January Reading Roundup

Happy February everybody! I am always a big fan of the month of February in general, because it’s short, and it just doesn’t seem to drag as much as January, and before you know it we’re in March and springtime is in sight. This year in particular, when winter has been long and cold and so so difficult, I am very glad to find myself more than halfway through February. Almost to the end of February at this point because as usual I am a slow poke.

And as usual, I meant to post this sooner, but I am embroiled in novel edits, and I also returned to my apartment in Virginia and that was complicated.

I read fifteen books in January. Many of them were quite short, which is how I got through so many. I was also almost definitely avoiding stress with books, which isn’t the worst thing in the world but which I’ve realized I need to be aware of. But I also just loved so many of these books.

Two of the books I read were in Braille (yay!), and the rest were audio. It was a pretty even split between fantasy and science fiction, with a couple contemporary books and one writing advice book as well. And none of these books were rereads.

First, I read The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab. I actually started this book last November but didn’t finish it before my copy from the library expired, and I didn’t get it out of the library again until the very end of December.  When Addie LaRue runs away from a wedding she doesn’t want in 1714 France, she makes a deal with a demon: she will have immortality, time to live her life, but no one will remember her. Then, three hundred years later, she meets someone who does remember her. This is the best I can describe this book. It spans 300 years of Addie’s life, crossing continents and wars, and it has such a beautiful, flowing, lyrical style. And I just love it and will definitely recommend it.

Next, I read The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner, the first of her Queen’s Thief series. This is another one that I started earlier in 2020, didn’t finish before the library copy expired, and then didn’t get it out of the library to finish it for a long, long time. The Thief follows Gen, a convicted thief who is hired by the king to steal a mystical gem from a hidden temple. Honestly, I struggled with this book. I didn’t really like any of the characters, and most of it was kind of boring. I was very intrigued by the ending, however. Without spoiling anything, this book is one that pulls off an effective twist that didn’t make me mad, even though the twist concerns our first person narrator and it’s something our first person narrator knew all along. I may go on to read the sequel, because it promises to have some fun political intrigue.

In January I also powered through all of the Murderbot Diaries books by Martha Wells, All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy, and Network Effect. The first four are more like novellas than novels, and the fifth one is a full length novel. These books follow a security unit who hacked its control systems so that it can slack on its job and watch television, but it gets embroiled in a lot of dangerous situation with its clients and is generally trying to figure out what to do with itself now that it is free. I absolutely adored these books. Murderbot is just plain amazing! I love the characters; I love the voice; the plot is technical but not so technical I couldn’t follow it; the world is appropriately awful; and there is just so much wonderful snark. The sixth book comes out and day before my birthday and I am just so excited!

I also read MiNRS by Kevin Sylvester, the first book in his MiNRS series. Twelve-year-old Christopher lives on a mining colony on the asteroid Perses, and his biggest worries are whether his parents will agree to let him hold a party celebrating the upcoming communications blackout with Earth and why his best friend, Elena, keeps looking at him like that. But then on the eve of the blackout terrorists after the ore mined on Perses attack, killing almost all the adults, and Christopher becomes the leader of a small band of kids determined to survive in the mining tunnels. This book didn’t make a ton of sense, as in it didn’t feel as logically sound as I wanted it to, but it was definitely fun. I’ve started the sequel, and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.

Next, I read Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. My agent recommend I read this to help with some structure problems with my space adventure project, and I found it super helpful. The book is based on the popular screenwriting book Save the Cat!, and it goes through all the beats you should hit when writing a novel, with a lot of explanations and examples. I particularly enjoyed all the examples of popular books included. This is one of those things where I don’t know how many times I’ve had three act structure explained to me but it never really clicked. Then I read this book, and something about the way everything was explained and the examples, it clicked. If you’re a writer, I definitely recommend this book. I have in fact been throwing it at everyone in my writing group.

