tag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498starfishstarI thought the sun was going down, but the sun was coming upstarfishstar2023-02-27T14:12:01Ztag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:125083Books in 20222023-02-27T14:07:27Z2023-02-27T14:12:01Zpublic15Oh, hey, it's almost March 2023... Here's my post about the books I read in 2022. (A post that I mostly wrote at the end of 2022...and then didn't manage to finish until now.)<br /> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in"> </p><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/125083.html#cutid1">Books in 2022!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=125083" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:122610Books in 2021!2022-01-15T18:12:02Z2022-01-15T18:13:52Zpublic9<br /><strong>How many books read in 2021?</strong><br /> <br /> 99 books<br /> <br /> <strong> </strong><br /> <span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/122610.html#cutid1">let me tell you about them!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /> <br /> .<br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=122610" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:122144Bookwormish, 4th quarter of 20212022-01-08T18:22:43Z2022-01-08T18:22:43Zpublic10<p>Okay, favorite books from this most recent quarter year, in roughly one sentence each, go…</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>TOP BOOKS</strong><strong> </strong></p> <p><strong><em>The Last Graduate</em> by Naomi Novik</strong> – I love it when an author takes the already excellent <a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/117590.html" target="_blank">worldbuilding from their first book</a>, and uses the second book in the series to unfold it further outward in unexpected yet inevitable directions; in other words, Naomi Novik continues to write at the top of her game.</p> <p><strong><em>Notes on Grief</em> by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie</strong> – A gentle and lovely elegy to her father.</p> <p><strong><em>The Secret to Superhuman Strength</em> by Alison Bechdel</strong> – Like probably pretty much everyone else, I saw this and thought, Alison Bechdel wrote a book…about fitness…? But because it’s Alison Bechdel, fitness is a lens through which to examine the human condition, her struggle for utter self-sufficiency, and her gradual – and still ongoing – capitulation to the idea that not all interdependence with fellow human beings is a bad thing.<em><br /></em></p> <p><strong><em>Shirley and Jamila’s Big Fall</em> by Gillian Goerz</strong> – This sequel to <em><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/117590.html" target="_blank">Shirley and Jamila Save Their Summer</a> </em>continues to be a wonderful kids’ mystery/adventure, a modern-day, kid-scaled Sherlock Holmes retelling, but very much stands on its own with a core theme of friendship and what it means to be a good friend.</p> <p><strong><em>A Stranger at Home</em> by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton</strong> – Sequel to <em>Fatty Legs</em>, and I thought this one was even better – here Olemaun, an Inuvialuit girl, returns home from her terrible experience at Catholic boarding school and has to struggle with no longer quite belonging in either world.<em><br /></em></p> <p> </p><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/122144.html#cutid1">more books here!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><p><br />.</p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=122144" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:120923Bookwormish, 3rd quarter of 20212021-12-18T19:51:58Z2021-12-18T19:54:33Zpublic2In the spirit of doing things perhaps a little less comprehensively than I usually might, in order to have a hope of getting them done at all.....<br /><br /><br /><p><strong>VERY TOP BOOKS</strong></p> <p><strong><em>Check, Please! Book 1: #Hockey!</em> and <em>Check, Please! Book 2: Sticks and Scones</em> by Ngozi Ukazu </strong>– OH MAN. I got sucked in at last. :D Being in fandom spaces, I'd long been peripherally aware of Check, Please! but I guess I'd sort of subconsciously pooh-poohed the concept (despite knowing next to nothing about it)? Hockey bros, but they're gay and fall in love? Sounds like a fannish fantasy... Well, it turns out, yes, it's perhaps a bit of a fantasy, but of the most AFFIRMING, HEARTWARMING, JUST-WANT-TO-SNUGGLE-THIS-BOOK-TO-MY-CHEST kind. Oh goodness. I read the whole series, and then I read it again. (And I've been reading fic for it ever since.)</p> <p><strong><em>The Street</em> by Ann Petry </strong>– The rare case of a book that I went into knowing almost nothing about it, only that a friend had recommended it. And I'm glad, because the experience was powerful. Searing social commentary that manages to pass itself off as a thriller.<em><br /></em></p> <p> </p><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/120923.html#cutid1">lots more books!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><p> </p>.<br /><br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=120923" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:120811Bookwormish, 2nd quarter of 20212021-11-16T21:51:15Z2021-11-16T21:51:15Zpublic10Ha. Yeah, I guess life has indeed been so hard (see note below) that it's now November and I still have sitting here a nearly complete draft of my write-up about the books I read in the second quarter of this year. As in, books I read from April to June. And now it's November. (This write-up was already very belated even when I first wrote it, sometime over the summer, and then things got even harder and I never had a chance to come back to finish it.) <br /><br />So I'll just share this as it is, with my thoughts mostly complete. Not sure whether I'll do posts for the third (long since fled) and fourth (racing toward its close) quarters of this year. I was thinking I was going to come here and say that I'm probably going to have to stop writing these quarterly round-ups entirely – but rereading this one reminded me how much I enjoy doing these! So, we'll see. Maybe I'll do a very abbreviated list of just top favorites, of the 3rd & 4th quarters squished together, at the end of the year? <br /><br />Dunno... Anyway, here's what I wrote for the second quarter of 2021: <br /><br /><p> </p><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/120811.html#cutid1">favorite books from April to June!