Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones

 We read An American Marriage by Tayari Jones for our book club last summer. I was really taken by Jones's writing and how honestly and bravely she delved into difficult topics. I also thought that her observations were just super smart.  Jones was also one of the authors who wrote in the Well-Read Black Girl anthology I just finished and I couldn't help but think it meant I should be reading more of Jones.  Sadly, Jones only has four novels, but I can see myself cranking through them one at a time in quick succession.

Silver Sparrow is the second Jones novel I have read and I am so mad at that the Goodreads score is less than 4. How is that possible?!  I don't usually rave about books (I mean, outside of Harry Potter, the Neopolitan quartet, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), but this book was so GOOD.  The basic premise (which you get in the first two pages, so it's not much of a spoiler) is that James Witherspoon marries two different women and has a daughter with each of them, daughters born within months of one another. 

This book raises so many questions. What is family? What role does colorism play in day-to-day lives of all sorts of people? In this story, who is right and who is wrong? Why? What role does the city of Atlanta play in this novel and why is it important that it is Atlanta? And that's all before you get started with issues of class, young love, and casual violence.

I will admit that the book takes a turn about halfway through and it loses some of its momentum. I definitely preferred the first half of the book to the second, but I think the second half is important in understanding the complexities of the human relationships that are at play in the novel.  There's a change in perspective that I was almost angry about, but at a certain point, I realized that this perspective was necessary to make me reexamine my own beliefs and, because of that, it was absolutely an essential part of the narrative. 

So if you haven't read any Tayari Jones, I implore you to do so! These books are thinkers in the best way possible.

Seven Months With Hannah

Hannah had a rough start to January.  The first minor thing that happened was we noticed that her boots were rubbing against her front dewclaws and causing them to bleed. That was pretty bad, so we didn't make her wear her boots and then the salt and cold caused her paw pads to crack and bleed. She LOVES being outside in the snow, though, so we really felt like we were stuck between a rock and a hard place. I'm considering either Musher's Secret Paw Wax or Boot Liners for her.  Anybody want to weigh in on this? I'm worried the wax might irritate her skin, and I'm concerned that the boot liners will be just as aggravating. 

Meanwhile, on the second of January, our puppy was really sick, with the grossest stuff every coming out of her every orifice. We got an emergency appointment with the vet and she was diagnosed with hookworms. Getting her treated for worms has been a problem because so many of the preventative medications have proteins in them that we haven't tested her for. Hookworms are terrible to get rid of, by the way. We gave her this liquid medication (she HATED it and spit it out on us the first night - we wised up and mixed it with some canned pumpkin after that ) and we had to give it her AGAIN in three weeks to kill any worms that escaped the first treatment. In the meantime, she wasn't supposed to really be with other dogs, which took out the dog park and daycare as some of our usual ways to exhaust her.

But she's really been a trouper (trooper? - this is a language question that seems to be quite vexing) through it all. She has always been eager to continue to go on walks, despite her paw issues. She's always good about using her time on walks to do her business.  Even at her sickest, she wasn't snappish or mean, just sort of pathetic.  Poor baby girl.

We did sneak her into an obedience class, though. I know she wasn't supposed to really interact with other dogs, but at these classes, she doesn't actually every engage with other dogs.  She is terrified to jump over jumps (she's very scared of humans wielding brooms and sticks and I hope that the person who hurt her before she came to us suffers a very violent fate) and so we've been working on desensitizing her to these types of obstacles.  She quickly learned how to do hand targeting.  She was less sure about putting her front paws in a cardboard box, but after a week of training, she now does it without much prompting. She also generalized that to putting her paws inside a bucket (that we normally use for her to stand on when it's upside down). We're working on getting her to hold a chin rest for five seconds.

She's doing great, though. We went ahead and gave her one of the worm preventatives with some of the allergens (what's worse? worms or a day or two of discomfort?) and so far she's tolerated that pretty well.  Fingers crossed that Hannah doesn't have to go back to the vet until she's due for shots in the spring!

