Tag: nonfiction

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June 2023 Books

Books Reread

The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan
Percy Jackson and the Olympians book 3 of 5
Last month I read Riordan’s new book about Nico so it was nice to reread this one to remember how it all began. Baby Nico is so cute! In this installment of the Percy Jackson series, Percy and Grover must team up with the Hunters of Artemis to save both Annabeth and Artemis herself in a cross-country adventure full of monsters, gods, good friends, and bad jokes.
4/5 dam store t-shirts

New Books Read

Indian No More by Traci Sorell and Charlene Willing McManis***
CW: racism
Regina and her family are moving off the Umpqua rez and 10-year-old Regina isn’t sure why. Her mom says the government doesn’t recognize them as Indians anymore. Her dad says it will be a great opportunity for them to move to the city and become real Americans with better opportunities. Regina has to balance fitting in in her new home with holding onto her history and identity that her grandmother passes down to her in the form of stories. This is a great middle grade read for anyone looking to learn more about Native Americans, particularly the Indian termination policy of the 1950s.
3.5/5 neighborhood kids

Dry by Jarrod Shusterman and Neal Shusterman
CW: climate change, natural disaster, attempted rape
This book was frighteningly plausible. In a near future climate crisis, the water in Los Angeles is shut off as the Colorado River is diverted from flowing into California. All the nearby lakes, rivers, and reservoirs have already dried up. The book follows four teens and one child as they try to navigate an increasingly desperate situation. I really liked this book; I think everyone should probably read it. I liked the way the authors gave the reader several archetypes of the kind of people who emerge in natural disasters like these: the kind of end-of-the-world preparer type, who of course will never really be prepared enough, the opportunistic capitalist who knows they can make a few dollars off everyone else’s desperation, the one who is just trying to survive, the one who keeps their humanity and wants to help others, and the sort of everyman, who is trying to balance being a leader who can keep their group alive with difficult decisions they might not be able to live with. I thought it created a really interesting dynamic in the group.
3.5/5 water bottles

Milkweed Editions

The Lost Journals of Sacajewea by Debra Magpie Earling***
CW: rape, rape of children, slavery
This book is stunningly unique and thought provoking. In an imagined history of one of the most celebrated Native American women in history, Earling fills in the gaps of what history knows about Sacajewea. Everything we know about her comes from accounts of white men: Lewis, Clark, Sacajewea’s “husband” Charbonneau (who let’s not forget purchased her as a 13-year-old, forced her into a nonconsensual marriage and raped her). So Earling’s book takes the reader on a journey of what it may have been like to be Sacajewea. The most arresting part of Earling’s narrative is the style in which she writes. She uses rhythm and sound and repetition in a way that makes the whole narrative almost an epic prose poem. It’s challenging but also visceral and immediate. Earling doesn’t shy away from the horrifying parts of Sacajewea’s story–in fact the history we learn of Sacajewea is almost devoid of horror, despite the known facts of her kidnap, slavery, and rape as a child, so Earling’s narrative reminds readers that Sacajewea was a human and however great her contributions to history, geography, science, and this nation, she was a child who was wronged.
4/5 horses

Crown

The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times by Michelle Obama***
Every year former president Barak Obama shares a list of the best books he read. This book topped his list in 2022—though he may be a little biased. Following her gorgeous memoir Becoming, The Light We Carry walks the line between a memoir and a self-help book. Obama shares fresh stories from her life and uses them to impart wisdom and insight on living through increasingly uncertain times. Since her first book, the world has faced a global pandemic, political turmoil, economic and climate insecurity. Obama offers practical advice on understanding and using fear, caring for relationships with friends, partners, and children, and what it truly means to “go high.” Compassionate, compelling, and inspiring, Obama’s book oozes with sincerity and conviction. Obama also reads her own audiobook which I highly recommend.
3.5/5

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia***
CW: forced marriage, murder, infanticide
I rescued this book, along with Dry and Indian No More from the trash room at my apartment complex. They deserved a better home. I really liked this book. Noémi, a young socialite in Mexico City, receives a concerning letter from her cousin, married to an Englishman in a remote part of Mexico. Noémi travels to the dilapidated manor where her cousin and the Englishman’s family live in the ruins of their wealth from a now closed mine. It doesn’t take long for Noémi to realize something odd is going on. Is the house haunted? Is it driving her cousin mad? Is it driving her mad? Is her cousin being poisoned? And worst of all, will the house let her leave? I very much enjoyed this. It was dark, it was mysterious. Noémi was plucky and smart. It was a treat for anyone who loves a good old Victorian gothic novel.
4/5 mushrooms

Scholastic Inc

Solitaire by Alice Oseman
CW: depression, eating disorders, homophobia
This book follows one of my favorite characters from the Heartstopper series: Tori Spring, Charlie’s older sister. Tori Spring is just trying to figure out how to survive high school; she doesn’t have the time to figure out how to be happy. Two new boys join her year: Lucas, who was a childhood friend, and Micheal, whose reputation as a prankster precedes him. At the same time, a mysterious individual or organization named Solitaire begins to prank the school. Tori isn’t really interested in finding out who’s behind the pranks…though they all seem to be connected to her. I really enjoyed this book. I read a review that compared it to Catcher in the Rye and I do see the similarities, but Tori Spring is just so much more likable than Holden Caulfield. It’s a timeless exploration of coming of age, friendship, and finding happiness and purpose as a teenager.
3.5/5

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee***
CW: AIDS epidemic, rape, sexual harassment, trauma, death of a parent
Undoubtedly one of America’s best writers, Chee constructs intimate windows into his life in the form of personal essays. Each essay stands alone, but taken together in this book, the essays become a mosaic of a queer writer’s life. Chee writes about his mixed-race identity, the particular challenges of being a writer in the industry, the experience of being a gay man during the AIDS epidemic, the long shadow of trauma, and much more. My favorite essays included “The Querent,” about how to believe in or trust what isn’t visible or easily explained, and “Rosary,” an essay about growing a rose garden, but also an essay about creating something out of barren ground, about being shaped in turn by this thing you’ve created. Chee writes with searing honesty about extremely personal subjects, and yet the universality of his essays is apparent. They are relatable and resonant, contemplative and insightful, and I can’t recommend them enough.   
4/5 roses

I reviewed this book for Under the Sun. You can read the full review here.

Pan Macmillan

Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes***
CW: rape, victim blaming
I will never not be obsessed with feminist retellings of Greek myths. A retelling of the myths of Medusa and Andromeda, Haynes conducts the reader through the myth from only female perspectives, changing a story we thought we all knew–how Perseus slew the evil gorgon Medusa and then used her severed head to kill the monster that was menacing the Princess Andromeda–and showing us that we never really knew it at all. Haynes gives us an arsenal of complex and interesting female characters and writes with an intimate and casual tone, evoking a bedtime story told by a grandmother. I was a big fan.
4.5/5 stones

**Book Hangover Alert indicates the kind of book that will leave you full up on love. Satisfied, but wishing the book never had to end. You’ll be laying on the floor with no idea what to do with yourself (other friends have called this feeling Good Book Depression or say that certain books necessitate Floor Time). This is the kind of book that gets its teeth in you and won’t let go easily. After the last page you’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. You’ll bother all your friends trying to get them to read it so that you won’t be alone in your Hangover.

***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience series! Read Indian No More to learn about Native American history and how Native identities were erased by this policy. Read The Lost Journals of Sacajewea to finally hear about the great journey of Lewis and Clark from Sacajewea’s perspective–even if it must necessarily be speculative. Read The Light We Carry to become a better person. Read Mexican Gothic for a diverse and anti-colonial take on the Victorian gothic horror genre. Read How to Write and Autobiographical Novel to learn more about a gay man’s experience living through the AIDS epidemic, and about navigating the world as a mixed race child of immigrants. Read Stone Blind for Greek myths but make it feminist.

Reads marked as part of the Books for a Social Conscience series will regularly address topics like race and racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, LGBTQIA+ experience, feminism, BIPOC experience, social and political issues, history, identity, class, disability experience, immigration, gun violence, poverty, colorism, environmentalism, and more! The goal of these books is to diversify the stories we’re reading, grow our empathy for those who are different from us, and amplify voices who are often silenced.

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May 2023 Books

New Books Read

Simon & Schuster

The Last Hero by Linden A. Lewis***
Book Hangover Alert**
The First Sister Trilogy book 3 of 3
CW: fantasy racism, oppression, scientific research and testing without consent, prostitution
The stunning conclusion to the First Sister Trilogy, this book is a whirlwind of war, politics, and resistance. I won’t say too much because I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t read the first two books. I enjoyed the final book, though I do feel like the pacing was relentless in that every chapter we switched character POVs and every chapter the POV character was in mortal danger. It was exhausting as a reader. The book is already pretty long, but I felt I need some places to rest when the characters could breathe. But I found the series conclusion satisfying.
4/5 synthetics

River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer***
CW: slavery, n-word, racism
I wanted to like this book more than I did. In Barbados just after the end of slavery, a mother searches for her children who were sold away from her plantation. She discovers freedom in the long shadow of slavery. While I was interested in learning more about the history of slavery in the Caribbean and about the legacy of slavery, particularly how it continued with the ‘apprenticeships’ after the legal end of slavery, I didn’t feel like I connected with any of the characters. I also felt that the protagonist’s journey was almost too easy. She actually does find out what happened to all of her children which seems sort of unlikely. I also found the way the dialogue was written to be rather jarring. I’m sure it was probably historically more accurate than writing the dialogue like we speak today, but it pulled me out of the story.
3/5 rivers

Hellbent by Leigh Bardugo
Book Hangover Alert**
Alex Stern book 2 of at least 2
I was utterly useless for three days while I sat and read this book, doing everything one handed and complaining about going to work. Alex Stern, agent of Lethe, the oversight agency of the secret societies at Yale, continues her quest to rescue her mentor Darlington, ready to go through hell and back to bring him home. It was excellent. Perhaps even better than the first one. There are a few pretty traumatic events in the first book, and this one was in my opinion less traumatic. We also got to spend more time with characters we already love, so that’s why I think I enjoyed it even more than Ninth House.
5/5 rituals to open a portal to hell

Temeraire LLC

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
Scholomance book 1 of 3
This book was very enjoyable. In an odd way, it reminded me of Gideon the Ninth in that it was a fantasy with a complicated magic system and world building with a protagonist with a very distinctive voice. Unlike Gideon the Ninth though, I liked it. I liked El’s distinct voice and how she grew over the novel. It was a little hard to understand the magic system and world at first but it was very unique and worth the effort to understand it.
3.5/5 mals

