Back From a European Vacation

Yeah, my boys came home! They apparently had a great time in Greece with their dad, stepmom, and baby sisters, and I got a small bonus as I shoved their suitcase into the laundry machine of a stash of baby pictures they found while clearing out a grandparent's apartment to ready it for rental. It's fun seeing pics of my strapping seventeen year old as a naked baby kicking up his heels. Or dangling from his heels in another shot.

X says it's a sign of his unity with Achilles, that he enjoyed being held in the grip I used to render his body just about impervious to harm. Meanwhile I continued frantically reading for my reading Team Tapers, even giving up a chance for some foam sword action in favor of finishing a crucial piece of literature (it had a naked arm on the cover, which would give us bonus points in this amazingly complex reading game).

The Book Date does a weekly roundup of what people are reading, want to read, have read each week called It's Monday! What Are You Reading and I'm going to sign up. There's also a version that is kidlit focussed, and as that is a particular interest of mine, I check in with either Teach Mentor Text or UnLeashing Readers for their version.

My pile of books for this week:

 

Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie. A reread for my Tuesday book club; I like this book even more the second time. I liked watching how Breq defines herself as human, and what she misses.

Bronze Gods, A.A. Aguirre. This book needs bigger print, but I still enjoy the Aguirre's blend of world building and character. I do with the two detectives worried more about fraternization on the job, but I'm mainly a grump about romance so that's on me.

* Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy, Susan Vaught. The next Cybils book, and another one that I dreaded going into and then was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. There is a pattern here.

* Dog Warrior, Wen Spencer. I grabbed the excuse to reread this for my team.

* Royal Street, Suzanne Johnson. My local Vaginal Fantasy meet-up substituted this for the official read. We feel more comfortable doing this after the horrible book they picked last month. It was a fun paranormal book, although the guy was very creepy as a romantic partner. I hope she ditches him next book; even the cousin is a much better option.

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Amos Tutuola. The next book in Octavia Butler's course on the history of black science fiction. This had an Oz feeling to me, with the boy wandering in a strange land and accepting the craziest things as normal before returning home.

* Over Sea, Under Stone, Susan Cooper. Another reread for my reading team. I think Cooper does a great job depicting sibling relationships, with their frictions and affection. And it's fun knowing so much more about the world than the characters do -- they don't even know they will forget all this after the last book.

* Death at Gills Rock, Patricia Skalka. Starts with Death, ends with Rock, and takes place in Wisconsin -- pluperfect! This is the second in a murder series, and it uses the death of prominent men in the community to look at hidden dangers, toxic myths, and the power of secrets uncovered. It also looks at the protagonist healing from grief and coming to terms with life again. With puppies!

Listen, Slowly, Tranhha Lai. A spoiled Californian girl is forced to spend the summer with her grandmother in Vietnam, supporting her while they search for the last evidence of her grandfather. Vietnam is apparently a boring place with many mosquitoes, although eventually you might make a friend there. 

*This Book Is Overdue..., Marilyn Johnson 7/16/16. A peon to librarians and the libraries they inhabit, especially the ones moving into a new age that is as much online as it is bricks and mortar. Librarians are praised for the resistance to a censoring and oppressive government as well as for the nimbleness is adapting to use the internet as a research tool.

* Books I started this week. Most books tend last for weeks on my lists, because I have this habit of reading dozens of things at once. But occasionally I keep focus for several days on end.

I started and am still reading more books:



Heat of the Night, Sylvia Day. Starts with Heat, ends with Night -- perfect!

Counterpunch, Aleksandr Voinov. This appears to be a boxing book, which my book team needs.

America: Imagine a World Without Her, Denesh D'Souza. An explanation of how and why Obama is trying to destroy America. It's not very convincing. Apparently progressives like Michael Foucault (??) which means they support pedaphilia, while conservatives like Alexis de Tocqueville, which means they support hard work and independence. America would be better if they went with the hard work plan rather than the S&M with underage boys plan. Step three: Profit! I hope chapter two was the weak argument and the better stuff comes later.

Bookmarks moved in several books:



The Flowers of Adonis, Rosemary Sutcliff. The sailor gets a chance at leadership, and we see the crack that will bring down the walls.

Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver. Reading My Library Quest audio book, set in Tennessee. Delarobia goes on TV.

A Whisper of Magic, Patricia Rice. Society seems to like our girls.

The next few books I'm not really reading, just dipping into between the books I'm trying to finish so that I can pretend that I'm going to read the books on my bookcases.




A Traitor To Memory, Elizabeth George.
Emerald Atlas, John Stephens.
Kenilworth, Walter Scott.
Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen, Wendelin Van Draanen.
The Quantum Universe, Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw.
Reading and Learning To Read, Jo Vacca.