Butchers Hill by Laura Lippman

Baltimore Blues
Charm City

Butchers Hill is the third book in Lippman's Tess Monaghan series. Our girl Friday Tess has elevated herself from the part-part-time work she was doing in Baltimore Blues all the way to opening her own private detective agency. She gets two cases to work on in this novel. One job is to track down a client's daughter, a daughter the client had given up for abortion thirteen years ago. The other job is to track down some foster children who the client had harmed in the past and now wants to make restitution to.  As these things go, as soon as Tess gets involved, chaos begins.  Witnesses started to disappear, there are people dying, and family mysteries start to come unraveled.

There's a lot in this book. It delves into privacy issues for adoptees and foster children. It delves into race. There are a couple of scenes in which Tess, who is white, can't get information, so she sends in her client, who is black. Tess, who had just a scene or two previously, been joking about the impact of race on her black client, is forced to face what her own privilege can and can't get her. The book also tackles Baltimore's problems with government corruption, which is not nothing, but does get sidelined a tiny bit here.

I really enjoy the character of Tess. She's absolutely terrible at reading a room. She's kind of terrible at being a detective - it seems like she's mostly just relying on calling in favors from people to do the legwork and I'm a bit concerned about how she's going to make it work when those favors are gone.  She loves her dog, but doesn't really seem to understand her own feelings. I also love the supporting characters - her lawyer mentor, her uncle, her mom, and her aunt are all developing into people I want to hang out with.

But the story was a bit confusing, to be honest. I'm not entirely sure I understood the ending. It just seemed so rushed and didn't explain to the reader what was going on. There was a scene in which it was clear that Tess knew what was going on, but instead of taking the readers through the flash of insight that Tess had, we just followed along with her rushing around, and that insight never was explained. Also, a major event happened off page and I'm still not clear how any of that shook out (slight spoiler: there was an unexpected guest at the picnic - how did the guest know where the picnic was?).  The ending really brought this book down in my estimation.

However, I do love the world of Tess Monaghan. I'm going to keep going with this series. Maybe they'll be more explanation of this novel in a future novel!

A Column of Fire by Ken Follett

The Pillars of the Earth
World Without End

The third (and final?) novel in the Kingsbridge series is A Column of Fire. In the first book, The Pillars of the Earth, we were introduced to the town of Kingsbridge in the 1100s as it was attempting to build a cathedral.  The second book, World Without End, moved us ahead in time to the Black Death of the mid-1300s.  A Column of Fire brings us even further ahead it time to the mid- to late-1500s when the Protestants and Catholics were killing one another and poor Mary Queen of Scots was suffering as Queen Elizabeth ruled in England.

I adored the first two books in the series, mostly because we mostly stayed in Kingsbridge and stayed with characters in the town. We learned about daily life in the city, how what was happening in London impacted (or didn't) lives of everyday people. We learned about how people lived, dressed, ate, married, and died. We were in a soap opera and there were illegitimate babies, secret daddies of babies, and people missing for years who would later just pop up out of nowhere.

This book, though. We were barely ever IN Kingsbridge. That's what I'm in it for, Mr. Follett!  I want my characters to be there, not in Hispanolia or Paris or London.  I want far, far less royal court intrigue and much, much more who's sleeping with who and who stole so and so's land.  I want less talk about religious doctrinal differences and more about how that impacts the lives of people who are married to people of opposing views.  I want less talk about naval battles and seafaring tactics and more talk about the lives of the women whose husbands are out at sea.

The soap opera feeling that I loved in the other two books just went away and there we were, stuck with a history lesson. I feel like I get the Catholic/Protestant division during this time. I really understand the line of royal succession. I do. But I wish I understood that less and understood more about our main characters, Ned and Margery, and why they even liked one another. In World Without End, we understand why Caris and Merthin want to be together and we want them to be together, but we also understand why they are kept apart for so much of the novel. In A Column of Fire, I was never convinced by the Ned and Margery relationship, outside of simple sexual attraction, which ain't nothing, but certainly doesn't keep someone going for decades.

