Jameyanne F

July Reading Roundup

As I’ve mentioned in my last few posts, July was a pretty hard month for me emotionally. Mostly because it sunk in that this pandemic is here to stay and I’m not going back to work or going to see my friends for several more months, possibly almost a year. I recognize that I am extremely lucky. I have a stable job where I can work from home, I’m in a safe place, and I’m not struggling to get food or anything. But as much as I want to go back to work and see my colleagues and have writing group in person and go to trivia with friends and work-out at in-person barre classes and all the great things I was doing pre-pandemic, I also don’t want to venture out of my safe bubble unless I absolutely have to. The outside is kind of terrifying. Social distancing is not designed for the blind, and I have to rely on other people doing the right thing all too often for my own comfort. So my feelings are all confused.

So in July, I did what I always do when I have feelings. I read. A lot.

Collage of the 14 books I read in July: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn, The Sound of Stars, Orbiting Jupiter, You Should See Me in a Crown, The Kingdom of Back, Chasing Secrets, Record of a Spaceborn Few, The Waste Lands, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Castle Hangnail, and Upside-down Magic I read fourteen books in July, bringing my total for the year up to seventy-two. Six of them were rereads. I read two sci fi, two contemporaries, four paranormals, four fantasies—two of them middle grade—and two historical novels—one of them a historical fantasy. One of the books I read was in Braille, bringing me up to six Braille books for the year so far. I’m still one behind where I want to be to meet my goal of reading twelve Braille books this year, but I’ll catch up. This was a very eclectic reading month, and I really liked most everything I read.

I started July with The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow. Aliens have invaded Earth, trapped all the humans in centers where they have to work for the invaders, and banned all forms of art because they inspire rebellion. Janelle is a human teenager operating a very illegal library of books she managed to save from the aliens’ purge. Morris is a teenage alien with too-much of an interest in human art. When Morris discovers Janelle’s library, he doesn’t turn her in, on the condition that she find him some music. But then they’re caught and they have to run for it, and then they wind up trying to stop the aliens from turning Earth into an alien resort planet. I love so much about this book. I love watching Janelle and Morris grow from enemies, to suspicious but curious companions, to friends, to something more than friends. I love that Janelle is such a diverse YA protagonist. She’s black, queer, fat, and has a thyroid condition. It’s not important to the plot, but it’s who she is and I love it. Most of all, because I’m as much of a nerd as these two, I love all the references to my favorite books: Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Twilight, The Mortal Instruments, The Hate U Give, and even The Light Between Worlds. My only problem with this book is the ending, and it’s only a problem if there isn’t going to be a sequel. Without giving spoilers, if there isn’t a sequel, then that was a really unsatisfying ending. If there is a sequel, it is a great ending. But I don’t know if there is going to be a sequel yet. So we’ll see.

Next I reread all four of the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer. I’ve already talked about these at length over here, so if you’re curious go check that out. I’m not going to reiterate my thoughts here, because I’m currently trying to dig myself out of the Twilight-shaped hole I fell into post-Midnight Sun. Never fear, Midnight Sun will be getting its own post too, because I have so many feelings.

Next, I read The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu. This was a fascinating historical fantasy book. It’s about Mozart and his older sister as children, growing up and touring Europe as composers and musicians, and also their adventures in a fantasy world called the Kingdom of Back. I knew vaguely that Mozart had a sister and that she composed and even that there are theories that she composed some of his pieces, and this was a great look into what it must have been like for her growing up in Mozart’s shadow because she was a girl. I admit I had a hard time with this book at first, because the excursions into The Kingdom of Back felt disjointed, and at times while I was reading this, I didn’t understand why Marie Lu didn’t just write this book about any two children, instead of tying it to the Mozarts. But then I read the author’s note at the end of the book, which said that there’s historical evidence that the Mozart children did in fact invent a fantasy land they called The Kingdom of Back while on tour in Europe. This made it all make sense, and I wish I’d read the Author’s note first. This wound up being a really good book, and I would definitely recommend it.

After that, I read Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt. This was a short contemporary middle frade book. I read it in one evening. Twelve-year-old Jack has a new foster brother, and the new foster brother has a daughter he has been separated from. This book deals with all the preconceived notions foster children with troubled pasts might have to face. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking and I just love it. I was definitely balling my eyes out by the end of it. And I definitely recommend this book.

I needed something light after that, so I reread Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon. Castle Hangnail needs a new master, but when twelve-year-old Molly Utterback arrives claiming to be a wicked witch, well it’s not what anyone expected. Crazy adventures ensue, including deals made with magical moles, turning donkeys into dragons, and fending off a corrupt real estate agent with his own shadow. And then of course the evil sorceress who’s supposed to be Castle Hangnail’s real master appears. This is such a fun book and I love it so much and I will always love it.

Then, because I love middle grade fantasy and Castle Hangnail wasn’t enough to satisfy me, I read Upside-Down Magic by Sarah Mlynowski, Emily Jenkins, and Lauren Myracle. Nory’s magic does not do what it’s supposed to do. Instead of turning into a kitten, she turns into a dragon-kitten, or dritten. Instead of turning into a skunk, she turns into a skunk-elephant, or skunkafant. When Nory’s wonky magic causes her to fail the entrance exams to her father’s prestigious magic school, he sends her to live with her aunt and attend a program at the local public school for upside-down magic. Nory meets a bunch of new friends with magic as crazy as hers. She deals with bullies and magical accidents and also how much she hates that she doesn’t have normal magic. This book was just so much fun, and I loved it lots. I’ve since read the second book and loved that too.

After that I read Chasing Secrets by Jennifer Choldenko. What I didn’t realize when I picked this up is this is a plague book. Oops. Lizzie is the daughter of a prominent doctor in San Francisco in 1901. There’s an outbreak of bubonic plague, and Chinatown has been quarantined, and the family’s Chinese cook is trapped inside the quarantine. But Lizzie knows what a quarantine should look like, and the Chinatown quarantine isn’t that. Lizzie is determined to get their cook out and to uncover the truth about the plague. Even though this is a middle grade book, it deals with issues of class, gender, and race in the early 1900s. The plague aspect of this book was pretty disturbing right now, so if you’re interested in reading this, I might wait to read it until the plague is over here. I’m also not sure the subplot about Lizzie’s brother was satisfying to me, but on the whole this was a good book.

My next book was also about a girl named Liz, though this was not an intentional choice on my part. I’ve been adding a lot of books by Black authors to my want to read shelf on Goodreads, and this month I got You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson out of the library. Liz is depending on getting a music scholarship to attend her top-choice school, and when she doesn’t get it, she decides to run for prom queen to try to get the scholarship that comes with it. Her hometown takes prom, and the race for prom court, very, very seriously. We follow Liz as she steps way outside her comfort zone and makes new friends, mends old relationships, falls in love with the new girl in school, and faces down some truly epic mean girls who are trying to use her race and sexuality to force her out of the race. This is a great book, and I had so much fun reading it. I actually caught myself wishing I’d gone to my own high school prom (I came to my senses later and have no regrets). I definitely recommend this book.

Next, I read The Waste Lands by Stephen King, the third book in the Dark Tower series. I think this was my favorite book in the series so far. Until we got to the suicidal talking pink monorail, which, I’m sorry, I just can’t take seriously.

And then I read the next book in Becky Chambers’s Wayfarers series, Record of a Spaceborn Few. This book follows a group of people living on the Exodan Fleet, the fleet that left Earth hundreds of years ago. Among these characters is Ashby’s sister (Ashby is the captain of the Wayfarer in the first book). This book is really about the lifestyle of these particular humans and how some cling to it, some reject it, and some seek it out. And it’s beautiful and I love it. I just love these books so so much, and I can’t wait for the next one to come out in 2021.

