Anaheim Reads

Spent last week traveling for work again and finished three books, so here's a summary!

Make My Wish Come True (by Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick) 

I waited until December to read this, a sapphic romcom in two alternating points of view by the authors of She Gets the Girl, which I really enjoyed. Like this one, more new adult than young adult vibe.  This is a classic Hallmark movie vibe - city girl who has made it big in Los Angeles comes back to the small town and has a fake relationship with the girl she left behind. Charming characters, delightful writing, excellent chemistry - very cute.

Liars (by by Sarah Manguso) 

A Tournament of Books entry abut an extremely toxic marriage. I had to read this in what I called "rage-snippets" because it's about a man who is such a classic tool of the patriarchy (and the woman who stays with him) that I found it enraging to read.  I gather it's somewhat autobiographical, which is why this man has no redeeming qualities, but watching a woman throw away years and have a baby with a man who is awful in every way doesn't make for a fun read.  Anyway, I snippeted my way towards the end. The patriarchy is garbage.

The Last Love Song (by Kalie Holford) 

Another young adult (see, I needed a palate cleanser after my rage-snippets) and it requires a whole lot of suspension of disbelief.  The main character is from a small town, her mother was a famous country star who died young, and she gets sent on a scavenger hunt around the town (by her deceased mom) at her graduation day.  Why wouldn't her grandparents ever even mention how her mother died? (It's not even some dramatic reason.) If her mom's so famous, why wouldn't she just check Wikipedia? The town is dedicated to her mom yet nobody who knew her as a person has ever had a single conversation with her only child? And the fight that gets in the way of the romance at 80% just makes the love interest look like an asshole. (Yes, Mia isn't very brave or bold. But you allegedly are in love with her and she clearly never has been. Also Mia is so emotional about her dead mother's letter she has literally just vomited. And this is the time to have a fight and break up? It's too contrived to believe that anyone would actually behave this way.)  Anyway, I liked the song lyrics and I liked the characters, I just needed a bit more believability.

Service Model (by Adrian Tchaikovsky)

Justice for Annie Bot! This was a fun read (also about a sentient - or is he? - robot) but not nearly as thought provoking as Annie Bot. But this is the one that made the Longlist so here we are. And it was good, just not as good, to me.

Even so, I already had this checked out because I was interested in it beforehand. It's about a robot valet who murders his master (for a reason unknown even to him) and goes on a journey of self-discovery as a result. I particularly enjoyed the ways in which each part was a homage to a classic author - to copy the cheat sheet from Goodreads: Part I KR15-T: Agatha Christie, Part II K4fk-R: Franz Kafka, Part III 4w-L: George Orwell, Part IV 80rh-5: Jorge Luis Borges, Part V D4nt-A: Dante Alighieri). 

The Christie and Kafka sections were my favorites but the whole thing is very well done. Our protagonist, Charles (or Uncharles) is a naive narrator and he encounters his Virgil, a fellow robot (or is she?) named The Wonk.  If you're interested in speculative fiction and you wish Ishiguro had written a combination of Klara and the Sun and The Remains of the Day, this is the novel for you!

Orbital (by Samantha Harvey)

This novella won the Booker Prize this year, and is basically a short meditation on earth from the perspective of six astronauts and cosmonauts on a space station.

I tend to zone out on descriptions of scenery, as you may remember, and this is basically all descriptions of scenery. (Yes there are characters, there is slight tension about a typhoon in the Philippines, but basically it's just descriptions of scenery.)  True, the scenery is the entire earth and it's being viewed from space so it's at least more interesting than average! Still, I found this boring. 

I chose this one off the longlist first because it won the Booker and because it was short but I actually took a break and read a second book in the middle of it because IT IS BORING.  I'm sure there are people who loved the prose and the perspective of Humanity in the Vastness of Space and the Care we should Have for our Planet, Mother Earth and blah blah.  But I'd rather watch a video taken from the space station and meditate on it all myself.

The Husbands (by Holly Gramazio)

It's here! It's here! The Tournament of Books longlist is out.  I've only read two books on it - Margo's Got Money Troubles and James.  But I did have a handful of books on hold and even a few checked out already, so I started with the ones that were almost about to expire.

The Husbands is a fun read about a woman whose attic magically produces a series of husbands, parallel universe style, and our main character sees how her life changes depending on who she's married to.  It doesn't feel particularly like literary fiction, or particularly worth deep discussion, but as a book, I really enjoyed it! Fun and entertaining, and unlike some of the Goodreads contingent, I thought the ending was interesting.

