Argh! I forgot to post this! Well, here it is, three days late.

Saturday was both the Library Fundraiser and my triple book club. So I muted my ipad and put lhe fundraiser on that while hanging out with the club. First was the Sword & Laser pick The Empress of Salt and Fortune, which some people had found too slow moving at the start to really get into but most of us ended up liking and some people loved. I wanted illustrations. Then onto our female-centric genre pick Strange Love, which was always surprising and sometimes hot, which was surprising. And finally I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings which made for an interesting discussion, especially around what libraries should include it. There are a series of challenges of books at some local junior highs, and we figure some people would challenge this one there, but we would support including it. After all, 8th graders are clearly ready for this.

I'm trying to keep up with my Deep Space 9, and knowing that The Next Generation is vanishing from netflix makes me move faster. I think I managed to watch about five episodes this week.

I have been displaced on the top score for my list of all the Cybils finalists. Ha! I am leaving the link here in hopes that other people try their luck. Even if they beat me. Actually, I think I was displaced last week. I didn't notice that there is a separate spot for Global leaders, which includes people you haven't friended. I don't friend anyone on list challenges, so I was top of my group of one. (Still am!) Congratulations, Shaye!

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 probably too late to go sign up. Ditto for the children's lit version at either Teach Mentor Texts or Unleashing Readers.

Started

No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Short Stories

Across the Tracks: Remembering Greenwood, Black Wall Street, and the Tulsa Race Massacre

No Middle Name, Lee Child. Reacher short stories.

My Last Summer with Cass, Mark Crilley. Cybils finalist.

Across the Tracks, Alverne Ball. Cybils finalist.

The Girl From the Sea, Molly Knox Ostertag. Cybils finalist.

Borders, Thomas King. Cybils finalist.

Front Desk, Kelly Yang. For Talbot Hill book club.

Completed

Chaos Reigning (Consortium Rebellion, #3)

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)

The Gift of the Magpie (Meg Lanslow, #28)

Chaos Reigning, Jessie Mihalik. A fun fake-romance that sets up another of these space princesses with true love. A fun conclusion to the series; the world building isn't very firm but the story moves fast enough that I didn't care.

Across the Tracks, Alverne Ball. 2021 Cybils YA Graphic Novel finalist. I saw this briefly as it was nominated for nonfiction, and I really wanted to read it but it was clearly in a graphic format so I reluctantly passed it to that team. And now I get to read it anyway! (I mean, I put it on my TBR list, but we all know how that can go). This is more than a history of the Tulsa massacre; it emphasizes how the community was built and the opportunities and capabilities that it offered to people who were often denied basic respect in most of the United States, and then the grisly and barbaric fury that was unleashed upon them. How often have American cities faced aerial bombing? A quick read but a very powerful one.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou. For Torches and Pitchforks book club. I read this decades ago and so could just grab it from my shelves for book club. The childhood sections were very familiar to me, although now I really noticed how skillful and clear the writing is. I had forgotten almost everything about her father, but her teenaged pregnancy had struck a chord with me. The book club mostly appreciated it, although some found that they couldn't really connect to the writing. We have a focus on censorship this year, and some local schools are having controversies, so we reviewed that. In our (mostly uninformed) opinion, this would be a great book for high school classes and also for middle school libraries. Although some grade school kids would have the lexical chops, it's probably not a great fit in those libraries in terms of themes.

Borders, Thomas King. 2021 Cybils YA Graphic Novel finalist. Well, my assumptions about this book were all wrong. It's the Canadian border that is referenced! Well, more accurately, the disagreement about borders between the Blackfoot woman and the American and Canadian governments. It's an interesting twist, especially with the viewpoint being the slightly bored kid who spends a few days trapped in the duty-free area with his mom while the various border guards wrestle with someone who doesn't fall into their bureaucratic check boxes. I also liked that Salt Lake City is the exotic destination, since that is where my brother lives. And that the big drama for the family was the lessening of tension between the older sister and the mom, not the international media circus created by the mom holding Blackfoot nationality.

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

The Gift of the Magpie, Donna Andrews. A fun series that does what it promises. Meg is a super competent person whose family and kids perform to her expectations -- her kids are well behaved and disappear when not needed, her father is amusingly eccentric, her husband is supportive and also disappears when not needed. A dose of competence porn, a smidge of mystery, but it follows the cosy rule of making the bad guys unpleasant so we are glad when they get caught. This also makes it easier for me to identify them, so I get to feel smart without having to actually BE smart. Perfect!

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:

The Barren Grounds (The Misewa Saga, #1)

Sweep of the Heart (Innkeeper Chronicles, #5)

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 almost into January! It's funny that Ringo has his liberal people (you can tell they are leftist because they believe in global warming) going along with the alien overlords and the rugged individualists (they also have their virtue-signals) fighting back, when we are just wrapping up our invasion by COVID-19, during which the liberals fought against it with everything they could while the rugged types worked with the virus to help it as much as they could. Kind of ironic!

The Barren Grounds, David A. Robertson. This is now kept near the dining table so I can read at lunch and breakfast.

Coyote Dreams, C.E. Murphy. There is a lot of awkward moments. And her dating choices are annoying. Hmm.

Red Hood, Elana K. Arnold. Cybils finalist. It's in second person and I still hate that.

Ancestral Night, Elizabeth Bear. I'm listening while I clean the kitchen at night.

Sweep of the Heart, Ilona Andrews. Another Innkeeper story! I'm on chapter 8.

Forging a Nightmare, Patricia A. Jackson. I feel like I should work at deciphering the code.

Winter Tide, Ruthanna Emyrs. I am enjoying this.

Terra Nullius, Clare G. Colman. I am going to finish all the book club books from when I was Cybils-ing. This is from Sword and Laser, maybe November?

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

Picture Books / Short Stories:

None.

Palate Cleansers

These books I'm barely reading; lately I use them as bribes to get me to deal with the mail. I've been ignoring my mail.

The Educated Child: A Parents Guide from Preschool Through Eighth Grade

Sorcerer to the Crown (Sorcerer Royal, #1)

YEAR OF WONDER: Classical Music for Every Day

The Educated Child, William Bennett.

Wool, Hugh Howey. I hope he pulls out a happy ending somehow!

Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho. We see what is behind our hero's reticence!

Dates From Hell, Kim Harrison & others.

50 Great Poets, ed. Milton Crane.

Year of Wonder, Clemency Burton-Hill. OK, I'm doing the day's song, and then jumping back to where I fell behind.

Reading Challenges

Cybils 2021: Finished two graphic novels!
Early Cybils: Working on Red Hood again.
Reading My Library. The library had a pipe break and is closed for repairs!
Where Am I Reading 2022. Arkansas. Canada (again)
Libraries: I've started Ancestral Night, and I hope it's a place I want to visit. 17/55 for the Tacoma Extreme Challenge.