May Flowers

Second week in a row and I'm still blogging! And reading. 

Back before the Pandemic, I'd help organize a small literary convention called Foolscap, which has evolved to be a sort of egalitarian thing. Instead of having panels with experts, we have discussions with the whole room, guided by a moderator. But then there was a pandemic, and we are all cautious types who have only recently returned to in-person planning meetings. But now we are planning a one-day event to see if people want to try again. I'm going to seek out panel ideas for our Foolscap on August 19th. 

It's been a nice social week for me. A friend and I tried out a new route for our weekly run, my brother came out for the big family dinner my sister cooks, I played different online games with three different groups, I got free popcorn when I went to see Guardians of the Galaxy,  I picked up my son from the bar where he was competing in a video game tournament. I'm including the driving to the bar one because it was almost too exciting -- our phone data plan ran out the day before the month restarts, so I was too cheap to use directions, and then THEY CLOSED THE HIGHWAY so I had to navigate through back streets of the city using only my instincts (which anyone who has met me knows I do not have -- I get lost driving around my block sometimes) but I persevered and showed up at the right place. Eventually.

Fitness-wise I'm still poking away at my training plans. When I did the Zombie run with my friend I actually paused it at the end because I had reached the car before the plan finished (and right before a zombie was gonna eat me). So when my sister and I hit the treadmills at the gym I figured I'd do the last few minutes and then just walk along and we'd chat like usual. Except I accidentally hit "RESTART" instead of "RESUME" and I had to start from the beginning and all the zombies I had already escaped were back! It's quite effective at making me up my pace (my sister was quite surprised at my sudden dedication to a workout) but rather stressful. But the game awarded me a book so I was chuffed. I mean, it's a virtual book that I can't read or anything, but my Zombie Run inventory now includes a small library. 

Dinner plans went nicely -- we feasted on Salt Lick Ribs for dinner one night, courtesy of the wonderful friend who I've known since I was seven who came out with her sister back when my mom was ill, and she ordered us a freezer full of dinner. These ribs were left over so we pulled them out right before Mother's Day and also had a round of roasted veggies and a huge pile of napkins. This was especially timely since we have a HEAT ADVISORY incoming and the temperatures will rocket up to the 80s (Fahrenheith) so it will be a reminder of Texas. And then it was time for book club, which means PIZZA. 

Mother's Day was lovely for me, with a sweet Dutch Baby for my traditional breakfast-in-bed, and then lunch at a new restaurant with my son. The lunch was also in honor of my mom, because she and I had founded a New Restaurants Club and then only had one meeting before she got too sick to eat out. So my son took to a new restaurant and we remembered my mom/his grandmother as we ate.

My list of completed books is larger than the list of started books, so things are moving in the right direction. Someday I will get back to two pages on goodreads.  I'm off to check out the other books at The Bookdate's It's Monday, What Are You Reading headquarters. And since I read a lot of kidlit, I'll also sign up at the Children's Book central version, held at either Teach Mentor Texts or Unleashed Readers. 

Started

 

Forge of God, Greg Bear. The Foolscap book club read this during one of the months I missed because of my mom. So I'm reading it late.

Black Butler 26, Yana Toboso. Working my way through the series.

Squire, Sara Alfageeh. 2022 Cybils Graphic Novel finalist.

Little Olympians 4: Artemis the Archer Goddess, A.I. Newton. 2022 Cybils Early Chapter Book finalist.

Undercity, Catherine Asaro. For my Friday book club. A reread.

The Road to Mars, Eric Idle. This will be one of my palate cleansers, so it will go slowly.

An Easy Death, Charlaine Harris. I switched to a fun book to listen to while cleaning the kitchen.

Royal Escape, Georgette Heyer. I'm a bit worried about this; I like her romances but find her mysteries a bit of a slog. And there's always the risk of anti-Semitism. Her romantic histories are also a bit dull. But here goes!

The Engagement, Sasha Issenberg. For Torches and Pitchforks. It's about the legalization of gay marriage.

Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, Janet Malcolm. I like Malcolm's essays.

