Is It December Yet?

I managed to read 2/3 of the books for my triple book club, so I went to discuss them. I also stared at a bunch of pages for Cybils nonfiction.

I attempted to run a 5K but apparently failed to actually sign up for it. As the ground was icy and I almost fell several times heading to the registration desk, I took this as a sign that I should go home and crawl back under the covers. But my friend and I decided to try to walk the distance next week, when the weather will be more accomodating. 

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" and I think I'm in time this week (barely)! Ditto for the children's lit version at either Teach Mentor Texts or Unleashing Readers. This is my third week of blogging after my long haitus, so it's taking me a bit of work to get back on a schedule. But this time I think I finished my Monday post in time to sign up with the other Mondays!

Started

This One Summer, Mariko Tamaki. Read for my Banned Book book club. (Torches & Pitchforks)

Freedom! The Story of the Black Panther Party, Jetta Grace Martin. Cybils nominee.

The Anti-Racist Kid: A Book About Identity, Justice, and Activism, Tiffany Jewel. Cybils nominee.

Citizen She, Caroline Stevan. Cybils nominee. 

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

Girls Solve Everything: Stories of Women Entrepreneurs Building a Better World, Catherine Thimmesh. Cybils nominee. 

Like Ability: The Truth About Popularity, Lori Getz. Cybils nominee.

The Passport Project: Two Sisters Ditch Middle-School For a Life-Changing Journey Around the World, Kelly McIntyre. Cybils nominee. 

Ascendance of a Bookworm: Fanbook 3, Miya Kazuki. I'm an addict.

Completed

. 

This One Summer, Mariko Tamaki. Thank goodness this was a graphic novel, because I could read it in one sitting as a break from all my nonfiction. It was interesting! It feels like a short story -- all tone and immersion in the feel of a summer with a girl teetering on the brink of adolescence, peering into the adult world of her parents and the almost-adult world of the teens around her, and making judgments and misunderstanding stuff that is clear to the adult reader. It doesn't really have an ending, just the summer ends. It's banned for completely ridiculous reasons; we think probably because the author has written other books for older readers so people just put this on their banned list without thinking.

What the Fact?: Debunking Disinformation to Detangle the Truth, Seema Yasmin. Cybils nominee. I liked how this book differentiates between misinformation (accidentally wrong), disinformation (deliberately wrong), and malinformation (deliberately slanted to mislead), as well as facts that people deny just because they don't like them, and then goes on to show how to figure out to recognize it, why it can be hard and how to recognize your own biases, how and when to engage with people spreading the different kind, and how to know when to walk away. The examples are clear. It's a bit dry, and I'm not sure how wide the appeal is.  

The Anti-Racist Kid: A Book About Identity, Justice, and Activism, Tiffany Jewel. Cybils nominee. OK, this is good and energetic! It's got fun illustrations and a variety of kids demonstrating the various points. But I don't see any entry for a kid who isn't already pretty woke -- there's one kid lamenting that his family is racist, and there's no complexity there; his family is bad and the nicer people feel sorry for him and assure him that he can hang out with them in the anti-racist club where people aren't bad. It's a bit smug about how simple it is to draw these lines, but life isn't always that easy. I guess my standards are really high for this sort of book now, because there have been several that I've read.

Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 5, Vol. 1, Miya Kazuki. I used this as a bribe to keep myself reading and on track, but it's actually quite short. I like learning more about royalty back story, and seeing how Rozemyne interprets things versus how everyone else in the books see them. I'm still completely hooked.

Coming of Age in 2020: Teenagers on the Year the Changed Everything, Katherine Schulten. Cybils nominee. It was kind of interesting to mess around in so many diaries; it reminds me of rummaging about reading fanfiction. But most of it is more earnest than insightful. 

Citizen She, Caroline Stevan. Cybils nominee. This was really moving! It's organized mostly by biographies of people working to make women citizens with the right to vote, and pulled along by pauses to see where in the world this has been achieved at set points. So it's more unified than most collections of biographies around a theme (a common genre for this age). The information is clear and well presented, with interest and passion. And accuracy, as far as I can tell. 

Girls Solve Everything: Stories of Women Entrepreneurs Building a Better World, Catherine Thimmesh. Cybils nominee. A collection of short biographies of women who saw a problem and worked to fix it, with great illustrations and organization. It doesn't have the throughline of Citizen She, but is more cheerful since the attitude is how these women fixed things rather than how they had to convince unwilling people that women should count as people. 

