Two Weeks, Six Books

I went on back-to-back work trips to New York and Austin, and in the process, finished six books that were across the board pretty good! And two of them covered Read Harder Challenge categories: queer mystery and standalone fantasy.  Here are the books:

Murder in the Dressing Room (by Holly Stars) 

A fun cozy mystery about drag culture. I was convinced I knew the murderer the whole way through the book, to the 99% point, but turns out I didn't! The murderer wasn't really the point though, more an endearing story about a cute, nonbinary main character and an exploration of the world of drag. This is the only book on the list that didn't get a + next to it on my list, but it was cute!

Magic for Liars (by Sarah Gailey)

I was dreading the fantasy category until I found this, detective fiction set in a magic school! (I could call this "genre blending" too I suppose, but it's going to be harder to get standalone fantasy out of the way so I'm sticking with that one.) This is so well done. A woman whose twin sister is a mage - but who isn't magical herself - investigates a murder at a magic school. I loved the main character (in spite of her unlikeability) and really enjoyed all the characters, the treatment of magic, and the way it all played out.  

Lorne (by Susan Morrison)

It was fun to be reading this while I was in New York, and especially since I finally got to see Studio 8H on this visit! I knew many of the stories from being an SNL fan over the years but certainly didn't know all of them - and overall was a fascinating insight to the show and Lorne Michaels as a person.  Highly recommended for fans of Saturday Night Live. 

Newcomer (by Keigo Higashino)

Inventive! It's not only a murder mystery but functions as a set of linked short stories - Detective Kaga is a newcomer to this part of town, as is the murder victim, and as you explore different characters you see their connections to each other and to the victim. Often, the vignettes explore a storyline of a person in the neghborhood, as their secrets are revealed and characters loop in and out of the story. Another great offering from Higashino!

Lover Birds (by Leon Egan)

A queer retelling of Pride & Prejudice, wherein a posh London girl moves to Liverpool and meets Lou Byrne and her four best friends.  There are echoes of P&P everywhere (guess who the four best friends are intended to be) but the conflict between the characters ends up feeling organic, and the main character's struggles to manage her ADHD are really well done. Great chemistry between our main couple also! Just overall loved it. 

When the Moon Hits Your Eye (by John Scalzi) 

Last but not least, my pal John Scalzi's latest! I wasn't hugely into Kaiju Preservation Society but this one I really enjoyed. The high concept premise - the moon turns to cheese - becomes an exploration of shared humanity and how we find meaning in our lives.  It's often clever and funny (classic Scalzi) but also surprisingly meditative and profound at points too. Honestly exceeded my expectations! 

Minnesota Books

I finished three books on my recent trip to Minneapolis and am off on another work trip soon, so I am squeezing in this little blog.

Rift Zone: Poems (by Tess Taylor)

For the RHC category "an author local to you" comes this amazing book of poetry by El Cerrito resident Tess Taylor. (It turns out we know people in common, which I didn't discover until I was talking to some other local poets at a school event.) I learned a lot about micro-local history and was blown away by the poems. If I had time, I'd dig up some quotes, but she has a lot listed on her website and I recommend them so highly.

The Honjin Murders (by Seishi Yokomizo) 

A "locked door mystery" originally published in 1946, but more recently translated into English. I enjoyed the atmosphere and characters here, and the mystery did keep me guessing, but the solution was beyond preposterous, really.  I'm going to keep exploring Japanese mysteries though until I find one that's both atmospheric and satisfying. Recommendations welcome!

The Dos and Donuts of Love (by Adiba Jaigirdar) 

The "reality show" at the center of this book is incoherent - Great British Bake-Off exists, and this is called Junior Irish Bake-Off, but it's structured like Masterchef, and the hosts are Gordon Cramsey, Padma Bollywood, and Marie Cherry? Really? The filming and editing process makes no sense. And on top of all of this, the romance falls totally flat.  Unfortunately this is a miss for me, although the fat positive and Bangladeshi-Irish representation are wonderful.

Recent Reads

And 75% of it wasn't even YA! 