It's just...I know Follett can write things that I LOVE. I know he can. So I was disappointed in this book. Follett's novels, Fall of Giants, Winter of the World, and Edge of Eternity make up the Century Trilogy.  I think I'm going to delve into those as my next Follett reads.

Well-Read Black Girl edited by Glory Edim

I write a lot. I write for my job - endless lectures, syllabuses, assignments in which the directions have to be crystal clear, emails to students, co-workers, and administrators, I write in a daily journal every night, and I write in this blog space that makes it seem like it's 2007 all over again. I write primarily for communication at my job. I write primarily as a record of my own life in my journal. I write here mostly to keep track of the books I read and how proud I am of my dog. 

But I'm not a writer. I don't feel like part of me is missing when I accidentally forget to write in my journal at night. I don't go around thinking original thoughts that I just have to have written down.  Words don't eke out of my fingertips onto the page, as if a magical fairy has entered my body.

No, I'm a reader.  I read the way other people watch television. I don't just sit down on the couch and randomly flip on the television. I sit down on the couch and reach for my book (and, if I can, the cat - it's so much cozier to read when you have a cat on your legs, isn't it?).  I think about "my" books all the time. I talk about them all the time.

When I first looked at Well-Read Black Girl, I assumed that this would be like eating my vegetables. I'd read about how this collection of black female authors struggled as children and I'd get my dose of white guilt and that would be that. But I was so wrong. Because these aren't the stories of systematic oppression and racism, these are stories about readers.  Sure, some of these women suffered serious injustices and they write about those injustices, but they write about them in the service of telling you how they played a role in the development of their identities as readers.  So even though I was a white girl growing up in a rural area in the northern United States, I felt seen in this book. Their stories weren't my story, of course, but their stories were stories of characters who resonated (one of them cited Francie in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and I squealed so loudly my husband and the dog came to check on me), of places that spoke to them, and of being able to, if only for those hours while reading the pages, visit places more adventurous, safer, or more magical than the world in which you lived.

I read these books and learned so much about the importance of Toni Morrison and James Baldwin within black culture. I learned how much harder it is to be a black nerd than a white nerd (the scant list of sci-fi/fantasy books by black women authors was sad). I learned that we are all united in the hunt for that one book that leaves that lasting impression. 

The book also has a list of all the books mentioned in the book. I'm going to use that list as a rough sort of Introduction into Black Literature for myself over the coming books. So don't be surprised if all of a sudden I'm reading Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison and starting to spout off about how I just don't have time to read all these amazing books!

The Purity of Vengeance by Jussi Adler-Olsen

The Keeper of Lost Causes
The Absent One 
A Conspiracy of Faith

The Purity of Vengeance is the fourth book in the Department Q series from Jussi Adler Olsen.  There are eight books in the series as of right now and I suspect that I'll read them all. In this series, Carl Morck is our grumpy Danish detective who is in charge of a motley crew of people who investigate cold cases.  In this case, his assistant throws a case on his desk that he was initially uninterested in, but we soon learn that it's linked to several other crimes.  Morck is still guilt-ridden about the case that killed one of friends and paralyzed another while his soon-to-be-ex-wife is attempting to con him out of money. 

Meanwhile, his cheerful assistant who we have suspected has hidden depths for quite some time, shows us a lot about his background in this novel. It turns out he has skills that make him quite suitable for Department Q and I can't wait to see how Morck begins to use these skills now that he knows about them. 

As in The Absent One, we know a lot about who committed the crimes in this novel from the beginning, so this is more of a thriller than a mystery, at least from the perspective of the reader.  Adler-Olsen spends much of the novel taking us through the criminal's justifications and reasons for the crimes. In this way, the novel is asking some deeply troubling questions.  Should you be judged for the worst decisions you've made in your life? What actions can you or should you take in revenge for people who have mistreated you? What do you do when mistreatment was sanctioned by the government?  Should the government make amends? How? And those are all the questions that come up before you start thinking about government corruption. 

