Klara and the Sun (by Kazuo Ishiguro)

 I love Ishiguro. Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day are two of my absolute favorite novels, and Klara and the Sun is definitely of a piece with those two.  It’s about Klara, an AF (or Artificial Friend) and the family she goes to live with.

It treads semi-familiar territory: the question of whether robots can have emotions. The dramatic irony and unreliable narrator. The slow worldbuilding. The quietly heartbreaking ending. And Ishiguro is a master at all of the above.  It doesn’t quite achieve the heights of my two favorites, but it reaches pretty high. 

Solutions and Other Problems (by Allie Brosh)

I tagged this both "kindle" and "on paper" because I actually have this in hardcover, but it is too heavy to comfortably read so I mostly read it on my phone from the library.  

I also tagged this "humor" and would have added a "sad" tag if I had one. Allie Brosh wrote a hilarious first book, Hyperbole and a Half, based on her equally amazing blog, and then disappeared for about five years.  It turned out later her depression was worsening, her first marriage was ending, and her sister died by suicide. All of these things are addressed in Solutions and Other Problems and, like the title suggests, none of them are fully behind her. 

In some ways this is the perfect read for 2021. We've all been through a lot of shit, we all are struggling with the absurdity and meaninglessness of life.  This book has funny moments, for sure, but it's not a laugh-till-you-cry experience like Hyperbole and a Half. Instead, it's more complex than that. I wish Allie Brosh well, and hope she will be back with another installment long before the next five years are up.

Smash It! (by Francina Simone)

 A cute contemporary YA about a Black girl who decides she needs to come out of her shell. She makes a "Fuck It" list (I guess they couldn't name the book that) and starts crossing things off. Needless to say, she makes mistakes, her relationships change, and she learns valuable lessons about herself.

I almost gave up at the first page - one of the plotlines is that the school is doing a Hamilton-esque rap musical version of Othello, and the "songs" they put in are embarrassingly hokey.  This ends up being very brief though so I moved on. I loved Liv finding female friends and learning about sex positivity and female empowerment.  I loved the body positivity as well; she has a larger frame that her mother disapproves of, and she learns to own it by the end of the novel.

Goodreads is really mad about a few throwaway jokes; for example, Liv's friend Janice makes a tasteless joke about a Palestinian-Israeli character. I think they're really not making enough of a distinction between the author and the character: the character is written to be inappropriate and it seems pretty clear the joke is not okay! Some people refused to read or gave up reading at that point, which, I mean, seems extreme? There's also pearl clutching about the stereotypical depiction of a Hawaiian character (one of my favorite characters, honestly) and making Othello African instead of a Moor? I mean Alexander Hamilton wasn't Puerto Rican, either.  Anyway, don't bother with the Goodreads crowd this time around. They are really conflating the author with the narrator and the characters and that road never leads anywhere good.

Moving on, my favorite thing about the book is that the tertiary characters are really well drawn. They have strong motivations within themselves, complex lives and character arcs. It's really noteworthy considering how rare this is in YA. I actually didn't think the love story was that strong - I found some of the love interest's actions rather unforgiveable, but the messiness seemed earned. I dunno, I guess just overall, I liked it!

The Case of the Left-Handed Lady (by Nancy Springer)

This is kind of scary for a supposedly "middle grade" book! But checking off the "middle grade mystery" category anyway in the Read Harder Challenge. This is the second book in the Enola Holmes series, aka Sherlock Holmes fanfiction in which both he and Mycroft are wildly out of character, but whatever, it's just an excuse to write about the clever and independent Enola. I enjoyed it.

As I update my list I see I didn't finish a lot of books this month. I read parts of several Tournament books, including Deacon King Kong and Shuggy Bain, without finishing them. I made it through about three quarters of We Ride on Sticks before I got so irritated I gave up. (I wanted to like it as I love first person plural narration and my own beloved Gen X; it's just a bit too long and a bit too cutesy for me.) 

I did end up finishing all four of the Tournament of Books semifinalists, although I go back and forth on my favorite. (The Vanishing Half was my fourth-ranked, though I still enjoyed it; the others are simply more inventive.) My brain says Interior Chinatown and my heart says Piranesi.  But Breasts and Eggs is also my favorite! Augh! Anyway, great tournament, with some outstanding judgments, particularly this one.