Happy New Year!

Hi again! The next post isn’t due until tomorrow, so I’m officially caught up!

Before last year ended, I drove home from California, and I even got to drive a bit! The weather was pleasant, by which I mean above freezing and snowless. We finished two audio books so I felt very accomplished. My cats were delighted to see me, which was pleasant. Especially when I got sick the next day and lay about languishing with cats. Not very sick, not covid, but a light fever and a cough and feeling the opposite of energetic, so I didn’t go to my New Year Party which was sad since I had read the book and got an exchange book and everything.

Luckily this was after the final meetings of my Cybils Committee, so I was there as we passed on our excellent choices to the finals judges. Go check them all out!

I made two New Years Resolutions: to read books from my shelves and to visit all the King County Libraries. These goals may be in opposition as library books with their due dates are a big reason I have so many unread books at home, but I am large enough to contain contradictions.  

 

Books Completed

Rock of Ages, Stephen J Gould. (Audio) Gaming Book Club. I think of Gould as a good writer about natural history, but in this book he was trying to set out boundaries between religious inquiries and scientific ones. The narrator was good and the vocabulary impressive (we were listening as we drove up California), but I think he never really wrestled with the goal on inquiry. He assumes, as a scientist, that questions are there to be answered, and that figuring out the nature of a question is the first step of deciding which tool (religion or science) to use to answer it. But for many people, especially religious people, answering questions is not the point. So they don’t need science to answer the questions religious thought are bad at, they can just leave them unanswered and use the question for other things: determining hierarchies and teaching humility or whatever. 

Citizen of the Galaxy, Robert Heinlein. Audio reread. We had actually started this together on our last road trip, and then I got distracted by many library audio books. So we jumped back in and even the back seat enjoyed Thorby’s military career and life on Earth. Fun for all.

A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall, Jasmine Warga. Cybils nominee. This is a good mystery with a shy kid gaining a friend as he works on the theft at the small museum where his mom works in an attempt to save her job. There’s a ghost helping them but she doesn’t know who she is. It’s about the kids learning to trust each other and the boy both working towards more independence but also when he can ask for help, and that works well with the fantasy stuff. There is also a turtle there to amuse the narrative voice. It’s very readable but the ending was a bit too easy and I wanted more depth to the fantasy bits.

Impossible Creatures, Katherine Rundell. Cybils nominee. This is a lovely book, both as a physical object and a reading experience. The warm writing gives us two endearing and dedicated characters who are willing to push past fear to do what they think needs to be done. The adults around them respect them and accept them as active agents, and the baddies definitely see them as threats to be eliminated. There is real danger and loss, and real sacrifices and fear as well as adventures and interesting characters and creatures. 

Nomad, William Alexander. Sequel to a book I liked. This was more complex and thought provoking although it lost a bit of the snazzy newness. I wanted one of his family but liked the way that empathy and compassion worked for the ambassadors, and the realistic way that different cultures ignored the ambassadors. 

Pokémon Adventures X*Y, Vol 4, Hidenori Kusaka. Jumping in with volume 4 was a mistake as I wasn’t convinced to care for the people, especially since as usual the action scenes baffled me, as they do in almost all graphic novels.

The Magic Treehouse 1-4, Mary Pope Osborne. At the elementary book club I mentioned that I thought you could read the Tree House Books in any order, but a kid strenuously disagreed and said there was continuity. So I went back to read the first 4 and I think we were both right and also some questions left after the first one were answered.

The Vanishing Friend, Christine Evans. Cybils nominee. Again I’m jumping into the middle of a series but in this case I’m not missing as much. As an adult reading I found the jeopardy of the friend actually quite concerning, but I knew from genre conventions he’d be okay. The camp was gentle and fun and the children mostly kind and apologetic when they were not, and I liked the magic librarian and the dire penalties for overdue books. 

The Four Star Challenge, Howard Dewin. Pokémon. Or did I start this before? I restarted it.

Adventure on Treasure Island, Jeanette Lane. Pokémon. These two Pokémon books are Ash wandering around, being delighted by and helping out new Pokémon, and battling any gym leaders he can find. For kids enjoying the show, they are good ways to practice reading in an enjoyable and familiar setting, For me it was a bit of nostalgia, as my son picked some of these when we took turns choosing the chapter book to read at bedtime. 

A Strange and Terrible Endurance, Fox Meadows. I enjoyed this very much as a story of two men in an arranged marriage who have to solve a mystery while learning to live together. I wish the sex had been less explicit as I found it distracting and not enhancing the story, and it limits who I can recommend the book to. This is not me being prudish; I mean I read fanfic for heavens sake. But in this case I’d be enjoying the world building or the relationship banter improving and suddenly dicks would spring out and abort the stuff I was enjoying without adding anything to them. I want to read the next but I kinda hope they quarrel at the start so the story can stick with the good parts.

