Keyboards Are Essential

Gosh, it's been a while. My excuses are excellent. Here's my super-fast diary for the past three weeks: 

I gave blood! Go me! I had to reschedule it because I got sick but they found me a new spot very quickly. Alexander and I went out for a fortifying breakfast and then raced through the donation. I won, but I get a big head start since he lets me go back with the lab guys first. I don't always win even with that lead -- he's a very fast bleeder.

A distant library came up with a new event that I attended -- a Summer Book Tasting. They had five or six tables for different genres and had a great selection of books from that genre on the table, complete with a menu describing the books. And they also had a lovely dessert table and some neat drinks to offer while you were browsing. Every fifteen minutes they'd ring a bell and people were encouraged to move to a new table. I was super impressed at the variety at each table, both genres I was familiar with and ones I rarely visit. Well done Federal Way Librarians! 

My Aunt Betty's funeral was held in Massachusetts, and I was the only one of my siblings able to attend (although my brother watched on zoom). It was a lovely event and I had a nice time catching up with that side of the family afterwards. Flying home was a bit annoying because they took my teeny tiny suitcase away to check, and also my plane was late. Air travel isn't fun in this post-covid world -- I still wear my mask in airports as much as possible. I missed a bookclub on the trip but texted in a few comments during a layover since it was being held at my house. 

Hmm, I went to the July River Runs Under It Book Club, and I helped my brother-in-law celebrate his birthday with our family (he's now as old as me!), I managed to get a few runs and many walks in, and we worked some on planning my mom's memorial. 

 

I planned to write up this blog while traveling to Massachusetts, but then I didn't. This made me so far behind that I didn't finish the next week either, so this time I'm just declaring victory so I'm caught up. Who needs coherence anyway?

I'm still safely on only two pages of currently-reading on Goodreads. I'm at 32 physical books checked out which includes some picture books plus five ebooks. I think I've only lost one picture book, but the librarian told me to just hope it turns up.  

I'm off to check out the other books at The Bookdate's It's Monday, What Are You Reading headquarters. And since I'm reading picture books as well as Cybils and other kidlit, I'll also sign up at the Children's Book central version, held at both Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers. And then I will dive around to see what everyone else has been reading.

Started

School Trip, Jerry Craft. Continuing the series.

Emergence, C.J. Cherryh. Continuing the series.

Girl, Forgotten, April Henry. I like this author.

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, Rachel Cohn & David Levithan. Cybils finalist.

The Last House Guest, Megan Miranda. For KCLS River Runs Under It bookclub. 

(week two)

Policing the Open Road, Sarah Seo. For Torches and Pitchforks bookclub.

Into the Broken Lands, Tanya Huff. I like this author.

The Blue Hawk, Peter Dickinson. For Scintillation bookclub.

Daughter of the Empire, Raymond Feist & Janny Wurts. For Foolscap bookclub.

The Creeping Shadow, Jonathan Stroud. The next audio in my Reading My Library quest.

(week three)

The Serpent in Heaven, Charlaine Harris. I'm finishing up my audio reread of the Lizbeth Rose stories, although this one is the regular narration, not a full audio thing. It's good because the new one comes out in September.

Smolder, Laurell K. Hamilton. I was feeling like I wasn't getting any real reading done, so I grabbed this book which was guaranteed to be simplistic and exactly what I expected.

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, Sangu Mandanna. For August Cloudy book club, although I'll miss the meeting.

Shelter, Susan Palwick. For Scintillation book club.

Ascendance of a Bookworm 5.5, Miya Kazuki. Yay! This one dropped just as I finished the previous one.

Completed

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea, Rebecca Thorne. For July's Cloudy book club. I missed the meeting! Humph. I didn't get the chance to complain about the economics of their business plan, which I found highly dubious. The romance also seemed rather dull, so that didn't paper over my concerns. Basically, if you haven't heard about the invention of the printing press, your plan for a small town book shop catering to drop-ins from the working class doesn't seem well thought out. Even the tea shop in the corner won't help. 

School Trip, Jerry Craft. The rich kids go to Paris! Along with the scholarship kids. And the clueless teachers. That part was a bit unbelievable (a prank scrambled the chaperones but no one noticed until the departure day), but the malfunctioning school credit cards seemed reasonable. Craft does a great job balancing emotion and humor throughout. 

Room to Dream, Kelly Yang. I was interesting to see how much was autobiographical -- the author really did write a column for young Chinese English learners, and she really did stumble over the ethics of mining her friendships for material. The tension of economic success between the family shows up in her family's visit to China, and her parents are much better sports about Mia's tactlessness that she had any right to expect. And while it's fun to see her little hotel triumph over the evil big corporations, it seemed a bit far-fetched. But maybe that was true as well! These are fun to read and I think there's another one.

