Book Check-In 8/2/20

It’s been 2 weeks since my last check in, sorry about that. Got very lazy, been struggling with motivation working from home. Also had some stressful work stuff so just haven’t been doing much.

But, in those two weeks, I read 3 books! (Well, 2 books and a graphic novel). 2 were the ones mentioned in my last check in: Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi, and Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland. The 3rd was the graphic novel Check Please Book 1: #Hockey by Ngozi Ukazu. I technically had read it as a webcomic but I did like the format of having it collected with the extras in a book. (Side note: it wasn’t until I put these three covers together that I realized all these books were written by black women.)

Reviews below the cut!

Book Check-In 7/19/20

This week I finished Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel! I mentioned it was the only book I had started in my last check-in, so I was glad to finish it, or else I wouldn’t have had anything to talk about today!

I really liked this book, but to be honest this was a terrible time to read it. A book about the collapse of the world after a pandemic isn’t necessarily a good choice to read when you’ve been stuck at home since March because of the pandemic. One of the kids I tutor told me that her teacher had switched the syllabus so in April they were supposed to read this and I absolutely can’t believe that. (The girl I tutor didn’t read it). Especially in the early days of the pandemic coming here I wouldn’t have wanted to read this book about the collapse of civilization from this new disease. I at one point had to stop reading and check if it had a happy ending before I would pick it up again.

The book follows a woman who was a girl in a play when the lead actor had a heart attack onstage. That was the same day that the deadly new pandemic arrived to the city. In a matter of days, society had collapsed as millions died worldwide. She was too young to remember much of before, only 8, and the book switches between events from then and 20 years after the collapse. She has joined a “Traveling Symphony” which travels town to town performing plays and music to try and keep arts and culture alive. They have a specific route they follow, but when they come upon a town that had changed significantly since their last arrival, with a new violent prophet, they end up having to change their route and entering the unknown. As the story flips back and forth between the before and after times, it reveals how the different characters from after the collapse were somewhat connected from the before times.

Despite the terrible timing, I did enjoy this book. (Super mild SPOILERS ahead: It does have a hopeful ending, which was good enough for me. END SPOILERS). I liked the world that was created. It flipped back and forth to weave how all these characters were actually connected through one person from before. One person was followed but didn’t really tie in post collapse that much which I thought was an interesting choice. A way to show the differences in the post collapse world. I liked the world building, I think a lot of apocalypse novels focus on right after this collapse, and while there were a few chapters that touched on it, it really wasn’t the focus. I love the idea of the traveling band/acting troupe that wants to keep the arts alive. I recommend this book, but in like a year or 2, when COVID isn’t so stressful.

I have started 2 new books! Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi and Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland. These are both sequels for books that I read in 2018, so it’s kinda weird to pick the thread back up.

As always, you can see all the books I’ve read on my reading list.

Book Check-In 7/14/20

A little late this week. It's a loose schedule ;)

This week I read both the books I mentioned I had started in my last check-in. Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez and The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah.

Sal and Gabi Break the Universe is another one from the Rick Riordan Presents collection. I talked about that a couple check-ins ago, but I’ll just give a brief summary again. Rick Riordan wrote books to support representation in media, but as a white author, he steps back to support authors writing in a similar genre to write about their own cultures. It’s a sort of “own voices” initiative for kids/middle grade books. They’re usually focused on myths or legends and I think they’re a fun way to find out a little more about different cultures, and they’re great ways for kids to see themselves represented as heroes in stories.

This one was a lot of fun! It’s focused on Cuban culture, and rather than focusing on myths, legends, or folklore, it’s more science fiction. Sal has a unique skill. He can make holes in the multiverse and peek through, or even pull things through! But tearing holes in the universe isn’t a good thing, it leaves behind dangerous particles. Ever since his mom died, he keeps accidentally pulling different versions of his mom from other universes. His family has just moved to Miami, partially because he made too many holes in the universe in their old home, and now it’s saturated with the dangerous particles. So he’s starting a new school and trying to make friends but keeps getting into trouble.

One thing that’s also really cool is that Sal has type 1 diabetes. It’s talked about it a lot of detail, and I think that’s another cool aspect of representation. I can’t remember ever reading a book with a main character who has diabetes. All the characters are super fun and vibrant. Sal is a magician, which adds a lot of flavor to the story. It was a really quick read, partially because I really liked it and wanted to keep reading it!

The Great Alone was pretty good. I was really excited about it when I read the description. It’s about a girl whose dad has really bad PTSD after he was a POW in Vietnam. He has a hard time dealing with people and cities due to it. He gets notice that one of his war buddies left him some property in Alaska, and decides to move the family up there to get away from it all. When his PTSD gets bad, he is sometimes abusive to her mother, and her and her mother are worried about how they will survive the long winter trapped with him.

