New School Year! New Foolscap

Last weekend was our first in-person Foolscap convention since the pandemic. We had a convention in February of 2020 (I remember because I proposed a panel on pandemic stories and no one was interested-- Cherie Priest was telling stories about her appearance on Captain Kangaroo). And two weeks later we went home for two years or so. 

We were hesitant to come back -- lots of us have vulnerabilities and also issues around sharing the virus with people with vulnerabilities. But we tried a one-day event and filled it with as much talking about the things we love as possible, which for me of course means books. Good books, engaging books with terrible world building, cosy horror and what that contradiction in terms means, Station Eleven and what it means to be a Speculative Fiction book, and lots of other stuff, including films, cookies, bubbles, and music. And coffee but I didn't try that. It was great to hang out with people again, new friends and old.

My Friday book club met as well and we had our Summer Special: Picture Books! I gather all the Cybils finalists of the year and we read them and decide if the judges got it right. We each get to make our own decisions though -- we don't wrestle ourselves into a group decision. Leave that for the professionals! (Wait, it's time to submit applications to be a Cybils judge. I'm a book blogger -- I could be one of the professionals!

If anyone reading this talks about children's books on the internet (blog, goodreads, instagram, whatever form of twitter you use, etc), I highly encourage you to consider being a Cybils judge. It's a great chance to read a bunch of books and talk about what makes them great with other interesting people with the same passion. They have categories from picture books through nonfiction all the way up to young adult, so you can pick your favorite kind of reading.

Hmm, what else happened? I had signed up for Run Like a Viking and I managed to do a 5k with my running app on so I have a time. Woot! No walking, just running and jogging. My most amazing athletic skill is how slowly I can jog without falling over too often. 

Oh, I went to a Drake concert! I mean, technically I drove to a Drake concert to let out my niece and her friend and then I drove home, but still, that was pretty exciting for me. I'm so cool. 

I'm back up to 3 pages of currently-reading on goodreads. I'm at 31 physical books checked out which includes some picture books plus five ebooks. I FOUND THE LOST picture book, so I acknowledge the librarian who told me to just hope it turns up as a genius. And I'd like to thank my brother who encouraged me to collapse the giant tower of cardboard boxes for the recycling balanced by the door to my garage and uncover the bag containing the book. Which had that picture book as well as things I was using when staying overnight with my mom in the hospital last spring, when I had apparently stopped at the library to pick up the hold on my way home to nap. I guess I was so tired I just tossed this bag carelessly to the side of the garage door. 

I'm off to check out the other books at The Bookdate's It's Monday, What Are You Reading headquarters. And since I'm reading picture books as well as Cybils and other kidlit, I'll also sign up at the Children's Book central version, held at both Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers. And then I will dive around to see what everyone else has been reading. (Since I think I'm actually finishing this post on Monday I may actually have time to do that!)

Started

Eden's Everdark, Karen Strong. Cybils finalist.

Daughter of the Moon Goddess, Sue Lynn Tan. Cloudy book club pick.

Big Mike, Little Mike, Lauren Marie. Freebie from author. 

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, V5, Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù. Completing a series.

Dusk, Night, Dawn, Anne Lamott. I like this author. 

Resurgence, C.J. Cherryh. Continuing the series.

Completed

Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel. For Foolscap Book club. Also for my Tuesday book club, which kindly picked this when they found out I was reading it. I read this before the pandemic, but it hits rather differently now. It was a good pick for both clubs -- lots to talk about. The book itself is well written, and the way it deals with science fiction and genre tropes is interesting. We talked about the characters and the situations and how they different from other post-plague books. I posed the question: Is it SF? and we had fun looking at how our reactions as well as how our answers shaped our reading. By the way, I found it resonated more with fantasy books than with SF books in terms of how characters reacted to the world around them. None of the characters viewed technology as something they could learn to replicate; it was the magic that had vanished from the world. 

Big Mike, Little Mike, Lauren Marie. I was unreasonably disappointed with this fluffy little romance about a guy on his way home after an extended tour in the army and a widow running a farm with her two sons. The title led me to think the man would establish a bond with one of the sons, but not really. The complexity of his having to make peace with his parents over joining the army meant that the couple spent even less time together. And they smoked! Yuck. Don't start this author here. 

