Gonna Regret This

As you may know or have gathered, my to-read list is out of control.  And based on the way I acquire books, it's pretty outrageous.  There are literally hundreds of unread books on my kindle.  I currently  have a dozen novels out from the library in print, not counting the comics or the "chapter books" to read to my son.  My Goodreads to-read is over 1300 books long--and I have a B-list consisting of another 1500 books.  If writers stopped writing tomorrow, I'd still be set for life.

But the length of this list means that things I am incredibly excited to read and have been pushed at me for ages never percolate to the top.  And it kind of kills me, especially when my friends are all reading books that I recommended and I haven't read their recommendations yet.

So I'm going to try something.  I'm usually reading a bunch of books at a time, and sometimes I manage the load by assigning a slot to a specific category.  I'm usually reading at least one ARC and one library book at a time, even while I'm reading other things.

New category: recommendations!  One at a time, of course; I will take more suggestions as I go, but one from each person should make a short list that I can use while still balancing the types of books with other things I'm reading.

My plan to start off:

Welcome to the God Damn Ice Cube, by Blair Braverman. After seeing the excellent play Franklin this weekend (doomed Arctic expeditions for the win!), I'm about to enter a spell of novels about freezing to death or nearly so, and this memoir is where I'll start. It's about a woman who unexpectedly finds herself living in and falling in love with the Arctic and becoming an accomplished sled dog racer.  Recommender: Lily.

A Darker Shade of Magic, by V.E. Schwab. There are actually a ton of Schwab books that I want to read, but this is the beginning of a trilogy that just ended, and two separate people have called it a Must Read.  When the person who pushed me to read Fifth Season says a book is amazing, I take her word for it.  Recommenders: Sarah and Elizabeth. (Two for one!)

That's actually all I've queued up so far--not really much of a list.  BUT: I would like to solicit choices from the other book recommenders in my life, especially the ones that I've been ignoring for so long.  Brenda, Curse of the Chalion, do you think? Or do you have another vote? You moved a bunch of stuff to the front page of my kindle a few weeks ago. Lianna, which of your favorites have I forgotten? Linden, do you want to put a pick on the table?

Now that I think about it, this reminds me of the Forcening, an event on the Reading the End podcast where each Jenny picks a book that she's wanted to the other to read and they read it together.  (Damn I love that podcast.)  So, help me, friends! Bring on the Forcening!

Prequelization

I was drawn to Brother's Ruin, by Emma Newman, when I saw it on Netgalley, partially because of the premise, but mostly, I'll admit, because her book Planetfall got such great reviews, but I never got a chance to read it. So hey, I thought, I'll get out ahead of this new one!  But I have to say, I think this was the wrong place to start.

I'm on this novella kick lately, partially because I like the size--you know it's going to be a quick, tight story, but not in the spare fashion of a short story.  I just don't think I'm a short story person--I always want all the details laid out for me. No, when I want short, I want a novella, but sometimes that falls short of what I'm looking for.

The premise here is promising--Charlotte is a young woman who is happily engaged and becoming quite successful in her work as an illustrator (under a pseudonym, of course, because it would not be respectable for a young woman to have a career).  Her brother, with whom she's very close, suffers from ill health, so her income, in addition to those of her parents, helps keep the family afloat.

When her brother begins to suspect he has magical abilities, it looks like it might be the family's financial salvation; though magical training is compulsory for anyone with talent, their families are generously compensated.  But bringing the testers around endangers Charlotte in a way her family doesn't know--she's been hiding her own magical abilities to avoid having to give up her fiance and career. 

Now she has to make sure her brother passes his tests while keeping herself hidden--and uncovering complicating secrets about the politics of the city's maguses.

(Is maguses a word? Let's roll with it.)

So there's my back cover copy.  I have to say, a lot of this book is like a breath of fresh air.  Charlotte frequently considers keeping secrets the way people in books do to keep the plot moving forward, then blurts out what she was thinking anyway.  First, I find this relatable; second, it prevents Plot By Unnecessary Withholding, which I'm pretty much done with.

I loved how close Charlotte was with her family, and I thought this book did the best job I've read in a long time setting up why someone with special powers might not want to seize hold of the opportunities that come with them.  I've always been kind of skeptical of "I just want to be ordinary" as a beginning and end to a person's motivation. But the things Charlotte has to lose are laid out quite well here, and the mystery and possible discomfort that would come with the opportunity are made pretty obvious.  The premise felt grounded in a way that a lot of similar stories don't.

The drawback here is the pacing, I think.  There's too much setup, and then it ends all in a rush.  This actually felt like the first third of a book, and it should have continued into Part 2, rather than ending itself.  From the broader pacing (I was shocked to realize that I was closing in on the end, and that they were going to wrap everything up in what felt like just a few pages) to the scene-by-scene details (the domestic descriptions were important to evoke what Charlotte's life is really like, but there was just SO MUCH time spent on the family getting the house ready for fancy guests), the pacing felt off. 

As the first third of a novel, this worked swimmingly, and I will definitely read what comes next (because oh yes, this is just the setup for a bigger story).  But I was pretty disappointed to get to the end--not in an eager to move on way, but in a "that's all there is?" kind of way.  A sad feeling to be left with, even if it's a good problem to have.

(Thanks to Netgalley for the free copy for review.)

On the Rails

We had book club today, talking about The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead.  It's the first book I've ever read by Whitehead, and it was really an incredible book--painful and exhilarating and pretty explicitly a work of genius.

Unfortunately, I don't even feel remotely qualified to do a reader's guide for this one. It's just too...big? raw? intimate? It's a lot of these things, but most of all I'd say it's brilliantly structured.

Cora is a slave on a plantation in the South, which is pretty horrifying, as you might imagine.  Her mother escaped when Cora was young, leaving her on her own in a horrible situation and now, many  years later, Cora takes thee opportunity to run. She travels with another escaped slave, Caesar, on the Underground Railroad. In her travels, she sees different parts of the country and the different situations of black people.

It's kind of a Pilgrim's Progress of horrors. Magical realism isn't quite the right term, but there is the feel of a fairy tale or a parable about this. The first clue is the actual railroad that runs underground, on which Cora makes her escape.  It's not really dreamlike, not the way I expect magical realism to be.  It's actually much more realistic--different stations in different states of repair, and the characters wonder over who built it and how it works.

