book recommendations and reviews – Page 3

September Reading Roundup

Hello. It’s mid-October, fall is upon us and covid cases are on the rise again, but I’m here to tell you about all the books I read in September. I keep trying to jrite this post earlier in the month, but this time I don’t feel that bad, because I spent the first half of this month writing and editing a short story. I haven’t finished a short story in a couple years, because of law school and the bar and working on novels, but also because writing short stories is hard guys. So this feels like a big accomplishment and I don’t mind that other things took a back seat this month.

Collage of the books I read in September: City of Bones, City of Ashes, The Bands of Mourning, Showing Off, A Song Below Water, Rules for Thieves, The Arctic Incident, and The Kiss of Deception But here I am now to talk about books again. I read eight books in September. Two of them were in Braille, bringing my total number of Braille books I’ve read this year up to ten, which means I’m ahead of the game for once. Three of the books I read this month, including the two Braille books, were rereads. I started a few new series and continued others I’ve been working on. No stand-alones this month.

Honestly, I was less happy with the books I read this month than I’ve been in the past few months. There were a few books that I really liked, of course, but there were also a few that were fine but ultimately just kind of so-so for me. Almost everything I read this month was some kind of fantasy. So let’s just dive right in.

First, I reread the first two Mortal Instruments books, City of Bones and City of Glass by Cassandra Clare. Just before she turns sixteen, Clary Fray discovers she is far from the ordinary teenager she thought she was when her mother is kidnapped by demons. Clary is a Shadowhunter, a demon slayer, and together with her new Shadowhunter friends and her barely discovered powers, she sets off to find and save her mother. I haven’t reread these books since before law school, and it was really great to pick them up again. No, they aren’t the most fabulous books in the world, but they are fast and fun and full of feelings, and right now that’s about all I need.

After that I got the third book in Brandon Sanderson’s second Mistborn trilogy, The Bands of Mourning. Wax and his team of trusty investigators are sent off to find the Lord Ruler’s metalminds, before the bad guys do, of course. I felt pretty much the same way about this book that I’ve felt about the first two books in the series. It was really slow for a long time and then it picked up and became really interesting, but unfortunately, I also just don’t feel as connected to these characters as I want to.

Then I read the third Upside-Down Magic book, Showing Off by Sarah Mlynowski, Emily Jenkins, and Lauren Myracle. In this book, Nory and her friends in the Upside-Down Magic class are faced with a whole new challenge: a school talent show ⋅ coneaen ieass has to compete. And Nory’s father is coming, so whatever they do, it can’t feature their Upside-Down Magic. Meanwhile, Pepper is finally getting a grip on her magic so she doesn’t always scare animals witless, and she and the other UDM kids want to show off their magic at the talent show. I continue to love the Upside-Down Magic Adventures. I especially love how much the characters grow in this book and learn about friendship and their own special power. And Nory’s father is the worst. I can’t wait to read more in this series.

I mentioned a few months ago that I was trying to read more books by authors of color, and this month I finally got A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow out of the library. Tavia is a black girl living in Portland, Oregon, where there aren’t that many other people of color and even fewer with magical powers. Tavia is also a siren, in a world where sirens are feared and persecuted. And her best friend, Effie, is, well, no one is sure but she’s definitely something. Everything is going just fine for them until a well-publicized trial of a man accused of killing his girlfriend begins, and the man claims his girlfriend was a siren as a defense. Then Tavia is pulled over by the police and accidentally uses her siren-call to get them to leave her alone, and Effie is blacking out and shedding skin and maybe turning people to stone. And suddenly staying silent is too much for Tavia. I really loved so much about this book. A lot happens, and there’s a lot of feelings, and it speaks to the current moment in our lives so well. I particularly loved Tavia’s and Effie’s friendship. On the other hand, I really struggled with the pacing in this book. Even while dealing with all this stuff, it still managed to be really slow for most of the book, and It switched from slow to fast and fast to slow so abruptly that it often threw me out of the story. So while I really did enjoy this book, it’s not one I would leap to first to recommend. On the other hand there’s a sequel or companion novel or something on the way, and I will most certainly read that.