Policing the Open Road, Sarah Seo. For Torches and Pitchforks book club. This was an interesting read that also confirmed that my brain is getting lazy and I should read more nonfiction. It talks about the links between the need for drastically increased policing once automobiles made communities less insular -- people could move around quickly and also widen their range, meaning a local beat cop wouldn't know everyone they met. So people were meeting strange police officers, and the officers didn't know who were the good (rich) people and who were people they could abuse with impunity. From a civil liberty standpoint, it would be a good idea to completely separate traffic controllers from police, and also accept that giving police complete discretion means mostly erasing the fourth amendment. I'm really sad to have missed this meeting!

Brightly Burning, Mercedes Lackey. Tuesday night book club pick. Lots of teens having extreme emotions, lots of foreshadowing that there would not be a happy-ever-after, lots of sniggering from me over the healer girl's crush and how seriously her parents took it. Did just what I expected! It was fun to see this as a villain origin story, which in a different world it could have been. Teenage victims of bullying who have an unexpected psychic ability to start big fires when they are upset can easily go wrong.

Picture Books

Finding Fire, Logan S. Kline. 2022 Cybils Picture book finalist. 

How to Party Like a Snail, Naseem Hrab. 2022 Cybils Picture book finalist. 

Apple and Magnolia, Laura Gehl. 2022 Cybils Picture book finalist. 

Out of a Jar, Deborah Marcelo. 2022 Cybils Picture book finalist. 

Nigel and the Moon, Antwan Eady. 2022 Cybils Picture book finalist. 

Farmhouse, Sophie Blackall. 2022 Cybils Picture book finalist. 

Knight Owl, Christopher Denise. 2022 Cybils Picture book finalist. And winner. 

My book club and I read all of these, and then I dragged them out again at family dinner and encouraged brothers and brothers-in-law (well, one of each) to sample them as well. It was a good assortment. There were several votes for Finding Fire and How to Party Like a Snail, but Knight Owl was also a crowd favorite and up near the top for everyone. This was a good crop of books -- a lot of variety, some funny, some poignant, some thoughtful, even a wordless option. My favorite images were of the little girl's hair in Apple and Magnolia and our introduction to the dragon(spoiler) in Knight Owl. 

Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:

Yes, this is getting ridiculous. I'm definitely going to finish some of these. Real soon now! 

Ascendance of a Bookworm, Miya Kazuki. Pausing my reread of Part 3 while I read the new book.

Ascendance of a Bookworm 5.5, Miya Kazuki. I'm almost done and the next one isn't out until the end of September -- woe is me!

Cobra, Timothy Zahn. Part 51. 

Warcross, Marie Lu. 

Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon. My bookmark moved! I haven't forgotten all the characters!

The Wine-Dark Sea, Patrick O'Brian. 

New Suns 2, ed. Nisi Shawl. 

Fourth Wing, Rebecca Yarros. The June Sword and Laser book club pick. Again, I'm finding the popular belief that the dragons like serial killers (of people and dragons) best worrisome, although the few dragons we meet do not support the idea. I'm also bored by how horny our protagonist is all the time. 

Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Malinda Lo. Cybils finalist. 

Into the Broken Lands, Tanya Huff. Yeah, we're moving into adventure land! Killer plants have already threatened our heros!

The Creeping Shadow, Jonathan Stroud. The next audio in my Reading My Library quest. I like the world and the suspense parts, but I hate with a passion the bizarre tension between our hero and the other female character. Like, do I really have to deal with stupid jealousy? Mean girl stuff? Ugh.

The Serpent in Heaven, Charlaine Harris. For the sake of my kitchen (which I clean while listening to this audio), I hope I finish in time for the new release in September! I'm enjoying the sister's point of view.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Lori Gottlieb. Recommended by a friend. I'm reading a little bit at night before sleep to make myself feel like a normally adjusted person.

Planetfall, Emma Newman. Sword & Laser pick. Wow, I'm falling seriously behind her. Better finish some of these.

Ship Without Sails, Sherwood Smith. 

Palate Cleansers

I'm slowly marching through these books.

 

50 Great Poets, ed. Milton Crane (no picture). Herbert and Herrick. A nice interlude. It's fun to recognize book titles in the lines. 

Stinger, Nancy Kress. 

Dragon's Breath, E.D. Baker. 

The Writer's Stance: Reading and Writing in the Disciplines, Dorothy U. Seyler.  

The Road to Mars, Eric Idle. 

The Dark Fantastic, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas. 

Year of Wonder, Clemency Burton-Hill. I caught up. Some great stuff -- surprises with Zappa but also known beauty from Bach. 