And finally, it took me all month, but I reread Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling. I also talked about this a little in my Twilight post. It was a hard book to read, particularly this month, because the ministry’s denial of Voldemort’s return feels very much like certain politicians in the U.S. denying the coronavirus and letting it run wild. But I read it, and enjoyed it by the end.

And that’s it for the month of July. Have you read any of these books? Do you agree with my thoughts?

Twilight Cookie Dough

If you’ve been following my reading roundup posts for the last few months, you know I’ve been working my way through the Harry Potter books again. This started as a combination of my annual reread and a deep need for some literary comfort food at the start of quarantine, and rereading the first three books were great. Then She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named revealed that she is a terrible person, and that really slowed down my reading of the fourth book as I worked through my feelings about this and what I wanted to do with those feelings. The fifth book was another story. The ministry’s denial of Voldemort’s return, coupled with Harry’s feelings of isolation, made it very bad quarantine reading. Which leads me to the actual point of this blog post.

Collage of the four books in the Twilight Saga: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn. At some point in the past few months, a friend in my writing group said that rereading Twilight was a good quarantine decision. Her recommendation, along with the announcement that Midnight Sun is finally coming out in August, pushed me to reread the Twilight books in July. And it was quite an experience. As often as I was cringing through the books, I have to admit that I enjoyed the books, and now that I’ve read them again, I judge myself a little less for how much I liked them in high school.

All through my sophomore and junior years of high school, I read and reread and reread the Twilight books. It was all I talked about, much to the annoyance of everyone around me who wasn’t a high school girl. I even had Twilight T-shirts and a poster of Edward on my bedroom wall. Then Breaking Dawn came out the summer before my senior year, and it was so bad and such a disappointing end to the series that by the middle of senior year, I was the one cringing at the freshmen and sophomores in my Spanish class who couldn’t talk about anything else.

I have spent the intervening ten years either vehemently denying that I was a Twilight fan in high school or else admitting, grudgingly, that I read them but then ranting about how utterly terrible they are. So much so that when I picked them up again, I found I barely remembered the books themselves, and I was shocked by how not terrible they were.

Don’t get me wrong, the Twilight books aren’t great. They aren’t great for a number of reasons, and so many people have talked about those reasons in depth. I’m not here to rehash that. There were definitely a lot of moments where I cringed on this reread. There’s a lot of casual racism and sexism and I was horrified that once apon a time I found the scene where Jacob kisses Bella against her will and her dad takes Jacob’s side, even though Bella actually got hurt defending herself, to be a funny scene. But I will say that in my opinion, the biggest flaw of the series is that it taught a generation of teenage girls that the gold standard for romance is an abusive relationship. I came to my senses by the end of high school, and I know many of my friends did too, but I’m sure not everyone did, and the damage this series might have caused is really problematic.

But after rereading the books last month, I have to admit that in a lot of ways, they aren’t as bad as I’ve been giving them credit for. Honestly, I was a little alarmed by how quickly I was sucked into the books and how unwilling I was to put them down. I felt like I was reliving all those times I read the books in high school, all the lunchtime arguments and fangirling in the back of my precalculus class and smuggling my original iPod shuffle into my confirmation retreat so I could listen to the end of New Moon. I’d honestly forgotten a lot of the books (especially New Moon, because I’m pretty sure after the first time through I only read the beginning and then skipped to the part where Alice comes back). There’s a point at the end of Eclipse when Jacob tells Bella that Edward is like a drug for her, and I felt, both back in high school and this month, that this applied to me and these books too. I needed to be reading them all the time, at the expense of everything else, including sleep. When I did sleep, my dreams were very much Twilight themed. And again, it wasn’t until I got to Breaking Dawn that I managed to snap out of it.

But revisiting all these memories is a lot of the reason I feel a little more kindly toward the Twilight books now, because rereading them reminded me not just of how much I liked them but of how much I actually gained from them.

I had a hard time socially in high school. I had a few close friends but often felt like I didn’t fit in any one group. But the time when we were all reading Twilight, sitting around crowded lunch tables after band and arguing about whether we were Team Edward or Team Jacob, or fangirling about Edward and his silver volvo all the way through algebra 2 and precalculus are honestly some of my happiest high school memories. Even the shared disappointment at the way Breaking Dawn went.

I’m also pretty sure Twilight is the reason I first picked up Pride and Prejudice in high school, though I admit I didn’t really appreciate it until I was in college and had put Twilight behind me.

Finally, the Twilight series really impacted how I write, and I’d forgotten how much until I reread them just now. No, the writing in the Twilight books is not a masterpiece of literary genius. But it does what it is meant to do: it is clear and engaging and it moves the plot along, and that’s totally fine. Of course, I do hope I write better than Stephenie Meyer, but I have to say, Twilight is the reason I first tried writing in first person, which is a style I really enjoy and use quite a lot. I also spent hours on Stephenie Meyer’s website—at one point it was my homepage—and her writing advice is also why I first tried writing scenes from other characters’ points of view to really get into their heads, and why I still make playlists of songs that speak to my ideas for each project. All these things have really helped my writing, and I have to give credit where credit is due.

So is Twilight a great series? No. Would I recommend it to anyone? Absolutely not. But did I enjoy it? Yes. Will I reread it again some time? Maybe. Will I buy Midnight Sun when it comes out tomorrow and read it obsessively for the rest of the week? You bet. And I’m okay with that now.

To quote another friend from my writing group, Twilight is like the equivalent of eating raw cookie dough. I’m totally aware of how it’s unhealthy, but once in a while… Yeah it’s good stuff.

June Reading Roundup

Well, we’ve made it to July, though honestly I’m not sure if we have indeed made it or if we’re going to make it much longer. The best I can say is we are more than halfway through this disaster of a year. But as coronavirus cases are rising all over the country again and there’s no end in sight, I’ve kind of given into the existential dread I was fighting off in April. We’re all going to die. If someone could convince me otherwise I would really appreciate it. Because I haven’t been sleeping or writing much or generally feeling like a human. Which is why

i’m writing this so late into the month this time despite my really good intentions to get it done sooner.

So let’s talk about the books I read in June.

Collage of the covers of the books I read in June: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay, Briar's Book, We Must Be Brave, Speak, A Closed and Common Orbit,Such a Fun Age, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and The Witches I read eleven books in June, bringing my grand total for 2020 up to fifty-eight books. Five of the books were rereads for me. Four were dystopians, one was science fiction, one was historical fiction, two were contemporary, and three were fantasy. And I read one book in Braille, bringing the number of Braille books I’ve read in 2020 to five, just one behind where I should be if I’m going to reach my goal of reading twelve books in Braille this year.

I started June with the prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. This was the story of the Tenth Hunger Games, and young President Snow, who acts as a mentor the first year mentors are included in the Games. I flew through this book, but I didn’t enjoy it very much. I found the worldbuilding fascinating. I loved seeing how the Games started and how they became what they are in the main trilogy. But I didn’t like being in Snow’s head. Knowing that he’s going to end up president meant that all his struggles in this book felt meaningless, because there were no stakes—everything was going to turn out fine. And Snow wasn’t really a compelling enough character to pull that kind of thing off, at least for me. Also the pacing of this book was really weird. So if you’re interested in the worldbuilding, this book might be for you, but otherwise I honestly wouldn’t recommend it.

I followed this up with a reread of the original three Hunger Games books because why not? My opinions of these books were largely the same as they have been in the past. I loved the first book. The second book was really good but again the pacing was weird, and I have strong negative feelings about the third book that I’ve ranted about in the past so won’t bore you with now. Despite the ending, this series remains one of my favorites, and it was nice to reread it right now.