So, yeah, I like this series and I like the Scandinavian noir genre.  I'm going to keep reading this series, so don't be surprised if Adler-Olsen comes up some more!

Charm City by Laura Lipmann

My review of the first book in the series, Baltimore Blues, can be found here.

Charm City is the second of the Tess Monaghan books from Laura Lippman. In this book, our girl Tess finds herself trying to find out the truth about why her uncle got beat up (he's in a coma!) and how one of her friends from her journalism days had a story that had originally been nixed end up on the front page of the Baltimore paper, the Beacon Light (frequently shortened to Blight, much to my amusement).  In order to solve these mysteries, Tess is hired on as a contractor at the newspaper, and, as always happens in these types of books, shenanigans ensue.

In the process, Tess finds herself at odds with both of her friends who work at the paper, breaking up with her boyfriend, and acquiring a greyhound named Esskay who I hope is a reoccurring character in this series. She finds herself getting shot at, getting bullied at her gym, and facing the smoke rings from the mean lady editor's cigarettes.

Baltimore continues to be an integral character in the story. Lippman clearly loves the city. There are digressions in which Tess thinks of cutesy names for neighborhoods. There are endless digressions about how a particular neighborhood came to be the mix of middle-class and rundown.  There are digressions about how Baltimore is not part of a county, but prospers and flails all on its own.  I enjoy every word of these tangential points because they are exactly the kinds of things I want to know when I'm reading about a place.

So, did I immediately request the next book in this series from the library? Yes, yes, I did. 

The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss

The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss tells the tale of Mary Jekyll, who is alone and penniless after the death of her parents. In her search for money, she finds Diana Hyde, a child who has been raised in a home for foundlings. They reach out to Sherlock Holmes for some help with the mystery of how Mary and Diana are related.  As the story unravels, we meet many other characters who are related to characters from other beloved novels, including Frankenstein and The Island of Dr. Moreau.

This book was clever. I was enjoying catching the Easter eggs and looking up references I didn't know.  The frame of the book is that one of the characters is writing down the story as the other characters constantly butt in with their own remarks and corrections. I enjoyed the interactions between those characters. I thought the setting was well done and I could feel the oppressiveness of Victorian London, the stifling social norms that forced women to make unthinkable choices, and the formality that existed between even the most familiar of social acquaintances.

I also thought the writing was tight. I've never read Goss before and it looks like this is the first book in a planned series. She has mostly written short stories before. Apparently The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter is her first novel.  She's a teacher in a creative writing program, but this didn't come off as too incredibly workshopped to me.  I thought there was just enough poking fun of literary conventions in the interstitial repartee among the characters to show that Goss knows what she's doing, but also knows how to play with it.

That being said, I also kept falling asleep as I read this book. Admittedly, I wasn't feeling 100%, but I'd read a couple of chapters and put it down for a day.  I think it's great! I really do! But I'm probably not going to pick up any more books in the series. But I DO recommend that you read this book because it's fun, there are great female characters, and the writing is solid. 

2020 Quarter One Goals

In 2017 and 2018, I had goals that I set up for myself at the beginning of the year and I did a good job with them. In 2019, things really fell off the wagon, so I'm going to back to the system that works for me.  Here are my goals for the first three months of the year.  I definitely reserve the right to tweak these goals throughout the year.

Area One: Health
1) Work out three times a week for 30 minutes or more - Because of a dumb overuse injury in my leg, I was not able to do substantial workouts in the first quarter of last year. And then I just...didn't pick it up again.  I need to get back to at it.
2) Work out an additional two times a week for at least 15 minutes - I have in my mind that a workout has to be at least 30 minutes to be doing something, but honestly a 15 minute core workout can be just as punishing as 60 minutes of cardio for me. Mindfully moving my body for five days a week seems like a good way to improve my physical and mental health.
3) At least two strength training workouts every week- I actually like lifting weights. Dr. BB got a new weight set, too, so I need to start doing a better job of incorporating strength training into my life.