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><p> </p> <p>. </p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=120811" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:119205Bookwormish, 1st quarter of 20212021-05-05T04:39:01Z2021-12-18T17:36:32Zpublic4Ha, well, apparently April was the sort of month where I didn't manage even to <em>think</em> about writing up my reading from the first quarter of the year (January–March) until now in...May. Yeah. But here we go! <br /> <br /> <strong> </strong><br /> <strong>VERY TOP BOOKS</strong><br /> <em> </em><br /> <strong><em>We Are Not from Here</em> by Jenny Torres Sanchez</strong> – Damn, this book hits hard and real. It was impossible to decide which of my three "very top books" from this quarter should be listed first; frankly, they all deserve to be first! But I'm putting this one at the top, because I think its very human message is going to stay with me for a long time. It's about three teenagers who flee their home in Guatemala when dangerous circumstances become untenable ones. The book follows them through the long, arduous journey across Mexico (a part of the migrant journey I knew NOTHING about) and then the perilous crossing of the U.S. border. It's a tough read, but an important one, and more than that a <em>good</em> one. It's a fantastic portrayal of tight-knit friendship. The author absolutely succeeded at what she clearly set out to do: put a human face to a catastrophe that's mostly talked about in sweeping terms and statistics. (Similar to how I felt about <a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/117590.html" target="_blank"><em>When Stars Are Scattered</em></a>, which similarly put a human face to the too-massive-to-comprehend crisis of life in refugee camps.) Talking about all this heavy stuff is probably not a great way to sell anyone on why they should read this book, but it's <em>really</em> good. And maybe essential reading for anyone in North America. (Oh, and I highly recommend the audiobook! Getting to hear the accents and the correct pronunciations of all the foods and such added such richness. Mm, now I'm very curious about Guatemalan food...)<br /><br /><strong><em>Concrete Rose</em> by Angie Thomas </strong>– I mean. Surely it was clear by now that everything Angie Thomas does is amazing! I loved this empathetic portrayal of a teenage boy trying so hard to do right by the responsibilities that are piling and piling up on him, despite pretty much everything being stacked against him. For much of this book I found myself saying over and over, "Oh, kiddo. Oh, kiddo." Because yes, Maverick makes a bunch of bad decisions along with the good ones, but given everything he's up against, the logic of those decisions is so relatable. And yet, because it's Angie Thomas, the story is beautiful and compelling too! I also really appreciated how firmly this book pushed back on racist stereotypes about Black men as absentee fathers. All the fathers in this book are <em>incredibly</em> present, fiercely looking out for their kids – yes, even in the case of the dad who's having to do his parenting from prison. I found myself having to excavate and examine some prejudices I still hold, even though I'd like to think I don't, and I'm grateful for it. <br /><br /> <strong><em>Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry </em>by Mildred D. Taylor </strong>– This book, too, deserves to be listed at the very top of the top three. Obviously! I think it's only down this far because this time around it was a reread. Or a reread of a reread? I've lost track... I was finally able to pick back up my big read of the entire Logan Family series, after I tracked down one errant book that the pandemic had made inaccessible to me, so stay tuned for more of the Logan family! Mildred D. Taylor is masterful. She's one of those writers (like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) where I find myself thinking, how do they <em>do</em> that? Even when they're writing about mundane things, it's so compelling. And the non-mundane things, of course, are even more compelling.<br /> <strong> </strong><br /> <strong> </strong><br /> <span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/119205.html#cutid1">so many more good books here...</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br />.<br /> <br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=119205" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:117986Books in 2020!2021-01-16T05:53:50Z2021-01-16T15:50:45Zpublic6<b><br />How many books read in 2020?</b> <br /><br />97 books<br /><br />...Yes, this is the first time since (*checks records*) 2015 that I read fewer than 100 books in a year. I don’t even know exactly why this year had a drop-off; yes, 2020 was hard, but for me 2019 was way, way, way harder. I think partly it may be that I’ve been working on being less obsessive about, well, everything, so that seems to have managed to spill over into not being quite as absurd about my MUST READ ALL THESE BOOKS impulses. That’s my plan for 2021, in fact – to try to hardly be obsessive about it at all. :-) <br /><br />(BTW, it was ADORABLE looking back at my end-of-year books post from 2015 and seeing that I was impressed with myself for having read a whole 79 books that year, and that I thought reading 6–7 books a month was a lot. Ha ha ha, awww. *laughs indulgently at my naïve baby self who had not yet become obsessive about expanding and tracking my reading*) <br /><br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/117986.html#cutid1">lots of thoughts and books and recs!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br />.<br /><br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=117986" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:117590Bookwormish, 4th quarter of 20202021-01-09T20:53:23Z2021-01-09T20:53:23Zpublic0My favorites of the books I read in the fourth quarter of 2020.<br /><br /><br /><strong>VERY TOP BOOKS</strong><br /><br /><em><strong>This Is How You Lose the Time War</strong></em><strong> by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone</strong> – A powerhouse of a slim little novella – and just as good as everyone had been saying it was! I love a book that gives the sense that great swaths of complex worldbuilding exist just beyond the frame of what we see.<br /><em><br /><strong>Friday Black </strong></em><strong>by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah</strong> – Oof. These stories tackle hard, dark topics, and in a bleaker way than I can usually stand to put myself through. (Police brutality, life post-apocalypse, brutality <em>in</em> the post-apocalypse...) And yet they're so well-written and so clearly and powerfully informed by urgent present-day concerns that they pulled me all the way through the book. I was impressed by the author's range, too. Some short story writers seem to write more or less the same thing over and over. Other short story writers also have a clear set of themes they're working within, and yet manage to make each individual story urgent and distinct. Carmen Maria Machado comes to mind – as does, now,<strong> </strong>Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.<br /><em><strong><br />Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead </strong></em><strong>by Olga Tokarczuk (translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) </strong>– What an intriguing book, indelibly imprinted with the unique voice of its protagonist. It would have been a strong book just as a character study, but then it had a twist, too, that really got me. <br /><em><br /><strong>When Stars are Scattered </strong></em><strong>by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed</strong> – A heartbreaking, beautifully crafted memoir about growing up in a refugee camp. It sounds like the authors set out to put a human, individual face to the overwhelming statistics of the refugee crisis, and they really, really succeeded.