What I’m Reading: 1.23.19
Steampunk, Scoobies, spooky hotels, and more books crossed off my TBR list recently.
The classes I teach started back this week, so my reading habits definitely reflect that!
Larklight by Philip Reeve
My son and I are reading this together, and it’s kind of a case study in how different the same book can be with different kids — my daughter, when we read it together, was skeptical: “It’s like Charles Dickens but with space pirates?” My son, this time around, was delighted, “It’s like Charles Dickens but with space pirates!” Note to self: Find more steampunk graphic novels.
Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero
I’m glad I don’t try to give star ratings for books because I would have a really hard time figuring out a rating for this book. On the one hand, sign me up, I am all in for a Scooby Doo-Lovecraft mashup, and this book absolutely delivers on that front. There are tons of wink-wink, nudge-nudge references to classic Scooby mysteries and other plucky detectives (“Nancy Hardy, girl reporter”), and while they’re maybe a little overdone by the time you get to the last quarter of the book, mostly they are delightful. And the story is great: A gang of kids famous for their summer detective work are still — more than a decade later — dealing with the repercussions of their last case, which is much darker than they like to remember. Tough-as-nails former tomboy Andy and former kid genius-turned-bartender Kerri team up to break former comic relief sidekick Nate out of an asylum (where he’s committed himself because he sees the ghost of the late team leader) and head back to finally solve the mystery that still haunts them.
I loved the structure of the book, which hops around between perspectives and literary styles, occasionally breaking the fourth wall, anthropomorphizing random objects, and shaking things up with metafictional transitions. I know this can get annoying, and your tolerance may be lower than mine, but I found it perfectly suited to the wacky storyline.
I did run into some bumps: Like a lot of people, I didn’t love the treatment of LGBTQ people in this book, which seems superficially fine but gets more problematic the more you look at it. And there were places where the tongue-in-cheek charm felt like it was just trying a little too hard — it felt more forced than funny. Overall, it was more hit than miss for me, but there were definite caveats.
Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia
This one, I loved. I picked it up because it won the Alex award (almost always a sign of a book I will like) and because of a review that called it a mashup of Glee and The Westing Game. Who could resist that? Of course, no book could live up to that comparison, and this one doesn’t, but that’s okay because I found it pretty delightful anyway.
The Hatmaker twins, Rabbit and Alice, have been selected for the annual Statewide high school music festival. Among the throngs of musical teenagers, a young woman is returning to the Bellweather for the first time since she witnessed a murder-suicide there 15 years ago. Minnie wants to face her demons, Alice wants to be a star, and Rabbit wants to finally tell his sister that he’s gay, but none of them is prepared for what happens when Alice’s roommate disappears under mysterious circumstances. That’s an oversimplification of a complicated plot that also includes a conductor with a damaged hand, an evil music director, a teacher recovering from a deadly home invasion, and a concierge who has never gotten over that murder fifteen years ago. There’s a lot going on, but as you would expect in a novel about an orchestra, all the different themes weave together in a satisfying harmony. I kind of loved it.
Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley
I told you not to read this one right after Beauty, and then I went and did it anyway! I think the recommendation stands, but Rose Daughter is a lovely, dreamy story. I do love that McKinley subverts many of the fairy tale conventions in this story: Beauty’s sisters are brave, kind, and intelligent; there’s almost no mention of Beauty’s physical appearance at all; and the spell on the Beast is weirdly metaphysical. I like Beauty better, still, but this one’s lovely.
Sherlock Holmes: The Major Stories with Contemporary Critical Essays edited by John A. Hodgson
I’m gearing up for my Sherlock class, so rereading these was essential. I’m teaching “A Case of Identity,” which I enjoy teaching because I get so angry with Holmes denying the solution to his client; “The Speckled Band,” which is a great opening to talk about Victorian Orientalism; and “A Scandal in Bohemia,” which is just great fun. I’ve obviously got a loose women-in-the-Holmes-canon thing going on, but to me, that’s one of the most interesting pieces of the Sherlock Holmes narratives.
The Storm Keeper’s Island by Catherine Doyle
Cogheart by Peter Bunzl
If I have a literary pet peeve — who am I kidding? I have a list of literary pet peeves! But one of them is books that end without a satisfying resolution. I don’t love cliffhangers, but I understand the point of them, and I’m never going to complain if a book doesn’t wrap every single thing up in a neat bow. (In fact, books that do that are often unsatisfying in a different way.) As Melville wrote, truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges. I can appreciate a ragged edge. What I don’t like is investing my time, energy, and interest in reading a book that just ends.
The Storm Keeper’s Island was kind of that book. I loved the set up: An island off the coast of Ireland is home to an ancient magic and a group of families who protect the world from the evil forces buried within it, and Fionn Boyle — still traumatized by the death of his father — is the top candidate to take over for his grandfather as Storm Keeper. There’s a lot of mystery and adventure, a little time traveling, and a lovely relationship that develops between Fionn and his grandfather. But then the book just ends — almost none of the threads that you’ve been following resolve. And that’s when you realize: Nothing has really happened. All this set-up has been for the sequel, not for this book. It feels like reading half a book. There were a lot of things I liked about this book, but I’m not sure I’ll pick up the sequel because the end was so disappointing. It just stopped.
On the other hand, there’s a sequel to Cogheart, and I plan to scoop it up, stat — not because it left me hanging but because I’d love to revisit Lily and Robert’s world. There are loose ends in Cogheart, but the story feels finished: Lily’s inventor father has vanished after an attack on his ship, and Lily, her mechanical fox, and their new ally Robert, a clockmaker’s son, set out to rescue him. Middle grades steampunk always seems to hit the sweet spot for me — it glides over the technological marvels with just enough detail to make them seem wonderful but focuses most of its energy on storytelling and character building. I liked this so much I flipped back to the first page to read it over again immediately after I finished — it’s just a delight. (And I do want to know what plucky airship captain/investigative reporter Anna is up to at the end of the book!)
