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Reading check ins 2020
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Week 22 Check In
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Hi guys. I haven't really been able to do much except help spread the word, donate, and sign petitions. I had to take a break from social media for a bit just because it was getting to be too much.Last week, I finished Wayward Son. I thought it was okay. I think I liked the first one better. At least one of the characters said he was 20, so that's good enough to be my Popsugar book with a main character in their 20s.
I'm currently reading Stormsong, which is the sequel to Witchmark. I loved the first one, and liking this one a lot so far, too. I figured since it includes a f/f pairing, it'd be a natural fit for my Popsugar book that passes the Bechdel test. So far, it's already passed the test and I'm not even halfway through, so yay!
QOTW:
I own a bunch of books by both Jemisin and Okorafor from various Kindle sales that I haven't read yet. I think I'm going to bump them both up on my reading list.
I definitely recommend Angie Thomas. The Hate U Give is so relevant and so important given what's happening right now.
I loved Tomi Adeyemi's Children of Blood and Bone, which I read last year. I didn't like the sequel as much, but it was still good.
Yeah, wow. I can't hear any helicopters right now but I expect them to start up at any moment. I hope this is a turning point.Some of my physical library requests are in, but they have been closing early this week, so I'll try to pick those up tomorrow.
My first book this week was They Do It with Mirrors, a Miss Marple I hadn't previously read. I enjoyed returning to that character, but I'd call it a middling example mystery-wise, and I was irritated by the characters' use of homophobic language and a racist figure of speech. I suspect this is fairly common in Christie and I'm just paying more attention.
My sister told me she'd read some of the Phryne Fisher books, and despite my having enjoyed the show, I somehow conceived an idea that I wouldn't like them. I decided to give Cocaine Blues a try. Since Hoopla gave me some trouble during the previous month-end, I thought I'd go ahead and load up the book on the evening of the 31st, just to make sure it worked... and I ended up reading about half of it right then. I don't know what I thought would be wrong with it, but it was great. I did pick up on a clue reasonably early and spent a lot of time wishing I could yell, "It's [redacted] because [spoiler]!"
Then my hold on So You Want to Talk About Race came in at a rather a propos moment. I really liked this. The author's voice is very engaging, and I thought that starting each chapter with a personal story from her own life really made it seem like a conversation with a friend. I had at least some familiarity with the concepts discussed, but this would be absolutely accessible to someone who does not. Recommend.
QOTW: Since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had a piece in the media recently, I will plug his Mycroft Holmes series, of which I have read the first two. They are solid Holmes pastiche for people who like that sort of thing (hello, it me). They're written with a co-author, and I don't know to what extent it's a "James Patterson and" situation, but if you're enough of a Holmesian to attach your name to such a project, you're enough of a Holmesian for me.
Mod
I had three finishes this week. First I read One Word Kill for my other Goodreads group - it was my first Mark Lawrence, but it won't be my last! It wasn't especially original - it played with a lot of well-worn tropes, plot-wise - but I enjoyed the characters and their rapport with one another. [VERY MILD SPOILER behind the tag - you'd probably guess it from the book description, but I'm super spoiler-averse so in case any of you are like me...](view spoiler)
A thread over on the mothership asking for nonfiction suggestions put me in a nonfiction kind of mood, so I dug up The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women in my kindle back catalog, and found it COMPLETELY riveting. A few minor annoyances in the writing style made me rate it 4 stars instead of 5, but I really couldn't put it down.
Given...everything...I then picked up The Hate U Give, which I'd brought home from my classroom bookshelf when I went in last week to clean things out. It was the summer reading book that the high school assigned to our graduating 8th graders last year, and I had an extra copy kicking around. I've been meaning to read it for ages and couldn't have picked a more appropriate moment.
QOTW: N.K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor are favorites of mine that have already been mentioned. I'm also working my way through Octavia Butler's catalog. I've only read one book by Karen Lord - Redemption in Indigo, which I really loved - but I intend on reading more someday.
I really enjoyed the one book I read by Rebecca Roanhorse and would love to read more Native American authors, if anyone has suggestions.