But it's also both ends of a metaphor--the railroad and the mysterious connection going to no one knows where. And at every point in the journey, each stop takes you on a tour through a lot of the horrifying things that have been done to black Americans through history. It's not literally an antebellum landscape--we get a glimpse of the Tuskegee experiments, of Jim Crow sundown laws (only worse, so much worse), of all kinds of horrors in all kinds of guises. 

Cora is an interesting protagonist--she's prickly and not terribly personable, and she's not an adventurous person.  Although she does several heroic things, she's not a hero.  I'm reminded of Sansa Stark--when you read a story about great injustice, you expect your protagonist to rise up and vanquish it.  But really, if the world was full of heroes there'd be a lot less injustice, and the most a person can often hope for is to survive and not be to horribly damaged by the journey.

Okay, I do have a couple of talking points, in case you have a book group of your own.  Here are my questions.

1. What did you think of the interstitial chapters, where you get glimpses of other characters' back stories?  Did you feel like they fit together with each other?  They seemed to serve many different purposes; did they have anything in common?

2. What did you think of Ridgeway? Did he feel like a real person, or like an archetype of a slave hunter?  He stood for the institution--indifferent and implacable.  How did he work as a human being.  And, corollary, how did the character of Homer work for you, as an archetype/stereotype and as a person?

3. This is the worst question, but which state was the most horrifying to you?  Which atrocity struck you hardest.  I was surprised at the different answers in our group.

4. What did you think of the ending, both as a symbolic ending to the journey and as a place to stop the narrative?  What do you think would come next--or maybe I mean what would be the logical next place for this story to go?

Discussing in book club, we kept saying "so depressing, horrifying."  But the fact is that it was a beautiful book to read.  It was horrifying, but it also gave you enough space among the horrors to catch your breath and appreciate the storytelling that was going on here, and the craftsmanship that takes on the enormity of an historic experience and shapes it for a modern audience in a most accessible way.

Binti

Nnedi Okorafor is an author I've been meaning to read for a long time.  I used the excuse of my Black History month reading goals to pick up a few of her books, so I ended up reading the novella Binti and its sequel, Binti: Home very close together.

Binti got a lot of glowing reviews when it first came out, and I can absolutely understand why. Binti herself is such a lovable character--brave, smart, headstrong, and loyal. She's been accepted to the best university in the known galaxy, Oomza Uni. She's not the first human to go, but most people who travel are Khoush, while Binti is Himba. She's the first member of her community to travel off planet, and she pretty much has to sneak away.

On the ship to the university, though, the ship is attacked by the Meduse, a race with a feud against the Khoush. Binti survives, but she has to use every resource she has to stay alive and prevent a war.

The great parts of this book were the details about Binti and the people she meets.  Her connection to her people, the clay she wears on her skin, the mathematical skills she has--these details are lovely.  I got confused, though, when the ship was attacked and the plot started hinging on a random object she had in her pocket--a trinket she found in the desert years ago and carried for good luck, but that also turned out to have magic? technological? properties that saved her life.  I don't know if it counts as deus ex machina if it happens in the beginning of the story instead of the end, but it threw me off my stride, and it left me stumbling for the rest of the story.

In the second book, Home, Binti has been studying at Oomza University for almost a year and decides she wants to visit home, along with a new friend.  This is a fraught decision, because her family does not approve of her leaving, and her friend is from a race that has been at war with humans (Khoush, not Himba, but isn't a human a human?) for ages.

Again, I started off confused, because Binti was being hit by waves of anger that seem to come from nowhere, and also maybe an empathic connection that lets her know what her friend is feeling when it's far away. This part seemed very disjointed and unconnected from the narrative; I wasn't quite sure what it meant, either what it was describing or what that implied. 

Anyway, though, the next part of the story is really lovely and powerful as Binti undertakes the second space journey of her life.  Since the first one ended in terrible violence that has haunted her, the middle part of this story is a powerful recounting of facing trauma. I especially loved that it didn't have any easy answers; sometimes things are hard and sometimes they're easier, and she takes care of herself and feels a little better and maybe will continue to get better.  It's a very realistic sense of fallout from the previous story and I admire that a great deal.

Then at home, there are some really lovely family relationships to explore.  Again, the strength here is that nothing is black and white--her family loves her and is angry that she left.  Binti wants to belong and doesn't quite anymore. By leaving, she has become something different, something that their society doesn't have a place for, and it's not a simple thing to deal with that.  The nuances of how the different characters handle this and react to the changes in Binti--everything from her new friend to the different clothes she wears--are well-observed and generous, even to those who behave the worst.

There are further plot developments that seem to come out of nowhere--people and legends who come up in the middle of the book and turn out to have been a part of her history all along--that I found a bit confusing from a narrative perspective.  But I think that this is a different style of storytelling, with less of a through arc and more of an emotional arc.  I'm still wrestling with how to read it right.

There is so much to love here--the representation, the cultures, and the diversity that Okorafor brings to her universe.  And the depictions of complicated family bonds, and how it's not always possible for everyone to get what they want, is something I've always wished someone would depict in this way. I'm not sure I've found my footing on these books, but I can tell you that when the next one comes out (because warning: cliffhanger!), I will be picking it up instantly.

Death By Therapy; Therapy By Death

I'm so behind on my ARC reviews, guys.  Another by-product of the cold that won't quit.  But I want to tell you about all this stuff, even if it's no longer in advance!

Seanan McGuire produces novellas at a thrilling rate, and I've been digging novellas lately.  I got Final Girls by Mira Grant (McGuire's more horror-ish pen name) from Netgalley for review recently after reading and loving Every Heart a Doorway.

The premise is the real draw here, and I think it kind of stands in for my feelings about the whole book. Esther is a skeptical reporter who's doing an investigation of a new type of therapy. This therapy, invented by Dr. Jennifer Webb, involves a complete virtual reality simulation of a novel trauma experience--basically, you get into a VR tank and have a completely convincing experience of living through a horror movie.  It seems like mostly the therapy is being used to heal very damaged personal relationships--by surviving a carefully controlled horrible experience, two sisters, or a father and son,  or whoever, can get over long-term feelings of antipathy to have a positive relationship going forward.

This brings up a LOT of questions, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Esther is skeptical because the therapy is a little too reminiscent of repressed memory therapy, which of course has been thoroughly debunked, but not before it ruined her father's life.

More questions, but give me a second.

During a demonstration, there are complications, and there you have most of the plot.