<br /><br /><em><strong>How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers by Toni Bernhard </strong></em>– Recommended for anyone with chronic illness, or who has a loved one with a chronic illness, or anyone, really. Offers a lot of thoughtful perspective on how to live <em>with</em> the challenges, instead of living a life that's an exhausting fight against them. <br /><br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/117590.html#cutid1">lots more books!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br /><br />And there we have it! "Year in review" about books in 2020 as a whole coming soon.<br /><br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=117590" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:113304Bookwormish, 3rd quarter of 20202020-10-20T04:41:24Z2020-10-20T04:41:24Zpublic4My favorites from July through September! (Once again I'm going to attempt to be succinct at this, let's see how that goes...)<br /><br /><br /><span class="st"><span class="st"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">VERY TOP BOOKS</span></b></span><br /><br /><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays) </i>by Rebecca Solnit</b> – I feel the same way about Rebecca Solnit that I feel about Ta-Nehisi Coates: The things she writes rewire the pathways my brain travels – about politics, society, humans. Brilliant. <br /><br /><em><strong>Seraphina</strong></em><strong> by Rachel Hartman</strong> – A reread, but I still cherish this book to forever. This portrayal of finding self and self-esteem and a place in the world – in the midst of dragons and intrigue and humor, no less – is one of my favorite things.<br /><em><br /><strong>Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry</strong></em><strong> by Mildred D. Taylor </strong>– I read this at some point as a kid, but I clearly retained little, and it proved very much worth a reread. This book pulls absolutely no punches about the depths and depravity of American racism. It's also a marvelous portrait of a family. I don't think I realized as a kid that there's a whole series of books about the Logan family. I'm now reading my way through all of them!<br /><br /><strong><em>Darius the Great Deserves Better</em> by Adib Khorram</strong> – This was so marvelous! <a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/103191.html" target="_blank">I liked <em>Darius the Great Is Not Okay </em>a whole bunch,</a> but I would venture to say this sequel is <em>even better</em>. (Please write a third one, Adib Khorram!) <br /></span><strong><span class="st"><br /><em>Parable of the Sower</em> by Octavia E. Butler</span><span class="st"> </span></strong><span class="st">– Talk about books that rewrite your brain... I have not stopped thinking about this eerily on-point portrayal of a near-future in which the world is well on its way to falling apart. One of those books where I just kept thinking, How did she <em>know</em>?? I've also started listening to Toshi Reagon and adrienne maree brown's <a href="https://anchor.fm/oparables" target="_blank">podcast</a></span><span class="st"><a href="https://anchor.fm/oparables" target="_blank"> about this book</a>. I'm only a couple episodes in, but I can tell it's going to be very, very good. <br /><br /><br /></span><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/113304.html#cutid1">read on for more excellent books!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><span class="st"><span class="st"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br /><br /></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br />.</span></b></span></span><br /><br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=113304" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:111861Bookwormish, 2nd quarter of 20202020-07-02T18:59:57Z2020-07-03T19:35:35Zpublic8Ugggggh, I had completed my descriptions of all but the very last book on this list... And then my browser crashed and I lost everything. (I ALWAYS draft these posts in Word first, and then edit and tweak them endlessly before posting. This is the ONE TIME I made myself try writing it directly into a Dreamwidth post, in an attempt to be more succinct and just post it right away for once. And then of course this happened. Ugggggh.)<br /><br />So maybe, as I'm faced with the slog of recreating something I'd already written in great and loving detail...maybe this time I WILL actually manage to be succinct. :-)<span class="st"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""> </span><br /><br /><br /><span class="st"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">VERY TOP BOOK</span></b></span><br /><br /><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Black Flamingo</i> by Dean Atta</b> – A beautiful, powerful coming of age novel, told in verse, by a poet. The character (and the author) is of Greek Cypriot and Jamaican descent, navigating race and class and gender and sexuality, while finding his own identity.<br /><br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/111861.html#cutid1">MORE TOP BOOKS!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br />.<br /><br /></span><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=111861" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:111314Bookwormish, 1st quarter of 20202020-04-17T03:05:48Z2020-04-17T03:11:56Zpublic13<p class="MsoNormal">My favorite books from the first quarter of 2020:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="st"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="st"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="st"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br /><br />VERY TOP BOOKS</span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"> </i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Water Dancer</i> by Ta-Nehisi Coates</b> – All the brilliance and all the empathy you would expect from Ta-Nehisi Coates’ first novel. <a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/71808.html" target="_blank">When I read Toni Morrison’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Beloved</i></a>, I said I felt like it brought home the trauma of slavery to me more than anything else I’d read or seen, even though I’ve learned about American slavery my whole life. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Water Dancer</i> felt similar in how powerfully it made real to me just how much the separation of families was one of the most unthinkably cruel and traumatizing aspects of slavery.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"> </i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Long Way Down</i> by Jason Reynolds</b> – Wow. Wow. Jason Reynolds is a master of the short-but-unforgettably-powerful form. The entire novel takes place in the time it takes the 15-year-old protagonist to ride the elevator down from his apartment, as he’s visited by memories of people from throughout his life and decides whether or not to find and kill the man who killed his brother. No description does the book justice. It’s slim (I listened to the audiobook, which is less than 2 hours total) but unforgettable.