Cybils Time Approaches! Especially Middle Grade SF!

Stop the presses! Read all the books! And then, if they were really good kidlit books (board books up to YA) and published in the last year, nominate them for the CYBILS Awards. Nominations are open from October 1-15 (16-25 for publishes) and everyone is eligible to nominate a book for each category.

Especially be on the look out for amazing Elementary / Middle Grade Speculative Fiction, because I'm one of the judges! I know, crazy! (Frankly I suspect some kind of computer or typing error, but too late! I'm on the team!) So my new plan for this fall is to READ ALL THE BOOKS.

In preparation, I am furiously reading all the books I've checked out of the library and meant to read any second now, such as the rest of the recommendations from my elementary book club and also the stuff I just randomly picked up. Some will have to go back unread as priorities are high! Also I'm reading books that I suspect will be nominated so I have a jump on the game.

My currently reading edged back up to 28. I'll worry about that next year.

The Book Date does a weekly roundup of what people are reading, want to read, or have read each week called It's Monday! What Are You Reading so I'll sign up there. There's also a version that is kidlit focussed at either Teach Mentor Texts or Unleashing Readers and as I read some Cybils poetry books plus the YAs and the extra middle grade books I'll sign in there.

This Week I started:




The Breadwinner, Deborah Ellis. Recommended by last June's Talbot Hill book club.

Girl Friday, R.A. Spratt. Recommended by last June's Talbot Hill book club.

Encrypted, Lindsay Buroker. Recommended by my sister.

Black Butler 15, Yana Toboso. Working my way through the series.

The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge, M.T. Anderson. I was sent a copy to review, and it's time to do that!

Cybils Reading

I picked up a pile of last year's elementary nonfiction but then spend the week crowing over my judge status and didn't read any of them. Oops.

I finished:




The Breadwinner, Deborah Ellis. Talbot Hill Book Club rec. Quick story of life for a girl in Afghanistan after war and the Taliban crush her family. She and her friend disguise themselves as boys to earn money for their families; discovery means torture and probably death. An age appropriate glimpse into current affairs in another country.

Auggie and Me, R. J. Palacio. Talbot Hill Book Club rec. I really like how seriously Palacio takes the moral lives of these fifth grades; it matches how I understand kids. Even the evil bully gets a fair portrayal. I only remember the outlines of the original book so I wasn't as prejudiced against him and I didn't remember the other kids at all, but I found all three stories rewarding. And an exotic glimpse into rich New Yorker private school kids' lives.

Girl Friday, R.A. Spratt. Talbot Hill Book Club rec. This was a lot of fun! Friday was quirky but relatable as she navigated life from benign neglect to ambitious prep school. And looking up the author tells me it's probably set in Australia. The pace was fun, the plot ridiculous but entertaining, and I hope to pick up the next few.

Black Butler 15, Yana Toboso. You know, I started this series at the recommendation of a previous Talbot Hill book club. There's a theme here. The boarding school setting of this one is fun, because the exoticness of British prep schools is doubly magnified by viewing it through the lens of a Japanese manga writer. The butler is rather oppressed so I hope he gets to beat people up soon so he can have some fun.

The Wonder Engine, T. Kingfisher. A great end -- I especially like the messy romance where she's mad at him for logically ridiculous but emotionally very powerful reasons. And I didn't spot several twists, but my son didn't either so I feel better about it.

The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge, M.T. Anderson. I consider this pre-Cybils reading, as with that author I'm sure it will get nominated. It's a political drama told about two small characters from different empires; we get text chapters from one POV and then the visual images sent back from the other, with expository letters from an evil spymaster commenting on them as well. I had a hard time following some of the graphics, but that's because I'm illiterate in pictures. I liked how there was more duplication of information at the start, which was necessary because the imager's perception was distorted by fear and dislike. It was a nifty way to show his progress and also to demonstrate the effects of prejudice on perception. And the ending worked out well.

Bookmarks In:





Son of the Black Sword, Larry Correia. 9/? Baen's podcast serial. More background on their warrior club.

Stiff, Mary Roach. Audio Reading My Library Quest book. It's a great book for the car since it consists of fairly short bits in easily digested chunks.