Boyfriend Material (by Alexis Hall)

An adult M/M romance that I absolutely loved. Romance isn't actually my favorite genre but this was just hilarious, hot, funny - did I mention funny? Just thoroughly enjoyable with a great central couple. Plus, the sequel comes out next month! Highly recommended for romance fans.

Flying Solo (by Linda Holmes)

I loved Linda's first book, Evvie Drake Starts Over. This didn't quite hit the same heights for me, mostly   the pacing didn't work for me.  But the characters are great, and the main character's independence made for a nice subversion of the "hometown career girl discovers she belongs in her hometown with her childhood love" trope.

Follow Your Arrow (by Jessica Verdi)

Weak, but had a good ending that directly confronted biphobia and not being "bisexual enough" if you're with a man.  The main character did have some good growth over the course of the book but she was just insufferable at the beginning with her fixation on social media.  Plus she has a supposedly traumatic breakup and is in love with someone else in like a week? The timeline felt very compressed and clunky. I just stuck it out out of bisexual loyalty, I think.

Sea of Tranquility (by Emily St. John Mandel) 

This is one of the choices for Camp ToB this year (which is taking place on Discord for some reason, so I'm barely following it).  I didn't love Station Eleven as much as seemingly everyone else in the world, so I was not expecting this: I loved this novel. I adored it. I guarantee this will end up on my top 5 of the year and maybe even #1.  It's reminiscent of Cloud Atlas (jumps through time, a cyclical structure) but somehow Mandel pulls off a novel with the scope and impact of Cloud Atlas in like 300 pages? This blew me away.

The Kaiju Preservation Society (by John Scalzi)

Classic Scalzi, along the lines of Agent to the Stars or Redshirts: fun, standalone, compulsively readable, full of humor and satisfying moments.  It is explicitly set in 2020, but due to the nature of the plot, our main character is fairly removed from current events. At the same time we can see the villain as an evil Trump avatar and be extremely satisfied when (spoiler alert) the good guys win.  

Yes, the characters pretty much all talk the same (sarcasm features heavily) in classic Scalzi fashion. As with most of his books, it still works, because it's simply not that serious. It's about kaiju, after all. Two of whom are named Bella and Edward, after Twilight. You just have to let go and enjoy. And if you're a Scalzi fan, you definitely will enjoy it.

(Lest you see the "I know this person" + "library" tags and think I am not supporting my friend by purchasing his book, I have purchased a signed copy for a good friend's birthday. He's gonna love it.)

Two More YA Books

Chaos on CatNet (by Naomi Kritzer) 

So excited to learn there was a sequel to Catfishing on CatNet! The original book in the series is an absolute gem. This has the same sparkling characters and fun speculative fiction elements, handling all its queer teenagers (and its poly adults) in an affectionate way.  The plot isn't quite as gripping to me as the plot of Catfishing on CatNet but that book is near-perfect so I can't really complain.  I hope the fact that this is "CatNet #2" means there will be a CatNet #3! (Disclaimer: I tagged this "I know this person" because although we've never met, Naomi and I are friends on Facebook.)

Here the Whole Time (by Vitor Martins) 

This is translated from the Portuguese and set in Brazil, so qualifies as "a realistic YA book not set in the U.S., UK, or Canada."  I tagged it novella because it's very short. I looked down thinking I was maybe halfway in and I was almost done! This is about a fat, gay teen in Brazil whose handsome neighbor comes to stay with him for two weeks. Although he is dealing with profound own body image issues and they are handled sensitively and movingly, the book really lacks conflict.  I definitely was hoping for more out of this one.

The Interdependency Trilogy (by John Scalzi)

My latest book was actually three books: the Interdependency trilogy by John Scalzi. My review is largely about the structure of these books, so let me open by saying they are as funny, smart, and entertaining as always. I particularly appreciate how many strong female characters are here, and the dedication on the last book ("To the women who are done with other people's shit") is a lovely touch.

I waited to read the trilogy all at once because I suspected reading one at a time would be unsatisfying, although the reviews saying the first one "ends on a cliffhanger" were overblown. I actually think books one and two each have satisfying endings, while leaving plenty open for the second and third, respectively. If anything, reading three at once emphasized that Scalzi really does design them to be read as standalones, because he cleverly (and organically) weaves in the backstory in each subsequent book.