2016 Challenge Progress:

1. Cybils 2015: 34 out of 82. The Cybils books haven't matched well to my team needs.
2. Reading My Library:  I'm on disc 7 of many of Flight Behavior.
3. Where Am I Reading?: 34/51. Picked up Wisconsin and Connecticut.
4. Full House Challenge:  25/25!
5. Library Challenge: I'm at 133. 
6. Diversity Challenge 2016: 12/12. 10/12. Got the autistic book. Poetry may be harder. Now tracking physical fitness vs disability. So far my books have included a Deaf character and a quadriplegic. 
7. Shelf Love Challenge 2016:  26. I hope I get more chances to read my shelves!
8. Grown-Up Reading Challenge 2016: 18/20. 
9. Eclectic Reader Challenge 2016: 10/12. No change. I need a debut author in 2016, and an immigrant experience book. 
10. Surprise Me Challenge:  Read the picture book.
11. Flash Bingo: Summer time! New bingo card! Got triple Bingo!
12. Literary Exploration Challenge: 12/12. Now I'll work on the 36 challenge -- 30/36

Library Hauling!

All right, I may have let this reading challenge thing go to my head, what with the sunny delights of summer and vacations to plan for. I've got all the books I could ever want to read, and not convenient wormhole of time to curl up and read the in. Oh well.

I also went to a few extra libraries to pick up special books for my Team Tapir reading team. Some of these books I got "on spec" and I don't actually have to read them, but when you are building an elaborate pyramid of book titles you have to be ready for flexibility and change.

Anyway, I snuck in early to my main library to pick up a sequel, before I went to two back-up libraries to score books that were on the shelve. While I was there I tripped and found a second sequel. Wow, it would be hard to find to series more different in genre fiction:



My hold shelf loot was mainly the Cybils YA Graphic Finalists:



Plus a few for my Team Tapirs reading team:


And a book club pick, which was also offered up to my Team Tapiers:



Also, I also grabbed many ebooks, mostly for the Team Tapirs:




That's a total of 55 things out, which includes a lot of vacation reading and stuff that I may or may not end up reading.  I'll go look at the Library Loot which is at The Captive Reader this week to see what everyone else is getting.  Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Linda from Silly Little Mischief that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post - feel free to steal the button (that pile of books up at the top) - and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. 

Library Questing

Here I document any progress I make in my Quest to read a book from every shelf in my local library. So far this week -- nothing!

I'm still enjoying the audio version of Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver. I'm on disc 7 of the latter, and I managed to renew it.

Teen Angst and Picture Books About Books!

I'm continuing the challenge that I saw on  I Push Book's blog to surprise yourself by randomly selecting a book from your TBR list. I think this used to be an official sign-up type of challenge, but it lapsed. Lucky for me people with expanding TBR lists kept it up long enough for me to notice it. Anyway, I plug in the size of my goodread's TBR list and then read the book that a random number generator spits out.

Last month I finished the June book, Kiss Me Deadly, a collection of paranormal love stories (mostly ending poorly, at least in terms of the love part) edited by Trisha Telep.I'm pretty sure I found this book because of Sarah Rees Brennan, because I love her take on teens, even angsty teens, and will stalk her all over the world and the internet to read her stuff. Her story about Peter Pan as a British secret agent made me smile, especially with the great-great-granddaughter of Wendy and her mace and her sensible attitude. That one ended well, although not in terms of the love part. The rest of the stories featured other young paranormal types struggling with their vampiric natures, their sense of themselves as monsters, and other common tropes representing the feelings of adolescents. I, as an old fogey, did get a bit tired of all the roller coaster emotions by the end, so I was happen that the last story came from the point of view of a parent, dealing with the loss of a child in a world where many people come back as zombies after a "death event."  There were other authors I knew, a few writing in worlds that I knew, and a few whose worlds look interesting enough to revisit, although none that I immediately tracked down. A fun book of short stories, in other words.

The July book gives me a chance to be caught up, because it's a picture book! Zip! So I can go back and look at the books I missed because of my library fast during the beginning of the year. Anyway, the library brought me The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore by William Joyce. Beautiful and unsettling but also searingly lonely. I always hope books bring me to other people through their stories, but the people in this book are completely isolated. (I don't think kids will worry about that though -- it's a happy book on the surface.)

Summer Break

I am continuing to read for my book team and to enjoy the lack of responsibilities that comes with summer vacation, particularly the part of summer vacation that my kids spend in Europe with their dad. I manage to feed the cats most days, but a lot of the other basic chores have slid a bit. Laundry? Dishes? My TV shows? Never happened.

Also, I'm in denial that the lawn grows if the kids aren't here. Strong, strong denial.

The Book Date does a weekly roundup of what people are reading, want to read, have read each week called It's Monday! What Are You Reading and I'm going to sign up. There's also a version that is kidlit focussed, and as that is a particular interest of mine, I check in with either Teach Mentor Text or UnLeashing Readers for their version.

My pile of books for this week:

* Hotel Ruby, Suzanne Young. A girl deals with her grief over her dead mother and estranged family at a posh hotel, except that things seem a bit odd. A bit too much horror for my squeamish self, and I found the people she met at the hotel annoyingly flat but I enjoyed the well-flagged big reveal. The ending felt satisfying, although I felt bad for the grandmother.

