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.