The Deceivers by Kristen Simmons
It’s about a fancy boarding school for grifter teens, you guys. If that is up your alley, you will dig this book. If not, steer clear. I found it fun and funny — not a great book but a totally enjoyable read. (Apparently the author intended it as a riff on Norse mythology, but I did not get that at all.)
The Dead Queen’s Club by Hannah Capin
I did get the riff in this one, which plays with the Henry VIII story, but you’d have to have completely skipped British history not to get it. In this take, Henry is a small-town football hero with a chip on his shoulder, who dates his way through a succession of girls who echo the Tudor queens, some of whom end up suspiciously dead. The story is narrated by Cleves (so-nicknamed because she hails from Cleveland), Henry’s BFF and — for 15 days — his fourth girlfriend. Gradually, Cleves starts to suspect that Henry’s bad luck with the ladies may be his own fault, and she teams up with his other surviving girlfriends to discover the truth about what really happened to Anne and Katie. It’s a fun idea, though it lags a bit in the telling and it has plenty of plot holes.
(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)
What I'm Reading: 1.8.19
Metafictional madness, snarky reimagined classics, time-traveling historians, lots of classic mysteries, and more new books to start the New Year.
Suzanne is continuing her Library Chicken sabbatical into 2019 (though she is still providing many of the book recommendations you read here!), so I’ve decided that since, let’s just be honest, I cannot fill her shoes, I’m just going to do a casual roundup of what I’m reading without keeping score. I read too many non-library books to keep Library Chicken interesting, and I am just not as brazen with my checkouts and holds as Suzanne — though you should definitely still play if you want to! (The rules are here.) You should chime in with what you’re reading, too!
I always start the New Year on a burst of reading energy, and this year I’m doing a great big crazy reading challenge, too — which, of course, means that I am constantly being tempted into reading books that don’t meet any of the challenge requirements, which is hard since the challenge list is apparently endless, but there you have it.
The Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton
I picked up this cozy mystery on a Kindle deal just to see if I’d enjoy it — and I did, but not enough to actively seek out the next books in the series. (I do love the series with Ashley Jensen — who will always be Christina from Ugly Betty for me! — though. It is just the right mix of entertainment, British accents, and gorgeous scenery to have going in the background for complicated knitting projects.) Agatha retires from her successful life in London to a Cotswolds cottage, where she has trouble fitting into the community of locals, especially when her entry in the village quiche competition ends up poisoning the judge. Agatha makes up her mind to solve the murder and clear her name, apparently kicking off an entire second career as an amateur sleuth.
Beauty by Robin McKinley
Robin McKinley has written more than one retelling of Beauty and the Beast, but this is the first one I read, back in the 1980s via Scholastic book order, I believe. (Don’t you wish they had Scholastic book order forms for grown-ups?) Her other Beauty retelling, Rose Daughter, is really lovely, but I DO NOT recommend reading the two books close together — they are so different, it feels like losing the rhythm halfway through the song. (Rose Daughter is technically a better book, but Beauty is the one I like best.)
It had been many years since I last read Beauty, and I was pleased to find that it was as lovely and lyrical as I remembered. Beauty, the youngest and least beautiful of three sisters, is the daughter of a wealthy merchant in some 18th century world — I’m guessing based on the fashion (fancy ballgowns), literature (printed books in large quantities), and methods of conveyance (horses and wagons). When her father loses all his money — and her oldest sister loses her sailor fiancé — in an unfortunate series of shipwrecks, the family leaves the city to live with the second daughter’s fiancé, who is returning home to the country to work as a village blacksmith. The country is mysterious, and their cozy new home abuts a mysterious forest that no one enters. Of course, you know the story: On his way home in a storm, the merchant gets lost in the forest and finds a magical castle, where he’s fed, sheltered, and protected through the night. On his way out of that enchanted place, the merchant stops to pick a rose for Beauty in the garden, and the Beast of the castle shows himself, enraged: The merchant must trade his own life or his daughter’s life for the stolen flower. And so Beauty, who is brave and loyal and also ready for an adventure of her own, goes to live with the Beast in his magic castle, where she slowly falls in love with him, eventually breaking the curse that turned him into a Beast in the first place.
Beauty and the Beast is a problematic story, of course — most of the time, you cannot make a monstrous man turn into a prince with just the power of your love, right? But I love this book anyway. I love how McKinley stays true to the original fairy tale, both in the beats of her story and in its dreamy, otherworldly tone. And I love that all of her characters are likable: Beauty’s older sisters are beautiful, but they are kind and practical, gentle and supportive. (It’s notable that neither of them is interested in marrying a prince — or even an earl!) Her father is a kind, hardworking man who does his best. There are no bad guys in this fairy tale — even the Beast, appearances aside, does not act like a monster (apart from the whole you-must-live-with-me-forever thing, which, okay, is pretty monstrous). Rereading this makes me want to put together a comparative literature class focused solely on Beauty and the Beast.
A Tangled Web by L.M. Montgomery
I almost always reread an L.M. Montgomery book on New Year’s Day. This one is one of my favorites: When Aunt Becky dies, the Dark and Penhallow clans are in a frenzy about who will inherit the Dark jar, and Aunt Becky stokes the fire by telling them that the lucky legacy won’t be announced until a year after her death — which means their behavior during that year might well be the determining factor in who gets the sacred but utterly hideous heirloom. Marriages, quarrels, reunions, breakups, and much drama ensue during that chaotic year, which ends up with everyone right where they should be.
I reread a whole spate of Agatha Christie books because there was a huge Kindle sale on them. I have a soft spot for Agatha Christie books, which are the literary equivalent of potato chips in a good way — I can never read just one.
This is a weird little collection: The mysteries are all riffs on mysteries that appear in other Christie books, but the non-mystery stories are odd and haunting. “The Lonely God,” about two people who fall in love at a museum exhibition, and “While the Light Lasts,” about a woman on her honeymoon who discovers that her killed-in-combat first husband is still alive, are good examples.
Again, nothing really surprising in this collection, but it’s notable as the first appearance of Countess Rossakoff, the over-the-top Russian émigré/criminal who always charms Poirot.