Then I finally finished Rules for Thieves by Alexandra Ott. I’ve been trying to read this for almost six months. I read the first half of this book in Braille, but gave up because the copy I had on my BrailleNote had too many issues, so I switched to having it read to me by this app on my phone. When twelve-year-old Alli runs away from her orphanage, she gets blasted by a curse that will spread and eventually kill her. The cure, however, is super expensive. Her new friend Beck proposes she comes back to the thieves guild with him and joins, because the salary will cover the cost of the cure. This was a fun book about belonging and right and wrong, and on the whole I enjoyed it. I did feel like I had a hard time getting into it, probably because of the problems I was having in Braille and then listening to it being read to me by a robot voice. I also found I had a hard time connecting with A’li as a character. I felt like I never understood why she wanted to run away from the orphanage so badly, especially because she was going to be released in a few months anyway. And this made it hard for me to grasp the rest of the world and the stakes and everything. And while she clearly thought of herself as sassy, she came across as more annoying and whiny to me. There is a sequel to this book, but I’m not sure I’m going to read it.

Next, I read The Arctic Incident by Eoin Colfer, the second Artemis Fowl book. In this book, Artemis is trying to find his father, and Holly and the fairy police are trying to deal with a goblin rebellion. Holly and Artemis make a deal to exchange hlp and team up, and it’s really great. I just love the adventures and the teamwork and the character development we get in this book. An excellent second book to this series.

And I finished off September with The Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson, the first book in The Remnant Chronicles. I read this series last year, and I believe I told you I had a full post on this book on the way. Well a year later I finally finished writing that post and will post it by the end of this week, so I’m not going to say much more than I continue to love this book and this series.

And that’s it for September. As usual, let me know if you’ve read any of these books and what you thought of them. I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy, and if you haven’t already, be sure to vote by November 3.

Book Recs Redux

I started this blog just over seven years ago, in 2013, before I started my senior year of college. (Excuse me for a moment while I go hide in a corner and feel old.) In early 2015, while I was working in Italy, I set up my book recs page, and I’ve been adding to it with my favorites of the books I read each year. Recently, I looked through the list and realized that not only is it getting to be a bit unwieldy, but there are also several books I wouldn’t recommend anymore, and the list doesn’t accurately reflect my tastes as a reader and books I would want to share with friends and family. So this week, I removed a bunch of books from the list, and you can go see the new and improved list right over here.

This pruning of my book recs page also made me think a lot about myself as a reader. I have read a lot over the past five years. And I mean a lot. Since I started tracking my reading goals on Goodreads in 2016, I have read 514 books: 62 in 2016, 77 in 2017, 176 in 2018, 109 in 2019, and 90-one so far in 2020. Yikes! But reading so much so fast has changed me as a reader, and I’m certainly not the same person I was at the start of 2016. So I thought this was also a good time to take a step back and think about how my reading tastes have changed and how I evaluate what books I like and what books I love so much I would recommend them to others.

I’ve read a lot of new genres and authors over the last few years. Recently, my reading habits have definitely skewed toward fantasy and science fiction. I’ve especially been enjoying getting into new science fiction stories, because I never used to read sci fi, though I definitely prefer my sci fi to be more space-related than not. I’ve also become pickier about the literary, contemporary, and historical fiction I read. I’ve struggled a lot more to get into those books, and I actually put a historical fiction book down recently, which is really rare for me. In terms of middle grade and young adult, I’ve found that while I adore middle grade fantasy, I’m usually not as captivated by contemporary middle grade stories, though there are some that I do love dearly and are still on the list. I want to read more middle grade science fiction, because what I have read I really like, and also I’m working on a middle grade sci fi project right now. I’ve also found I’m pickier with YA of all genres. I tend to like the fantasy and sci fi books more, but there are some contemporaries I still absolutely love as well.