I need to read more anti-racist nonfiction, that's an area in which I know I'm lacking. The one that I did read and found really illuminating, as a teacher, was "Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity, which I've been thinking about pulling off the shelf to read again - it's been a LONG time since I read it in ed school.
Just one finish this week: The Fall, which is super of our times, in terms of a plague sweeping the world and the world's failure to react rapidly. The military sweeping into NYC to clear streets (albeit in a very different context) also struck a familiar chord. So in terms of escapism, this ain't it. Reviews are mixed. I quite enjoyed it, myself. Used for the Slytherin/Tom Riddle/book in a series prompt.34/60
QOTW: Another enthusiastic vote for the Binti trilogy, with an added note that I found the series got better and better, with the first book being the weakest.
I'll add Jason Reynolds to the list. I enjoyed Long Way Down.
And since I'm from Canada, and Indigenous people also experience many of the systemic issues currently in the spotlight, I'll suggest Tanya Tagaq, who is mostly known as an Inuk throat singer. If you can get the audiobook version of her first novel, Split Tooth, it's worth the listen, as it also includes throat singing performances between chapters. Full disclaimer, though: she's one of those artists that part of you is fully aware of the great talent you are seeing at work, and another part of you just has no clue exactly what's going on with the story that shifts between realism and wild allegory and metaphor. Very trippy. In the best way.
Not sure what my next read should be. Part of me wants something fluffy, and the other half thinks I might have a hard time getting into anything that *isn't* making the rounds on suggested reading lists. I don't often have multiple books going at once, but this may be one such occasion.
I have done a lot of reading this past week and a bit. Some of that was less internet time, some just because the books were absorbing!
I finished Oliver Twist, which I enjoyed. I can always tell Dickens wrote it for parts-publication, but his work is still good. There's a bit of a different ending to the Oliver! musical film, which after I discovered the film had cut out an entire major plotline I wasn't so surprised by. I would also have liked Dickens to have described people, especially Fagin, by name more often than epithet. I've spent a long time learning from fandom and reminding others that calling someone by their name is more effective than 'the brown haired boy'. Less clunky too. Plus constantly calling Fagin 'the Jew' made me wince every time.
Then I read The Flatshare in two days flat. It's a modern comedic romancey thing. I actually enjoyed it a lot. It had a fair amount of epistolary action, which I love. I also liked the more serious themes it dealt with. Overall I did remember why I don't read more of that type of 'chic lit' is at least partly do do with how fast I read them and not just the repetitive themes and predictable plots. I'm not knocking them if they're you're thing, I just prefer something else.
Then I read fast through The Tattooist of Auschwitz. It's a book that's both very good, but also so painful to read. I knew going in that the central character survives since it was based on his first hand account, but that didn't necessarily prepare me for all of the other horrors. The book overall made me feel a bit raw and like I needed a good cry afterwards.
And I finished The Enchanted Castle this morning. Given it's a children's book it read surprisingly slowly. I don't know if that's an age of the book thing. I wasn't over enamoured with the characters for the most part. There was blackface. And the end was pretty meh. Not much of a fan.
QOTW: Well I've picked up a couple of recs from people.
Authors I've enjoyed include Toni Morrison, who does US centric experiences mostly in the south (from the books I've read) with some tricky themes; Zadie Smith who writes mostly modern British centric work sometimes looking at multi-racial experiences in particular and finally Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who writes largely about Africa, specifically Nigeria, although Americanah talks being an African in the USA.
Oh and for younger readers Malorie Blackman who wrote some of the earliest things I read which really opened me up to the problem of racism. Also she wrote or co-wrote the Doctor Who Rosa Parks episode.
I finished Oliver Twist, which I enjoyed. I can always tell Dickens wrote it for parts-publication, but his work is still good. There's a bit of a different ending to the Oliver! musical film, which after I discovered the film had cut out an entire major plotline I wasn't so surprised by. I would also have liked Dickens to have described people, especially Fagin, by name more often than epithet. I've spent a long time learning from fandom and reminding others that calling someone by their name is more effective than 'the brown haired boy'. Less clunky too. Plus constantly calling Fagin 'the Jew' made me wince every time.
Then I read The Flatshare in two days flat. It's a modern comedic romancey thing. I actually enjoyed it a lot. It had a fair amount of epistolary action, which I love. I also liked the more serious themes it dealt with. Overall I did remember why I don't read more of that type of 'chic lit' is at least partly do do with how fast I read them and not just the repetitive themes and predictable plots. I'm not knocking them if they're you're thing, I just prefer something else.
Then I read fast through The Tattooist of Auschwitz. It's a book that's both very good, but also so painful to read. I knew going in that the central character survives since it was based on his first hand account, but that didn't necessarily prepare me for all of the other horrors. The book overall made me feel a bit raw and like I needed a good cry afterwards.
And I finished The Enchanted Castle this morning. Given it's a children's book it read surprisingly slowly. I don't know if that's an age of the book thing. I wasn't over enamoured with the characters for the most part. There was blackface. And the end was pretty meh. Not much of a fan.
QOTW: Well I've picked up a couple of recs from people.
Authors I've enjoyed include Toni Morrison, who does US centric experiences mostly in the south (from the books I've read) with some tricky themes; Zadie Smith who writes mostly modern British centric work sometimes looking at multi-racial experiences in particular and finally Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who writes largely about Africa, specifically Nigeria, although Americanah talks being an African in the USA.
Oh and for younger readers Malorie Blackman who wrote some of the earliest things I read which really opened me up to the problem of racism. Also she wrote or co-wrote the Doctor Who Rosa Parks episode.
I've been donating and petition-ing, too - I have panic attacks in crowds at the best of times, so now that I've been home for so long I know that I would definitely not be able to handle the protests in person. Bail Reform has been THE hot topic for the past year or so at my place of employment, so I'm feeling a twisted irony about how much I've spent on bail funds in the past week.... In all of my time online doing that, I also learned about a magazine that others here may enjoy - FIYAH (www.fiyahlitmag.com). It's only $15 per year for a digital subscription, so if you feel so inclined, you might consider that. If you're interested, but that's not in your budget, let me know - I bought a few gift subscriptions over the weekend, and I've got a couple codes left. At last check in, I was reading Step on a Crack for IRL book club #2, which I enjoyed - and based on the excerpts in the back from subsequent books in the series, it seems like it will get into some very relevant issues, so I might move the next book up on my list.
I stayed on my James Patterson kick after that and read Lost. I was concerned at the beginning, because it seemed like it was going to use human trafficking as the basis for a light action thriller - but it actually handled it well as it went on - there was a good separation between the action part and the human trafficking information, and I can definitely see the book making people who are willing to read a thriller but aren't going to go out of their way to keep up on social issues aware of some of the basics.
Next was Misfits, which had been on my TBR for quite a while since one of my book clubs read another book that is often compared to this one. They were quite similar, but I enjoyed both and would recommend it for the young tween crowd, particularly in light of many people's new interest in non-Potter series.....
I was ready for something a bit more adult after that, so I read The Swans of Fifth Avenue without knowing anything other than that it was written by Melanie Benjamin, who I love. It turned out to be about Truman Capote and the society ladies in his circle in the 1960's-70's, which is not a topic I would have normally been pulled to - but it's just so well written that I have to recommend it to anyone, regardless of interest in the subject matter.
I knew that one was going to stick with me for a while, so I wanted something light next. So I finally got around to Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, which was a lot of fun.
In the midst of that, I heard a reference in a radio interview to The Rats in the Walls, so I found it online...and I just couldn't get past the cat's name. Or that there are current editions that include it without commentary. I'm trying to give the person who brought it up in the interview the benefit of the doubt, but I have to wonder why they didn't bother to mention it either. Especially because this was when the protests were at their first peak.
I wasn't sure what to read after Good Omens, so I randomly pulled one from my TBR and read Three Parts Dead, which was enjoyable. I've heard from many people that the writing gets better as the series goes on, but I still enjoyed this first one.
I was spending too much time reading news online, so I decided to swing in the opposite direction and re-read The Hobbit, or There and Back Again for the first time in 30+ years. I think I enjoyed it more now than back in the day, despite having a newer copy with very boring black and white illustrations rather than the cartoon tie-in edition I had as a kid.
It was now time to get going on IRL book club #3's next selection...but it turned out to be the third book in a trilogy. Apparently everyone else must have already read the other two? So I started in and read Broken Promise, and the novella Final Assignment, and I'm currently reading the second full book, Far From True. The series isn't awful, but it's pretty clunky for a modern mystery/thriller, so I'm wondering if the third book (the actual book club selection) is going to be a vast improvement, or if there's some other story behind why it was chosen. I'm just glad I started early enough to have time to read it all, because based on what I've read so far, there's no way the third one would make sense as a stand-alone!
QOTW: A lot of my favorites have already been mentioned, so going a little farther down my list (and I'm focusing specifically on Black authors - not to ignore other types of diversity, but that's a good place to focus at the moment) to add a few that haven't been brought up, I'll contribute:
Stephanie Powell Watts
Wil Haygood
Ibi Zoboi
Trevor Noah
Yaa Gyasi
Isabel Wilkerson
Tee Franklin
Lorraine Hansberry
Katrina Parker Williams
Zora Neale Hurston
If you like Lovecraft but can't stomach his notorious racism, you might enjoy Lovecraft Country, soon to be an HBO series. (The author is not Black, but it seems to get good reviews from Black people: Jordan Peele is an executive producer on the show.)
Hey all, hope it's not too weird that I keep jumping in and out of these threads. I keep trying to be consistent about posting here, but honestly the last few months totally overwhelming. At the moment, I'm donating and engaging other people online to support the protestors, trying to be a good ally in the ways that I can. It's been a weird week for reading, for sure. This last week I read:
The Night Tiger, by Yangsze Choo. This one was a little odd, but I really liked it. Ren, a young boy, has been charged by his master to find his missing finger and bury it with his body. In the meantime, Ji Lin has found a finger, and is trying to get it back to where it belongs. The story is a good mix of "normal" and supernatural and comes together with an unexpected twist.
I finished N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms last week, and this week the second of the series, The Broken Kingdoms, came up in my library holds. I don't like this series as much as her other Broken Earth series. I read an article about her recently, and it said that The Hundred Thousand kingdoms had been been dumbed down (with a predominantly white cast of characters) to appeal to publishers... so it makes sense to me that it's a little weaker. That being said, I really appreciate the way Jemisin constructs a layered story, and has the reader discover bits and pieces along the way, instead of presenting everything chronologically. I liked the second of this series more than the first... although a large part of that could be that the formatting of my kindle copy of Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is atrocious, and it was hard to read around.
I also read Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan. This is actually a YA book (which I normally don't like), and I checked it out from the library on a whim, not realizing it was YA. It starts out a bit simplistically, and I rolled my eyes at the world building... but then quickly got very absorbed and involved with the characters. Humans have split into three races, "Paper" humans, "Steel" human/demon mixes (humans with animal body characteristics, and "Moon" demons (humans that are significantly more animalistic but still talk and walk upright), and predictably, the Moon demons rule over the rest. The main character has been picked to serve as a palace concubine, which also felt a bit predictable... but as I said, things quickly got more complex and I ended up loving it. The author has drawn on her Malaysian and Chinese heritage to build out the world. It also features a f/f pairing, if anyone is looking for that. In my review, I likened it to the Hunger Games... but without the annoying, selfish protagonist. (I am not much of a Katniss fan although I think the writing is good.)
Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi was free or very inexpensive a few days ago on Amazon, so I had grabbed it on Kindle. This one was written by an Omani woman and translated... it took a bit to get into it as the chronological set up takes a bit to get used to. And I never really developed a lot of sympathy for the characters, but at the same time, I very much wanted to figure out what happened to everyone. My only real complaint about the book is that the ending is not a traditionally satisfying ending with all the loose strings tied up.
I finished with A Divided Inheritance by Deborah Swift. I almost put this one down as the action is very slow at the beginning, and one of the characters grated on my nerves so much that I wasn't sure I wanted to finish. However, midway through the book, the characters end up traveling to Spain, and the plot picks up. In the second half the book, part of the action takes place during the mass exportation of the Muslim Moriscos of Spain in the 1600s, and the characters grow significantly more interesting.
QOTW:
One of my goals this year was to read 52 books by women of color, so I actually have an entire list of suggested titles here, if anyone wants it: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
I pulled most of those titles from a list compiled by a woman of color, based on books that were going to be released this year. I actually have a physical copy of So We Can Glow: Stories, by Leesa Cross-Smith, and I would be happy to pass it on to someone else here. It is an interesting mix of short stories that take some getting used to, but many of them loop back around to characters at different points in their lives, or are about different side characters in other stories, so it gets more interesting the longer you read.
One author that I would suggest is Jason Reynolds. I read his middle grade book Ghost last year, when I was coaching a group of 5th graders in a Battle of the Books, and I was impressed by the depth of the story. Ghost is the first of a series, so if you have younger people in your life and you're looking to expand their reading list, this could be a good one for them.
Mod
Thanks, Rebecca - I didn't have much familiarity with Lovecraft before this - I just wanted to understand a reference someone made - but Lovecraft Country sounds about 100000% better than the story I just read, so that's going on my list! It doesn't sound like it requires too much prior knowledge, but I'll ask you if I have questions when I get to it. :)
EPBOT Readers
Books mentioned in this topic
Celestial Bodies (other topics)A Divided Inheritance (other topics)
So We Can Glow: Stories (other topics)
Ghost (other topics)
Girls of Paper and Fire (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
James Patterson (other topics)Stephanie Powell Watts (other topics)
Wil Haygood (other topics)
Zora Neale Hurston (other topics)
Melanie Benjamin (other topics)
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I hope everyone is hanging in there, it's been a rough week in the world.
I know all the pain and anger has inspired me to up my actions, been signing petitions and making donations all week. Book Riot's been posting a lot of resources for anti-racist reading and lists of black authors to support, so building a big reading list too. Sadly my library only has a tiny portion of the titles digitally, and they all have waiting lists, but the physical library is opening up June 12 for contactless pickup of physical books. Only library-owned books, but hopefully it increases at least some titles. I can buy a few books, but my reading lists are becoming massive, can't afford to buy them all. Also Stamped From The Beginning is currently streaming free on Spotify right now (https://bookriot.com/2020/06/04/stamp...) , which is cool. I haven't started it yet, but I will soon.
This week I finished:
Green Rider - this was one of my book flood books, I really enjoyed it! Reminded me a bit of the Heralds of Valdemar which is one of my favorite worlds. Counted it as my book published in the 20th century (goodreads lists both 98 and 2000 as publish dates, I think 2000 is when DAW officially picked it up. Either way, 2000 was the last year of the 20th century so it counts)
Turn Coat- re-reading via audio. I have to say that while the stories are still good, and I like James Marster's voice, when they're read aloud you absolutely can't avoid how male-gazey Harry's inner monologue is. This had a lot of white court interactions and there were so many descriptions of breasts and Harry's reactions to them. I think when I was just reading, i kinda skimmed and didn't absorb those parts.
The City We Became - Loved this so much. I just love NK Jemisin in general. Ended up being more timely than planned, since it was basically a story about combatting white supremacy within Lovecraftian type settings. Which is pretty apt considering that Lovecraft was a huuuuge racist, so his beings becoming the symbol of white supremacy tearing apart the real world and destroying culture felt pretty apt. Used it for popsugar great first line "I sing the city."
Currently reading:
The Price of Paradise - popsugar book set in a country beginning with C, Cuba. I got this as part of Amazons's world reads day. I like the writing style, and it moves fast, but it's one of those ones I'm kinda rushing through because I can't see how the story is going to end well soo I just want to get there.
The Count of Monte Cristo - finally into the 800s at least. Some day i'll finish.
The Glass Hotel - doing audio book, not my favorite method for new books. Library got audio before ebook, so my hold was already up before i realized they HAD an ebook. We'll see how it goes or if I just return it and wait for the ebook version.
QOTW:
To amplify some diverse voices, how about we share some of our favorite diverse authors?
As I mentioned above, I adore NK Jemison, particularly her Broken Earth trilogy starting with The Fifth Season.
I love the Binti trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor, Binti, and her Akata Witch.
I really enjoyed The Black Tides of Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune, the two books of the Tensorate series. They're novellas and short, they are fantasy based on Asian mythology instead of western, and the author is nonbianary.