I'm bad at predicting what's going to make the shortlist but I will say I'm shocked The Husbands made the longlist but Annie Bot, which has a lot more depth, did not.  Again, its not bad, it's very entertaining! But more lightweight than I have come to expect from ToB.  Still, glad for the nudge to read it. 

On to the next one!

Airport Feminist Book Club

These are the four books I finished on a work trip to Austin last week; the theme of patriarchy was front and center in three of them.  The first two I finished had pink covers and I wanted to do a whole theme but I gave that up after looking at my library holds and realizing I didn't have any more pink books. Would have been cute in a pointless way though.  

Annie Bot (by Sierra Greer)

Contender for favorite book of the year (which I thought James had locked up).  Onstensibly about a sex robot who is sentient, but actually an exploration of the subtleties of personhood and emotional abuse.  Skin crawling and fascinating and unpredictable... I loved everything about it and re-read the ending like four times.

Plan A (by Deb Caletti)

About a girl who has to travel from Texas to Oregon to get an abortion. The way her pregnancy is discovered by the community is incredibly contrived and the writing takes some getting used to - a bit stream-of-consciousness and discursive. But once I adjusted to the writing and decided to suspend disbelief, I enjoyed it. (While, obviously, being enraged because women should have basic fucking body autonomy.)  It's a bit didactic but it's young adult and this particular kind of didacticism is badly needed even though it SHOULDN'T BE but here we are. 

This Time It’s Real (by Ann Liang)

This was an adorable YA palate cleanser about a girl living in China who has a fake relationship with a film star in her class. It's very cute and well-written with great chemistry.  I hoped it would be good because Ann Liang's I Hope This Doesn't Find You was also very good. Great to discover a new, extremely solid young adult writer!

The Secrets We Keep (by Cassie Gustafson)

Also a YA but this time about a girl whose father is arrested for abusing her friend, and the secrets she may have been keeping for him. Absolutely moving, utterly heartbreaking.  Weirdly has a similar ending to Annie Bot as both characters undergo a sort of liberation.  I also re-read this ending like four times for the same reason. And god I loved the fairy tales interspersed throughout too! A couple of moments when the inner voice doesn't quite work, but for the most part, great.

One by One (by Ruth Ware)

I wanted to find a thriller to read on Halloween and this one was recommended on a list of books with good twists, I've enjoyed Ruth Ware before, and it was available from the library.

Do not bother! It's a take on And Then There Were None, where a group of tech workers and a couple of workers get snowed in by an avalanche, and people begin to die. But the mystery is structured so poorly. They reveal the murderer two thirds of the way through the book (and it's obvious) so I kept reading thinking surely now will come the twist!

There's no twist. It's just boring all the way to the end. Most of the characters aren't even trapped, they leave the chalet! So we're left with two people, and of course you can guess what that means if you've read any murder mysteries at all.  

As the kids say, or probably stopped saying already, it's very mid.

Alaska Books

I spent a week in a cabin in Alaska; due to weather and flight delays, I also spent a whole lot of time holed up in the cabin and in airports and on planes. As a result, I finished a whopping nine books, so this might be a long post! This covers many of my favorite genres: litfic, young adult, speculative fiction, and Japanese mystery.

Asking for a Friend (by Kara H. L. Chen)

Cute YA about Taiwanese-American kids with complicated families who enter a business competition. In fact, the first of two books on this list about second-generation Asian kids! I enjoyed the depiction of Taiwanese culture and as a second-generation kid of immigrants (though not Asian immigrants) a lot of relatability in this one. Cute but not amazing.

Inspector Imanishi Investigates (by Seicho Matsumoto) 

I believe this was a new author for me that I got from a recommendation on Reddit.  Slow-paced, lots of minutia which I normally love, but but not enough balance in the other direction, and not enough excitement in the mystery. It's like "here is every detail about a very slow paced investigation, and the killer is the exact person you most medium suspect, and you'll discover that very slowly." Not a must.

True Love and Other Impossible Odds (by Christina Li) 

This was the one that made me cry.  It has lot in common with the first book on this list, as it also deals with the pressure of being the child of Asian immigrants. Bu it's a little more mature (the characters are college freshman), the romance is a Sapphic one (always a plus), and in general it was more affecting (I cried). Of all the YA books (or early adult in this case) on this list, this was by far my favorite.

