14 books read this month, thanks to a vacation at the start of the month. And 13 of the books I really liked. I remain thankful that assignment reading (Librarian Book Group, Family Book Group) is so darn enjoyable.
Recommended
Picture books: When Angels Sing: The Story of Carlos Santana
Middle grade: all of them
Young adult: both of them
Grownup fiction: all of them
Young nonfiction: both of them
Grownup nonfiction: yes, that too.
Picture Books
All of a Kind Family Hanukkah
Emily Jenkins & Paul O. Zelinsky
Read for Librarian Book Group
I adored the All of a Kind Family books when I was a child, so I was excited to see this book pop up in the Youth Media Awards.
And then I was underwhelmed, perhaps because my expectations were too high. I didn’t feel that this picture book captured all that was delightful about the All of a Kind Family, and I didn’t love the illustrations.
It might be a nice as a Hanukkah intro, though I’m not Jewish, so can’t say for sure.
When Angels Sing: The Story of Carlos Santana
Author
A short biography of Carlos Santana with gorgeous illustrations. The illustrations are made even better by the fact that they incorporate the year. Brilliant!
Middle Grade
You Don’t Know Everything Jilly P.
Alex Gino
A middle grade novel about how to be a white person and a good ally, both for members of the Deaf community and people of color. Very short and nicely done.
A Crack in the Sea
Author
Read for Family Book Group
A great blend of fantasy and historical fiction as well as a work that highlights sibling relationship and slavery. Though I wondered about the use of modern words (kids) in a world that hadn’t had contact with our world since the late 18th century. The author’s note at the end added important context to the story.
I sat on this review until after Family Book Group so I could report what everyone thought. Alas, the three children in the group read, at the most, half of the book. One of them stopped reading after the first page because he thought he had read the book in third grade. But he had not.
The adults liked the book. Mostly.
New Kid
Jerry Craft
Read for Librarian Book Group
In this graphic novel, Jordan is starting at a new school where most people aren’t the same race or class as him. In bright, clear drawings we see Jordon deal with microaggressions, joining sports teams, and making new friends who have his back.
I did notice at one point that spring sports were not required and then at a later point they were required.
The Book of Boy
Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Read for Librarian Book Group
It’s 1350 and the plague has killed one-third of the people in Europe. In France, our main character, Boy, is content to tend the goats on his master’s estate, and avoid rocks thrown at him by Ox, who taunts Boy for his hunchback.
Enter a pilgrim on the search for relics. Boy is compelled by Cook to go with him, so he can pray for her soul. So begins our adventure which leads to surprises for both Boy and the pilgrim. The book includes lovely line drawings at the beginning of chapters.
I felt the ending was a bit hurried and convenient, but until that point, I greatly enjoyed following Boy on his journey.
Young Adult
The Field Guide to the North American Teenager
Ben Phillippe
Read for Liberian Book Group
I loved Norris as a hapless Canadian teen set adrift in his new home of Austin, Texas and I loved the chapter headers. This was a low-key amusing book, in that it was never actually laugh-out-loud funny, but was instead a steady heh-heh (though not in a Beavis & Butt-Head way) type of funny.
It did, however, need one more editing pass. There were several times sentences didn’t make sense and there were errors. At one point there is a reference to the father of a set of twins. Later, it was stated the twins had two mothers.
Field Notes on Love
Jennifer E. Smith
Hugo, one of the Surrey Six, a locally famous set of sextuplets, was going to go on a train trip across the US with his girlfriend, before heading off to the local college with his five siblings. He’d rather go elsewhere, but the six are a package deal, and it’s one way to get a free education.
But then his girlfriend breaks up with him before they can leave. She encourages him to go on the trip and he plans to. But there’s one problem. The tickets are in her name, and aren’t refundable. So Hugo advertises for anyone with the same name and he gets Mae, who is heading off to college and working through her disappointment at not being accepted into film school.
And thus we are off on a cross-country train trip with stops in major cities. This was a breezy contemporary romance that offered an evening’s worth of entertainment.