My big takeaway from looking at all this is that I have become a lot pickier and a lot less forgiving as a reader. I really only find myself recommending books I absolutely love, and if I feel like I need to recommend a book or series with a caveat, I tend not to recommend it. So the books I list on my book recs page now are books that I not only loved when I read them but books that I still love, books that have stayed with me in some way or another and are still meaningful to me.

I’m not going to list here which books I removed from the page. To be clear, these were good books and series, and I really enjoyed them when I read them, so I certainly don’t want to put them down by calling them out. That being said, if you remember something was on the old list and want to talk about why I cut it, I’m happy to chat about that in the comments.

Generally speaking, there were a few reasons I removed the books I did. at this point, I honestly couldn’t tell you what some of the books were about, so while I enjoyed them at the time, they obviously haven’t stuck with me, and I don’t feel like I can honestly recommend them now.

Some of the books and series that I recommended in the past were books and series that I enjoyed even though I recognized they had serious flaws. Sometimes I recommended them because I was interested in the flaws, or because the flaws inspired me as a writer. I have removed these books for a few reasons. Firstly, because as I’ve said above, I’m a lot less forgiving of major flaws than I once was. And secondly, because a book recs page that is just a list of books I would recommend with no explanation of whyI recommend them doesn’t seem like the place for these books. In the future, I might write posts about what intrigued me or inspired me about these books, but they aren’t books I would recommend.

Finally, I removed books that I felt I could not recommend for social justice reasons. Over the past several years, I have become much more aware of diversity, inclusion, and representation in what I’m reading, and I have become much better at critically engaging with the text. This is not to say that all the books on my book recs page are paragons of diversity and representation. Several certainly have problems, and one day I will write a whole post on how you can love something and recommend something while still recognizing and engaging with its flaws (thank you to the folks over at the Tortall Recall podcast for teaching me this important lesson). But there were a few books on my list that I have come to realize have serious enough problems that I am just no longer comfortable recommending them.

Which brings me to the one and only series that I removed from the list and am going to call out by name: Harry Potter. This is also the series which I regret most removing from my book recs page, because it has meant so much to me over the years. I’ve bestruggling with how J.K. Rowling’s transphobic comments all summer affect how I feel about the books. Rowling has always been a writer I admire, and the Harry Potter books have remained incredibly important to me. It broke my heart that someone who wrote such powerful books about accepting difference and love being the strongest kind of magic could believe and say such awful, hateful things. This letter on Tor.com does such a good job expressing my feelings. I am not trans, but I have friends who are, and I have been bullied because I’m different too. I can’t stand by silently mourning how she has forever-tainted the book series that has served as a beloved touchstone for my whole generation, and worse, the harm she is doing to trans people all over the world, because to remain silent is to condone her comments. And her comments have become more and more hateful in the last few months.

I have come to the conclusion that whatever she says, the Harry Potter books are ours now, not hers. I love them. I can’t turn that off. They have still affected how I read and write even today. They are flawed books, certainly, but they still send a strong and lasting message about the power of love and friendship and acceptance. But there’s a difference between me continuing to love the books and me actively recommending the books. Because as Lindsay Ellis said in this video about death of the author, recommending the books gives J.K. Rowling more power and more influence. I do not in any way agree with J.K. Rowling’s views, and I do not want my continued appreciation of the original Harry Potter books to be construed to mean that I do agree with her.

If I were to recommend the Harry Potter books, it would come with a major caveat: borrow them from the library or from a friend, or by them from a used bookstore, because by purchasing these books new, you are supporting an author who has turned out to be a hateful bigot. But part of repising my book recs page, as I said above, has included removing books that I would recommend with caveats. And so it is with a heavy heart that I have taken Harry Potter off the list.

That turned into a bit more of a rant than I originally intended, but as much as I didn’t want to remove Harry Potter from the list, I would also be really uncomfortable doing it silently, without explaining why. As with the other books I took off the list, I still think the original Harry Potter series is really good and worth reading, but it doesn’t belong on my list anymore.