I reserve the right to add food and/or water tracking on to this list. Unfortunately, I've tried that in the past and I've always failed to do so, so I'm not sure if this exactly a realistic goal for me. However, if my weight doesn't start to decrease, I might be forced to count calories again.

Area Two: Professional
1) Get my email under control and keep it there (try to keep the inbox to 15 emails or fewer at all times) - I had some mental health issues in 2019 that led me to avoid checking my work and personal email. Because of this, my email started stacking up. There are over 1000 emails in each of my accounts right now. Most of them can be deleted, but it is a definitely a priority for me in the first quarter of the year to get those inboxes under control. I'm not a zero-email inbox kind of girl, but I'd like to stop missing things because they sink to the bottom of my inbox.
2) Volunteer position - I'm on the board for my local community center.  I'm head of the programming committee and I'd like to get a program started in 2020 and, ideally, have that program be profitable. Also, I need to communicate with everyone promptly in that role.
3) Update my resume and cover letter - Things are not going smoothly for me at work. I'd like to take the free time I will have this semester to really think about what I want to do for work.  Anyone know how to create a business plan for a small business?  Or maybe I should just take a part-time job in non-profit training. Argh.
4) Create a portfolio - I have to do this for one of the classes I teach. Right now, I just have a fake portfolio with links that go nowhere. I actually want to create a portfolio of our progress with Hannah (I can actually use this for instructional purposes, I swear). This will involve me figuring out how to do video editing, though. Egads. It sounds hard. Oh, well. Let's say it's a "goal" and hope for the best.

Area Three: Communication
1)  Post to Instagram once a day - I did this in 2017 and it was good fun. I think I'll do my best again this year. It is sometimes hard to find something new to photograph, but if all else fails, I'll take a photo of my adorable mutt.
2) Update blog at least twice a week - I posted an average of 1.4 times a week last year without tracking it. I'm hoping that I can keep a good editorial calendar and do better. We'll see.
3)  Keep track of books read - Every year people ask me how many books I read and I honestly have no idea. I read a lot of trashy books that I get for free on my Kindle (sign up for BookBub, people!), but this year I'm going to have a dedicated place on my spreadsheet for what books I'm reading and when I finish them. I generally have two books going at once - one on my Kindle for bedtime reading and one book that I have gotten from the library that I read downstairs.  I will hold myself accountable by publishing a list every quarter.
4) Send a postcard/note/letter to my two elderly aunts and one uncle every month - I've done this in the past and it's fun and I like to do it.

Area Four: Personal Improvement Projects
1) Tackle one project around the house every week - By "project," I essentially mean "something I've been putting off." The first week in January it will be taking down the Christmas tree. I also need to organize my desk, the closets, deal with a bunch of Lego sets my mother gave me from childhood that have taken over the guest room, and figure out how to declutter our bookshelves. There's a lot to do, but I just tend to ignore it because it doesn't have to be done RIGHT. NOW.
2) Duolingo every day - I've done Duolingo for at least ten minutes a day for over 300 days as of today. I would like to keep this streak going. I can actually follow basic stories in Spanish at this point.
3) Take at least three more classes with Hannah - She's so smart and tries so hard and I want her to be happy. Also, I love videos of dogs doing fun tricks and I want Hannah to be the star of one of those videos.
4) Try a new recipe every week - For real. I'm so sick of eating the same five recipes.

2019 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge

Here are the results from my 2019 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge. I like to do these reading challenges because if left to my own devices, I'd read trashy romances over and over again, so this really broadens the scope of my reading and I come across some new favorites (as well as some duds) along the way. This year I was able to reread a few old favorites, too. Here's my 2018 list, if you're interested.

Challenge List
1. A book becoming a movie in 2019: The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn (library) - This was certainly a page turner, but I dislike books told from the POV of addicts and I knew all the "twists" ahead of time. It's just not my type of novel. Also, there are some issues with the author, so all in all, not one I would necessarily recommend.

2. A book that makes you nostalgic: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling (book on my bookshelf!) - I've read is so many time and it still makes me chuckle. I wish I didn't have to think about what Rowling is like in real life, though.

