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Category Archives: Fiction

A book for every day of the week

30 Apr

Pulled from books read this month with one that hasn’t come out yet, how I think about the books in the context of Monday through Sunday.

Monday: Putting your best foot forward for the work week ahead on a Monday. Ann Lowe wanted to put her best foot forward the best dresses created by her hands every day. Only The Best: The Exceptional Life and Fashion of Ann Lowe is a perfect Monday read to inspire you to tackle the week.

Tuesday: Well, did Monday run you or did you run Monday? It happens that the day doesn’t go well but instead of stewing in it for days on end, recognize it, put a rhyme to it, and move past it. Ode to a Bad Day helps you realize that it’s all temporary.

Wednesday: Hump day. Midweek. Squished, literally in the middle like Avery is squished in a family of seven kids without a room of her own. But you can be just as forceful but still sweet at she is to make it through.

Thursday: It’s the new Friday. It’s the comfort that tomorrow is Friday and you’ve made it through the week. The graphic novel adaptation of the original, the Fangirl volumes already released, one and two, are the adorably comfortable and vulnerable stories to keep you looking toward the weekend.

Friday: Friday Night Lights, synonymous with football. Greenwald hasn’t shied away from the dangers of football and in his newest, Dinged, he does it again. It’s entertainment and pride, but it’s also health and wellness. A good thought to keep in mind with the overindulgences of the weekend!

Saturday: The weekend is here and it’s all about fun and games like Jennifer Lynn Barnes skillfully does in the Hawthorne Legacy series ending with The Final Gambit. Winner does take all.

Sunday: When you need the umph to get fired up for the week, turn to characters like Perry in Warrior Girl Unearthed— she knows who she is and what she wants. Her sights are set on a way forward even if it means stepping into danger. But her internalized stickwithitness is a solid feeling to have that we can all make it!

 
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Posted by on April 30, 2023 in Audiobooks, Childrens, Cover Love, Fiction, Graphic novels, Middle grade, Upcoming Releases, Young Adult

 

A tale of the ‘finish in one day’ read: Check & mate

18 Apr

Last week was spring break. Naturally I planned a lot of reading time into each day along with other relaxing activities, plus housework and to-do list items. There are the quick reads, the fast-paced reads, the slower reads, the savory reads, the brain breaks, and the in-betweens. Based on my interest level or mood, I can tell pretty quickly what kind of book it’ll be.

I had been sent a galley copy of Ali Hazelwood’s YA due out this November called Check & Mate. This is where I confess that while I’ve seen Hazelwood’s books for adults everywhere, I haven’t read one yet, but a YA, now that was music to my high school librarian ears. And it’s punny chess title was also a bonus. Another confession- I’m not an avid chess player, I can rarely hold my own against my teenage sons, but I do play a little. I also watched The Queen’s Gambit. And I have joyously celebrated the return of raucous chess matches in our library (years ago that’s all our teens did was play chess, we had 5-6 that went out per period, then there was a die-off, but now it’s back again).

Back to the book. I picked it up off the pile and thought it would be an enjoyable stopover before the next book. What I got was an intense sprint/marathon battle for the next several hours. I literally wanted to sprint through it to know how it all ends (of course I knew how it HAD to end, but just in case). And I literally wanted to pace myself too because I didn’t want to it to end because if it ended it would be over and I couldn’t go back again.

I loved the prevalence of chess in the story– not too much, not too little. I fell in love with Mallory and her family, especially her littlest sister and the indifference when readers meet Mallory at the beginning of the story. Cue Nolan. Then came the witty banter, the sly hints about the past, the tournaments amplifying the pressure. It was exactly what I wanted. It was exactly what I needed. And when I found out I would have to stay up WAY past my bedtime to pick up my sons returning from a trip, I continued to sip my tea and read. I brought it in the car as I waited in the parking lot. I was thisclose to the end. The boys were back home and it was close to midnight. Do I wait until morning to finish it just so I can extend it a few more hours?

No. I must finish it.

And that I did. I fell into bed tired and book drunk. Is that a thing? It needs to be. The enemies to lovers trope won’t ever get tired in the capable hands of Hazelwood. Nor will romance ever be dead. The last thing that I want to give credit for is the topic of sex in the book, from the humorous scenes to the serious ones. It’s an age relevant topic and I want more of this in YA.