Disney Hyperion

The Sun and the Star by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro***
Companion to the Percy Jackson series
CW: trauma
We’ve all been waiting for Uncle Rick to give us a book about Nico and Will and it’s finally here! Nico, son of Hades, and Will, son of Apollo, must undertake a quest to Tartarus to rescue a friend. Along the way, they’ll learn just how much they mean to one another. This book was good. It was enjoyable and I’m grateful to Riordan and Oshiro for writing it because it think there are some teenaged queers that need to see themselves represented in fantasy. I didn’t love it as much as I’d hoped; I didn’t love it as much as the first two series of Percy Jackson books. There was a lot of working through trauma and developing healthy relationships, which are of course good things, but sometimes you just want demigods making jokes and killing monsters.
3.5/5 nightmares

Macmillan

The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill
CW: domestic violence
I love Barnhill’s work. In the near future, a teenaged girl’s mother falls in love with a man who is sometimes a crane, and sometimes a man. The crane soon becomes an abusive and menacing presence, demanding the mother, a talented weaver, create a masterpiece for him. The protagonist is then left to care for the house and her younger brother alone without the income from her mother’s work, and unable to convince her mother of the evil of the crane. The novella is a dark fantasy reimagining of the crane wife folktale from Japanese mythology, and it does a wonderful job of examining domestic violence, generational trauma, and the patriarchy.
4.5/5 cranes

Hachette Book Group

The Bone Shard War by Andrea Stewart***
**Book Hangover Alert
The Drowning Empire book 3 of 3
Another conclusion to a trilogy this month. Two years after the conclusion of book two, Emperor Lin is struggling to hold her empire together as the governors grumble, resistance factions spring up, and the secrets of the Alanga threaten to tumble her rule. Sometimes I feel like writers give their characters too much adversity. I realize the story would be boring without it, but at this point I just want Lin and Jovis to be happy. The conclusion to the series was bittersweet and satisfying, which is really the most I can ask of any book.
4/5 ossalen

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz***
CW: homophobia, hate crimes
This book gets a lot of hype on BookTok, and I’ll be honest, I thought it was going to be more gay. In this coming of age novel, Mexican-American Ari and his best friend Dante learn how to be themselves in a world that’s not always kind. The book is compulsively readable but I didn’t love it and I didn’t hate it. Ari has a lot of self loathing to work out, which is a relatable experience for many queer teens, but is not always enjoyable to read. I have one other qualm but it’s a spoiler so read on at your own risk. Read More: SPOILERS AHEAD

Throughout the book, Ari is obsessed with knowing more about his brother who has been in jail since he was young and no one in his family will talk about him. Ari eventually finds out that his brother committed a homophobic hate crime, murdering a trans person. And that doesn’t really seem to bother Ari that much? Which I thought was odd? Ari is irate when he learns Dante is beaten to within an inch of his life for being gay, but he seems to feel no anger that his brother committed that crime. And I understand that Ari is worried about becoming like his brother because he also has anger issues and likes to fight. But he chooses to put up photos of his brother and wants to write to him in prison and while I’m all for forgiveness and healing, I didn’t understand why he wasn’t more upset that his brother MURDERED someone, specifically a trans woman.

3/5 birds with broken wings

Me trying to be as cool as Claude Cahun with her self portrait photography

Exist Otherwise: The Life and Works of Claude Cahun by Jennifer L. Shaw***
CW: antisemitism, homophobia
This lovely coffee table book details the life of Claude Cahun, an artist and writer active in the Surrealist movement of the 1920s. Cahun and her partner Marcel Moore also resisted fascism, running a sophisticated anti-Nazi propaganda movement on the occupied island of Jersey during WWII. The book is fascinating and full of photographs of Cahun and Moore’s work. Moore was an artist in her own right and she and Cahun collaborated on much of their artistic work.
3.5/5 surreal collages

Flatiron Books

Atalanta by Jennifer Saint
CW: victim blaming, rape
Jennifer Saint is one of my favorite writers of mythological reimaginings. Atalanta follows the titular character from her abandonment on a mountain as a baby, her childhood being raised by bears and nymphs of Artemis, and her involvement in the Argonaut’s quest for the golden fleece. The champion of Artemis and the only woman on the quest, through Atalanta’s eyes we get to experience the myth of the golden fleece anew through a feminist lens. I adored it.
5/5 bears

Lake Union Publishing

Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark T. Sullivan***
CW: genocide, slavery, antisemitism, war
Based on a true story, this novel follows the experiences of Pino Lella during WWII as he helped refugees flee across the Alps from Italy to Switzerland and then became a spy for the resistance in the Nazi high command by driving for General Hans Leyers. The book was definitely very engaging and interesting. I didn’t know much about the war in Italy. That being said, there have been some rumblings on the internet about how much truth there is in this ‘true story.’ The author’s note states the following:

“Due to the document burning, the collective amnesia, and the death of so many characters by the time I learned of the story, I have been forced in places to construct scenes and dialogue based solely on Pino’s memory decades later, the scant physical evidence that remains, and my imagination fueled by my research and informed suspicions. I have also comingled or compressed events and characters for the sake of narrative coherence and have fully dramatized incidents that were described to me in much more truncated forms.

As a result, then, the story you are about to read is not a work of narrative nonfiction, but a novel of biographical and historical fiction that hews closely to what happened to Pino Lella between June 1943 and May 1945.”

-Mark T. Sullivan

So perhaps it’s more constructive to think about this book like a movie based on a true story–as we know movies always “Hollywoodize” the true story. Several different people on the internet have made different claims about the veracity of several pieces of the narrative. So I guess I would say to read the book, enjoy it, learn more about the broad strokes of WWII in Italy, but treat the book more as a historical fiction.
3.5/5 cathedrals of God

Weyward by Emilia Hart
CW: domestic violence, abuse, trauma, rape
I enjoyed this book. It was my March BOTM pick. The novel follows three women from different generations of the Weyward family as they discover their affinity with nature, survive abusive men, and come into their own power. I found all three narratives compelling and I liked the way they were all woven together. I did find the writing style a little choppy and featuring too many em dashes (which contributed to the choppiness) at least in the first half of the book. It didn’t bother me as much in the second half, either because I got used to it or the writing flowed better later on.
3.5/5 crows

HarperCollins

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang***
The Poppy War book 1 of 3
CW: genocide, extreme body horror and mutilation, rape, war, addiction, colorism, racism, human experimentation, self harm, slavery
I loved Babel by Kuang so I was really excited to read this book. The start to an epic fantasy trilogy, the story follows Rin, an orphan from a remote part of the Nikara Empire who tests into the elite military academy Sinegard where she attempts to prove she belongs there. Along the way she discovers her own shamanic powers and begins to unravel the mysteries of her past. The book is inspired by Chinese military history from the mid-20th century but set in a world closer to the Song Dynasty of the 13th century, with fantastical elements. It’s an incredible work of fantasy to be sure. I didn’t love it, and it isn’t because it wasn’t good. It was good. All the characters, but especially Rin, were so complex and interesting and flawed. It was so fresh and new and I’ve never read anything like it. But it was a little too dark for my taste. It was a little too gory. The atrocities were more gruesome and horrifying than I wanted to read about. I’m not very knowledgable about Chinese and Japanese history, so it’s possible that some of the atrocities described by Kuang are inspired by actual events, in which case I think it’s important to learn about those things, however, I didn’t necessarily pick up this book because I wanted to read 101 ways humans can desecrate other humans. That being said, I’ll probably still read the rest of them.
4/5 poppy seeds

HarperCollins

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang***
Book Hangover Alert**
CW: racism, microaggressions, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts
I can’t stop thinking about this book. And I’m not sure I’ve thought about it long enough to form a coherent review of it. Yellowface follows June Hayward, a white author who steals an unfinished novel draft from her Asian-American author friend after her untimely death. June finishes the novel and passes it off as her own and we watch as everything spirals out of control. This book reminded me of Self Care in it’s page-turning, watching-a-train-wreck quality. And June reminded me of the protagonists in Self Care, who were the same kind of white woman (we all know the one). Kuang’s biting satire of the publishing industry brings up a lot of important issues like who should be able to tell what kind of story, what is cultural appropriation, how the publishing industry treats writers of color, how privilege operates in the industry, how white women weaponize their own victimhood. It was so good. I might have more to say later, but I’m still in the lie-on-the-floor stage of the Book Hangover.
5/5 stolen manuscripts

**Book Hangover Alert indicates the kind of book that will leave you full up on love. Satisfied, but wishing the book never had to end. You’ll be laying on the floor with no idea what to do with yourself (other friends have called this feeling Good Book Depression or say that certain books necessitate Floor Time). This is the kind of book that gets its teeth in you and won’t let go easily. After the last page you’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. You’ll bother all your friends trying to get them to read it so that you won’t be alone in your Hangover.

***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience series! Read The Last Hero for disability, LGBTQIA+ rep in sci-fi. Read River Sing Me Home to learn about the legacy of slavery in Barbados. Read The Sun and the Star for LGBTQIA+ rep in fantasy. Read The Bone Shard War for an Asian inspired fantasy with LGBTQIA+ rep. Read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe for a Mexican-America, gay coming of age story. Read Exist Otherwise: The Life and Words of Claude Cahun to learn about a forgotten female, lesbian artist and her heroic resistance against the Nazis. Read Beneath a Scarlet Sky to learn more about WWII and the atrocities committed in Italy. Read The Poppy War for a fantasy inspired by Chinese and Japanese history. Read Yellowface to learn more about racism and microaggressions in the publishing industry.

Reads marked as part of the Books for a Social Conscience series will regularly address topics like race and racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, LGBTQIA+ experience, feminism, BIPOC experience, social and political issues, history, identity, class, disability experience, immigration, gun violence, poverty, colorism, environmentalism, and more! The goal of these books is to diversify the stories we’re reading, grow our empathy for those who are different from us, and amplify voices who are often silenced.