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="st"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br /></span></b></span></p><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/111314.html#cutid1">lots more good books!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><p class="MsoNormal">.</p><br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=111314" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:110426bookish stuff & fannish stuff2020-01-25T23:32:15Z2020-01-26T20:46:18Zpublic6<br />Thoughts!<br /><br />1. <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://sanguinity.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://sanguinity.dreamwidth.org/'><b>sanguinity</b></a></span>, if you're around these parts... Thank you again for recommending <a href="https://asmywimseytakesme.com" target="_blank"><strong>As My Wimsey Takes Me</strong></a>, the podcast about Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novels. I'm now here to heartily pass along the recommendation to everyone else! I listened to the introductory "episode 0" a while ago, and wasn't sure whether it was something I would end up getting deeply into or not; it's a great concept, but I have a million things bookmarked already and can't always get to new things fast. But last night I listened to episode 1 (and then immediately to episode 2...) and was absolutely sold on it. The podcast is fantastic, the podcasters are fantastic, and I might have to do a whole series re-read after all. :-) It's an excellent mix of squee over the author and characters, critique of problematic elements, and insights into literature and history. Highly recommended!<br /><br /><br />2. Also thank you to whoever (almost certainly one of you Holmestice folks) mentioned <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQaoCdh7q6I" target="_blank"><strong>Sherlock Holmes and the Furtive Festivity</strong></a>! Again, I'm only now getting back to things I'd bookmarked ages ago, so I don't remember where I heard about it. (And probably everyone else already knows it, since it seems to have been crowdfunded by fans!) This is a short film about a Victorian-era Holmes/Watson, as Watson tries to conceal a surprise birthday party from the world's greatest detective. It's fan-made, I think? But highly professional in quality – and utterly, utterly, utterly charming! 12 minutes of Holmesian delightfulness.<br /><br /><br />3. If you're looking for a reading challenge, or if you just like having a little nudge to read genres and books you might not otherwise have thought of, Book Riot once again has their <a href="https://bookriot.com/2019/12/03/2020-read-harder-challenge" target="_blank"><strong>Read Harder Challenge</strong></a> for 2020. Right now I need to focus on my thesis and can't let myself get distracted by/excited about trying to read even more than I usually do... but I may circle back sometime later in the year to see how many of the challenges I've met already, and if there are a few more I want to make a point of meeting.<br /><br /><br />4. A friend who has almost-seven-year-old twins asked me for book recs for them; she started reading Harry Potter to them and they LOVED it (my heart!!) but it's still a little too old for them; even the second book was already too scary and gave one of them a nightmare. So I've been having a lot of fun poking around at different resources, putting together a list of suggestions for books that are similarly complex in characters and relationships, strong on adventures and friendships, and immersive as a reading experience – but not too scary for seven-year-olds.<br /><br /><br />Okay – I'm off to cook dinner and listen to episode 3 of As My Wimsey Takes Me. :-)<br /><br /><br />ETA:<br /><br />5. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ1JC9ue8Y8" target="_blank"><strong>The trailer for the Miss Fisher movie</strong></a>!! It looks like they're making good on their promise to make this like a James Bond film – but this time, a woman gets to be James Bond. Also, I was wondering how they would manage to balance the "Phryne out in the world adventuring" aspect with the Phryne/Jack pairing that fans have gotten so attached to (i.e., be true to Phryne's character and the adventure spirit of the movie but also don't disappoint us sentimental fans) and it seems like they may have actually pulled it off. I am suddenly VERY excited for this movie.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=110426" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:108198Books in 2019!2020-01-02T04:58:03Z2020-01-02T05:06:54Zpublic7<p class="MsoNormal"><b>How many books read in 2019?</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">101 books<br style="mso-special-character:line-break" /> <b> </b></p> <span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/108198.html#cutid1">so many books, so many thoughts!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div> <br />.<br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=108198" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:107795Bookwormish, 4th quarter of 20192020-01-01T18:16:39Z2020-01-01T18:16:39Zpublic7<p class="MsoNormal">Books! Here are my favorites from the 4th quarter of 2019.<br /><br />This was a bit of an odd quarter for me; I ended up reading much less than usual because of serious life stuff going on (only 5 books in October, and only 3 books in November???) And I was doing my big reread of the Raven Cycle at the same time… so this list is probably going to seem like it’s about half Maggie Stiefvater!<br /><br />Also, somehow I didn’t end up with any “very top books” like I usually would (runaway favorites that I just have to gush about), though of course I’ve got a whole bunch of books that were good and I recommend. So this time around I’m just calling the first category here “good books.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="st"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/107795.html#cutid1">books!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><p class="MsoNormal">.</p> <br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=107795" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:107299Little Women + 100th Book + fests are wonderful2019-12-29T22:30:25Z2019-12-29T22:30:25Zpublic7<span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/107299.html#cutid1">Little Women</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br />~<br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___2" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/107299.html#cutid2">100 books!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___2" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br />~<br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___3" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/107299.html#cutid3">fests!