So there are three central stories being told here. The two that comprise most of the book are the story of the illusion--Esther and Jennifer, growing up together and encountering evil--and the violent story playing out at the clinic that sends the inside story spiraling out of control.  The framing story--Esther investigating this new therapy--might not even be worth counting as its own, but I actually found it one of the most interesting ones, especially from a worldbuilding perspective.

Because the new therapy was just meant to set up the story, but it raises SOOOOO many questions.  I'm not even worried about the scientific issues, like the fact that they can control dreams with drugs or see what's going on in the dreams with monitors (though that at least gets a nod in the story).  I'm talking about the viability of this business.  Like, you have a fully immersive VR system--one in which the subject has no idea the experience is not real--and your go-to application is...this?

Actually, I guess I think therapy is a good first application here, but therapy specifically based around healing relationships by inducing a shared trauma experience just seems...unlikely.  How many people have relationships in their lives that involve deep antipathy and a desire on both sides to get rid of that antipathy?  And are those the people who are trying expensive, cutting edge therapeutic technologies?  Are they really the ones who are being failed by talk therapy?

It just seems like a campy level of setup for an otherwise kind of serious story.  Like, I would expect this to be the premise of a very cheap, B-grade horror story, the kind that winks at you with its own silliness. The kind that is a movie on Spike TV. (Though now that I think about it, they actually made this movie and it was anything but cheap.)

I also found Esther's conflation of this with recovered memory therapy to be kind of spurious.  I mean, this is kind of the opposite--it's creating new, purposefully false memories. I could see a whole host of problems with it, but none of them are the ones Esther's looking for.

As horror novels go, it was engrossing and kept you wondering what would happen.  I really did enjoy reading it.  But what I walked away with were questions--so many questions, and not ones the story gave me a lead on. 

Also, would you ever go into an immersive virtual reality experience? Would it make a difference if you would know inside the story that it wasn't real?  I think my answer might be no, but I'd like to know yours.

Black History Month, Retrospectively

Two things about February: Black History Month, and the cold that wouldn't die.  This means that I have been reading a bunch of great books by black authors, and that I haven't been blogging about them. And now I'm in that place where the backlog of amazing books is intimidating.

So, in the interest of taking the job in bite sized pieces, let's do a run down of my February reading list.  My policy was to only start books by black authors in February, and I got some great ones in.

I read Nnedi Okorafor's novellas Binti and Binti: Home, which have gotten great reviews.  I didn't love the first one as much as everyone else did, but I thought the sequel was exciting and much stronger.

I also started the audio book Okorafor's The Book of Phoenix, which I'm still in the middle of. I liked the first part very much, but I'm not clear on where the story's going, and I'm wondering if Nnedi Okorafor just might not be a writer for me. Her manner of storytelling is very fairy tail-like, and I'm not actually that big a fan of fairy tales and mythology.

In February I also finished N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season, which we read for book club at work.  Not a lot of people managed to finish it--it's dense and DEEPLY world-buildy--but it was incredible.  Seriously, an unbelievable masterwork of storytelling. I am now creeping my way up the library's infinitely long waiting list for the sequel, The Obelisk Gate.

Just yesterday I finished Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, which has been getting a ton of buzz, and for good reason.  This is an incredible book and will win many prizes, I think. We'll meet for book club next week and I hope I can do a list of question after that.

Also a lovely book: Brit Bennett's The Mothers.  This is exactly the kind of book I say I don't like--it's pure literary fiction, a story of the closely observed lives of a young woman and the people around her in the wake of her mother's suicide.  The story centers around a church, and how the pain of many people can interact in so many ways.  It's sad and sweet and so, so lovely.

I also started and am still reading both Tiny, Pretty Things (Jenny: murder bunheads!), by Dhonielle Clayton and Sona Charaipotra, and You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain, by Phoebe Robinson.

February has been a really terrible month for my body but an incredible month for my mind.  Hopefully now that we're deep in March, I can get back to telling you all about the latter!

Post-Hamilton Post

It was amazing. It was glorious.  It was just what you want it to be.  The music that I know by heart, the same, but with enough subtle changes to make every bit worth listening to. The dancing was amazing--just the dance alone would have been an incredible show.  The acting was such fun to watch, and there are so many details in action and expression that it brought a whole new level to how wonderful the album already is.

Absolutely delightful.

And now I have a cold, thanks NYC, so back to our regularly scheduled posts next week!

This Hiatus Brought To You By....

Hamilton!

That's right, no bookish post today because I'm on Broadway, baby, with the hottest ticket in town in my hot little hands.  Full report to come!

In the meantime:

I Heart Patreon

I have a million more reviews I need to write, but I've wanted for a while to do a post about Patreon.

I love Patreon. I love being able to give money to creators I love, especially those whose product is online, or sporadic, or whom I consume through the library and don't pay directly.  I love the idea that I can pay a small amount for something I value online.  For the most part, if you're in my blog reader and you have a Patreon, I am very happy to be giving you money.

So who do I support?

Webcomics!

Tom Siddell's Gunnerkrigg Court is the big one; he was the first one I sponsored, and it was so exciting to see that he is making about the same amount from his Patreon per month as I am at my job. (That equates to less after taxes and fees, but either way, he's making a living wage from his art.)  I find this incredibly inspirational.  I will say that he is a complete professional--his posting schedule is like clockwork and I don't think he's ever missed a post.  I really hope he's living the dream as much as I imagine he is.

I also support Ngozi Ukazu's Check, Please!, which is insanely popular and another one that's making her a full time living. I support this one at a lower level, partly because there are WAY fewer updates. She does maintain an active Twitter feed for the characters and posts sketches pretty regularly, but the fact is that I don't follow all those (and actually find a lot of the supplemental material hard to navigate). But the comic is amazing and worth my money, so by gum she gets my cash.

Drew Weing writes The Creepy Casefiles of Margo Maloo, which I don't even remember how I found.  I got in on the ground floor of that one, though; I read the first couple of pages and it seemed to have potential, so I figured I'd give him some money and see where it went.  It's a good comic, and I feel like I'm watching the mythology get richer and the story get better as he goes.

Bloggers.

I am a complete sucker for an advice column; most of the ones I read are in newspapers (I pay for an online subscription to the Washington Post because of Carolyn Hax), but I've been reading Captain Awkward forever. I actually emailed her once and suggested she open a Patreon so I could sponsor her; I don't flatter myself that that's how it happened, but I'm glad it did.