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April 2023 Books

Books Reread

Flatiron Books

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
**Book Hangover Alert
Alex Stern book 1 of 2
CW: rape, drug abuse, PTSD, body horror, murder, racism, self-harm
I reread Ninth House in preparation for Hellbent, the sequel, which I am very excited about. Ninth House is a dark academia fantasy featuring Alex Stern, a girl who can see ghosts and is part of Lethe, an oversight body for the secret societies of Yale, tasked with making sure the societies don’t harm students of the town with their magic. After a suspicious murder, Alex must find out if the societies had anything to do with it. I listened to the audiobook this time and Lauren Fortgang does a superb job.
5/5 secret societies

New Books Read

Random House

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
CW: racism, n-word, murder, homophobia
Talk about truth stranger than fiction. This is a true crime book set in Savannah, GA in the 1980s and it’s a wild ride from start to finish. The story covers Berendt’s move to Savannah and how he came to be a part of the Savannah community which is then rocked by the murder of a young man by one of the richest and most influential men in Savannah’s upper crust. It’s full of colorful and interesting characters and Berendt manages to capture the quirkiness of the situation and the people that live there without seeming condescending.
3.5/5 jars of grave dirt

Flatiron Books

Our Crooked Hearts by Melissa Albert
CW: animal death
This is the first book in a long time that I’ve stayed up all night to finish in one sitting. It almost seems like a fever dream, I read it so fast. Our Crooked Hearts is a YA fantasy that follows a mother and daughter, both with an affinity for magic, on parallel lines as the dark secrets of the mother catch up to the daughter. I loved the dark fantasy aspect and twists and turns as Albert kept me guessing and unable to put it down.
4/5 rabbit hearts

Naxos Audiobooks

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
CW: racism, slavery, antisemitism, suicide, suicidal ideation, attempted suicide, ableism, abandonment
Is this book like way too long? Yes, yes it is. Did I still enjoy it? Yes, yes I did. I’ve mentioned this before, but with many Victorian novels, you only have to read about every 30th page to still know what’s going on, and that’s definitely true here. The Count of Monte Cristo follows a man wrongly accused of Bonapartism in post Bonaparte France and his subsequent imprisonment, escape, and quest for vengeance. But Monte Cristo isn’t satisfied with just finding and murdering the men who put him away, he has extremely elaborate plans for the total destruction of the men who have wronged him. And I respect that about him. I have a few more thoughts, but they are spoilers. Read More: SPOILERS AHEAD

As much as I enjoyed the book overall, I did not need this many pages of prose to learn that vengeance doesn’t equal justice and destroying the men who have wronged him isn’t really going to make Monte Cristo feel any better. I also didn’t love that Monte Cristo and Haydee and up together at the end. It’s weird and gross and paternalistic. She is much younger and spent a long time as his slave. And even though Monte Cristo is portrayed as a benevolent, ‘good’ slave owner, we know that good slave owners don’t exist.

3.5/5 secret treasures

HarperCollins Publishers

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by S. A. Chakraborty ***
**Book Hangover Alert
CW: murder, misogyny, racism
This was a choice for the March Book of the Month and I didn’t choose it and I have regrets. It was so good. Retired scourge of the seas, Amina Al-Sirafi comes out of retirement for one final job, searching for the kidnapped daughter of her former crew member. There are pirates, found family, magic, monsters, sorcerers, demons, adventure, and it was fabulous. Definitely hoping Chakraborty continues the series.
5/5 charismatic demon husbands

HQ Fiction

The London Séance Society by Sarah Penner***
CW: ableism, murder
I really liked Penner’s first book, The Lost Apothecary, so I was excited to read this one. I didn’t like it as much as The Lost Apothecary, but it was still enjoyable. The story follows Lenna Wickes, the pupil of famous medium Vaudeline D’Allaire, as she tries to solve her sister’s murder. When Vaudeline is called on to investigate the murder of one of the leaders of the London Séance Society, Lenna and Vaudeline discover there may be more to the society and these murders than they first thought. I loved the lesbian representation in Victorian London. My main complaint is a spoiler so read on at your own risk. Read More: SPOILERS AHEAD

I really disliked the chapters from the perspective of the man, whose name I can’t remember and doesn’t appear in any of the blurbs about the book. He was just so unlikeable, which I realize was the point, because he turned out to be the bad guy, but still. I think it would have been more enjoyable if he had been charismatic and alluring and THEN turned out to be the bad guy. He is also described as having a facial birthmark which I think is problematic. It is a trope in Victorian literature that those with disabilities or physical or mental differences are evil and the disability is God’s way of punishing them for it. I don’t know if Penner was trying to lean into this trope because it was a mainstay of Victorian literature, but it’s a really harmful stereotype and I hate that I still see it in modern books.

3.5/5 amber stones

**Book Hangover Alert indicates the kind of book that will leave you full up on love. Satisfied, but wishing the book never had to end. You’ll be laying on the floor with no idea what to do with yourself (other friends have called this feeling Good Book Depression or say that certain books necessitate Floor Time). This is the kind of book that gets its teeth in you and won’t let go easily. After the last page you’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. You’ll bother all your friends trying to get them to read it so that you won’t be alone in your Hangover.

***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience series! Read The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi for fantasy and piracy set around the Islamic Golden Age with diverse characters from many areas surrounding the Indian ocean. It also has LGBTQIA+ representation. Read The London Séance Society for LGBTQIA+ representation in historical fiction.
Reads marked as part of the Books for a Social Conscience series will regularly address topics like race and racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, LGBTQIA+ experience, feminism, BIPOC experience, social and political issues, history, identity, class, disability experience, immigration, gun violence, poverty, colorism, environmentalism, and more! The goal of these books is to diversify the stories we’re reading, grow our empathy for those who are different from us, and amplify voices who are often silenced.

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March 2023 Books

New Books Read

A Venom Dark and Sweet by Judy I. Lin***
The Book of Tea book 2 of 2
I really enjoyed this one too. I read the first book last month and all the things I liked about it continued in this one. This one is a little more focused on the political issues of the empire than the first one was, but I thought it was really well done. I liked learning about the gods and the mythology of the world Lin created.
3.5/5 relics from gods

Pan Macmillan

A Victorian Flower Diction: The Language of the Flowers Companion by Vanessa Diffenbaugh and Mandy Kirby
I read this book as research for the novel I’m writing but I did find it both interesting and very helpful. The book talks in depth about 50 flowers, sharing their meaning for the Victorians and sharing art and poetry that uses these flowers as symbols. The book also contains a longer list of dictionary entries for more flowers and their basic meanings. I haven’t read The Language of the Flowers, the novel that this dictionary is a companion to, but the book was very helpful for my purposes.
3/5 chrysanthemums

Babel by R. F. Kuang***
**Book Hangover Alert
CW: racism, racial slurs, death, Imperialism
I adored this book. If you’re not interested in linguistics and language and the academic theory surrounding language, this book is probably not for you. I thought it was fascinating, and I loved the setting of magical Victorian Oxford and the dark academia vibe. It reminded me a little of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, but with more likable and diverse characters. I also loved the exploration of Imperialism and racism and the difficult pull and push between one’s homeland and one’s adopted homeland, especially when one’s adopted homeland is exploiting one’s homeland. I love that this book is an anti-Imperialism, labor union book. It’s a very niche genre but one I love. My only criticisms are that I wished it had a happier end (though I’m not sure a happier end would have been believable), and I wished Ramy and Robin had a little happiness together.
5/5 silver bars

Penguin Publishing Group

Homicide and Halo-Halo***
Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mysteries book 2 of 4
CW: PTSD, trauma
This book has an author content warning at the beginning, so make sure to read it for a full list of triggers that may be in the book. I enjoyed this book too. The first book in this series was my book of the month a couple years ago and it’s a super enjoyable cozy mystery full of delicious food. This one continues in the same vein. I loved learning more about Filipino cuisine and I loved the beauty pageant aspect of the plot. We love mysteries (or really any books) with excellent female and BIPOC representation.
3.5/5 Filipino baked goods

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, translated by Kencho Suematsu
CW: pedophilia, grooming of a child
This book is considered one of if not the first fiction novel ever written. This translation is supposedly one of the first translations of the book into English, however it only translates the first 17 chapters and not all 54. I don’t know why they didn’t translate the whole thing, but I must say, I’m grateful because 17 chapters was more than enough. Of course this book is important historically in that it is one of the first fictional novels ever written and it was written by a woman, so that’s cool. But that doesn’t make it good. It was not good. It was actually quite awful. It had no plot and no interesting characters. Prince Genji, the main character, was just the worst, a womanizer and a pedophile. It was also confusing for someone who has no knowledge of Japanese court structure, life, or customs in the year 1000. I hated it.
1.5/5 ladies named after flowers (I have to give it more than a 1 because I did finish reading it)

Alfred A. Knopf

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
I loved it. This book reminded me a bit of David Mitchell, one of my favorite authors. I loved how the story weaved through time and created such a neat, satisfying well resolved ending. I don’t want to say too much because spoilers, but I adored it. I read it in basically one sitting.
5/5 moon colonies

Penguin Random House

Spare by Prince Harry
CW: PTSD, trauma, death of a parent, suicide, suicidal thoughts
Prince Harry’s memoir was fascinating. We all know a little about the royal family and we all know a little about Princess Diana and her death, but getting to see the royal family and Princess Diana through Harry’s eyes was very interesting and also heartbreaking. Harry reads the audiobook which was cool to get to hear it in his voice. I was left with the conviction that the monarchy is no longer relevant and continues to be a harmful institution, and with the conviction that the way the press dehumanizes and commodifies famous people is disgusting. I wish only the best for Harry, Megan and their children and only the worst for everyone else in the royal family.
4/5 tabloids

Cursed by Marissa Meyer
Gilded book 2 of 2
CW: death of children, loss of bodily autonomy
This was a month of reading second books in series apparently. Cursed is the sequel to Gilded, and the duology is a retelling of Rumpelstitskin. I don’t think I liked this series as much as Meyer’s first fairytale retelling, The Lunar Chronicles, but it was still very enjoyable. I really liked the world she created and the magical creatures and gods in it.
3.5/5 golden chains

Lion Forge Comics / Oni Press

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe***
Book Hangover Alert**
CW: body dysmorphia
I tried to buy this book for Banned Books Week last year and it was sold out so I still don’t have a copy, but this month for Trans Rights Read-A-Thon, I thought I would go ahead and get it from the library. It was great. You know I’m always trying to find more ace representation and Kobabe’s graphic memoir explores eir experience as a nonbinary asexual person. My complaint on the last book I read with ace rep (Loveless) was that it didn’t reflect my experience as an ace of not really wanting romantic or sexual relationships. I felt Kobabe’s experience of discovering asexuality more closely mirrored mine, although I identify as a cis woman. I hope everyone can read this book and more books like it. Stop banning books, you cowards.
5/5 pronouns

W. W. Norton & Company

The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson
CW: slavery
Two translated books and one book about translation this month. I’ve read parts of The Odyssey before from other translations but this is the first time I’ve read it straight though. Emily Watson’s translation is quite new and comes with a more feminist lens which was super interesting. I enjoyed it. I liked that she kept it as a metered poem, which it is in the original Greek. Other translations translate it to basically a prose poem, keeping the line breaks, but losing the meter and form. I do think it’s a little too long and there’s too much time spent between Odysseus returning to Ithaca and finally confronting the suitors. Also I didn’t realize how much help he had from Athena. Like Odysseus had a great reputation for being so smart and a great warrior, but really he just had a lot of help.
3/5 wine-dark seas

**Book Hangover Alert indicates the kind of book that will leave you full up on love. Satisfied, but wishing the book never had to end. You’ll be laying on the floor with no idea what to do with yourself (other friends have called this feeling Good Book Depression or say that certain books necessitate Floor Time). This is the kind of book that gets its teeth in you and won’t let go easily. After the last page you’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. You’ll bother all your friends trying to get them to read it so that you won’t be alone in your Hangover.