My only real complaint is that while the third book does have a satisfying ending, to me it actually feels less final than the other two. Spoilers coming in white text: He never explains what happens with Cardenia and Rachela, how it's even possible, and what the nature of memory room existence then is. I thought for sure we'd go back to End since the book opened with the political machinations there, and the series would end (no pun intended) with a final showdown there, but instead it was anticlimactic and felt rushed. I didn't mind Marce's storyline ending because I think that would definitely be a separate book in this universe (one which I'd love to read). But the lack of resolution about Cardenia and about End particularly makes me think this could have easily (and arguably should have) been four books. 

Overall, though, an extremely enjoyable series!

Something That May Shock and Discredit You (by Daniel M. Lavery)

My experience of Danny Lavery: loved his work on the feminist website The Toast, find his newsletter The Shatner Chatner alternately brilliant and impenetrable, quit reading Dear Prudence, and enjoy interacting with him on Instagram. As a person and a writer and a thinker and a humorist, he is a delightful presence in the world.

There are occasional misses among the chapters here, for me, but someone on Goodreads nailed it when they called this "so wonderfully idiosyncratic that it's impossible to imagine anyone else writing it." I often wanted more of the traditional trans memoir, but the way the trans experience is here filtered through literary and Biblical referents really, really worked for me most of the time. It's not possible to really "explain" this "book" in a way that makes sense. All I can do is point you to an excerpt and say if it makes you want to read more, I highly recommend it.

Head On (by John Scalzi)

I'm holding off on reading the latest Scalzi series because I don't like cliffhangers (by the time I read the next book, I'll have forgotten everything) so in the meantime, I read the sequel to Lock In, the delightful Head On. 

It's a fast-paced, Salzi-esque style mystery about Chris Shane and his/her partner, Leslie Vann. (The gender of Chris is deliberately unspecified; my evidence that Chris is male is the phrase "take a piss" in the first book and "barbershop" in this one.) (Chris is not canonically either gender, John has made that clear.) (But he also said the book belongs to the reader so I'm going male.) (Although if I listen on audiobook I'm totally going for Amber Benson's version.)

This was difficult for John to write (as he's been open about on his blog) but it doesn't show. It's tightly plotted, with a great cast of characters and enough suspects to make the mystery interesting. It all unfolds in a way that is fun and makes sense. There's a pretty high body count if you're sensitive to these types of things.  Obviously the best character is Donut the cat.

A fun read; thanks for a distraction from the dumpster fire, John.

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (by Jenny Lawson)

The tag "i know this person" is somewhat misleading here. It would be more accurate to say "i am one degree of separation away from this person" but that would make for a long tag.  And I feel like although I don't know Jenny, I also don't not know Jenny, in that I met her once at BlogHer and a couple of my friends are mentioned in the book. So I basically know her. I know of her! Okay, you're right, it doesn't count.

I don't read her blog regularly, but I do read it from time to time and admire what she does. She's managed to stay funny, relevant, and real and avoid the whole "mommyblog" pigeonhole while the whole concept of "blogging" has withered on the vine. (Maybe it's resurging. In fact, here's an outstanding blog post by Evany about this very book.) I have been disappointed in the past by blog books that are just recycling of existing posts (Dooce's book, I am looking at you). And I don't know how much of this material is "recycled" since I'm not a regular reader. But I think it reads cohesively, at least as cohesively as possible given her writing style, which is sort of stream-of-consciousness discursive comedic riffing.

This doesn't always work for me in that "humorist" writing doesn't always work for me in general. I have the same issue with David Sedaris, the trying-to-be-funny taking precedence over telling a real story. But oh my god, Jenny Lawson can be funny. There's the classic story of Beyonce the chicken (which I have, in fact, also read on her blog) and a story about her cooking skills that made me laugh out loud as I was reading. And her writing is bold and witty as hell -- she throws in fake notes from her editor, chapters that don't make sense chronologically, and tons of meta notes about all of the above.