I’d forgotten how little actually happens in this book! It’s a great locked-door mystery: An American gangster is murdered in his locked compartment on a snowbound train, and everyone on board has an alibi. (I really liked the Kenneth Branagh adaptation when I saw it, and I liked it even more after reading this — all those narrow compartment shots really emphasize how confined the space on the train is.)
There is almost no actual mystery here, but the narrator Anne Anne Beddingfeld is delightful. (And is this the first book with Colonel Race? I believe it is.)
This was always one of my favorite Christies, and I think it’s the next adaptation Kenneth Branagh has lined up. (Edited to add: It is! And apparently Gal Gadot is playing Linnet Ridgeway!)
Weirdly, this is the first Agatha Christie I ever read — I think I picked it up in a beach rental on vacation. It doesn’t feature any of the usual Poirot/Marple people (though Colonel Race does make an appearance), but it definitely got me hooked on Poirot. Beautiful Rosemary Barton committed suicide at her birthday dinner, and a year later, her grieving husband dies exactly the same way — which means Rosemary was murdered, and a lot of people had reasons to want the glamorous socialite out of the way.
Another untraditional Christie: A young man finds himself caught up in a weird mystery featuring a murdered John Doe discovered in the house of a blind woman by a secretary who was mysteriously summoned to the scene to make the discovery.
And the Rest Is History by Jodi Taylor
Number nine in the Chronicles of St. Mary’s series, which is about a band of time-traveling, tea-drinking, trouble-making historians. I am so fond of this series, which is the literary equivalent of a binge-worthy television series, and even though this is a pretty dark entry in the series, Taylor leaves the door open for some happy endings in book 10. (PLEASE GIVE US THE HAPPY ENDINGS, ESPECIALLY FOR PETERSON.) If you’re already reading this series, you’ll want to pick this up, and if you aren’t, there is really no way to explain what is happening at this point. It’s all very complicated with multiple timelines.
Deadfall by Stephen Wallenfels
This was an advance reader copy. Twin brothers on the run discover a girl locked in the trunk of a crashed car in the middle of nowhere, which means they’re now also on the run from her kidnapper, who — surprise! — may be someone they already know. I’m sure there’s an audience for this book, but it’s not me: The mystery was too predictable, and chase sequences (of which there are many) were just not exciting.
Revenge of the Translator by Brice Matthieussent, translated by Emma Ramadan
This book, on the other hand, probably isn’t for everyone, but it was definitely, 100-percent for me. It was utterly, completely WEIRD, and I loved it. It is definitely one of those books that you have to just jump into and be willing to go along for the ride — if you pause to try to make too much of sense of what’s happening, you’ll fall right off the roller coaster.
Revenge of the Translator is an American translation of a French novel, which is about a French translation of an American novel — that novel, the one being translated, is about an American translation of a French novel. I’m sure that’s all perfectly clear. The narrator — the book has a narrator — of the book is Trad (from the French word traducteur, which means translator), who increasingly dominates the novel he is translating through its footnotes, eventually even managing the vanish the literal typographical line between the footnotes and the actual text. At first he is the translator; gradually, he is also the editor; he becomes the author; and by the end, he is a character, too. (Again, all of this is perfectly clear, no?) It’s dizzying. And fun. As the narrator toys with the boundaries and the implications of what it means to be a translator, he’s also inviting us to explore the perpetually interesting question of what it means to be an author.
I didn’t love the toxic masculinity, especially when the text becomes a three-way competition (between our translator-narrator, the author, and the author’s American translator) for an objectified female secretary — that pulled me out of what was otherwise a delightfully wild ride, and I don’t see how it contributed to the story except for as a kind of obligatory plot point. I would have loved a shorter version of this that omitted that trope entirely. It is, of course, interesting in light of this that the actual translator of the novel — the person who translated Matthieussent’s French novel into its English version, is a woman.
My Plain Jane by Cynthia Hand, Jodi Meadows, and Brodi Ashton
Reader, this book is BONKERS. And I say that with a heart full of love. As you know, I did not love Jane Steele, despite my best efforts, but I think the sheer silliness of this one is what bumped it in my affections. I do not think this is a better-written book than Jane Steele. (It’s actually sloppy in many places, which with three authors is either inevitable or inexcusable.) I just found myself able to relax and go with this Jane Eyre retelling more than I could with Jane Steele, which made reading it so much more enjoyable.
Here’s the set-up: It’s Jane Eyre, except in this version, Jane sees dead people, including the ghost of her best friend Helen Burns and of recently murdered head of Lowood School Mr. Brocklehurst. She also happens to be at school with a young Charlotte Bronte, who adores Jane but has no idea about her friend’s psychic gifts.
The Society for the Relocation of Wayward Spirits (founded by George III, who also saw dead people, which made people think he was not in his right mind) does discover Jane’s gift, however, and is determined to recruit her. In fact, Society superstar Alexander Blackwood is so eager to recruit Jane that he allows Charlotte and her brother Branwell to tag along with him when he follows her to her new job as a governess at Thornfield Hall, which is one seriously haunted house.
There is no getting around it: This book is silly, and there are plenty of moments where the authors get so caught up in their own silliness that they bog the book down with witty asides and comments. This book also falls into the trap of making the reader much quicker on the draw than the characters, which means we spend a good chunk of the books waiting for Charlotte et al to catch up to us. Also, I can appreciate wanting to poke a little fun at Charlotte Bronte, who did have a tendency to take herself very seriously, but making her character crush on Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy when Charlotte — frequently — expressed her disdain for Austen’s work seems a little cruel, especially when the rest of the story treats her so affectionately. (Plus Mr. Darcy is not dark and brooding, is he? I would never characterize him that way. Mr. Rochester, of course, is practically the poster child for dark and brooding.) I’m also not sold on the boy craziness of the two female leads, though I appreciate that the text makes the point that getting married was like getting your dream job in 19th century England. Frankly, there are many, many things that I could nitpick — I keep thinking of more as I write this! — but I had such fun reading this book despite them, which I guess is saying something.
(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)
The HSL 2019 Reading Challenge
If you, too, are looking for a way to organize your (endless) reading lists for 2019, consider our Reading Challenge Bingo — it’s flexible enough to work for you and your younger readers and a fun way to keep track of what you’re reading throughout the year.