And that’s it. You can go check out my leaner book recs page over here, and if you’re curious why a book you remember being there is gone, I’m happy to chat about it in the comments. I’d also like to know if you’ve read any of the books on the list and what you think of them, and of course I will always take more book recommendations.

August Reading Roundup

I was all set to post this on Friday, and then the news of RBG’s death broke, and I reached levels of despair about the state of the world I haven’t felt since March. It’s hard to believe that 2020 could get any worse, but on top of the plague, huge parts of the country are literally on fire right now, I don’t even know what hurricane is hitting where at this point, and I don’t even have words to express what RBG’s death and the upcoming battle for the Supreme Court means to me, so yes, 2020 did get worse. A lot worse. To my friends affected by the fires and the floods and the plague, my thoughts are with you. Please stay safe. And for anyone feeling hopeless, there are steps we can take beyond just wringing our hands and panicking. I never wanted this blog to be about politics, but I can’t ignore the fact that our very democracy is at stake. This is the time to call your senators, donate to campaigns, volunteer, and vote, vote, vote.

But this post isn’t really about politics. It’s about books. So let’s talk about books.

Nothing major happened for me in August. I continued to stay home and work from home and take Neutron for as many walks as I can. This past week marked my one-year anniversary working at the FCC, which is really cool. I definitely feel more confident in my work than I did on day 1, but it also doesn’t feel like it’s been a whole year, probably because half of that time I’ve been at home.

Collage of the covers of the books I read in August: Midnight Sun, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, Life and Death, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, A Constellation of Roses, Uprooted, Sticks and Stones, Artemis Fowl, Midnight at the Barclay Hotel, and The Mystwick School of Musicraft. I read eleven books this August. This felt like a minor miracle to me when I counted them all up, because in case you didn’t read my whole post on Midnight Sun, I got kind of hung up on Twilight again. Two of the books I read were in Braille, which gets me up to eight Braille books a month, which means I’m back on track to reach my goal of reading twelve books in Braille this year. There wasn’t quite as much variety in what I read last month as I’ve noticed in the past few months, but I still really enjoyed most of what I read. Three of the books I read were rereads, but the rest were new to me. I read one YA contemmporary; four middle grade fantasies, one of them a mystery, and two YA fantasies; three YA paranormals; and one fantasy that I’m honestly not sure what age category it belongs to. I also got two books on the day they came out in August and just blasted through them. I haven’t done that in a long time and it was really fun. For one of those books I also got to attend a virtual launch party, and I’ll talk about that experience in a bit.

My first book of August was A Constellation of Roses by Miranda Asebedo. Tricks has been on her own and on the run from the foster care system ever since her mom abandoned her. And she’s good at being on her own, because she can steal anything she wants, and she’s never caught. When the police finally do catch up with her, she’s given a choice, prison or going to live with her father’s family in the middle of nowhere. Tricks never met her father, never knew she had other family, but they welcome her with open arms. And it turns out she’s not the only one who do magic with her hands. All the women in her new family have special, powerful talents. As you must know by now, I’m a sucker for found family stories. Throw in a pie shop and a little magic, and I’m hooked. I really enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend.

After that, I squeezed in the second Upside-Down Magic book, Sticks and Stones, by Sarah Mlynowski, Emily Jenkins, and Lauren Myracle. Strange things are happening at Nory’s new school, and everyone is blaming the Upside-down Magic kids. They’re even starting a petition to end the UDM program and kick the UDM kids out of school. Nory and her friends have to figure out who is trying to frame them, and working in a little kittenball wouldn’t go amiss either. This book was just as fun and delightful and full of heart as the last one. By this point I’ve read the third one too, and I can say this series is definitely going on the favorites list unless it goes, well, upside-down.