This also qualifies for the Read Harder Challenge in the category "Main character has mental illness" -- I would not have thought of this for this category, but the New York Public Library recommended her second memoir for this, so I figure the first also counts. She does address her mental issues, and writes about them humorously but also openly.

Overall, an entertaining read: recommended.

Future Perfect (by Jen Larsen)

It is so exciting to have this book in my hands finally, this gorgeous book written by my spectacular friend Jenfu. Also the book is dedicated to me, you guys. I am sorry for the bragging but nothing like that has ever happened to me before and it never will again so there you have it. A once-in a lifetime brag.

Future Perfect is the story of Ashley Maria Perkins, whose grandmother bribes her every year on her birthday to lose weight in exchange for a car, or a shopping trip to Paris, or other extravagances. I don't even think Jen knows this, but I had a grandmother who was a little similar -- she helped financially support our family, and although she never was as evil as Ashley's grandmother (oh man do I hate Ashley's grandmother), she definitely did pressure me around my weight. She dominated our childhood and loved me fiercely. So it resonates for me personally on many levels.

Ashley is strong, she's smart, she carries her family and all their hopes on her shoulders. She is confident in herself, but that confidence erodes with her grandmother's every attempt to chip away at it. Her friends Laura and Jolene have their own inner lives and are extremely well-drawn. There are gorgeous sentences, because it's Jen's book and of course there are gorgeous sentences. It's the book I wish to go back in time and present to my teenage self. It absolutely feels like a gift. A wonderful, five-star YA. 

The Human Division (by John Scalzi)

Warning to RSS readers: minor spoilers. Non-RSS readers can highlight to read the spoiler text.

When The Human Division was released, I read the comments on John's blog that indicated there was a cliffhanger. So I decided to hold off on reading it until the sequel was released, to spare myself any frustration. Glad I did! Even knowing there was a cliffhanger, I was expecting there to be a little more resolution. Specifically, I thought the big bad would be revealed, and then the sequel would focus on subsequent events. But not the case, so I'm excited to download The End of All Things soon.

This is a classic Scalzi book, with classic Scalzi pros and cons. On the pro side: it is incredibly smart and propulsive, with clever banter and delightful characters, particularly Harry Wilson (an old favorite) and Captain Sophia Coloma. I love how front-and-center women are in Scalzi's novels, and how he makes an effort to strike a gender balance in his books. He's such a popular writer that I feel it's good for the genre as a whole. On the con side, it's true that his characters are uniformly clever and sarcastic, and basically all sound like Scalzi. But... that's what makes the books so entertaining! Our flaws are often the flip side of our best qualities, are they not?

I should probably also mention that this was originally released serially -- so how does it hang together as a novel? Pretty well! I actually enjoyed all the chapters, maybe the one about Schmidt the least (possibly because of expectations, as I was hoping he was the mole). I was always happy to get back to the Clarke and to anything to do with Harry Wilson.

I see The End of All Things is in four parts, as opposed to the 13 parts of The Human Division, and I think that's probably a good call. It strikes a balance between the standalone pieces and the work as a whole. I look forward to seeing how it all wraps up.

Vacation Reads Roundup

An unfortunate thing happened on the way to my vacation. On my first day aboard our cruise ship, my cell phone died. This would not have been a problem except that I had downloaded some books especially for the trip (Lock In, The Vacationers, The Miniaturist, Lola and the Boy Next Door) and was planning to read them all on my Kindle app. My cell phone died so completely that even safe mode could not bring it back to life. I was 80% done with Lock In at the time, too. Argh!

There is a lot of nice downtime on a cruise ship, and I was looking forward to all of these reads. What was I going to do instead, go to a demonstration on the wonders of Tanzanite, attend a fruit and vegetable carving demonstration, get a free foot print analysis, or play in a Ladies Singles Shufflebord tournament?

...Actually, these are all real cruise ship activities that, in hindsight, I totally should have done. But instead I went to the cruise ship library in a fit of desperation. The pickings were incredibly slim, but I did end up with a few books. Add to that a new Sue Grafton purchased at the airport on the way home, and the Scalzi novel that I finished on my laptop today, and here's my list of books read:

Divergent (by Veronica Roth)
Along for the Ride (by Sarah Dessen)
Reread: Thursday Next: First Among Sequels (by Jasper Fforde)
Being Nikki (by Meg Cabot)
W is for Wasted (by Sue Grafton)
Lock In (by John Scalzi)

I thought these would be good candidates to group together since three are young adult novels, three are sci-fi novels, and four are part of book series rather than standalones. Divergent qualifies in all three of these categories. I will devote a few sentences to each one.