* To Sail a Darkling Sea, John Ringo. Ringo tells a good story, but I really don't want to hang out with him or his friends based on what he seems to think are truths of human nature. I do like how everyone keeps correcting Faith on how to do things, although she is always right even when she is being an idiot. I wish there were a few women worthy of being characters who weren't lovely, but maybe chubby people don't have the right stuff.

* Demigods and Magicians, Rick Riordan. The library wanted it, and my reading team could use it. The short stories would not work without the background of both series, but it was a fun ride to see how the different characters would interact. Since Riordan had (I assumed intentionally) gender-swapped the impulsive/studious characters, the girl Kane got to bond with Percy while Annabeth appreciated Carter's finer points. And fight bad guys, of course.

* The Sword of Summer, Rick Riordan. And now for some Norse myths! I like how he immediately crossed the streams with a cousin in the Greek demigod camp, and then separates them for most of the book. I'm a Loki fan (thanks Joanna Harris!), so I hope he doesn't turn out to be all bad, but even if he does it's still fun. It's definitely a roller coaster of a plot tickets ride (we need X -- must go through Y and Z; X shows us the need for A!).

*Mystic and Rider, Sharon Shinn. I like these stories of the Twelve Houses because they are solidly grounded in character. The party travels about and deals with bad guys, but also develop themselves as real and diverse people. I especially like that some of them make decisions I disagree with but which seem true to their character. Finally, I like the tone of Shinn's books, which value decency and competency.

* The Time Traders, Andre Norton. The Sword and Laser pick for July. It's from the 1950's, although Norton went through it and replaced "Reds" with "Russians" and such for modern sensibilities. I don't think it passes the Bechtel test. Our hero must learn discipline and resolve so he can be a true soldier in the Time Traveling division, as well as make it as a prehistoric warrior type. Luckily he has the inner strength, as well as the chance to wear nifty alien long johns. Fun, short read.

* The Reason I Jump, Naoki Higashida. An autistic boy answers questions about his life, particularly the parts dominated by his autism. I was a bit put off by his habit of speaking for all autistic people (except when he varies from the main stream) but enchanted with his description of how he perceives things and works to make his body his ally instead of his problem.

* Books I started this week. Most books tend last for weeks on my lists, because I have this habit of reading dozens of things at once. But occasionally I keep focus for several days on end.

I started and am still reading more books:



Listen, Slowly, Tranhha Lai. The next Cybils book, as I start middle grade fiction. I don't really buy the premise, but I'm there for the ride, and I always like a new setting. I hope the main character grows out of her brattiness quickly so she becomes less annoying.

Bronze Gods, A.A. Aguirre. This is not by Ann Aguirre, but by Ann and her husband Andre, which seems like an interesting combination. My copy is signed, which I hadn't noticed, and I don't know which one did it. So far we have a detective team that are just discovering their UST, and a murder case. It seems to be a steampunk/fairy type of world, which could be a fun combination.

Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie. Rereading this for my Tuesday book club, and I'd better get on it because we are supposed to have it finished by Tuesday. I like knowing what to watch out for this time around.

Bookmarks moved in several books:



The Flowers of Adonis, Rosemary Sutcliff. The political favors of Athens are a chancy and ruthless weapon, and only continued success placates her.

Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver. Reading My Library Quest audio book, set in Tennessee. I like the interactions between the science interns and the family.

A Whisper of Magic, Patricia Rice. Our heroine kinda accidentally starts an industrial strike while on a tour of a cloth factory. Oops, but maybe good for the people?

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Amos Tutuola. The next book in the History of Black Fiction list I'm working through. The boy is having a lot of magical adventures, but I think I'm starting to get into the rhythm of it.

The next few books I'm not really reading, just dipping into between the books I'm trying to finish so that I can pretend that I'm going to read the books on my bookcases.




A Traitor To Memory, Elizabeth George.
Emerald Atlas, John Stephens.
Kenilworth, Walter Scott.
Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen, Wendelin Van Draanen.
The Quantum Universe, Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw.
Reading and Learning To Read, Jo Vacca.

2016 Challenge Progress:

1. Cybils 2015: 31 out of 82. The Cybils books haven't matched well to my team needs.
2. Reading My Library:  I'm on disc 7 of many of Flight Behavior.
3. Where Am I Reading?: 32/51.  But I've read books in Japan, Finland, and now Viet Nam.
4. Full House Challenge:  24/25. Picked up a memoir.
5. Library Challenge: I'm at 126. 
6. Diversity Challenge 2016: 12/12. 10/12. Got the autistic book. Poetry may be harder. Now tracking physical fitness vs disability. So far my books have included a Deaf character and a quadriplegic. 
7. Shelf Love Challenge 2016:  25. I hope I get more chances to read my shelves!
8. Grown-Up Reading Challenge 2016: 18/20. 
9. Eclectic Reader Challenge 2016: 10/12. No change. I need a debut author in 2016, and an immigrant experience book. 
10. Surprise Me Challenge:  Haven't read the picture book yet.
11. Flash Bingo: Summer time! New bingo card! Got triple Bingo!
12. Literary Exploration Challenge: 12/12. Now I'll work on the 36 challenge -- 30/36