I'm A Judge!

Whoo hoo! I'm a Middle Grade Speculative Fiction First Round Cybils Judge! I get to read all the fun books! I'm trying to actually finish some of the books I'm reading this month so that in October I can go crazy. 

Fun book clubs this week -- River Runs Under It discussed Isabel Allende's The Long Petal of the Sea which was a great book and a great discussion, and the Romance Reader's group looked at historical romances, which is a great deal of fun although we talked about how to recognize when history was actually involved and when it was not. 

My son went off on his Grand European Adventure with his two cousins; they are all about the same age and planned a great itinerary from Portugal to Spain, France and Italy. Things got off to a rocky start when the two Seattle cousins missed their connection and ended up flying to London (missed another connection) then to Frankfort (yet another missed connection) and finally, over 24 hours late, made it to their first official destination. Luckily my son's phone worked for several more days before the international plan he signed up for hiccoughed and locked him off the information superhighway on his way back from the airport where his luggage had finally caught up to him. Sure hope he gets that worked out! I tried to push from my end but finally gave up and handed control of our family phone plan to him so he could pester them directly. Good luck! 

I'm signed up for a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) class, so I'll spend Thursdays learning how to do fun things like put out small fires, mobilize for catastrophes (volcanoes, tidal waves, terrorism, etc.) and get a cool helmet. Should be fun! The first class involved free chocolate bars, so clearly I'm going to enjoy myself. 

The rain came down and reminded me that my garage is still full of boxes from clearing out my mom's apartment. So I've started working on that again, because I definitely want my car under shelter when it gets colder!

Official Plug For Cybils: 

OK world, one week left before it's time for CYBILS NOMINATIONS. You will have a chance to nominate the picture books, middle grade books, YA books, fiction and nonfiction and poetry books for kids that came out in the past year and that were great to read and great to recommend! I need you to look over middle grade speculative fiction and find me the best of the best from the past year!

--- End Official Plug ---

I'm still at 3 pages of currently-reading on goodreads. I'm at 32 physical books checked out which includes some picture books and then there are a pile of ebooks. And we're about to enter Cybils season. Oops. I mean really, oops. 

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 Unleashing Readers. And then I will dive around to see what everyone else has been reading. 

Started

Ruby Finley Vs the Interstellar Invasion, K. Tempest Bradford. I've read good essays by this author. 

The Clackity, Lora Senf. Cybils finalist. 

A Long Petal of the Sea, Isabel Allende. Renton Library's River Runs Under It book club pick. 

The Wild Journey of Juniper Berry, Chad Morris and Shelly Brown. The library tempted me. 

Going Postal, Terry Pratchett. For my Tuesday book club.

The Noble Smuggler, Sian Ann Bessey. For Romance Readers Club: Historical.

The Hunt for the Hollower, Callie Miller. Warm-up for Cybils. 

Completed

Ruby Finley Vs the Interstellar Invasion, K. Tempest Bradford. I really enjoyed this book about Ruby. She was smart, compassionate, independent and respectful. She got in trouble sometimes but didn't whine about it; she knew her parents wouldn't believe some stuff (like about the alien) so she and her friends aimed not so much to deal with the invasion on their own but to figure out a way to make the adults they trusted understand the problem. Of course, by the time the grown-ups caught up the kids had managed to save the day. I liked Ruby's fascination with science and how she and her parents pushed back against the lousy teacher's attempts to squash her enthusiasm. The balance of real-life problems and alien problems worked and both illuminated the same truths of Ruby's character.

Shattered, Lisa J. Morgan. This is a steamy paranormal romance featuring a Secret Organization of psychically powered people who save the day. There's a meet-cute where the precog-vision-having protagonist meets the empath who will help her go undercover to figure out where exactly the terrorist attack she's predicting will take place, and as she walks into the room she gets a vision of having really hot sex with her soon-to-be-partner. They immediately get into a huge spat that they refuse to explain and their boss sends them off to save lives! Once he figures out she isn't deliberately sending pornographic feelings his way he lightens up, but unfortunately his idea of "lightening up" skates a bit close to sexual harrassment, as he keeps trying to generate more visions and then grill her about the details, taunting her with "lie!" as she grimly tries to hang onto a professional relationship. But once they start moving on their mission their strengths come to the fore -- both are dedicated hero types with multiple moments of awesome!  And they are really hot for each other and get along great so maybe they will find something to do when they are forced to hide out together in a small safe house... There's an annoying emotional final twist at the end (dumb genre conventions) but the plot is fast and smart so I forgive it. Good job by a new author and I'll keep an eye out for the next one. 