The first third of the book was totally based just on that premise, and I was into the suspense vibe that it had. Then it got resolved super easily in almost a deus ex machina type thing. The middle third of the book was a little boring, it switched to more the girl has a secret boyfriend and her dad can’t find out which wasn’t as interesting in my opinion. It got exciting again in the last third, but then I wasn’t super satisfied with the ending. It wasn’t a bad ending, or unsatisfying in the normal sense. I just didn’t like the way it represented some stuff. It also in some ways seemed hand wavy “and then everything was happily ever after.” I found this book had it’s ups and downs. There were parts I really loved, and then there were parts that were just okay. I didn’t hate any of it, so I still think it was pretty good.

So far I’ve only started one new book: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.

As always, you can see all the books I’ve read on my reading list.

Book Check-In 7/5/20

My last check in was in the middle of the week, so I’ve only read 1 book since then. I finished reading The Alice Network by Kate Quinn.

I really liked this book! I’m not usually super into books about the World Wars, but this one was awesome! It’s historical fiction, somewhat based in truth. It brings together two women. The first is a young American in a bad situation who’s looking for her cousin who disappeared during WWII. She meets the second woman, who was a spy during WWI, as a possible lead to find her cousin. The story switches between the 40s, the two women journeying together to find the cousin, and the past, when the second woman was a spy. It goes through her experiences and gives insight into their present. The old enemies from her past seem to have touched the life of the missing cousin, and so she has to work through her painful past to help. It’s really fantastic, at points I couldn’t put it down because it was so thrilling. I kept saying “just one more chapter” and then would get to the end of the next chapter and need to repeat it.

I was really excited because at the end, there was an afterward explaining that some of the members of the spy network were real historical figures, and some of the spy techniques described in the book were ones those women had actually used. I thought it was interesting, because I had never heard much about spies in WWI. The Alice Network was a real network of spies led by a women whose alias was Alice Dubois and was one of the most successful spy networks of the war! I had heard of using women as spies in other wars because women are often overlooked, but I thought it was really cool how she was worked into the novel. Even if you don’t read the book, you should look her up, she was awesome.

I’m still working on reading Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez, and have started one new book, The Great Alone, by Kristin Hannah.

As always, you can see all the books I’ve read on my reading list.

Book Check-In 7/1/2020

A little late this week, but that’s okay!

Since my last check in on 6/21, I read 2 books. I finished My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult and Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia.

I think everybody’s heard of My Sister’s Keeper. It came out in the early 2000s and they made a movie out of it, so I think it’s pretty well known. But, I’m gonna give a little summary anyways, because when I was talking to my brother about it he had heard the title but had no idea about the plot! It’s about a girl who was conceived to be a donor for her sister who has an aggressive form of leukemia, but now that she’s 13, she wants to stop donating, which means she needs to get power over her medical decisions. She sues her parents for medical emancipation, but if she doesn’t donate a kidney to her sister, she’ll die. The book switches perspectives between her, her parents, the lawyer, her older brother and sister, along with the temporary legal guardian assigned to the case. It’s interesting to see the case from all sides, and how it affects the whole family. It also occasionally goes back in time to when important events happened or decisions were made about the girls. There’s also a subplot of the legal guardian and lawyer used to have a thing and it ended terribly but now they have to work together, which was an interesting (although sometimes cliched) side story.

The ending was super cliche but it still got me good. I was crying while trying to get through the last pages. And, (VERY MILD SPOILERS) when I was perusing the wikipedia page after I finished, I found out they super changed the ending in the movie! Based on what it sounds like, I think I would have preferred the movie ending, it sounds slightly less cliched. Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I didn’t think I would like it as much as I did, because I already knew quite a bit about it and I expected it to be pretty predictable. The characters had a lot of depth which I think is what really made me love it. I really cared about what was happening to them.

Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky is another one from the Rick Riordan Presents collection. I talked about that a couple check-ins ago, but I’ll just give a brief summary again. Rick Riordan wrote books to support representation in media, but as a white author, he steps back to support authors writing in a similar genre to write about their own cultures. It’s a sort of “own voices” initiative for kids/middle grade books. They’re usually focused on myths or legends and I think they’re a fun way to find out a little more about different cultures, and they’re great ways for kids to see themselves represented as heroes in stories.

