Books in 2024
Feb. 20th, 2025 08:57 pmY'all, I am managing to post this in February, not May, and that is already a massive improvement over last year ;-)
Books in 2023
May. 6th, 2024 03:29 pmHa ha, whoops, did I say I would post again soon? Well, that was January, and now it's May, and anyway here's a little bit about the books I read in 2023...
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Books in 2022
Feb. 27th, 2023 09:07 amOh, 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.)
( Books in 2022! )
Bookwormish, 4th quarter of 2021
Jan. 8th, 2022 01:15 pmOkay, 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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Bookwormish, 3rd quarter of 2021
Dec. 17th, 2021 10:36 pmIn 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.....
VERY TOP BOOKS
Check, Please! Book 1: #Hockey! and Check, Please! Book 2: Sticks and Scones by Ngozi Ukazu – 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.)
The Street by Ann Petry – 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.
( lots more books! )
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Bookwormish, 2nd quarter of 2021
Nov. 16th, 2021 04:09 pmHa. 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.)
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?
Dunno... Anyway, here's what I wrote for the second quarter of 2021:
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?
Dunno... Anyway, here's what I wrote for the second quarter of 2021:
( favorite books from April to June! )
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Bookwormish, 1st quarter of 2021
May. 4th, 2021 05:28 pmHa, well, apparently April was the sort of month where I didn't manage even to think about writing up my reading from the first quarter of the year (January–March) until now in...May. Yeah. But here we go!
VERY TOP BOOKS
We Are Not from Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez – 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 good 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 When Stars Are Scattered, 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 really 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...)
Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas – 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 incredibly 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.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor – 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 do that? Even when they're writing about mundane things, it's so compelling. And the non-mundane things, of course, are even more compelling.
( so many more good books here... )
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VERY TOP BOOKS
We Are Not from Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez – 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 good 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 When Stars Are Scattered, 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 really 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...)
Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas – 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 incredibly 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.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor – 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 do that? Even when they're writing about mundane things, it's so compelling. And the non-mundane things, of course, are even more compelling.
( so many more good books here... )
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Books in 2020!
Jan. 16th, 2021 12:51 amHow many books read in 2020?
97 books
...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. :-)
(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*)
( lots of thoughts and books and recs! )
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Bookwormish, 4th quarter of 2020
Jan. 9th, 2021 02:43 pmMy favorites of the books I read in the fourth quarter of 2020.
VERY TOP BOOKS
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone – 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.
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah – 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 in 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, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) – 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.
When Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed – 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.
How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers by Toni Bernhard – 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 with the challenges, instead of living a life that's an exhausting fight against them.
( lots more books! )
And there we have it! "Year in review" about books in 2020 as a whole coming soon.
VERY TOP BOOKS
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone – 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.
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah – 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 in 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, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) – 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.
When Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed – 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.
How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers by Toni Bernhard – 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 with the challenges, instead of living a life that's an exhausting fight against them.
( lots more books! )
And there we have it! "Year in review" about books in 2020 as a whole coming soon.
Bookwormish, 3rd quarter of 2020
Oct. 19th, 2020 11:14 pmMy favorites from July through September! (Once again I'm going to attempt to be succinct at this, let's see how that goes...)
VERY TOP BOOKS
Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays) by Rebecca Solnit – 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.
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman – 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.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor – 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!
Darius the Great Deserves Better by Adib Khorram – This was so marvelous! I liked Darius the Great Is Not Okay a whole bunch, but I would venture to say this sequel is even better. (Please write a third one, Adib Khorram!)
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler – 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 know?? I've also started listening to Toshi Reagon and adrienne maree brown's podcast about this book. I'm only a couple episodes in, but I can tell it's going to be very, very good.
( read on for more excellent books! )
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VERY TOP BOOKS
Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays) by Rebecca Solnit – 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.
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman – 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.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor – 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!
Darius the Great Deserves Better by Adib Khorram – This was so marvelous! I liked Darius the Great Is Not Okay a whole bunch, but I would venture to say this sequel is even better. (Please write a third one, Adib Khorram!)
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler – 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 know?? I've also started listening to Toshi Reagon and adrienne maree brown's podcast about this book. I'm only a couple episodes in, but I can tell it's going to be very, very good.
