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THE BRIGHTON MERMAID - DOROTHY KOOMSON (a book you picked because the title caught your attention)

This was the book that pulled me back out of my quarantine reading slump! Thank you, Dorothy Koomson! 

I’d seen this a bunch of times in my bookshop, but I’m not that into crime fiction so even though the title intrigued me, I didn’t buy it. But I spotted it in my library’s ebook app and decided to give it a go, and I’m very glad I did! It’s about Nell, a woman who has spent her life obsessed with solving the mystery of a body she found on a Brighton beach as a teenager. The body was never identified, despite a distinctive mermaid tattoo, and there were several other similar murders afterwards. Not that long after, Nell’s best friend Jude, who was with her when she found the body, disappeared without a trace. Nell’s father was a suspect for a long time and was terrorised by the police, and one officer in particular, so she feels that her whole life, and those of her family, have been shaped by these murders. 

This was a really intriguing book - there was a lot going on. Obviously the big test for if a crime book is successful is ‘did you figure out the murderer’, and I have to say, I figured it out only about two pages before it was revealed, and I didn’t guess the rest of it! So definitely a good result there. The characters were all brilliant - the murderer wasn’t the only villain of the piece and there were a couple of characters I loved to hate. 

Nell herself is a fascinating person - she’s been through a lot in her life and finds it hard to trust people, and it feels to her like when she does place her trust in people, they always let her down. The book is split between her viewpoint and that of her sister, Macy, who struggles with OCD and other issues due to the trauma she faced with the murders. She’s desperate for Nell to move on from them and let them all go, but of course Nell can’t.

There’s a compelling romance sideplot which I enjoyed, and I REALLY liked the resolution to that! If only more authors had Koomson’s guts... Plus I liked the family side of things - Nell’s worry that maybe her father did have something to do with the murders and Jude’s disappearance was really compelling. 

This isn’t a traditional detective book - Nell’s not a police officer, which given the context of the murders and what happened, makes perfect sense to the story. She’s just a woman who wants justice and resolution for an event that traumatised her and another young woman who died unknown. I thought this book succeeded where a lot of others in the genre fail - it showed sympathy to the victim and the human side of things.

#2020 reading challenge #popsugar reading challenge #a book you picked because the title caught your attention #dorothy koomson #the brighton mermaid

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THE CITY WE BECAME - N.K. JEMISIN (a book with a map)

I finished this book yesterday, and honestly, I’m still recovering. I’m always weak for urban fantasy, and I loved The Fifth Season, although I haven’t read the rest of the trilogy yet. But this was truly spectacular.

The premise is fairly simple if you read a lot of urban fantasy: cities are alive, and when they’re born, one person becomes the avatar of the city - its soul, if you like. But New York doesn’t just have one avatar - it has six, one for each borough and one for the city as a whole. This is a shock to most of the people who’ve been chosen - Manhattan, who literally only arrived in the city earlier that day; Brooklyn, a councilwoman who used to be a rapper; Bronx, the director of a community art space; Queens, an Indian student with a passion for mathematics; and Staten Island, the isolated daughter of an NYPD officer who is too terrified to ever visit the city. Luckily, they have the avatar of the last city to be born, Sao Paolo, there to help. Which is good, because New York is under attack by an enemy, a mysterious, omnipresent Woman in White, who attacks using gentrification and alt-right assholes.

This is a book with a lot of heart, as well as a totally electrifying plot. I had to force myself to put the book down occasionally because I really wanted to savour it rather than just race through. As a Brit, I don’t know New York other than through movies, so I really needed the map in the front, but it was a lot of fun figuring out what was going on and matching places up with what I knew. There’s a huge variety of cultures and backgrounds represented, which was fantastic - based on the acknowledgements in the back of the book, Jemisin has taken a lot of care and used several sensitivity readers to make sure she got things right. I also loved the whole premise of cities that are alive - I think I first encountered this as a kid reading Diana Wynne Jones’ The Merlin Conspiracy, which features a few cities-as-people, and I’ve been a sucker for it ever since. I loved meeting some of the other cities and hearing about the ones I didn’t meet. I suppose my only quibble is that I don’t understand how there can be so few living cities? Based on the list in the front of the book, there are six, plus New York - London, Paris, Sao Paolo, Hong Kong, Cairo and Lagos. Considering the conditions for ‘being born’ are that a city must a) have existed for a few hundred years and b) have a unique culture, I feel like there should be a lot more - plenty get mentioned as potentials, but I thought surely if New York is alive, somewhere like Beijing or Tokyo or Mumbai ought to be as well? Entirely possible I misunderstood this though!