This one I really liked. It’s based on African American folk tales and legends (and tall tales!) and melded with West African folklore. Because it blended some stories I was knew a little about with stories I knew nothing about, it was really fun. It felt very unique and fresh. Tristan is 12, and going to stay with his grandparents over the summer to get some peace and fresh air after his best friend died. He has a journal full of stories his grandmother told them, that his best friend recorded, and it’s all he has left of his friend. The first night there, a creature sneaks in and steals his journal! He gives chase, and ends up underneath a bottle tree. He knocks some darkness free from a bottle, and tears a hole into a realm called MidPass. The darkness he set loose, and the tear in the sky are causing evil to overrun the realm, so he has to work to try and return the world to normalcy so he can get back his friend’s journal and go home. I really really liked this one.

I’ve started two new books! The Alice Network by Kate Quinn (I’m really enjoying this one so far!) and Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez.

As always, you can see all the books I’ve read on my reading list.

Book Check-In 6/21/20

I totally missed checking in last week, so this covers the past two weeks. But even though it covers two weeks, I still only read one book! It's been a little slow going recently. I finished Always and Forever Lara Jean by Jenny Han, which I mentioned I was reading in my last check-in. Usually I read one or two books a week, so this is pretty slow for me! I started a new tv show and podcast, and also downloaded a new video game, so that might have something to do with it...

In this book, Lara Jean is grappling with going to college and possibly being further away from Peter, and if their relationship will be able to last. They're getting a lot of conflicting advice from friends and family, saying it's not good to start college while dating somebody because then you don't get the "real" freshman experience. I'll be honest, I liked this one the least out of the three, I found the ending unsatisfying. But also in general I found this book the least relatable. This one really felt like a teen high school romance, much more than the other two did, even though all three are. I guess I'm just a little old for this book, I'm not the target demographic. Overall it was pretty good, I liked it pretty well, I just think I would have liked it more if I were in high school. But who knows. In high school I hated romance, so it's hard to say.

I'm still working on reading My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult (and I'm loving it!) and I also started Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia. I'm nearly done with both, so next week's check in should be a little longer.

As always, you can see all the books I’ve read on my reading list.

Book Check-In 6/7/20

I read 3 books this past week! Like I mentioned in my last check-in, I was almost done reading The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, so I was able to finish it and read two more books. I read Aru Shah and the Song of Death by Roshani Chokshi as well as In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware.

The Glass Castle is a memoir, and I more or less generally like memoirs, but I loved this one! It was really interesting. I’m pretty late to this party, it came out in 2005, so half the people I tried to recommend it to had already read it. It’s about her childhood, growing up in extreme poverty with parents who don’t necessarily want to work, and how she and her siblings managed to get it together enough and get out from the toxicity of their household and grow to have good lives. And how even though her parents didn’t take care of her the way she wanted, she still loved them. I was riveted, there was some crazy stuff happening in this book, but part of what made made it so compelling was that it’s true. Sometimes with fiction, you think, that’s interesting, but it couldn’t be true. With this, nothing is unbelievable, and the things that maybe you wish weren’t true, you know they are.

Aru Shah and the Song of Death is another one from the Rick Riordan Presents collection, which I talked about a lot in my last check-in. This one comes from an Indian author, and is about a handful of girls who are the reincarnated souls of the ancient heroes from Hindu legends. This is actually the second in a series, I had  liked the first, but it’s been a while since I read it, so I didn’t remember the story that well. It did a good job of refreshing me, without being overt about it. It was longer than I expected for a middle grade book, so it took me a while to get through it. The plot of this one is that the main character, Aru is accused of stealing a magical weapon, and if she doesn’t manage to get it back within 10 days, she and her friends will be banished from the Otherworld, the magical realm that they’re allowed to be a part of due to their powers. I really loved the characters in this one. They felt real and well fleshed out, and I cared about them and their goals. And another thing I loved, they didn’t all necessarily want the same thing, or for the same reasons. I’m looking forward to the third book, but unfortunately my library doesn’t have it yet.

In a Dark, Dark Wood is a thriller. I’ve read Ruth Ware before and I really like her. This one I whipped through in just like two days cause it had me on the edge of my seat. I went to bed super late one night because I couldn’t put it down! Our main character is invited to a bachelorette party for a friend she hasn’t spoken to since they were in high school - 10 years, and she wasn’t invited to the wedding for. She agrees to go with one of her other friends who she’s still in touch with and was also invited. It ends up being in this weird glass house in the middle of the woods where she keeps feeling watched. The story is interspersed with her in the hospital, after some accident has happened, which she can’t remember from head trauma, but she knows the police are guarding her door and somebody may have died. The story flips between chronological order, and her in the hospital trying to remember what happened. I was racing to find out what happened and who it was, and I loved the ending. Definitely would recommend if you’re into thrillers.

I’ve started two new books! Always and Forever Lara Jean by Jenny Han (the third and final in the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series) and My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult.

As always, you can see all the books I’ve read on my reading list.