was careful to always pause my holds when I went out of town after that and FINALLY The Gender Game arrived last week! Woot!

I enjoyed it but good grief, why is it so hard to get this book from the library? Also, why didn’t I realize I could have just grabbed the Kindle version for free and moved on to the other books that are much easier to get at the library? (Not that TW would have read it, because she hates e-books but this is about me, not her.)

Anyway Matrus and Patrus – post-apocalyptic fiction. I’ll read the next book and see how it goes from there.

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Ms. Bixby’s Last Day

2018, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction /

Tearjerker. And a fun, well-written tearjerker, at that. Ms. Bixby’s Day Off is exactly the kind of Cybil shortlist book that I love.

Have you ever had a teacher that you’d go out of your way to do something really special for — like create her “last day” dream? I’ve had teachers like that. I hope every kid who reads this book has had a teacher like that.

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