James (by Percival Everett) 

I've been meaning to read this one since the summer, as it was selected for Camp ToB and is by one of my favorite authors. It's a high concept novel (a loose retelling of Huck Finn from Jim's perspective) and it's by Percival Everett, so of course it's a masterpiece. This will definitely make my end of year best books list and probably be in the 2025 tournament.  It's wonderful.

In the Orbit of You (by Ashley Schumacher) 

Another YA, with good chemistry and a nicely complex love story but an unsatisfying ending that didn't quite ring true. As an aside, I knew the Goodreads crowd would dislike this one because they get very mad when anyone is emotionally (or god forbid physically) cheating in a YA novel, but I cannot be the only teenager with the messiest love life. (A sample of my high school days: I cheated on my first boyfriend by kissing a hot guitar player at a party, he responded by bringing me flowers and forgiving me, which didn't make sense until I catfished him for fun only to discover he'd been having sex with his male best friend for years. We stayed together until I successfully convinced him he was gay. We've been best friends for over 30 years. That's high school for you!)  

Margo Has Money Troubles (by Rufi Thorpe)

I decided based on reading her ToB judgment last year that I had to read something by Rufi Thorpe and indeed, this novel is exactly as smart, fresh, quirky and funny as I expected. 

The Half-Life of Love (by Brianna Bourne) 

This was both speculative fiction and YA; the concept is that you get a twinge when your life is halfway over.  A lot of suspension of disbelief was required because they are scientifically investigating it as if it's some chemical thing but also apparently you're immortal before this happens? Like, what happens if you blow your brains out with a pistol? But it's a love story between a researcher who lost her baby sister and a teenage boy who's about to die.  I didn't love how the ending played out (not in terms of what happens, but in terms of how Finch doesn't get agency over his planned death) but it was an interesting high concept, and I liked September as a character and just generally pondering how we live our lives and what's important. Also I was on a bucket list trip (to see the Northern Lights) so led to some interesting contemplation about the purposes of a bucket list and why this trip was important to me.

True Letters from a Fictional Life (by Kenneth Logan)

I wasn't sure if the characters fell flat for me because I was tired from travel at this point, but my thoughts were echoed on Goodreads and the more I thought about it, the more flat it fell. It's about a sporty kid who's figuring out he's gay but I had a lot of problems with it: there's a lot of homophobic and transphobic stuff that is never challenged or addressed. It doesn't feel like in 21st century Vermont of all places there would be this many people using the f-slur, punching gay kids, assuming gay people are pedophiles, or panicking about gay people getting AIDS. Like the widespread regressive attitudes don't ring true. The romance is absolutely tepid. And I couldn't really visualize any of the characters so they all fell flat. A big miss for me.

Salvation of a Saint (by by Keigo Higashino) 

Last but not least, from the author of The Devotion of Suspect X, another Howdunit.  There was one part of the Howdunit that I figured out very early on; the other part was ingenious and I didn't. I loved the character of the female junior detective.  I loved the entire plotline and the unraveling of the mystery. Goes into my top tier of Japanese mysteries for sure, and a great note to end my vacation reading marathon on!

Two Ya Don'ts

I read two YA books last week and just realized that they both start with the word Don't. So here we are. It's a theme now!

Don’t Let It Break Your Heart (by Maggie Horne) 

This is about a lesbian who has come out but is still facing microaggressions from former friends and is enmeshed in a deeply codependent way with her ex-boyfriend, also her lifelong best friend.  A new girl comes to school that both she and the ex are immediately attracted to, and complications ensue. They definitely act like messy teenagers but in a relatable way.  I liked that the focus was less on the romance and more on our main character, Alana, determining what it means to be an out lesbian and what does (and doesn't) have to change in her life. Really good!

Don’t Be a Drag (by by Skye Quinlan) 

This is about a girl with anxiety and depression who goes to spend her summer with her drag queen brother and enters a drag king competition. This worked less well for me - the characters seem to change personalities between chapters, there are some time jumps where we are told about an incident rather than shown, and the romance doesn't really work that well, although I did like the ending and what the author is attempting. There are a lot of references to fanfic which is the hallmark of a fic writer going mainstream, and it does indeed read on the level of good fanfic.   (That said, in the first chapter the author is in a first class pod on an airline later revealed to be Southwest, an airline with no first class at all. So maybe it's an editor problem...)

Close to Death (by Anthony Horowitz)

The fifth book in Horowitz's metafictional Hawthorne mystery series; in this one, he writes about a Hawthorne cold case, Agatha Christie style, and also about the experience of trying to write about the cold case when Hawthorne won't tell him the ending. (Although it's just a google search away...)