Then Midnight Sun came out and I was lost. As I’ve discussed at length over here, I loved Midnight Sun despite the many reasons I probably shouldn’t. And then, because Midnight Sun got me stuck back in the Twilight world again, I read The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner and Twilight Reimagined: Life and Death, both also by Stephenie Meyer. I think I read Bree Tanner my first year of college, though I didn’t remember it until I reread it. And you know what, it was actually a lot better than I was expecting. Life and Death, though, was another matter. I was torn between hysterical laughter and utter horror as I read it. Far from demonstrating that the story would have worked if Bella was a boy, I actually feel like Life and Death made the mysogyny in the Twilight books that much worse. The two scenes in the original series that involve sexual violence against female characters are simply changed to muggings gone wrong, which is an excellent example of the idea that if the crime can be changed that easily, then it’s only a sexual crime because the victim is a woman and that’s not great. Never mind that Edythe (AKA female Edward, also I can’t get over the spelling of that name) frequently has less agency than Edward, and her inability to stay away from Beau comes across more as because she’s a girl, and I’m just going to stop here because this book made me really angry and I don’t even want to rant about it. Life and Death was an interesting experiment, I guess, but it didn’t work for me. But on the upside, it did the trick of getting me out of Twilight world for the moment.

After I read Midnight Sun, but before I read Bree Tanner and Life and Death, I spent a lot of time trying to find books that interested me enough that I wanted to read them instead of reading Twilight again. I ended up reading Uprooted by Naomi Novik. Did I pick it up because a friend described it as like Twilight for her? Yes, yes I did. But I didn’t find it to be very like Twilight for me. Every ten years, the lord of the valley, the immortal wizard called the Dragon, chooses a seventeen-year-old girl to be his servant for the next ten years. This is the price for the Dragon’s protection against the corrupted wood encroaching on the valley. Agniescka is seventeen this year, but she, like everyone else, is convinced the Dragon is going to choose her best friend, Kasia. Except, of course, he picks Agniescka. Because Agniescka has something the other village girls do not. She has the power to become a witch herself. The strongest aspects of this book for me was Agniescka discovering and grappling with the consequences of her new power and Agniescka and Kasia’s friendship. I didn’t really find all the political intrigue, epic war, and romance parts of the book all that interesting, and on the whole I felt like I was dragging myself through the book, which was unfortunate. It’s entirely possible I was still in recovery from Midnight Sun, but on the whole I’m sorry to say this isn’t a book I would recommend.

Next, I read Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer. I’ve never read these books before, and after a lot of friends telling me they were good, and a desire to be able to join in on the discourse around the new movie, I got the first one out of the library and gave it a shot. Artemis Fowl is an evil genius. Also a millionaire. And a criminal mastermind. And did I mention genius. His father has disappeared and his mother is slowly going insane from the grief of losing his father. And Artemis has concocted a plan to get his hands on some fairy gold. Only he might have bitten off a bit more than he could chew when he kidnaps the fairy lieutenant Holly Short and soon finds his house under siege. This book started out slow for me, but it picked up really quickly and on the whole was fun and engaging. I have the second book out of the library now and I can’t wait to read it.

After that, I sped through Midnight At the Barclay Hotel by Fleur T. Bradley. This was a middle grade mystery/ghost story that reminded me a lot of And Then There Were None, the one and only Agatha Christie book I’ve ever read. A whole bunch of people are invited to the Barclay Hotel in the mountains of Colorado for a weekend getaway. Twelve-year-old ghost hunting JJ tags along with his mother, and bookish Penny comes with her grandfather. JJ and Penny befriend Emma, who’s lived at the hotel her whole life. They’re all set to have a fun weekend full of cupcakes and bowling and swimming pools and of course trying to find the ghosts rumored to haunt the Barclay Hotel. But then the butler announces that the owner of the hotel, Mr. Barclay, has been murdered, and all of the adults are suspects, so the kids set out to figure out who the killer is and to prove JJ’s mom didn’t do it. This was such a fun, fast mystery with all kinds of twists and turns. I loved the characters, and the twists were exactly right for the story. This was the second book of August that I snatched up the day it came out and just sped through. (Yes, the first was Midnight Sun.) I also went to the virtual launch party Fleur Bradley held, and it was so cool to hear her talk about how to write a mystery and where the ideas for the Barclay Hotel came from. On the whole, this was a great book and I would definitely recommend.