3. A book written by a musician (fiction or nonfiction): The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan (library) - Apparently Tan is a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock group that consists of writers. 

4. A book you think should be turned into a movie: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (library) - This was the book for our June book club. I thought it was a fun read and since the main characters are movie stars, I think the whole glitz and glamour and pretty gowns could really be played up on the big screen. The costuming would be amazing.

5. A book with at least one million ratings on Goodreads: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (library) - This is a terrible book that helped illuminate a lot about what is wrong with the world today. The tag on the front cover says "a fable about following your dream," but it should say "a story about how you should take advantage of everyone and everything in pursuit of your own selfishness and how to tell yourself you deserve all the good things."  This book made me SO ANGRY.

6. A book with a plant in the title or on the cover: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (library)

7. A reread of a  favorite book: Rock with Me by Kristen Proby (Kindle Purchase) - I love Proby's With Me in Seattle series and this is probably my favorite of the series.  If you're looking for a contemporary romance series, this might do it for you.

8. A book about a hobby: I reread Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. It's still excellent. (library)

9. A book you meant to read in 2018: The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis (library)

10. A book with "pop," "sugar," or "challenge" in the title: Pop Princess by Rachel Cohn (library) - Sort of a boring book with very little character development. It was an easy read, but not exactly a good one.

11. A book with an item of clothing or accessory on the cover: Squint by Chad Morris & Shelly Brown (library)

12. A book inspired by mythology, legend, or folklore: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Summer Sword by Rick Riordan (library)

13. A book published posthumously: My Year by Roald Dahl (library) - Beautiful prose about the changes of the seasons over the course of a year. There's a bit of "kids these days," but mostly is just a lovely retrospection on birds and flowers.

14. A book set in space: Abaddon's Gate by James S. A. Corey (library) - The third book in The Expanse series. This series is mind-boggling. It's serious stuff, but the moments of levity are there. Thumbs way up.

15. A book by two female authors: In early January, I read through the entire Max Monroe catalog.  Monroe is actually the duo of  romance authors Laurel Ulen Curtis and N.A. Alcorn.  These books are hilarious and I want more. I recommend you start with the Billionaire Bad Boy series, although I also deeply enjoyed the Mavericks Tackle Love series. Read them all. Laugh at all of them. (Kindle purchases)

16. A book with a title that contains "salty," "sweet," "bitter," or "spicy": Bittersweet by Sarina Bowen (Kindle purchase)

17. A book set in Scandinavia: The Absent One by Jussi Alder-Olsen (library)

18. A book that takes place in a single day: The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon (library)

19. A debut novel: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (library), From the Corner of the Oval by Beck Dorey-Stein (library)

20. A book that's published in 2019: Vendetta in Death by JD Robb (Kindle purchase) - I keep reading them and I keep thinking they're snooze-inducing. We actually knew who the killer was from very early on, so it wasn't a mystery exactly. I don't know. Maybe I should give up on the series?  (You know I'll never stop.)

21. A book featured an extinct or imaginary creature: His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Navik  (library)

22. A book recommended by a celebrity you admire: An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (library) This was an Oprah book club pick. I don't know if I admire Oprah, but I don't not admire her.

23. A book with "love" in the title: Love, Hate, and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed (library) - Maya Aziz is just a regular American Indian girl from a Muslim family who's trying to get through her life in a small midwestern town.  This book was an easy read, but it was pretty superficial, even for a YA novel. There's so many topics here - Islamaphobia, young love, the responsibilities of being the child of immigrants, religion, generational divides, friendship - but the story really ends up being about romance and while that's fine (the first word of the title is love!), it wasn't exactly what I was hoping for in a novel that had so many big ideas. Read The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon instead.

24. A book featuring an amateur detective: The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie (library) - I haven't read a lot of Christie and this book reminded me why. The writing is so stilted and the characters are so oddly stiff. I didn't care when Colonel Prothoroe died and I didn't really care who killed him.  Miss Marple is almost a side character in the whole thing and I just wanted someone to hold on to.  It's probably sacrilege or something, but I'm probably not going to read any more from Christie any time soon.