Scroll to the bottom of this post if you want to download a PDF copy for yourself.
New year, new books! For some people, the end of the year means holiday treats, celebrations, time with family and friends — and that’s all nice, but real book nerds know that winter break is really all about putting together your dream TBR list for the coming year.
If you, too, are looking for a way to organize your (endless) reading lists for 2019, consider our Reading Challenge Bingo — it’s flexible enough to work for you and your younger readers and a fun way to keep track of what you’re reading throughout the year. You can be as ambitious as you like: Complete the whole card by reading 25 books, or just complete a row or two. Your 3rd grader can tackle the challenges, your high schooler can fill out her own card, and you can take this challenge on yourself. Keep your scorecards on the fridge and plan celebrations when you hit major milestones or offer prizes for the first person to get three in a row or another accomplishment you choose.
Ideally, this challenge will give you an excuse to check out a few books you wanted to read anyway and point you toward a few books that you might not have picked up otherwise. And since it involves reading, everybody wins!
What’s on this year’s challenge:
A retelling of a classic you’ve never actually gotten around to reading
A book set in a city you’ve always wanted to visit
A book that’s becoming a movie in 2019
A book by an author from your state
A book set in an alternate reality
A book published in the 1970s
A book with a non-human narrator
A book published this year
A book translated from another language
A book inspired by Asian mythology or folklore
A book inspired by Norse mythology or folklore
A book recommended by your best friend
A book you meant to read last year but never actually got around to reading
A book you think your favorite fictional character would read
A book that has been banned in your state
A play
A book with a character who has a hobby that you also practice
A book that takes place on two continents
A book nominated for an award in 2019
A book that takes place in two different timelines
A book set in space
A book set in (or near) the place you grew up
A book inspired by Native American mythology or folklore
A book whose title begins with the letter J, K, Q, X, or Z
A book with a homeschooled main character
You can download a copy of the Bingo card here. (Last year’s challenge is here. And Suzanne has some great tips for keeping up with what you're reading during the year here.) Happy reading in 2019!
Amy’s Library Chicken :: 11.27.19
Intergalactic music competitions, royal biographies, and more in this week’s Library Chicken.
I know I’m late with my update, but somebody has to make the pie! (Please help me convince Suzanne to do a special Library Chicken update focusing on Jane Austen fan fiction because she has been reading some TRULY TERRIBLE stuff, and she is the funniest when she is complaining about terrible stuff.)
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
So earlier this fall, I told Suzanne that I needed to read something that would just make me happy, and she suggested this space saga. NEVER DOUBT SUZANNE. This zany, Douglas Adams-ish (and I don’t throw that around lightly) story centers around an intergalactic version of American Idol, in which planets compete not for record deals but for the right for their species to be considered sentient by the rest of the universe. All newly space-faring species must compete to prove their sentience — and if they come in last, their whole species will be wiped right out of existence. Now that Earth is in the space game, and the future of humanity is in the hands of aging 70s rocker Decibel Jones. It sounds wacky and all over the place because it is wacky and all over the place — but in a way that made me really happy. I am not going to claim this is the greatest book I’ve ever read, but it was absolutely the book I needed. THANK YOU, SUZANNE. (I loved the cat!)
(+1)
Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography by Julia Baird
I know I have mentioned my love of Sunfire’s YA historical romances before, and I feel that this biography of Queen Victoria is a worthy successor — okay, there are fewer detailed dress descriptions and no romantic tug-of-war (Albert is the clear choice), but Baird’s book definitely focuses on the personalities and stories that make history so interesting. Happily, Baird also manages to elucidate the major events of the Victorian age so that you feel totally virtuous while reading this very entertaining tome.
(+1)
The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard
This first book in the Cazalet Chronicles follows the titular family through 1937: the Duchy and the Brig have brought their sprawling, very British family together for the summer holidays: Handsome, philandering Edward and his uber competent wife Villy; Hugh, who is still recovering from his experiences in World War I, and his pregnant wife Sybil; artist Rupert and his young, beautiful second wife Zoe; and sister Rachel, who has never married, all converge for one of the last happy summers before the war. You know I love big, sprawling British families who are polite and plucky, and the Cazalets deliver big time. I would jump right into the second in the series, but I want these to last, so I’m reading The Light Years again. (I am solidly in favor of the back-to-back read.)
(+0, read it on my Kindle)
Love à la Mode by Stephanie Kate Strohm
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this frothy little book — I passed it right on to my teenager, who loves cooking shows and Paris boarding schools as much as I do. Henry and Rosie have both won spots a competitive cooking school in Paris, and they can’t wait to hone their cooking skills under the tutelage of a famous celebrity chef. There’s a little too much artificial stuff getting in the way of their romance in an attempt to keep the will-they-or-won’t-they going (why do YA books do this?), but it’s a sweet story with lots of descriptions of eating and cooking, so it’s on my nice list.
(+0, advance copy)
The Camelot Code, Book #1 The Once and Future Geek by Mari Mancusi
A computer game pulls Sophie and her best friend Stu back to the time of King Arthur — while King Arthur ends up the cool kid in Sophie’s high school in this middle grades fantasy. While Arthur’s working on scoring the winning touchdown, Sophie and Stu are trying to get history back on track with a little help from Merlin: pulling the sword out of the stone, winning the jousting competition, and preparing for the war that will make King Arthur a hero. This is a fun, upbeat take on the King Arthur story, though there are places where the writing and plotting feel a little forced.
(+0, advance copy)
Charlie and Frog by Karen Kane
All Charlie wants is to have his parents spend time with him instead of dumping him at his grandparents’ house. All Frog (Francine on her birth certificate) wants is to be a detective. Together, they’ll team up to solve a mystery signed to Charlie by a stranger on his first day in town. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that treated deafness so deftly — Frog happens to be deaf, and her parents run a school for the deaf, and sign language figures into the mystery, but none of these things feels forced at all. Charlie and Frog’s friendship develops naturally over the course of the story — sometimes they click like best friends, and sometimes they annoy each other — and the droll humor reminded me a little bit of David Walliams and Roald Dahl. For a middle grades novel that’s half mystery, half comedy, this little gem really delivers.