This is the first book in a trilogy, and I was very pleased that Jemisin gave it a satisfying ending rather than leaving it on a cliffhanger, but left enough questions to make me keen to read the next one when it comes out. Unfortunately, since this was only released a few months ago, I’ve probably got a while to wait! But I will do so, gladly, if the rest of the trilogy turns out to be as good as this first one - and Jemisin has form on that, being the only author to win a Hugo for every book in a trilogy, so I’m very, very excited.

#a book with a map #2020 reading challenge #popsugar reading challenge #the city we became #n. k. jemisin

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2020 Reading Challenge

I’m back! Also very embarrassed about my year and a bit absence, but oh well. I’ve never been very good at consistent blogging! I can say, though, that although I didn’t blog about it, I did complete the 2018 and 2019 challenges, and I started 2020 a while back. Unfortunately, I’m one of those people who found themselves totally unable to focus on reading during the pandemic, and I’ve only just started to get back into it. But anyway, here we go!

2020 POPSUGAR READING CHALLENGE

1. A book that's published in 2020 – 

2. A book by a trans or nonbinary author – 

3. A book with a great first line –

4. A book about a book club – 

5. A book set in a city that has hosted the Olympics – 

6. A bildungsroman – 

7. The first book you touch on a shelf with your eyes closed –

8. A book with an upside-down image on the cover –

9. A book with a map – The City We Became (N.K. Jemisin)

10. A book recommended by your favorite blog, vlog, podcast, or online book club – 

11. An anthology –  

12. A book that passes the Bechdel test – 

13. A book with the same title as a movie or TV show but is unrelated to it – 

14. A book by an author with flora or fauna in their name – 

15. A book about or involving social media – 

16. A book that has a book on the cover – 

17. A medical thriller – 

18. A book with a made-up language – 

19. A book set in a country beginning with "C" – 

20. A book you picked because the title caught your attention – The Brighton Mermaid (Dorothy Koomson)

21. A book published the month of your birthday – 

22. A book about or by a woman in STEM – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot)

23. A book that won an award in 2019 – 

24. A book on a subject you know nothing about – 

25. A book with only words on the cover, no images or graphics – 

26. A book with a pun in the title – The AI Who Loved Me (Alyssa Cole)

27. A book featuring one of the seven deadly sins – 

28. A book with a robot, cyborg, or AI character – 

29. A book with a bird on the cover – 

30. A fiction or nonfiction book about a world leader – 

31. A book with "gold," "silver," or "bronze" in the title – 

32. A book by a WOC –

33. A book with at least a four-star rating on Goodreads – Just Mercy (Bryan Stevenson) 

34. A book you meant to read in 2019 –  

35. A book with a three-word title – 

36. A book with a pink cover – 

37. A Western – 

38. A book by or about a journalist – 

39. Read a banned book during Banned Books Week – 

40. Your favorite prompt from a past POPSUGAR Reading Challenge – 

41. A book written by an author in their 20s – Do You Dream of Terra-Two? (Temi Oh)

42. A book with "20" or "twenty" in the title – 

43. A book with a character with a vision impairment or enhancement (a nod to 20/20 vision) – 

44. A book set in the 1920s – 

45. A book set in Japan, host of the 2020 Olympics – 

46. A book by an author who has written more than 20 books – 

47. A book with more than 20 letters in its title – Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)

48. A book published in the 20th century – 

49. A book from a series with more than 20 books –

50. A book with a main character in their 20s – 

#2020 reading challenge #popsugar reading challenge #books #reading challenge #reading #book reviews #masterlist

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A BOOK BY TWO AUTHORS - THE UNBEATABLE SQUIRREL GIRL: SQUIRREL MEETS WORLD, SHANNON AND DEAN HALE

You might as well give up on your ‘who’s the best superhero’ arguments right here, right now. It’s clearly Marvel’s Squirrel-Girl, half-squirrel, half-girl, here to kick butts and eat nuts!