***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience series! Read A Venom Dark and Sweet for a lush Asian inspired fantasy with LGBTQIA+ rep. Read Babel for anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, immigrant experiences and LGBTQIA+ rep. Read Homicide and Halo-Halo for BIPOC rep, strong ladies, and LGBTQIA+ rep. Read Gender Queer for experiences in self discovery and LGBTQIA+ rep.

Reads marked as part of the Books for a Social Conscience series will regularly address topics like race and racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, LGBTQIA+ experience, feminism, BIPOC experience, social and political issues, history, identity, class, disability experience, immigration, gun violence, poverty, colorism, environmentalism, and more! The goal of these books is to diversify the stories we’re reading, grow our empathy for those who are different from us, and amplify voices who are often silenced.

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January 2023 Books

Books Reread

Disney Hyperion

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Percy Jackson and the Olympians book 1 of 5
First, a moment of silence for the lost art of chapter titles. I reread this as a Buddy Read on StoryGraph, which I highly recommend. It’s super fun if you want to read with a group of people, but don’t want to do the traditional bookclub thing. You’re able to make comments about certain points in the book and then when your buddies have reached that point, they can unlock your comments, which is super fun and motivating. Now back to the book. I love this book. It’s so good. I forgot how good this series is. I loved revisiting where it all started and being reminded how far Percy, Grover, and Annabeth have come since this first book.
5/5 magic flying shoes

Disney Hyperion

The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan***
Percy Jackson and the Olympians book 2 of 5
Another great installment in the series. This book introduces Tyson, Percy’s cyclopes half brother. This isn’t something I picked up on the first time I read this book, but I think it actually does a really good job handling disability. Tyson has a cognitive disability, or at least in the novel he stands in for a disabled character (he is othered by his peers in the same way a child with Down’s syndrome might be). And Uncle Rick doesn’t put him in for tokenism and he doesn’t rely on any disabled tropes or stereotypes (i.e. Tiny Tim is in the story to make Scrooge a better person, and disabled/deformed villains are disabled/deformed to signal to the audience that their disability represents a moral failing as well). Tyson is a rounded character with thoughts and motivations and interests and talents that are separate from his disability. The whole disabled-person-as-monster metaphor is a little on the nose, but at least he’s using it to prove that disabled people AREN’T monsters (a la Frankenstein). I also love how Percy is written in relation to Tyson. Percy’s and Tyson’s relationship is complicated with all of Percy’s worries about what his peers will think, and I think that’s a really real reaction that kids with disabled siblings have. At first Percy feels pity for Tyson when they’re at school together, then shame when he finds out they’re brothers, then love, appreciation, and acceptance. He underestimated Tyson and then revises his opinion and I love it so much. 
3.5/5 hippocampi

New Books Read

Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson***
Vespertine book 1
We love that ace representation. This book was cool. I liked the magic system. I liked Artemisia a lot, who read to me as both ace and autistic. I also liked the revenant who also read as ace to me, though he’s a non-corporeal spirit so I’m not sure it counts. I loved seeing Artemisia’s friendships develop. I’m excited to see what the rest of the series looks like.
4/5 spirits

Greywaren by Maggie Stiefvater***
**Book Hangover Alert
Dreamer Trilogy book 3 of 3
Stunning. Gorgeous. I adored it. Hennessey was a bit annoying in this one, but it’s part of her journey and she works through it. I love that for her. The ending was such a lovely note to leave this world and these characters on.
10/5 homemade sweetmetals

Penguin Random House

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner***
CW: death of a parent, illness
I don’t always read memoirs, but when I do, for some reason they’re about women whose mothers have died. Okay that’s an exaggeration, but one of the most memorable memoirs I’ve ever read was also about this subject. I enjoyed Zauner’s memoir. Maybe enjoyed isn’t the right word. It was of course very sad. I loved how she used food to explore her relationship with her mother and also her relationship with Korean-ness. Hers is a journey that many mixed-race and immigrant children will relate to. I liked that Zauner didn’t shy from examining her complicated relationships with both her parents and her culture.
3/5 delicious Korean foods

Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen
CW: child abuse, mental illness
This was my September Book of the Month. I enjoyed it. It was very readable, and I liked how all the threads tied up at the end. I did think it was a bit unrealistic that literally every character had terrible parents. And I didn’t love that Charlotte, a white girl, made a living doing henna for other white people. There’s a brief mention about how all the symbols in henna mean something, but it isn’t explored or really acknowledged that this is a very important cultural and traditional practice in India with a long history. It was used more as a way to make Charlotte seem arty and like a hippie. But I liked that everyone was happy and became friends at the end.
3.5/5 invisible birds

Loveless by Alice Oseman
This month was all about ace rep! I enjoyed this book a lot. I did wish that Georgia wasn’t so obsessed with wanting a relationship, but I guess it’s just because I don’t really want a romantic relationship, and I want this book to reflect my exact experience. I loved the Shakespeare references and all the characters. I loved that we get to celebrate friendship as much as romantic relationships.
4/5 thirsty plants

Victor Gollancz

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
Discworld book 13 of 41
We love a good Terry Pratchett Discworld novel. This one satirized religion and it’s very funny and insightful. I loved how Brutha was characterized as kind of slow at the beginning of the book, but developed into a thoughtful and powerful character. I would have liked to see a single female character somewhere in the book, but some of the older fantasy novels are pretty lacking in female representation. Pratchett does have good rep in some of the other Discworld novels, just not this one.
3/5 turtles

Bravely by Maggie Stiefvater
This book is a novel companion to the movie Brave. It takes place a few years after the movie, and explores Merida’s quest to save her family and her kingdom. It was very enjoyable. I didn’t like it as much Maggie’s other books (some of my favorite books of all time), but I still liked it. I liked that we got to see Merida’s brothers get a little older and develop unique personalities. Read on for a spoiler.

Read More: SPOILERS AHEAD

One thing I didn’t love was that Merida has to fall in love and break her heart to change. The movie establishes that Merida has no interest in love, and in my opinion she is an ace queen and I don’t want her fall in love or have a relationship. Other than that I really liked it.


3.5/5 bears (although there could have been more bears in this book)

Audible Original

The Mystery of Alice by Lee Bacon
This was another of those free Audible books. It was enjoyable. I liked the sort of dark academia vibe. It was kind of a child safe version of The Secret History. I don’t know that it was super believable, but I still enjoyed it. I wish Emily would have made a real, actually good friend. I would like to argue that Nathan was still not a good friend, even though it’s proven (spoiler alert) that he isn’t the bad guy. He’s still a stalker with anger issues who was never a good friend to Emily.
3/5 spy necklaces

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
CW: anti-black racism
Not to be a snob, but both this book and Crying in H Mart were on Obama’s favorite books of the year in 2021, and though both were good, I don’t think either will make it on my favorite books of this year. In fact none of the books I’ve read on his 2021 list made my list the year I read it. I guess we just have different tastes. I liked this book. It was interesting and very readable. The characters were interesting and distinct. I did think Billy didn’t read much like an 8 year old; he acted and spoke like a much older child, apart from his naïveté. I thought Duchess was a really interesting, well-done morally gray character. I didn’t love the ending. It felt kind of callous. I also felt like Towles wrote this book and then his editor was like “there is not a single female character in this book.” And so Towles went back and added Sally’s chapters (Sarah doesn’t count because she’s basically a non-character). But Sally seemed really unnecessary to the plot.
3.5/5 studebakers

Hachette Book Group

The World We Make by N. K. Jemisin***
**Book Hangover Alert
Great cities book 2 of 2
CW: racism, ICE
I love these books so much. I adored The City We Became and I loved this one too. I do wish there could be more books, but I also respect Jemisin’s reasons for not writing more. As a writer, I don’t even know how she managed these two books. I still love all the characters, especially Padmini. I liked seeing Aislyn’s development. I would have loved to see a little more Neek and Manny, but I am still satisfied with the ending.
5/5 boroughs of New York

**Book Hangover Alert indicates the kind of book that will leave you full up on love. Satisfied, but wishing the book never had to end. You’ll be laying on the floor with no idea what to do with yourself (other friends have called this feeling Good Book Depression or say that certain books necessitate Floor Time). This is the kind of book that gets its teeth in you and won’t let go easily. After the last page you’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. You’ll bother all your friends trying to get them to read it so that you won’t be alone in your Hangover.

***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience series! Read The Sea of Monsters for disability in fantasy rep. Read Vespertine for LGBTQIA+ rep in fantasy. Read Greywaren for LGBTQIA+ rep in fantasy. Read Loveless for LGBTQIA+ rep in romance. Read The World We Make for diversity and LGBTQIA+ rep in sci-fi.

Reads marked as part of the Books for a Social Conscience series will regularly address topics like race and racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, LGBTQIA+ experience, feminism, BIPOC experience, social and political issues, history, identity, class, disability experience, immigration, gun violence, poverty, colorism, environmentalism, and more! The goal of these books is to diversify the stories we’re reading, grow our empathy for those who are different from us, and amplify voices who are often silenced.

(I stopped being able to change text color. I don’t know why.)

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December 2022 Books and End of Year Roundup

End of Year Roundup

Number of new books read this year: 106

Number of books reread this year: 11

Number of books by women, trans, and nonbinary people read this year (only counting new books read): 74

Number of books by BIPOC this year (only including new books read): 34

Number of books by disabled authors this year (only including new books read)*: 3

*This can only include authors I know are disabled. More on the list could be and I might not know. Definite room for improvement in this category!