(+0, advance copy)
This Week: +2
Running Score: +8
(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)
Amy’s Library Chicken :: 10.24.18
Middle grades screwball comedy, YA Victorian steampunk mysteries, and a little historical fiction were highlights of this week’s reading list.
I’m happy to report that this week’s readerly efforts have paid off in some books I can actually recommend enthusiastically! And Suzanne assures me that if I read Space Opera, everything will be better, so that’s at the top of my list for next week.
The Clockwork Scarab by Colleen Gleason
This was on super-sale for the Kindle this week, and I couldn’t resist rereading it to see if it was as fun as I remembered. Happily, it is — Irene Adler (remember her?) recruits Sherlock Holmes’ niece Mina and Bram Stoker’s little sister Evaline to solve a mystery involving missing society girls, a mysterious Egyptian cult, and an unexpected time traveler. Miss Holmes and Miss Stoker don’t immediately hit it off — Mina is as logical and inflexible as her famous uncle, and Evaline is a pretty, popular young lady (who also happens to be a vampire slayer) — and their gradual grudging respect for each other is well-earned over the course of the book. In their steampunk alternate London (where electricity has been officially banned), the city is both familiar and strange, full of both Victorian conventions about what proper young ladies should and shouldn’t do and new fangled clockwork gadgets and steam guns.
What I loved about this series — aside from all the wink-wink Victorian references, of which I can never get enough — is that Mina and Evaline are such different kinds of feminist heroines, and they tackle the challenges they run into in totally different ways. I also appreciate that their differences mean they don’t instantly become best friends forever. Mina and Evaline really have to work to trust each other, and that reluctance really rings true in a wold where they are so rarely allowed to let their talents shine. They’re not used to being trusted, so learning how to trust someone else — and be trusted by them — is a new thing.
(+0, read it on my Kindle)
The Lost Book of the Grail by Charlie Lovett
I am going to stop reading books that people tell me are “just like Possession” because 1.) they never actually are anything like Possession and 2.) usually I’m so annoyed that they aren’t anything like Possession that I can’t appreciate them on their own merits.
I bet you can guess that I did not love this book. It’s true that it sounds up my alley: Arthur Prescott is a professor of literature at the University of Barchester, but the only thing he really likes is sitting alone at his desk in Barchester Cathedral Library reading old books about the Grail, which he’s been obsessed with since he was a kid. Enter plucky, beautiful (the book makes sure you know she’s beautiful — also kind! funny! smart!) American Bethany, who has come to digitize the library’s collection of medieval manuscripts. It turns out Bethany is obsessed with Grail, too, and together, the two of them discover a clue that may actually lead them to the secret of the Grail’s connection with Barchester.
The books flashes around in time, illuminating little pieces of the history of the Grail and a missing manuscript from the library. I love old manuscripts and literary mysteries as much as the next person — honestly, probably more than the next person! — but this was pretty much a complete miss for me. Part of it is that people talked a lot about manuscripts, but because it’s mostly talking, there’s not really an opportunity for the reader to look for clues of her own, which is part of the fun of this kind of literary mystery. Then there’s the fact that Arthur is just terrible — he’s utterly self-centered, rude to his students and everyone else, uninterested in anything beyond his narrow focus, and oh my gosh, he is the worst professor ever. And Bethany, who falls in love with him, rarely feels like more than Archivist Barbie — she’s a catalogue of attractive qualities that never add up to a real person.
The solution to the mystery is fine, but there’s a big twist to Arthur’s character that we’re supposed to believe without any evidence at all that anything about him has changed to make him such a completely different person.
Honestly, I’m still mad at this book, so I should just stop now.
(+1, thank goodness because I would be so angry if I read this and didn’t get a point for it)
#MurderTrending by Gretchen McNeil
I don’t even know where to start with this. In a not-too-distant future, convicted criminals who have received the death penalty get shipped to a Survivor-style town, where they work minimum-wage jobs, hang out with their fellow criminals, and get hunted down on live television by celebrity assassins. Dee didn’t murder her stepsister, but she was convicted anyway, and pretty teenagers are always popular additions to the cast of Alcatraz 2.0.
There’s no real character development in Dee or her friends in the Death Row Breakfast Club (I’m not making that up), and while the serial killers’ murderous methods are described in gory, painstaking detail, there’s no real character development on that end either. I wouldn’t mind that so much if the plot held together, but it’s such a crazy mess: Wait, this whole thing has always been about Dee and getting Dee specifically to Alcatraz 2.0? Doesn’t that seem a little — complicated? — for a revenge scenario? I mean, there are actual laws that had to get through Congress to make this happen, which seems like a lot of work to get revenge on one teenage girl. How many years would that take? Did this whole plan start when Dee was in kindergarten?
I’m on board for a good accused-criminal-proving-her-innocence arc, and I’ll happily ruminate on the evils of reality of television, but this book was a mess. Which maybe would have still been okay if it had been an entertaining mess. Alas, it was not.
(+0, advance copy)
My Name Is Victoria by Lucy Worsley
I am currently watching Victoria, so I was definitely ready to hate on Sir John Conroy for a while. He is definitely the villain of the piece from the moment he makes his daughter (named Victoria) give her beloved puppy as a gift to the future Queen Victoria. Not long after, he drags his daughter — who must now be called Miss V. so no one confuses her with the princess —to be Victoria’s companion. Sir John wants Miss V. to report back on Victoria’s emotional state, but Miss V. finds herself growing fond of the princess, who is really just a lonely girl kept in isolation by the people who want to control her. Miss V. and Victoria are both stuck in situations created by their controlling guardians, but they forge a cautious friendship — after all, they could always be spying on each other — that blooms into a lovely, supportive relationship.
I loved the historical details, and it wasn’t at all surprising to discover that the author is a curator at Kensington Palace, which is where Victoria grew up — this reads like a book written by someone immersed in Victoria’s early life. And while the twist ending may be a little surprising, it’s also kind of delightful to be thrown by something unexpected in a world that we think we know so well.
