Leaping Across the Stage

A friend called to say they had an extra ticket to Cirque du Soleil -- Alegria and did I want to go? Yes, yes I did! This is the first time I saw a whole show and it was amazing. The seats were great -- very close to the stage, and the performances were spectacular. One trapeze artist fell into the net, which sorta emphasized how hard most of the stuff they were doing was. I really liked the dances with long poles at the beginning and the trampoline stuff. 

I've been applying the cleanser, cream, and ointment properly to my face, but my lesion is not responding, which I think means it's time to cut it off and check for cancer, which will not be fun. (Spoiler, since this is so late -- it was not fun.) On the bright side, the rest of my face looks great! Too bad I'm so good at mask wearing.

Birthday season is about to gear up: my mom, my nephew, my sister, me, my niece, my son, and my other niece. I'm always glad to have an excuse for cake come up every two weeks or so.

Cooking was two very different lasagnas -- the pesto spinach one made in the crockpot, and the "Mexican lasagna" made with chicken and tortillas. I am pretty sure it was not invented in Mexico and is named after the tortillas, but I like it. I still hope for falafels soon. 

Um, Foolscap had a fun Thursday Game night, with Jackbox games. I went for a pleasant walk. I kept forgetting to post this blog. 

I went back to my list of all the Cybils finalists to reclaim my top score. Ha!

Deep Space 9 has fixed the past, so I'm on to the next. But I keep forgetting to fold laundry, so my TV viewing is limited.

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" but I'm going to go sign up because I'm posting this so late. Ditto for the children's lit version at either Teach Mentor Texts or Unleashing Readers.

Started

In the Shadow of the Fallen Towers, Don Brown. Cybils finalist. 

Sisters, Raina Telgemeier. From my shelves.

Sweep of the Heart, Ilona Andrews. Another Innkeeper story! They are serializing it.

Child of Fire, Harry Connolly. Foolscap book club pick for  "NO ROMANCE" theme.

Empress of Salt and Fortune, Nghi Vo. Sword and Laser February pick. I'm rereading on audio.

Completed

Of Curses and Kisses, Sandhya Menon. So, I could kind of get into the heroine's problem, especially as I have complete sympathy for all royal members of imaginary countries. There were a lot of expectations that she felt she and her sister had to uphold, and it took a while for her to examine them. The conflict between the individual and society is interesting to me, so I liked that her arc was all about that. His arc was that he believed in some oddball curse that his evil dad foisted on him, with the proof being that he killed his mother by being born. Which I would accept in a historical gothic type book as a motive, but since he was supposed to be in this rich kid modern boarding school, where he had lived since childhood, it felt contrived and made him deeply unlikeable. Then he doubled down by betraying the heroine, and only reluctantly accepting her apology for being someone he could betray, and I was cranky and sad that they got back together, which is the opposite of how I want to feel at the end of a romance, but I acknowledge that the problem is mostly my old person perspective and teens would probably find the curse romantic and not be so down on him for being a drama king about it.

Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe, Carlos Hernandez. Although it wasn't as surprising as the first, since I already new about magic and their complex families, I really enjoyed going back to see how Sal and Gabi were handling their lives. I like books where compassion is the most important superpower, for children as well as for adults. Sal is a bit too eager to take responsibility for everything (it's not actually a crime to say you don't like what someone is doing, especially when you don't say it to them). Probably my favorite feature is the mix of wildly fantastic, slightly fantastic, and solidly realistic in the story, which works on both a narrative and emotional level.

The Guinevere Deception, Kiersten White. 2020 Cybils YA Speculative Fiction finalist. This did a lot of interesting things with the Arthurian legend which I really enjoyed. I do find myself exhausted by the emotional rollercoaster of teens even when they seem very realistic. Guinevere is dealt a very bad hand and then isolated as she tries to make sense of it. It's not set in history -- I didn't get any sense that they were trying recreate the emotional lives of people from a different time, but although the emotional beats are modern the characters fully inhabit their setting. It helps that Guinevere is explicitly from an different society than Arthur, so the other characters as well as the reader expects that she'll be baffled by normal life.

In the Shadow of the Fallen Towers, Don Brown. 2021 Cybils Young Adult Graphic Novel finalist. I thought this did a good job of showing the history, not just the facts but the emotions that American dealt with. Graphic books are really good for that. Since I am old I already knew most of the information. I liked the color choices for the illustrations.

