Birds!

Oh no! I usually copy over my status posts from week to week, and somehow this week I forgot to copy and was just editing, so last week's (double) post is gone! I was so mad at myself when I noticed on Monday that I stomped away from my keyboard so this one will be late. 

Also in my stomping I managed to delete parts of this post as well, so I hope I remembered to put everything back. It's now Wednesday so I'd better hurry up and finish last week again if I'm going to. Humph.

Goodreads must have noticed I was sad because they gave me my favorite recommendation ever. I'm very slowly (decades long) reading a teacher manual on reading instruction even though I've never been a teacher. Goodreads noticed that I was reading this 20 year old textbook, and gave me this recommendation:

RECOMMENDATIONS

Because you are currently reading Reading and Learning to Read:

Vicious (Sinners of Saint, #1)

I guess teaching elementary students has aspects heretofore unknown to me! I can't wait to get to the appendixes of this textbook, which I now realize will probably involve naked dudes and maybe some chains!

Anyway, as I have recently typed and lost, I had fun on my birdwatching walk last weekend -- we saw green herons, many great blue herons, assorted ducks (at least 3 varieties), flickers, kingfishers, and some deer. I also wrote down what sort of binoculars I should try, and what I should put on my wish list for a Christmas present. 

When I got home from bird watching I had an online book club for Foolscap, and we discussed Absolution By Murder, and I got to scandalize the club by thinking maybe I'd jump ahead several books when I return to the series. We liked the setting, thought some bits hadn't aged well because our society has moved along in the past 20 years, and also discussed how different authors can draw from the same sparse information about the past and create very different societies when they write about the distant past. 

Earlier that week I had another online book club -- the monthly library Romance Series, this time focussing on Science Fiction Romances. We had fun talking about the line between a romance book with science fiction, and a science fiction book with romance, and how to combine the two in different ways and with different success rates. As usually I picked up a lot of good recommendations; the librarians always start us out with a good list, such as Science Fiction Romance. This is a group that did a good job moving from in-person to online. I'm not sure when the library will start having in person groups again, so I don't know how the transition back will go.

My mom sounds serious about maybe moving to be near her kids, so I did some apartment hunting for her, and some of them seemed likely prospects. I don't want to jinx anything, so I'm not saying much!

My son Alexander had to do some tough stuff this week, so I loaded the weekly menu with his favorites: Lentil stew, pesto lasagna, and homemade bread. I also snuck in a shrimp enchilada night, but he could munch on leftovers as he's not a bit shellfish fan. I am, so I'm glad my younger son was willing to make the extra dish (I made the bread). We've also filled the freezer with ice cream, which is always a good resource when you come down from some tense phone calls and meetings. 

I have been slacking on the laundry, which means that both my Cybils reading and my TV watching have suffered. I need to finish last year's Cybils finalists soon, as the new year is approaching!

I am currently reading 22 books, which almost fits on a single GoodReads page.  I'm still hitting my #bookaday summer target, even without picture books. It's a bit stretched because I read in many places, I'm double reading the Cybils, and I haven't been working out at the gym so I haven't been reading the books I've been meaning to finish any month now.

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" and I'm going to go sign up. Ditto for the children's lit version at either Teach Mentor Texts or Unleashing Readers. 

Started

Vampire Trinity, Joey W. Hill. I received this as a SantaThing gift and I'm finally getting around to it, thanks to the GoodReads challenge: Read the 2nd book on your TBR pile that starts with the letter V.

From Scratch, Tembi Locke. My meal companion book.

Dancing At the Pity Party, Tyler Feder. Cybils finalist.

Absolution by Murder, Peter Tremayne. For Foolscap bookclub.

Aurora Blazing, Jessie Mihalik. Continuing a series.

The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin. Hugo finalist.

The Last Dragon, Silvana de Mari. Cybils finalist. 

Dramacon, Svetlana Chmakova. Part of a series a series. 

Completed

The Galaxy and the Ground Within, Becky Chambers. This was a cosy book to read while eating a solitary lunch. This is the fourth in a loosely related sequence (I think one character is is the long-distance romantic partner of a character in the first book), but the commonality is that most people are decent, and that regular people often deal with problems by working together and communicating to find a solution. The fun part is that most of the people aren't human, so the cultural assumptions they have to deal with have real biological differences. One character can't breath the same air as the others, they all have to deal with various food affinities, and the differing grown rates means the definition of childhood can vary. It's a lot of fun and also basically heartwarming; the characters are stuck together because of a kind of traffic accident (and it is an accident and not sabotage) and they are strangers but rally together and provide support and reassurance for each other. Perfect companion for my meals.