( read on for more excellent books! )
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Bookwormish, 2nd quarter of 2020
Jul. 2nd, 2020 01:27 pmUgggggh, 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.)
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. :-)
VERY TOP BOOK
The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta – 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.
( MORE TOP BOOKS! )
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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. :-)
VERY TOP BOOK
The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta – 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.
( MORE TOP BOOKS! )
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Bookwormish, 1st quarter of 2020
Apr. 16th, 2020 09:48 pmMy favorite books from the first quarter of 2020:
VERY TOP BOOKS
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates – All the brilliance and all the empathy you would expect from Ta-Nehisi Coates’ first novel. When I read Toni Morrison’s Beloved, 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. The Water Dancer 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.
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds – 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.
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bookish stuff & fannish stuff
Jan. 25th, 2020 02:24 pmThoughts!
1.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanguinity, if you're around these parts... Thank you again for recommending As My Wimsey Takes Me, 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!2. Also thank you to whoever (almost certainly one of you Holmestice folks) mentioned Sherlock Holmes and the Furtive Festivity! 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.
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 Read Harder Challenge 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.
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.
Okay – I'm off to cook dinner and listen to episode 3 of As My Wimsey Takes Me. :-)
ETA:
5. The trailer for the Miss Fisher movie!! 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.
Bookwormish, 4th quarter of 2019
Jan. 1st, 2020 12:54 pmBooks! Here are my favorites from the 4th quarter of 2019.
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!
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.”
( books! )
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Bookwormish, 3rd quarter of 2019
Nov. 1st, 2019 11:30 amExtremely 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.
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Bookwormish, 2nd quarter of 2019
Jul. 17th, 2019 10:49 pmVery 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):
VERY TOP BOOKS
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith – 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!
With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo – Last quarter I loved Elizabeth Acevedo's The Poet X, 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.
On the Come Up by Angie Thomas – You know how, when someone's first book is as AMAZING as Angie Thomas' The Hate U Give, 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. On the Come Up is excellent: equally hard-hitting topics, equally well-drawn characters, and different from The Hate U Give in some great ways, too. (Like: the protagonist here, Bri, is a lot less sympathetic in some ways, while still being totally relatable.)
( lots more good books in here! )
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VERY TOP BOOKS
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith – 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!
With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo – Last quarter I loved Elizabeth Acevedo's The Poet X, 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.
On the Come Up by Angie Thomas – You know how, when someone's first book is as AMAZING as Angie Thomas' The Hate U Give, 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. On the Come Up is excellent: equally hard-hitting topics, equally well-drawn characters, and different from The Hate U Give in some great ways, too. (Like: the protagonist here, Bri, is a lot less sympathetic in some ways, while still being totally relatable.)
( lots more good books in here! )
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Bookwormish, 1st quarter of 2019
Apr. 6th, 2019 07:34 pmMy favorites books from the first quarter of this year...
VERY TOP BOOKS
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo – 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, and it just won the Walter Award in the teen category). All deserved!
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky – 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.
The Raven Boys; The Dream Thieves; Blue Lily, Lily Blue; and The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater – 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.
MORE TOP BOOKS
Greensleeves by Eloise Jarvis McGraw – 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 really pleasingly surprised me by not allowing the plot to fall into the “romance fixes everything” trap, while nonetheless honoring the heroine’s romantic feelings.
Far from the Tree by Robin Benway – 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.
A Properly Unhaunted Place by William Alexander – 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.
( even more good books here! )
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VERY TOP BOOKS
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo – 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, and it just won the Walter Award in the teen category). All deserved!
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky – 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.
The Raven Boys; The Dream Thieves; Blue Lily, Lily Blue; and The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater – 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.
MORE TOP BOOKS
Greensleeves by Eloise Jarvis McGraw – 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 really pleasingly surprised me by not allowing the plot to fall into the “romance fixes everything” trap, while nonetheless honoring the heroine’s romantic feelings.
Far from the Tree by Robin Benway – 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.
A Properly Unhaunted Place by William Alexander – 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.
( even more good books here! )
.