It’s not out until November, so you have plenty of time to sign up for publisher giveaways and preorder it, but put it on your list.

 
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Posted by on April 18, 2023 in Authors, Cover Love, Fiction, Upcoming Releases, Young Adult

 

Women authors to love

18 Mar

Continuing with the theme of Women’s History Month, I want to give a shout out to influential women authors through the lens of my reading experience.

  1. Probably forever, Ruta Sepetys will always be at the top of the list. Having had the pleasure of her company in person does add an additional layer of appreciation for her, but her books themselves mine hidden histories which are captured with elegance and an emotional capableness to reach through the pages of the book to reach the reader on another level. She’s simply the best.
  2. Mary Roach is the queen of curiosity for me. All of her books from the science of the military to cadavers have endlessly fascinated me. Years ago I wrote that she would be an author I’d love to have lunch with just to pick her brain. She’s got a fascinating array of subject areas, but I’ll follow her wherever that curiosity leads.
  3. There is no one more Instagram-poet famous that Rupi Kaur. I follow her as do many of my high school students to see what new and old poems she drops there. Then I scrambled when she publishes a collection to get my hands on a copy and then make sure I have a handful in our library too. I confess to also following her social media to see what dress she’s wearing and to celebrate that this poetess sells out arenas to read her poetry. She’s an experience.
  4. Sarah Andersen of Sarah’s Scribbles fame makes me laugh– every.damn.time. Her humorous take on the extraordinary and the mundane in her comics (but I’d be remiss not to gush about Fangs too) gave me a boost in the mornings when I would read a few pages from her comics with my cup of tea. She’s more than just a writer, she’s a creator.
  5. And when I think about books whose settings and writing envelope me, I think about the atmospheric writing of Cat Winters. She pulled me in with In The Shadow Of Blackbirds and kept me there with all of the other books (and short stories) that she’s written. She’s the ultimate spooky YA writer.
 
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Posted by on March 18, 2023 in Adult, Authors, Blogging, Comics, Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Young Adult

 

The ABCs of romance

14 Feb
  1. An Arrow to the Moon
  2. Book Love
  3. Code Name Helene
  4. Darius the Great Deserves Better
  5. Eternally Yours
  6. Fangs
  7. (The) Girl from the Sea
  8. (The) House on the Cerulean Sea
  9. If These Wings Could Fly
  10. Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side
  11. Keturah and Lord Death
  12. Love in the Library
  13. Mudbound
  14. Not So Pure and Simple
  15. Out of Darkness
  16. Pumpkinheads
  17. Rent a Boyfriend
  18. Saga
  19. Tokyo Ever After
  20. (The) Unlikelies
  21. (E)Verything Everything
  22. Walk Through Walls
  23. XOXO
  24. Your Own, Sylvia
  25. Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

Dark and light romances. For adults or teens. An alphabetical list of some that I’ve read and loved.

 
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Posted by on February 14, 2023 in Adult, Childrens, Comics, Fiction, Graphic novels, Nonfiction, Short Story, Young Adult

 

One for the money

03 Feb

One for the money, two for the show, three to make ready and four to go.

I was thinking about this children’s rhyme when I was contemplating what type of reading goals I could set for myself for 2023. As a practice, I don’t make goals because there’s usually a committee, reviews, and general work around reading (even though it’s never really work) that I’ll always be reading anyway. And I read widely already. So I thought I would highlight each month a children’s book, a middle grade, a YA, and an adult that I read. Here’s January’s books via rhyme–

One for the money: An Immense World by Ed Yong

It made so many best lists for 2022 which is why I added it to my TBR for January and it did not disappoint. Yong, take all my money because as a lover of science titles, this one was lyrical, moving, and insightful for a general adult audience.

Two for the show: How You Grow Wings by Rimma Onoseta

Sisters who grow up disparately loved by their mother, the choices that are made ultimately separate then reunite them in a moving story that brings them full circle. Clever, clever book for young adults.

Three to make ready: Ancestor Approved edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith

Short story collections are one of my favorite categories to explore and each of these short stories featuring Indigenous characters can be mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. All of the stories drew from a wealth of experience, storytelling, and heart.

