August Read Harder

Ah, August. Back to school, back to real life, back to responsibilities. We already covered that I accidentally pre-read one of my August books, My Lady's Choosing, so one down, bingo bango. I also started It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful in July, as stated in my previous update, because I figured it's non-fiction, it's a heavy topic, and it would take me a while to finish it. Look at me, thinking ahead! 

Turns out that pays off, because I finished it, and it was very emotional and educational and inspiring and fascinating. The more I read and learn about history, the more I'm like wow, fuck, growing up and "learning" about history, we really were just straight up deceived about so many things. It's truly fucked. And no wonder so many people now have their heads so far up their asses. 

And speaking of not learning about real history, last book of August, Like a Hammer, another heavy read. I'm not a huge poetry reader, so I tried to read just a few at a time to give myself the chance to really experience them, and SHEESH, powerful words, heartbreaking. It's an incredible collection of poetry, and it's so overwhelming reading about the experience of incarceration and our bullshit justice system from people living within that system. If you can get a copy of it (if you know me, you can borrow it from me!), I recommend it.

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And here we go, into the last third of the year! For challenge #4, read a book about obsession, I'll be reading the second book in the What the River Knows duology by Isabel Ibanez, Where the Library Hides. I also picked Rebel Witch, the second book in The Crimson Moth series (maybe duology?) by Kristen Ciccarelli. Maybe I'll finish one this month, maybe I'll have time for both, we'll see. Looking forward to both, though.

For challenge #19, read a queernorm book, I chose The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. And now we're going to get into a little bit of a shananigan, because this book is over EIGHT HUNDRED PAGES, y'all. Soooo, since I'm reading one book that's basically two or three or four books, I'm giving myself a freebie and using Crier's War, which I read earlier this year, for challenge #20, read the first book in a completed YA or middle grade duology. Typically I only a count a book if I specifically chose it for a challenge, but...I think I deserve a little bit of a pass with such a behemoth to get through.

Lasagna Means I Love You - Kate O'Shaughnessy

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆

Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Nan was all the family Mo ever needed. But suddenly she's gone, and Mo finds herself in foster care after her uncle decides she's not worth sticking around for. Nan left her a notebook and advised her to get a hobby, like ferret racing or palm reading. But how could a hobby fix anything in her newly topsy-turvy life?

Then Mo discovers a handmade cookbook filled with someone else's family recipes. Even though Nan never cooked, Mo can't tear her eyes away. Not so much from the recipes, but the stories attached to them. Though, when she makes herself a pot of soup, it is every bit as comforting as the recipe notes said.

Soon Mo is asking everyone she meets for their family recipes. Teaching herself to make them. Collecting the stories behind them. Building a website to share them. And, okay, secretly hoping that a long-lost relative will find her and give her a family recipe all her own.

But when everything starts to unravel again, Mo realizes that if she wants a family recipe - or a real family - she's going to have to make it up herself."

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This is one of the books on a nominee list for one of the book award committees I joined. I feel like I'm super behind reading through the list, so I checked out a whole stack of books, grabbed this one with zero idea of what to expect, and I was blown away. It's a gorgeous story, nothing at all like I expected. The cover is so playful, I expected something very lighthearted and silly, which it was at times, but it was emotional, sometimes heartbreaking, and it was so full of heart.

Immediately, something I appreciated about this story was that it centers around grief and foster care. There are so few books that touch on these topics (more now than there used to be, but still), and I have SO many students navigating losing a parent or other loved one, living in foster care, group homes, etc...I want them to be able to see that experience reflected in the books they're reading, to have that little boost of "I'm not alone in this." 

I will say, my students in foster care likely have a different experience than Mo, and this is something that the story touches on. It warmed my heart that this was something that stuck with Mo and that, when presented with an opportunity to try and do something about the inequity in this system, she takes it. Mo has a big heart, and you can see throughout her journey that she's trying to do the best she can to leave the world around her a brighter place.

One of my favorite things about this book was the sense of community it created. Mo's best friend, Crystal, Crystal's family, and many others rally around her to embrace and support her. I swear, I'm a little dehydrated after reading this from crying at so many beautiful moments. I don't want to spoil anything, but appropriately, the scene where the book gets its title from was one of my favorites of the whole book. I felt like I was there, experiencing things with Mo, and it filled my heart in the same way it did hers.

I feel like I've barely said anything of substance about this book, but my brain and heart are still overflowing from the experience of reading it. I loved it so much that as soon as I finished reading it, I ordered a copy for my school library. I hope my students enjoy it as much as I did.

Gay the Pray Away - Natalie Naudus

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆

Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Valerie Danners is in a cult. She just doesn't know it yet. But when she stumbles upon a queer romance novel at the library, everything about her life - centered around a fundamentalist Christian homeschooling group - is thrown into question.

And to make things even more complicated, there's a new girl in town. Riley is rebellious, kindhearted, and impossibly cool. As the two bond over being multiracial teens in their very white and very religious community, Valerie finds herself falling in love.

Soon Valerie and Riley are exchanging notes in secret and stealing kisses behind the church. But even as their romance blooms, Valerie knows that they're trapped. If Valerie wants a chance at writing her own story, she must choose between staying with a family she fears will never accept her and running away with the girl she loves."

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While I thought this was a bit heavy-handed and would have benefited from some subtlety and better development, character and story-wise, overall, I really enjoyed it. To the uninitiated (aka people who were lucky enough to NOT grow up in a cult), some of the interactions with Valerie's parents and other "Institute" members may seem overexaggerated or almost like a caricature, but rest assured, all of that is very real and not what I found heavy-handed. (Example: while my parents didn't forbid me from going to college the way Valerie's would have, it was with the expectation that I quit when I got married. There were some Big Feelings when I made it clear that wouldn't be happening.) 

