Bookwormish, 3rd quarter of 2019

[starfishstar]

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):


VERY TOP BOOKS

Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian – 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 about 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.

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter – 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.

Black Boy by Richard Wright – 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 this bad?

Driving by Starlight by Anat Deracine – The other book I read at almost the same time as Like a Love Story, 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.
 

MORE TOP BOOKS

Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) by Lev Rosen – A great character (gay teenage boy who’s unashamedly sexually active but uninterested in relationships, though yikes, a driving point of the plot is that he’s being stalked and it gets scary for a bit there), and at the same time manages to teach some important stuff about sexuality without ever being didactic.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan – Thoughtful and erudite. I may need to pick up some more Ian McEwan.

We Are the Perfect Girl by Ariel Kaplan – Ah, so great! A modern, gender-swapped retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac. Which is an idea that could turn out terrible or fantastic... This is fantastic.


EVEN MORE GOOD BOOKS

How to Be Both by Ali Smith – An interesting, odd book, based around the conceit of two stories, separated by centuries, that do and don’t interrelate.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green – Yes, I thought I should finally read The Book of the Century! I can see why it won teens’ hearts; the main characters are an appealing combination of tough and sarcastic as a coping mechanism against tragedy, but at the same time beautifully vulnerable and open to each other and to the world, even if it means heartbreak.

Broken Harbour by Tana French – Didn’t suck me in as much as some of the others in her series, but definitely a searing indictment of boom-era (and post-boom-era) Ireland that I won’t soon forget. Also? I don’t usually think of myself as the kind of person who swoons over British and Irish accents... But listening to this series as audiobooks is a delight. Irish voice actors can read me a twenty-hour story any time they want.

There There by Tommy Orange – A kaleidoscope of lives (mostly Cheyenne, mostly in Oakland) that come together around one tragically ill-fated powwow. I think what’s stuck with me most is the kids’ stories, the kids in the book who are trying to figure out their own identities with imperfect guidance, with adults in their lives who are doing their best but can’t always teach the kids everything they’re asking for.

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater – Yes, the great Raven Cycle reread has begun…even though I read the complete series for the first time only earlier this year. I was meh about this first installment in the series when I read it the first time around, so it was very interesting to go back and reread it after having fallen in love with the series as a whole. What I understand in retrospect is that Stiefvater was deliberately making these four (mostly) privileged private school boys not entirely likeable at first, so that you had to come to understand and like them gradually, just like Blue does. Stiefvater did maybe too good a job, though, because on the first go-round I indeed didn’t especially like them, and I put the series aside, because I was feeling so done with being asked to care about some rich white boys’ angst, and there are so many other things I could be reading instead. Literally when the book ended on Ronan’s big revelation, clearly meant as an exciting set-up for the second book, my thought was, “But who cares? Why would I care about anything to do with Ronan?” Because Ronan in the first book was unlikeable, and worse, uninteresting. Just a jerk with no depth or redeeming qualities. Obviously, my feelings about all that changed completely with the subsequent books. (Yes, I just wrote a fic that includes a bonding moment between Blue and Ronan…) But this first book almost caused me to give up on the series entirely. (To be clear: it’s not badly written. In fact, it’s very well-written – Stiefvater’s prose is always gorgeous and seductive. And I enjoyed it fine when I read it. It just didn’t succeed in making me fall in love with the series, the way I’m now in love with the series.)

Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life by Eric Klinenberg – A rare case of a book for my dissertation/lit review where I didn’t just skim the relevant parts, I read it cover to cover. This stuff is my catnip. Libraries! Communities! Resilience!

I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver – A sweet story about a nonbinary teen (by a nonbinary author) that starts out pretty painful (getting kicked out by bigoted family) but gets sweeter and sweeter as it goes on (supportive sister, delightful love interest, growing self-confidence and trauma healing, and also therapy! portrayed! realistically! – this last being something that was the case with We Are the Perfect Girl, too, and I am very onboard with this trend.)


HONORABLE MENTIONS

Marriage of a Thousand Lies by SJ Sindu – A portrait of just how damaging it is to live in the closet, even when it seems like there are convincing reasons for it.

Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown – This relied on some tropes that weakened it considerably (the usual “plot relies entirely on the characters failing to just talk to each other the way normal people would” thing) but it had enough sweet-and-affirming going for it that I’d rec it anyway. (Family accepting their lesbian daughter, in the South no less! Being both religious and gay and it’s harmonious and everyone’s happy with it!)

Shadowhouse Fall by Daniel José Older – Somehow I just didn’t get into this sequel to the utterly fantastic Shadowshaper. But Shadowshaper was, as stated, utterly fantastic, so maybe the problem was that I didn’t click with the audiobook, and should have read the book instead?

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen – Gradually trying to catch up on all the Jane Austen, but I found this, and the characters in it, much less engaging than most of her works.

 

.