Next, I finished my reread of Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic series with Briar’s Book. in this book, Briar and the girls face down an epidemic. I was worried about rereading this book, because it’s very much a plague book, but it was actually kind of a nice read. It was nice to escape to a world where the plague is taken seriously and everyone is behaving responsibly and a cure can be found. Plus I love these four young mages and this whole world. This series also remains a favorite for me and I continue to highly recommend.

My aunt gave my mom We Must be Brave by Frances Liardet for her birthday, and when I found out it was a World War II book, I picked it up too, because I love World War II books. We must be brave is about a couple living in the English countryside who discover a little girl alone on a bus full of evacuees. The girl apparently got on the bus by mistake, and the couple take her in while they try to contact her family. They never wanted children, but the little girl takes over their lives completely and becomes theirs as the war rages on. And then her family appears. The premise of the book really hooked me in, but honestly I was disappointed by this book. I found it to be slow to the point of tedium at points, melodramatic and maudlin at others. And it also just would not end. I can see why some people would like it, but personally I wouldn’t recommend it.

After that, I read Speak by Laurie Hals Anderson. This was a powerful and heartbreaking book about a girl finding the strength to speak up after she was raped a party the summer before high school. i never actually read this book when I was a kid, but I know a lot of people who did and I feel like it should be required reading for all teens.

I needed something fun after that, so I read the second book in The Wayfarer’s series, A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers. At first, this book threw me a little because it doesn’t follow the same crew as the first book. It follows Lovelace the AI, now trying to adjust to life in an illegal human body kit, and Pepper, the mechanic we met in the previous book. But once I got used to these new characters, I was totally won over by both of their stories and their struggles and their growth and I was totally crying by the end. I loved how different this book was from the first, but how it was still connected. I also love this amazing universe Becky Chambers has created, and all these great characters with these wonderful heartwarming relationships. I am just dying to read the next book!

Then I read Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid. I’ve had this on my list for a while and just happened to get off the waiting list at the library during June. So yes it was topical but not on purpose. Such A Fun Age is about a young black woman, Amira, who babysits for a three-year-old white girl, Briar, and Briar’s blogger mom whose name I cannot remember. When there’s a family emergency one night and Briar’s mom asks Amira to take Briar to the market down the street to get her out of the house, Amira is accused of kidnapping Briar, and so begins a chain of events as Amira tries to move on with her life and Briar’s well-intentioned mom tries desperately to make amends. I loved this book. Not just because it was topical in today’s climate but because it was about so much more than the incident in the market, though of course that was central. All of the characters in this book were fully developed characters, with serious but realistic flaws, and it was really about Amira’s life and her struggles as she grew up and tried to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. The book encompasses the incident in the market and so much more, and I feel like this is a really important book because of that. Also it was very fast-paced and very easy to read. This is definitely one I would recommend.

I was reading the fourth Harry Potter book all month in Braille. It took me so long because first of all, I’m slower at reading in Braille, and second of all, I was really struggling with how I felt about the author and the books. I talked about this last month, so I won’t go into it again here. But at the end of June, I finished rereading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and that’s all I’m saying about it.

And I finished up June with The Witches by Roald Dahl. Like most of the Roald Dahl books I’ve reread in the last couple years, this turned out to be both delightful and horrifying. I know I read this as a child but I had no recollection of it and wow, just wow this was a wild book. A lot of fun but really wild.

And that’s it for the books I read in June. Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them?

April and May Reading Roundup

Well here we are, more than halfway through June, and as usual, I’m abysmally late on posting this. I admit, I’ve been putting it off, because it feels ridiculously insensitive to be posting about the books I read in April and May with the world in the state it’s in. I don’t like to talk about politics online, and anyway I don’t have anything to say that hasn’t been said a hundred times and much more eloquently than I could. But I also can’t stay silent.

At the time I’m writing this, more than one hundred twenty-five thousand people have died from the coronavirus in our country. People are still calling it a hoax and refusing to wear masks. I viscerally hate masks, but wearing one saves lives, so it’s really the only decent thing to do. The pandemic is disproportionately affecting people of color, and meanwhile, our president is focused solely on bringing back the economy and winning the upcoming election. And I get that bringing back the economy is important, I do, but we need to do so safely, and based on the rising number of Covid-19 cases in more than half the country, safety still isn’t the watchword, and this endangers everyone, particularly the people of color who will continue to be disproportionately harmed by the pandemic because of the way our society is built. Last, and certainly not least, we have been reeling over the brutal police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others, and then the police brutality and attacks by right-wing extremists against the peaceful protestors who have come out against the murders and the systemic racism and oppression that enable them. It is high time we are protesting, in all the ways we can, and I only hope we can keep the momentum up through November and beyond, because our country needs real, drastic change. I don’t pretend to know everything there is to know about these issues, but I’m reading and I’m learning and I’m sharing. I am furious. I am furious, and heartbroken, and so stressed out I’m worried I’ve hurt my jaw with all the teeth-grinding I’ve been doing.

Most of this has come about since the end of May. But before that, in April and most of May, I was sheltering in place and freaking out about Covid. And learning all this important stuff. In April, I was so stressed out that I only read one book. I couldn’t focus on anything, and even though I started a bunch of other books, they were mostly library books, and I didn’t finish them before they expired, and then I had to get back on the waiting list. In May, though, I read thirteen books of all different genres. Some were rereads, but most were new. I read three books in Braille which brings my total of Braille books for the year up to four. Still behind where I should be for my goal, but yay! Collage of the covers of the 14 books I read in April and May: Ember Queen; Shadows of Self; The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet; The Deceivers; Circe; There There; the first three Harry Potter books; Spark; Supernova; Daja's Book; Fantastic Mr. Fox and Other Animal Stories; and The Light Between Worlds.

The only book I read in April was Ember Queen by Laura Sebastian, the third book in the Ash Princess trilogy, which came out in February. Anything I say about the plot of this book will spoil the first two if you haven’t already read them. But let’s just say that things are heating up for Theo and her rebellion. Quite literally. I love what Laura Sebastian does with the characters in this book. I particularly love what she does with the villains, and the villains throughout the entire series. It’s really interesting from a writing perspective, and also just so well done. I loved this whole series and would definitely recommend it.

I started off May by finishing Shadows of Self, the second book in Brandon Sanderson’s second Mistborn Trilogy. In this book, Wax is investigating a set of highly improbable murders. We get a lot of Wax’s backstory from before he returned to the city too. I enjoyed this book, but the first two thirds were quite slow by Sanderson’s standards. The ending was heartbreaking though, and I’m looking forward to what comes next.

Next, I read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. This is the first book in the Wayfarers series, though as I’ve since discovered these books all stand alone and are actually just interconnected novels in the same universe, which I love. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet follows Rosemary, who has signed on as a clerk for a spaceship which creates new wormholes for other ships in the Galactic Commons to use to travel. The ship, the Wayfarer, has an interspecies crew of delightful characters, who embrace Rosemary wholeheartedly. But Rosemary has a secret, and when they are asked to travel for almost a year to build a wormhole to a kplanet at war with the rest of its solar systemand threatening war against the rest of the Galactic Commons, Rosemary’s secret is in danger of coming out. This is the best description I can give this book, because the plot is a bit thin. I’ve seen some reviews claim that this book doesn’t have a plot, but it definitely does. It’s just a very episodic novel, filled with different adventures for each of the crew members. We already know that happy space adventures are 100% my thing, but oh this book was just so much fun! Also it has a great title! It was exactly what I needed to be reading while the world falls apart, and this was the book that really got me out of my April reading slump. I just love it so much, and if you love fun, heartwarming, delightful space adventures too, I highly recommend you give this book a shot.

