Bookwormish, 4th quarter of 2021

Okay, favorite books from this most recent quarter year, in roughly one sentence each, go…

 

TOP BOOKS 

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik – I love it when an author takes the already excellent worldbuilding from their first book, 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.

Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – A gentle and lovely elegy to her father.

The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel – 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.

Shirley and Jamila’s Big Fall by Gillian Goerz – This sequel to Shirley and Jamila Save Their Summer 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.

A Stranger at Home by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton – Sequel to Fatty Legs, 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.

 

( more books here! )

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