If you’re in the mood for a historical YA, you could do much worse.
(+0, advance copy)
The Mortification of Fovea Munson by Mary Winn Heider
This is a weird little book, but that’s not a bad thing. Seventh-grader Fovea works part-time in her parents’ cadaver lab, which is weird. Her parents tell a lot of random body parts jokes, which is weird. And three defrosting disembodied heads have started talking to Fovea, which is very weird.
Just go with it: The wacky premise is the price of admission for a screwball comedy that’s worth reading. Those heads need Fovea’s help — and, as it turns out, she needs their help, too — kicking off a series of hijinks that will have you laughing out loud. This was a surprisingly light, fun readaloud.
(+0, advance copy)
A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle
Every few years, I reread this book, which is basically a memoir L’Engle published in 1971. I always seem to find something that I need in it; this time, I started crying when I read: “We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civilized world. We’ve come to the point where it’s irresponsible to try to protect them from the irrational world they will have to live in when they grow up. The children themselves haven’t yet isolated themselves by selfishness and indifference; they do not fall easily into the error of despair; they are considerably braver than most grownups. Our responsibility to them is not to pretend that if we don’t look, evil will go away, but to give them weapons against it.”
(+0, from my shelves)
This Week: +1
Running Score: +6
(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)
Amy’s Library Chicken :: 10.15.18
Vampire bonding stories, middle grades mysteries, U.S. history, and more in this week’s Library Chicken roundup, brought to you by Amy.
Filling in for Suzanne is no easy task! I have to admit, I’ve read a few extra books this week just so I don’t have to be embarrassed not to keep up with the Book Nerd.
These Truths by Jill Lepore
Next year I’m teaching U.S. history and literature and I usually enjoy Jill Lepore, so I was thrilled to pick this up. Reading it was harder than I expected because Lepore’s central question — Has this country lived up to the Truths (political equality, natural rights, sovereignty of the people) on which it was founded? — feels particularly salient in today’s political climate, and Lepore brings us right up to the present day (the last chapter is called America, Disrupted). I always love Lepore’s ability to humanize history through the stories of individual people, and this book is full of people like Margaret Chase Smith and Mary Lease who are left out of other history books. No one volume book of U.S. history is going to feel totally comprehensive, but this one’s a good start. I liked it.
(LC score: +1)
American Indians in U.S. History by Roger L. Nichols
I picked this up for my U.S. history research, too, and I can recommend it if you’re looking for a Native American history textbook to add to your U.S. history studies. Nichols starts in pre-colonial America and traces Native American history through the creation and dominance of the United States and all the way into the 21st century. It’s a clear, chronological account of Native American history in the United States, and I really appreciate that Nichols tried to balance European and U.S history sources with tribal accounts.
(LC score: +1)
The Bookshop Girl by Sylvia Bishop
The problem with this book is that I kept expecting it to be more than a light, pleasant story, and it’s not. If you’re not waiting for the deeper impact, I think this is a charming little middle grades book: Property Jones (so-named because she was abandoned in the Lost Property box at a bookstore) has found a happy home with the family who own that ragtag little bookshop. When they win the Montgomery Book Emporium — the world’s greatest bookstore — the whole family is thrilled. But the bookstore turns out to be more like a curse than a gift, and Property must save the day. That’s pretty much the whole story, but it’s a pretty charming story if you know that’s what you’re getting going in.
(LC score: +0, advance copy)
The Guggenheim Mystery by Robin Stevens
Robin Stevens wrote this as the sequel to Siobhan Dowd’s lovely The London Eye Mystery, and her after-note about Dowd (who died in 2007) is a tear-jerker. I love Stevens (her Murder Most Unladylike series is a family favorite here), but she’s really channeling Dowd in this book, telling this story, just as the London Eye mystery is told, through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy with Asperger’s. This time, Ted and Kat travel to New York, where their cousin Salim has moved so his mom can work at the Guggenheim Museum there. When a smoke bomb goes off and a Kandinsky painting is stolen in the confusion, Salim’s mom is the chief suspect — and Ted teams up with Salim and Kat to clear her name. I really loved this — it’s maybe a little less suspenseful than The London Eye Mystery, but it’s a well-paced, interesting mystery that turns on Ted’s unique understanding of the world.
(LC: +0, advance copy)
Wicked Nix by Lena Coakley
I am always sold on the idea of Lena Coakley’s books, but they never seem to come together in a way that works for me. Mischievous fairy Nix is determined to do his fairy queen proud by keeping humans out of the forest, and he’s very good at playing tricks. But there’s more than just Nix’s mischief at play, and someone may be playing a much darker trick. So many people loved this book, so I must be missing something, but it just felt unsatisfying to me. The big twist was obvious early on, so I wanted something more to come from it, but it never did. The illustrations were gorgeous, though.
(LC: +0, advance copy)
Sunshine by Robin McKinley
I’m reading this with my daughter as part of our vampires and feminism literature seminar — I read it some years ago, maybe even when she was still a baby, but I didn’t remember much about it. I’m glad we read it together. Rae’s world is full of Others — demons, weres, and monsters — but the vampires are the most dangerous. When she’s captured by a band of vampires, she thinks her ordinary days of baking at her stepdad’s coffee shop are over forever — and they are, but not the way she expected. Instead of making her dinner, the vampires turn her over to a vampire who is also their prisoner, and Rae and her fellow prisoner form an unexpected alliance that just may have the power to change the world. There’s tons of stuff going on in this YA novel — and while, yes, OK, it is a little Buffy-ish in all the right ways, it’s worth reading on its own merits. Our seminar is off to a great start!
(LC: +0, from my shelves)
This Week: +2
Running Score: +5
(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)
Book Nerd: The Brave New World of Science Fiction
The science-fiction/fantasy genre has never been more exciting — or more inclusive. Suzanne examines the new directions of an old favorite and highlights the genre’s new must-reads.