In May, I started my annual Harry Potter reread. I reread the first three books, Sorcerer’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets, and Prisoner of Azkaban. This time, I was rereading them in Braille. I read these books before J. K. Rowling made all those awful transphobic comments on twitter, and I’ve been working through how I feel about her and the books ever since. Working through my feelings about JKR was pretty easy actually. I’ve been cranky with her ever since Cursed Child, honestly, and we’ve all known she’s transphobic before now, but the fact that she refused to learn from the countless people trying to tell her that her comments are hurtful, hateful, and dangerous for the trans community was too much for me. I’ve been bullied and excluded all my life because I am blind, and I cannot abide anyone who hates and attacks anyone else just because of who they are. So now JKR is she-who-must-not-be-named to me. Sorting out what to do about my feelings for the Harry Potter books themselves is much more complicated. I love these books so much, and I can’t just turn that love off. They have shaped who I am as a person and a writer. I recognize they aren’t great in terms of representation, and they’re actually pretty terrible on some of the sub-issues of the books (the house-elves only ever get better masters but as a species remain enslaved; anyone fat is a terrible person or just plain stupid; Snape is really abusive, but because he’s ultimately a good guy, he’s totally forgiven for that; I could go on). For me personally, I feel it’s important to continue to engage with the books, both because I do love the characters and the story and the fundamental themes of love and acceptence, and because I want to continue to study these books critically and learn from their shortcomings. However I understand that publicly supporting or discussing the books could cause real harm to my trans friends, and I absolutely do not want to do that. I have taken my Hogwarts house off my social media profiles and bios, and I won’t be wearing or displaying any Harry Potter swag in the future. And if I reread the books, I’ll keep it to myself. As I said above, I don’t pretend to know or understand all the issues at play here, but I will keep learning. And as I do, this tentative balance I’ve come to might change. All I’ll say for now is that I reread the first three Harry Potter books in May. Moving on.

Meanwhile, I read The Deceivers by Margaret Peterson Haddix, the sequel to The Strangers which I read earlier this year. In this book, Chess, Emma, and Finn and their friend Natalie have to venture back into the alternate world to rescue their mothers. This book is so much fun, and it’s got a lot of twists and turns. It was a great sequel to The Strangers, and I can’t wait for the third book to come out.

I also read Circe by Madeline Miller. This was another book I started in April but didn’t finish before my library copy expired and had to get back on the waitlist. We were trying to get my Harvard Law School book club back together, virtually, to discuss this, which is why I picked it up, but that discussion never happened, sadly. Circe is a retelling of Greek mythology from Circe’s point of view. It goes through her entire life, from her birth and her childhood, to her exile, and so on. I don’t want to spoil it in case you don’t know the Greek mythology, if you do know the mythology, I’m sorry to say you know the whole book. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with Circe, especially because it’s gotten so many glowing reviews. Madeline Miller’s writing was very beautiful, if a tad melodramatic at times. But she didn’t add anything new to the story, and so it really dragged for me. I can see why people liked it, but it honestly just wasn’t for me.

Next, I read There There by Tommy Orange. This is a book that follows several Native American characters in modern-day Oakland, as they all prepare to attend a big powwow in Oakland. I’m ashamed to admit that aside from what I learned in elementary schools and the few books I read then, I know very little about modern-day Native American culture. I really enjoyed reading about all these different characters, but I admit that I got a bit lost because there were so many characters and they all connected in different ways. I also felt like it was a little too convenient how it all came together in the end. I did enjoy this book, but honestly literary fiction has to really wow me for me to recommend it to others, and this didn’t quite do that.

After that, I read Spark by Sarah Beth Durst. I started reading this in Braille but the electronic Braille version I had kept having whole sentences or parts of sentences missing, so I gave up and listened to it. Set in a world where children bond with dragon-like creatures called storm beasts and control the weather, Spark follows Mina, who is very quiet, and her new lightning beast, Pixit, as they learn to harness and control lightning. Mina struggles at the lightning school, because most lightning guardian teams are loud and obnoxious. She doesn’t feel like she fits in, a fact reenforced by her family’s perceptions of her, and she’s sure she’ll never be able to be a real storm guardian. But when Mina and Pixit learn the price of controlling the weather with their power, quiet Mina must learn to speak up. This was a really fun book. I loved watching Mina grow into the person she wants to be, and I just ador Pixit, who is like a dragon puppy. I would definitely recommend this book.

Then I finished Marissa Meyer’s Renegades series with Supernova. This was a great finale to this series. Everything comes to a head so nicely, and yes, a lot of it was still really predictable, but it was also a lot of fun. The only bit I didn’t like was the epilogue, which put a twist on everything and really didn’t feel like an ending at all. Now if there was going to be more content in the Renegades world, I’d be fine with it, but as it stands it didn’t work for me as an ending. Still, I really enjoyed the whole series.

After that, I reread the third Circle of Magic book, Daja’s Book by Tamora Pierce. I always love these books. They’re so much fun and really great to reread in times of stress. In Daja’s Book, the four young mages have traveled north with Sandry’s uncle, the duke, and their teachers to figure out how to help with a drought. Since they spun their magic together, the four’s magic has changed and is now getting out of control in some really weird ways, and they have to deal with that. Also forest fires. But the real joy of this book is how Daja has to confront her past and the people who cast her out after her family died in a shipwreck. When Daja accidentally creates a vine of living metal, a Trader caravan offers to buy it, and Daja gets to interact with her people for the first time in months. This is a really great book, and as I’ve said before, I really recommend this whole series.

I then took a break for something fun and silly and listened to Fantastic Mr. Fox and Other Animal Stories by Roald Dahl. This was a collection of a bunch of different short animal stories: Fantastic Mr. Fox, Esio Trot, The Enormous Crocodile, and The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me. We had this audiobook when I was a kid, and I remember listening to it on some car ride, but nothing else. This was quick and fun and very silly, which was really nice.

Finally, I read The Light Between Worlds by Laura E. Weymouth, and guys, this might be my favorite book of 2020 so far. The Light Between Worlds reminds me a lot of Narnia, but it’s everything I didn’t know I wanted from Narnia. The story is about three children who are whisked into a magical world in the middle of an air raid in World War II, and the book alternates between their adventures in the fantasy world and their lives five years after they’ve returned home. It particularly focuses on the youngest child, Evelyn, who grew up in the fantasy world and is really struggling back in our world. This is an absolutely beautiful book that just gave me so many feelings: It’s the sort of book that I have been not just recommending to everyone but buying for everyone too. You absolutely have to read this one!

And that’s it for April and May of this year. My plan is to have my June reading post up not too long after the end of June, because this is ridiculous. If you’ve read any of these books, I’d love to talk about them. And I hope some of these books might help you find some light in these dark times. Take care of yourselves, and I’ll be back soon.

What I’ve Learned in Two Months of Quarantine

I only read one book in April, so I’m not doing a whole post on that. Instead I’ll talk about that one book along with my May books in a few weeks. In the meantime, I want to chat with you all about my quarantine life.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past three months, the coronavirus has taken over the world, and no plucky sixteen-year-old heroine has risen up to save us yet.

Personally, I haven’t been in to work since March 13. The last time my writing group met in person was March 14, and we realized after the fact that we probably shouldn’t have done that. The last time I went to a barre class at my local studio was March 16. Aside from walks around the neighborhood to keep up Neutron’s training, I’ve been quarantining for sixty-eight days.

I recognize that I have been incredibly lucky. I’m safe and healthy. I still have a job. I have plenty of food and toilet paper. But I’m not going to pretend it hasn’t been hard. I’ve been happier in D.C. than I’ve been in a long time, and in a little less than a week, most of the things that made me really happy were gone. I’m hopeful that most everything will come back once it’s safe, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard right now.