Little Olympians 1: Zeus, God of Thunder, A.I. Newton. To put the Artemis one in perspective. 

Little Olympians 3: Hermes the Fastest God, A.I. Newton. To put the Artemis one in perspective. 

Completed

Cannery Row, John Steinbeck. For River Runs Under It library book club. I'm a few weeks early, so I hope I remember this when bookclub happens! Steinbeck has a rich command of language; each chapter felt like a short story. Reading it that way made me appreciate his strengths. Reading the whole book also revealed some weaknesses -- he's much more interested in the interiority of men and doesn't really notice women except in the ways they intrude on male happiness or dissatisfaction. So whores make up a lot of the appearances. The bits on sea life were surprising to me but really well done. Turns out Steinbeck was kind of an amateur marine biologist, so that was nifty. He also had a lot more acceptance of the damage that happy-go-lucky drunk men do; they mean well and gosh their enjoyment of life sure in appealing! But I was more struck by the damage they carelessly leave behind for other people to clean up. Reading about them here made them seem very vivid and real.

H Is For Hawk, Helen MacDonald. The gaming book club was not that impressed. One member pointed out that we do tend to appreciate competence porn in our genre reading -- people who are good at things getting things done is our delight. This book is in a great sense about how MacDonald found herself failing at everything in the time after her father's death as her grief consumed her. As I've said, I appreciated it more when not reading it in the wake of a loss of my own; listening to her this time around I found myself impatient with her slow emotional journey and almost contemptuous of her mishaps, especially the ones she repeats (oh no, I am letting my hawk poach pheasants AGAIN). I think I do still recommend it, but read it before a death in the family, not just after.

Visitor, C.J. Cherryh. Like the previous book this one started a bit slowly, but things started cascading energetically much earlier. The final third was gripping! I like the different perspectives on communication, and how characters make realizations about the motives of each other, some confirmed because we've seen their viewpoints and others still speculative. It's a lot of thinking about how hard it is to communicate with other people, and in this case the other people are truly aliens, but even within a species sometimes basic concepts are missed. Now I want to read the next one!

The Weird Sisters: A Goat, a Note, and a Casserole, Mark David Smith. 2022 Cybils Early Chapter book finalist. Fun urban fantasy for the early chapter book crowd -- a trio of witches move into a regular town, although they have their own oddities (the pet goat, for example). I liked the menacing note that sparked the main mystery, and the cop chasing speeders, and the resolution of that mystery that nicely brought in the B-plot of the missing kid. 

Swim Team, Johnnie Christmas. 2022 Cybils Graphic Novel finalist. This is an interesting story of an anxious kid moving to a new town and trying new things while making new friends. It has the starts and stops appropriate for age period as friendships come together quickly or haltingly; even the friendships that seem easy have their bumps. And alongside is the Swim Team stuff -- our Bree can't even swim when she gets tossed into the unwanted elective, and only when the neighbor who was on the legendary almost-winners from a generation ago comes to help does she start to succeed. The weaving of the current competition with the call back to what happened back then and the role of racism in the paucity of African American swimmers all make for a rich conclusion. I don't even care that I still don't really understand how points for the swim meet work either on an individual or a team level. 

Humankind: A Hopeful History, Rutger Bregman. Very encouraging book, showing me that everything I want to believe is true. It is biologically impossible for me not to accept this unconditionally! More seriously Bregman presents evidence showing that people are basically kind (Homo Puppies he calls us), and that only unusual circumstances drive us towards antisocial behavior. Unfortunately, one of those circumstances is being in charge; leaders of multitudes tend to go bad. And since we can all see it, it feeds into the belief that badness is inherent in the nature of humanity. Bregman terms this a "nocebo" -- if you believe something bad is happening or is true, it often does, just as placebos can cure people. An interesting and very optimistic book that will allow me to continue placing my faith in strangers and family members alike, knowing that the occasional loss to a baddie is more than made up for by the many returns I will gather from trusting in the world. 