I received a copy of this book for review, and I read it on time, which is actually a really good sign since I'm so far behind on finishing almost everything (see below). 

The Wild Journey of Juniper Berry, Chad Morris and Shelly Brown. I briefly homeschooled my kids and it was great. We had to stop because my ex was much worse at it than me and that made him cross, but it makes me curious about other books about homeschooling. This is an extreme example -- Juniper's family have eschewed all the trappings of civilization, not just schools, and when they are forced back due to a medical emergency she's baffled by electricity, elevators, and embarrassment. Specifically why her peers want to waste time being mean to each other instead of exploring the world. It's a wild journey, and does not end in the depressing way more ex-homeschooling books do, with the kid deciding middle school is better after all. 

A Long Petal of the Sea, Isabel Allende. I loved this. I loved the language and the characters and their mistakes (hello, doctor who doesn't know about birth control!) and their triumphs, I loved the history, I loved how everything eventually came back, I loved the story of the marriage and the family and the language. I should definitely read more Allende. I had to leave the book club early but I think most people liked it, although the vivid war scenes gave some people some bad nights. 

The Noble Smuggler, Sian Ann Bessey. The cover calls it a Historical Romance. I did learn some history -- I may remember more about Pitt reducing the tea tax and raising revenue while curbing smuggling in one legislative triumph. Maybe it's good to have one big fact that I might remember than a lot of smaller ones that I'll quickly forget. The romance part had the problem that the problem between the characters was completely external, so solving it (or having it solved for them, really) did not require any emotional growth. That's a rather static thread for a main engine of a romance book.

Picture Books

Gibberish, Young Vo. Thank you to whichever kidlit blogger recommended this, because I also enjoyed it a lot. I thought the crazy font was an excellent way to depict the emotions of being surrounded by an incomprehensible language, as was the black and white aliens speaking the unknown tongue. As Dat slowly picks up more words color seeps back into his world and the aliens reveal themselves as possibly friendly people. Just as I hope the world feels for all kids facing a new school and a new language.

Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:

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

Ascendance of a Bookworm, Miya Kazuki. The new one dropped! I'm making myself finish out the chapter. She's bonding with Ferdinand over tricking Sylvester.

Cobra, Timothy Zahn. Part 51. Huh, somehow I haven't been getting to the Baen podcast. 

Warcross, Marie Lu. Made progress. 

Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon. 

The Wine-Dark Sea, Patrick O'Brian. 

Fourth Wing, Rebecca Yarros. The June Sword and Laser book club pick.

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

Into the Broken Lands, Tanya Huff. Into the danger lands!

The Creeping Shadow, Jonathan Stroud. The next audio in my Reading My Library quest. Lots of action here, and much less girl-on-girl dislike. 

The Serpent in Heaven, Charlaine Harris. The teen protagonist is very a teenager, in a good way.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Lori Gottlieb. 

Planetfall, Emma Newman. Sword & Laser pick a while ago. Wow, this is getting depressing. 

Resurgence, C.J. Cherryh. 

China Mountain Zhang, Maureen McHugh. Sword and Laser's September pick.

A Shadow in Summer, Daniel Abraham. Scintillation book club pick. Missed the book club.

40-Love, Olivia Dade. 

Smek For President, Adam Rex. I like how the things the girl is avoiding slowly circle back, like that black assassin does.

Borderland, Anna Reid. 

Ship Without Sails, Sherwood Smith. 

Palate Cleansers

I'm slowly marching through these books.

 

50 Great Poets, ed. Milton Crane (no picture). 

Stinger, Nancy Kress. Some people take the danger more seriously than others. 