Four to go: The Sun is Late and So Is the Farmer by Philip C. Stead and illustrated by Erin Stead

This children’s book includes a cast of animal main characters, including the four pictured on the cover wondering where the sun is and thus where the farmer is. The vibe of the cover art and title exactly matches the book itself.

 
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Posted by on February 3, 2023 in Adult, Authors, Childrens, Cover Love, Fiction, Illustrators, Middle grade, Nonfiction, Short Story, Young Adult

 

After everyone

18 Jan

Cue Semisonic’s “Closing Time” and that’s how I’m feeling about reading Delia Owen’s Where the Crawdads Sing.

Yes I know that the movie was just released in 2022 and no, I haven’t watched it. I know that whenever a movie comes out there’s a resurgence in reading the book if it hadn’t been read before (or lovers of the book re-reading it) but still, the height of obsession with the book is well past since it was published in 2018 which seems like yesterday and a lifetime ago all at once. Yet the most wonderful thing about books is there really isn’t ever an expiration date and it can be read and reread at any time. It was a few days ago that finally after seeing it pop up again somewhere in my internet travels that I decided it was time.

I listened to the audiobook which annoyingly had a cover update from the movie (I hate that) but beside a captivating narrator, I found that for as popular with book clubs and reading circles, pop culture lists and Goodreads Choice Awards, I didn’t know anything about the book. It was what I hold dear about reading the book for the first time in 2023 because other than it’s general popularity, I didn’t know a single tidbit of what awaited me which is why my respect for the book deepened. I got to read the book as myself, not as anyone else or through anyone else. My own experiences interpreted what Kya was experiencing. My own experiences sensed the marsh. My own experiences greeted the characters.

For readers who have moved on, having a conversation about the book has well-passed since vivid thoughts about the book fade over time as new books crowd out the memory of the older books. But I wanted to celebrate here that a book is evergreen. It never goes out of style whether it’s 10 days old or 10 years old. As I wrote this sentence, I remembered Chicken Every Sunday by Rosemary Taylor, a book published in 1943 that was often read by soldiers during World War II. It was mentioned in the book When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning. I promptly went to my indie bookseller who found a 1943 copy of Chicken Every Sunday that I bought, took home, read cover to cover with a cup of tea and my blanket, and sat in the experiences of from a half-century ago, but felt like it was yesterday.

Cheers to timeless stories.

 
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Posted by on January 18, 2023 in Adult, Audiobooks, Fiction, Reflections

 

Series alert: Something is Killing the Children

08 Jan

When I was making my top lists of 2022 and finishing up the year of reading, I noted that there were a handful of books on my lists (as I narrowed them down and that made the lists themselves) that were series. I have a love/hate relationship with series but I’ve learned to accept them as a natural course of publishing and creativity. Several years ago I decided that if I wasn’t completely obsessed with the first book in a planned series, that I wouldn’t continue reading the series out of obligation. Instead, I would have enough to be able to recommend the series to audiences. And with so many books out there to read, spending time reading ones I weren’t in love with wasn’t making anyone happy.

Enter this comic series, Something is Killing the Children, written by James Tynion IV, illustrated by Werther Dell’Edera, and colored by Miquel Muerto and published by BOOM! Studios. I have read up to the twenty-first issue through Hoopla and looking on BOOM!’s website, it says that issue 21 is available but then I see that there is a fifth published volume that includes issues 21-25, so I’m going to have to visit my local comic book store to check this out. To fill my time and the gap in waiting, it was introduced to me this weekend that House of Slaughter existed, telling the backstory of one of the Orders of St. George and the namesake house that main character, Erica Slaughter comes from in the series.

And Erica as a character is the strongest part of the series. Readers want to follow her journey of slaying monsters and sassing law enforcement. This is in addition to the creatively drawn monsters that haunt the woods and kill children, the gore of the action sequences that are dark and haunting but aren’t so ridiculously bloody that it is gratuitous. On a whim I borrowed the first volume and was shocked by how much I got into the characters, setting, and story because the comic series is a well-rounded mix of it all.

I’ll be over here waiting for the next issue and looking around the house to figure out what my totem would be.