Divergent wasn't mind-blowingly awesome, but it was fun, and I gladly would have read the next two books in the series if the ship's library carried it. I don't know if I'll go out of my way to finish the series now, though. I did enjoy the heroine very much and loved envisioning Shailene Woodley the whole time.  

Along for the Ride I was skeptical about, because I hated the one and only Sarah Dessen novel I'd read in the past. However, I really enjoyed it; it goes beyond the typical young adult romance to address issues like divorce, remarriage, academic pressure, and having parents who are kind of assholes. I'd give Dessen another try based on this. 

First Among Sequels is my favorite in the Thursday Next series and I enjoyed it just as much the second (actually I think third) time around. Definitely a treat to find it in the ship library.

In the opposite of my Dessen experience, I was let down by Being Nikki, which I thought never established its premise well enough and never allowed me to suspend my disbelief--it involves a girl having her brain transplanted into the body of a supermodel and none of the characters quite coalesced. The whole time I read it, I felt like I was missing some important establishing information. Of course five minutes ago I discovered that it is in fact the second book of a series, which makes a whole lot of sense. Again, I probably won't bother to go back to the first book, it's probably too late for me to really enjoy it.

I read W is for Wasted on the plane home; I've been a very spotty reader of the series, but I used to love it and I'm glad I picked it up. I did notice some clunky dialogue, and I just looked up my last review to see what the last one I read was, and I noted it there too! In this case, the sentence I dog-eared was "Naomi always said I used work to avoid being close, a claim I hotly denied until the truth of it came home." No. That is not a line of dialogue that an actual person would say. But everything else was so enjoyable that I forgave her for this.

Finally was the weird experience of reading 80% of Lock In before I read all these other books, and then the final 20% afterwards. The whole dead phone thing was made so much worse by the fact that Lock In was such a fun, suspenseful novel and I couldn't wait to see how it ended! It's one of my favorite things John has written, and definitely worthy of all the acclaim it's getting. (Personally I think this one is far more deserving of the Hugo than Redshirts, and it may go ahead and win him his second one anyway.) The one weird thing I noticed is the lack of description of some of the characters, most notably Vann. Unless I missed it, we don't seem to get a single identifying detail about her. Maybe this is deliberate, maybe I missed it, maybe I'll just have to wait for the movie.

(Note: he also never specifies the gender of the narrator in this first-person narrative, and there are two audiobook versions, one read by a man and one by a woman. I voted man not just because of my own assumptions, but because there are no gender-specific microaggressions in the book, and the idea of a woman facing none of these is implausible to me. But interesting what he's done here.)

And that was my list of vacation reads! One of the best things about the trip was having the chance to sit back and do some pleasure reading, which was one of my goals for the year. And once I get my phone back, I have my other Kindle reads to look forward to. At the airport in a frenzy of thank god I am among books once again, I also purchased The Engagements, Heart of the Matter, and (most excitingly, very much excite) David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks. And the updated version of Live from New York comes out in two days! I need to get back on another cruise ship so I have time to finish it all....

Guide Her Home (by Jolene Lavine)

I should actually have a tag for this I just made a tag for this. This book was written by yet another friend of mine from the old-timey days of online journals, Jolene.* It's the memoir of her daughter Jessica being kicked in the head by a horse four years ago and her survival and recovery from a traumatic brain injury, an event that I followed along with on Facebook with my heart in my throat.

At the outset I have to say that although this book is self-published, it absolutely stands alongside other traditionally published works, most notably Schuyler's Monster, with which it has a lot of similarities. I could nitpick a few things that didn't work for me, but on the whole I was impressed. Even though I knew how it ends, it was still hard to put it down until I was done. Congratulations, Jolene!