I’ve loved science fiction ever since junior high, when I found my dad’s copies of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and Robert Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy in our home library. Fantasy, via C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, wasn’t far behind. I read everything I could in the genre, clearing out the sf/fantasy shelf at the library and saving up my allowance for trips to Waldenbooks. In those bad old pre-Internet days I did as much as I could to research the genre classics and Grand Old Masters, keeping a list of books to look for at the local used book store. Soon I discovered fandom, and by high school I was going to every sf/fantasy convention around (or at least the ones I could convince my mom to drive me to). The sf/fantasy genre at that time was exciting, smart, perspective-shifting, often funny, occasionally mind-blowing — but one thing it wasn’t was diverse.
Primarily, sf/fantasy was written by white men, with white male protagonists, for (judging by con attendance) a white male audience. Often, even the aliens or far-flung galactic empires behaved in a suspiciously European manner, retelling stories of the Roman empire (or other major events from the history of Western Civilization). Fantasy epics drew on familiar European myths and legends, giving us dragons, elves, unicorns, and princesses that all behaved in predictable ways. Perhaps that’s why I got out of the habit of reading the genre in my 20s and 30s — whether it was military sf, a fantasy adventure, or yet another vampire story (seriously, what’s with all the vampires?!?), it all started to feel a bit samey-samey.
Things have changed, though, and I’m excited. A lot of people who weren’t necessarily white and/or male grew up, like I did, loving the genre and seeing themselves spell-casting or traveling to the stars. And now they’re writing about it for all of us. There are so many great authors publishing right now — N.K. Jemisin, V.E. Schwab, Yoon Ha Lee, Nisi Shawl — that I can’t even keep up. Even better, those stories — with diverse characters, diverse content, and diverse settings — are being embraced by authors writing for children and young adults. I still think you can’t go wrong with Asimov and Tolkien, but if you want to take advantage of what’s out there now and start your budding sf/fantasy fans off the right way, I’ve got a few suggestions.
In The Jumbies, author Tracey Baptiste draws on Caribbean folktales to tell the story of Corinne, a young girl who must save her island village and her family from the monsters in the woods and an evil witch. This is a fun and just-the-right-amount-of-scary story for middle grade readers, and Corinne is a fierce and resourceful heroine. We meet another heroine in Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch: 12-year-old American-born Nigerian Sunny. Sunny is an albino, and between that and her American accent, she finds it hard to fit in with her classmates — which becomes less of an issue once she discovers that she is heir to magical powers and (like Harry Potter but in an entirely different context) begins to explore the hidden magical world that exists within and beside her own. Like Corinne, Sunny must channel her own strength and bravery to save her world and her friends from a supernatural challenge. Fortunately for readers, we have more adventures to look forward to with Corinne and Sunny: Baptiste’s Rise of the Jumbies and Okorafor’s Akata Warrior both come out in fall 2017.
Daniel Jose Older takes us to a diverse Puerto Rican neighborhood in Brooklyn with his acclaimed YA novel Shadowshaper. Teenage Sierra plans to enjoy her summer hanging out with friends and painting wall murals, but when one of the murals begins to weep real tears, she realizes that there’s something strange going on. She learns that she’s inherited the ability to shadow shape — to do magic by infusing art with ancestral spirits — and she needs to get good at it in a hurry if she’s going to defend herself and her community. (The sequel, Shadowhouse Fall, is also due out in fall 2017 — clearly we need to clear our calendars for all the great reading coming up.) Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Summer Prince takes us out of the world of magic to the far future, on a high-tech Brazilian island called Palmares Tres. Palmares Tres is ruled by a matriarchy (set up after men almost destroyed the world in a nuclear holocaust) and guerilla artist June finds herself unexpectedly in rebellion against the powers that be when she becomes friends with the teenage Summer King. Immediately after finishing this book, I bought a copy for home and showed up at 16-year-old daughter’s bedroom door insisting, “YOU MUST READ THIS NOW, and please pass it on to your sister when you’re done.”
And I can’t leave without mentioning three of my new favorite sf/fantasy novels, beginning with Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown. I’m a sucker for historical-Britain-plus-magic stories (see Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, also Sorcery and Cecelia, or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer), but Cho’s story of Regency England plus wizards is a version I’ve never read before. As the new Sorcerer Royal (and the first one ever of African descent), Zacharias Wythe has enough problems, but he’s really in for it when he has to deal with a woman who believes that she should also be allowed to practice this male-only profession. (My only problem with Cho is that she’s not writing the sequel fast enough!)
Gender roles are upended in an entirely different way in Ann Leckie’s multiple-award-winning story of galactic empire, Ancillary Justice. The sentient AI protagonist of this novel is from a culture that doesn’t bother to linguistically discriminate between genders, instead using only feminine pronouns and nouns. I’ve never before read a book where the gender isn’t actually identified for most of the characters; it’s an interesting and eye-opening experience. Author Ada Palmer plays with gender in yet another way in her novel of 25th century Earth, Too Like the Lightning. In this far future, affinity-based Hives have replaced geographically based nation-states, public discourse on religion has been outlawed, and gender-neutral terms are the norm in polite society. Our narrator, however, has decided to tell us the story in the style of an 18th century Enlightenment novel, so he apologetically uses gender-specific pronouns (and not always the ones a reader might expect) when describing others.
I couldn’t be more excited about the new voices and new perspectives showing up in my favorite genre. If you’ve never explored science fiction and fantasy novels, now is a great time to take a look and see what’s out there. And if you don’t see yourself reflected, maybe pick up a pen — there’s room for everyone on the bookshelf, and I’m always looking for something new to read. Happy reading!
(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)This column was originally published in the summer 2017 issue of HSL.
What We Read: July Edition
A reading roundup from our homeschool family.
Summer reading is in full swing over here, which means I have a deliciously gluttonous stack of books to report on. Here's what we're reading by the pool, while we're stirring pots of tomato sauce to can, on the hammock, on the deck, in the car, and pretty much everywhere else.
On Our Own
The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester :: I am a little obsessed with the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. (So much so that I have been known to joke that if we ever have another son, we will have to name him Oedipus so that we can call him OED.) So I relished this book about a little-known piece of its history, a man who contributed more than 10,000 definitions to the dictionary's creation and who also happened to be living in an asylum for the criminally insane.
