Bookwormish, 1st quarter of 2017
Apr. 2nd, 2017 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starfishstarTime to talk about this quarter in books! I read 31 of ‘em over the past 3 months, which I guess has become a fairly standard average for me. Ha ha ha ha let’s see if I can actually narrow that down to only a few favorites…
Later, after going through my list of what I read: Nope, I’m terrible at narrowing; once again it’s going to be a long list of books I love!
TOP BOOKS:
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
This book starts out deceptively simple and gets richer and richer and richer. It unfolds from the painful, tight, short single-page first chapters of childhood abuse and degradation to a beautiful story of a woman who's found herself and built a found family around her. My pitiful words aren't doing this justice. Can anyone tell me if all of Alice Walker's books are this brilliant?
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
How did I not know about prolific writer Seanan McGuire? This slim book pulls off not just one but many worlds' worth of world-building, because it's set at a boarding school for children who've tumbled into other fairytale worlds...and then accidentally fell back into our world again. So good. Also, bonus asexual character representation, and trans character representation, all presented totally matter-of-factly as "this is who I am, why would it be an issue?"
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
Dawwww this book is so charming! I just want to cuddle it! (I literally sometimes have to pick it back up and cradle it to my chest and grin about how much I love it.) Not-yet-out gay high school student Simon might be falling for his secret penpal, Blue. Blue is someone who goes to Simon's school, but Simon doesn't know who. Their online friendship is perfect, so do they risk ruining everything by telling each other who they are in real life? (Becky Albertalli was a school psychologist before she became an author and it shows. Here is a YA writer who knows teenagers.)
the “Hereville” graphic novels by Barry Deutsch (How Mirka Got Her Sword, How Mirka Met a Meteorite, and How Mirka Caught a Fish)
My colleague's two kids were kind enough to loan me this series about the adventures of, as the tagline says, "just another troll-fighting Orthodox Jewish girl." Mirka is stubborn, brave, sometimes a brat, always awesome, as she fights trolls and shapeshifter meteorites and dangerous magical fish. The books also present a loving, detailed picture of Orthodox Jewish family life, while still allowing Mirka to push against her culture's double standards for girls.
Forgive Me if I’ve Told You This Before by Karelia Stetz-Waters
I read this on the recommendation of one of my students, which always makes me really happy. A beautifully written coming of age novel about a girl in rural Oregon growing into herself and her identity as a lesbian. Feels very different from the usual YA fare both for the poetic language, and because it's clearly drawn from the author's own experiences and is set in the early 90s, rather than now.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
This book had me laughing out loud. Helplessly. A book that promises to be the opposite of all those "inspirational story about a kid whose friend gets cancer and they all learn a life lesson" type books, and delivers on that promise, and yet sneakily makes you feel stuff, too. All while yelping with laughter.
EVEN MORE GOOD BOOKS:
Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
Totally charming graphic novel about a shapeshifting girl who argues her way into a gig as a villain's sidekick. Except in this world, villains are never just villains.
She’s Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan
I think and talk a lot about representation and support of trans kids, since I work with teenagers, but Boylan's excellent memoir took me so much deeper inside 1) the actual experience of being trans and 2) the adult perspective. Also, for bonus greatness I listened to the audiobook, read by Boylan herself, who's an excellent narrator and really good at doing all the voices of her quirky relatives.
This One Summer and Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
These two books are not actually connected; I think of them together because they both touch on so many of the same themes, like coming of age, feeling like an outsider in life and watching other people's catastrophes, trying to make sense of it all. The Tamaki cousins are an excellent writer/illustrator team, with so much in these stories told in the empty spaces, the things that are only obliquely glimpsed.
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
The last week in the terrible life of a terrible person, before she finally leaves it all behind.