Death of Mrs Westaway, Ruth Ware. I like how Ware sets us up with an interesting protagonist before setting the whole murder/bizarre situation/mystery thing up. Hal is believable and sympathetic, and then things get complicated, and then things get dangerous. I remember at the book club some people were still confused about who was who and who did what, so I was glad I was reading it and knew what bits to pay attention to. 

Black Butler 26, Yana Toboso. This started with an action scene, which was discouraging because I have no idea what happened. I need dialog to tell me what is going on in the panels because I'm a terrible graphic novel reader. I think somebody tried to kill someone but killed someone else instead? But I never figured out who was who. And then, just to make fun of me for being face-blind in comics, there was a plot about identical twins. Very funny!

Little Olympians 4: Artemis the Archer Goddess, A.I. Newton. 2022 Cybils Early Chapter Book finalist. The Me Too moment of the series. Artemis's family has always celebrated her twin brother Apollo's achievements while scolding her for bragging if she ever let anyone notice her own, let along mention them. So she was not surprised when Hermes wrote his article about the archery contest she won by forgetting to mention her victory what with all the paragraphs about Apollo's plans to succeed. At the end it's acknowledged that it's ok for female type people to do things and even have these things celebrated, but for me it's exhausting to still need that storyline. Which I guess we do. Also, how is Jupiter Artemis's dad while Zeus is her peer?

Ascendance of a Bookworm, Manga, Part 2 Vol 2, Miya Kazuki. I am insisting on reading all the manga versions in order. I think I read most of them already, but not IN ORDER. This one has Myne figuring out how to handle attendants and save the orphans, and also start developing her management skills.

You Can Write Children's Books, Tracey E. Dils. Some good advice, some dated advice (it's from 1998, so email is a bit exotic and faxing exists). I like seeing how books work from both sides.

Undercover Duke, Sabrina Jeffries. My Romance Reading club at the library is doing a dive on Sabrina Jeffries this month. This was silly but fun enough. It's the end of a series so I missed all the bits where I care about or can keep track of all the siblings, which was probably a bit of a drag on my enjoyment because they do have an extremely complicated family. There wasn't much tension; both characters were obsessed with each other by page one (I guess they met in the earlier books) so they just had to do some goofing around before they got married and could have a few minor misunderstandings.  Luckily the serial killer lurking somewhere provided some excitement, although mostly the "how long will it take the characters to figure out what I spotted several chapters ago" sort.

Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, Janet Malcolm. This was a fast and interesting read, during which I learned a lot about Gertrude Stein, put my memories of Autobiography of Alice B Toklas in perspective, and also was introduced to a lot of thinking about the nature of biography and autobiography and how much is about the subject and how much about the writer.

Little Olympians 1: Zeus, God of Thunder, A.I. Newton. Finally I read the first one! Confusingly, Zeus is one of the last gods to show up at the camp, and it takes him a while to find his place among those confident senior campers like Ares and Apollo. Luckily Poseidon is a good big bro. I'm a bit worried that this camp seems to be where Hogwarts got its safety protocols from; supervision is not a major concern.

Picture Books

Unpictured: Two Greek board books that I successfully read! I have a box of these from when my kids were young, before their dad gave up on raising them bilingually. Now I'm doing Greek Duolingo so I read them (when I read them with the kids before, I cheated a lot. Now I'm reading all the words.).

Six books for my Library Quest, where I read a book from each shelf. I'm in the nonfiction picture books in the Renton Highlands Library:

Winning Well, Katie Peters. Great shots of kids in action, since the pictures show a kid winning while the text has them saying encouraging stuff to the losers to demonstrate good sportsmanship. I wish there had been at least one page acknowledging that this is sometimes hard.

Explore Mercury, Liz Milroy. I love space books, so I enjoyed these pages about the first planet of the solar system. Enough text to be interesting but also accessible to early chapter book readers.

At the Gurdwara, Shalini Vallepur. Simple text with fun photos and a cartoon Granthi showing us around. I knew zero about the Sikh religion so I now I know a little. I think this is a series -- I like it.