Siderea is a blogger I learned about specifically because her sponsorship model is a bit unusual; it's per post, rather than per month.  If she posts, you pay; if not, you don't.  She actually posts small, casual posts at a fairly normal rate, but her long, carefully researched analytical posts are incredible and totally worth the money.  I've read her nearly-novella-length exegesis of the first part of Watership Down several times. She's been writing a lot about politics lately, and her realism and pragmatism are very reassuring to me.

I've been reading the Lady Business blog for a while; they just started their Patreon and it hasn't got a ton of momentum yet, but I'm glad to sponsor it.  They are a go-to source for feminist geekery, and where I get most of my non-Buffy fanfic recommendations, as well as a lot of great, in-depth recommendations for TV, movies, and books that are directly up my alley.

Creators.

There are a few artists who aren't producing anything special, but whose work I love so much that I sponsor them in a small way just so they'll keep creating things for me to read.  There's Ursula Vernon, on whom I've gushed in the past, and Linda Medley, whose Castle Waiting is so wonderful that it's worth the years of waiting and paying for in the interim.

I actually don't sponsor any podcasts yet; I've only recently become a real podcast listener, and some of my favorites aren't sponsored (Gin Jenny, Whiskey Jenny, I would sponsor you!). Ursula Vernon has podcasts; I already give her money.  But I've also been listening to StoryWonk's Dusted (Buffy podcast) and I've got a whole bunch of things that I want to try an episode of--when I get my lineup lined up, I'm probably going to add some podcasters to this list.

I love Patreon.  I love that I can be a small part of something that can make a big difference together. I love the idea of the artists whose work I value making a living doing what they love.  Patreon is something I'm so glad exists, because this is exactly how I want to be spending my money.

Quick Review: Comeback!

I read a bunch of books over the holidays this year that I haven't had a chance to review yet, but I lurved them and want to share the glory with you. So: a series of brief review posts!

Do you remember Trouble Is a Friend of Mine? Remember how much I loved it?  (A lot. The amount was a lot.) The sequel came out!  I had pre-ordered it, which is a thing that I do not do, ever.  And I read it.  Right away.  This is unprecedented; I never read the books I buy.

Once again, I was in no way disappointed.  Trouble Makes a Comeback is great in all the best ways.  It's also preposterous, melodramatic, and convoluted, but you just can't care with Zoe and Digby and Sloane and Henry and Felix tooling around town, going up against drug dealers small and large, enormous corporate conspiracies, and the high school football team. 

Digby's back, but Zoe's settled into a normal life and maybe knows better than to get involved with his brand of crazy again (also, why didn't he call?).  She has a boyfriend and besties and is totally normal, and Digby is trying to drag her straight into his investigation...but how can she resist? Everything is more interesting with Digby around.

And more dangerous.  The stakes are higher this time around--in the first book, there's a sense at first that this could all be a bit overblown and mostly in Digby's head.  But here, we are learning that everything in the first book is the tip of the iceberg. 

And I really loved that, while there was definitely romantic tension in this book, that is not even remotely the main basis of this relationship.  I don't even know if you call this a slow burn--this is a book full of sparks, but with people who have more important things to do than obsess over romance.

There will definitely be a third--the end was practically a cliffhanger--and as soon as they announce it I'm ordering it.  Can't waaaaaaaaait.  Stephanie Tromly, you're awesome. Write more books!

Quick Review: Diabolical!

I read a bunch of books over the holidays this year that I haven't had a chance to review yet, but I lurved them and want to share the glory with you. So: a series of brief review posts!

I really wanted to do a post of its own about S.J. Kincaid's The Diabolic, which I read over Christmas, but it sat half written through the flu and now it's too late for the lavish, loving extravaganza of a review I wanted to give it.

Nemesis is a Diabolic, a genetically engineered humanoid who is designed to be a bodyguard.  Big, fast, strong, ruthless, she's been imprinted on a girl named Sidonia, who becomes her best friend and the star around which Nemesis orbits.  But when Sidonia's family falls out of favor with the Emperor, she is summoned to his space station palace as hostage, and it's clear what her fate is to be.  The only way for Nemesis to save her is to take her place.

Okay, so this is a fish-out-of-water story about someone bluntly practical trying to imitate royalty, which is TOTALLY MY JAM. I was all over this, and it generally did not disappoint, in many ways soared far beyond my hopes for it, and in one way really made me mad--partly because it was otherwise SO GOOD why did you use Literally The Worst Trope? Why? (Note: I will spoil in "The Bad" section below. Warned!)

What was good: The complicated political games Nemesis has to learn how to play.  She's more of a trouble-comes-punch-it type of person, but she knows full well that she can't show that or everyone will know she's not Sidonia, so she takes her lessons very seriously. There are many layers to alliances and manners and invitations and appearances, and they are treated with the solemnity they reserve, which is to say that everyone knows they're ridiculous, but they dictate how the world is run, so you have to play them.  This isn't about how snobs are shallow; it's about how snobs are cutthroat.

What was even better: I find that futuristic stories that try to hinge on manners and mores and appearances the way Victorian novels do tend to be unbelievable.  It's very hard to convince me that a romance in the future is shocking in its impropriety. But Kincaid made the silly, meaningless rules of court hugely important.  Honestly, it was almost Dune-like in how it folded real politics into frivolous appearances. 

Also, Nemesis's explorations of what it means that she's not human, the fact that she doesn't just discover that she's really a human being after all, but that she gets to be who she is--not human, but a person.  Something different, but still someone worthy. The things that make her different make her better not just in the ways they are intended--strong, brave, loyal--but also in unexpected ways--perceptive, just, sympathetic.

The bad: Again, this is the spoilery section.  I saw the plot thread coming for ages, but I'm so mad about how it ended.  Sidonia and Nemesis had such a lovely relationship--it was complicated by a lot of factors, but I really hoped it would turn into a romance.  Even later, after the male lead showed up, I had my hopes. And you know, I can live with not getting a lesbian romance out of this. But you know what happens to lesbians in The Worst Trope, right? Yup.

So, aside from that one big, glaring caveat, this book was amazing.  I highly recommend it, really, even if you have to brace yourself for The Worst Trope.  In so many ways it's a sharp, fast, smart story that really thinks about personal relationships and what they mean.  

Quick Review: Avalanche!