 
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Posted by on January 8, 2023 in Authors, Comics, Cover Love, Fiction, Graphic novels, Illustrators

 

Last and first

01 Jan

Other bookish people likely do the same thing, right? They plan their last book of a calendar year and the first one of the new year. I have been doing this for a few years now and while they don’t always work out to the five-star reads I want them to be in my head, not all books can be winners and that’s life.

But this year I can confidently say I chose well.

My last book of 2022 was

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

I bought this about a month at my indie bookstore on a whim. I rarely buy books that I haven’t read before but the hype around the book has been so overwhelming that I went ahead and bought it. Then it was clear by the beginning of December that I would save it for my last book of the year.

Vacation reading is often trying to cram as many books in as I can while still being productive and extroverted for holiday activities, so I actually waited until December 30th to read the first few chapters and then I could roll into the rest of the book on New Year’s Eve. The problem is that we had company for the better half of the afternoon, but I hunkered down with my champagne and white cranberry and finished about 11:45pm- in time to watch the ball drop and be filled with the love and admiration of Garmus’s writing AND how she created the most loveable and unique characters. It’s as funny as it is sad reminding me of a combination of The House in the Cerulean Sea by Klune and Lab Girl by Hope Jahren.

So the clock strikes midnight, I toast my cranberry champagne with my husband and kids, get a good night’s rest and wake up knowing that my first book of the new year awaited.

My first book of 2022 was

The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston

In part, I chose this one because the color palette matched Garmus’s book. It’s a book that I saw a lot via social media and I also have read (and loved) Poston’s YA, plus it came in from the library several weeks ago so it was already on my TBR pile.

Just like Elizabeth Zott in Lessons in Chemistry, Florence Day is a main character I’ll remember. Her voice is unmatchable. With its mix of magical realism and new adult humor, it combines nicely with the sexy romance and Day’s day job as a ghostwriter of romance novels who does not believe that love wins anymore. As a book nerd, Day’s day job makes our word-loving hearts sing. In addition, I’m a cemetery walker who is curious about death, so Day’s family’s ownership of a funeral home and her unique upbringing is My Girl meets The Lovely Bones and would be something a Colleen Hoover reader should check out. The two twists in the last third of the book make it all the more indulgent and creative.

Now, onto a year filled with books in all their iterations with plenty of tea on the side.

 
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Posted by on January 1, 2023 in Adult, Authors, Fiction

 

Top 10 of 2022: Young adult books edition

29 Dec

And rounding out the last four posts is my young adult top 10 because that’s who I spend the most amount of time reading and recommending for as a high school librarian. I’ve had the best time reviewing all of my reading this year to be able to pick out the top 10 of each target audience and from conferences to reader’s advisory, telling people to READ THESE BOOKS. So here they are!

I get chills just thinking about my reading memories with these titles which run the gamut of graphic to nonfiction, memoir and historical fiction with some of the best darn authors out there. I think in each one of these books there were lines and pages that I Post-it’ed to go back and reread and experiences that made me into a better human being. Plus, the best kinds of books lead you to other discoveries and I can say that each one of them led me to at least one other book or Google search.

Cheers to the book memories of 2022 and the new ones I’ll make in 2023!

 
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Posted by on December 29, 2022 in Authors, Cover Love, Fiction, Graphic novels, Nonfiction, Verse, Young Adult

 

Top 10 of 2022: Middle grade edition

28 Dec

Middle grade needs it’s own category this year because I spent an inordinate amount of time reading the excellent selections of middle grade titles this year. It was a banner year for sure. Today I celebrate middle grade and tomorrow I’ll round out my four posts with the best of young adult.

When I look back at this titles as graphic novels, verse, manga, fiction, and nonfiction, I can’t help but celebrate the range, depth, and breadth of creativity and sensitivity for an age of transition. I should know since I have two thirteen year old boys myself. The message of perseverance; the power of individuality; the adventure; the need to remember the past and explore the future– it’s all here in these titles. If you’ve missed any one of these, you MUST pick it up.

 
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Posted by on December 28, 2022 in Authors, Cover Love, Fiction, Graphic novels, Illustrators, Middle grade, Nonfiction, Verse

 
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