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
A hardboiled detective story narrated by a character with Tourette syndrome – I didn't read this only to learn what it's like to have Tourette syndrome, but I really, really learned. Lethem does an excellent and sympathetic job of writing from inside his character's head.
all the Hildafolk books by Luke Pearson
Another charming set of children's graphic novels, also recommended by my colleague and his kids; adventurous Hilda explores the fjords and mountains of her non-specified Scandinavian home, befriending trolls and elves and the nisse, creatures who live in the unused spaces under beds and behind bookshelves. (These are short children's books, almost picture books, so no, I didn't count them towards the number of books I read this quarter!)
The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales edited by Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe
I do love story collections where a bunch of different authors all retell classic tales... fanfiction, basically, but in this case fanfiction of fairy tales!
I especially liked: Seanan McGuire's "Little Red Riding Hood" set in the American West, where the girl is the one who saves herself; Amal El-Mohtar's intriguing mash-up of two different fairy tales that completed each other's missing pieces; the heartbreak of Catherynne Valente placing a fairy tale in a world with heroin and predatory drug dealers; and Marjorie Liu's powerful "Sleeping Beauty" retelling, where the captive/princess and the rescuer/prince are both women. (I haven't read the very last story in the collection yet, by Naomi Novik, but it looks like it's going to be good!) (ETA: Yup, Naomi Novik's story (a Rumpelstiltskin retelling with an Eastern European Jewish girl protagonist!) was great – looks like I need to add her novel Uprooted to my want-to-read list...)
Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman
Darn it, Backman, why are you always so charming? I liked My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry a whole lot, and I liked this one – which expands on a minor character from that book – too.
Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger
A fun, lighthearted steampunk romp; particularly good as an audiobook.
The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones
One of those cases where I pulled a book off the shelf to laugh at how totally stupid its cover was, and then accidentally found I had to read it, because the book itself was quite good. (I think maybe in the 80s they just didn't know how to make book covers? We have so many of those in the library...a whole decade of laughably bad book cover illustrations.) This is kind of a weird story, about four very eccentric sisters, and the preoccupied parents who mostly ignore them, and a ghost who's trying to figure out who she is. The four characters are vividly drawn, as are all the weird things they get up to in trying to sort out their ghost problem.
The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren
This is one![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
huldrejenta had mentioned ages ago, and I finally found a library that had it! It is indeed very sweet.
.
Later, after going through my list of what I read: Nope, I’m terrible at narrowing; once again it’s going to be a long list of books I love!
TOP BOOKS:
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
This book starts out deceptively simple and gets richer and richer and richer. It unfolds from the painful, tight, short single-page first chapters of childhood abuse and degradation to a beautiful story of a woman who's found herself and built a found family around her. My pitiful words aren't doing this justice. Can anyone tell me if all of Alice Walker's books are this brilliant?
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
How did I not know about prolific writer Seanan McGuire? This slim book pulls off not just one but many worlds' worth of world-building, because it's set at a boarding school for children who've tumbled into other fairytale worlds...and then accidentally fell back into our world again. So good. Also, bonus asexual character representation, and trans character representation, all presented totally matter-of-factly as "this is who I am, why would it be an issue?"
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
Dawwww this book is so charming! I just want to cuddle it! (I literally sometimes have to pick it back up and cradle it to my chest and grin about how much I love it.) Not-yet-out gay high school student Simon might be falling for his secret penpal, Blue. Blue is someone who goes to Simon's school, but Simon doesn't know who. Their online friendship is perfect, so do they risk ruining everything by telling each other who they are in real life? (Becky Albertalli was a school psychologist before she became an author and it shows. Here is a YA writer who knows teenagers.)
the “Hereville” graphic novels by Barry Deutsch (How Mirka Got Her Sword, How Mirka Met a Meteorite, and How Mirka Caught a Fish)
My colleague's two kids were kind enough to loan me this series about the adventures of, as the tagline says, "just another troll-fighting Orthodox Jewish girl." Mirka is stubborn, brave, sometimes a brat, always awesome, as she fights trolls and shapeshifter meteorites and dangerous magical fish. The books also present a loving, detailed picture of Orthodox Jewish family life, while still allowing Mirka to push against her culture's double standards for girls.