I read a bunch of books over the holidays this year that I haven't had a chance to review yet, but I lurved them and want to share the glory with you. So: a series of brief review posts!

Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies, by Lindsay Ribar. I read a review of this one from the Booksmugglers and it sounded weird and fascinating, and I'm sorry but is that not the best title?

Aspen Quick is visiting his aunt and grandmother for the summer; they need a third family member to help with the ritual.  Their family has powers--they can use objects to pull things from people--and they use them to keep the cliff that looms over the town from collapsing and destroying everything.  Every few days, the cliff trembles and the family makes an offering. They take something--one kid's competitive spirit; another woman's enjoyment of rowing on the lake. They offer these to the cliff to keep it quiet.

But Aspen can take things any time. He can take away his friend's anger when he's done something obnoxious, or a girl's desire for him to go away.  It's easy, and it makes life easy and smooth.  He just can't figure out why his father wouldn't take away his mother's desire to move out.

So good.  Aspen is exactly the kind of privileged kind-of-brat that having a power like that would make you. He doesn't seem like a jerk, really; even from the first page, you're reading this likeable guy, and he says some things that you think you must have misunderstood in the rush of worldbuilding.  But as you go along you realize, no, he just has no idea what's going on outside of his own head.  And so you follow Aspen through the summer when he basically learns what it means to be a good person. It's such a good story, with lots of sad parts, and also lots of parts about how hard it is to be a good person that, I'm sorry, I could really relate to.

Code Switch

I was drawn to Lucy and Linh, by Alice Pung, because a fish-out-of-water story at a fancy-pants private school is exactly what I want to read, thank you.  I got the book from Netgalley (for an honest review; thank you, Netgalley!) and I got started, and it is definitely about a fish out of water at a fancy-pants private school--but the pants might be too fancy, and instead of water, the fish is kind of in a murky cesspool of malevolence.

Lucy's family came to Australia from Vietnam when she was a small child; they're ethnically Chinese.  She lives on a poor side of town and goes to the local Catholic school, where many immigrants send their children to get a better education than in public school.  Her father works at a carpet factory and her mother does piecework, sewing clothing at home while taking care of her baby brother.

Then Lucy applies for the first ever scholarship position at the incredibly posh Laurinda Academy, and, to her own shock, gets in.  Suddenly she's going to a school where everyone else is rich, and white, and very, very snobby.  At the point where I am (not quite halfway through the book), most of the story is about the politics and social life of this school.

Which is awful. Every single person there is horrible. From the very first moment, when we learn that the very expensive uniform must be purchased from a certain very expensive store and the headmistress doesn't seem to notice that this might be a hardship, to the firm label of Charity Case that she seems to have stuck on Lucy's head, the whole school seems toxic.  There is a popular crowd who walks the halls in slow motion with a wind machine blowing their hair back--they are called The Cabinet and they rule the school but are evil, evil, evil, playing random pranks designed to crush people's spirits, including one on a teacher that results in a nervous breakdown.

These people are so evil I don't believe them.  They do not seem to have any interiority; unlike, say, Before I Fall, the mean girls don't seem to have any personalities or desires or emotions that drive them.  They just enjoy ruining lives.  They're sociopaths, basically.  And a lot of the attention of the school--and of the book--is devoted to them.

I wanted more about Lucy.  So far she's mostly an observer; she's tried to talk to one or two other students about things, but they don't get it or won't talk about it.  I'm frustrated for her, because she seems like the only sane person in the crazytown of this school, but she's got a Nick Caraway vibe going on, in that she doesn't really seem to have much of a role in the story yet.

The format of the book is interesting, too--it's addressed to Linh, who seems to be a friend of Lucy's from her old school, someone she left behind. Linh is in all of her memories from her old school, and sometimes backs Lucy up when she's, say, on the phone with someone from school, but her actual role isn't clear at all.  I'm pretty sure at this point that the epistolary nature of the novel is a bit of a gimmick; it doesn't seem to be adding anything to the story, and I think it's working more as a metaphor.

I really wanted to like the book better.  I did listen to the Reading the End podcast episode about it (warning, there are some spoilers there--but it's worth listening to for the sharp observations about how evil cliques work in real life vs. stories), and they felt the same way I did: there's some good potential here, but the story focuses way too much of the mean girls at school.  I do love Lucy's family--her lovable baby brother, her dad who takes time of work whenever he needs to for her, her mom who sews all day and loves her children fiercely.  Her family is great, and if the book is trying to paint them as awkward in the fancy world Lucy now inhabits, it's failing, because her parents seem pretty rational and the adults at this school are all on some kind of crack.

So I think this book is not for me.  I'm pretty sure I really like what it's aspiring to, but it's strayed a little too much into caricature to work, in my opinion.  I'm only partway through it, so maybe that opinion will change, but I also might not finish it at this point. 

Thank you again to Netgalley for the review copy.  I'm never sure about writing about a review book that I'm not sure I'll finish, but I really wanted to talk about this one, because the ingredients of the book aren't adding up to everything it could be. 

Dusk or Dawn, Dark or Day

Or rather Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day, by Seanan McGuire, which is a lovely title for a ghost story with many lovely aspects but that is, ultimately, Not For Me.

I picked the book up (from Netgalley, for review; thank you, Netgalley!) because of how much I loved Every Heart a Doorway. I knew it was about ghosts--as in, a story about the "lives" of ghosts, from their point of view, which is a hard world to build, in my opinion.  If you're going to show me a vision of the afterlife that looks pretty much exactly like being alive (these are ghosts who live in apartments and have jobs and eat sometimes), I'm already pretty skeptical. There's an element of "moving on," though--you only stay as a ghost if you go before your time--another concept that I'm kind of fuzzy on, but I'm not bad at suspension of disbelief.

Jenna died too soon--when her sister Patty killed herself, Jenna was distraught and died in an accident. Now, years later, Jenna has moved from her small town home to New York City, where she works at a suicide hotline, "earning" her extra time back to get closer to the right time for her death.  So, this is the first confusing thing--ghosts can "steal" time from living people. Now, what I think when I hear this is that the person's life gets shorter--maybe their death date moves up or maybe they get older. But what it actually means is that the ghost takes some of the person's age--the person gets younger, winds back the time that the ghost takes, and the ghost gets older, closer to their death date/moving on.