I love a Christie-style mystery (Horowitz always fools me), and a postmodernist twist. I love that Horowitz has no problem making his fictional self so annoying. And the central mystery is very satisfying, in that it makes perfect sense but also I never saw it coming. 

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think (by Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling)

My final book of the Read Harder Challenge! (And I just realized I haven't updated my post all year, so I'll get on that.) The category was "a book about media literacy."

This is a book I wouldn't have read without the RHC and it's really great. Some of the data is outdated - usually it's even better than presented - but the 10 tips on interpreting the world around you are evergreen.  Rosling was a Swedish researcher and in this book he presented 10 instincts that we use for interpreting human behavior. 

The very first one, the gap instinct, was a good reminder during election season when things are very "us vs. them" and we envision the country as two polarized groups instead of a spectrum of people when it is, in fact, a spectrum. (Also, registering college voters in person this year was similarly enlightening.)  

Highly recommend this as a very digestible read that will help you interpret the world more clearly, and more hopefully.

The Pairing (by Casey McQuiston)

This is the book equivalent of the TV show Smash: not objectively good, but very entertaining to hate-read. My favorite part was actually reading the 1- and 2-star reviews on Goodreads afterwards to help nail down all the things I hated, and here are some choice quotes that add up to a review:

It just came across as two obnoxious Americans being obnoxious on a European food and wine tour.

Theo is a nepo-baby who just can't stand the privilege afforded to them by having rich, famous parents. Kit is a French-born, half-American pastry chef who seems to assume he knows what others are thinking instead of asking. Neither of them knows how to communicate.

All [Kit] did was endlessly wax poetic about cream or a painting of a leaf, or go on and on about how amazing Theo is right after we've had 200 pages of evidence that Theo is not in fact amazing. Do you know how dire it has to be for me to dislike a fruity, hopeless romantic poet man? Very, very dire.  

If they had just talked about their feelings once, the book would have been 75% shorter. 

Theo feels like the perfect character to have a lot of growth throughout the book because of how insufferable they are, but when they reach their peak shittiness the pov just switches to Kit for the rest of the book.

We also get to know relatively early that they’re still in love with each other, which sets the stakes in the book so low it makes you indifferent to everything they’re doing. Of course, they decide that the only way to deal with their mutual pining is to make a sex bet instead of, I don’t know, talking to each other.

Most of [the side characters] were reduced to sexy stereotypes for the main characters to bang. Maybe I want to know what Santiago the chocolatero is like as a person and not what it's like to lick his ass crack, but hey, that's just me. 

Yes, they are sexually compatible, but it seems like they are also sexually compatible with half of Europe... It feels like a book that Gwyneth Paltrow would write if she was nonbinary and taking a food tour across Europe. 

Way too many French people

 

The Devil's Flute Murders (by Seishi Yokomizo)

Another Japanese murder mystery! This time I had a really hard time keeping all the characters straight in my mind. I went to Goodreads and I wasn't alone - the cast of characters is large and not always rendered distinctively, and there are a lot of names starting with the same letter.  This is par for the course with murder mysteries but didn't gel for me here.

I also found the pace slow, the translation of the "accents" to be very odd. I enjoyed the reveal at the end even if I didn't fully follow everything (due in part, again, to a huge cast of characters and more being introduced as we go...) For the first time in reading a Japanese murder mystery, I found myself wishing for a western adaptation! The plot is good, but the execution wasn't great.

Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange (by Tess Taylor)

Last year, I read the wonderful Rift Zone, a book of poems by Tess Taylor that met the "an author local to you" requirement. This year, Ian alerted me that Tess was doing a reading at our local library, and I'd enjoyed her book so much I bought another one, Last West, and then we went to see her read it.  So this qualified as "Read a book by an author with an upcoming event (virtual or in person) and then attend the event."

Last West is a book of poems written to accompany a Dorothea Lange exhibit at the Met.  Tess Taylor talked about how she read Lange's notebooks when she was documenting the lives of migrants in the American West, and did a road trip herself, following the same path. The poems are a collage of Tess's words and Dorothea's.

I loved the reading but as a standalone, the book of poetry is mixed (as books of poetry so often are). Some parts of it worked better for me than others - the choppiness of the pastiche/found poetry approach didn't always give me enough to grab onto - and on the whole I'd recommend Rift Zone more. Still, I'm excited that I have a signed copy now and definitely will be excited to read whatever she releases next.