At the start of all this, I heard a lot of people saying that you should journal about these times. I have successfully kept a journal exactly once in my life, during my year living in Italy, and even then I was pretty bad at it. But back in March, I thought I’d give journaling another try. These are, after all, extraordinary times, and I thought it would be cool to have my own record of them. But honestly I found that living March was so awful that I did not want to then write about it. I tried just writing down what I was doing each day, but even that was too much. And so, as the quarantine continued with no end in sight, I just started a list of things I was learning during this time. Things I was learning about myself, things I was learning to do, random little factoids that intrigued me.

Since we’re now two months into this, I thought it was time to share my list.

So here’s what I’ve learned in two months of quarantine:

How to make really good bread. Seriously I may never buy bread again.

I hated telework before all this started. I have not learned to like it. No, I still definitely hate it.

I am happier when I have something to do. Having nothing to do makes me miserable and leads to excessive napping.

Having nothing to do also does not make me more productive at things like reading, exercising, blogging, playing the clarinet, or any of the many craft projects I have lying around my apartment. Remember what I said about only reading one book in April?

Don’t aggressively wipe down pasta boxes with disinfectant.

Pasta boxes also have directions on the back, and I should read them. Also red lentil pasta is only okay.

Routines are glorious things. I miss my routine. But it’s hard to motivate myself to keep a routine when there’s nothing to hold you accountable to it.

I miss dressing up in my professional clothes and going to work. The novelty of working in my pajamas has definitely worn off. But somehow it’s now a routine. Aaaahhhh!

How to actually use track changes in Word. I think I’ve been doing it wrong for years.

Even though it has a lower fat content than American ice cream, gelato has eggs in it.

You can make vegetable broth by boiling all your vegetable scraps.

Microwaving frozen vegetables is a sure path to spontaneously crying into your plate about how bad the world has gotten. Seriously sauté them with olive oil and a lot of spices and life will be much better. Still not as good as fresh vegetables but better than microwaving them. (I actually already knew this from my time studying for the bar last summer but it bears repeating.)

I love Wegman’s. I also already knew this but it also bears repeating.

The difference between something I need and something I want. Yes I needed that ice cream machine.

That a pandemic is still better than law school in a lot of ways. That’s just sad.

How to play backgammon. Also it’s spelled backgammon, not batgammon.

That brushing harissa onto one side of tofu is not equivalent to marinating the tofu.

Networking is an excellent thing. I should do it more and maybe be less terrified of it.

I am no longer afraid of the telephone. Who am I kidding? I’m a millennial. Of course I’m still afraid of the telephone.

How to make really good homemade ice cream.

On the flipside, don’t substitute frozen berries for fresh, half-and-half for cream, and maple syrup for sugar all in one batch of ice cream. You will get a quart-and-a-half sized popsicle.

As much as I complain about the D.C. metro, I miss the D.C. metro.

When you sneeze, your snot leaves your nose at a whopping 200 miles per hour. (This is why masks are important, people, and this coming from someone who is kind of terrified of masks.)

I’m really hoping that I don’t have to write a list of what I’ve learned in two more months of quarantine, but at the same time, I don’t want to venture out into the world if it’s not safe. I’ve already had the flu this year, and my sinuses still haven’t recovered from that for some reason. As much as I want life to go back to normal, it’s not worth it if it puts me, my family and friends, my dog, or anyone else I might come into contact with at risk.

I hope you’ve found this list at least a little enjoyable to read. I’ll be back in a few weeks to talk about what I’ve been reading in quarantine. And in the meantime, as one of my coworkers likes to say: Stay healthy, stay safe, stay sane.

March Reading Roundup

Over the past several weeks, I thought about blogging more and getting this post up sooner. I meant to do it. I really did. But a solid sense of time and my motivation to do pretty much anything have gone out the window in social distancing life. But here I am now.

I hope everyone is holding up out there. I so far haven’t gotten sick or gone insane, but there’s still time. I did finish my five trillionth round of revisions on my middle grade fantasy project, and then my five trillion and first round of revisions. Now I’m back to the memory-wiping academy project. I also bought myself a television because my iPad or laptop just wasn’t enough of a screen, and I hope to have friends over for a movie night someday ever. I’ve been cooking all the time too. I’ve learned to make some really good bread thanks to a recipe my brother shared with me. I tried lentil pasta, with mixed results, and harissa marinated tofu which probably would have turned out better if I had enough harissa to actually marinate the tofu. But after that it’s been a lot of staples like couscous and frozen veggies or rice and beans or pasta. I’ve also been making homemade ice cream, and there’s no going back to the store-bought stuff now.

Basically I’m doing fine but life is upside down and I hate it so much, even though it’s definitely necessary.

I also read eight books in March. I read most of these books in the first half of March, before the lockdown set in. Oddly I haven’t been reading as much even though I’m stuck at home now. I saw a tweet about this somewhere. I can’t find it now, but the gist is we expect to be a lot more productive with life on lockdown, but we’re also spending a lot of time holding the existential dread at bay.

Collage of the eight books I read in March: A Little Taste of Poison, Archenemies, Ash Princess, Lady Smoke, Sandry's Book, Tris's Book, Babylon's Ashes, and The Drawing of the Three While I enjoyed all these books a lot, I admit that none of them really stuck out to me, and I’m having a hard time remembering them, but I think that’s more because of the world getting thoroughly messed up in the last month than the books’ fault.

I continued a lot of the series that I started last month, and I started a couple new series. I also read a variety of genres again, some middle grade and YA, some fantasy and sci fi, and a superhero story.

All the books I read were audiobooks. I’m not doing so great on my goal to read one Braille book a month. But even though I won’t be completely successful on this goal this year (unless one of you knows how to time travel), I’m going to keep trying.

Now let’s dive in and talk about these books.

First, I read the second Uncommon Magic book, A Little Taste of Poison by R. J. Anderson. I read the first book, A Pocket Full of Murder, back at the end of January, and I loved it lots. This was a great sequel. It did a great job following up on the problems left unsolved at the end of the first book, delving deeper into the world, and complicating everything further. My only complaint is there’s this epilogue at the end that, without spoiling anything, puts a new twist on everything, and it’s really sudden and fast and in my opinion makes the book and series feel incomplete. If there’s going to be a third book, I’d be okay with it, but I’m not sure there will be a third book based on my very cursory research on Goodreads. On the whole though I really loved this world and these characters, and this is a very fun middle grade fantasy series.

Next, I read the second Renegades book, Archenemies by Marissa Meyer. I don’t want to say too much in terms of plot synopsis because I don’t want to spoil the first book if you haven’t read it, and almost anything I say would be a spoiler. But we continue with the spying and the secret identities and the superhero teamwork and friends and romance and everything I loved about the first book. Archenemies took the story forward in a logical way but a different way than I expected. It also raised the stakes a lot, and it did a lot better with the issue I had with the first book that I felt like we were in the wrong character’s head during key moments for the other character. And oh my gosh I loved the twists this took for its characters and the complexities it added. I just love all the characters and I don’t know how I want this to end because I’m cheering for all of them (with a few exceptions). I’m really looking forward to diving into the third and final book soon.

Last year while I was studying for the bar, I read Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian. I really loved the book, but also had no recollection of it because I was studying for the bar. And since the third book just came out, I reread Ash Princess this month and then read the sequel, Lady Smoke. And just oh my gosh these books are amazing! Ash Princess follows Theo, the princess of a conquered country who has been kept by the conquering force as a prisoner and tortured to keep her people downtrodden. But when she is forced to do the unthinkable, Theo decides to fight back. These books go some really unexpected places, and I just love how brilliant and driven Theo is. She is willing to sacrifice everything for her goal, and she does. And while she has emotions like any other sixteen-year-old girl, she has iron control over them and she acts for her head every time. The world is also really interesting, and like I said the plot takes some really interesting twists and turns. At this point I’ve finished the third book, and while I’m not talking about this until next month, this series is one I’d love to go back and reread from the beginning knowing what’s coming. If you haven’t read these books, I highly recommend them.