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___3" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br />.<br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=107299" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:106277Bookwormish, 3rd quarter of 20192019-11-01T18:34:14Z2019-11-18T05:45:49Zpublic6<p>Extremely belated because life is even more of a catastrophe than usual, but here are my favorites from this most recent quarter-year of reading (July, Aug, Sept):<br /><br /><br /><strong>VERY TOP BOOKS</strong><br /><br /><strong><em>Like a Love Story</em> by </strong><em><strong>Abdi Nazemian</strong></em> – I was so fortunate these last couple months to stumble across some FANTASTIC YA books, and I fell for this one so hard. A beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking story of three friends navigating teenagehood in AIDS-crisis-era New York City. I know a lot <em>about</em> that era, of course, but I’m just young enough that I didn’t quite live through it directly. This book brought home to me, I think more than anything else I’ve read/seen, what it was actually like to be a teenager at that time, trying to figure out your own desires when the world around you was equating sex with death.<br /><br /><strong><em>The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories</em></strong><strong> by Angela Carter</strong> – An author who’s been recommended to me for ages, for her dark, female-centered takes on classic fairy tale tropes. I found the first story in the collection, the retelling of Bluebeard, especially memorable.<br /><br /><strong><em>Black Boy</em> by Richard Wright</strong> – One of those books that’s so painful to read, but you know you have to. As with the above book about the AIDS crisis, this made me think: I knew racism was bad – but did I know it was <em>this</em> bad?<br /><br /><strong><em>Driving by Starlight</em> by Anat Deracine</strong> – The other book I read at almost the same time as <em>Like a Love Story</em>, that made me swoon with how lucky I was to find such fantastic YA books all at the same time! Teenage girls in Saudi Arabia throwing everything they have at the question of how to have a life despite oppression and constant surveillance.<br /> </p><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/106277.html#cutid1">so many more great books!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><p> </p>.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=106277" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:104857Bookwormish, 2nd quarter of 20192019-07-18T04:00:58Z2019-07-20T17:43:51Zpublic4Very belated and maybe also a bit briefer than usual, because life is a rodeo right now, but here are my favorites out of the books I read in the second quarter of this year (April, May, June):<br /><br /><br /><strong>VERY TOP BOOKS</strong><br /><br /><strong><em>I Capture the Castle</em> by Dodie Smith </strong>– I don't know how to describe this book except "delightful." I knew nothing about it except that I'd seen it recommended in places I respect, so I went into it admirably clueless. It turns out to be a wonderful, lively, often funny, always compassionate coming-of-age story, set in the 1930s but wonderfully fresh and relatable. Also: it's written by the same author as "The Hundred and One Dalmatians," how funny is that!<br /><br /><strong><em>With the Fire on High</em> by Elizabeth Acevedo</strong> – <a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/103191.html">Last quarter</a> I loved Elizabeth Acevedo's <em>The Poet X</em>, so I snapped up her new book as soon as it came out. (...Literally. It was still on the shelving cart, newly catalogued and processed, when I arrived at the library in eager search of it.) This one, too, is wonderful, about a high school student who's balancing being a teen mother, and an aspiring chef, and part of a loving web of friends and nontraditional family.<br /><br /><strong><em>On the Come Up</em> by Angie Thomas </strong>– You know how, when someone's first book is as AMAZING as Angie Thomas' <em>The Hate U Give</em>, you worry that it's just not possible for the author's second book to live up to the hype? Don't worry about Angie Thomas, though. <em>On the Come Up</em> is excellent: equally hard-hitting topics, equally well-drawn characters, and different from <em>The Hate U Give</em> in some great ways, too. (Like: the protagonist here, Bri, is a lot less sympathetic in some ways, while still being totally relatable.)<br /><br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/104857.html#cutid1">lots more good books in here!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br />.<br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=104857" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:103191Bookwormish, 1st quarter of 20192019-04-07T00:06:58Z2019-07-18T02:51:59Zpublic2My favorites books from the first quarter of this year...<br /><br /><br /><strong>VERY TOP BOOKS<br /><br /><em>The Poet X</em> by Elizabeth Acevedo </strong>– This book knocked me over. For the best of everything, listen to the audiobook. It’s a coming-of-age story told in poetry, about a girl who’s a slam poet, and the audiobook is read by the author herself, who is a slam poet, and it's amazing. This book has been sweeping the awards (National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, Printz Award and Pura Belpré Award, the audiobook is one of the Odyssey award’s honor audiobooks, <em>and</em> it just won the Walter Award in the teen category). All deserved!<br /><br /><em><strong>The Perks of Being a Wallflower</strong></em><strong> by Stephen Chbosky </strong>– This was a reread, but yup, this book still goes right to my heart. I wasn’t even a teenager when I first read it, but it feels so necessary and true. One of those books I’ll never be able to be objective about, because it lives so deep inside me. <br /><br /><em><strong>The Raven Boys; The Dream Thieves; Blue Lily, Lily Blue; </strong></em><strong>and </strong><em><strong>The Raven King </strong></em><strong>by Maggie Stiefvater </strong>– This would have been an unequivocal rave review, if not for the final book, which I found a letdown and not a worthy conclusion to an otherwise stellar series. (It left just about every plot thread dangling, and not in an intriguing, open-ended way. In a “then what was even the point of this book?” way.) But if I try to ignore that and recapture how I felt about the first three books, extraordinary. (And BTW I take back everything I said when I first read the first book last year, and didn't find it engaging. Turns out the problem was the audiobook; when I came back and read the books instead, I was hooked.) I’m honestly not sure if I’ve found myself this deeply immersed in a world since Harry Potter. Stiefvater is amazing, and the whole series is full of rich little details that reward rereading the earlier books once you know more from the later books. So I’d been looking forward to immediately rereading the whole series – until the final book killed my enthusiasm. But I belatedly realized that Stiefvater’s upcoming