I’m a big fan of the Squirrel Girl comic book series and have loved reading it over the last few years. So when I heard there was a kids book written by husband and wife team Shannon and Dean Hale, I got very excited and ordered it immediately. In this book, Squirrel Girl (her secret identity is Doreen Green, but don’t tell anyone!) is a teenager, arriving at a new school in a new area and struggling to keep her powers hidden. It’s a familiar theme, but the Squirrel Girl version is funnier and more enjoyable than any version I’ve read so far.

It’s also got some great rep in the form of Ana Sofia, Doreen’s new best friend, who is Deaf and signs as well as lip reading. Ana Sofia is seriously badass, and helps Doreen out with her superhero-ing. Doreen’s family are excellent as well - they’ve made a few appearances in the comics, but because Doreen is 14 here, they’re a lot more present, and they’re a wonderful support system. It’s lovely to read about a superhero with healthy family relationships for once!

There are also cameos from several major Marvel characters, including some hilarious text conversations as Doreen tries to get advice on her predicament from a real life superhero. (Squirrel-Girl’s friendship with Iron Man is my absolute favourite in every format, but the convo with the Winter Soldier might almost have it beat). 

This is a great book which is really filled with the spirit of fun and optimism that is so present in the comics. I’m so glad I read it! 

#a book by two authors #the unbeatable squirrel girl: squirrel meets world #2018 reading challenge #shannon hale #dean hale

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A BOOK MADE INTO A MOVIE YOU’VE ALREADY SEEN - ARRIVAL, TED CHIANG

Arrival is exactly the kind of scifi movie I love. Deeply weird and playing on obscure physics and linguistics, strong and compassionate female character, weird alien races and international politics... I adored it. So obviously I was keen to check out the short story it originated with, Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others. This is the original name of the collection as well as the story itself - it was republished under the new name to coincide with the movie. 

Stories of Your Life and Others didn’t quite do for me what the movie did, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The short story focuses more on physics than linguistics (a blow for me, because physics makes my brain feel like it’s melting). But the format is easier to understand when written than in a film, at least for me. So good and bad points. The ending was not as satisfying but I expected that - I loved the ending of the movie and had already heard it was different in the story.

The other stories in the collection range from a parable about the Tower of Babel, to a man whose intelligence begins to grow rapidly after an experimental treatment, to a world where angels and acts of God are both common and accepted, to Victorian kabbalism. Some I enjoyed more than others, but they were all excellent scifi stories. It was also really nice to read some modern scifi short stories - I spent a lot of time in 2018 reading Asimov for my unread shelf project, and whilst I love his work, it does sometimes feel a bit outdated! Chiang’s scifi is a more modern take, focusing on society and its people rather than the technological developments. Asimov does this too, but to a lesser degree in his short stories. 

All the stories in the collection have very strong scifi concepts at the heart of them. Really, I’m not surprised the film-makers chose the story they did, because it’s probably the easiest to film, which is saying something! Definitely one I’ll hang on to, and possibly reread - I imagine there’s a lot more I can get out of these.

#arrival #story of your life and others #ted chiang #a book made into a movie you've already seen #2018 reading challenge

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A BOOK WITH A FRUIT OR VEGETABLE IN THE TITLE - UNDER THE UDALA TREES, CHINELO OKPARANTA

My two choices for this category were this one and Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit. Funnily enough, they’re both about lesbian relationships. I don’t know if that’s a legacy of Oranges are not the only fruit or if they’re all part of a theme! But the deciding factor for this one was that I hadn’t read a lot of African literature in 2018 and I had read quite a few in the American South.

I didn’t realise it was a historical novel, so that was interesting - I’ve read quite a few books set in Nigeria but very few that were historical. I know very little Nigerian history (some, from a module on African literature at uni, but that was a while ago), so learning about the war was an interesting element to the book. But in the main part, it’s a story about a young woman, Ijeoma, growing up as a lesbian throughout the 60s and onwards. I think this is the first LGBT novel set in Africa that I’ve read, and I really enjoyed it. 

