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.
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.
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.
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.