trilogy is set in the same world, so I’m cautiously willing to check it out and see if it provides a satisfying continuation. <br /><br /><br /><strong>MORE TOP BOOKS<br /><br /><em>Greensleeves</em> by Eloise Jarvis McGraw</strong> – I picked this up knowing nothing about it beyond that a friend had recommended it, and I was so surprised! It’s a delightful coming-of-age story (sort of YA from before YA was really a thing), surprised me with how feminist it was despite being from 1968 (maybe my generational bias is showing there?), and <em>really</em> pleasingly surprised me by not allowing the plot to fall into the “romance fixes everything” trap, while nonetheless honoring the heroine’s romantic feelings. <br /><br /><em><strong>Far from the Tree</strong></em><strong> by Robin Benway</strong> – I sobbed while reading this, more than once. A beautiful story of three biological siblings, all adopted into different families, who find each other again as teens. Very sensitive in honoring both the longing to know about biological family, but also the importance and validity of adoptive family. <br /><br /><em><strong>A Properly Unhaunted Place</strong></em><strong> by William Alexander </strong>– Finally picked up one of William Alexander’s books, after hearing about him forever, and wow! This was basically a perfect example of everything a middle-grade novel should be. Great characters, great world-building, just the right size plot for middle-grade length. I was especially impressed by the world-building: it really felt like what I saw in the book was just a little sliver of an entire, fully formed world that the author knows all about. <br /><br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/103191.html#cutid1">even more good books here!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br />.<br /><br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=103191" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:100479Books in 2018!2019-01-01T18:25:16Z2019-01-01T20:22:08Zpublic2<p class="MsoNormal"><b>BOOKS MEME </b><br /> <br /> </p><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/100479.html#cutid1">I read so many booooks</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=100479" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:99889Bookwormish, 4th quarter of 20182019-01-01T00:31:56Z2019-01-01T20:19:48Zpublic13A separate post about my entire year's worth of reading is coming soon, but first, here's that thing where I tell you my favorites from just this quarter year:<strong><br /><br /><br />VERY TOP BOOK:<br /><br /><strong><em>We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy</em> by Ta-Nehisi Coates</strong> </strong> – It’s rare that I’m able to pick just one favorite out of a whole quarter year’s reading, but this is a book I’ve found myself recommending at every turn, so it deserves that honor. I think Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of our most brilliant current thinkers, and this book took me terrifyingly deep into the history and present of American racism. I feel like this book rewired my brain.<strong><br /><br /><br />MORE TOP BOOKS:</strong> <p><strong><em>The Best We Could Do</em> by Thi Bui</strong> – A truly excellent and moving memoir that interweaves the author’s experiences as a child immigrant in the US, with her parents’ wartime experiences in Vietnam, all seen through the prism of the author’s own shifting perspectives now that she’s a parent of her own child.<br /><br /><strong><em>The Memory of Light</em> by Francisco X. Stork</strong> – In recent months I’ve hit on some really fantastic examples of just how much the YA genre has to offer in powerful, empathetic examinations of mental health/illness… This is a beautiful portrait of a depressed teenager figuring out how to find meaning in life again.<br /><br /><strong><em>Exit West</em> by Mohsin Hamid</strong> – A <a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/83524.html">reread</a>; yup, still brilliant.<br /><br /><strong><em>We Have Always Lived in the Castle</em> by Shirley Jackson</strong> – Also a <a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/56619.html">reread</a>; also still brilliant.<br /><br /><strong><em>Mrs. Dalloway</em> by Virginia Woolf</strong> – I don’t really know how to describe Virginia Woolf, since she’s so famously and obviously brilliant. I’m still trying to catch up on her canon.<br /> </p><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/99889.html#cutid1">even more good books!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><p>.</p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=99889" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:97026100th book in 20182018-10-20T21:00:41Z2019-01-01T20:21:34Zpublic2<br />I have read my 100th book of this year.<br /><br />In 2016, I hit that milestone on December 20. In 2017 it was on November 23. And this year it was a couple days ago, on October 18. (Don't worry, I don't just <em>remember</em> these facts; I posted about them at the time...)<br /><br />I don't even know what to think about having hit the 100-book mark <em>more than a month</em> earlier than last year, which was in turn was a month earlier than the previous year? And this while also doing grad school?? <br /><br />I mean, I know there are some un-fun reasons (like that so much of the time I feel so unwell that I can't do much more than lie around reading or listening to audiobooks; and also that I can definitely be weirdly compulsive about reading – the more stressed I get about other things in my life, the more obsessively I seem to pursue my want-to-read list). As well as, of course, the fun reasons (I genuinely love to read, I read fast, and I like to read a wide array of things, so I'm often reading multiple books at once).<br /><br />At any rate, this definitely means I'm going to easily break last year's record of 114 books in a year. :-) (I'm already, uh, on book 103. And it's still not nearly the end of October.)<br /><br />Anyway, book number 100 was Colson Whitehead's <em>The Intuitionist</em>, and having that end up as my book #100 was entirely fitting for this topsy turvy year, because it happens to be the one I started reading while I was back in the US over the summer, didn't quite have time to finish before I went back to Europe, and only finally picked it up again now that I'm back in the US, after a two-month break.<br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=97026" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:96153Bookwormish, 3rd quarter of 20182018-10-07T11:02:42Z2019-01-01T20:21:08Zpublic0<b>TOP BOOKS:</b>
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<b><i>Eliza and Her Monsters</i></b><b> by Francesca Zappia</b> – A wonderful story about a girl who keeps her offline life (quiet, friendless, and she likes it that way) and her online life (famous but anonymous creator of a webcomic) determinedly separate. Until they collide. It’s also about anxiety in a way that feels real, and a developing romance but in a way that doesn’t feel like the usual clichés. I really loved this.