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. Okay, I've almost caught up, both with my mail and the Music of the Day.

Reading Challenges

1. Cybils 2022: Working on middle grade SF. 
2. Early Cybils:  Working on some nonfiction. 
3. Reading My Library. Working on an audio. Picked up some Easy fairy tales at 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: Allegiance
• Ebook I own: The Wine Dark Sea
• Library Ebook: Borderland
• Book Club Book: The Witch's Heart
• Tuesday Book Club Book: Going Postal
• Review Book: Back Home 
• Rereading: Chalet School books
• Audio: considering my next one. Many options. 
  

New Restaurants

OK, I'm moving into fall. I'm scheduling all the school stuff (workout sessions, school book clubs, etc.), and finding a few pieces of my mom's estate to clean up. And we had a nice time going out to celebrate New Restaurants Day. My mom had enjoyed going out to restaurants with her friends, so we started doing that in Renton with the intention of inviting more people to join, but we only had the first meeting (yum) before she got sick. So now I am keeping on, although so far just with the family.

Where did we go this month? The Big Chicken, which is Shaq O'Neil's chicken chain that recently opened a branch in Renton. My mom would have hated this place! But we enjoyed it, despite them being out of the Gramma's Banana Pudding ice cream sandwiches (guess I'll have to go back). Let me highly recommend the sweet potato waffle fries. 

At home we had more gourmet food, as I snuck Fish Tacos onto the menu. Then two adults said they couldn't make dinner so it would be just me and my son. He and I secretly prefer to eat around ten at night, so he waited until then and then made them -- spices for the fish, radish and cabbage slaw, avocado sauce. Yum! He did skip the sides I had suggested because my sister dislikes fish. I guess we could make them this week. 

I barely exercised at all. Even though the weekend weather was perfect for it! But I did sign up for a CERT class to get training on emergency procedures. Hopefully that will remind me why I wanted to get fit. 

Official Plug For Cybils: 

OK world, it's time to line up all the new kidlit that you enjoyed this year, because we are gearing up for CYBILS NOMINATIONS. No, not quite yet, (hint, it's in October) but soon you will have a chance to nominate the picture books, middle grade books, YA books, fiction and nonfiction and poetry books for kids that came out in the past year and that were great to read and great to recommend!

--- End Official Plug ---

I'm back up to 3 pages of currently-reading on goodreads. I'm at 30 physical books checked out which includes some picture books plus five ebooks. And we're about to enter Cybils season. Oops. 

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 Unleashing Readers. And then I will dive around to see what everyone else has been reading. 

Started

FaceOff, ed by David Baldacci. Reading My Library Quest, Renton Library, Fiction. I picked this off the first F shelf. 

The Talk, Darrin Bell. Grabbed impulsively from a Seattle library branch. 

Shattered, Lisa J. Morgan. From author, for review.

Completed

Starship Repo, Patrick S. Tomlinson. For my Friday book club. This was a light-hearted heist novel, with a lot of interesting aliens and dubious finances and a young human with a talent for electronic theft, here turned to a (mostly) legal use. There were some implausible bits I was completely willing to swallow and some I had to choke down, as well as modern Easter Eggs scattered about, some subtle, some I probably missed, and some glaring (yes, I'm talking about the statue in the casino). We tend to read these fun books in the summer, although I don't think our next picks are getting more challenging. But still fun to talk about!

The Walls Around Opportunity, Gary Orfield. The premise of this book is that our society is set up so that Hispanic and Black children are specifically disadvantaged, and that color-blind policies will fail to accurately target the people who need them, since the needs are to a great extent determined by past or present racism in our country. For example, poverty for White or Asian people tends to be a short-term situation (students, recent break-ups, sudden job loss) while for many PoCs it's a long term, sometimes generational issue. School and school districts are carefully set up to segregate people by color, which often also means segregating by income, and then those feed on each other. Colleges who are denied the ability to seek out and support students of color will continue the American habit of separating the best elementary and secondary education by race, then pretending innocence when color-blind "merit" selection sends mostly White and Asian kids on to college from their well funded and institutionally favored schools. 