Ijeoma’s first love is Amina, a Muslim Hausa girl, whilst Ijeoma herself is Christian and Igbo. So their relationship is taboo on multiple levels. It’s really fascinating to read about LGBT relationships within different cultural contexts - so far the majority of my reading has been Western, but I want to expand that. I found myself comparing this book with The Miseducation of Cameron Post: despite the fact that the two are very different in most ways, they do have similar elements. Ijeoma and Amina are discovered, with difficult consequences for both of them. They grow up constantly feeling the pull towards one another.

The tidbits about Nigerian history and attitudes to LGBT relationships were really interesting, but I particularly appreciated the treatment of Christianity and Ijeoma’s relationship with God as a gay woman. There is a significant portion of the book dedicated to Ijeoma and her mother’s Bible study as her mother tries to impress on her that her sexuality is bad, but Ijeoma is more than capable of arguing back, and doing so eloquently. I imagine you could argue it’s unrealistic, but given the unending stream of depressing gay novels where characters are steadily ground down by religion and social pressures, it was really heartening to read. 

Ijeoma herself is fiercely determined and utterly unapologetic at times, but she’s not immune to the pressure. She’s a complex and believable character and her heart is the most important part of the novel. This was a really rewarding read and I plan to search out more of Okparanta’s work to check out! 

#a book with a fruit or vegetable in the title #under the udala trees #chinelo okparanta #2018 reading challenge

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A BOOK YOU BORROWED OR WERE GIVEN AS A GIFT - MRS DARCY VERSUS THE ALIENS - JONATHAN PINNOCK

Shout out to my dad for giving me this, because he knows EXACTLY the sort of book I dream about. This came out in about 2011, when Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was taking off and there was a flurry of monster-themed parodies of classics (I’ve also got Jane Slayre to read at some point). It was silly, absurd, and not terribly well written, but I absolutely loved it. There’s so much going on! I really don’t want to spoil it but, essentially, aliens are trying to invade, they can shapeshift and impersonate various characters, and Lydia Wickham has mysteriously disappeared. Lizzie is suspicious of Mr Wickham’s strange behaviour, and doesn’t quite believe that he knows nothing of her sister’s disappearance. Various random characters and places are named after the actors in the different film and TV adaptations. I think the Jack the Ripper cases get solved? Plus they meet Jane Austen herself, there’s some weird stuff at Glastonbury with Lord Byron, and a lot of jokes about wet shirts and Mr Bingley’s bad investments. It was very, very, entertaining. I don’t know if I’ll ever read it again, mind - it’s like reading crack fanfiction. You enjoy it at the time, but when you’re done you’re not quite sure what to think. But I’ll leave you with my favourite line from the prologue, which was the first point at which I giggled aloud (though certainly not the last):

‘“The truth is out there,” he added significantly. “Though it is not yet universally acknowledged.”‘

#mrs darcy versus the aliens #jonathan pinnock #2018 reading challenge #a book you borrowed or were given as a gift

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A BOOK WITH YOUR FAVOURITE COLOUR IN THE TITLE - RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE, ZANE GREY

Westerns really aren’t my genre. Which is weird, because I love scifi and space operas SO much, and the term ‘space opera’ actually originated from ‘horse opera’, which referred to Westerns - scifi began in the old Western pulp magazines. (Yes, I spent so long on my dissertation about scifi that I’m going to seize any available opportunity to lecture people on it. Also, I think it’s really cool). Still, maybe I like the futuristic more than the historical?

This is a classic Western. You have a Mormon village and a young woman being repressed by the religious council. There are mysterious cattle thieves who ride in and make the animals stampede to steal them. Then there’s the lone gunslinger, who hates Mormons and is feared throughout the land.

