Book Check-In 5/31/20

I only read one book this week, but I am almost done with another. The book I finished was Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse.

I was really excited about this book! It’s one of the Rick Riordan Presents books, where he promotes books written by authors of different nationalities to support diversity in books and authors. His intro to this book made me very emotional. The premise is that the main character, a girl named Nizhoni, has started seeing monsters. It’s due to her ancestry, tracing back to heroes from Navajo legend. She goes on an adventure with her brother and friend to try and stop the monsters. It’s very much in the same genre as the Percy Jackson books.

This one was interesting because I don’t really know anything about Navajo legends and it was a fun way to get a little peek, although I definitely wouldn’t use this book to get a solid background. I’ll be honest though, I’ve read several books off of the Rick Riordan Presents, and this one was my least favorite. It felt more derivative than the others, and I felt a little bored with it. I might just have not been in the mood for it. It would probably also help if I were a middle schooler :). I would still recommend this book, even though I didn’t love it, especially to people in the targeted age range. And it’s still great representation. I will say, the author, Rebecca Roanhorse is native, but she isn’t Navajo. She married a Navajo man and has studied Navajo culture. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that, but in her about the author she mentioned that she has a daughter, who is (of course) Navajo, and she wanted to provide representation for her. That’s really why Rick Riordan wrote Percy Jackson, and why he expanded into the Rick Riordan Presents, so I was really glad to know that. The tradition continues.

Like I mentioned in my last check-in, I started reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. I’ve nearly finished it, and have also started another book: Aru Shah and the Song of Death by Roshani Chokshi.

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

Book Check-In 5/24/20

This week I read the three books I mentioned in last week’s check-in: The Cat at the Wall by Deborah Ellis, Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor, and An Enchantment of Ravens, by Margaret Rogerson.

The Cat at the Wall was a decent middle school aged book. There’s this girl who was a real brat who died and was reincarnated as a cat in Israel. She ends up in a house where 2 Israeli soldiers are camped out, along with the Palestinian child who’s house it is. It switches between her ruminating on her life as a human, and this teacher who she hated, and the problem of this child in the house with two soldiers, when his parents aren’t coming back. It wasn’t great, but it was pretty interesting.

Binti: Home was kind of boring, in my opinion. Binti has been struggling with anger, so she decides to return home, but once there, she realizes how out of place she is and she realizes there’s a lot she didn’t know about her family. She learns she’s connected to a different group of people besides just the Himba, and she goes to learn about their culture and finds out that they had been visited by aliens centuries ago, which left them with powerful technology. It felt like only half a book to me. It was a cool idea, but it felt unrealized. There wasn’t very much plot to it, so I didn’t love it. I’m not planning to read the 3rd book.

I really liked An Enchantment of Ravens. It’s been a while since I’ve read any books with Fae in them. This one was really good. At the end I was like, “okay, where’s the next book, I want more.“ It’s about a girl who grew up in Whimsy, a town that’s adjacent to Faerieland that’s in constant summer and in constant contact with Fae. They come to Whimsy because they crave human Craft. Our protagonist is a portrait artist. The book starts with one of her frequent patrons telling her that he’s recommended the Autumn Prince get his portrait painted by her. She ends up painting him in a way that he doesn’t like, which whirls her into trouble. I really loved this and would recommend it to anybody who likes some of that Dark Fantasy or books with Fae. I think fans of Holly Black would love this one.

I’ve started 2 more books: Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.

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

Book Check In 5/17/20

This week I read 3 books! I finished the two I mentioned in last week’s check-in: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, and A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman. I also read Half a World Away by Cynthia Kadohata, which is a really sweet kids book.