Jade City, Fonda Lee. Last month's Sword and Laser pick. Only a few pages this week.

Stinger, Nancy Kress. Kress is the next Foolscap GoH. I was easily distracted.

The Eye of Truth, Lindsay Buroker. Oh uh, the family may be complicit.

Honor Among Thieves, James A. Corey. My next Reading My Library book. Pushed ahead a few hapters.

Too Like the Lightning, Ada Palmer. I forgot I have copies in both ebook and print copies. I find myself compulsively aligning the bookmarks.

Lady Rogue, Teresa Romain. It's fluffy, so I like it as I read it but I'm not seeking it out.

Someplace to Be Flying, Charles D. Lint.

Shadow of Doubt, Norah McClintock.

Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula LeGuin.

The Rules and Regulations for Mediating Myths and Magic, F.T. Lukens. Cybils YA fantasy book.

Palate Cleansers

These books I'm barely reading; I use them as palate cleansers between books I'm actually reading.



A Traitor to Memory, Elizabeth George. Back to the lapsed violinist.

Sammy Keyes and the Art of Deception, Wendelin Van Draanen.

Change of Heart, Norah McClintock.

Inn of the Sixth Happiness, Alan Burgess.

Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vaca.

2018 Challenge Progress:

1. Cybils 2017! 53/104-ish. Picked up most of elementary nonfiction. Working on YA.
2. Reading My Library: Working on the James Corey book and Mary Roach's Stiff.
3. Where Am I Reading 2018?: 38/51. No new states, but I did get to read in Afghanistan and Australia.

Cold!

So, at the beginning of last year I prepaid for this year's furnace inspection. And then I kept avoiding scheduling it for a host of silly reasons. But summer is over, the nights are getting chilly, so after a few more evasions I let the guy in and apparently my furnace is leaking carbon monoxide all over the place. Oops.

Like, turn it off right now leaking, because it could easily be lethal.

So, I need a new furnace. But apparently the trapdoor to the attic is smaller than any known furnace, so they have to chop into the ceiling. And I need to replace my carbon monoxide detectors which apparently haven't been detecting things for almost then years. So that's this week's plan.

Book club was this Friday, and I did warn them all to dress warmly as in the interest of saving lives I'm not turning the heater on. The book was fun but lightweight (we chose it deliberately for that) so it was mainly a social evening. It was a good excuse to read more Lindsay Buroker, though. Dragon Storm was the book.

My currently reading edged back up to 27. I need to whittle this down very quickly.

The Book Date does a weekly roundup of what people are reading, want to read, or have read each week called It's Monday! What Are You Reading so I'll sign up there. There's also a version that is kidlit focussed at either Teach Mentor Texts or Unleashing Readers and as I read some Cybils poetry books plus the YAs and the extra middle grade books I'll sign in there.

This Week I started:




The Rules and Regulations for Mediating Myths and Magic, F.T. Lukens. Cybils YA fantasy book.

Saints and Misfits, S.K. Ali. Cybils YA book.

One Last Word, Nikki Grimes. Cybils poetry book.

Stiff, Mary Roach. My next audio Reading My Library Quest book.

I'm Just No Good At Rhyming, Chris Harris. Cybils poetry book.

Dragon Storm, Lindsay Buroker. For my friends book club.

The Terrible Two, Mac Barnett and Jory John. Recommended by the Talbot Hill Book Club.

Auggie and Me, R. J. Palacio. Recommended by the Talbot Hill Book Club.


Cybils Reading

I finished the poetry finalists, and things only got harder -- these books were all doing completely different things and doing them extremely well. Kudos to both sets of judges for poetry last year -- these were great selections and the judges must have really struggled over them. Or maybe not, because they picked my favorite -- the Shel Silverstein worthy book by Chris Harris. A good Cybils book is one that makes you want to buy extra copies and hand them out to children. A great one makes you want to befriend extra children so you can give away more copies.

I also made some progress on YA, but that's still going slow for me. I think I'll pick up younger grade nonfiction to continue feeling a sense of progress.

I finished:




Ascendant, Jack Campbell. I enjoyed this a lot, and I thought Campbell did a great job with his wildly separate points of view. The varying personalities and problems kept the book moving along at a good pace and gave several windows into the larger problem. At first I was dubious, but it definitely worked for me.

Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, William Styron. My Tuesday night book pick. A very erudite description of suicidal depression, along with the stupid decisions and apparently logical nonsense that starts the illness. This may have been the book for my Tuesday book club, but sadly I went to the PTA meeting and my plan to sneak out after the voting was foiled by the agenda which put the votes at the end. Humph.

The Compleat Gentleman, Brad Minor. My audio RML book. 6-7/7. It felt misogynistic all the way through. If you want to have a book about the best possible man, but you can't tell the difference between men and humans, there's a large gap that should be addressed at some point. Sadly, the only time Minor addresses it is when the chance to make a joke about a transexual comes up (we don't even know if it's about a transman or a transwoman, but clearly the lady is no gentleman). I was happy that the book was only 7 discs long.

One Last Word, Nikki Grimes. Cybils poetry book. This was a lovely celebration of Harlem Renaissance poets, with Grimes writing a Golden Shovel poem for selected poems. Golden Shovels are poems written where the last word in each line comes from the original poem and in Grimes's hands they are evocative reactions to the original. This was a delicious books with many pages worth savoring, from the old poems to the new, and including the carefully chosen illustrations.

I'm Just No Good At Rhyming, Chris Harris. Cybils poetry book. This was an utter delight from the cover to the acknowledgements. Wait, the author/illustrator biographies were after that, and they were great as well. It had humor, it had a love of words and poetry and rhymes, it had tempo, it had it all. Very well done.

The Terrible Two, Mac Barnett and Jory John. Fun story of a trickster who meets his match, but luckily the other boy sees the value of teamwork. My only complain was the indeterminate setting -- it's someplace with a lot of cows, and it stays cold through March, but that leaves a lot of territory.

Saints and Misfits, S.K. Ali. Cybils YA book. A sexual assault on a young girl colors the next few months of her high school year. Her inability to speak out makes many other relationships complicated as the rapist shows up at many social occasions, but life continues -- she has exams, a quiz show, concerns about her Muslim identity, a crush on a cute boy, a death in her building, etc. But everything cycles back to the assault until she deals with it. The voice is engaging; the structure of the back third gets a bit wobbly, but it's a good read with a lot in it.


Bookmarks moved in:





Son of the Black Sword, Larry Correia. 7-9/? Baen's podcast serial. Asok cannot fear for himself. Distant worry for a friend is about the limit of his emotions.

Jade City, Fonda Lee. Last month's Sword and Laser pick. Can you root for the bad guys if their opponents are like, super-bad?

Stinger, Nancy Kress. Kress is the next Foolscap GoH. Real life is hard. Science can be a relief.

The Eye of Truth, Lindsay Buroker. They both admit that the other is attractive!

Honor Among Thieves, James A. Corey. My next Reading My Library book. Fall-out from the daring rescue!

The Wonder Engine, T. Kingfisher. I found it! There's a puzzle, but it's hard to solve it while hiding under a blanket. On the other hand, the blanket is saving a life.

Too Like the Lightning, Ada Palmer. I'm starting to lose track of the mystery. The setting is very interesting and that distracts me.

Lady Rogue, Teresa Romain. It's fluffy, so I like it as I read it but I'm not seeking it out.

Someplace to Be Flying, Charles D. Lint. The animal people are among us.

Shadow of Doubt, Norah McClintock. Still stuck in the boyfriend stuff.

Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula LeGuin. Aliens are incomprehensible.



These books I'm barely reading; I use them as palate cleansers between books I'm actually reading.



A Traitor to Memory, Elizabeth George.

Sammy Keyes and the Art of Deception, Wendelin Van Draanen.

Change of Heart, Norah McClintock. The best friend is back on side.

Inn of the Sixth Happiness, Alan Burgess. Difficult trek through Russia to get to China.

Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vaca.

2018 Challenge Progress:

1. Cybils 2017! 53/104-ish. Finished poetry. Ordered up elementary nonfiction. Working on YA.
2. Reading My Library: Working on the James Corey book. Finished Compleat Gentleman audio and started Mary Roach's Stiff.
3. Where Am I Reading 2018?: 38/51. No locations at all this week.