Except it wasn’t quite like that. The young woman, Jane, was way more empowered than I expected - she lived alone (with servants, mind), and had her own money and her own land and her own cattle. The driving force of the plot is that the local Mormon elders want to bring her in line and stop her offering help to non-Mormons, and they’ll do whatever is necessary to achieve this. The lone gunslinger is out to discover what happened to his lost sister. And there’s another fascinating female character, who is sadly less developed, and whose identity I won’t spoil because it’s a bit of a twist (probably more of a twist at the time it was written, but still unexpected). Some of the plot was a bit generic, but honestly it was far less than I was expecting. In all, I was surprised to discover it was a book that was really about strong women surviving in spite of what the men around them do.

The landscape described sounds beautiful, but I found I just couldn’t quite picture it in my head. Probably because it’s so far away from the damp fields of England! But, whilst it took me a while to get into, I did find myself really enjoying this book. Maybe I ought to give a few more Westerns a go!

#a book with your favourite colour in the title #riders of the purple sage #zane grey #2018 reading challenge

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A BOOK BY AN AUTHOR WITH THE SAME FIRST OR LAST NAME AS YOU - THE THIEF, MEGAN WHALEN TURNER

I’d never heard of these books until I started looking for this category and found a lot of people absolutely raving about the series. It wasn’t until I picked it up from the library that I realised it’s actually a kid’s book, but that’s like, the opposite of a problem. 

Gen, a thief, has been clapped in irons for stealing from the King of Sounis. But he’s offered the chance for freedom if he steals a legendary object from the neighbouring country for the King. 

I have to be honest, it wasn’t what I was expecting. I suspect things amp up a bit in the later books, since everyone seems to be very exciting about the upcoming next instalment. I really liked the mythology and folklore side of things, and how the setting seemed inspired by ancient Greece and other contemporaneous civilisations. Gen was a great character - full of sarcasm and anger, but also humour. 

The twist at the end definitely caught me by surprise, I knew there had to be something coming but I didn’t expect that! I am still kind of intrigued to find out what happens in the later books, but they’re pretty difficult to get hold of without using Amazon, so we shall see.

#2018 reading challenge #the thief #megan whalen turner #a book by an author with the same first or last name as you

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A CYBERPUNK BOOK - EMPTY ZONE, JASON SHAWN ALEXANDER

I really thought this would be an easy category, given my love of scifi, but it wasn’t! Ironically my first read of 2019 was a cyberpunk book which would’ve been great for this but I didn’t realise in time to bump it up my list. Oh well.

Empty Zone is a comic which doesn’t seem to have got off the ground - there are only ten issues, in two five-part arcs. It’s a shame, because the concepts are very interesting and develop the best tropes of cyberpunk: female mercenary with cyber protheses, weird genetic alterations, loss of memory due to digital interference, and even cyberpunk zombies. They’re all classic, but they just didn’t feel like they quite reached where they were meant to be going. This is partly because it’s clearly unfinished - I assume it just didn’t get the readers it needed to be continued - but also partly due to the style. It just lacked the kind of clean storytelling something as tightly plotted as this needs. I’ve read a lot of comics, I can’t claim to know much about writing them, but whilst my dislike of the art style in this one was more of an aesthetic difference, I just felt like the way the comic was structured didn’t serve an effective purpose for plot. It was a lot of cyberpunk art, some of it pin-ups, which was just... not what I was after. I guess cyberpunk is a difficult genre to get right, and unfortunately, as in this case, it’s just so easy to get wrong.

#a cyberpunk book #jason shawn alexander #empty zone #2018 reading challenge

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A BOOK MENTIONED IN ANOTHER BOOK - THE FIRE NEXT TIME, JAMES BALDWIN

This is a potent, fiery book which unfortunately seems just as relevant today as it was when it was written. Mentioned in Americanah and Normal People, both of which I read this year, so I thought it was kind of weird that I hadn’t come across it before. Also, it was nice and short, and I really needed quick books to finish off the 2018 challenge. But despite the lack of length, Baldwin never pulls his punches and there’s a real sense of anger and determination behind the words. The Fire Next Time is made up of two letters - one from Baldwin to his nephew, the other to the American public on the occasion of the bicentenary of independence. He considers how much has changed in American society, but also how much things haven’t changed. There’s some really interesting historical stuff, but also a lot that reads like it was written last week. Very glad I picked this one to read and didn’t go with The Mysteries of Udolpho, which was my other choice!