Binti was really interesting. I’d heard a lot about it as a sci-fi book with a black main character, it’s popped up on a lot of lists of books for if you’re tired of all white protagonists. I didn’t really know much more besides that. I was really excited because it’s more than just her being a black character, she’s of the Himba people. I was expecting a sort of African American type of thing, but her entire character is deeply steeped in this African culture that I knew very little about. I did a lot of pausing the book and looking things up, not because I needed to, but because the culture was really interesting. I had seen a couple pictures online before, but I learned a lot more because this book introduced me to it more. The characters were very vibrant. Binti is the first of her people to be accepted into an off planet university, but her family don’t want her to go because being Himba involves strong ties to family and the land. She sneaks away and boards the ship anyways, but midway through their journey they are attacked by an alien race, the Meduse, and the ship is massacred, with her as the only survivor. She finds out that the university she is going to has wronged the Meduse, and she agrees to speak with as a mediator for them to broker peace. I thought the plot was a little simplistic, she’s the perfect one in many ways, and problems are solved just by virtue of who she is. But the world building was very interesting, for instance the ship she flew to space on was really a fish! Some of it seemed more like space fantasy rather than science fiction, but all in all a good read. And it was just a novella so a quick read.

I adored A Man Called Ove. I’ve recommended it to like 4 people already. I cried several times while reading it, but mostly out of happiness. It’s a very sweet book. It’s about a grumpy curmudgeonly man called Ove who doesn’t really have anything left to hang onto after his wife dies and he loses his job, but then a new neighbor moves in and starts pulling him out of his shell. I’d say that the main point of the book is really about how important human connections are, but it was so lovely seeing this grumpy old man doing all these nice things for others and forming all these relationships. It sort of switched between present time and how he had become who he was; his past and how it shaped him. I often don’t like time jumps in novels, but this was done more as him recalling or remembering events in his past, which I found much more tolerable. It was really beautiful, and I really recommend it. It looks like they also made it into a movie, which I’m planning to watch shortly. The trailer looked pretty similar to the book, so if you’re considering reading the book and don’t mind a little more information, I’d watch the trailer. My mom was on the fence about reading it, but I showed her the trailer, and now she’s very excited about reading it.

Half A World Away popped up in the Asian & Pacific American Heritage month collection in my library, and I figured that since it was just a kids book it wouldn’t take much time to read. I also cried a little while reading this one. It’s about a boy, who was adopted as an older child and still remembers his biological mom and therefore has had some trouble connecting with his adoptive family. His parents are trying to adopt a new baby from Kazakhstan which he thinks is because he’s “broken” he’s brought along but when they get there, the baby that they expected to adopt has already been given to another family, and they’re meant to pick a new baby in the space of a few minutes. His parents pick another infant, but he starts falling in love with a toddler who’s about to age out of the adoption agency. He doesn’t want this little kid to go through the same thing he did. But the child seems to have some special needs, so his parents don’t think they can adopt the toddler, because they already have enough on their hands with him. It’s really moving, his frankness and perspective. I didn’t expect a book for kids to be such a gut punch.

I’ve started actually 3 more books. An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson; Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor (the sequel to Binti); and The Cat at the Wall by Deborah Ellis.
As always, you can see all the books I’ve read on my reading list.

Book Check In 5/12/20

I’ve given up all semblance that I’ll post these on Sunday. It’s COVID time, days have no meaning, time is an illusion.

That being said, I’m supposed to go back to work starting on Monday which is spooky scary and stressful. It also might mean that these check ins might be even more disordered and on random days, and I might be reading fewer books.

I say that like I read more than 2 books this week. I finished the 2 I mentioned in last week’s check-in, A Darker Shade of Magic, by V.E. Schwab, and P.S. I Still Love You, by Jenny Han. Such different vibes from these two books!