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<b><i>Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets </i></b><b>by Evan Roskos</b> – I read a lot of YA books about kids with anxiety and/or depression (for obvious reasons of self-identification) and I swear this is one of the best I’ve read. It’s real and complicated and wonderfully written and funny, too. Highly recommended.
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<b><i>The Mother of All Questions</i></b><b> by Rebecca Solnit </b>– The brilliant Rebecca Solnit, continuing to tackle some of the most important topics of our times with incisive intelligence and compassion.
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<b><i>The Obelisk Gate </i></b>and<b><i> The Stone Sky </i>by N. K. Jemisin </b>– Jemisin’s trilogy is intense, epic in scale and theme, and something I’ll be thinking about for a while. I think I actually need to reread book 3, because there’s just so much in there.
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<b><i>Annie on My Mind</i></b><b> by Nancy Garden </b>– An important, early book in the LGBTQ+ YA canon. The book itself was great, but it was the author’s afterword that moved me to tears, where she talks about her own youth, and how there wasn’t anything like this book (lesbian teen protagonist AND a happy ending), so she wrote it.
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<b><i>The Bluest Eye </i></b><b>by Toni Morrison</b> – A painful book about the complete and brutal destruction of a young Black girl’s self-image.
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<b><i>The Buried Giant</i></b><b> by Kazuo Ishiguro</b> – As always, Ishiguro is writing about memory, the past, and how we grapple with it. But this book, more than others of his, moved me with the personal story between the main protagonists: amidst the epic events of a country in turmoil is the small but powerful story of an elderly couple who have little left but their unbreakable love for each other.
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<b><i>Call Me By Your Name</i></b><b> by André Aciman </b>– Yes, I fell for both the movie and the book… Aciman is <i>wow</i>, such a writer. This is one of those books that’s so deep inside the narrator’s thoughts, you wonder that anyone even dared to try to make it into a film. It’s a beautifully written, in-depth examination of a young person not only in the process of falling in love, but also growing into who he himself is.
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<span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/96153.html#cutid1">MORE GOOD BOOKS</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br />
.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=96153" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:94749Bookwormish, 2nd quarter of 20182018-07-07T14:08:23Z2018-08-13T20:43:08Zpublic15Here are my favorites from this past quarter-year's reading! (With bonus thoughts from a reread of <em>Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.</em>)<br /><br /><br /><p><strong>VERY TOP BOOK:</strong><strong><br /></strong></p><p><strong><em>Tess of the Road</em> by Rachel Hartman</strong></p><p>It is so rare that I’m able to pick just one favorite out of the 30 or more books I read in a quarter (!), but this time there’s no question: It’s <em>Tess of the Road</em>, by the ever-increasingly brilliant Rachel Hartman.</p><p>Tess is a very traumatized, very angry person, forcing down every single one of her desires for the sake of her family. This is the story of how she finally breaks away and starts walking, coming to know herself as she just keeps walking down the road. It’s an amazing portrait of grief and healing, of friendship and family ties and how to balance them with the needs of the self. And because it’s Rachel Hartman, it’s often funny too, and the world-building is as flawless as ever. (This book falls under fantasy, probably YA fantasy, but I’ve been recommending it even to people who normally never touch fantasy, because it’s just that good.) What also blew me away was the compassion that keeps unfolding throughout the book – every minor character gets a chance to be seen as more than just what the protagonist first thought of them. Truly astounding. Such a beautiful and <em>necessary</em> book, I could write about it for pages and still feel speechless.</p><p><strong> </strong><strong><br /></strong></p><p><strong>MORE TOP BOOKS:</strong><strong><br /></strong></p><p><strong><em>Her Body and Other Parties</em> by Carmen Maria Machado</strong> – Machado combines vivid, visceral realism with a twist of fantasy and a touch of horror to tell powerful stories. And she’s very, very good.<em><br /></em></p><p><strong><em>Chime </em>by Franny Billingsley</strong> – Another beautiful Franny Billingsley story of learning to outgrow past beliefs that are hurting you, in a beautifully realized folklore-based setting. Also, Billingsley practically creates her own language for her character’s inner voice. (Warning, though: this otherwise beautiful book includes a very negative portrayal of an autistic secondary character, so proceed with caution if that’s upsetting!)</p><p><strong><em>The Argonauts </em>by Maggie Nelson</strong> – A book that is impossible to describe. A nonfiction portrait of love (both as partner and parent) and of making a nontraditional, queer family. Nelson’s writing draws deeply on poetry, philosophy, sex and everyday domesticity and – as one reviewer said – turns every one of those things on its head.<em><br /></em></p><p><strong><em>The Reluctant Fundamentalist</em> by Mohsin Hamid</strong> – Hamid’s <em>Exit West</em> was another rare case of a book that won my clear favorite of a whole quarter, quite possibly a whole year. So I wanted to read more by him, and this didn’t disappoint. A seemingly simplistic set-up (a friendly local tells his life story to a visiting tourist, as they drink tea at a local market) twists more and more complexly, as you increasingly wonder who is telling the truth and who, if anyone, is what they seem.