#a book mentioned in another book #the fire next time #james baldwin #2018 reading challenge

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A BOOK ABOUT DEATH OR GRIEF - HOGFATHER, TERRY PRATCHETT

Although I’m only working my way through the Discworld books slowly, I’m enjoying every moment of them. Sir Terry’s world shines through constantly, and his characterisation of Death in particular is one of my favourites. I think the only other Death I like as much is the one who narrates The Book Thief. So yes, I’m perhaps not interpreting this prompt in the spirit it was intended, but it’s my challenge, so I don’t really care. I wanted to read something festive!

I think the last book I read in Discworld was Small Gods, which is book #13. I made the mistake of starting with book #1, the avoidance of which is the only thing avid fans can agree on when it comes to reading order. But it didn’t put me off (perhaps because I’ve read a few fantasy novels of the style it parodies), and I’ve kept going, although I’m beginning to jump around. Before Small Gods I read Guards! Guards! which is #8, and before that I think I got up to Sourcery, #5. But luckily Hogfather works perfectly as a standalone story, and I didn’t feel lost at all.

Hogswatch is the Disc’s version of Christmas, but this year something has changed. The Fat Man, the Hogfather, is rather more skeletal than usual, and speaking in capital letters, and his assistant isn’t exactly an elf. Susan Sto-Helit, Death’s granddaughter, wants to get to the bottom of it all, if only so she can go back to living a reasonably normal life.

Susan’s a great character - I loved that Pratchett didn’t care at all that she’s only Death’s granddaughter through adoption, and she’s inherited some of Death’s abilities through nurture over nature. She’s practical, entertaining and believable, and doesn’t take flack from anyone. 

Pratchett’s storytelling is at times wickedly pointed, joyfully tender, and affectionately mocking, as he takes aim at the Christmas season. He points out the festivals pagan origins and questions why it’s really important. What does belief in the Hogfather really matter? There are a lot of different answers spread throughout the book, but Pratchett never fails to satisfy when it comes to existential questions. This book also contains one of the best descriptions of humanity I’ve ever come across - ‘the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape’. I think it’s a quote that shows both how well Sir Terry understood the human condition, and how wonderful a writer he was. I’m glad I’m reading these books for the first time, because I think they’ll be favourites for the rest of my life.

Happy holidays to you all!

#2018 reading challenge #a book about death or grief #hogfather #Terry Pratchett

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A BOOK WITH AN UGLY COVER - BALOOK, PIERS ANTHONY

I keep trying to embed a picture of this book’s cover into this post, and whenever I manage it, the website crashes. Thanks, Tumblr. So if you’re curious, you’ll have to go google it, but it’s just ugly design and poor quality art. My standards are pretty low but if you’re going to write a book about a prehistoric creature recreated through genetic manipulation, you could at least provide a proper scifi pulp cover to go with it. But no, we get ugly box pictures instead. 

The story wasn’t much to write home about, either. Balook is a giant rhinoceros type creature  - don’t ask me what, specifically, I read it a while ago and I’m not going back in - who has been recreated through experimentation. The main character, a boy who befriended Balook as a child, has an interesting background but quickly becomes obnoxious and selfish. Pretty much the only key moment I remember from the book is when Balook stampedes and accidentally kills a child. The boy considers this everyone’s fault except his or Balook’s, and is utterly cold-hearted about it. I can buy a bratty kid, but not total lack of sympathy, and it really threw me off and turned ‘huh, not sure about this protagonist’ into ‘what a horrible person’. The female character is a stereotype and her relationship with the boy (yes, I can’t remember his name either) is just kind of expected. It has a great premise but falls utterly flat, and when I read the afterword, it was with no great surprise I found that this had been the author’s pet project for years and he could never get it published. Take a hint, mate. 

I guess what riles me up the most about this book is the wasted potential. The prehistoric creatures coming back to life trope is the gift that keeps on giving - just look at Jurassic Park! And this one is actually a variation that I haven’t seen before. But no. In all fairness it’s a kid’s book and I’m reading with adult eyes, but I highly doubt I would’ve enjoyed it much as a child, either. There are much better books out there, and they probably have a better cover design, too.