Reading Challenges

1. Cybils 2022: Finished Picture Books. Working on middle grade SF. 
2. Early Cybils:  Nope. 
3. Reading My Library. Working on an audio. Need more picture books from Renton Highlands.
4. Libraries: Working on the 10 to Try for 2023. Need an artist and a summer book.

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: China Mountain Zhang
• Library Book: Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivate V5
• Ebook I own: The Wine Dark Sea
• Library Ebook: Forty-Love
• Book Club Book: The Daughter of the Moon Goddess
• Tuesday Book Club Book: a Pratchett, to be determined
• Review Book: Back Home 
• Rereading: 
• Audio: Serpent in Paradise
  

Miss You Mom

August so far was a bit of a tough month. The weather was really hot here on the West Coast. I dodged a lot of my runs in response. We gathered in California to a memorial service for my mom, with relatives and some close friends. I drove down with my brother and sons; the rest of the family also made it out by plane or car or a combination of the two. We were in a lovely inn (Back Bay Inn) on the coast where they put all us siblings in rooms together; most of the niblings were left with our upties (aunts and uncles). 

On Saturday my mom's siblings, children, grandchildren, their spouses and a few cousins and friends spent a few hours telling stories and remembering what we valued about my mom. Then most of us headed over to The Madonna Inn where we had celebrated other major events (especially my grandmother's 90th birthday) and ate and danced and remembered why we liked our family and tried to make it an event that Mom would have loved. The next day we buried her near her mother. 

Oh, and I introduced my SIL to Zombies Run and I think they have a new fan.

And then we drove back up on a really really hot pair of days -- 109 F at one rest stop in Oregon! That's like 43C! 

At that point it was time to get serious about the literary convention Foolscap that I'm involved with. I didn't do as much as I should have, but I was missing my mom a lot. I had a great time at the convention though, so thanks all the rest of you who did pull your weight!

Hmm, what else has happened during these three weeks? My reading got very disordered, so I have far to many books on the go. Oh well. And the library scolded me because somehow I skipped checking out my holds one week -- apparently I just grabbed them and wandered out? Oops. I definitely remember checking them out, but it's conceivable I just substituted the a memory from all the other weeks I went from the hold shelf to the check out machines. So I made sure to check the out when I brought them back to return.

I'm back up to 3 pages of currently-reading on goodreads. I'm at 33 physical books checked out which includes some picture books plus five ebooks. I think I've only lost one picture book, but the librarian told me to just hope it turns up. That hope is looking pretty cold now. 

I'm off to check out the other books at The Bookdate's It's Monday, What Are You Reading headquarters. And since I'm reading picture books as well as Cybils and other kidlit, I'll also sign up at the Children's Book central version, held at both Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers. And then I will dive around to see what everyone else has been reading.

Started

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Lori Gottlieb. Recommended by a friend.

Children of the Quicksands, Efua Traore. Cybils finalist. 

Planetfall, Emma Newman. Sword & Laser pick. 

Theodore Boone: Fugitive, John Grisham. I was curious how the series went on.

Theodore Boone: The Accomplice, John Grisham. This is number 7. 

Tsalmoth, Steven Brust. Continuing a series.

Brightly Burning, Mercedes Lackey. Tuesday night book club pick.

Hunting Ground, Patricia Briggs. Car entertainment. 

My Man Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse. Car entertainment. 

Have Space Suit, Will Travel, Robert Heinlein. Car entertainment. 

Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel. For Foolscap Book club.

Completed

Shelter, Susan Palwick. For Scintillation book club. This was a tough but rewarding read. In the near future, questions over the citizenship of various forms of AI create opportunities for brutalism, while society continues to choose easy, cruel solutions to complex problems that should provoke compassion. There's an AI called House that is easy to love and a flawed rich woman who is easy to despise and a struggling orphan who tries to do the right thing even when it results in personal loss. And there's a heartbreaking child with real problems who runs afoul of the easy, cruel solutions. And it asks a lot of the reader and left me with a lot of questions for myself, and the book club was great in that it showed me a lot of other questions and angles I also need to ponder. 

Fairy Tale, Stephen King. For Tuesday game & book club. This was a fun 200 page story trapped in a 600 page book. Each page was easy to read, but then you look up after fifty pages to realize that nothing has happened and it's hard to pick the book up again. But I managed to finish it!