25. A book about a family: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (library)

26. A book written by an author from Asia, Africa, or South America: When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon (library) - Another coming of age story about children of immigrants. It was okay - better than Love, Hate, and Other Filters, but not nearly as good as The Sun is Also a Star.

27. A book with a zodiac sign or astrology term in the title: Zodiac by Romina Russell (library) - I would describe this as fine. Girl is suddenly promoted to leader of her people while involved in a ill-fated love triangle in which neither guy is really worth her time.  The writing was fine, but I just didn't get invested in any of the characters.

28. A book you see someone reading on TV or in a movie: The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury (library) - Spencer Reid referenced this book in episode 20, season 5, entitled "A Thousand Words" that deals with a serial killer whose body is covered in tattoos.

29. A retelling of a classic: Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige (library)

30. A book with a question in the title: What's Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges (library) - Sad movie, sad book. There are some creepy elements here (he's in his twenties, pursuing a girl who is fifteen) that sort of took me out of the book, but I thought it was beautiful, spare prose with great insight into a young man who feels stuck in his life.

31. A book set on a college or university campus: We Are Okay by Nina LaCour (library) - A good book. It has remarkably little plot and mostly just talks about a young woman's feelings regarding the death of her family members. It was super well written. LaCour's a bit of a genius with words.

32. A book about someone with a superpower: Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson (library)

33. A book told from multiple character POVs: There There by Tommy Orange (library)

34. A book that includes a wedding: The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory (library) - A romance novel that seemed to hit every cliche without doing anything unusual, except maybe occasionally (very occasionally) address difficulties of being in an interracial relationship.

35. A book by an author whose first and last names start with the same letter: Almost Midnight by Rainbow Rowell (library) - Two very short, very fun stories from Rowell. She's a genius at writing easy-to-read, breezy tales.

36. A ghost story: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (Dr. BB's copy) - Jackson is a brilliant writer. I have no idea how she does it. I actually read this in a collection of a bunch of her works, including some short stories and she takes ordinary mundane scenes of daily domestic life and turns them into twisted, haunting tales that evoke creepiness in a sneaky way. She writes sparsely but effectively and Jackson may single-handedly turned me into a short story lover.

37. A book with a two-word title: The Power by Naomi Alderman (library)  - This was our January book club pick. I thought the concept was interesting, but didn't care much for the execution. Many people in my book club loved it though. It spurred lots of complaining about local politics in our discussion.

38. A novel based on a true story: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (library)

39. A book revolving around a puzzle or game: War Cross by Marie Wu (library)

40. Your favorite prompt from a past POPSUGAR Reading Challenge: The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (book on my bookshelf - given to my by my father-in-law) - The 2018 prompt "A book with a female author who uses a male pseudonym"

Advanced list!!

41. A "cli-fi" (climate fiction) book: Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (library)

42. A "choose-your-own-adventure" book: My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel by Kitty Curran and Larissa Zageris (library) - This was a really fun idea, but sort of a failed execution. I can't really tell if it's supposed to be a parody of romances, in which case the humor was a bit off, or if it was supposed to actually be a romance, in which case the writing was really, really terrible. I wanted to love it and I hope it jump starts a trend (do you want this bossy alpha guy or the shy beta?!), but in the end I was glad when my character finally settled down and the book ended.

43. An "own voices" book: If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo (library) - A book by a trans woman about a trans woman. I had a fair number of criticisms of the book (the main character wouldn't have been able to afford the surgery, she was conventionally attractive as a woman) that basically came down to the idea that I thought this book was making the life of a trans woman fairly easy (and therefore, not typical), but those concerns were washed away when I read the author's note when the author said she did all that so that it would be appealing to cis folks like me.  Eh. I didn't think it was appealing because it didn't ring true, BUT I'm not the real audience here. If I were a young trans person, I don't know if I'd think it was a comforting or annoying book, but I'm glad there's at least something for those young readers to latch on to.