I also very much identified with "close" friends cutting you off the second you weren't acting the way that they wanted you to. So real. Oh, and dudes getting to do cool shit during church activities while the girls had to sit and quietly learn how to best take care of the menfolk? My godddddddddddddddddd, let me tell you about all the cool hiking and rappelling and whatnot that my male church friends got to do while I did shit like learning how to iron button-down shirts and tie a tie so I could be of service to my future husband. The culty stuff was very real and infuriating. And don't even get me STARTED on her fucking brother, that absolute douche of a human.

Anyway, all that ranting about the shittiness of cults out of the way, my favorite character was far and away Riley. I adored her. She was very clearly going through her own shit, yet she was so supportive and optimistic and really lifted Valerie up. She was also unapologetically herself, even under immense pressure to conform, and she refused to make herself small to appease the fragility of others. While a very minor character, I also loved Mrs. Batra, Valerie's neighbor. She was so sweet and thoughtful, and I wish she played a bigger role in the story. Honestly, some of the most minor characters ended up being my favorites, I wish they all featured a little more! This book was relatively short, and I think it could have benefited from a little more development at the beginning and more wind-down at the end. And then we could have seen more from several of those minor characters who rocked so hard.

One of the most bittersweet parts of this book for me is a huge spoiler, so don't read ahead if you're planning on reading this.

Spoilers ahead, don't keep scrolling.

Seriously, stop reading if you don't want to be spoiled.

Have you read the book?

Are you not planning to?

Do you look ahead to the endings of things anyway and don't care one whit if you get spoiled?

Okay, then here we go.

At the end, on the day Valerie leaves home, I was so shocked that her mom supported her, but the more I thought back on it, the more sense it made. (Incidentally, I was SCREAMING at her to not tell her parents, if it hadn't been so close to the end of the book and the book as a whole hadn't been so positive, I would have been genuinely afraid of what her dad would do to her.) Like, her mom was so suffocating and bought-in to everything in her interactions with Valerie, but at the same time, you could see that she felt similarly suffocated herself. I saw a lot in her that I see in my own mom. 

On the one hand, she's a person who desperately wants some kind of scaffolding to dictate to her the "rules" of existing in our random, often fucked-up world and give some kind of meaning and sense of community without having to go through what it takes to develop a real, healthy, supportive community. On the other, she's a person who is intelligent and strong-willed and knows that she is in a situation where she has to make herself smaller so other people *coughmencough* can feel bigger. It's an inner conflict that I can't even begin to understand, because I couldn't do it and I left, but it has to be hard. It gave me a little bit of home that Valerie's mom recognized that she didn't want her daughter to live like that and helped her get out - and hey, maybe at some point she'll realize that she doesn't deserve to live like that either and get out herself. We can only hope.

I'm a bird person now

Welcome to another episode of Puzzle Pals! Or...something else. I haven't really come up with a name for it. Anyway, this month's puzzle was State Birds of America, created by Cobble Hill Puzzle Company.

The thing about puzzles is sometimes the effort is frontloaded and sometimes it's backloaded. This is definitely a frontloaded puzzle. For starters, this was possibly the first time I've done a puzzle and thought it might have been easier starting with the center instead of the border. Except for the bottom, it was all just green, and we still had a couple of edge pieces we weren't sure what to do with when we finally thought we had it all together. I ended up just working on it and eventually figuring out where the border was wrong and fixing it WAY into the process. 

After some initial legwork, though, I thought it was a delightful puzzle. Very unique piece shape, things fit together well, and it was fun seeing all the different birds. It would have been a solid 5/5 puzzle, were it not for one heartbreaking thing, spotted on the box after we finished it. "This image was produced with the assistance of AI." That's a hard no thanks from me, so I guess I'll have to pay closer attention to where I source my puzzles going forward. Le sigh. Jazz hands for cool state birds (and a new haircut). Not so jazzy hands for using AI to create art instead of actual artists.

August Mystery Book

July's mystery book turned out to be excellent (and a dang series, of course, so I had to request the next book from the library), so I've been looking forward to the next one and hoping it's just as good, so I could start a streak. After starting the book, I'm not sure it's going to happen. But I'm getting ahead of myself!

August's mystery read is Murder of Crows by K. Ancrum. Cool, I like K. Ancrum. Seems intriguing.

But then I started reading it, and it's immediately apparent that this is a sequel of some sort. Even though it's listed as "Lethal Lit #1" on the Storygraph. Soooooo what is it a sequel to? 

A PODCAST. 

Yeah, apparently the events in this book take place between the first and second seasons of a scripted podcast called Lethal Lit. And I just...do we think this is a good idea, pals? I guess technically so far (four chapters in) it doesn't seem like it's a requirement to have the context from season one to understand the plot of the book, but events from the podcast are HEAVILY referenced, so it's such a weird vibe NOT having that context. Plus numbering a book as the first in a series when there is already existing story, just not in book form, rubs me the wrong way. I don't know the correct way to denote that this is set in an existing podcast universe, but like...it just all leaves me feeling a little offput. 

I looked it up, and the first episode of the podcast is six episodes, pretty short, so listening to it and then reading the book would be an option. But if I'm being honest, pushing readers to the podcast is part of what I don't like about this whole concept. Listening to the podcast feels like rewarding bad behavior, and if you know me you know one of the things I love to say is "I don't reward bad behavior." So no, I shan't be listening to season one of the podcast. I SHALL give the book a few more chapters and see how I feel about it. And then we can go from there.