Ascendance of a Bookworm Manga, Part 2 Vol 6, Miya Kazuki. Tragically this is currently the last translated volume of the manga. However, while checking that I discovered that there are new episodes of the anime out. Time to resubscribe to Crunchyroll! My love of this series is never ending. 

Feed, M.T. Anderson. Not quite what I expected. There was more complexity and of course a lot more distance to the idea that social media feeds would become ubiquitous, although thankfully so far everything remains external. I guess glasses and watches are the step towards brain ports. I enjoyed the protagonist leaning away from the girl, even as he did so in an unpleasant way. He was right, if not diplomatic about it. 

Only Bad Options, Jennifer Estep. This is when I noticed that I was supposed to attend a funeral on the East Coast on Saturday and I hadn't made any arrangements yet. So I did not make the Friday bookclub for this book, but it was a fun science fiction story about two people trapped in a soul bond who are actually good for each other, especially since most of the rest of their interstellar society are out to get them. Fun characters, fast moving plot, disappointing missed chance to do something really cool with the soul bond plot at the end.

Six Kids and a Stuffed Cat, Gary Paulsen. The problem with getting this for my Reading My Library Quest (Renton Highlands) is that the first disc was the book read aloud, and the second disc was the screenplay of the book read aloud. I hoped that it would be an actual performance, but it was just the same narrator reading the lines and the stage directions, which made it basically a repeat of the book and a bit boring. But by golly I listened to it! It's a decent short story about middle school guys being emotionally considerate of each other. 

------ New week

The Great Stewardess Rebellion, Nell McShane Wulfhart. Boy would I have loved to have my mom alive to talk to me about this book! She was a stewardess in the late 1960's when the women in this book worked to organize and fight back against the sexism keeping them from making the job into a career. And finishing it while I was on an airplane gave me the chance to see the gains they made -- men working as flight attendants but not trying to boss the women about, female flight attendants over the age of thirty (men never had age limits), comfortable shoes for female flight attendants, and I hope decent benefits as well although obviously I can see those from my seat. Go unions! And go women setting up their own unions when the men running the national one refused to take their issues seriously!

Emergence, C.J. Cherryh. It's great to see Cajeri maturing and starting to understand all the politics happening around him, and also to make his own contributions. He's also old enough to see when he has a problem but not always able to come up with a solution on his own.His new, older, bodyguards give him a chance to stretch a bit. Meanwhile Bren gets to go back to humanity and be weird, and also astonished when he discovers some teens who had adopted his style of weird as a fashion. I think I'll grab the next, although I have a lot of book club books to deal with...

The Blue Hawk, Peter Dickinson. I loved this book as a child and I rarely find anyone else who has heard of it, so it was great that Scintillation had it for their book club. Unfortunately I spent that hour in an airport waiting area so could not participate in the discussion, but I could listen! (And apparently leave my airpods behind afterward, dang you girl pockets!) I really like the approach to a religion (or maybe an alien!) and I wish I could have engaged with some of the colonialism discussion, but it was fun to revisit an old friend.

The Last House Guest, Megan Miranda. For KCLS River Runs Under It bookclub. This didn't quite work for me. The set up was interesting, with the rich summer visitors contrasted with the working class permanent residents, and our viewpoint character who was spiraling into disaster when her friendship with the girl who dies to kick off the mystery nudged her in a new direction. We find lots of secrets held by all the characters, and it's fairly fast paced. But somehow I felt like the plot pushed the characters, that the secrets didn't reflect backwards in the characters that revealed them. If what we find out was true, they should have been acting differently in the scenes before we knew. But it made for a fun discussion!

--- new week 

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, Rachel Cohn & David Levithan. 2006 Cybils YA finalist. I can see why this is so great for kids, even though I found it a bit of a slog. These kids are so young! And they are so intense! It's exhausting to remember when I processed things that way. And fell in love so hard and so easily. Wow. She was so sure of her jaded existence even as she did the most immature things (good for her dad for saving her college admission); he was so devastated about his crush leaving him; both of them so sure the world is staring at them all the time.

Daughter of the Empire, Raymond Feist & Janny Wurts. For Foolscap bookclub. I finished in time! We had a small turnout. But I liked talking about what I liked (the warrior characters, the non-warrior protagonist, the politics) and what I didn't like (dated attitudes towards female friendships, a tendency to hang plot climaxes on physical conflict which left our non-combatant protagonist a passive bystander), and how we thought writer teams worked together. We looked at different types of partnerships and how and why they might be attempted.