Ghosts can also give time--get further from their death date, stay on earth longer, and by giving those minutes or hours or years to a human, cause the person to age.  Apparently most ghosts are eager to move on, so they steal time from people in a win-win situation--people get younger, ghosts get older and move on sooner. But a few ghosts want to stay, and they tend to find bad people and give them back time to keep away from their death date.

But Jenna's odder--she has somehow decided that she has to earn the right to move on. So she works at a suicide hotline, and whenever she talks someone into living longer, she logs that time and only then allows herself to take that time from someone. This was really my first sticking point; I really can't figure out why Jenna would put this artificial gate between herself and the thing she wants--to be with her sister Patty. I didn't get a feel for Jenna's relationship with Patty, either, which was supposed to be the driving force of the novel.

The actual story begins when ghosts start to disappear from the city. Jenna and a few allies are the only ones to investigate--her ghost landlady, a local witch, a homeless woman.  They follow the trail which leads them, for some reason, into Jenna's past.

Talking it through, I think this was part of the trouble I had with the story--there were a lot of different pieces that ended up dovetailing for no particular reason. Jenna's personal story and the problem of the missing ghosts are mostly unrelated, except for a lot of ways they're related.  A lot of the plot is driven by coincidence, in the end, which doesn't work as well for me.

What I will say, though, is that Seanan McGuire can write.  The day to day moments of Jenna's life are smooth and lovely to read, and if I didn't understand a lot of the emotional content, the way it's described was not the problem. I didn't love this book, but I absolutely want to read much more by this author.

A Whole New World

I don't even remember when I started reading 52 Book Minimum, and we have very dissimilar taste in books, but I actually kind of love reading book reviews for books that I'm never going to read, and I love people who take the time to fill their reviews with gifs.  So, despite the fact that she doesn't like Squirrel Girl, I continue to read her blog all the damned time.  I don't usually add to my to-read from there, though, because she reads a lot of, as she puts it, porn.

But I was recovering from the Death Flu and I read her review of The Wingman by Natasha Anders, which was glowing, and which ended with the point that it was available to Read Now on Netgalley, and here we are.  I read the porn. I am a reader of porn. Your finer contemporary erotic romance.

Nah, I'm just kidding. I mean, I'll admit that I usually get my porn from fanfic, because I don't have to worry about anyone making me care about their characters.  But as promised, this book was adorable.  Daisy is so likeable, and her sense of herself as the not-attractive one is really well-told.  She's the "other sister"--not the pretty one, not the cute one--and in their small town, that kind of thing sticks.  Mason would normally never look twice at her, but when his brother wants to chat up  her sister, he agrees to play you-know-what.

So, here's the thing--being hit on by the wingman is not by definition a bad thing.  I mean, sure, a guy who isn't actually attracted to you  was chatting you up, so maybe it's...dishonest, a little? But no, even that, you had a conversation with someone who didn't want to take you home--that's not inherently gross.  I will admit, however, that the way it went down was uncool, so it makes sense that Mason feels like a heel and Daisy feels like he owes her one, and sexy hijinks ensue.

There was a decent amount of the usual stuff that makes romances eye-rolly--Mason is ex-military and pretty fond of barking orders, and I'm sorry but boundaries are not a starting place for flirtatious negotiations--but overall this was really about two people who realize they like each other and become more attracted to each other as they get to know each other.  How about that, huh?

In sum, everything that Kelly said in her review, and please enjoy this picture of Daisy's dog, Peaches.

(I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley for honest review.)

Influenzed

Naturally, right after an author tweets something incredibly flattering and links my review, I immediately come down with the flu and can't post for a week. All of my descriptions for how sick I was sound like hyperbole--I was barely able to get out of bed, I kind of felt like I was dying. But yeah, the flu is not a joke--I had chills and the doctor gave me IV fluids and even after I was feeling better, I could only read for half an hour at a time before my head would loll back.

But!  Here I am, in between naps, back in action. I've read so many books in the past month that I want to write about, it's a bit overwhelming, but I'm also trying to decide whether to finish an ARC that I'm not that into, just because I want to talk about why I'm not that into it.  I generally try not to review advance copies unless I finish them, since it seems unfair--especially if the book seems mostly okay, just not for me.  But I really want to discuss this one.  I'm pretty sure, by my own personal ethical system, that means I have to finish the book.

Anyway, I hope to get back on my normal posting schedule this week, but I wanted to say hi and that I'm wheezing but surviving over here. And I'm reading the cheesiest romance novel, an incredible sci fi novel, and a Terry Pratchett novel, so life is, overall, not too bad.

I hope you can say the same!

The Long-Awaited Ursula Vernon Post

I have been promising a post about Ursula Vernon for so long I almost don't know how to write it.  And I keep mentioning how much I like her books, but I never get around to laying it all out there.  Well, this week I finished her novel Nine Goblins, and it's time to babble on appreciatively.

But let's start at the beginning--Danny Dragonbreath. The library website kept putting that series in front of my face, and it seemed about age appropriate for my son, so we started reading them. They are the MOST fun. Danny is brave and loyal and tricky and just an ordinary kid, and with his best friend Wendell, he has adventures all over the place. No one believes he's a real dragon, because he can't quite breathe fire yet, but he can save the school from a scourge of were-wieners or visit his great grandfather in mythical Japan (It's a really good bus system.)

It's not perfect--there are some stereotypes, like Wendell, the genius who is frightened of and allergic to everything, and Danny's skepticism of girls in general (which gets much better over the course of the series). I admit those slowed me down a bit at first, especially since my son wasn't at all skeptical of girls when we read this and I didn't want him getting ideas.  But ultimately, they're just so off-the-wall and wacky, I can't pass them up.

When we'd plowed through all eleven Dragonbreath books, we started on Hamster Princess, which is about Harriet Hamsterbone, an incredible princess who spent her childhood invulnerable due to a curse and consequently learned to be a seriously badass hero.  There are only three Harriet books so far, but they are just as much fun--maybe moreso, with her battle quail and her cliff diving hobby and fearless swords-hamster-ship.

At about this point, Ursula Vernon wrote a book called The Seventh Bride, published under the name T. Kingfisher, which is the name that she uses for her non-kids work.  This book got some buzz, but I didn't realize it was the same author until months after I'd read it.  The only word for this book is charming--the story is loosely Bluebeardish, but between the hedgehog sidekick and the mysterious Clock Wife, it's the small, rich details of a mundane magical world that make the book shine.

