Bookish Thoughts

The sixth book in The Craft Sequence returns to Kai, adding a nice level of symmetry to the series, even if this book is setting on a new era. We now have two books about Tara in Alt Coloumb, two about Caleb Altemoc and his father in Dresedial Lex, and now two about Kai and Izza and the Blue Lady from Kavekana, though this book doesn't take place in Kavekana. Ruin of Angels  sees Kai and Izza travel to Agdel Lex, a new city that the Iskari imposed on the ruins of Alikand after the God Wars. But Alikand is still there, hidden beneath and behind and around the forced order of Agdel Lex. And beneath both of them is the dead city, where the wars are still going on, frozen in a single moment. This is a book about dualities. About the many faces a single person takes on in different situations. About the many different places a single city can be. About history seen from multiple points of view. It's about a pair of sisters who don't entirely know how to relate to each other...

I finally got my hands on the second and third volumes in John Lewis' graphic memoir, March , so I had to go back and re-read the first one. The memoir as a whole is about Lewis' experiences in the Civil Rights movement, and the first volume is specifically about how he came to be involved with it and his participation in the lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville, Tennessee. It goes in depth with the training Lewis and his fellow students received before the sit-ins, which was quite extensive. And it also shows a lot of the hatred and violence they faced, including attempts on their lives. The story as a whole is told through flashbacks, both John Lewis' memory and the stories he tells a couple of young constituents who come by his office in the Capital. In the present, this is all happening on the day that Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States. The frame provides a nice counter-balance to the story, showing how far we've come and how ...

I love advice columns. There are a lot of reasons. Good, practical, applicable advice is certainly part of it. I like having concrete tactics and actions to fall back on in difficult situations. But there's also a weird combination of solidarity and smugness. I like reading about some problems and knowing that I'm not alone. I like reading about other problems and feeling better about my own life. At least I'm not as stupid as some people out there. I think it all comes down to that human connection, conveniently packaged into bite-sized articles. When I'm dealing with a tricky problem - practical or emotional - one of my go-to problem solving methods is to write a letter to an advice columnist. I never send these letters. But the act of writing the letter is beneficial. What's the most succinct way to describe the problem? What information is relevant and what really isn't? What sort of answer am I looking for? A big part of the process is deciding who I want...

I gotta say, I'm actually glad that I wasn't completely in love with this book. I started adding romance novels to my regular rotation earlier this year. I've loved them so much that I was starting to worry that I wasn't being objective about it. (Then again, who really wants to be objective about romance novels? The point is to love them whole-heartedly.) But it turns out that I was just that good at doing my research. I did enjoy this story about a fake date that quickly becomes a whole lot more. Alexa and Drew are both driven, career-focused people who get completely caught off guard by their feelings for each other. Their meet-cute was adorable (and obviously in an elevator). Their friends were totally supportive. Their obstacles were a nice mix of internal (commitment issues) and external (living in different cities). It was a sweet book. But I really struggled with the pacing. Guillory tended to jump forward in time with no warning. The sex scenes were vague an...

If I know you in real life, there's a solid chance I'm buying you this book for Christmas. It's got elements of Contact , Hidden Figures , and The Right Stuff , all wrapped up in a fantastic story that had me crying in all the best ways. The story opens in 1951, with a meteorite landing on Washington D.C. and taking out most of the eastern seaboard. When it's realized that this is likely an extinction event - an extended winter followed by rising temperatures that will eventually make the planet uninhabitable - the space race kicks into high gear. But in this timeline, it's not about being the first to set foot on the moon. It's about figuring out how to establish colonies on the moon and possibly Mars so that humanity keeps going. At the center of all of this is Elma York, a brilliant mathematician and pilot who wants nothing more than to be an astronaut. But this is still America in the 1950s, and despite the stated goal of establishing a colony on the moo...

Well I'm pretty much committed to Seanan McGuire's Incryptid  series at this point. The next two books are already sitting on my shelf waiting to be read. And after that there are only two more that currently exist. (Though I expect there will be at least one more by the time I catch up. McGuire is remarkably good at keeping to her one-book-a-year schedule. Even more impressive that she's maintaining it for at least three series while also writing other stuff. Seriously, she's been publishing books for less than a decade and she's got somewhere in the neighborhood for 50 books and novellas. And then there are the short stories.) To get back to the point, this series is great fun, and I'm enjoying it. Even if I didn't enjoy this book quite as much as the last two. But that really just comes down to the fact that I fell head over heels in love with Verity and I merely like her brother, who narrates this and the next book. (But then it's back to Verity, a...

This is the fourth time I've read The Night Circus  and I still love it just as much as the first time. It is so lush and romantic. The descriptions are absolutely perfect. Precise enough to transport me to the circus and vague enough to make me feel like there's still so much to discover. The romance breaks and heals my heart every time. Tsukiko keeps on getting better and Chandresh gets more tragic and Alexander gets more sinister. I've started fantasizing about trying to recreate the circus in my backyard someday. Maybe I can convince my kid to do it as a themed birthday party. Maybe I'll do it as my own themed-party. And give out copies of the book as party favors. I have ideas for the tents that don't require actual magic but would seem magical. I just want this book to be real. Every time I read it I want it to last forever. And then I end up staying up too late to finish it anyway. The good news is that I can always pick it up and read it again.

The Halloween Tree  was one of my favorite movies as a kid. The VHS tape was bright orange, and we rented it so often that my parents eventually bought it from the rental store. My mom probably picked it up because Leonard Nimoy is the main voice actor. And even though Ray Bradbury himself narrates it, it took me decades to realize that the movie was based on a book. The book follows a group of friends who get side-tracked from trick-or-treating when their friend falls ill. They end up chasing him through time, learning about the origins of Halloween as they hope to catch up with him and save his life. This book is definitely a product of it's time. They made some significant changes to the movie, which were all for the better. But it's still a fun romp through history, as the kids learn about this celebration of death which is really a celebration of life. A way to make our fears smaller so we can deal with them. The book was short enough that I might end up reading it a...