44. Read a book during the season it is set in: Christmas Light by Jolyse Barnett (free on Kindle) - This book was not good. The main character was all "I hate my life and I'm going to just whine about it instead of taking control and I let what everyone else thinks dictate every major decision I've ever made in my life and I never learn from my mistakes" and the dude was all "she's super annoying, but somehow I'm in love with her." Ugh. They both could have fallen out of the pages into my trash can and I'd have been happy.  There was an adorable golden retriever character named Sophie, though.

45. A LitRPG book: I reread Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (Kindle purchase) - It really is one of my favorites.  Also, none of the other books in this category were easily available to my local library.

46. A book with no chapters, unusual chapter headings, or unconventionally numbered chapters: Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg (library)

47. Two books that share the same title (1): Roomies by Christina Lauren (library) - A woman gets a crush on a man who sings at a train station, but when she is injured at the train station, he runs away. She marries him anyway so that he can perform for her favorite uncle's hit Broadway show.  I found this book to be fun to read if you didn't bother to stop and think about the plot at all. I'm not a fan of love at first sight and this book suffers from the "just stop and have a conversation" and the rest of your issues will go away trope, so it wasn't my favorite, but it wasn't an unpleasant read. I doubt I'll remember it in three months.

48. Two books that share the same title (2): Roomies by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando (library) - Two girls are put together as roommates for their freshman year at college and this novel shows their communication over the summer before they meet. It was sort of a fun look at that scary transitional period of your life after you graduate high school, but before your "real life" begins. 

49. A book that has inspired a common phrase or idiom (e.g., Big Brother from 1984): Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein (library) - This book introduced the word "grok" to the world. I read it in high school and adored it, but I could barely get through it this time around. I am not the audience for Heinlein's sermons, stilted writing, and misogyny anymore, I guess.

50: A book set in an abbey, cloister, monastery, vicarage, or convent:World without End by Ken Follett (library)

Wrap-up!

Books I loved: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Where the Crawdads Sing, Rock with Me, Fangirl, The Sun is Also a Star, His Majesty's Dragon, Homegoing, Ready Player One, World without End

Books I liked: The Kitchen God's Wife, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Abaddon's Gate, Bittersweet, The Absent One, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, An American Marriage, When Dimple Met Rishi, The Illustrated Man, There There, The Haunting of Hill House, Burial Rites, The Silkworm, Roomies by Lauren, Roomies by Zarr and Altebrando

Books I thought were fine: The Fifth Risk, Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Summer Sword, My Year, From the Corner of the Oval, Love, Hate, and Other Filters, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, We Are Okay, Steelheart, The Power, Red Mars

Books I thought were terrible: The Woman in the Window, The Alchemist, Vendetta in Death, The Murder at the Vicarage, Dorothy Must Die, War Cross, My Lady's Choosing, If I Was Your Girl, Christmas Lights, Feast Your Eyes, Stranger in a Strange Land

Books I forgot ten minutes after I finished them:  Pop Princess, Squint, Zodiac, The Wedding Date, Almost Midnight

December 2019 Podcast Roundup

A collaboration between the Canadian Broadcasting Corp and the Norwegian newspaper VG, Hunting Warhead is all about child sexual abuse images (child porn in the US) on the internet. Who are the people who make it? Trade it? How do you catch those people? What are the lengths you'll go to catch them? What should the punishments be?  So many important questions.  It's hard to listen to, but well made.  It's a limited-run podcast with only six episodes, but it is a hard topic, so it may not be one that you want to binge one right after the other.

If you really want to know what I did with my time in December, it was listen to Finish It!  I know I talked about it last month, but this podcast in which two brothers read every page and every ending of Choose Your Own Adventure books is amazing. They are really funny. They clearly love each other (and their mom). They make fun little games and songs that are hilarious.  And, frankly, there's never a mention of child sexual abuse images, so it's a definite palate cleanser for Hunting Warhead. Please listen! I desperately want to talk to someone about this podcast.  In the third book there's a MUSICAL EPISODE. You guys! It's so good.