The last time I really meant to write an Ursula Vernon review, though, was when I was reading Digger, a comic she originally published on the web, about a hard-bitten wombat who gets lost and tunnels her way into a land far from anything she knows.  Digger just wants to get home, but she finds herself embroiled in local drama. Between the mysterious source of her impossible tunnel, a talking statue of the god Ganesh, a fanatical order of veiled priests, an aggressive tribe of fierce warrior hyenas, and a simple child made of shadows, Digger has a lot to sort out if she's going to find her way home.

What makes Digger so great, though, is how this complicated, high-fantasy setting and plot are carried out around such pragmatic, mundane characters.  Digger has no interest in making enemies or solving mysteries, but she is very interested in doing the right thing, which drags her into the middle of a million situations.  Eventually, the world needs saving, and who's going to step up? That's right--always a wombat.

I'm not doing this justice; I don't think I can.  She's just so matter-of-fact, whether she's fighting a hoard of hyenas or befriending an outcast, politely drinking warrior tea (blech) or patiently explaining to the Shadowchild that you shouldn't eat anything that can talk (CAN YOU TALK, TOMATO? CAN YOU?), you just want Digger on your side. I read this to my son, and though I think a lot of it went over his head, he loved it, too.

This week, though, I read Nine Goblins, a short novel from a few years ago--again, T. Kingfisher--about a troop of goblins who get magically yanked from a battlefield by an errant wizard.  Miles from the front and in enemy territory, the motley band just wants to find their way safely home, but end up facing bigger dangers than they're ready for.

This book. This book. Okay, so there are two big things to say about it. The first--the obvious one--is that this is more like reading Terry Pratchett than anything I've ever read by anyone who was not Terry Pratchett. Except for those Pratchett moments where the narrator backs off to explicitly state grand facts about the way the world works that both fit perfectly in the story and are true on a very deep level (RIP, Sir Terry, you were a great gift to the world), this book had all the charm, wit, warmth and weirdness that made Discworld so incredible.  I thought this from the beginning, and then when I went to review it on Goodreads, I saw that everyone else thought it, too.  It's full of mostly good people doing mostly their best, even the ones who are causing trouble (mostly).

But there is another thing that was going on when I was reading this, which is that I was simultaneously rereading Siderea's essay on kingship in the first section of Watership Down. I read this essay before and loved it, and it came to mind because the Jennys at the Reading the End podcast might do a WD reread this year. So I went back and read the essay, and I happened to be reading Nine Goblins, too.

And guys, kingship. Reading that essay about what leadership means and watching Sargent Nessilka lead her strange and really barely all-there team through this adventure made my heart swell.  The essay was dissecting Nessilka's leadership--caring (valuing your team) and daring (taking the big risks); making the decision just because someone has to, even if you're likely to be wrong, gambling when you have to--it's all here.  Especially the caring and daring--she doesn't want to go into the abandoned house, but neither does anyone else, so she does it.  But the best part--maybe my favorite thing in the book--is her fatalistic, fed-up caring. So one member of the team, Blanchett, has had a bit of a rough time.  At this point, he carries around a teddy bear, and speaks mostly when translating for the bear. Nessilka respectfully addresses the bear as necessary--and, to be honest, the bear is one of the most valuable members of the team.  At one point she leaves him in charge.

I cannot tell you how much this book meant to me.  It made my heart swell.  I've bought all Ursula Vernon's other T. Kingfisher books now, and I can't wait to read them.  I also sponsor her Patreon (Siderea of the above essay, too, by the way; I should do a post on my Patreon account, because I love it). And I want more.

God, I haven't even mentioned the illustrations!  Digger is a comic, of course, and her kids' books are part comic. I love her illustration and I'm trying to pick a print from her store.  I want a troll--her trolls are the best.  And I left out Castle Hangnail! One of the best books I read last year, straight up.  Also illustrated.  Also for kids.

I'm sorry, this has gone on forever.  It's years of pent up fanhood.  But the point of this is that you should read Harriet Hamsterbone and Danny Dragonbreath to your kids, and Nine Goblins for yourself (and your older kids; there's nothing inappropriate there, though my eight-year-old found it too confusing to listen to). And read some of her online stories. And if you see her on the street, you should give her a hug.  Maybe ask first. Tell her it's from me. 

Dread, Both Existential and Immediate

I don't think I've ever felt such a protracted sense of dread when reading a book.  Emotionally, it was like the most tense parts of a Hitchcock movie strung together for 300 pages, even though there are no more moments of high drama in My Sister Rosa than in any other psychological thriller--if that's what you could call this.

Justine Larbalestier has written some dark books (Liar) and some distant characters (Magic or Madness), but Rosa is a whole other thing. This book is creepy, but not in a horror novel way.  It's about Che, the 17-year-old son of a globe-trotting, super-cool couple who's just moved to New York with his family to pursue his parents' latest business venture.  But what it's really about is, as advertised, Che's sister Rosa.  Because Rosa is a psychopath, and Che seems to be the only one who knows it.

When she was little, they recognized she was not typical and she saw doctors and therapists.  But she didn't like that, and she learned the right things to say, and they declared her fine.  Now, Rosa is the perfect little adorable girl--to everyone except her brother.  She trusts him. She tells him things. She asks him questions.

And Che, god bless him, tries to keep her in check.  He extracts promises about what she won't do. He watches her, and he answers her questions about how to be normal. And he loves her, and also he hates her.

Che lives in such a state of hyperawareness of Rosa that I started to get really twitchy halfway through this book.  The family doesn't have much money, but they live well because the parents work for their best friends, who are incredibly wealthy.  Che's father's family tree is full of violent, arrogant people, so he knows where Rosa comes from, and he understands the risk.  But his parents won't listen to his concerns--they are hardly around--and he doesn't know what he could do to stop her if Rosa decided to do something awful.

As Che settles into New York and he begins to make friends, he watches Rosa make friends with a sense of dread. Again, just so much dread.  And all justified.  It's always on the horizon, always ominous, but so rarely does anything actually bad happen.  Rosa does what works for her, and keeping off the radar is part of what works for her.  But she's a very smart girl, and very curious, and....ooooh, it's just really creepy.

Honestly, I took a page from Jenny and read the ending when I was about a third of the way through the book, because it seemed like there was no way this could end well.  And I will say, it's not exactly a "happy" ending.  It's maybe kind of--cathartic? Like, things are all okay, but the tension that builds and builds and builds over the course of the book is definitely addressed.