Then I got The Mystwick School of Musicraft by Jessica Khoury from Audible. It was free with their new Audible+ thing, and I’ve had it on my wishlist for a while, so I grabbed it, and oh I loved it so so much! Amelia Jones wants only to go to Mystwick and become a maestro, basically a super high-powered magical musician, and learn about her mother, who attended Mystwick herself and whom Amelia knows very little about. But then she fails her audition in a horrible way—like she gave the maestro a very, very impressive mustache kind of way. She thinks all hope is lost, and she doesn’t know what to do with herself. But then a mix-up leads to her getting a second chance. If, after two months at Mystwick, the maestros think she’s Mystwick material, she can stay. But not only is the work harder than anything she’s ever done in her life, someone is out to get her, and something dark and sinister is closing in on Mystwick. I feel like my description of this book doesn’t do it justice, but it is absolutely fabulous. Magical music stories are right up there with found family stories and space adventures for me, so I was probably bound to love this no matter what. But I adore all the characters, and I was hooked from start to finish. It was fast and fun and full of so many feelings. And the audiobook had actual musicians playing the songs the kids were playing in the background, which made it super epic. I don’t know if there are going to be any sequels to this but I would be so so happy if Mystwick was a series.

Finally, I finished the Harry Potter series with Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows. My thoughts on the books themselves haven’t changed, but finishing the series this time felt especially bittersweet to me (mostly, bitter actually). I don’t know when I’ll pick them up again. I do plan to reread them in Italian before I go back to Italy, because I need to practice and I already own them in Italian and never finished them. But I don’t know when I’m going back to Italy. The plan was this October but with Covid of course that’s not happening, and it’s not happening any time soon. Also, as she-who-must-not-be-named continues to demonstrate her despicable transphobia, I just don’t feel right rereading the books again when there are so many other books out there that are just as good and whose authors aren’t horrible people. On the other hand, Harry Potter is such a huge part of who I am—it shaped me as a reader, a writer, and a person—and I’m not ready to just let the books go. So I don’t know, and adding all those mixed feelings to the Battle of Hogwarts was a lot.

And that’s it for August. Let me know if you’ve read any of these books and what you thought of them. And of course I will always happily take more recommendations for found family, magical music, and space adventure stories.

Midnight Sun Madness

Cover of Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer Well, friends, I promised it was coming, and here it is: all my thoughts on Midnight Sun, the good, the bad, and the confused. I have a lot of criticism for this book, but on the whole I really enjoyed it, and my primary reaction to this is that I want more Edwardian Twilight please give me more Edwardian Twilight!

Before we go on, I just want to flag that the real Quileute tribe is currently seeking donations to move to higher ground. I’ve learned since posting my last Twilight post that a lot of people didn’t think the Quileute tribe featured in the Twilight books is in fact a real tribe. They are a real Native American tribe, living right on the water’s edge in Washington, and they are attempting to move their at risk communities to higher ground to secure the survival of their tribe. If you’re a fan of the Twilight books, or have recently purchased Midnight Sun, please consider a donation.

For those who don’t know, Midnight Sun is Twilight told from Edward Cullen’s point of view. Stephenie Meyer started the project more than twelve years ago, while she was working on the original Twilight series. But in 2008, someone leaked her unedited, unfinished draft on the internet, and she set the project aside, much to everyone’s disappointment, because what we did see was so great. I found out recently (I didn’t know it at the time) that there were rumors she had picked up the project again and it was going to be published in 2015 with the tenth anniversary edition of Twilight, except then the Fifty Shades book from the guy’s point of view came out. I never got into those books and so know literally nothing about them except they exist and started as Twilight fanfiction, and I’m going to keep it that way because I’ve gone far enough down this rabbit hole. Anyway, when that came out apparently Stephenie Meyer set Midnight Sun aside, again, and we ended up with the gender-bent Twilight book, Life and Death, which I also just recently discovered and don’t really want to talk about (but I probably will, more on that later). Which brings us to 2020. It feels like everything in the world that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong, and everything is awful, but finally, finally, Midnight Sun has been published!