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, Sangu Mandanna. For August Cloudy book club, although I'll miss the meeting. This was a fun romance with a light urban fantasy flair and some cute kids who don't quite take over the story. A good pick, although I'm not sure what the club will talk about.

Girl, Forgotten, April Henry. Although the previous two Henry books I read really appealed, this one was a bit of a slog. I found the extra drama around her mom distracting from rather than adding to the main story, and the main story itself was hard to take seriously. I pushed through and I'll go back for more from this author, but I don't recommend this one.

Theodore Boone: The Accomplice, John Grisham. The problem with a series starting a lawyer is that most of the problems are for the clients, not the main character. When the "lawyer" is an eighth grader, his connection to his "client" is even more distant. That makes the book less engaging, since the reader is farther from the conflicts. Grisham does his best by making Theo implausibly deal with the bondsman but it still reads more as a lecture about the injustice of our juvenile criminal procedures and a bail-based system. 

Theodore Boone: Fugitive, John Grisham. It was so hard to suspend my disbelief in this one that I had to pause it and read the other Boone book. I was OK when Theo manages to spot the fugitive while on a field trip; when the FBI flew him back to help him with their search I started backing away. It's not like this kid is Alex Rider or anything! And I'm still bothered by the corruption in an earlier book, where the guy who becomes the fugitive is being tried on fairly flimsy evidence, and he's clearly going to walk, but Theo uncovers some better evidence, so the judge calls for a mistrial so the state can try again. Isn't that sorta the definition of double jeopardy? I though the government wasn't supposed to be able to keep putting people on trial until it finally gets a guilty plea? Humph. 

Tsalmoth, Steven Brust. I liked this, and thought the frame of wedding planning worked, but I no longer hold all the history of the characters in an accessible way. My son helped me a bit, but I hope to have time for a final reread when he finishes.

Hunting Ground, Patricia Briggs. This worked well for entertainment on our drive to California. Perhaps a little too well, as I missed a turn that cost us about 30 minutes. I did catch a reference to all the small salt lakes scattered about the city of Seattle; if anyone finds one of those please let me know?

My Man Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse. Another good audio for the car. This is short stories (and not all about Jeeves) so it was a good choice to finish the drive south and start the drive back north a few days later.

Have Space Suit, Will Travel, Robert Heinlein. A nostalgia listen for my brother and me, although probably a first for my son. We particularly enjoyed the trial at the end. 

Children of the Quicksands, Efua Traore. 2022 Cybils Middle Grade SF finalist. This was immediately interesting because it's not set in America and the characters aren't American. Instead we see a Nigerian city girl going back to her grandmother and discovering some of the local magic and having to step up to understand and help deal with it. I was a little disappointed that the final climax left our heroine mostly passive, but for most of the book she was making things happen. 

Picture Books

This Is My State, Lisa Bullard. Reading My Library Quest -- Renton Highlands Easy Nonfiction. This instructional book follows two kids driving from one state into another while collecting those state quarters as a car game. It's an interesting take on this topic, and reads more as a story than as a fact-giving book, but manages to convey some information while being entertaining. I remember doing the state quarters thing with my kids over a decade ago; it's probably more challenging now. 

B Is For Baller, James Littlejohn. Reading My Library Quest -- Renton Highlands Easy Nonfiction. This is a lovely book with great art and words, but I really needed a back section giving sports novice me some background on all the famous people mentioned. I guess it would work to read to a kid who already knows everything. 

Preaching to the Chickens, Jabari Asim. Reading My Library Quest -- Renton Highlands Easy Nonfiction. I liked this biography, which told of John Lewis's childhood habit of talking to his chickens, and linking his sermons to his adult convictions.  I thought the art and text worked really well together. 

The Fabulous Flying Machines of Alberto Santos-Dumont, Victoria Grifford. Reading My Library Quest -- Renton Highlands Easy Nonfiction. Wow, I will never again refer to the Wright brothers as the first airplane flyers. Santos-Dumont's plane took off on its own without gizmos to assist. And he was super cool -- he had a personal blimp he flew around Paris, and his friend Cartier invented the wristwatch so he wouldn't lose track of time while zooming around. Great stuff.

The Wall, Peter Sis. 2007 Cybils finalist. Artist picture book biographies are usually great -- I love how they express their experiences so emotionally through the illustrations. I liked getting the feelings of both young Peter and how writer Peter thinks about his memories. 

At the Pond, David Elliott. 2022 Cybils Poetry finalist. Lovely illustrations, vivid poems. My kids would have reluctantly indulged me I think.