Stars Before Bedtime, Jessamy Hibberd. Very well intentioned, and I can see parents using it, but the mix of sleep techniques and pictures of constellations wasn't all that well integrated for it to work well as a picture book. But I hope kids dealing with insomnia find some help in one of the techniques; there are good suggestions on each page.

Don't Waste Your Food, Deborah Chancellor. This is a lesson about food use and recycling and composting wrapped skillfully in a narrative about a girl refusing dinner and her parent using that to teach her all the stuff the author wants the reader to know. It's informative without being too lecturing (a danger of this technique). Bonus points for having the girl be in a wheelchair but that's not a bit deal.

My First Book of French Words, Katy R. Kudela. Good photos with lots of captions telling us the French word. The photos show kid-appealing settings -- a family, a kitchen, a farmyard, etc. 

On library day I sat down at the library to read a picture book, and a nice person left two other picture books on the chair. So I read three picture books in my comfortable library that spans a river, sitting at the big window and watching the water roll down to the lake. 

Michael Rosen's Sad Book, Michael Rosen. I heard about this on the Even the Trunchbull podcast so I ordered it up from the library. Go listen to the podcast to learn about this book -- it's great.

Negative Cat, Sophie Blackall. I really enjoyed the story with the cat who refuses to do the pet things, and I liked the ending where it shows its mettle by softening when the kid reads the book. Two greats things make for a fun picture books.

Where Is the Dragon, Leo Timmers. Another great pick from the person who had the chair before me. I loved charting the changes to the knights hunting the dragon, the slow burning down of the candle, the shadowy forms that turn out not to be a dragon, and the "surprise" ending when the candle burns down. This would have been fun to read with little kids.

Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:

Ascendance of a Bookworm, Miya Kazuki. I'm endlessly rereading this while waiting for the next version. The bookworm's universe is my happy place. Currently I'm on Part III. But it's on pause as I slowly savor the new release over in part V. 

Ascendance of a Bookworm, Part 5 Vol 3, Miya Kazuki. I am nearing the end of this one, so I hope the next one comes out soon. If not I'm back to Part 3 for another reread.

Cobra, Timothy Zahn. Wait -- is it almost over? No, apparently there's another section.

Children of the Stone City, Beverley Naidoo. Oh no -- the third disc was broken! My library is getting me a new copy. 

Busman's Honeymoon, Dorothy L Sayers. I skipped to the end to read the fun bits, and now I'm working back towards the middle. 

Flood Circle, Harry Connolly. Connolly is very good at giving his characters new strengths but then having the problems they encounter come from an unexpected direction.

Your Perfect Year, Charlotte Lucas. I can see how a happy ending for everyone is coming but I was hit pretty hard by the problems along the way.

Milk in My Coffee, Eric Jerome Dickey. I find the woman's reasons for secrecy a bit strained.

Rocking the Babies, Linda Raymond. The rockers can either help or hurt each other.

Warcross, Marie Lu. I was supposed to read this for a book club but I didn't finish it.

Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon. I think we can expect to see this here for a while.

The Wine-Dark Sea, Patrick O'Brian. Not gonna finish this week.

Ship Without Sails, Sherwood Smith. Someone I am keeping all the characters in my head. Well done, Smith. 

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.

 

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

Stinger, Nancy Kress. I like this.

Dragon's Breath, E.D. Baker.

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

Year of Wonder, Clemency Burton-Hill. I'm listening to the selection most days; it's a good way to start the morning.

Reading Challenges

1. Cybils 2022: Started.  Working on Graphic Novels.
2. Early Cybils:  Not done.
3. Reading My Library. Working on audio from backup library. 
4. Where Am I Reading 2022. Never finished updating this. Not sure I'll do it in 2023.
5. Libraries: Started the 10 to Try for 2023. 

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: Royal Escape
• Library Book: Forge of God
• Ebook I own: Flood Circle
• Library Ebook: Milk In My Coffee
• Book Club Book: Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal
• Tuesday Book Club Book: Nancy Drew: The Haunted Bridge, Carolyn Keene (wink)
• Review Book: Back Home 
• Rereading: Busman's Honeymoon
• Audio: An Easy Death