</p><p><strong><em>Their Eyes Were Watching God</em> by Zora Neal Hurston</strong> – Another classic I’m so glad I finally read: Hurston’s portrait of a woman coming into herself and her own narrative voice.</p><p><strong><em>The Sealwoman’s Gift</em> by Sally Magnusson</strong> – Recommended to me, of course, because of the Iceland connection and the folklore connection (thanks to <img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png" alt="[personal profile] " style="vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;" width="17" height="17" /><a href="https://gilpin25.dreamwidth.org/"><b>gilpin25</b></a> for being the first to mention it!) but why it captured me was Magnusson’s gentle, compassionate portrait of long-ago people bearing unbearable horrors, bringing vivid life to people who are otherwise just names in a historical record.<br /><br /><strong><em>Salvage the Bones</em> by Jesmyn Ward</strong> – Ward weaves together the small incidents of daily life and the heady themes of mythology to tell the story of Esch, her brothers and their dog, surviving extreme poverty and neglect in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina.<em><br /></em></p><p><strong><em>Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda</em> by Becky Albertalli</strong> – Wait, wasn’t this already one of my top books in a previous quarter? Why yes, it was, but I recently reread it and it’s still a favorite. :-) I reread this after seeing the movie; because I’m very, VERY glad the movie exists – it was good in many ways and so important in many more – but I found it only middling as an adaptation of the book. A lot of the things that are cringe-worthy in the movie (or just underdeveloped) are beautifully handled in the book. One to read and reread!<strong><br /></strong></p><p> </p><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/94749.html#cutid1">EVEN MORE GOOD BOOKS</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><p> </p>.<br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=94749" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:93579Bookwormish, 1st quarter of 20182018-04-01T20:09:59Z2018-05-06T13:31:13Zpublic2I'm posting this from a train, on increasingly rattling, wobbly tracks as we make our way further up into the sparsely populated far north of Scotland, so let's see how this goes...<br /><br /><br /><br />Here are some books I recommend, from my reading in the first quarter of this year!<br /><br /><br /><strong>VERY TOP BOOKS:<br /><em><br />The Folk Keeper </em>by Franny Billingsley </strong>– This slim little book bowled me over with its creativity and intricately crafted plot built around its own folklore. One I’d like to own and reread, because every tiny thing turns out to have a importance later. It’s a great coming of age story, too, all about sense of self and mental resilience and what to do when the survival skills that have kept you alive are now holding you back and it’s time to outgrow them. Wow, yeah, actually I want to reread this already. <br /><strong><br /><em>Bone Gap</em> by Laura Ruby</strong> – Ooh, this was great. A rich story about love of all kinds (romantic, familial, friendship) that blends real-world small-town concerns with a bit of magic/fantasy, around compellingly flawed and lovely characters. <br /><br /><em><strong>A Hundred Thousand Worlds </strong></em><strong>by Bob Proehl</strong> – I was not expecting to get this caught up in a book about an ex-sci-fi-TV-star (think the X-Files) touring the fan convention circuit with her 9-year-old son in tow. But this is one of those books I wanted not to end, so I could keep living in these characters’ world. This book was so full of heart. <br /><br /><em><strong>In the Woods</strong></em><strong> by Tana French</strong> – Wow, yeah, I’d heard Tana French was good. She’s indeed very good. It had been a while since a book kept me up all night reading. It’s a murder mystery, but like the best murder mysteries, it’s at least as much about the characters solving the murder. It’s an old-sounding premise – detective takes a case that turns out to have uncanny resonances with his own traumatic past – but I found she did something surprising and new with it. <br /><br /><em><strong>Strange the Dreamer</strong></em><strong> by Laini Taylor</strong> – I’d been hearing this recommended for ages, and I don’t know why I waited so long! The magical, gorgeous story of a daydream-y librarian who gets to visit the mysterious city he’s always longed to see. The ending was a bit off-kilter, especially compared to how carefully crafted the rest of it was, but I still liked the book a lot. <br /><br /><em><strong>What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours </strong></em><strong>by Helen Oyeyemi </strong>– Helen Oyeyemi continues to be strange and brilliant. One review I read described her ideas as “protean”; another called hers a “restless imagination harnessed to a smooth and propulsive prose style.” Strange threads of magic weave through narratives both folkloric and contemporary; I am always up for finding out what fascinating thing Oyeyemi crafts next.<br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/93579.html#cutid1">EVEN MORE TOP BOOKS</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br />.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=93579" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-04:2844498:89328Books in 2017!2017-12-30T23:32:47Z2019-01-01T20:20:35Zpublic2I read...114 BOOKS THIS YEAR. One hundred and fourteen of them. That is a thing I did. I'm proud and terrified. But let's be honest: mostly proud. ;-) Let me tell you about them!<br /><br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://starfishstar.dreamwidth.org/89328.html#cutid1">THE GREAT 2017 BOOKS MEME!</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br /><br />Onward to great books in 2018!<br /><br /><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=starfishstar&ditemid=89328" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments