By: Revanche

The fun we had: Summer 2018

September 12, 2018

What I read

Our library is pretty great but also drives me bananas with their book-licensing habits. They hold licenses for random books in series (see Sue Grafton below) so that you never know which books you can read in what order.

I did some digging to find out that I can make a directed donation to the library so that they will buy the e-books that I very much want to be in their collection so I and anybody else can read them. YAY! I feel better about donating to have them own the books, for some reason. Probably because I’m still staring at 10 moving boxes blocking my entirely full bookshelves.

Also, they let me know that e-books can either be owned by the library entirely for unlimited check outs OR they might be limited by elapsed time or number of checkouts. This was news to me and it kind of stinks but someone pointed out that it makes sense because the library has to replace physically worn out hardcovers, they don’t have to do that for e-books so publishers have to make up their money somewhere else.

I couldn’t write reviews on every book but they were all, unless otherwise indicated, two thumbs up!

Ursula K. Le Guin
Gifts
Voices
Powers
A Wizard of Earthsea
The Left Hand of Darkness (I just could not get into this one no matter how hard I tried. Pretty sure it was a brain mood thing because everything else by Le Guin is good.)

Sue Grafton
A is for Alibi
B is for Burglar
Y is for Yesterday
W is for Wasted
P is for Peril (I’m still mad about how this one ended.)

Sherry Thomas
The Immortal Heights. The problem with reading the end of a trilogy because the first two books aren’t available at the library is that it feels sort of pointless to try and read the first two, you know how it all ends now! But her writing was phenomenal so I may try to anyway.

Gene Wolfe
The Knight, Shadow & Claw

I know Gene Wolfe is supposed to be an SFF master but these weren’t up my alley.

Kate Collins, Florist Grump: Only book 17 of an entire series was available at all, meaning the library doesn’t even have the license for any of the others. What? Anyway something about this book annoyed me all the way through. I feel like the characters were too obviously written, too shallow and unnuanced – bleak contrast to Sue Grafton’s detective and characters who were definitely flawed but not nearly so annoying. I wanted to know whodunnit so I read all the way to the end but was just annoyed by pretty much the entire cast all the way through. I won’t be picking up any more of these books.

Eoin Colfer
Artemis Fowl, The Arctic Incident, The Eternity Code, The Opal Deception, The Lost Colony, The Time Paradox, The Atlantis Complex, The Last Guardian

Much like my love of the show Grimm was entirely about the supporting characters, I don’t read this series for the boy-genius part though he’s the starring role, he’s just part of what moves the plot forward for me. I love this series for all the supporting characters though they’re not all thoroughly developed: Butler, Holly, Foaly, even Mulch.

Cassandra Khaw, Hammers on Bone. I normally can’t read horror but either this wasn’t what my brain defines as horror or I’m too accustomed to supernatural entities and whatnot. It was a really good read, and yes, still gave me a few nightmares because honestly, any fodder for the sleep imagination gets used. I adore Cassandra’s extemporaneous fiction and asked our library to buy her e-books for their collection.

Kathryn Stockett, The Help. This hurt my heart to read, knowing that this level of racism is alive today.

Jane Lotter, The Bette Davis Club. This was light read, not in my usual vein, and fun.

Saladin Ahmed, Throne of the Crescent Moon. My first read from Ahmed, it was engaging and I’m looking forward to the next book.

Mira T. Lee, Everything Here Is Beautiful. Here was a searingly painful read. A sibling with mental illness, an unraveled family. Beautifully written and totally gripping but also very painful for me personally to read since I have a sibling with mental illness. Our roles are reversed, though. I finished with tears in my eyes and gratitude that so far as I know there isn’t a neglected nibling out there that I have to try to rescue from a wholly incompetent probably-NPD sibling.

Min Jin Lee‘s Pachinko is what I imagine reviewers mean when they call it a sweeping novel of epic proportions. I hated that I cared so much about what happened because each loss hurt.

Growing up, I’d been told that a friendship between a Korean friend and a Japanese friend would be frowned upon, that their parents wouldn’t be at peace with the relationship, and I had no real idea why. This story opened up that world

Daniel José Older
Last Shot (Star Wars): A Han and Lando Novel
Shadowshaper

Grant Ginder, The People We Hate at the Wedding: A Novel. A random selection when all of my book holds were still pending and I had nothing else to read. It was surprisingly engaging at the time but I remember very little of it.

Gregory Harris, The Bellingham Bloodbath. Once again my library befuddles me with having Book 2 of a series and nothing else. But why? I wonder if Book 1 had a limited license that expired. That’d be annoying.

Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death? I think “read anything and everything Nnedi writes” is a solid life choice.
The Book of Phoenix. Amazing book. The creativity, the soul, the depths of this book are just amazing. Definitely read it.

Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes. I’m mad at myself for reading this when the sequel wasn’t available yet because I hate finishing Book 1 and then waiting for the next book! But it saved me a couple hours of lost sleep so that’s probably good. I would have read until 5 am otherwise.

Gary Paulsen, Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northers: Reflections on Being Raised by a Pack of Sled Dog. I picked this up on the strength of reading an excerpt someone screenshotted on Twitter and itw as totally worth it. Sled dog fans, you’d really enjoy this book. This is free with your membership if you have Prime.
Notes from the Dog. This is a sweet story.

Where we went

COMIC CON. That is all.

What I watched

Trolls. This was for JB. It’s mildly amusing but on our fifth or so viewing when I actually started paying attention, I realized Poppy is obnoxious. That scene where she keeps singing when Branch is trying to sleep? I’d burn her lute or ukelele or guitar too.

Black Panther. This came on Netflix and I played it in the background ohhhh a million times.

Bolt. This was cute. JB did start to cry at one mildly scary point but it was more of an excess of emotion than real fear.

Jenny Han’s To All The Boys I Loved Before. I generally never watch rom-coms, mostly because I’m not a lover of romance anything but this was well worth the exception. Lana Condor is adorable as the first Asian-American lead I’ve ever seen in an American romantic comedy. For all that it was about a teenager which I never understood when I was a teen myself, the plot touched on the firsts of heartache that seem to make sense when they don’t at all and decisions that don’t make sense because the intensity of first-time feelings for teens is something we tend to forget as we get older and gain life experience.

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