*Can I just say how impressive our old-timey journal crew is? So many people have published successful books, Stee's show You're the Worst is really good, John is about to have his books turned into not one but two TV series... who knew, eh?

Unlocked (by John Scalzi)

This is an oral history prequel to John's upcoming novel Lock In. And hey, there's a character named Monique in it, which I'm sure is after me! (John, please just let me believe this lie.)

It definitely whetted my appetite for Lock In, and it made me wish the whole novel were told in the oral history style, because I think it works quite well. Some of the similarities in voice bothered me a bit (would a career criminal really sound so similar to a neurobiologist?) but as usual with Scalzi's works, it's an inventive and engaging read. I also loved the various teasers: who genetically engineered this virus? Who continues to propagate it? that will certainly be the driving questions of the novel. Stay tuned, because I will definitely be reading Lock In to find out the answers.

Spoiled (by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan)

I finished my own Hollywood-themed YA, so I finally allowed myself to read Spoiled, by the wonderful  Jessica and Heather who write maybe the best, most consistently funny site on the internet. gofugyourself.com. I admire them for somehow managing to keep their writing so fresh and funny when they've basically been writing variations on the same theme for years and years. And they produce a lot of content, too. It's pretty amazing.

Oh, and Spoiled! I think it's pretty different from my book in tone and plot, but it's just as fun, insidery, and awesome! (Confidence. Bam.) If I were going to steal things for my own book, I would steal two things first: the wonderful sense of place, and one line that approximately goes: "blood is thicker than smartwater." Come on, that's genius.

I loved the characters, two sisters named Molly and Brooke whose points of view alternate throughout the book. (It makes me wonder how H and J collaborated, since I don't think they each took a character, necessarily--I'll have to hunt down some interviews.) The charaters' conflicts feel very organic and it doesn't necessarily feel like Molly is always right and Brooke is always wrong. I also thought Molly's mother's death was handled very well--it's a sad plot point in a comedic novel, but they strike the right tone there, of dwelling on it enough but not too much.

I love how they did the alliterative Hollywood name thing, too. Brooke is named Brooke Berlin. I have a character in my novel who is a former tween star named Harper Hudson. They could totally exist in the same universe!  And that universe is awesome, Hollywood-themed YA. ;)

Redshirts (by John Scalzi)

Redshirts is a charming sci-fi novel that focuses on the "redshirts" on an Enterprise-like vessel who realize that a disproportionate number of them die, and that there seem to be strange rules governing their world. Love John, love the concept of the novel, love the sense of fun and humor throughout the book.  I'm going to throw out a couple of issues I had with it though.

First of all, a lot of the characters sound like prototypical Scalzi characters, and many of them use his verbal tics. (One character says something like "I am. I so very am." that I feel like is as classic Scalzi as you can get.) As a result, they're not very well differentiated. (Could be at least partly on purpose, but given the meta twists at the end, I think the characters could have had a little more depth to them, even if it was very broad or cliche.)

Second issue: It feels like this book could have used more sentence-level editing. It has a loose, fun style that you wouldn't want to edit away, but couldn't someone go through and fix the dialogue tags? Every single piece of dialogue doesn't need a "he said" or "she said" after it, and that is an easy editorial fix.

I was also confused about one of the twists. The rule seems to be that in the Intrepid's timeline, the show Chronicles of the Intrepid doesn't exist. So they go back in time using Intrepid timeline rules to 2012--but shouldn't that be the 2012 within the world of the show? The show shouldn't exist there either! So how does it? (I guess that can be explained by the final meta twist, but it bugged me the whole time I was reading that section, even if I did love how that whole 2012 bit played out.)

And I also think Jenkins just laying out the rules of the world was a little too Jenkins ex machina for me. I would have loved if it took a little more time to figure it out, or if we figured out how Jenkins figured it out, since it seems impossible for him to have the level of knowledge he did about, say, Star Trek. Maybe I was reading too fast and missed it, or I don't quite understand the rules of the world.

All of this is not to say that I give the novel anything other than a thumbs up--it is really fun and fast to read and breezy and all that good stuff. But a good edit would have made it even better, in my  humble opinion.