Reading the first page of this book was live diving into a pile of pillows. This is a cozy little story about a baker who enjoys a simple life with her family in the wake of a supernatural war that decimated the human population. She just wants to make cinnamon rolls and read trashy novels. And then she gets kidnapped by vampires and finds herself in way over her head. I loved it when I read it two years ago, and re-reading it was a bit like coming home. The narrator and main character, Rae "Sunshine" Seddon, babbles. She goes off on tangents and loses herself down rabbit holes. The story gets a bit circuitous, as she occasionally backs up to explain this or that detail. And I could see people getting frustrated with her. But I honestly love it, and I think McKinley pulls off the chatterbox character superbly. It adds a level of cozy intimacy to the book, like you're hanging out with a mug of tea while your best friend tells you about the crazy weekend she just had. P...

Red as Blood  answers the burning question: What if the Disney Princesses were all Satanists? That's probably not fair. Especially since this book was written before Disney Princesses became a thing. But it retells a bunch of fairy-tales and twists them around so that the good guys become bad guys, and the bad guys become misunderstood underdogs. Mostly by making the princesses worship Satan. Like most short story collections, this was a bit of a mixed bag. There were a couple that I really liked. Anyone who makes Snow White a vampire has my heart forever. And the Beauty and the Beast tale was fun, even if it didn't seem like it belonged in the book. It's a science-fiction romp about falling in love with an alien, rather than a more traditional creepy fairy tale. But it was fun. Some of them never quite came together. The Sleeping Beauty story was so ambiguous that I was just confused. And the Red Riding Hood tale, which admittedly had a great idea (Grandma is a werew...

This book is almost too bright. Which is maybe an odd way to describe a book. It's so bright that it gives me a headache, the kind I got when I was in Alaska in June and the sun was always in my eyes. Which, again, is an odd way to describe a book that I love deeply. But it's true. The first time I read it, I had a stomach bug, so I figured that was why I felt a little off. This time through I felt fine, and I still got a headache, right at the exact same spot. This book glitters and shimmers, and it's sometimes hard to look at. But it's even harder to look away. So. Headache. My second time through this book, I got a chance to marvel at how French constructed her mystery. I was actually surprised to realize that she tells you who the author is right on the third page. Then again, much like The Secret History , this mystery is more about why than who. What did Lexie do that fractured the group? I love books that hold up well on a re-read, and I think it can be espec...

This was not my favorite work of Bradbury's. A lot of the stories in this collection fell flat or just missed their mark, and I was more eager for them to be over than I was to actually read them. I was most disappointed by "The Small Assassin". The idea of a newborn baby actively trying to kill it's parents has a lot of potential, but the execution wasn't quite there. I was on board for the mom being increasingly unnerved by her son and the dad not really taking it seriously. The beginning was nice and creepy. But a lot of the story also had me wondering if Bradbury ever had kids. Turns out he did, and the disconnect may have just been due to different times and cultures. I wanted to connect with this story, and it never quite happened. There were a couple of stories that I did enjoy, particularly the one about the man with wings who has given up flying until his kids turn him into a kite (in a cute way). He also makes an appearance in a different story, abou...

Much like the other books in this series, Patternmaster  left me wanting more.  Butler has a lot of ideas that she just sort of hints at rather than expanding fully. And a lot of characters that could be interesting if they were ever developed beyond what was necessary for the plot. Teray was the only character I felt like I got to know properly. Even Coransee, the main antagonist, remained mostly a mystery. This was compounded by the plot that moved at the speed of light. Nothing ever got a chance to breathe before the next thing happened and relationships developed so quickly that I had a hard time believing they were real. I definitely prefer character-driven fiction to plot-driven. If I don't believe in the characters then I'm just never going to care about the story. And that's been my problem with this series. If we're going to be dealing with difficult moral choices, then I need people to be making those choices, not 2-dimensional archetypes.

House of Leaves  is about a haunted house. Or rather, it's about the documentary that was made about that haunted house (made by Will Navidson and his friends and family). Though it's actually an academic treatise on that documentary (which may or may not exist), written by Zampano. And it also has the notes of Johnny Truant, who assembled Zampano's notes and writings into an actual book. And then there are the unnamed editors who occasionally provide a translation that Truant couldn't find or otherwise clarify something. It's a layered book. And it keeps jumping between the stories, some of which exist only in the footnotes or appendices. The text itself plays on the confusion, by playing with font and layout. Though actually what looks like a dense, confusing book ends up being surprisingly easy to read. The book teaches you to read it as you go, so that by the time you're digging a mirror out of your purse to read a section on the metro you barely even noti...

This book was rough to read. And it's rough to revisit now and talk about. Which is probably why I've been putting this off for so long. Like Fire and Fury , this book dives deep into the Trump administration. Woodward interviewed countless people to get a sense of everything that's going on in the White House. Unlike that book, Woodward tries hard to remain neutral. More facts and less salacious gossip-mongering. Of course, with this administration, things still get horrific and I had to pick my jaw up off the floor a number of times. I think I'm glad I read it. If nothing else it's good to be reminded of the myriad things I should be paying attention to but that keep slipping off the radar. As I saw someone say on the internet today "this is less a 24-hour news cycle and more like that episode of Battlestar Gallactica where the cylons keep showing up every 33 minutes". Fatigue sets in, and it's hard to keep all the details straight. Recaps like t...