Breakdown by genre
-Fiction: 86 (classics: 6; contemporary fiction: 7; dystopian: 1; fantasy: 34; historical fiction: 10; literary fiction: 8; mystery: 3; romance: 5; science fiction: 7; thriller: 1: YA*: 4)
-Nonfiction: 12 (travel: 3; essays: 1; history: 1; memoir: 5; science: 1; social science: 1)
-Graphic novel: 1 (fantasy)
-Short story collection: 1 (fantasy)
-Poetry: 3 (poetry collection: 1; novel-in-verse: 2)
-Play: 3 (script: 1; audioplay: 2)

*Many of the fantasy, sci-fi, and historical fiction books I read were also in the YA age range.

First Book of the year: The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All by Josh Ritter

Last Book of the year: The Chimes by Charles Dickens

Best Books of the year (in no particular order):
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan
The House on the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
Elektra by Jennifer Saint
The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart
Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel
The Summer of Bitter and Sweet by Jen Ferguson
True Biz by Sara Nović
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez
The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
Lobizona by Romina Garber
The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar
Disability Visability: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century edited by Alice Wong
The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Time Is A Mother by Ocean Vuong
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

Okay actually there were a lot of really good books I read this year, and I cut myself off but I could have kept going.

Worst books of the year:
The worst books of the year have to be the two I didn’t finish reading: Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds and A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair. But my lowest rated books of the year were Heaven by Mieko Kawakami, which was just far too bleak, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, which was actually good if you skip all the parts about Levin, and Life Ever After by Carla Grauls, which was just not good.

Most read author: Maggie Stiefvater (6 books)

December Books Reread

Scholastic Inc.

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater***
**Book Hangover Alert
The Raven Cycle book 4 of 4
The stunning conclusion! I didn’t remember this one super well either. I only remembered the relationship that finally happens in this book (trying not to spoil it). Anyway I still love it. I love all the characters. I love getting to see Henry Cheng join the gang.
5/5 robo bees

Scholastic Inc.

Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater***
**Book Hangover Alert
The Dreamer Trilogy book 1 of 3
I still love the Dreamer Trilogy too. I don’t think I love it quite as much as the Raven Cycle but I still love it. I love getting to spend more time with Ronan, and getting to know Jordan and Hennessy, and who could have guessed I would learn to love Declan?? My only qualm rereading this book is that there is a lot of (necessary!) build up to Ronan and Hennessy meeting and beginning to work together.
4/5 forged paintings

Scholastic Inc.

Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater***
**Book Hangover Alert
The Dreamer Trilogy book 2 of 3
I actually think I might like this one better than the first one. Not that I don’t love the first one, but this book is where things really start to get exciting. And we get to see the development of Ronan and Hennessy’s relationship and Declan and Jordan’s, and also Matthew’s development, which I adore. I also love Farooq-Lane and Liliana. This is also the first time I’ve reread a book that is already on the blog, so if you’re interested in my original review of Mister Impossible, you can read it here.
4.5/5 sweetmetals

Chapman & Hall

The Chimes by Charles Dickens
I really respect that after Dickens wrote an instant classic about ghosts on Christmas, he was like, “I’m going to write more holiday books, and you know what else, besides ghosts, says Christmas? Goblins. That’s what.” Anyway, this book is about goblins. It’s definitely not as good as A Christmas Carol, but still enjoyable. We love a Dickens book in the winter.
3/5 bells

New Books Read

Chronicle Books

A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger***
This was the Big Library Read, so it was available to check out as an ebook to everyone. I read Elatsoe by Little Badger last year so I was excited to read this one. I didn’t enjoy it as much as Elatsoe. I liked the ace representation, we could always use more of that, and I loved learning about the animal people. But I didn’t love the style of prose and I thought the dialogue felt stilted and awkward.
3.5/5 tornados in nesting dolls

HarperCollins

The Kiss Curse by Erin Sterling
Sequel to the Ex Hex
The Ex Hex was my Book of the Month last year in October and it was delightful, so I wanted to read the sequel. This one focuses on Gwyn, Vivi’s cousin. In the first book, Gwyn is dating Jane, the mayor of Graves Glen. In this book, Vivi and Rhys are happily married and Gwyn falls in love with Rhys’s brother Wells. Not to invalidate bisexual people who are in heterosexual relationships, but I would have liked it more if it was a wlw book. As it was, it was sort of the same story as the first book, enemies to lovers, Jones woman falls in love with Penhallow brother. That being said, it was still a super fun light read. The banter was fabulous and I loved Gwyn and her Baby Witches and Wells was delightful.
3.5/5 bags of edible glitter

Part of My World by Jodi Benson
If you didn’t know, Jodi Benson is the voice of Ariel from The Little Mermaid. I had a chance to hear her give a talk about the book when she visited the Disney College Program here at Disney World. Her memoir is full of fascinating stories from the making of The Little Mermaid including stories about Howard Ashman, Alan Menken, and many others involved in the movie and the Disney company. I also loved reading about Benson’s experiences on Broadway. My only complaint about the book is that it’s pretty preachy. Benson is deeply religious, and though I can agree with many of her philosophies, I’m not that interested in reading about how God is the author of her life and He had a grand plan for her and her life, and He gave her great performing talent so that she could spread the word of God. It felt like the last three paragraphs of every chapter, were all the same: her explaining how the story she just told is part of God’s plan. I also would have liked to see her grapple more with the knowledge that the Church as an institution has caused great harm. One story that stuck out to me was when Benson visited Howard Ashman at the end of his life when he was dying of AIDS. She told him she would pray for him. To her, that was the greatest comfort someone could offer. And maybe she believes God truly does love everyone, but she fails to acknowledge that the Church and religious people have probably told Ashman all his life that he was an abomination going to Hell, because he was gay.
3.5/5 mermaids

G. P. Putnam’s Sons

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
CW: domestic violence, assault, attempted rape, anti-Black racism, n-word
I thought this book was okay. It does seem overhyped to me. I really liked the way Owens described the marsh and all of the nature writing and descriptions. She did a really good job creating and bringing to life the place of the swamp. I thought the plot was a little weak and Kya was kind of a passive character. I wasn’t interested in the romance aspects of the book, and the murder mystery aspect of the book wasn’t that satisfying. It’s also important to note that Owens is wanted for questioning about an unsolved murder in Zambia. I believe people are innocent until proven guilty, but she certainly isn’t helping the investigation, so take that into consideration before you decide to support the book or movie.
3/5 crawdads

**Book Hangover Alert indicates the kind of book that will leave you full up on love. Satisfied, but wishing the book never had to end. You’ll be laying on the floor with no idea what to do with yourself (other friends have called this feeling Good Book Depression or say that certain books necessitate Floor Time). This is the kind of book that gets its teeth in you and won’t let go easily. After the last page you’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. You’ll bother all your friends trying to get them to read it so that you won’t be alone in your Hangover.

***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience series! Read both Stiefvater books for more LGBTQIA+ representation in fantasy. Read A Snake Falls to Earth for Native representation and LGBTQIA+ representation.

Reads marked as part of the Books for a Social Conscience series will regularly address topics like race and racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, LGBTQIA+ experience, feminism, BIPOC experience, social and political issues, history, identity, class, disability experience, immigration, gun violence, poverty, colorism, environmentalism, and more! The goal of these books is to diversify the stories we’re reading, grow our empathy for those who are different from us, and amplify voices who are often silenced.

(I stopped being able to change text color. I don’t know why.)

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July 2022 Books

I was really busy in July so the reading was a little slow this month (also I wasted a lot of time on Revelation Space).

New Books Read

Namesake by Adrienne Young
Book Hangover Alert**
Fable book 2 of 2
I really enjoyed this series. I mean how can you go wrong with pirates? I liked all the twists and turns I didn’t see coming. I did miss Wes and the crew a little bit because they don’t seem to get as big a role in this one as the first one, but I still really liked it. I won’t say too much because I don’t want to give any spoilers for those who haven’t read the first one.
4/5 deals struck

Doubleday

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
This might be Bryson’s best book. I always enjoy Bryson’s humor and the way he weaves in history and science. I liked how Bryson captured the way hiking can be really not fun but still somehow enthralls you and keeps you coming back for more (we’ve always called that Type 2 fun). As an experienced hiker, it was very amusing to hear of Bryson’s and Katz’s experiences on the trail as fairly inexperienced hikers, especially because of the self-deprecating way Bryson tells the story.
4/5 thrown out supplies

Audible

The Man on the Mountain Top by Susan Trott, adapted by Libby Spurrier
I don’t know that this really counts as a book but this is my blog so I can do what I want. It’s an audible original that adapts two books by Susan Trott (The Holy Man and The Holy Man’s Journey) into an audio play. I enjoyed it. It was reflective and thoughtful and sweet. I liked the performances of all the actors.
3/5 treks up the mountain

Random House

The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida***
This is a great read for anyone who wants to understand a little more about the autistic experience. So often people assume that nonverbal autistics are stupid or don’t understand what others say to them, but this book, written by a nonverbal autistic 13 year old gives us a window into what it’s like inside his head. Of course experiences of anything, including autism, aren’t universal, but I think reading this book can definitely help people understand that brains can work in different ways and people can communicate in all sorts of ways and that’s okay.
3/5 happy flaps

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart ***
Book Hangover**
Drowning Empire book 1 of 3
This book was so good. So unlike anything I’ve read before. The world building was exquisite; I loved the Asian-inspired fantasy. I also liked the characterization of each of the main characters. I liked the tension created by each of their different goals and motivations, which set them at odds with each other. At the same time though, they were all compelling and I was rooting for all of them, even though they weren’t always working together. There were lots of twists and turns I didn’t see coming or only saw just before they happened, which was very satisfying. I also adored Mephi. I liked this book so much I immediately started reading the sequel.
5/5 constructs

Flatiron Books

Elektra by Jennifer Saint
Book Hangover**
CW: murder, rape, gore
I loved this. Saint did such a great job with each of her three main characters, Elektra, Clytemnestra, and Cassandra. Each woman was unique and nuanced and had a voice and perspective entirely her own. I feel like so often we see female characters who are pretty much indistinguishable from each other. I love the Trojan war and I’ve read several retellings before; I loved the fresh perspective this book brought. I liked Saint’s last novel, Ariadne, but I loved this one.
5/5 lion daggers

Books I didn’t finish

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
The last time I didn’t finish reading a book was July of 2020 (Tender Morsels). It’s rare for me to not finish something. I suppose I might return to this one someday. It has that quality that some science fiction books have where the first few pages you have no idea what’s going on and they’re using all this jargon that’s unfamiliar (Dune is one of these). Usually I just keep reading in the good faith that it will start to make sense eventually, and usually it does. But I read almost 100 pages of this book and it was still not making sense. I also thought it was boring and had too many characters, and the way it jumped around in time was confusing. So anyway, let me know if you’ve read this book and what you thought.
0/5 alien fossils

**Book Hangover Alert indicates the kind of book that will leave you full up on love. Satisfied, but wishing the book never had to end. You’ll be laying on the floor with no idea what to do with yourself (other friends have called this feeling Good Book Depression or say that certain books necessitate Floor Time). This is the kind of book that gets its teeth in you and won’t let go easily. After the last page you’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. You’ll bother all your friends trying to get them to read it so that you won’t be alone in your Hangover.