When I heard Midnight Sun was finally going to be published, I reread all the Twilight books in preparation. You can find my post about my feelings about the Twilight books over here.

There will be spoilers in this post. I’m assuming you’re familiar with the first Twilight book, at the very least. If not, read on at your own risk.

As I said, I really enjoyed Midnight Sun, against a lot of my better judgment. Because as we’ve already established, when it comes to Edward Cullen I’m apparently still sixteen and I don’t care how awful he is I love him so much.

Lots of people have gone through all the problems with this book. I don’t really want to tear it apart, because others have done a really good job doing that, but there are some things I just have to point out, in no particular order.

This book is still about the start of a toxic, abusive teenage relationship. There’s just no getting around that. Also, the way Edward thinks about female characters is pretty gross. Rosalie and Jessica come to mind in particular, but they are by no means the only ones in this book. Also, I don’t care what justification Edward has, it is still really bad that he is sneaking into Bella’s room to watch her sleep. He says he’s there to protect her and there’s nothing creepy about it, but he’s a vampire with super senses, and he can protect her from the front lawn or the roof or something, I don’t care. He’s in Bella’s room, while she’s sleeping, without her knowledge or consent, and that is creepy and wrong and not romantic at all. Also it’s made weirder by the fact that his whole family knows what he’s doing and is okay with it. Yikes! And finally, while it might have been okay to include Orson Scott Card on your list of favorite authors in 2005, when Twilight is set, that isn’t really an okay thing to say now in 2020, when the problematic issues of Card’s books and the fact that he is really homophobic have been common knowledge for a long long time. Disclaimer, I haven’t read Ender’s Game or any of his other fiction, and at this point I probably won’t, so I don’t feel qualified to say more than that. But the fact is that Stephenie Meyer’s readers are living in 2020, and I never really got a strong sense of time in Twilight anyway. Like if someone hadn’t told me it was set in 2005 I wouldn’t have guessed that year, and it could just as easily have been set in 2020 without too many changes (like maybe there’s better internet in Forks in 2020, but there’s still a massive digital divide in this country so also maybe not). Anyway, my point is that including Orson Scott Card on Bella’s list of favorite authors felt too deliberate not to be a point Stephenie Meyer was making, and it made me uncomfortable.

Like I said, there are certainly many other problems with this book, but I’m really not here to rant about how problematic it is. Others have done that much more eloquently than I could. These are the problems that really jumped out at me, and I wouldn’t feel right not pointing them out up front. But Midnight Sun also did a lot of really cool things and brought a whole new perspective to Twilight for me, and what I really want to do in this post is talk about why.

One of the coolest things, as a writer, was being able to see how Stephenie Meyer has actually grown as a writer from the first Twilight to Midnight Sun. The writing isn’t bad in Twilight, in my opinion, but it certainly isn’t fabulous. Because Midnight Sun is essentially the same story, it’s really easy to see how Meyer’s writing has improved. I’m sure some would disagree with me, but I would actually say that Midnight Sun is quite well-written. Okay Edward says Bella has translucent skin a few too many times, and since a friend started referring to the monstrous part of Edward that wants to eat Bella as the eldritch horror living inside him, I can’t help cracking up every time Edward refers to the monster. But Meyer uses metaphors and symbolism and deliberate repetition in this book, along with other techniques she didn’t use in the first Twilight book, and she uses them well. She also captures Edward’s angsty teenage boy/hundred-year-old vampire voice really well.

Also, I have to give Meyer points for pulling off what had to be a really difficult point of view to write. She’s writing in first person, but it’s also kind of an omniscient style because Edward can hear everyone’s thoughts, with one notable exception, of course. Which makes Midnight Sun not only Twilight from Edward’s point of view, but almost Twilight from everyone’s point of view.

The new scenes that were added were pretty cool too, like the family conference after the car accident when Jasper and Rosalie are arguing for killing Bella because she saw too much, or how Jasper is actually using his powers at the baseball game to hide Bella. And the bit in the end where Alice is going through how she’s going to fake Bella’s accident, seeing how each decision will play out and making new decisions to make it go just right, is super awesome.