#a book with an ugly cover #balook #piers anthony #2018 reading challenge

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A BOOK SET IN THE DECADE YOU WERE BORN - THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST, EMILY M. DANFORTH

Because of the way this book was marketed as being like Love, Simon and other feel-good LGBT teen novels, I went into it with the wrong impression. I found it heavy going at first, thinking it was taking too long to get to the meaty part of the story. I was wrong, but that was because I misunderstood the nature of this book. It’s not a flash in the pan, feel-good romance and coming out novel. It’s a meditation on identity, love, and loss, and although Cameron’s queerness is the driving force of the plot, it’s not the point of the book. To be honest, I didn’t really understand this until the end.

Cameron knows she’s gay from a pretty early age. But her parents die in a car crash just hours after she has her first kiss with a girl, and the trauma of this settles into her and makes her believe that she brought about their deaths. This is described matter-of-factly, as are all Cameron’s experiences from this point. She’s brought up by her grandmother and her aunt Ruth, a born-again Christian (you can see where this is going). She falls in love with a girl from school and church, and is, to quote the blurb, ‘unceremoniously outed’. Her aunt promptly packs her off to a gay conversion camp.

As someone who grew up outside America, and only realised I was bi in my twenties, I felt like I was a bit of an outsider when it came to Cameron’s experiences. Reading about her thoughts and feelings towards her identity was terribly sad - the other reason I struggled to get through the first section of the book was because I just wanted someone to give the poor kid a hug and tell her it was okay. I did grow up in a Catholic community, though, so I’m very familiar with the kind of chirpy Christian goodwill that manifests itself in deliberate suppression of identity. None of my communities ever focused much on gayness, though, so I’ve never encountered that level of hatred. (If you’re curious, I’m still Catholic, just not a very good one - I take just about everything with a pinch of salt these days). 

The stories of the other teens at the camp were utterly heartbreaking, too, and I was terribly frustrated and angry reading it. Knowing that it’s based on fact only made it worse. But the gradual friendship growing between Cameron, Adam, and Jane summoned up a lot of nostalgia, despite my teenage years being a decade later, and ultimately the ending filled me with hope. 

Considering this is a book set over twenty years ago, it’s depressing how little has changed. But things do, eventually, get better, and even though I usually prefer a happy ending that ties up all the loose ends, it feels more realistic for a book like this to finish on the note it did.

#a book set in the decade you were born #the miseducation of cameron post #emily m. danforth #2018 reading challenge

[starryshelf]

A BOOK THAT WAS BEING READ BY A STRANGER IN A PUBLIC PLACE - HOLDING UP THE UNIVERSE, JENNIFER NIVEN

Shout out to the guy in Waterstones cafe reading this book - as I get increasingly panicked towards the end of the year, you saved me from having to read Philippa Gregory’s Wideacre (I’m sure it’s good, but it’s over 600 pages), or Philip Pullman’s Daemon Voices (also probably good, but very long and non-fiction). I’m sure I must’ve seen more people than this reading in public, but maybe I just didn’t register it, or get close enough to see what they were reading. It’s surprisingly difficult to fulfil this prompt if you’re not in a city with a tube/subway system, or else using the train regularly - people don’t often read on buses. Last year, I recall seeing loads of women reading The Power on public transport, but not this time. Also I wasn’t paying attention the billion times I visited the library, which would also, technically have counted.

The book itself didn’t do a lot for me. There wasn’t anything objectively wrong with it, but it just seemed to not be terribly original. I liked having a mixed race love interest (and some brief discussions of the problems his prosopagnosia could cause combined with that). Weirdly, this isn’t the only book I’ve read for this challenge which mentioned prosopagnosia - it popped up in Arrival as well (Still to be reviewed). 