FaceOff, ed by David Baldacci.  I enjoyed this anthology even though I'm not a big thriller reader. The gimmick was to have famous thriller writers team up to have their series regulars (if they had series) meet and deal with a problem, usually on the same side. (I had assumed they would be facing off against each other, but mostly they cooperated directly and occasionally indirectly.) Baldacci wrote intros for each story, which was handy since I didn't know most of the characters (or authors), but the stories worked for me anyway. And in the few cases where I recognized people (Hi Jack Reacher!) it was a bonus. 

The Talk, Darrin Bell. This graphic novel memoir starts when Bell is frightened first by a growling dog and later by a police officer, both inspiring long nightmares. The fear of police is actually fairly rational for a young black boy, as explained by his White mom. His brother and father don't want to admit to this; the brother insisting that they are targeted for being poor, his father refusing to speak about it at all. Bell tells of his life through college and beyond, constantly having to ask himself if he's seeing patterns or imagining them. And at the end, he has to contemplate giving "The Talk" to his own children, seeing how things have changed and yet not changed, and how he's going to handle the issue with his own children, given the examples he has encountered throughout his life. Powerful story and amazing I think I rarely had to figure out who was who!

The Marvellers, Dhonielle Clayton. 2022 Cybils MG Spec Fic finalist. A strong entry in the "kid goes to magic school" genre, which I am glad to see is still going strong. This one has an international school that isn't sure it wants to accept "conjurors" such as our heroine and her family, and she and her friends have to grapple with prejudice as well as normal boarding school issues. I like the idea of different kinds of magic and how institutions that think they have categorized everything are uneasy with power that doesn't quite fit their guidelines. As an adult, I thought her stated reasons for avoiding adult help a bit bogus (her aunt was right there) but I suspect kids would wonder why she needed a reason at all; kids solve problems in kid books. 

Picture Books

 None

Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:

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

Ascendance of a Bookworm, Miya Kazuki. Continuing my reread of Part 3 while I await the next book. We are just meeting Sylvester's evil sister!

Cobra, Timothy Zahn. Part 51. Huh, somehow I haven't been getting to the Baen podcast. 

Warcross, Marie Lu. Made it a few pages. I really going to remember to schedule that service for my car!

Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon. 

The Wine-Dark Sea, Patrick O'Brian. 

Fourth Wing, Rebecca Yarros. The June Sword and Laser book club pick.

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

Into the Broken Lands, Tanya Huff. Into the danger lands!

The Creeping Shadow, Jonathan Stroud. The next audio in my Reading My Library quest. I'm on disc 7, so I hope I finish before the library calls it home. 

The Serpent in Heaven, Charlaine Harris. I'm enjoying the accent of the narrator. 

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Lori Gottlieb. 

Planetfall, Emma Newman. Sword & Laser pick a while ago. 

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

China Mountain Zhang, Maureen McHugh. Sword and Laser's September pick. I do not trust this author not to break my heart so I keep losing my nerve when we switch narrators. 

A Shadow in Summer, Daniel Abraham. Scintillation book club pick. I have about a week and a half to finish this and the next three books. Oops. 

40-Love, Olivia Dade. 

Smek For President, Adam Rex. Boovs are great, especially J.Lo. 

Borderland, Anna Reid. 

Ship Without Sails, Sherwood Smith. 

Palate Cleansers

I'm slowly marching through these books.

 

50 Great Poets, ed. Milton Crane (no picture). 

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. I'm hoping some of these women get character roles. 

The Dark Fantastic, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas. How Rue is used for Katniss's growth in Hunger Games. 

Year of Wonder, Clemency Burton-Hill. I am falling behind on my email!

Reading Challenges

1. Cybils 2022: Working on middle grade SF. 
2. Early Cybils:  Working on some nonfiction. 
3. Reading My Library. Working on an audio. Picked up some Easy fairy tales at 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: The Wild Journey of Juniper Berry
• Ebook I own: The Wine Dark Sea
• Library Ebook: Forty-Love
• Book Club Book: A Long Petal of the Sea
• Tuesday Book Club Book: Going Postal
• Review Book: Back Home 
• Rereading: 
• Audio: Serpent in Heaven