There were also some points in Midnight Sun where I felt like Meyer was actually taking this opportunity to respond to some of the criticism Twilight has faced without actually changing what happens in Twilight. This was a really intriguing idea to me. Obviously this might not be the case, but it’s how I interpreted it. The big ones that stood out to me in this regard were Edward’s justification for watching Bella sleep and Bella’s character. As I said earlier, Edward’s justification for watching Bella sleep still doesn’t make it okay in my opinion, but I accept that Meyer couldn’t just rewrite that part out of the book or significantly change it so that Edward asks Bella permission and she says yes. Still not okay though. As for Bella’s character, in Midnight Sun we get to hear Bella’s side of the Q&A chapter, which is glossed over in Twilight. Bella has things she likes and dislikes. She has plans for college and dreams of becoming an editor or a creative writing teacher. It makes sense that we don’t see this exact scene in Twilight, because we’re from Bella’s point of view and it would have been boring and very telly, but I do wish we had gotten these details from Bella’s point of view in other ways, because we have literally no inkling of any of this in Twilight, which of course is one of the criticisms of Twilight. So I’m glad we get the details in Midnight Sun, but it does feel kind of like Meyer is trying to say “look, Bella is a fully developed character,” while trying to retcon in all her hopes and dreams. As I said, I could be totally wrong on this, but it kind of does feel like Meyer is trying to respond to some of the critiques of Twilight, and even if it didn’t work as well as she may have hoped, I think it’s really brave of her to accept that she could have done better in the first Twilight and to try to show how she would have done it if she was writing it now. Again, just my interpretation.

Finally, I want to talk about the end of Midnight Sun and why I want more from Edward’s point of view. The ending was definitely the right ending for this book, but it wasn’t a good ending for Edward’s story. Spoilers ahead. Basically the book ends with Edward deciding, while Bella is in the hospital, that he is going to leave her. Not now, but some point soon. And as we know from New Moon, he does indeed leave. End of spoilers. So I know that everything works out, but I want to see the rest of the story from Edward’s point of view. At the very least, I want to see New Moon and Eclipse from Edward’s point of view. I really don’t care about seeing Breaking Dawn from Edward’s point of view honestly but I would read it if it were to be a thing.

I am aware that Stephenie Meyer has said she isn’t planning to write more of the Twilight books from Edward’s point of view. I’ve read various interviews where she’s said that writing Edward has made her anxious (and New Moon would be even worse) and that she didn’t enjoy not having the freedom she would have writing a completely new book. I appreciate both of these sentiments, but just in case Stephenie Meyer or anyone who has the power to change her mind is reading this, I just want to say that I kind of feel like I’ve been left hanging by the end of Midnight Sun, even though I have the rest of the Twilight books and I know it works out. And I would love, love, love more Edwardian Twilight. I know New Moon would be super depressing, but since Edward is apart from Bella, it would also basically be a completely new book. And I feel like Edward has the most character growth of the series in New Moon and Eclipse and I want to read that so much! So I will continue to hope.

I would also take any of the Twilight books from Alice’s point of view. Just saying.

In the meantime, since I’ve already reread all the Twilight books, the end of Midnight Sun left me listening to the last chunk of New Moon (from the point when Alice returns to the end) on a loop for days and days. I only managed to get out of the loop and start reading other books again by reading The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner and Life and Death, which I’ll talk about in my August reading roundup post soon. I also made a deal with myself that if I reach my goal of reading 100 books by December, I’m allowed to reread all the Twilight books again, reading Midnight Sun between Twilight and New Moon so things feel more resolved.

I could go on and on about Midnight Sun, but these are my main thoughts. As I said, on the whole I really enjoyed the book, despite its flaws, and I’m really really hoping for more from Edward’s point of view someday. If you’ve read Midnight Sun, I’d love to know what you thought of it.

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.

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.

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