***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience series! Read The Reason I Jump to get a better understanding of the experience of nonverbal autistic people. Read The Bone Shard Daughter for an Asian-inspired fantasy.

Reads marked as part of the Books for a Social Conscience series will regularly address topics like race and racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, LGBTQ+ experience, feminism, BIPOC experience, social and political issues, history, identity, class, disability experience, immigration, gun violence, poverty, colorism, environmentalism, and more! The goal of these books is to diversify the stories we’re reading, grow our empathy for those who are different from us, and amplify voices who are often silenced.

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June 2022 Books

New Books Read

Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel***
Book Hangover Alert**
Reading two books back to back with ace protagonists? Is this what representation feels like? Amazing. I adored Kaikeyi. It’s a reimagining of the classic tale of the Ramayana told from the perspective of Kaikeyi, one of Rama’s mothers (not his birth mother, but the third wife of his father). I loved the lushness of this story. I loved the exploration of Kaikeyi’s relationships, particularly with other women, and how each of the female characters was fleshed out (something I hear is missing from previous versions of the Ramayana). I recommend reading the Author’s Note, but saving it for after you’ve read the book if you’re not very familiar with the Ramayana.
4.5/5 strong bonds

Darling Girl by Liz Michalski
CW: sexual assault
People on the internet were excited about this book because it’s a reimagining of Peter Pan where “Peter is the villain!” They said it like it was a very novel idea, but if you paid attention when you read Barrie’s original, you know Peter’s always sort of been a villain. But I digress. I found this version refreshing; I liked the way the world of Neverland bled into present day. I liked the exploration of parenting shown by Holly who is always trying to protect and save both her children but doesn’t always do the right thing. One criticism: some of the flashbacks were in past tense and some were in present tense and the main action of the story was also in present tense. It bothered me that the flashbacks weren’t consistent in one tense or the other. Overall I did enjoy this book and I read it in like 2 days. The rest of this review has spoilers.

Read More: SPOILERS AHEAD

 
I thought it was an interesting choice by Michalski to give the final confrontation with Peter to Holly’s mother, and have Holly not even present. It struck me as a little anticlimactic. I guess I was also expecting to get a little more explanation of the Christopher Cooke/Hook and Nan characters. I don’t feel like we ever really figured out if they were from Neverland or what.

3.5/5 tinkling lights

Random House Publishing Group

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
CW: substance abuse
I listened to this audiobook, which I definitely recommend as the format works really well for audio and I loved the full cast interpretation. I found this book really intriguing because I had never read a book formatted like this, like a series of oral interviews. I thought it worked really well because each member of the band got to give their own perspective and memories which were often very different or disagreed entirely with other characters’.
3.5/5 album covers

Doubleday Doran

Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier
CW: ableism
I’ve been meaning to read this since I went to Jamaica Inn in Cornwall in 2016. I finally did read it and it was okay. I like the way DuMaurier writes, and I enjoyed the mystery of what’s going on in the Inn, but I was disappointed by the ending. If you want to know why, you can continue reading, though there will be spoilers.

Read More: SPOILERS AHEAD

 
It’s common in Classics and even in more contemporary work that someone with a visible difference or disability is the villain. And here DuMaurier buys into that stereotype, making the main mastermind villain an albino vicar. Disability or physical difference and disfigurement in literature are often shorthand for moral corruption and evil. And I’m very tired of reading about that. The other thing I didn’t love about the ending was Mary ending up with Jem Merlyn. The whole book she’s like “I know Jem is bad news and I can see how he could become like his brother (the other main villain in the story), and besides I’ve decided to be single forever and own my own farm.” And then she just doesn’t? She just chooses to go with Jem?

2.5/5 smugglers

The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera***
Book Hangover Alert**
CW: attempted genocide
This is the last book from my haul from the Bay Area Book Fest and it did not disappoint. It just won a Newberry medal and it deserved it. I actually read this book twice this month because I read it on my own and then I listened to it with my family driving from California to Colorado. I loved the incorporation of Mexican culture and folklore in a sci-fi story, especially since that genre has been so white for so long. I love when middle-grade authors grapple with important questions.
4/5 bioloaf cubes

Anxious People by Frederik Backman
CW: suicide, suicidal ideation
This book has the same charm, humor, and humanity of all of Backman’s works. It explores heavy and difficult topics with levity and sensitivity. It’s full of twists and turns and the way the story unfolds keeps you guessing. I love the way everything comes together at the end.
4/5 boxes of Christmas lights that aren’t bombs

Roc Hardcover

Dead Beat by Jim Butcher
Dresden Files book 7 of 17
I liked this one better than the last one, but really these books are pretty consistent. They’re enjoyable and don’t take a lot of extra brainpower, which is exactly what you need sometimes. I enjoyed the character of Butters and I hope we get to see him again.
3.5/5 zombies

The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton***
Book Hangover Alert**
CW: lynching, anti-Black racism, n-word, sexism, sexual assault, trauma
I said above that I’d never read a book formatted like Daisy Jones and the Six. Well, this book is also formatted like that, which did at first make it seem a little less exciting and fresh. But I really liked that this book engaged more with the current events that were happening in the 1970s. It shows the collision of rock and roll and the Civil Rights Movement. I also loved how it explores the difficulties Black women still face and how white silence can be just as insidious as loud, aggressive, in your face white racism.
4/5 platform shoes

The Girl Wakes by Carmen Lau
I got this book because sometimes when you submit stories to certain presses, they ask you to pay money or get a copy of one of the books they’ve published. So this was the one I picked. It’s a collection of short stories that echo or retell dark fairytales. It does remind me of the work of Angela Carter in its darkness and subversiveness. It was enjoyable, fresh, imaginative, and the prose was clean.
3/5 gingerbread houses

Execute the Office by Colin Rafferty
A disclaimer: Colin Rafferty was one of my professors at the University of Mary Washington, so obviously I think he’s great. This is a book of creative nonfiction essays, each one addressing a different president. I loved that I learned something new about each president, but the essays weren’t purely informative; they balanced information, personal connection, and the effort to reconcile how inarguably great men also did terrible things. I love Rafferty’s lyrical style and thoughtful explorations of each of the presidents (even the somewhat unremarkable ones).
3.5/5 presidential first dances

I reviewed this book for Under the Sun. The review can be read here.

Sandman: Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman
Sandman Vol 4
CW: gore
I have listened to the latest Audible Sandman collection, which does cover Season of Mists, but this was my first time reading it. This volume is mostly concerned with who will inherit Hell after Lucifer decides to leave, which was interesting but I do think I liked some of the other episodes better from previous volumes. One thing I really like about the comics that I haven’t mentioned yet is that I really like the way the artist changes the way Dream looks depending on who he’s speaking to.
3/5 keys to Hell

Redhook

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
CW: racism
I always love a story about doors to other worlds. I really liked The Once and Future Witches by Harrow, but I’m not sure I liked this one quite as much. It had a little slower build up and it took me longer to get hooked. But I did still enjoy it. I really like Harrow’s writing style. I do feel like I need a spin-off series about Jane and the Leopard Women.
3.5/5 loyal dogs

Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine***
CW: racism, police brutality, misogyny
As a Coloradan, I really liked seeing Denver from a historical and not whitewashed perspective. I also really liked the generational aspect of this book. I liked the focus on the female characters, however I also felt I could have had more Diego and his snakes in the book. I didn’t understand what Luz saw in David; I thought he was awful. I’m also not sure all my questions were answered by the end.
3.5/5 snakes

**Book Hangover Alert indicates the kind of book that will leave you full up on love. Satisfied, but wishing the book never had to end. You’ll be laying on the floor with no idea what to do with yourself (other friends have called this feeling Good Book Depression or say that certain books necessitate Floor Time). This is the kind of book that gets its teeth in you and won’t let go easily. After the last page you’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. You’ll bother all your friends trying to get them to read it so that you won’t be alone in your Hangover.

***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience. Read Kaikeyi for a feminist perspective in a classic and for ace representation. Read The Last Cuentista for Latinx representation in sci-fi. Read The Final Revival of Opal and Nev to learn about the Civil Rights Movement and racism in rock and roll. Read Woman of Light for a non-whitewashed look at the history of the west.

Reads marked as part of the Books for a Social Conscience series will regularly address topics like race and racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, LGBTQ+ experience, feminism, BIPOC experience, social and political issues, history, identity, class, disability experience, immigration, gun violence, poverty, colorism, environmentalism, and more! The goal of these books is to diversify the stories we’re reading, grow our empathy for those who are different from us, and amplify voices who are often silenced.