After that, I read the sixth Expanse book, Babylon’s Ashes by James S. A. Corey. A lot of this book felt like fall-out from the events of the last book. There was a lot of political maneuvering and planning and then finally a big battle. We get to see Holden play the mediator again which is fun because he’s bad at it. Some pretty big important things happened in this book that I won’t spoil. But on the whole, it was just an okay book. There were honestly too many point of view characters, characters who were very minor players in previous books and rose to the level of point-of-view characters in this book. Some of them it was cool to see their viewpoint, but on the whole it felt like just too much and it became hard to follow. I’m not entirely sure I’m going to continue with this series, because I can’t get any of the rest of the books on audio from the library, and I’m not sure I care enough to either buy the audiobooks or invest in reading them in Braille. I might just switch to the TV show at this point. I don’t know. We’ll see.

When the lockdown hit and I needed some literary comfort food, I started rereading Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic books. In March I read the first two, Sandry’s Book and Tris’s Book. Did I momentarily forget that the fourth book in this book is a plague book, and now I’m on track to read a plague book in the middle of a pandemic? Yes. Yes I did. Will I read it anyway? Probably. These books have been all-time favorites for a while, and they held up on reread, which is fabulous. They’re just so much fun and full of such great meaningful relationships, and I love them. I also love Tamora Pierce’s Circle world way more than her Tortall world. It’s so detailed and rich. I loved rereading these books, and I’m looking forward to getting back to the series soon.

Finally, I read the second book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, The Drawing of the Three. I enjoyed this more than the first book. It was way more coherent, story-wise. There was also a female main character. Yay! Unfortunately, I’m not really comfortable with King’s representation of mental illness in this book, and his treatment of women still isn’t great. I’ll probably keep reading this series, but not with a ton of enthusiasm. (Spoiler alert: I’m really just in it to get to the talking pink train I remember in the third book.)

And that’s it for March. Have you read any of these books? Do you have any other reads I might want to check out during quarantine?

February Reading Roundup

I intended to have this post up well before this, but halfway through writing it something happened to the file and I could no longer open it to finish, so I had to start again and that threw me off. And then of course the coronavirus went from “hey this is a not great thing that’s happening” to “oh my god what is happening?!” I’ve been working at home for a little more than a week, trying to adjust to life where everything from barre classes to writing group has gone virtual. So here I am, finally, to tell you about the books I read in February. If any of these sound interesting to you and you can get your hands on them, these might be some good quarantine reading.

At this point I am mostly over my flu and related sinus infection adventure of January and February, but it took all of February to get to this point and it was quite a saga. I am really hoping that I don’t get this coronavirus because I have been sick enough thanks. In February I also finished my next round of revisions for my middle grade fantasy project. And I read eleven books.

February was a great reading month. I read one whole series and two stand-alones. I finished another series I’ve been reading. And I started six new series this month. I also read a variety of genres and age-groups: a bunch of middle grade, as usual, but some YA and adult too, and also some contemporaries, sci fi, and fantasy of all stripes. Ten of these books were audio, but I did read one book in Braille, the first entire book I’ve read in Braille since last July.

Let’s dive in to the actual books I read.

First, I read The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. This is the first book in the Thursday Next series. I actually started this book in Braille during spring semester last year, but stalled when I started studying for the bar. This month I got the audiobook out of the library and tried again, and the audio worked better for me with this book. More on that in a second. The Thursday Next books take place in an alternate 1985 Britain where time travel is possible, genetic engineering has brought the dodo back from extinction, and literature is very, very important. Like people regularly change their name to John Milton, proponents of different literary movements regularly get into violent clashes, and Richard III is this world’s Rocky Horror. It’s a bonkers world, but all the details are integrated so well it’s pretty amazing. Our protagonist,Thursday Next, is a Literatec, or literary detective, and when her old college professor steals the original Martin Chuzzlewitt (Dickens) manuscript, she’s pulled into the investigation and crazy adventures ensue. For me, this book shone in its worldbuilding. It’s brilliant at making the wildly weird seem perfectly normal. The plot is exciting, and I enjoyed the characters, though this might be the first book I’ve read in a while where I shimped two characters and it turned out not to be canon. The part where I struggled with this book was the pacing. After a fast and furious opening, the book slows way downin the middle. This is where I got stuck last year, and because I read audio faster than I read in Braille, this is why audio worked better for me this time around. I got through the slow part faster. Later on, there was a moment where the plot takes a detour and the characters go on a weird time adventure that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the main plot of this book, though I’m hoping it will be relevant in the sequels. On the whole this was not my favorite book, but it wasn’t bad either, and the friend who recommended it also said the later books are stronger. I definitely plan to continue this series, and I’m looking forward to what comes next.

Next, I read the final book in The Thickety series, The Last Spell by J. A. White. I don’t want to say too much about the plot in this book because I don’t want to spoil the earlier books, but The Last Spell wrapped up this series so nicely. It was everything I wanted from a series finale and more. I particularly loved the growth that we saw from all the characters in this book. And of course I just love this dark and twisty world. This whole series is one that I definitely recommend now.

Next, I read A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. Full disclosure, I listened to the audiobook and I can’t remember or spell any of the character or place names in this book, so I’m not even going to try. This is a sci fi book about the ambassador from a small space station traveling to the heart of the empire that has conquered most of known space. She is tasked with both finding out what happened to her predecessor, who has gone silent, and trying to prevent the empire from annexing her station. But the empeare is teetering toward a succession war, something is eating ships on the edges of human-inhabited space, and someone has tampered with the ambassador’s memory link machine which connects her to the past ambassadors to the empire. This is the best I can describe it. There was so much I loved about this book: the worldbuilding was really cool, the characters were great, it was political in tffigue that didn’t make me feel stupid, and there was a great queer romance! But I also felt like the plot built and built and built, and the ending just didn’t seem like enough for all that buildup. That being said, the sequel comes out next year, and I’m still onboard to read that. I’m holding out hope the sequel will strengthen the ending of this book. I do want to say that there is a very graphic brain surgery scene in this book. It was well-done and totally justified for the plot, but it also freaked me out, so if that’s not your thing I’d be aware going into this book and possibly skip over that section.

Next, I reread Tamora Pierce’s two trickster books, Trickser’s Choice and Trickster’s Queen. Goodreads tells me the actual title for this duology is Daughter of the Lioness, but I super don’t like that so I’m pretending it’s not the case. These books follow Ali, daughter of Alanna the Lioness, who is captured by pirates and sold into slavery in the Copper Isles. The trickster god enlists Ali to help the native, brown-skinned islanders overthrow the white colonizers. I’kl say right away that these books aren’t perfect. Ali is an almost ridiculously perfect character, and there’s a big white savior problem. And I’m not even going to talk about the romantic subplot. The love interest is a crow and that is all. Trickster’s Choice also has a lot of fanservice moments where we glimpse characters from the other books (fun but not strictly necessary for this plot), and in a lot of ways it feels like setup for the second book. But Trickster’s Queen will always have a special place in my heart, because it was the first Tamora Pierce I ever read and also probably my first introduction to medieval fantasy. The plot of Trickster’s Queen is really great. There are a couple excellent twists, and it moves along at a really good clip. The characters in these books are also amazing. I think I have to agree with the folks on the Tortall Recall podcast that I would love to see these books from pretty much anyone else’s point of view, but acknowledging that these books do have some problem, they’re still favorites.