Stranger Here (by Jen Larsen)

I just finished reading Stranger Here for the third time, so I guess I should write about it! (The first time was in rough draft form, the second was a lightning-fast read where I was mostly noticing what was added, cut, and changed, and of course skimming for my name. Then the third time I read it for real.) It's hard to know what to say about a book that I am a character in. (I have "bosoms" and big eyes and I wink saucily, so you know, it's a fairly true-to-life representation.) Is it biased if I say that it's a really really good book?

Jen writes about her weight-loss surgery and about how becoming thin didn't magically fix her life. It's definitely not a formulaic memoir, and it's written in her signature amazing style, honed by years of brilliant blog writing. People gave it four stars, it sold out its first print run, it seems like everyone who's reading it loves it, even those who don't know Jen personally. So it's not just me, is what I'm saying here.

As for the whole me-as-character thing, I remember many of the incidents and conversations in the book vividly and I think she captured them well. I still remember the meal at the Greek restaurant that she mentions, where I tried Greek yogurt with honey for the first time, or the first day she moved to San Francisco, when we were young and silly and rode those carts around the supermarket. I think one of the best qualities of our friendship and one of the reasons it endures is that we aren't judgmental of each other, and I think that came across in the end.

Read the book!

You Take It from Here (by Pamela Ribon)

I had a miraculous day off last week, and I spent a good chunk of it reading You Take It from Here, which is only the latest book on my exploding shelf of Books Written By People Who Are Also My Facebook Friends. It's sitting between Wendy's The Wilder Life and John's Redshirts to remind me that I have many very talented friends.

I feel compelled to point out that I made it to at least page 25 before pouring myself a glass of wine to accompany the reading experience. The characters had already been boozing it up for several chapters by then, I think, so I showed remarkable restraint. (This is a compliment.)

All this is to say: I think this is Pam's best novel yet. I tore through it in a few hours because I had to find out what happens next. The characters feel real. I think the letter-to-Jenny structure works really really well to focus the narrative, though ultimately I didn't quite understand their estrangement. And I really love that it's about female friendship in a messy, complicated way. The ending was lovely and made me cry. I guess I could nitpick things if forced to, but why? She did an awesome job, and I am so proud to have Pam on my BWBPWAAMFF shelf!

The Wilder Life (by Wendy McClure)

This is a book that we own in both hardcover and paperback, a book written by a friend that I adore, a book that I kept dipping into but kept procrastinating the actual cover-to-cover reading of. You see, I wasn't a Little House girl. I was a Little Women girl* and an Anne of Green Gables girl** and to a lesser extent a Betsy-Tacy girl and for sure a Babysitters Club girl. But I never read any of the Little House books. None! How is this possible!

(*I toured the Alcott house in Concord, and it was super awesome. We saw the real-life "Meg's" wedding dress and "Amy's" art and learned so many things about Louisa May Alcott. **On my life list or bucket list or whatever dumb name you want to call it is "do an Anne of Green Gables tour of Prince Edward Island." I want to go so bad.)

So my idea was that I was going to read the Little House books before I read all of Wendy's book. And then Wendy came to town and I bought yet another copy of her book (supporting my friend! supporting local bookstores!) and then I opened it and got sucked into the narrative and realized that it really didn't matter that I hadn't read the Little House books, because Wendy is such an awesome writer and her prose just sucked me in and it's funny and smart and a terrific little glimpse into this Little House world.

I mean, I still want to read the Little House books (even more now, since I've been pre-sold on them now). But I can assure you that even if you haven't, you will still love The Wilder Life. Because Wendy McClure is an awesome writer. The end.

Chocolate and Vicodin (by Jennette Fulda)

I'm just randomly guessing on the date that I finished this book. I just forgot to blog about it! I remembered to Facebook about it though, which totally counts. A book by my friend Jennette about her headache that wouldn't go away. I really liked it, as I always do Jennette's writing. There's this kind of clean, straightforward, sensible tone to it that I always enjoy. I think I like the way she organizes information in her head. Anyway, it's always hard to "review" books by friends. Especially when you've had a baby since you finished reading it, and have forgotten most of the details. All I can say is, I'm proud of Jennette, and I super-liked the book!