Forgive Me if I’ve Told You This Before by Karelia Stetz-Waters
I read this on the recommendation of one of my students, which always makes me really happy. A beautifully written coming of age novel about a girl in rural Oregon growing into herself and her identity as a lesbian. Feels very different from the usual YA fare both for the poetic language, and because it's clearly drawn from the author's own experiences and is set in the early 90s, rather than now.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
This book had me laughing out loud. Helplessly. A book that promises to be the opposite of all those "inspirational story about a kid whose friend gets cancer and they all learn a life lesson" type books, and delivers on that promise, and yet sneakily makes you feel stuff, too. All while yelping with laughter.
EVEN MORE GOOD BOOKS:
Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
Totally charming graphic novel about a shapeshifting girl who argues her way into a gig as a villain's sidekick. Except in this world, villains are never just villains.
She’s Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan
I think and talk a lot about representation and support of trans kids, since I work with teenagers, but Boylan's excellent memoir took me so much deeper inside 1) the actual experience of being trans and 2) the adult perspective. Also, for bonus greatness I listened to the audiobook, read by Boylan herself, who's an excellent narrator and really good at doing all the voices of her quirky relatives.
This One Summer and Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
These two books are not actually connected; I think of them together because they both touch on so many of the same themes, like coming of age, feeling like an outsider in life and watching other people's catastrophes, trying to make sense of it all. The Tamaki cousins are an excellent writer/illustrator team, with so much in these stories told in the empty spaces, the things that are only obliquely glimpsed.
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
The last week in the terrible life of a terrible person, before she finally leaves it all behind.
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
A hardboiled detective story narrated by a character with Tourette syndrome – I didn't read this only to learn what it's like to have Tourette syndrome, but I really, really learned. Lethem does an excellent and sympathetic job of writing from inside his character's head.
all the Hildafolk books by Luke Pearson
Another charming set of children's graphic novels, also recommended by my colleague and his kids; adventurous Hilda explores the fjords and mountains of her non-specified Scandinavian home, befriending trolls and elves and the nisse, creatures who live in the unused spaces under beds and behind bookshelves. (These are short children's books, almost picture books, so no, I didn't count them towards the number of books I read this quarter!)
The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales edited by Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe
I do love story collections where a bunch of different authors all retell classic tales... fanfiction, basically, but in this case fanfiction of fairy tales!
I especially liked: Seanan McGuire's "Little Red Riding Hood" set in the American West, where the girl is the one who saves herself; Amal El-Mohtar's intriguing mash-up of two different fairy tales that completed each other's missing pieces; the heartbreak of Catherynne Valente placing a fairy tale in a world with heroin and predatory drug dealers; and Marjorie Liu's powerful "Sleeping Beauty" retelling, where the captive/princess and the rescuer/prince are both women. (I haven't read the very last story in the collection yet, by Naomi Novik, but it looks like it's going to be good!) (ETA: Yup, Naomi Novik's story (a Rumpelstiltskin retelling with an Eastern European Jewish girl protagonist!) was great – looks like I need to add her novel Uprooted to my want-to-read list...)
Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman
Darn it, Backman, why are you always so charming? I liked My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry a whole lot, and I liked this one – which expands on a minor character from that book – too.
Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger
A fun, lighthearted steampunk romp; particularly good as an audiobook.
The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones
One of those cases where I pulled a book off the shelf to laugh at how totally stupid its cover was, and then accidentally found I had to read it, because the book itself was quite good. (I think maybe in the 80s they just didn't know how to make book covers? We have so many of those in the library...a whole decade of laughably bad book cover illustrations.) This is kind of a weird story, about four very eccentric sisters, and the preoccupied parents who mostly ignore them, and a ghost who's trying to figure out who she is. The four characters are vividly drawn, as are all the weird things they get up to in trying to sort out their ghost problem.
The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren
This is one
huldrejenta had mentioned ages ago, and I finally found a library that had it! It is indeed very sweet..