Another First Chance (by Robbie Couch)

You know I'm always going to run, not walk, to any queer RA speculative fiction. (As long as it's not fantasy.  It's a fine line.)

This one has a kid grieving the death of his best friend sign up for a mysterious weeklong experiment called the Affinity Trials. How he gets recruited into them is somewhat convoluted but then we watch the Trials happening, we watch him make new friends and wonder what the researchers running the trials are truly hiding and what their real agenda is. 

(When you find out the answer, you too may find the experiment design somewhat nonsensical.) This book had a slow start and setup, but I powered through (read this while getting my hair done for five hours) and enjoyed the reveal and the ending.  Wasn't at the level of More Happy Than Not, but still enjoyable.

Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers (by Deborah Heiligman)

This book won a whole bunch of awards, so feel free to take this review with a grain of salt. (Or a grain of sand, like the one we saw through a microscope at the Van Gogh museum because Van Gogh painted one of his canvasses at the beach and it was windy that day.) 

The RHC category was "a YA nonfiction book" and that's probably why this didn't work for me. Although the content was good, and I learned a lot about the Van Gogh brothers, the writing style was super choppy, a bit juvenile and simplistic, and not particularly engaging.  I would much rather have read a biography written for adults, but that wasn't the task. 

I do love that she gave Jo her due though; it was not only Theo but Theo's wife Jo that ensured Vincent's art lived on after both brothers were gone.

Rock Paper Scissors (by Alice Feeney)

My book of choice for the long weekend was Rock Paper Scissors, which I'd had recommended as a good thriller with an unreliable narrator. I tried not to learn any more about it than that, but it kept popping up in my library holds and it felt like a vacation weekend was a good time to dig in.

It does have a really good twist, but then piles some more twists on top of that twist to the point where it gets kind of ridiculous. Definitely an ending that benefits from not thinking about too hard. But nonetheless, a really entertaining and page-turning poolside read.

Leslie F*cking Jones (by Leslie Jones)

Okay, this is a book that is wildly different in audio vs. print. It's a short book that turns into a 19-hour audiobook because Leslie Jones riffs, expands on her stories, curses a lot, ad libs, and improvs her way through it. She laughs her ass off and also cries when recounting difficult moments of her life. It's completely authentic - she tells stories that include her stealing stuff during the L.A. riots, dealing with debilitating hemorrhoids, and regularly getting high with Kenan Thompson, among other things.

You have to be a fan of Leslie Jones and her style of comedy, but if you are, you can trust and believe (a Leslie-ism you will hear a lot) that this audiobook is an experience. (Also there are multiple shoutouts to John Ritter's comedy skills and so of course I love her even more.)

The Worst Perfect Moment (by Shivaun Plozza)

This was for the RHC task "recommended by a librarian" and it is queer YA! With an amazing supernatural concept about a girl who dies and goes to her happiest moment, only it's inside of a horrible memory in a rundown motel. Seems tailor-made for me, am I right?

Unfortunately I had a lot of issues with it.  The banter is mostly the main character and the angel who designed her heaven calling each other "dick cheese" and "butt face" a lot. Just not clever or cute, honestly. It's also a really frustratingly dumb concept of heaven, which I guess gets figured out by the end but not in a brilliant, The Good Place type of way. The romantic chemistry is minimal. The entire story of our MC's life (and those she leaves behind) is depressing as hell.   

I would have quit this one, I think, if not for the challenge. I have three other librarian recommendations in my library queue so I may read more of them, we shall see! Sorry this was a miss for me.

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (by Satoshi Yagisawa)

Read for the"read a book about books" Read Harder category and also recommended by a librarian (although I don't double dip, so the librarian category will be another book). 

As you might have guessed, this is a Japanese novel about a young woman who is a bit adrift in life and goes to live in her uncle's bookshop, the Morisaki bookshop in a famous bookshop area of Tokyo. As with so many Japanese novels, it's restrained and thoughtful and moody and cozy.  And I enjoyed it!

How to Excavate A Heart (by Jake Maia Arlow)

What's this? More queer YA? Why, I never.

Starting with the minor negatives - I found the main character frustrating from the start, but when I got to the conflict at 80% (with percentages on my Kindle app I can assure you there's always a conflict at 80%) it was the worst example of the miscommunication trope ever and I had to put the book down for a while.  (It turned out her reaction had a good reason, which in hindsight was obvious, and I did forgive her very quickly.)  She does have a good growth arc but you'll know pretty quickly when starting the book if you're okay with a very flawed protagonist.