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May 2022 Books

New Books Read

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd
**Book Hangover Alert
I loved this book. It was my March BOTM pick and I loved the mystery of it and the magic of maps. Shepherd really managed to instill a sense of wonder in the art of looking at and learning from maps. I feel like I appreciate maps in a whole new way now. I also liked the development of Nell’s character and the growth of her found family throughout the story.
4.5/5 gas station maps

Barnes & Noble Classics

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
There are spoilers in this review. I feel like they aren’t really spoilers because this book has been out for over 150 years, but just in case you want to read it (which I actually don’t recommend) don’t read the spoilers. I’m not sure why I finished reading this book. It’s definitely way too long. And only the parts about Anna Karenina are interesting. I did not care about Levin and how much he liked farming and that he found God in the end (spoiler alert, I guess?). Also, if I had a nickel for every time the death of a horse early in a Victorian novel foreshadowed the death of the leading lady, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird it happened twice (another spoiler, I guess). All in all, you should just watch the Kiera Knightly movie instead, even though Vronsky has terrible hair and a bad mustache.
2.5/5 unfaithful partners

Audible

Diary of a Hounslow Girl by Ambreen Razia***
This was an adaptation of a play arranged for Audible. It addressed some important themes for young women, especially young women of color from underprivileged backgrounds. It’s a story of a young woman trying to balance the expectations of her family and cultural roots with finding her own freedom growing up in the UK.
3/5 pretty hijab pins

Pushkin Press

I Live a Life Like Yours by Jan Grue***
Grue spoke at a panel on disability and creativity at the Bay Area Book Festival which I went to a few weekends ago. I really liked the panel and thought Grue had a lot of interesting things to say, so I went and read his memoir. I like his writing style and how scholarly it was. It wasn’t simply a catalogue of his own experiences, but a story very much in conversation with disability theorists.
3.5/5 wheelchairs

Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl
CW: racism, unnecessary killing of fish and sharks
This was an old book I think my dad was trying to get rid of but I stole it. It’s a fun adventure story. It is a very “boys will be boys” thing to decide to float across the Pacific in a wooden raft just because no one would publish your theory about how the South Pacific islands were populated. It’s also a very white man thing to say “no, of course there’s no way primitive people from Peru could have sailed all the way to the South Pacific in wooden rafts” even though both Peruvians and Polynesians had stories about people who left before the Inca rose to power and sailed west (Peru’s story), and ancestors who arrived from the east and peopled the islands (Polynesia’s story). But I digress. I enjoyed reading it, even though I had a hard time getting over the author’s torment of sharks for no apparent reason (boredom?) and the fact that they just chucked all their trash into the ocean as they went. I know they’re certainly not the first or the only people to litter in the ocean, but it still annoyed me. It also annoyed me that Heyerdahl felt like he had to mention the skin color of every person they encountered who wasn’t white. It is certainly a product of the 1950s. I also can’t get over that they actually developed film on the raft from their film cameras.
3/5 balsa rafts

Little, Brown

Run Rose Run by Dolly Parton and James Patterson
CW: domestic violence, child abuse, human trafficking
This was a solidly average book. It was enjoyable but not special. I liked learning about the music business and I liked how it highlighted the misogyny in the industry, especially in country music. I liked the full cast audio recording, especially as Dolly Parton reads one of the characters. I did feel like there were some story threads that were dropped and never got resolved, and I would have appreciated being able to solve at least parts of the mystery on my own as a reader before we were just told at the end. I liked that Annie Lee was trying to be a strong independent woman, but it got annoying that she would never ask for help and needed rescuing in the end.
3/5 guitars

I felt like I should have gone to Muir Woods to take a picture of this book but this tree by my apartment had to do.

The Overstory by Richard Powers***
**Book Hangover Alert
I’m still not really sure I’ve processed this book. It was really good. But I wouldn’t necessarily say it was enjoyable to read. It’s about trees. About forests and about ecosystems and about sentience that humans have no right to destroy. It will probably change the way you think about trees and it will probably make you very sad about deforestation, like it made me. But there is a grain of hope at the end? That I might not ever live to see?
4/5 redwoods

Tom Doherty Associates

Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders***
CW: genocide, fantasy racism, transphobia (mentioned)
This was exactly what I hoped it would be: a queer escapist space fantasy. I loved the focus on strong friendships and bodily autonomy and consent. I loved that every character shared their pronoun in their introduction and I loved that all the characters asked for permission before they touched each other. It was a fun read and I’m excited to read the rest of the series. My only real criticism is that I wish fewer of the aliens had died and that more aliens had gotten to be major characters, apart from the Earthlings.
3.5/5 universal translators

I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston***
CW: homophobia, religious trauma
This one was fun. I picked it up at the Bay Area Book Festival after I heard McQuiston speak on a panel, and I also got it signed! I don’t think I liked it quite as much as McQuiston’s first two books, but it was still a fun read. I liked the exploration of queerness in the context of a small southern town and a religious school.
4/5 pink notes

Simon and Schuster

The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande***
CW: alcoholism, PTSD, domestic violence, child abuse, neglect
A memoir of a young immigrant from Mexico trying to make her way in the United States. This isn’t an easy story to read. Grande has faced a lot of really difficult struggles. But in her story we can learn more about immigrant experiences and the realities of the ever elusive American dream.
3.5/5 first generation college graduates

Scout’s Honor by Lily Anderson
CW: PTSD, death
This book was fun! It was exactly the monster-killing, sisterhood vibes I was hoping for. I really appreciated that the main character was struggling with trying to decide whether to be a part of a toxic organization and try to change it from within, or to quit and get out of that space. I relate to that struggle. There were just a couple things I didn’t like as much. I do resent a little bit all the insinuations that Girl Scouts just sell cookies. I also thought it was gross that the author kept pointing out whenever Kelsey slurped spit off her braces. While this is a believable character trait, it’s gross and I don’t want to read about it. There were a couple of sections of the book inexplicably in verse and I feel like it was necessary or really added anything, but overall I enjoyed it.
3.5/5 mulligrubs

Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong***
**Book Hangover Alert
Who gave Ocean Vuong permission to write like that? This is his third book, second poetry collection, and I think it’s his strongest. He’s always been amazing but he’s just getting better. Favorites include “Beautiful Short Loser,” “Dear Sara,” “The Last Prom Queen in Antarctica,” and “Woodworking at the End of the World.”
4/5 ants on the page

The Summer of Bitter and Sweet by Jen Ferguson***
**Book Hangover Alert
CW: see Author’s Note at the beginning of the book
I adored this book. I bought it after hearing Ferguson speak at the Bay Area Book Festival and the only regret I have is that I didn’t get it signed by her. We love that Native and asexual representation so much. This book was just so well done, I don’t even know what to say. I loved the characters; I loved the struggle of balancing your identity with what other people want you to be; I loved the sense of community and the focus on the land. Also I just really want to eat all the ice cream described in the book.
5/5 reds

**Book Hangover Alert indicates the kind of book that will leave you full up on love. Satisfied, but wishing the book never had to end. You’ll be laying on the floor with no idea what to do with yourself (other friends have called this feeling Good Book Depression or say that certain books necessitate Floor Time). This is the kind of book that gets its teeth in you and won’t let go easily. After the last page you’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. You’ll bother all your friends trying to get them to read it so that you won’t be alone in your Hangover.

***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience series! Read Diary of a Hounslow Girl to learn about balancing cultural and familial expectations with finding freedom and identity. Read I Live a Life Like Yours to learn more about disability experience through a non-American lens. Read The Overstory to grow your empathy for trees, the earth, and the environment. Read Victories Greater than Death for a diverse sci-fi story. Read I Kissed Shara Wheeler for an exploration of queerness in the context of a small, southern, religious town. Read The Distance Between Us to learn about the immigrant experience. Read Time Is a Mother to learn more about AAPI and LGBTQ+ experience. Read The Summer of Bitter and Sweet to learn about Native and asexual experience.

Reads marked as part of the Books for a Social Conscience series will regularly address topics like race and racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, LGBTQ+ experience, feminism, BIPOC experience, social and political issues, history, identity, class, disability experience, immigration, gun violence, poverty, colorism, environmentalism, and more! The goal of these books is to diversify the stories we’re reading, grow our empathy for those who are different from us, and amplify voices who are often silenced.

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March 2022 Books

Books Reread

Wildwood Dancing by Juliette Marillier
Book Hangover Alert**
Wildwood book 1 of 2
I just got the companion book to this one, and I wanted to reread it before I read the companion. I forgot how much I like this book. It should probably be on my list of favorite books. It is a retelling of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” It’s set in Transylvania, and it’s just superb. Jena, the main character, is one of my favorite strong heroines. I love the feminism and the sisterhood in this book as well. Highly recommend.
5/5 enchanted frogs

New Books Read

Random House Publishing Group

The Maid by Nita Prose
CW: ableism, manipulation, drug use
We’re going to be talking about disability studies a lot in this blog. The Maid is told from the perspective of Molly, a maid in an upscale hotel. To me, she reads as autistic and maybe having OCD as well. Neither of these diagnoses are named by the author, who just calls Molly “socially awkward,” which I felt was weird? Did she feel that if she named them, people would criticize her for the representation? But by not naming them, I felt it made these identities seem taboo. I read a few reviews trying to get an idea of whether people though Molly’s characterization was an accurate representation of neurodivergence. The reviews were very mixed. As far as I could tell, Prose does not identify herself as neurodivergent. I do not identify that way either, so you may take my review with a grain of salt. I felt that even though the characterization relied on many stereotypes of autism and OCD, they weren’t negative stereotypes, and Molly was still a round, relatable, sympathetic character. Though she is at times manipulated by those around her, the reader doesn’t doubt her intelligence or her empathy, and her disability actually helps her do her job and makes her who she is. Overall it was a fun locked-door mystery.
3.5/5 cleaning carts

Anchor Books

Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank***
Book Hangover Alert**
CW: the holocaust, anti-semitism
I don’t know if this was a Book Hangover, or I just felt sad after finishing it. Last month I read The Betrayal of Anne Frank, and I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t actually ever read Anne Frank’s diary, despite having visited her museum in Amsterdam and reading the aforementioned book. So I finally did it. What struck me most about Anne Frank’s diary is how normal she seemed. She was just a normal 15-year-old girl, with normal 15-year-old thoughts and feelings living her life during a momentous moment in history. But when I think about, we’re living though a momentous moment in history right now and, like Anne, somehow we’ve all figured out how to carry on as if this were normal. The other thing that struck me about the book was just the terribly sad dramatic irony. Because the reader knows what happened to Anne. In her final entries, Anne could see the end of the war was coming. She had so much hope for her future, was planning her return to school, and she was betrayed and died so close to the end of the war.
3.5/5 food ration coupons

Cazadora by Romina Garber***
Book Hangover Alert**
Wolves of the World book 2
CW: misogyny, homophobia
I told you all last month how much I loved Lobizona, and I’m still really enjoying this series. I loved getting to see more of the Septimus world in this book and I loved getting to meet some new characters. I like that it kept me on my toes and I didn’t know what was going to happen. The ending was a surprise for me and I’m super excited to for the next one to come out! I hope Manu and her friends can continue to speak their truth.
4/5 septibol matches

Audible

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
This is only the second Austen novel I’ve read. It’s not as good as Pride and Prejudice but I did enjoy it. I particularly enjoyed the performance of the narrator of the audiobook. I liked that I could tell which characters I was supposed to like, not only by what they said, but by the various annoying voices the narrator gave them, while the likable characters had likable voices. I haven’t read many Gothic novels, but I did enjoy the way Austen pokes fun at Gothic tropes and subverts Gothic conventions.
3.5/5 mysterious trunks

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
CW: ableism, scientific animal testing, medical testing without consent
I almost didn’t put this one on here, because it’s just a short story and not a novel (there is a novel but I only read the short story version), but The Metamorphosis is pretty short too. And this is my blog, so I can do whatever I want. My dad recommended this short story to me. It is a really interesting piece of science fiction. I’ve been thinking about it a lot from a disability standpoint and it leaves me…uneasy? It is certainly an interesting concept and I think it brings up a lot of good questions about humanity. I felt maybe the author’s intention was to highlight a theme of human dignity and universal worthiness, but I really just felt Charlie was an object of pity. His disability is separated from him and made into the villain, which goes against the identity model of disability studies which posits that the disability cannot be separated from the identity of the person. But I was also interested in the fact that Charlie at the height of his intelligence in the middle of the story was just as isolated as Charlie with his disability, perhaps proving that a cure for mental disability isn’t a good idea. I also get stuck on consent; Charlie can’t consent to this operation and he doesn’t have anyone advocating for his wellbeing separate from his utility as a scientific test subject. Even though Charlie is at first grateful for the operation, if he had been able to give informed consent, I would feel less weird about it. I’m not going to rate this one because I feel too conflicted.

