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.

To Be Taught, if Fortunate (by Becky Chambers)

This book marks the halfway point in my Read Harder progress this year, a sci-fi novella. It's about a group of four astronauts who are exploring other planets in between rounds of "torpor" and being adapted for the next environment via enzyme patches, and is narrated by the engineer, Ariadne.

It's very creative about what kinds of other planets and life forms may exist, and I think hinges on a sort of "Choose Your Own Adventure" ending.  But ultimately I didn't really love the characters, could have done without all the bed-hopping, and wished for this to be better fleshed out as a story.  The ending could have hit better if it was better developed. Ultimately a meh for me.

I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents Up (by Naoko Kodama)

Read for the "manga" category in the RHC.  It's a short manga about a girl who marries her best friend "to shut her parents up" and then ends up developing romantic feelings for her.

There are a lot of flashbacks, which made this choppy and confusing to read. (This may partly be because I'm not used to reading manga, but I had no issues with My Brother's Husband.)  There is some weird sexual harassment going on, flashbacks that don't pay off, a weird focus on the main character's giant boobs?

I mean, it's cute - the grumpy/sunshine dynamic is there and this could have been adorable. But it lacked pacing and depth, for me.

Ellie Haycock Is Totally Normal (by Gretchen Schreiber)

I thought this was a RHC book (a book by an author with a disability) but it didn't qualify (I was supposed to read a genre book by an author with a disability) but I still was glad to see the representation of a main character with a physical disability, in this case, VACTERLs, which the author also has.

The Goodreads detractors found the main character too unlikeable, which I understand, but I had different problems.  I thought the writing was really strange. Often I had to go back and try to re-read a conversation to figure out what people were responding to, because the dialogue didn't flow for me at times. And some of the metaphors are bizarre.   Her mother's blog is like noxious butter. The friends sit on the couch like lasagna.   Her reaction to a text message is like a boob-punch.  Also the mother's blog is called "VATERs Like Water" and I don't understand why it's VATER instead of VACTERLs or what that even means. I spent a lot of time confused!

I hesitate to say this because it's hardly #ownvoices rep, but "snarky girl with a life-threatening illness" was done better, I think, in The Fault in Our Stars.  Then again, a lot of readers loved it, so maybe this was just one that wasn't for me! It happens.