Another minor negative - this is billed as "enemies to lovers" because the characters meet when our MC's mother hits the love interest with her car. And then the love interest is really super mean and nasty for seemingly no reason except to call it "enemies to lovers." (Like why are you so hateful towards the passenger of the car?) It doesn't make sense for her character at all (or her character is just underdeveloped) so by the time you get to the end you look back and think ???? what was that about? 

But the writing is solid. It's legitimately funny without trying too hard. And the details are what really make it: the D.C. setting, the corgi and his little snow booties, the art of David Hockney, a local meteorologist who drinks out of a cup with a picture of himself on it, paleoicthyology, Beatrice and her haunted sex bed. So many delightful details made everything else forgiveable. 

Small Spaces (by Katherine Arden)

Middle grade is not my favorite genre and horror is hit and miss for me, so I really wasn't super exited about this Read Harder category, "read a middle grade horror novel."  But thanks to the recommendations on Goodreads, I decided to check out Small Spaces for this category, and I'm glad I did!

It's age-appropriately creepy (and definitely very creepy) with a wonderful sixth grader, Olivia, who is dealing with grieving the death of her mom and isolating herself emotionally.. until a school field trip goes wrong and the ghostly diary she's been reading seems like it might not just be a ghost story after all.

I read it in a few hours (it's middle grade) but really glad I did.  Another little nudge out of my comfort zone thanks to the RHC. 

Time and Time Again (by Chatham Greenfield)

A really fun time loop novel with a great central romance. Strong, organic representation of two disabled lesbians (one nonbinary) who get stuck in a time loop and, of course, complications ensue.

I loved our main character's arc over the course of the time loop, the main characters' communication skills, the diversity (including size diversity) that seemed purposeful and not shoehorned in, because the characters' diverse identities are actually explored.  Five stars! If I gave stars, which I don't. Man I should have been giving stars this whole time, huh?

Life on Mars (by Tracy K. Smith)

My 18th Read Harder Challenge book is a collection of poetry by a Black author and Pulitzer prize winner, Tracy K. Smith. The category: an indie published collection of poetry by a BIPOC or queer author.

Sadly I did not get the hype about this collection. A couple of lovely poems in here (I particularly enjoyed "The Universe Is A House Party") but not my favorite; poetry either gives you transcendent chills or it doesn't; this collection didn't hit for me.  It did make me want to read more poetry though - it's been a while since I picked up a Best American Poetry collection, and I used to get them every year! 

(What the hell, just pre-ordered this year's edition.) 

I Hope This Doesn’t Find You (by Ann Liang)

Another cute YA, although the premise of this one (Sadie's hate mails that she saves in email drafts accidentally get sent) is ridiculous. Nobody as careful as Sadie would write email drafts with the person's name in the "To:" field, it is absolutely so dumb. And how they get sent out makes no sense.

I stuck with it because I enjoyed Sadie (an extreme people-pleaser and high achiever) and was excited to see her growth over the course of the novel - and that was great, as was the chemistry with the love interest. They had cute banter but actually did hate each other so it's a good enemies-to-lovers slow burn. I never did get fully past the premise though!

Wish You Weren’t Here (by Erin Baldwin)

A sapphic YA debut from Erin Baldwin. Overall I enjoyed it - I thought the writing was really funny without trying too hard (the slightly off-brand Beauty and the Beast production was hilarious) and I enjoyed the camp setting and the chemistry between the leads. 

There are some missteps - slightly off characterization (I agree with some Goodreads reviewers that a dual POV would have potentially really helped) and some strangely resolved side plots, but overall it's a good debut and I will definitely read whatever Baldwin writes next!

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (by Isabel Wilkerson)

Book #17 in the Read Harder Challenge was The Warmth of Other Suns, and while I was reading it it also popped up as #2 on the best books of the 21st century, so that was very satisfying, (I've read 38 of those books, and thanks to Wilkerson, I've read the top 7. Very tempted to try and read all of the rest....)  

This is the story of the Great Migration of Black Americans to the North during Jim Crow, meticulously researched and very insightful.  It centers around three specific migrants (who settled in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago) but puts their lives in context of societal changes happening around them. I found context-switching between those three life stories a little challenging, honestly; I would have preferred a straight-up oral history covering dozens of people, not just three. But regardless, I learned a lot from reading this and really recommend it to all Americans for help understanding the forces that underpin race relations in America today. 