Che is just a guy, going to the gym, falling for a girl, navigating a new city--and waiting for his sister to maybe murder someone.  I am going to be shaking off this dread for days to come.  Excellent and creepy as hell.

Impending Possession

Excellent title: The Impending Possession of Scarlet Wakebridge-Rosé. I liked it SLIGHTLY better before I noticed the accent mark on "Rosé;" I think it scans better without that emphasis, but that is neither here nor there.

Scarlet is haunted, and she's trying to figure out why, how, by what.  There's a presence hovering around the corners of her life, a shadowy, threatening figure. Her work is suffering, her marriage is on the rocks, and her relationship with her teenage daughter isn't doing much better. She's desperate to figure out what it is and get rid of it, and when psychiatrists can't help her, she finds herself in church. She's a lesbian who was raised Catholic but hasn't been to church in years, but she has nowhere else to turn.

At church she meets Father Angelo, an exorcist with the requisite Haunted Past. She doesn't tell him about her problem at first, but his assistant Kelton realizes that Scarlet has some ability to detect powers and recruits her to help with the exorcisms. Eventually they hook up with Dante, Father Angelo's first supernatural tutor, and they try to help Scarlet sort out her demon problem.

I got this book from Netgalley for an honest review, but if I hadn't, I probably wouldn't have finished it.  It felt like a stretched out short story, and none of the characters was very likeable.  With Scarlet, the implication is that the demon that's been haunting her has been interfering with her emotions and that's why she's been fighting so much with her wife and daughter, but that's hard to tell, since she seems to pride herself on being a hardass workaholic in the best of times.  Kelton is a one-note homophobe who is almost a caricature of a villain--which is weird, since he's supposed to be, technically, a "good guy."  Father Angelo's got a dark past, but he appears to have spent 30 years not thinking for himself at all, which comes across as very weird given that he's an exorcist.

The characters kind of thump along from one scene to the next; information about the demon unfolds, and there are past life regressions, and some of the demon logic doesn't make a lot of clear sense to me. Like, if a demon threatens you into saying some words in another language, does that count as promising something of your own free will?

This felt kind of like an early draft of something that could have been much better, if a lot of motivations had been sharpened up, and if all the characters' "humanizing" flaws had been balanced with humanizing virtues as well.

Great title, though. A long, kind of complicated title is a bold choice and almost always worth it.

Always Forward

Hello! I have been lounging through my vacation and reading like a fiend and consuming SO MANY best-of lists and end-of-year blog posts (I LOVE THEM) and just taking it easy.  But the reading like a fiend has combined with the best-of lists to make me feel guilty about never quite being ready to do a best-of list at the end of the year.

So, to fend off the guilt and yet participate in this listy time of year, AND to partake of the New Year spirit in non-binding resolution style, I bring you:

The Top 10 Books Even I Can't Believe I Haven't Read Yet

1) The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin. This one almost doesn't count, because I just started it, but I loved the Inheritance trilogy and so very many people have loved this, I have no doubt it's going to blow my mind.  And it's our pick for work book club this month, which I think is going to challenge us and give us a nice meaty conversation. So look just getting started and already something is half checked off!

2) Karen Memory, by Elizabeth Bear. I wanted to read this well before it came out--butt kicking old West magic steampunk ladies of the night. Whenever I see the cover I get tingles.

3) Three Parts Dead, by Max Gladstone.  This one I think I've waited for because the plot--investigating the death of a god--sounded a little too much like a couple of others that I've read and loved. I know it will be very different from City of Stairs and The Broken Kingdoms, but I definitely needed to leave some space between one reading and the next. But this is the year!

4) The Dream Thieves, by Maggie Stiefvater. I'm trying not to fill this list up with sequels, because I am behind on so many of my favorite series. But this is one that I think I have to get on top of, because the first one snuck in under my radar and went from "okay, I'm reading and enjoying this" to "this book is having a profound impact on my understanding of human beings" almost while I wasn't looking. So yeah, this one makes the cut.

5) Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett. The only Patchett I've read was State of Wonder, and I loved it.  This is the one that everyone talks about, and the Jennies (Jennys?) mentioned it in their gift recommendation podcast a few weeks ago.  But really, what happened was that Brenda sat down with my Kindle and sorted through the 400-something books on there, bumping the ones she couldn't believe I hadn't read to the top. On this one she and I entirely agree.

6) Fly By Night, by Frances Hardinge. People have been telling me to read Frances Hardinge forever, and I finally read Cuckoo Song a while back and they were right.  But this is the one they keep selling me on, and this is the one I want to read, and this is the one that I just got from Netgalley, so no excuses!

7) A Darker Shade of Magic, by V. E. Schwab. Elizabeth read ONE V.E. Schwab book and became a "buy this author's books automatically" fan.  This is enough for me. I have to read one; it was this or Vicious, and lord knows I love a good trilogy.

8) Walk on Earth a Stranger, by Rae Carson.  I liked The Girl of Fire and Thorns much more than such a straightforward, standard YA fantasy trilogy seemed to deserve.  It was compelling, and it was tight, and I loved the setting and the main character's determination to become less of a hot mess than she was at the beginning of the book.  Add that craftsmanship to the Western setting of this one and I've been meaning to read it for ages.  Apparently it's the year of the old West for me!

9) Feed, by Mira Grant.  I am SO far behind on this one.  She's started a follow-up series to the completed series that everyone read a million years ago.  But I was off zombies for a while there.  I think I'm ready to dive back in by jumping back to the best I can find.

10) Behind the Throne, by K.B. Wagers.  I was a quarter of an inch from picking this book up when a dozen other reading obligations landed on me and I was beckoned away.  But I will come back, because I need to read about a super-competent spaceship captain who has to go into politics.  I love it when people who are not meant to be in politics have to go into politics.  Best books ever.

Honorable mentions will all go to series in which I'm shamefully far behind--I have read not even a third of the Vorkosigan saga; I am at least three books behind on Dr. Siri Paiboun; Sharon Shinn's Elementals series has two more books out, and I've never even picked up Mystic and Rider (which was another one Brenda pushed to the front of my Kindle); Ursula Vernon has a bunch of books as T. Kingfisher that I haven't read yet. As I flip through my Kindle, the list goes on and on and on.

But I will leave it here, because this is a good solid approach to January.  And hey, I'm two full chapters into The Fifth Season.  Progress already!