In between the two Trickster books, I read Blastaway by Melissa Landers. This is a middle grade space adventure, so it was right up my alley from the start. When Ky accidentally steals his parents’ spaceship—seriously it was an accident—he decides he might as well capitalize on this opportunity and go see the Fasti Star Festival, where manmade stars are unveiled and sent off to new homes in the galaxy. On the way, he runs into a spot of trouble with some space pirates, but he meess a girl named Fig at the festival who helps him shake off the pirates in exchange for a ride back to Earth. What Ky doesn’t know is Fig was hired by the same pirates chasing Ky. Fig is the best sharpshooter in the galaxy, and she’s been hired to blow up the star, which the pirates have loaded with dark matter. She also totally intends to steal Ky’s ship. Crazy space adventures ensue. This book had pretty much everything I love: space, space pirates, science nerds, characters keeping secrets from each other, complicated families, and fun hijinks. One thing that pulled me out of the story is that some of the basic science was just plain wrong. Traveling through wormhols? Cool. If you tell me that in the future humanity can manufacture stars and tow them across the galaxy to create new solar systems to colonize, I’ll follow you there. I’ll even go with it if you tell me one of those stars could be filled with dark matter. But space is a vacuum, guys. No amount of technological advancement can change that. Say it with me, folks: space is a vacuum. And sound cannot travel in a vacuum. There is no sound in space. So every time the characters were out in space and heard two ships crash into each other, or heard an explosion, or even talked to each other without radios, it pulled me out of the story and made me angry all over again. There is no sound in space! But if you can get past what really is a small detail, this was a really great book, and it’s definitely a great MG space adventure and I would totally recommend.

Next I read the first Dark Tower book by Stephen King, The Gunslinger. I got all the way through the fifth book in this series in college and then stopped. I don’t remember why. But The Dark Tower came up at trivia a few weeks ago and I remembered it and decided to take another whack at the series. The Gunslinger follows Roland, who is following the man in black and seeking the dark tower. It moves back and forth between the present as Roland journeys through the desert and into the mountains and Roland’s childhood growing up as a gunslinger in training. It’s sort of like a fantasy western. There are demons and weird magic and some hopping between worlds. Honestly, this was a wild book. I spent a lot of the time having no idea what was going on, honestly. There are also a lot of moments and descriptions in this book that made me really uncomfortable and probably wouldn’t hold up under a critical social justice reading today. If I didn’t remember really enjoying the next few books I probably wouldn’t continue with the series. As it is, I do remember really enjoying the next few books, and if that holds to be true I’ll continue the series. If it doesn’t hold to be true, well maybe there was a reason I stopped reading them in college. We’ll find out.

Next, I read Renegades by Marissa Meyer. This is the first in her superheros trilogy, and I really liked it. Nova is an Anarchist, and Adrian is a Renegade. The Renegades are the superheroes who ended the age of anarchy and brought order and justice back to the city, but Nova has a reason to hate them. This book is brimming with secret identities and cool powers and fun spy stuff. Nova infiltrates the Renegades to try to bring them down from the inside, and Adrian picks her for his team, and all of the feelings get complicated. This was a fast, fun read. It’s hard not to compare it to The Lunar Chronicles, but I couldn’t help myself sometimes. I’ll refrain here. I will say that the plot was pretty predictable. I saw almost everything coming long before it happened, which was a bit unfortunate, and I felt like we were in the wrong character’s head for a good chunk of the climax, but other than these issues, I really enjoyed this book and can’t wait to finish the series (at this point I’ve already read the second book).

After that, I read Forever, or a Long, Long Time by Caela Carter. This was my Braille book of the month, and I couldn’t put it down. Flora and Julian have been in so many foster homes that they don’t trust it when their new adopted mom says she’s theirs forever. They also don’t believe that they were ever actually born and ever actually had a birth family. So Flora, Julian, and their new mother set out on a journey to discover Flora and Julian’s past. This was just such a sweet, heartfelt book about found family and I loved it to pieces. One reviewer on Goodreads points out that the kids’ questions could have been answered by a trip to city records to see their birth certificates, and I sort of agree, but given the trauma the kids had, I’m not sure it would have worked that easily. But if you’re looking for a middle grade book about foster care and found family that will give you all the feels, I’d definitely give this one a read.

Then I picked up the second Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. In February, I read the first book, The Alloy of Law. Apparently Sanderson is planning multiple trilogies set in different time periods in this world, which sounds really cool. This trilogy is a western, set three hundred years after the end of the first Mistborn trilogy. Wax is a nobleman-turned-constable out on the wild frontier, until he has to come back to the city to save his financially struggling house and gets embroiled in trying to stop a gang that’s stealing from railroads and taking hostages. I really liked the plot and the characters of this book, but I feel like it struggled from being connected to the first Mistborn trilogy. I got too hung up on trying to figure out which religious figure was which character in the original trilogy and how we got from there to here in the development of the world.

Finally, I finished off February with The Strangers by Margaret Peterson Haddix. This is the first book in her new Greystone Secrets series. The second book comes out this spring and I can’t wait. Chess, Emma, and Finn are perfectly normal kids living perfectly normal lives in Ohio (I think?), until one day three kids from Arizona are kidnapped, and these three kids have nearly identical names, the same birthdays, and even look similar to the Greystone kids. And then their mother leaves on a mysterious business trip, and everything just gets really weird. Won’t say more than that because I don’t want to spoil it. This was a fun, fast middle grade book, and I really enjoyed it. The way it’s structured, it does kind of feel like it switches genres two thirds of the way through the book—from contemporary mystery to sci fi—and that isn’t great, but it also makes sense for the plot and I’m not sure how else something like that could have been accomplished. I loved how the author captured each kid’s voice and age so well, and I was so invested in the story. And oh the ending! It’s incredible! Sidenote, if the sequel goes awry I could wind up hating this series but as it stands I loved this first book and would definitely recommend.

And that’s it for February. If any of these books sound interesting to you, they’d certainly make great reading during these socially distant times if you can get your hands on them. And now that I’m getting settled into my telework routine, I’m hoping to get some more blogging done soon. At the very least, I’ll be back next week with my reading roundup for March.

A Valentine’s Fear Published by Every Day Fiction

Happy early Valentine’s Day everybody! I’m so excited to tell you that my little dystopian Valentine’s Day flash fiction story, “A Valentine’s Fear,” was published in Every Day Fiction today. It’s about the commercialization of feelings and brownies and feelings, and it’s only 250 words so it won’t even take up much of your time to read. You can check it out here. And once you’ve read it, if you’re curious about where the story came from, you can read the story behind “A Valentine’s Fear.” Hope you enjoy, and hope you have a good Valentine’s Day, whether you’re out to dinner with a special someone or happily snuggled up on the couch editing your novel which is definitely what I’ll be doing.

January Reading Roundup

January felt like a very, very long month this year. This is the first year that I’m working full time and didn’t have a long break from mid-December through mid-January, which was definitely part of the feeling that January lasted forever. But a lot happened in January too. I started writing every morning before work, a friend from college came to visit for the weekend, I made a ton of progress on my revisions, and then I got the flu and a post-flu ear/sinus issue that I’m still dealing with. It was a lot.

Collage of the 14 books I read in January: Savvy, Scumble, Switch, The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, The Hero of Ages, The Whispering Trees, Well of Witches, First Test, Page, Squire, Lady Knight, Girl in the Blue Coat, and A Pocket Full of Murder I also read 14 books in January, which gets me well on my way toward my 100 book goal for 2020. I read three complete series this month, continued with a series that I was in the middle of, started a new series, and read one stand-alone. I only read half a book in Braille and switched to audio when I got the flu. And all of the books I read but one were fantasy, mostly middle grade fantasy but one adult fantasy series. The non-fantasy book I read this month was historical fiction. I really liked almost all the books I read too, so on the whole this was a really good reading month.