This was just not that long ago - Ida Mae, the migrant woman whose story is told and who began life as a sharecropper, ended up meeting Barack Obama when he was a community organizer in Chicago. This is a vibrant history that every American should know. Highly recommended.

Belize Books

I'm almost done with a sixth book, but here are the five books I finished while on my vacation to Belize:

Birding Under the Influence (by Dorian Anderson)

I avidly followed Dorian's blog about the Big Year he did on a bicycle. In this memoir, he tells the story of his journey while interspersed with the love story between him and his now-wife Sonia, and his problems with drinking and drugs and general addict behavior. I thought this memoir was terrific - well written, candid, structured well, and generally one of the better blog-to-book books I've ever read. Highly recommended if you're interested in reading about a Big Year!

Journey Under the Midnight Sun (by by Keigo Higashino) 

Another Japanese Mystery, and I think the third one I've read by Higashino. This one is pretty long (I would say overly long) and you figure out whodunit pretty early, but the whydunit and will-someone-ever-catch-them elements propel you to the end. Definitely a motive I should have, but did not, see coming, which made the ending hit hard. Not my favorite by him purely because of the overlength, but good nonetheless.

The Long Run (by James Acker)

Queer YA, you knew it was making it on this list somehow. I wasn't sure an athlete love story would be my jam as they've been hit or miss for me in the past, but this one has so much depth, the characters and their relationship are actually wonderful and lovely and I cried of course. Recommended!

Noah Frye Gets Crushed (by Maggie Horne)

This was, vis a vis the RHC, "a middle grade book with an LGBTQIA main character." Absolutely adorable, funny and charming. full of terrific characters, although I would have liked to see Jessa developed better. I'm actually not a middle grade fan (Baby-Sitters Club notwithstanding ) but this nails it. Horne has got a sapphic YA debut coming out next month, can't wait for that!

Annie LeBlanc Is Not Dead Yet (by Molly Morris) 

Love the premise - every 10 years, someone in this small town gets to come back from the dead - wrapped in a queer YA.  I enjoyed it enough to finish it to the end but was my least favorite of these - I found it to be overly quirkified and aggressively 90s (authors need to stop with this).  I was thrown off at the very beginning by the quirky names. The main characters, Wilson and Ryan, are both girls. Ryan's twin brother is Mark, which makes no sense whatsoever as a sibling set. Wilson calls her mother by her first name, Jody, and Jody's ex, a man, is named Cass.  Wilson is named after Wilson Phillips. I was so confused and also, like, why do all the names have to be quirky.  My biggest issue is that the romance didn't fully work and relationships felt inorganic.  I finished it, I guess, is the best I can say!

Check & Mate (by Ali Hazelwood)

More college-age than truly young adult (I've heard this called "new adult") and a good read about a chess rivalry. This is one I kept checking out and letting lapse because the cover is juvenile and just not appealing.  But the book is much more sophisticated than the cover would suggest.

Mallory is a chess prodigy who quit the sport after some unspecified trauma with her deceased father. She now takes care of her mother (who is chronically ill) and her two younger sisters by working under the table as a car mechanic.  Until she is drafted to play in a chess competition and beats the #1 player in the world, who is of course a hot chess prodigy.

I enjoyed: the dialogue, the relationship of the sisters, the bisexual and sex-positive representation. Less effective: I felt the "best friend" owed her an apology at the end and that never got resolved, and I can see how the ending might feel a bit unsatisfying.  But overall I enjoyed it.

Dungeons and Drama (by Kristy Boyce)

I have a little backlog of YA novels on my library checkout list that I'm trying to read through before they expire. This was a cute one about a theater nerd who starts working in her dad's game store and learns about the theatrical joys of D&D (she is a bard who sings showtunes to inspire her fellow players).  

This does lean on the fake dating trope but honestly it's handled pretty well! At first I wasn't sure about the characters but I ended up loving them. There were a few weird moments (DMs do accents all the time! No self-respecting theater fan would call Les Miz a perfect movie!) but this was squarely in my wheelhouse and I enjoyed it a lot.

Finally Fitz (by Marisa Kanter)

Just a queer YA that hits perfectly. Our main character is bisexual and an aspiring fashion designer and influencer in New York for the first time. She is dumped by her girlfriend and reconnects with an old friend from her youth. Fake relationship shenanigans ensue.