Smolder, Laurell K. Hamilton. I stalled out on reading for a few days, so I grabbed this as a known quantity to complete. I finished it in bits over a day or so, stopping only to laugh at Anita's furrowed-brow attempts to understand the people around her, usually pausing in the midst of an actual physical crisis to ask about irrelevant details of their feeling towards herself, someone else in the room, or other people they may have known in the past. Occasionally she manages to keep the questions to herself, and she's very consciously proud of herself then. It's very adorable, especially as they are apparently in a war with the Worst Vampire Ever and every second counts. 

Ascendance of a Bookworm, Vol 5 Part 4, Miya Kazuki. I finished the same day as Part 5 dropped -- victory! Myne's fiance is being a bit of a prat, which could interfere with her plans to become a librarian. If he's a complete loser, they'll want her to be duke! Sadness! 

Picture Books

B Is For Bananas, Carrie Tillotson. Although this is my first meeting with the Banana, I enjoyed watching it fully engage with bedtime. It's a worthy addition to alphabets and bedtime book lists.

Wombats Are Pretty Weird, Abi Cushman. Although I'm not sure we needed the cute snake (wombats are pretty cute on their own) I enjoyed learning a few facts about wombats, especially since Cushman covered the all-important square poo topic. I also learned about the different kinds of wombats and nose fur. Not bad. 

My Name Is Jason. Mine Too: Our Story, Our Way, Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffon. 2022 Cybils Poetry Finalist. I'm not sure what this is -- it's a collage, it's a joint autobiography of their youthful attempts to make it in New York City, it's a group of poems. It's a story of a friendship. I'm left baffled but mostly pleased.

'

Soccer, Tessa Kenen. Reading My Library Quest book -- Renton Highlands Easy Nonfiction.  Very easy reading book that does what it says on the tin with cute pictures. Maybe a sentence per layout -- low text. 

Great Explorers, James Buckley Jr. Reading My Library Quest book -- Renton Highlands Easy Nonfiction. Much denser -- several paragraphs per page. I definitely now notice how it's written from a European perspective -- explorers go from Europe to exotic places on other continents. We don't hear about explorers going to Europe. 

Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:

Ascendance of a Bookworm, Miya Kazuki. Pausing my reread of Part 3 while I read the new book.

Cobra, Timothy Zahn. Part 51. Johnny isn't very good at politics. Or logic.

Warcross, Marie Lu. Still my car book, so I'm making slow progress.

Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon. It's still on my bedside table.

The Wine-Dark Sea, Patrick O'Brian. I managed to read a few chapters! I like this book.

New Suns 2, ed. Nisi Shawl. So far they range from good to great.

Fourth Wing, Rebecca Yarros. The June Sword and Laser book club pick. I missed the meeting, and I'm still struggling to get traction on this. At least I have a text copy instead of an audio now.

Fairy Tale, Stephen King. For Tuesday game & book club. Wow, this is long. Everyone else either finished or gave up, so I'm supposed to finish it this week.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Malinda Lo. Cybils finalist. Young love must find a way!

Ship Without Sails, Sherwood Smith. Last chapter!

Palate Cleansers

I'm slowly marching through these books.

 

50 Great Poets, ed. Milton Crane (no picture). The only problem with Donne is I get through less mail because I like to reread his stuff several times.

Stinger, Nancy Kress. I like the switches between medical mystery and FBI mystery, and how each feeds into each other.

Dragon's Breath, E.D. Baker. A princess and her boy companion may squabble over who gets to lead.

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

The Road to Mars, Eric Idle. I'm not sure I'm going to find these guys entertaining.

The Dark Fantastic, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas. She raises interesting points but I don't always agree with all her conclusions. We're analyzing The Hunger Games right now.

Year of Wonder, Clemency Burton-Hill. Two long (and beautiful) Bach works have me caught up with the mail. 

Reading Challenges

1. Cybils 2022: Started poetry.  
2. Early Cybils:  Finished Nick and Norah. Read a bit of Telegraph. 
3. Reading My Library. Finished an audio and some picture books from Renton Highlands.
4. Libraries: Working on the 10 to Try for 2023. Need an artist and a summer book.

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: China Mountain Zhang
• Library Book: Girl Forgotten
• Ebook I own: none
• Library Ebook: Forty-Love
• Book Club Book: The Secret Society of Irregular Witches
• Tuesday Book Club Book: Brightly Burning
• Review Book: Back Home 
• Rereading: 
• Audio: Serpent in Paradise