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez***
Book Hangover Alert**
CW: abandonment, rape, abortion, racism, alcohol and drug addiction, AIDS
I got this as a gift for recruiting my sister into the cult of Book of the Month. It was stellar. Last month I read The Bad Muslim Discount, and I enjoyed that this book and that book took place at about the same time in American history. It was interesting to compare the Muslim experience to the Puerto Rican experience over the same time period. I loved Olga and all her family dynamics. I love the exploration of how doing something for a cause greater than yourself can also come with personal sacrifices. At what point is it worth it? I also highly recommend reading the poem that inspires the name of the book.
5/5 very fine linen napkins

(If you, too, would like to be recruited into the cult of Book of the Month, use this link.)

Bloomsbury USA

This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron***
Book Hangover Alert**
I really enjoyed Cinderella is Dead which I read last year, so I was excited to read This Poison Heart. Honestly, I think it was even better than Cinderella is Dead. I loved the mystery of the creepy house left to you in a will. I loved the secret magical community. I loved all the plants. I loved Black and LGBTQ+ characters in a fantasy, and it wasn’t a big deal. I’m already ready for the next book. Also, isn’t the cover just gorgeous?
4.5/5 carnivorous plants

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

The Last Pow-Wow by That Native Thomas and Steven Paul Judd***
CW: anti-Native racism, blood quantum, genocide, alcohol and drug addiction
This was a free audiobook on Audible and I’ve had some mixed results with the free Audible books (see the November 2020 book blog) but this one was really good. It was told in almost short stories that all intertwined and met together at the end at The Pow-Wow of All Pow-Wows. That Native Thomas reads the book, which I really enjoyed. His style reminded me a lot of other Native storytellers I’ve heard. I liked how the book mixed in history along with issues relevant to Natives today and also fantastical elements. I did feel the style was a little heavy on telling rather than showing (something we talk a lot about in creative writing), but I also felt that style was very much in keeping with more traditional Native storytelling, and it didn’t make me not like the book.
3.5/5 fancy dancers

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
There is something so oddly relatable about Gregor Samsa waking up one morning as a gigantic beetle and still feeling like he should go to work. I don’t know if Kafka intended this to be a disability narrative, but I do think that author intention doesn’t matter as much as reader interpretation. Maybe I’ve just been thinking a lot about disability this month, but Gregor’s transformation strikes me a little like a narrative of someone who becomes disabled. He is isolated from his family. At first they try to help him and support him, but then they begin to feel he is a burden. They stop being able to communicate with him, thinking that he can’t understand them anymore. Eventually they decide they can’t take care of him anymore and Gregor isn’t really inside the beetle anyway. I hope this isn’t most people’s experience of becoming disabled, but I do think it shows how family and friends can drift away from you when something happens to change the way you have to live your life.
3/5 beetles

Sourcebooks Inc

Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall***
Book Hangover Alert**
CW: homophobia, microagressions
I really enjoyed this. I was chasing the high of Red, White & Royal Blue and, while I don’t think I liked this one quite as much, it was still very fun. A+ banter and I loved the friendships portrayed as well. Both main characters had some inferiority complex problems that were a bit annoying but it was so funny I forgave them. It was also very charmingly British.
4/5 dung-beetles

Collins Crime Club

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
A Hercule Poirot mystery
CW: colonialism, ethnocentrism, racism (directed at the natives of Egypt)
So good. I haven’t read many of Christie’s novels but I have enjoyed them every time. I do think I should read more of them. I won’t say too much about Death on the Nile since I don’t want to spoil it, but I love how she creates her mysteries. There’s always some details I can guess or figure out on my own, but I can never predict the full picture, which is so exciting.
4/5 Egyptian ruins

Cybele’s Secret by Juliet Marillier
Book Hangover Alert**
Wildwood book 2 of 2
This is the sequel to Wildwood Dancing above. I loved it. It followed Paula, one of Jena’s younger sisters. It’s set in Istanbul and it was full of magic and mystery. Also there were pirates. Fabulous. It’s probably not quite as good as Wildwood Dancing but I loved that it allowed me to live in that world a little longer. The only thing I’m mad about (and I am IRATE) is that Marillier left the ending just a little open for a third book about Stela, the youngest sister, and didn’t wrap up all of Tati’s loose ends, also leaving those for a third book. AND THEN her stupid American publisher asked her to write a different series and not finish this one. The audacity. This book came out in 2008, so I guess I’m not that hopeful that she’ll write a third book, but I want that more than anything.
4/5 dashing pirates

Orion

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs by Caitlin Doughty
CW: death, dead bodies
Everybody has questions about death. Let a mortician answer them for you. This book is a collection of common death questions from children. It’s interesting, funny, and informative. Even though they weren’t necessarily the questions I would have asked, I still learned a lot.
(The answer, by the way, is probably yes, if your cat or dog is starving several days after you die.)
3.5/5 dead bodies in the plane seat next to you

HarperCollins

Pumpkin by Julie Murphy***
Book Hangover Alert**
Dumplin’ book 3 of 3
CW: homophobia, fatphobia
If you loved the Dumplin‘ movie (and if you didn’t you’re probably a monster), then you should absolutely read the book and then read the next two books in the series. I loved this story of a baby drag queen in a small town. I loved Waylon’s relationships with his parents, grandmother, and sister. I loved that we got to visit characters we fell in love with in Dumplin‘ and Puddin‘. It was feel good. It was queer. I read it in like 3 sittings.
4/5 rainbow cummerbunds

A River Enchanted by Rebecca Ross
Book Hangover Alert**
Elements of Cadence book 1
I loved this. Definitely the best fantasy book I’ve gotten from BOTM (though I did really like Piranesi). I loved the world Ross created on the island of Cadence. I loved the Scottish folklore. I loved the magic and the delicate relationships between characters. I loved the mystery, and I was surprised by the plot twist. The ending was bittersweet and left me very ready for the next book.
4.5/5 enchanted plaids

Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose
CW: bigotry
I have some students reading this play for class, so I read it too to be able to help them with their essays. It really is a play about 12 angry white men in a room. But it’s pretty good. It shows how biases can prevent people from being objective, which is an important lesson. I also love how the characters revise and change their opinions as they discuss the case (I mean it would be a boring play if they didn’t), but I love that it shows people changing their minds when presented with new information–something it seems many people resist doing.
3/5 switchblades

Wide Awake by David Levithan***
CW: anti-semitism, racism, homophobia
I read a lot of gay books this month too. Loving that energy. This book was written in 2006, so before Trump and accusations of stealing the election, but it’s so oddly prescient. It’s set “in the near future” and it tells the story of the election of the first gay Jewish president. After he is elected and Duncan, the protagonist, and his friends are hopeful that love has won and the country is finally moving forward, the new president’s opponent tries to say that the election was fraudulent, despite losing both the popular vote and the electoral college. It reminded me so forcefully of both the election in 2016 and in 2020. I loved that it was a story about hope and about standing up for what you believe in. I also loved the portrayal of Duncan’s Christian friends; it was a nice reminder that some Christians think the most important idea in the Bible is love.
3.5/5 bad Christian pop songs

Simon and Schuster

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds***
CW: gun violence, death, drugs, gang violence
This is a beautiful novel-in-verse. I read it really quickly but it was really good. It takes place in the 60 seconds a boy is in an elevator, on his way to kill the man who killed his brother. It explores grief, cyclical trauma, Black masculinity, and how society has failed poorer communities. It’s a really powerful novel, beautifully written, and very relevant. My students are going to read it in their class and I expect a lot of them will relate to it.
4/5 elevator ghosts

Princess in Waiting
Princess Diaries book 4 of 11
I must admit these are starting to wear on me a bit. I sort of wish the books in the series took place farther apart from each other, so we could see a bit more character development. I still think Micheal is too old for Mia and Lilly could be a better friend. They’re still funny and charming, but they do all sort of seem the same.
2.5/5 moon rocks

**Book Hangover Alert indicates the kind of book that will leave you full up on love. Satisfied, but wishing the book never had to end. You’ll be laying on the floor with no idea what to do with yourself (other friends have called this feeling Good Book Depression or say that certain books necessitate Floor Time). This is the kind of book that gets its teeth in you and won’t let go easily. After the last page you’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. You’ll bother all your friends trying to get them to read it so that you won’t be alone in your Hangover.

***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience series! Read Diary of a Young Girl to learn more about the Holocaust. Read Cazadora for an Argentine-inspired, feminist fantasy. Read Olga Dies Dreaming to learn more about Puerto Rican history and the Puerto Rican experience. Read This Poison Heart for a fantasy that includes many characters of color and LGBTQ+ characters. Read The Last Pow-Wow to learn more about Native history, culture, and current issues. Read Boyfriend Material for a lovely gay romance. Read Pumpkin for a queer coming of age in a small town. Read Wide Awake for a hopeful political story of love and acceptance. Read Long Way Down to learn about Black masculinity and cycle of poverty that leads to gangs and violence.

Reads marked as part of the Books for a Social Conscience series will regularly address topics like race and racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, LGBTQ+ experience, feminism, BIPOC experience, social and political issues, history, identity, class, disability experience, immigration, gun violence, poverty, colorism, environmentalism, and more! The goal of these books is to diversify the stories we’re reading, grow our empathy for those who are different from us, and amplify voices who are often silenced.

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