All that said, this doesn't really hit the cliche beats you'd expect, and I super appreciated that! There's a storyline about Fitz and her (much older) trio of sisters that is really beautiful, and I cried at the end because of All The Feels about Fitz, her relationships, her sisters, etc. etc.  Super well done and a home run for YA romcom fans.

A Pair of Mysteries

A friend and I got to talking about mysteries we like; we're both fans of Agatha Christie-style fair play mysteries and not so much modern thrillers.  I recommended some Japanese mysteries to him and he talked about some Golden Age writers I might enjoy, like Ellery Queen. So we exchanged recs.

The Greek Coffin Mystery (by Ellery Queen)

Like Agatha Christie, this has not aged well. Sexism, racism, some really awful ableism.  I also didn't much like the writing style. I kept reading because I wanted to give it a fair shake and hear the solution to the mystery, which is clever, and fooled me, which as you know I always enjoy.  But it's really hard to get past the writing, which is depressingly Of Its Time and like I said, not even that good. I think I'll move on from Queen (the nom de plume, by the way, of two cousins, who wrote these books) and try a different Golden Age writer next.

Malice (by Keigo Higashino)

Coincidentally, this popped up on my library holds list, by the author of The Devotion of Suspect X, which I enjoyed. Well Malice was even better! A Whydunit that manages to be so suspenseful, I finished it all in one day.  Now this one, I really recommend. Japanese mysteries are really a goldmine. I'm hoping my friend enjoys my rec, The Decagon House Murders, and if so, I'll tell him to read Malice next.

Act Your Age, Eve Brown (by Talia Hibbert)

Read for the category "a genre book (SFF, horror, mystery, romance) by a disabled author."  Hibbert has fibromyalgia. Also this is an #OwnVoices book for autism, as Hibbert is queer and autistic. 

I'm not a huge romance reader but I did enjoy this one, the third in Hibbert's series about the Brown sisters.  The immature Eve Brown is cut off from her trust fund by her parents and decides to go get a job, hits her interviewer with her car, and somehow is still hired? And they have instant chemistry, great communication, and frankly some really contrived conflict before living happily ever after.

If you're a fan of contemporary romance, it is cute and I recommend it.

Books Make Great Friends (by Jane Mount)

This seemed like a silly category, "a picture book published in the last five years." I can go to Barnes and Noble and leaf through a picture book in 5 minutes. But dutifully I did my research, and found out about this book, about a girl who loves to read.

It's beautifully and meticulously illustrated, with so many amazing books represented. I originally checked this out from the library and when I Couldn't zoom in to read all the titles, I ordered the hardcover so I could pore over every book. It had so many of my childhood favorites (Anne of Green Gables! Anastasia Krupnik!) and modern ones I love (Melissa! Planet Earth Is Blue!) And here's a picture of the adult bookshelf. It has some of my all-time favorites, most notably Cloud Atlas, Americanah, Crying in H Mart, and Circe. Jane Mount clearly has great taste, so I want to try and make out all the titles if I can and add them to my library list.

 

 

The story itself - about making friends when you are awkward and shy - is very sweet, and I think will resonate a lot with my child, even though she's "too old" (theoretically) for picture books.   I loved the experience of reading this, and thank you Read Harder Challenge for this lovely gift!

The Final Season (by Andrew Gillsmith)

This was the most difficult RHC category for me this year, and still not sure if I nailed it, but I read this for a book that went under the radar in 2023." The question of course is what radar? Whose radar? Recommendations in the Goodreads group included a bunch of novels from the Tournament of Books short and longlist. They do find a lot of relatively niche books, but they are by definition on the ToB radar, so they're on the radar, so then they don't count! 

Someone suggested looking for books with a small number of reviews and ratings, and I think a random rec list had this book on it. Not only is it low on reviews and ratings, it isn't carried by any of my libraries, so I bought it. And as a humorous sci-fi book, I would fully expect it to show up on The Big Idea series on Scalzi's Whatever blog, which definitely counts as "the radar" for sci-fi, but it hasn't. (Dear Andrew Gillsmith: Scalzi readers would be so into this, you should get on The Big Idea when you publish the next one in the series.) 

Anyway, the book itself! It's a Douglas Adams-style book about a reality series that's been watching a doomed planet for 10,000 years. The planet's apocalypse is about to happen, and the showrunner has the opportunity to save the planet's inhabitants. But will she? A fun, funny read and really I do think it would be a hit with fans of Agent to the Stars or Hitchhiker's Guide.