Like Ability: The Truth About Popularity, Lori Getz. Cybils nominee. A self help book about understanding popularity in middle school, the different kinds and why the top kids in middle school are not actually on a path to future success, and then how to manage to not be unpopular while avoiding the pitfalls of the influences. Very earnest and helpful. 

Why We Fly, Kimberly Jones. 2021 Cybils finalist. Rather grim book about two friends with stressful senior years who learn tough truths about the weakness of friendship, the power of racism, the difference between protest and activism, and the unreliability of boyfriends. It ends on hopeful notes for both kids but with the lesson of the power of institutional and structural racism resounding. 

The Passport Project: Two Sisters Ditch Middle-School For a Life-Changing Journey Around the World, Kelly McIntyre. Cybils nominee. Maybe my expectations were too high? I love homeschooling and I love traveling with kids, so this book seemed made for me. But it took these two sisters an amazingly long time to figure out that countries are different and people are the same, so there was endless shocks at minor cultural differences. I think I would have preferred if the mom had written it from her point of view and just had the kids' blogs as commentary instead of basing it from their perspectives, which were sadly limited. 

Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:

Primary Inversion, Catherine Asaro. My kitchen cleaning book. It is a sad tribute to my housekeeping that I still keep finding Thanksgiving messes to deal with. 

Four Streets and a Square: A History of Manhattan and the New York Idea, Marc Aronson. Cybils nominee. 

White Fragility (Adapted For Young Adults): Why Understanding Racism Can Be So Hard For White People, Toni Graves Williamson. Cybils nominee.

You Are More Than Magic: The Black and Brown Girls' Guide to Finding Your Voice, Minda Harts. Cybils nominee.

Still Stace: My Gay Christian Coming-of-Age Story, Stacy Chomiak. Cybils nominee.

Cobra, Timothy Zahn. Oh -- I forgot about the serial Baen is giving me as part of their weekly podcast. I had fallen behind but now I'm catching up.

Animal Allies: 15 Amazing Women in Wildlife Research, Elizabeth Pagel-Hogan. Cybils nominee.

Absurd Words: A Kids' Fun and Hilarious Vocabulary Builder For Future Word Nerds, Tara Lazar. Cybils nominee.

Concrete Rose, Angie Thomas. 2021 Cybils finalist. 

Hattie Big Sky, Kirby Larson. Previous Cybils finalist.

Cramm This Book So You Know WTF Is Going on in the World Today, Olivia Seltzer. Cybils nominee.

A Snake Falls to Earth, Darcie Little Badger. I liked her previous book.

Threadbare, Elle E. Ire. Book club pick from a few months back. 

Tin, Kenny Padraig. Next audio in my Renton Highlands Library Quest. 

The Woman All Spies Fear: Code Breaker Elizebeth Smith Friedman and Her Hidden Life, Amy Butler Greenfield. Cybils nominee. 

A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow, Laura Taylor Namey. 2021 Cybils finalist. 

Ship Without Sails, Sherwood Smith. I lost this and now I've found it again. Really continued reading but covered under my COMPLETE AMNESTY (see last week). 

(Yes, this is getting a bit out of hand.)

Picture Books / Short Stories:

I think I'll have to do another December round up at the end of the month. 

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.

 

Dates From Hell, Kim Harrison & others. 

50 Great Poets, ed. Milton Crane (no picture). I like seeing how different people translated Horace and other Latin guys.

Stinger, Nancy Kress.  

Dragon's Breath, E.D. Baker. I think I've been brought up to speed (this is not the first book in this series)

You Can Write Children's Books, Tracey E. Dils. Middle grade. 

Year of Wonder, Clemency Burton-Hill. I'm mostly keeping up with the present December selections. Mostly.

Reading Challenges

1. Cybils 2021: Not done.
2. Early Cybils:  Not done.
3. Reading My Library. My libraries have many shelves. 
4. Where Am I Reading 2022. 
5. Libraries: 44/55 for the Tacoma Extreme Challenge: 

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: Red Dragon Codex
• Library Book: Simmer Down  
• Ebook I own: 
• Library Ebook:  The Woman Who Split the Atom
• Book Club Book: 
• Tuesday Book Club Book: 
• Hugo Book: She Who Became the Sun
• Review Book: Back Home 
• Rereading: Steerswoman 
• Meal Companion: 
• Audio: Primary Inversion