When Stars Are Scattered, Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed. 2020 Cybils Elementary/Middle Grade Graphic Novel finalist. Lovely and moving. The stubborn kindness and loyalty Omar shows to his little brother is beautiful and heartbreaking, and the tensions in the found families in the refugee camp is delicately drawn. They support and help each other, but there is also a zero sum competition for places in the school, for access to food and supplies, for chances at resettlement elsewhere. Can friendships survive one boy getting a chance at an interview for an American VISA? Or when that chance falls through but is extended to a different boy? It was also an interesting pair with the book A Thousand Darknesses, which is interested in the line between fiction and fact in a memoir, where a person's history is organized into literature. Events have to simplified, reorganized, or borrowed in order to make sense of what happened; truth is not as simple are a video of what happened. Omar's story is lovingly told and makes me feel I know the refugees.

A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction, Ruth Franklin. Sometimes I like reading books that could have started as someone's school thesis. This is a fascination exploration of what it means to create art about the Holocaust, what victims and survivors thought about this art, and what it means to be a "true story" about it -- where true and story seem to make that an oxymoron. Franklin looks both at specific authors (Weisel, Levy, etc) and the general idea of writing a memoir, novel, or story about events that may have happened to you or to people you knew or people you saw, and why it's hard to draw lines around memoir and story, and when that might matter or might not. She also has an interesting look at the children and descendants of survivors, and what their relationship to these stories might be, which had an interesting overlap with the generational trauma explored in works such as the Cybils finalist Displacement that I read a few weeks back. It's nice to stretch myself with literary analysis a bit.

Dancing At the Pity Party, Tyler Feder. 2020 Cybils YA Graphic Novel finalist. I really liked this. I read it as a mother to young adults, and I think that if I died in the next year or so it would be really hard on them, so reading about a young woman whose mom dies from a rapidly developing cancer was very powerful. I could appreciate the humor and grief that the family mixes, how the rituals of their faith help them but can't ever be enough, how happiness can sneak in and almost feel like a betrayal, how each sister handles their grief different, and how the bond between people who have lost a parent too young is something universal. I'm not sure I'd enjoy this book as much as a young adult thinking about (or experiences) this kind of loss, but from my older standpoint it was a moving experience. 

Shadowghast, Thomas Taylor. I like jumping into the middle of series, and this is #3 in the story of Herbert, the boy in charge of Lost Property at the hotel where he lives and works. The author does a good job of welcoming new readers -- I felt confident I understood the setting and the relationship between the characters; they mention some previous adventures but in a comfortable backstory kind of way. My only confusion was why Herbert had to work full time for a living -- the book felt vaguely modern enough for this to be a thing but there were no cell phones so maybe I was off by a hundred years or so. I liked the balance of danger, both in the sense that the danger was realistically kid-sized -- they were kidnapped and threatened but that's pretty much standard, and also the physical and emotional stakes were balanced -- sure they were lost in an underground maze and menaced by a mythical shadow creature, but equally important their friendship was under siege from conflicting desires -- was Herbert about to find a true family and leave his still orphaned friend behind, or was he blinded by the hope of a real connection and leaving himself vulnerable to nefarious influences? The pacing of these two kinds of concerns worked well, giving the book both emotional weight and lots of adventures.

I received an ARC from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Absolution by Murder, Peter Tremayne. For Foolscap bookclub.  I know Foolscap is a SF/Fantasy genre convention, but the book club reads what it wants. Also, I made a good case for all books set in the past, especially the distant past (600s definitely counts as distant) being fundamentally fantasy since the author has to invent the society and the people's understanding of themselves and their place in the universe. Comparing this world with that of Griffith's Hild, which both involve someone based on a historical figure (Hild/Hilda). This one has the fun flavor of how the Irish were better at almost everything -- laws, women, distaste for torture, bathing, and the English are losers! I think I would like to hang out more with Sister Fidelma in some later books. The conclusion did not age well -- this was written over twenty years ago so the author probably didn't notice that having the villain be a crazed and jealous lesbian is probably not a good way to introduce diversity. Yuck. But I think that's not a big part of the story, and the author is not really better at heterosexual attraction either. (The last sentence is an incredibly clumsy attempt at coy sexual tension -- the main character is given a chance to spend more time with the cute dude, and she muses to herself "I wonder why I'm so excited about this?" But since "this" was an opportunity to travel to Rome, something she would have been wildly excited about anyway, it is a bizarre thing to muse about.) So, a B- for the book, but it shows potential.