P.S. I Still Love You is super fun. It’s the sequel to To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, and it explores Lara Jean and Peter’s relationship now that they’re for real instead of just fake-dating. Very light hearted, the kind of book that’s perfect for these stressful times. I whipped through it. There are some bits that are supposed to be drama, where Lara Jean and Peter are having issues, but she’s caught up in so much stuff it doesn’t like wallow in it, so it’s not as much drama or sadness as there would be in a normal romance or even rom-com. It also might be that I’m at a point in my life where when I see teens dating and they break up I’m not upset about it because they’re teens. You know? I feel old saying that. But basically, I had a “good for her” mentality for most of it. I had also watched the Netflix movie, and one thing that I hadn’t realized from the movie that they changed from the book was John Ambrose was white in the book, but they cast a black actor for this movie. It’s actually a different actor from the first movie, so they made a conscious decision to have a black character for romance, which is so often the opposite of what they do (looking at you HP, we all see what you did with Lavender Brown). It was really refreshing.

The other book I read, A Darker Shade of Magic, for some reason I wasn’t that into. Which you might have guessed, if you’ve been keeping up with these book check-ins, because I’ve been reading it for about 3 weeks. Honestly, I don’t have a good reason for not really liking it. Like the plot was interesting, and the characters were cool, and I liked it when I was reading it, but once I put it down I didn’t really have a drive to pick it back up again. It didn’t really keep me wanting more, or wanting to find out what happened next, which was weird because like I said, the plot was interesting! Maybe it was just that it’s a little darker and I haven’t been feeling the dark books as much recently. Shit’s bad enough outside, I don’t necessarily want it in my books. It’s an interesting premise though: there are different London’s, and the main character is from “Red London” which has magic. He can travel between the London’s, there’s another with magic, our magic, and a fourth, which was closed off because its magic turned bad and ruined the city. The main character finds a magical artifact from the London that was lost, and he wants to dispose of it, put it back in the world it belongs to, but it starts wreaking havoc almost as soon as he gets his hands on it. There are sequels, and I had been planning to read them, especially because I expected the 1st book to leave some cliffhangers. But it really tied up all the loose ends, and since I didn’t love it, I probably won’t read the rest.

I’ve started 2 more books. Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor, which is pretty short so I expect to get through it really quickly, and A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman which I’m absolutely adoring so I’m already a third of the way through despite starting yesterday.

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

Book Check In 5/4/20

Oops! I'm a day late!

I didn't read very much this week. Lots of working from home, both work work and tutoring. I only finished the Trickster duology by Tamora Pierce, like I mentioned in my last check in.

I really like the Trickster duology. It follows Aly, daughter of Alanna (from our second Tortall series). She wants to do spywork but is forbidden by her family, but when she tries to avoid having her life planned by her parents, she instead gets chosen by a Trickster god to help start his revolution on an island nation. I always wish there was more than 2 books when I'm finished with it. Aly goes to some islands that hundred of years ago were conquered by white people, and since then the native people have been kept largely as slaves or lower class citizens. Aly is chosen to help a queen rise who is from the forgotten native royal family, but is also related to the white royal family. It gets close to being white savior-ish at points, but I think it does a pretty good job of staying clear. She brings new tools to an already active rebel group, although she does become the leader of said group, because she's god-picked. I am white, so people of color might think it's more of a white savior story than I do. I'd trust their voices over mine.

I really love the characters in this one, they're very rich and this one has a larger cast than some of the previous books, but they feel quite fully fleshed out, even though there are half as many books than the previous series. I also love the intrigue and plotting. Even rereading them and knowing what's going to happen, I get so excited by each new step, and I cry at the dramatic moments. These are the last of the Tortall books, and they always leave me wanting more.

I did not finish A Darker Shade of Magic this week, which I kind of expected, but I did read a little more of it. I'm not very far in it still, but I am far enough that it's pulled me in a bit. I'm curious about Kell's background, and more about how magic works in this realm. I'm excited to see where it goes.

I also started a new book: P.S. I Still Love You, by Jenny Han. This is the second in the To All The Boys I've Loved Before series (made popular by the Netflix movie). The Netflix movie for this book also just came out and I watched it and it was super cute, so I started this one before finishing A Darker Shade of Magic. Oops. Oh well, I think it's going to be a quick read.

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