Having a fat female protagonist was great, but I happened to read Dumplin’ earlier this year, which I felt did far better with the same concept. I related to Willowdean a lot more than I did to Libby. It also all seemed a little simplistic, plot-wise, although maybe that’s the effect of reading it immediately after the Six of Crows duology, with its twisty plots. But I felt there wasn’t a lot of buildup in Libby and Jack’s relationship, nor were there many major challenges for them to overcome, and I didn’t really feel the chemistry between them, or between any other characters. So all in all, a reasonable book, but not a particularly great one.

#a book that was being read by a stranger in a public place #holding up the universe #jennifer niven #2018 reading challenge

[starryshelf]

A BOOK ABOUT A PROBLEM FACING SOCIETY TODAY - THE ACCUSATION, BANDI

This is a difficult book to review. What can I possibly compare it to? The Accusation is a collection of short stories set in North Korea, written by someone still living in North Korea, and smuggled out with a relative. The biographical section in the back contains information that we are told has been altered to protect his identity. It’s an incredibly important book, and absolutely radical and terrifying.

The North Korea Bandi writes about isn’t the North Korea of the last decade or two, the one we’re all familiar with thanks to current leadership, but earlier, in the 80s and 90s. The closest thing the stories reminded me of are the memoirs and books I’ve read set in the USSR, or East Germany, or Nazi Germany. The world they evoke is one where on the surface things seem good, but scrape off even a tiny bit of veneer and you’ll find the wrongness and rot beneath. 

In the very first story, a man thinks his wife is betraying him, only to find out she is instead being blackmailed with his own family’s history as party traitors. In another, an old woman and her husband and grandchild are forced to wait at a train station for days whilst the Leader travels, shutting down both roads and rails. Another features a family who’s young son bursts into sobs of terror at the site of the faces of Karl Marx and the country’s leader. They’re all upsetting and deeply unsettling, seething with repressed rage at the unfairness of it all. They vividly evoke what it’s like to live under a Communist regime, but at the same time, the world they describe is so far from what we know, it just doesn’t quite compute.

Yeah. I don’t know what to say, other than that this is an extraordinarily important book and you should all read it.

#the accusation #bandi #2018 reading challenge #a book about a problem facing society today

[starryshelf]

A BOOK INVOLVING A HEIST - SIX OF CROWS, LEIGH BARDUGO

I heard so much good stuff about this duology that I bought it last Christmas, even before I’d read the original Grisha trilogy. I’ve gradually made my way through those over the year, and finally, finally, got to read this one. 

I worry a bit when I read a book that’s been built up so much. I didn’t need to here. Within about fifty pages I was absolutely attached to Kaz Brekker, and it didn’t take long for me to build an investment with the rest of the team. But Kaz and Inej are my favourites. 

Ketterdam is a city with huge personality, and those are difficult to create, particularly in a fantasy setting. I only know a little about Amsterdam in the sort of period we’re looking at, just as I only know a little about Russia when I read about Ravka. But it was all magnificently brought to life. The description is incredibly detailed and effective. (One of my little pleasures when reading Leigh Bardugo’s books is to try and figure out which fantasy settings are based on which real-world settings. Some of them are obvious, but I’m still stuck on others!) 

The Dregs themselves won my heart completely, but none more so than Kaz. They’re all damaged and angry, but they made me laugh and cry in equal measure. I did feel a bit like they sounded older than they’re supposed to be, but I think that’s always going to be the case in YA adventure books. I’m old enough now that there’s always an undercurrent of ‘please give these children a break’!

The actual heist was deeply satisfying, particularly now I’ve also read Crooked Kingdom and got relief from the cliffhanger. I love a good heist, particularly one against seemingly impossible odds and with an emotional investment. Watching old episodes of Hustle is a bit of a guilty pleasure some evenings. Kaz makes a perfect leader, always six steps ahead of everyone else, but damaged enough that you never quite believe he’ll pull it off. 

I enjoyed the nods to the happenings in the original trilogy (and more than nods in Crooked Kingdom) - it really helped tie the worlds together when the characters in the two series couldn’t really be more far apart (a street gang and a military leader worshipped as a saint). But to be honest, I liked these books far better than Shadow and Bone and the others. The characters, the setting, and the story itself were just far more interesting to me, and I absolutely loved it.

#a book involving a heist #six of crows #leigh bardugo #2018 reading challenge