First, I blazed through the Savvy trilogy by Ingrid Law. I read the first two books, Savvy and Scumble, on New Years Day, and the third book, Switch, the day after. These books take place in contemporary midwest and west America and follow a sprawling family with magical powers. The first book follows Mibs, who gets her magical powers—called a Savvy—on her thirteenth birthday like the rest of her siblings, and sets off with two of her brothers and some new friends to try to get to the hospital where her father is in a coma after a car accident. It’s a crazy adventure and a ton of fun. The second book follows Mibs’s cousin as he tries to get his savvy of dismantling anything metal under control. And the third book follows Mibs’s younger sister after everyone in the family’s powers suddenly switch and they’re stuck with new powers just as they’re trying to help their very unmagical grandmother move to come live with them. These three books are more like related companion novels than a series with a single arc, but they are just all so much fun and basically everything I want out of a middle grade fantasy adventure book. I definitely recommend all three.

Next, I read the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. I read the first book in this series, The Final Empire, last year, and I loved it to pieces. I loved it so much that I was afraid to pick up the second book, because I didn’t know where the story was going from here and didn’t want to be disappointed. After reading Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series last year though, I decided I had enough faith in his plotting ability to brave the rest of the series. And… I don’t know. The Final Empire is about a girl who discovers she is a mistborn, someone with the ability to unlock the powers of various metals. She’s taken on by a thieving crew working to overthrow the evil dictator known as the Lord Ruler. I have a full review of The Final Empire over here, so you can read all about how much I adored this book. The thing is, this plot is very wrapped up by the end of the first book, and so the second book is a very different kind of story. So is the third book. And while the plots of the second and third books definitely follow the first book logically, and both The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages are definitely good books, they don’t feel like a unified story to me. Also, a lot of what I loved about The Final Empire wasn’t present in the sequels. Finally, I know I was sick when I finished The Hero of Ages, but I feel like the ending should have had me balling my eyes out, and I just felt nothing. I know a lot of people really love The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages, and I don’t think they’re bad books by any means. They just weren’t what I wanted them to be, and I ended up kind of disappointed. So while I still absolutely love The Final Empire and will continue to recommend it, I’m not sure I would recommend the rest of the series. On the other hand yes I am definitely planning to go on and read the second Mistborn trilogy which takes place a few hundred years after the events of The Hero of Ages.

While I was reading Mistborn, I also read the second and third Thickety books, The Whispering Trees and Well of Witches by J. A. White. I read the first Thickety book, A Path Begins, in December and loved it. The Whispering Trees picks up where A Path Begins left off, with Kara and Taff running for their lives through the Thickety. In this book, they come face-to-face with the forest demon himself, and things get really scary. I won’t say much about the third book because it would spoil the second, but Kara and Taff go on yet another dark and twisty journey through the well of witches, where the witches go after using the last spell, to try to save their father. I absolutely love how dark and twisted this series is but also how much fun and hope there is. So far this is a really excellent middle grade series. I started the fourth book this evening, and I am already hooked.

Next, I continued my reread of Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books with her Protector of the Small series. I read First Test, Page, Squire, and Lady Knight in January. Of the Tamora Pierce I’ve read so far on this reread, these are definitely my favorite. The king decreed that girls could try for their knighthood, and Kel is the first girl to openly train for her shield in Tortall since Alanna the Lioness. The series follows Kel through her training as a page and squire and her first year as a knight as she faces down bullies, immortals, and a system that generally doesn’t want her there. Kel is so different from Alanna, and she faces different struggles because she is openly training to be a knight as a girl. She is very much a heroine it’s easy to get behind and support, and on the whole these books are really well put together and hold up well on reread.

This month I also read Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse. This is a World War II historical fiction book set in Amsterdam. I admit I don’t know much about the war in the Netherlands, so I was very interested in this book. Hanneke works as an undertaker’s secretary and black market delivery girl to support her family. She’s expert at avoiding the Nazis and finding the impossible, but since her boyfriend’s death fighting the Nazis, she has put a premium on her own self-preservation. When one of her black market customers asks her to help find a Jewish girl who ran away from her hiding spot in her house, Hanneke gets pulled into the resistance movement in the city and discovers the true horrors of the war. This was a pretty good book. I liked that it stuck to a narrow focus on these characters and events and didn’t try to include the entire war. I also felt like Hanneke had a really relatable journey, and her emotions and desires were so well-done. I will say that the pacing felt a bit off—the climax came too soon and there was too much denouement—but on the whole I enjoyed this book and would recommend it.

Finally, I finished off January with the first Uncommon Magic book, A Pocket Full of Murder by R. J. Anderson. This is the book that I started reading in Braille and switched to audio when I got the flu. This is a middle grade fantasy set in a kind of steampunk-style world where turn-of-the-century technology is powered by magic. Only the wealthy can afford magic, and the city is teetering on the brink of a workers’ revolution. Twelve-year-old Isaveth’s family is very poor. Her mother has recently died, and her father is out of work, forcing Isaveth’s older sister to drop out of school and get a job at a sewing factory. When Isaveth’s father is arrested for murder of the governor of the university committed using magic only a builder could get their hands on, Isaveth joins forces with a street boy named Quiz to prove her father’s innocence and find the true murderer. But Quiz may not be who he says he is, and Isaveth’s father is keeping secrets too. This was a really good book. I loved how rich the world was and how complicated the problems that Isaveth and Quiz face. I picked this up because I thought it would be a good comp title for my own middle grade fantasy project, and I wasn’t disappointed. I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on the sequel this month.

And that’s it for January. If you’ve read any of these books, I’d love to know what you think of them.

2020 Goals

I set some pretty ambitious goals for myself in 2019. I didn’t meet all of them, but I did pretty well on the whole. I was having trouble deciding how I wanted to challenge myself in 2020, which is why this post is so late in coming. This post is also really late in coming because I got the flu last week, which brought my entire life to a screeching halt for more than a week. The flu is a gross illness guys.

In the end, I’ve decided that my biggest goal for 2020 is to keep up the momentum I’ve built for myself in 2019. Right now, thanks to the flu, I feel like I have to start building that momentum from scratch again, but once I get everything up and running I’m sure that won’t be the case.

Last November, I challenged myself to write every day. Not only did I succeed at that, but I continued in December and January. As of today, I’ve written ninety-one days in a row. Yes, I managed to write a little bit every day when I had the flu because I refused to have to start back at day 1. It’s become a habit for me now, and I really want to keep that up in 2020. In addition, I set a goal for myself to get up early and write before I go to work on weekdays. It’s been hard to adjust my sleep schedule, but so far I’ve written every morning before work since the start of the new year, and I’m already seeing some incredible benefits, so it’s definitely a new year’s resolution to keep that going.

In particular, for writing, I’d like to try again to complete new drafts for three big projects, especially since I don’t have the bar exam to interfere with my productivity this summer. I’d also like to get back into writing and submitting more short stories, which I’ve already started this month. I’ve had a few short story projects that have been languishing on my computer thanks to the bar and novel revisions, and I’d like to get back to those as well.

I’m still going to barre classes three or four times a week, and I want to keep that up in 2020 too. I’d also like to add in evenings when I go to the gym in my apartment. I’m starting with one day a week, and I’m hoping to up that to two days a week at some point. I’m also setting a 2020 goal for myself to cook one new recipe a week. Last week I tried a coconut roasted butternut fennel bisque, which unfortunately fell into the too-much-work-to-be-really-worth-it bucket.

I also set my 2020 Goodreads reading challenge to 100 books again. I’m hoping to read more, but 100 is a nice round number, and if I surpass it I can always increase my goal. In addition to reading 100 books, I want to challenge myself to read at least one book a month in Braille, because I got out of the habit of reading books in Braille when I was in law school and I miss it and want to get back to reading like that.

And of course I have my usual goal of blogging regularly. I’d like to get back on track with a manageable blogging schedule this year.

Writing it all out definitely makes it seem like a lot, and I’m already behind on a few of these goals thanks to the flu. So I better get started.

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