Then I read Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas. This was another book that I started in 2020 and didn’t finish because of the library. I got too many books out of the library at the end of 2020, okay? Cemetery Boys is about a trans boy, Yadriel, who belongs to a family who can see and communicate with spirits and help them pass on. In this family, the men are the ones who help spirits pass on, while the women have healing magic. Yadriel has been trying to convince his family, without success, to let him take his place among the men of his family. So he undergoes the ritual to gain his powers by himself, with his cousin’s help. Then, when he accidentally summons the ghost of a dead classmate, Julian, he’s pulled into the mystery of what happened to Julian so that be can help Julian pass on, only to find that he doesn’t want to let Julian go.  I admit that I had a hard time getting into this world, but once I did, I was just along for the ride with this book. I loved the characters, and the world was so rich and intricate. Most of all, I loved the way the characters’ relationships grow and change over the course of the book, romantic relationships, friendships, and familial relationships. This book is also a great mix of fun adventures and grappling with serious, heartfelt feelings and issues. I loved it.

Next, on a way lighter note, I read Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo. I picked this up because it was one of the examples discussed in Save the Cat! and I hadn’t ever read it. Opal and her father have just moved to a new town, and Opal doesn’t have any friends and is starting to really feel the absence of her mother, who left when she was little. When she adopts a stray dog, Winn-Dixie, she begins to make friends and become closer to her father. This book was just plain adorable. The characters are so vivid, and Winn-Dixie stole my heart. Minor spoiler alert, I was a little worried as we neared the end that Winn-Dixie was going to die, it I was hesitating to keep reading, because I’m still just such a mess about losing Mopsy and I don’t think I could stand to read a book where the dog dies. But Winn-Dixie is fine. So if you haven’t read Because of Winn-Dixie, it’s a really cute book, and you should check it out.

I also picked up Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon, another book discussed in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. Maddie has an autoimmune disease that basically means she can’t go outside because she’s allergic to everything. Then new neighbors move in, and she befriends Olly, a boy her age, first by talking through written signs and miming messages through the window, then online. They fall in love, and Maddie has to decide how far she’s willing to push the boundaries set up to protect her in order to be with Olly. There were definitely some things I enjoyed about this book. The way the characters get to know each other was really fun, and Maddie has some great character growth. It reminded me a bit of The parts I loved in Fault in Our Stars. And then we hit the ending, and I don’t want to give spoilers, but I could do an awful lot of ranting about disability representation and just how much I hate this twist. Ultimately the twist  ruined the book for me, and I can’t recommend this one.

Then I got the sixth Upside-Down Magic book, The Big Shrink by Sarah Mlynowski, Emily Jenkins, and Lauren Myracle. In this book, the kids in the UDM class start a craze at their school for these amazing dragon toys that are kind of like living pets, and suddenly the other kids want to hang out with them, which is new and exciting, and then the teachers get mad because the kids are always playing with the dragons and ban them from the school. The kids plan a revolution. This was a very fun book for me. It reminded me of my own days in fifth grade, when I was circulating petitions to get a longer lunch time (I still think fifteen minutes was too short) and getting the entire class to play squish the lemon until we broke the slide and starting a bottle cap collection craze that spawned quite a few disagreements. I saw a few Goodreads reviews that didn’t really like it as much as the other books, but for me, it felt very realistic and was quite fun.

I also read The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot. This is another one that I never read as a kid. I guess at this point I’m just on a kick of reading middle grade books I missed as a kid. I think I’ve talked before about how I missed a lot of books as a kid because easy access to digital Braille didn’t really come along until I was in high school, and hardcopy Braille and audiobooks were expensive and pretty big-deal gifts. So sidenote, I’m always taking recommendations for your favorite books from middle school. Back to The Princess Diaries. I do know I’ve seen the movie for this one, but didn’t really remember much of it. Mia is a normal fourteen-year-old in New York City. All she wants is to grow breasts, get a boyfriend, and generally not be a freak. But then her father comes to visit and guess what? Mia is a princess. This book was really, really fun. Mia’s voice is just superb, and while some of the jokes and references might be a bit dated (the Trumps keep coming up and I cringe every time), it was just a great read. I’ve since read the second book and watched the first movie, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the rest.

After that, I read The Princess Bride by William Goldman. I absolutely love the movie, and I’ve always heard the book is better. I totally believed this, because the book is always better, but honestly I didn’t feel like the book added to my understanding of the movie. In fact, I found the book to feel kind of flat, as opposed to the lush, intense world of the movie. On the other hand, I did like the framing device in the book quite a lot. On the whole, this is a rare case where I prefer the movie to the book.

And that’s it for January. I’ll be back, hopefully sooner rather than later, to talk about the books I’ve read in February, which I’m just as excited about. In the meantime, have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? And definitely pass along your favorite books from middle school so I can read them too.