Decrypted, Lindsay Buroker. I finally decided I deserve to read whatever I want, and what I wanted was an adventure story with two likable, quirky and amusing people who were awkwardly in love in a fantasy world with interesting geography but that doesn't take itself too seriously. So I settled in and just read this for an hour to finish it and enjoyed myself tremendously. I will now start working on my ebook Buroker backlog, because reading fun books is a joy that I want in my life. It's self-care!

Sisters, Raina Telgemeier. From my shelves. I'm keeping an eye on this challenge where every two weeks they send you to your TBR shelves to find a book based on the cover or the author's last name or something. This one had a blue cover, and blue is my favorite color, so I grabbed it off my TBR bookcase and read it. The family is funny and honest, but I was uncomfortable with how mean the kids were to each other. That's how my siblings and I rolled as kids, and I know my mom was very concerned that we didn't like each other (we grew up to be incredibly close). My sons were always much nicer to each other (they tell me they fought a lot but they have no idea of what "a lot" would mean) and I have to tell you that is much more pleasant for the family as a whole. 

-------  And now a book from my blogging hiatus! Someday I will mention them all -----

Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, Sabrina Strings. I read this for a book club (Torches and Pitchforks) that I then missed, but I'm glad to have read it. I appreciated the historical context given to mostly English and American attitudes how weight and size reflect character, especially for women, and how the need to enforce racial ideas affected this. I'm not sure it completely addresses the changing nature of definitions of race, especially as these differed in America vs elsewhere, but it gave me a lot to think about.

Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:

Ok, I'm only going to put a book in here when I actually try to read it. Or at least actually pick it up and think about reading it. This week I made some progress in:

Mexican Whiteboy, Matt de los Pena. This has been banned somewhere, so I'm reading it for my Torches and Pitchforks banned book month. Except then I got tickets to Cirque du Soleil: Alegria, so I'm skipping bookclub and can finish this whenever.

Winter Tide, Ruthanna Emyrs. There is small problem of my Spaceward Ho! addiction cramping my ebook reading time.

Never Fall For Your Fiance, Virginia Heath. OK, they are having a Dumb Misunderstanding that lasted over a chapter and I hate those. 

Forfeit, Dick Francis. Hmm, maybe I should read another Francis while I get up the nerve to read the hard part.

Live Free or Die, John Ringo. This is The Baen Free Radio Podcast serial, so every week they read a few pages to me. I'm so far behind that my phone keeps trying to remove the downloads and then I can't listen while driving. Humph.

Picture Books / Short Stories:

"The Plasticity of Youth", Marissa Lingen in Clarksworld. This gave me neat parental vibes, about how priorities shift with children and how it changes things.

"The Haunting of Dr. Claudius Winterson," Sarah Monette in Uncanny Magazine. Very creepy and sneaky, although I'm not sure it works for people who haven't read other Booth stories; I know who Booth is and what he's likely to encounter and that may had shaped my reading.

Palate Cleansers

These books I'm barely reading; lately I use them as 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. All the men and the spunky young girl are in a showdown!

 

Dates From Hell, Kim Harrison & others.

50 Great Poets, ed. Milton Crane. We start off with Homer, Virgil, and the Bible. 

Year of Wonder, Clemency Burton-Hill. Heading into the end of December. Maybe I should just skip February altogether.. 

Reading Challenges

1. Cybils 2021: Read a graphic novel!
2. Early Cybils: Finished Guinevere Deception. Looking at Framed.
3. Reading My Library. The library had a pipe break and is closed for repairs!
4. Where Am I Reading 2022. Two more -- Florida and New York. I can't believe I've read three books in Colorado this year ALREADY.
5. Libraries: Forgot to check, but last weeks Yasmin the Librarian would count for Book Set in Library!

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: Forging a Nightmare Next: Running the Books
• Library Book: Mexican Whiteboy. Next: Perks of Being a Wallflower
• Ebook I own:   Winter's Tale. Next: ???
• Library Ebook: Chaos Reigning.  Next: Ascendance of a Bookworm Vol 1
• Book Club Book: Mexican Whiteboy Next: Ghost
• Tuesday Book Club Book: Perks of Being a Wallflower
• Review Book: The Queer Principles of Kit Webb  Next: Back Home
• Rereading: Forfeit
• Meal Companion: 
• Audio:  Probably just podcasts