Maya Lin: Architect of Light and Lines, Jeanne Walker Harvey. Someone recommended this (a fellow kidlit blogger?) and when I got it from the library it looked familiar -- I had read it a few years ago. But I really liked it this time, so much that I bumped it up a star on goodreads. I liked the clear line from her childhood to her famous Vietnam memorial through her later works. 

The Case of the Missing Eyebrow, Chris Lam Sam. This was reviewed on the Even the Trunchbull podcast so I ordered it up. I enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes twist detecting and the art analysis solution. It's fun and works on several levels. 

Zoobilations!, Douglas Florian. 2022 Cybils Poetry finalist. OK, the illustrations were fun and goofy, but the poems were goofy but not always scientifically accurate. I wanted both. So I was cranky.

Marshmallow Clouds, Ted Kooser & Connie Wanek. 2022 Cybils Poetry finalist. These were lovely -- quick glimpses of moments across the year. 

Older Than the Stars, Karen C. Fox. I liked the mix of language and science here. The pages build like a house-that-Jack-built, but it's all the current physics of creation as we understand it, as expanded upon in the extra text boxes. Meanwhile the illustrations both illuminate and inspire -- they are lovely but also explanatory. Thanks for recommending this!

Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:

Ascendance of a Bookworm, Miya Kazuki. Pausing my reread of Part 3 while I read the new book.

Ascendance of a Bookworm 5.5, Miya Kazuki. I let myself read extra bits during the weekend of my mom's memorial so this one won't last all the way to the next volume. 

Cobra, Timothy Zahn. Part 51. Johnny isn't very good at politics. Or logic.

Warcross, Marie Lu. Exciting action scene!

Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon. My bookmark moved!

The Wine-Dark Sea, Patrick O'Brian. I managed to read a few chapters! I like this book.

New Suns 2, ed. Nisi Shawl. So far they range from good to great.

Fourth Wing, Rebecca Yarros. The June Sword and Laser book club pick. Some more people have died to show us how grim the school is. But they were jerks so maybe it's a sign that dragons prefer non-jerky people? Strange how the school and teachers haven't picked up on that trend.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Malinda Lo. Cybils finalist. Young love must find a way!

Policing the Open Road, Sarah Seo. For Torches and Pitchforks book club. The meeting ended up being on the weekend of my mom's memorial so I got lazy about finishing. 

Into the Broken Lands, Tanya Huff. I like this author. I'm finding this one slow to grab me. I don't mind picking it up, but I'm not dragged along once I do.

The Creeping Shadow, Jonathan Stroud. The next audio in my Reading My Library quest. I hope I finish it before the library calls it home -- I only have CD capability in the car.

The Serpent in Heaven, Charlaine Harris. For the sake of my kitchen (which I clean while listening to this audio), I hope I finish in time for the new release in September!

Ship Without Sails, Sherwood Smith. Last chapter!

Palate Cleansers

I'm slowly marching through these books.

 

50 Great Poets, ed. Milton Crane (no picture). Donne goes really well with classical music, except when I try to get lost in both at the same time.

Stinger, Nancy Kress. 

Dragon's Breath, E.D. Baker. An interesting twist on the whale as island trope. 

The Writer's Stance: Reading and Writing in the Disciplines, Dorothy U. Seyler.  Some more good essays. I still get a little thrill from skipping the assignments at the end of the chapters, although sometimes I do them in my head.

The Road to Mars, Eric Idle. I'm not sure I'm going to find these guys entertaining.

The Dark Fantastic, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas. The problem with describing an overall trend with individual examples is that any one of them can be explained away. But Thomas is convincing me with the cross references and broader discussions.

Year of Wonder, Clemency Burton-Hill. I lost some days during my travels but I'm doubling up some days to catch up. Mozart is amazing. 

Reading Challenges

1. Cybils 2022: Got through some poetry and a middle grade fantasy.  
2. Early Cybils:  Finished The Wall. 
3. Reading My Library. Working on an audio and some picture books from Renton Highlands.
4. Libraries: Working on the 10 to Try for 2023. Need an artist and a summer book.

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: China Mountain Zhang
• Library Book: Planetfall
• Ebook I own: 
• Library Ebook: Forty-Love
• Book Club Book: The Daughter of the Moon Goddess
• Tuesday Book Club Book: Brightly Burning
• Review Book: Back Home 
• Rereading: 
• Audio: Serpent in Paradise