70 Maxims of Highly Effective Mercenaries, Howard Taylor. My shelves. This is based on the Schlock Company franchise, which is a comic or a anime or something but I haven’t seen it. So it was amusing but probably better if you started with a sense of who was writing the comments.

The Art of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind: Watercolor Impressions, Hayao Miyazaki. My last warm up before starting the Nausicaä manga! Which I have to do now because this is when my library books arrived, oops. I liked reading Miyazakis’s thoughts on some of these pictures, especially when they were things like “I was so mad when they made me draw this” or “bird beasts because they have fewer feet”.

Liberty’s Daughter, Naomi Kritzer. Scintillation Book Club. A fun YA about a teen living on a libertarian enclave floating in the ocean off California a bit after tomorrow (although it’s been there for fifty years). Beck starts treating the community as the water she swims in, but as she first stumbles across some of the ugly realities and the gaps in the propaganda she starts to question some of her society. And then some events keep cascading that put her personal issues into perspective and keep the reader turning pages. At the end we see why Beck loves her home, and the possibilities for her and the sea based community are open ended. The group talked about the society, the parenting, how Beck developed the way she did, and lots of other stuff.

Kingdom of Dust, Lisa Stringfellow. Cybils nominee. This started as a Chosen One Story based on West Africa legends but then did some very interesting things. Some disturbed me and some delighted me. I felt the maturity level of the protagonist fluctuated a bit (twelve going on eight) but I liked the complexity of the adult characters and how sometimes the bad guys had a point (but then they would kick some puppies so we knew who to root for). I’ll look out for more by this author.

Ash and Splinter, Marieke Nijkamp. Cybils nominee. A Princess and her squire team up as friends against the world! The author acknowledges her love of Tamara Pierce’s Alana stories but goes in a different direction; this princess walks with canes and isn’t sure court life works for her and her older brother the prince is turning into a bully, also starring as the squire’s main nemesis. The court sees this as a weakness to exploit and the kids navigate both friendships and political stuff like kidnapping, assassins and complicated brothers. Just what I like!

Books Started

Rock of Ages, Stephen J Gould. (Audio) Gaming Book Club.

A Strange and Terrible Endurance, Fox Meadows. 

The Magic Treehouse 1-4, Mary Pope Osborne.

The Vanishing Friend, Christine Evans. Cybils nominee.

The Four Star Challenge, Howard Dewin. Pokémon. Or did I start this before? I restarted it.

Adventure on Treasure Island, Jeanette Lane. Pokémon. 

The Art of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind: Watercolor Impressions, Hayao Miyazaki.

70 Maxims of Highly Effective Mercenaries, Howard Taylor.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind Vol 1, Hayao Miyazaki.

ADHD Is Awesome, Penn and Kim Holderness.

Liberty’s Daughter, Naomi Kratzer. Scintillation Book Club.

Poems, R. Hawley Truax. 

Bookmarks Moved

Akata Witch, Nnedi Okorafor. Sword and Laser club pick. (Audio)

Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler.

Deal With the Devil, Kit Rocha.

Lamplighters, D. M. Cornish.

Bookmarks Languished

Poppy and Marigold, Meg Welch Dendler. 

Puzzleheart, Jenn Reese. Cybils nominee.

Heroes of Havensong: the Last Ice Phoenix, Megan Reyes. Cybils nominee.

Serpent Rider, Yxavel Magno Diño. Cybils nominee.

Grimspace, Ann Aguirre. Reread.

True Colors, Abby Cooper. Cybils nominee.

Picture Books and Short Stories  

None.

Books on Slow Mode

Home Comforts, Cheryl Mendleson. I read one section a day. Currently she is talking about what meals are and why your family should have them. 

Renegade Love, Ann Aguirre. Another section a day book. There is alien sex in this book. 

At the Feet of the Sun, Victoria Goddard. I read the next bit every morning before starting my day. It reminds me why I love books. 

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

The Writer's Stance: Reading and Writing in the Disciplines, Dorothy U. Seyler. (no picture). Mail bribe. 

The Road to Mars, Eric Idle. Mail bribe. I’m near the end. 

Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James. Promoted from languishing to mail book. 

Teaching With Caldecott Books, Scholastic books. Mail bribe.

Year of Wonder, Clemency Burton-Hill. Mail bribe.

Future Plans

This is for the actual future, so two weeks from the books in this post.

I am reading: 

• Book I own: Long Live Evil
• Library Book: Service Model
• Ebook I own: The Down Deep,
• Foolscap Book Club Book: Rivers of London
• Sword and Laser Club Book: Akata Witch
• Tuesday Book Club Book: Impulse
• Scintillation Book Club: The Wednesday Wars
• Renton Book Club: The House in The Pines
• Talbot Hill Book Clubs: Warriors & Diary of a Wimpy Kid
• Friday Book Club: Road Trip!