Dramacon Vol 1, Svetlana Chmakova. Finishing a series. I read volume 2 of these as a Cybils finalist, and I'm glad I started there. The protagonist, being younger, is a lot less mature in this one, so she was rather oblivious and annoying. I mean, her boyfriend was a jerk, as expected (that was mentioned a lot in the one I read) but she was as well. And then the bf moved beyond jerk to assaulter, which I had not gleaned from the later one, which was a bit of an oof. Also, there were even more stylizations that I assume are common manga things, with characters being drawn in odd cartoony ways that I think I was supposed to recognize as expression various emotions, but when I didn't get it I just felt like I was failing the translation. I'll probably eventually go pick up volume 3, but I'm not in a huge rush. 

Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:

Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James. Ancient Sword and Laser pick. Didn't touch it. 

The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein, Farah Mendelson. Hugo finalist. Made progress.  

The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton. Read some pages. It's my book to read while walking on a treadmill. Sadly, I have not gone to the gym at all this week.

The Bourne Supremacy, Robert Ludlum. Didn't touch it.

The Wine-Dark Sea, Patrick O'Brien. Didn't touch it.

Seven Sisters, Lucinda Riley. The library brought it back, but I pushed for another week.

Sharks in the Time of Saviors, Kawai Strong Washburn. A little progress.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Malinda Lo. A little progress.

Gardens of the Moon, Steven Erikson. Tuesday book club pick.

Picture Books / Short Stories:

Old Mikamba Had a Farm, Rachel Isadora. Cute picture book; I liked the illustrations (torn paper?). But this is a terrible farm -- Mikamba is going to starve! He doesn't have any domesticated animals, and I'm not seeing any signs that he lives on a safari camp type of place. 

"The Inaccessibility of Heaven," Aliette de Bodard. 2021 Hugo novelette finalist. Although I usually like de Bodards stuff, this didn't work for me. I never really liked the world building, and I found the protagonist rather whiny in her relationship, and distracted by concerns about her girlfriend while dealing with a gruesome mass murderer, which seems oddly inappropriate. 

I Hate Reading, Arthur Bacon & Henry Bacon (and probably their parents, at least their mom). I read two versions of this, both credited to two brothers who apparently wrote this while caravanning around the country with their parents so I assume being homeschooled. It's a great send up of the 20 minutes required reading beloved by schools across America. Even my bookwork kids disliked the idea of timing themselves; I remember bribing them with books to get them to do their reading. The first one is very simply illustrated, possibly by the mom, and I think it's my favorite version. The second has real illustrations but that left me not knowing these guys were brothers for a while. In either case, a charming book either for preschoolers or young readers whining about the 20 minute rule.

Palate Cleansers

These books I'm barely reading; lately I use them bribes to get me to deal with the mail. Hmm. I should get back to that. 

The Educated Child, William Bennett. 

Wool, Hugh Howey. 

Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho. I sympathize with his good intentions, although she is definitely having more fun.

Under the Eye of the Storm, John Hersey. 

Dates From Hell, Kim Harrison & others.  

Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vaca. Individualizing reading instruction.

Reading Challenges

1. Cybils 2020. Finish a graphic novel. Picked up a lot from the library. 
2. Early Cybils: Started The Last Dragon. 
3. Hugos 2021: Finished a novelette (big short stories) and some podcasts. 
4. KCLS 10 To Try: 9/10. Planning to finish next month.
5. Tacoma Extreme Reading Challenge. 45/55. Last week's Sunshine could count as Alternate History.
6. Reading My Library. Haven't started my new book yet. 
7. Where Am I Reading 2021: 26/51 states. No change.  11 Countries. 

Future Plans

I'm putting this at the end because I suspect it's complete fiction, but I feel I should attempt some structure.

I am reading: 

• Book I own: Vampire Trinity Next: Ghost Talkers
• Library Book: Theodore Goss short stories  Next: Kidlit book about camping.
• Ebook I own:   Gardens of the Moon. Next: Profession of Heinlein.  
• Library Ebook: Reckless Guide . Next: Bourne Supremacy
• Book Club Book: Consider Phlebas Up Next: Bollywood Affair.
• Tuesday Book Club Book: Gardens of the Moon. Next: I need to finish The Wind Dark Sea
• Review Book: The Queer Principles of Kit Webb  Next: Back Home
• Hugo Book: The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein. Next: Joanna Russ.
• Rereading: None
• Meal Companion: From Scratch
• Audio: None  Next: I have a book on CD I'll start listening to if I ever catch up on my podcasts.