Little, Big by John Crowley :: Not everybody likes rereading books, but I do—as a kid, I would often flip from the last page of a book I loved right back to the front page so that I could start the whole thing over immediately. I think there's something sort of illuminating about going back to a literary world, and Little, Big is one of those books I can read over and over, finding something new to love every time. It's one of my perfect summer books.
Mimesis: The Representations of Reality in Western Literature by Erich Auerbach :: I read this for a pop culture in philosophy class I'm co-teaching at our homeschool group this fall. (Now watching Doctor Who and Buffy the Vampire Slayer counts as legitimate academic research!) It's an impressively comprehensive look at the history and evolution of Western literature, and each of the essays stands alone pretty well, so it's great for bits-and-pieces reading, which I do a lot of during the summer.
The Magic Treehouse: Dinosaurs Before Dark by Mary Pope Osborne :: I'm feeling super-sentimental watching my son dive into the Magic Treehouse series, just as his sister did before him.
My daughter's been on a feminist biography kick. (I'm not complaining!) I think she was inspired by Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women, which we read together last year, and which, if you haven't read it, definitely deserves a spot on your library list. (I love that in addition to giving the histories of some very cool women and girl inventors, it includes resources to get readers started with their own inventions.) She's breezed through Invincible Louisa (about Louisa May Alcott), The Daring Nelly Bly (from our spring issue!), and Rooftop Astronomer: A Story about Maria Mitchell. With biographies (and honestly with most books), I don't worry much about reading level—I just let her grab whatever appeals to her.
Together
The kids were fascinated by the mystery of the princes in the Tower, who vanished somewhere between Richard III and Henry VII's reign, so I thought The Daughter of Time, a mystery novel by Josephine Tey that tackles the topic with modern-day researching detectives, would be a hit. My 12-year-old is captivated—I don't think it had occurred to her that modern-day historians could try to solve historic mysteries.
Continuing my tradition of forcing my children to listen to readalouds of books I loved as a child, we're reading Honestly, Katie John by Mary Calhoun. Happily, this one has proven to be popular with the kids, too, and we've enjoyed reading about tomboy Katie's adventures.
We keep a running list of readaloud books, and everyone adds books to it as they strike our fancies. My daughter read Lloyd Alexander's Vesper Holly adventure series last fall, and we're finally getting around to The Illyrian Adventure for our bedtime readaloud. It's pure fun reading about 19th century American orphan Vesper, her prim-and-proper guardian Brinnie, and their adventures in an invented Adriatic nation.
So that's what we've been reading. What about you?
(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)
Meet the Team: Suzanne
As our resident Book Nerd, Suzanne will be introducing you to must-read new books, classics you might have forgotten about, and enough reading material to ensure that you will never, ever run out of titles for your reading list. (In fact, if we're running behind deadline this first issue, it's totally her fault for recommending Drood.)
Me in 100-ish words: I'm a nerdy forty-something ex-software-engineer homeschooling mother of four (ages 15, 13, 11, and 8). I live in north metro Atlanta with my husband, all those kids, two cats, and a dog. I also do some baby-sitting for friends, so on any given day there's an assortment of toddlers and preschoolers wandering around and getting underfoot. I'm terrible at housework (the rest of the family isn't much better), so we undergo periodic shortages of things like clean laundry and groceries, but there is always fresh reading material in the house. We recently sent the oldest kid off to the local public high school (he was homeschooled exclusively through 8th grade), which has me thinking about the next chapter in my life—though I do have a few years to go as a stay-at-home mom and most days what I hope comes next is a nap.
How I started homeschooling: When my oldest child was 3, I went to the library and checked out every book I could find on homeschooling, then put them all on my to-read stack next to the bed. About halfway through the stack, I turned to my husband and said, "I think we could do this." A couple of books further down I found The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home, and I turned to my husband and said, "This is how we're going to do it." I ordered a box of curriculum from Rainbow Resource and off we went!
My homeschool style: We started off as secular classical homeschoolers, but have grown away from that a little bit over the years as we've discovered what works best for our family. We have a fairly structured day, mostly because I'm not sure how else to fit everything in.
What a typical day looks like in my homeschool life: Make sure the kids are up around 7 a.m., so we can start with a read-aloud (snuggled in Mom's bed) at 8. Then we go downstairs to the dining room table for math and language arts (handwriting, spelling, grammar, lit, and composition). After lunch there is more reading aloud, followed by history and science, which we take in turns (one kid per day). Everyone who isn't doing history and science has independent work or reading to do. We try to finish up around 2:30 or 3 p.m. Friday is our day off for errands or just goofing around.
Favorite readaloud: I couldn't possibly pick just one! I adore Diana Wynne Jones—right now we're reading Charmed Life (vol. 1 of the Chronicles of Chrestomanci). Howl's Moving Castle is another good book to start with, if you'd like to give her a try. Also see: Eva Ibbotson, Understood Betsy, M.T. Anderson's Pals in Peril series, 101 Dalmatians (the original novel), the Narnia series, Harry Potter (of course), and I could keep going but I should probably stop...
Favorite driving music: It's a tie between Cowboy Mouth's Are You With Me? and the Refreshments' Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy.
Things I like: Doctor Who, musicals, Georgia Tech (go Jackets!), screwball comedies, Agent Dana Scully, chocolate mousse, Jane Austen, cross-stitching, Disneyworld, road trips, and checking out so many library books that I have to make two trips to the car.
Guilty pleasure: Daytime court shows. I want to be Judge Marilyn Milian when I grow up.
What I love about homeschool life: The freedom to set my own daily, weekly, and yearly schedules, so that my kids and I can spend a rainy day reading together in our pajamas, or plan a road-trip to visit Grandpa in the fall without worrying about the school calendar.
What I love about home/school/life magazine: The sense of community that I get from connecting with other homeschool parents, near and far, as we walk this path together.
AMY SHARONY is the founder and editor-in-chief of home | school | life magazine. She's a pretty nice person until someone starts pluralizing things with apostrophes, but then all bets are off.