Grownup Fiction
Crazy Rich Asians
Kevin Kwan
I ran out of fiction before my vacation ended, plus my flight home was delayed, so the Tucson Airport got $16.99 of my money (plus a bit more for M&Ms) and I got to read the book version of a movie I watched last summer.
I’m glad I read this book because it cleared up a lot of questions I had about the relationship in the movie. They were the kind of questions that had me wondering why I should be rooting for this couple. Thanks to the more time/more words situation of being a book, things made more sense.
Also, this book has footnotes! I love footnotes, and welcome them in all books. They cleared up some questions I had about words in the text and put in context what was going on. They helped a lot with grounding me in a world I’m unfamiliar with.
I also loved the large quantity of characters and how I didn’t have trouble keeping everyone straight–though I did spend a lot of time referring to the handy family tree in the front.
On the negative side, there was a lot more head hopping in this book than I’ve seen in some time. It was jarring to be in one character’s head in one paragraph and then in someone else’s in the next.
While I enjoyed this book, I did find that about the three-quarters mark the materialism had me feeling slightly ill.
I’m still not convinced Rachel and Nick are the ones for each other, but I had a good time reading their story.
Atonement
Ian McEwan
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie, but it was the kind of movie that is seared into my brain.
Based on that searing, I can say that this is the rare book/movie combination where you can pick your preferred medium and enjoy. The movie manages to get across exactly what the book is saying and doesn’t add or subtract from its source.
This is a heartbreaking story, made more so by the remote voice that is telling the tale.
It’s hard and beautiful and I recommend a read, a watch, or both. (I mean, if you watch it, you get to see that amazing dress, so there’s that in the movie’s favor.)
And, in news to me, apparently I read this book 11 years ago. And liked both the book and the movie then too!
The Witch Elm
Tana French
First off, a question. The tree in the book is referred to as a Wytch Elm. Is the title word “witch” instead of “wytch” Americanized for US reader’s benefit, or is it purposeful and a clue to the story?
I loved the main character, Toby, a golden boy who really had no idea that everyone’s life wasn’t as easy as his until there was a sudden turn of events. He seemed a perfect pick for the times we are a living in.
The turn that Toby takes isn’t the last as this story loops around several times tying up some things and bursting open others. This is a complex story with complex characters. I think Tana’s French’s greatest gift is how she wraps you up in her world.
Young Nonfiction
Baby Elephant Joins the Herd
American Museum of Natural History
Read for Librarian Book Group
Good book of facts about baby elephants which also includes a lot of pictures of baby elephants, which is awesome!
Bloom Boom!
April Pulley Sayre
Read for Librarian Book Group
A gorgeous picture book of blooms from different areas across the US. I appreciated the rhyme scheme which switched things up at just the right moment. Also the back matter gave me the names of all the flowers. It was also nice that desert blooms were featured so prominently.
Grownup Nonfiction
A World Without Whom
Emmy J. Favilla
Written by the global copy cheif of BuzzFeed this is a breezy meditation on how language should be depicted on the internet. As a descriptivist, I was down for Ms. Favilla’s various pronouncements and I especially appreciated the chapter: “How not to be a jerk: writing about sensitive topics” and also her tracking the loss of meaning of lol (aka LOL, aka Laughing Out Loud) from it’s origins in the early internet era to today’s proliferation and loss of meaning.
There’s also a handy “terms you should know” section, a helpful section on headlines (now that we’re free of space constraints, just what should that headline be?) and many paragraphs of practical advice such as this:
To that end, let’s talk a little about a language trend I’d be negligent to ignore: everything eventually becoming one word. The AP Stylebook is a fantastic resource for very many things, and I realize BuzzFeed’s job listings explicitly request “no haters” but holy crud—it took until 2011 for APS to say sayonara to the hyphen in email. Wut? Way, way back in the ’90s—when people were more likely to ask Jeeves than ask Google—Wierd’s style guide boldly asserted, “We know from experience that new terms often start as two words, then become hyphenated, and end up as one word. Go there now.” Descriptivists for the win! Go forth, young internetters, and close up those words (unless, you know, they look weird).
