No lie, Read Harder went great in July

Hey, do you want to hear something exciting? I finished Oathbound! Turns out that while the first roughly 200-250 pages could have been whittled down (and, let's be real, possibly a little bit more further in), the rest of it was GRIPPING. It ended on such a cliffhanger, too, which is VERY rude given that I first thought this would be a duology and then when I realized it wasn't crossed my fingers that it was a trilogy, but hey, what are you gonna do? It was a solid ending, and I can't wait for the next one. I just hope it isn't another 600+ pages that could have been shorter.

I also finished The Third Gilmore Girl, which made me cry so many times and also made me rewatch Gilmore Girls to admire Emily with fresh eyes. Also need to rewatch Bunheads because...Bunheads. It's so great. Seriously, I had no idea what an incredible, tough, tenacious badass Kelly Bishop was, and wow. She's a marvel.

Next up, I finished The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding, which I discovered is not a standalone, so...that's annoying. It was a solid read, but I also have like four books that I recently read only to discover they were part of a series, so I'm really on the fence about if I liked this one enough to add ANOTHER sequel to my stack of books waiting to be read. Man, my kingdom for fantasy/supernatural/spooky books that are NOT a series.

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For August, I'll be reading books for challenges #12, #16, and #21. 

Prompt twelve is read a recommendation from a (preferably local) indie bookstore. Look, I don't know about "indie" but I picked my favorite local bookstore, Palabras, and will be reading Like a Hammer by Diana Marie Delgado, a book of poetry about mass incarceration.

Prompt sixteen is read a genre blending book, which...I accidentally already read. I picked My Lady's Choosing by Larissa Zageris and Kitty Curran, a historical romance choose your own adventure book (sorry, not choose your own adventure, that's trademarked...but you know what I mean.) It was also available at the library when I went to pick up my books for last month, so I grabbed it while I was there and then was like oh yeah, this book looks interesting. So, hey, check this one off! It was quite the experience. Very funny, such wild euphemisms for genitalia. I'm not sure if it was meant this way, but it was a wildly successful parody of a historical romance. If it wasn't intended as parody, my apologies to the authors for taking it that way - if it was truly meant as a tribute to the romance genre, they would have benefited from fewer storylines and better development. But hey, regardless of intent? I had fun.

Aaaand finally, prompt twenty-one is to read a book about a moral panic. For this, I chose It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful, by Jack Lowery, which is about the AIDS pandemic. Growing up mormon, AIDS was kind of something we were shielded from because god forbid your kids hear anything about gay people, and after I read another book about it I was blown away by how little I knew and how much I thought I knew was incorrect. I've started reading this one but not gotten far, and I'm looking forward to learning more about it and how activists fought for change (particularly relevant right now, given the fascism of our current "administration" sooooooo...yeah).

One of the Good Ones - Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite

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

From the cover: 

"When teen social activist and history buff Kezi Smith is killed under mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally, her devastated sister Happi and their family are left reeling in the aftermath. As Kezi becomes another immortalized victim in the fight against police brutality, Happi begins to question the idealized way her sister is remembered. Perfect. Angelic.

One of the good ones.

Even the phrase rings wrong in her mind - why are only certain people deemed worthy to be missed? Happy and her sister Genny embark on a journey to honor Kezi in their own way, using an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book as their guide. But there's a twist to Kezi's story that no one could've ever expected - one that will change everything all over again."

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Well, already talked a tiny bit about this, since it's my June mystery read, but now I've read it, so I'm going to talk about it some more. As predicted, it was very emotional. Heartbreaking, frustrating, and intense. It clocks in at 330 pages, and there is so much packed into each of those pages that I wanted more. I thought it was excellent, but with such nuanced content (and so many details to get into), while it was handled well, I think it would have been even better with more time to develop everything.

My one gripe, possibly born out of the fact that I finished the last half of this in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep and was therefore very scared reading it alone in the darkness, is how the last few chapters played out. I don't want to spoil anything, but there were opportunities seeded that never came to fruition, and I thought doing more with those opportunities would have built toward a more satisfying conclusion than the abrupt ending we got. Other than that (and even with this gripe, the ending was mind-blowing), incredible writing. I can't do half stars...maybe I could figure it out, but I haven't...but this would be a solid 4.5, maybe a 4.75, from me.

Visiting the ole' General Store

That's right, puzzle pals, it's time once more to piece together a work of art. This time, we assembled Country Store, manufactured by Buffalo Games & Puzzles.

Y'all...I fuckin loved this puzzle. The picture? Idyllic, beautiful sunset (or sunrise, I don't know what time it is), so many animals, just adorable. The pieces were all kinds of different shapes and stayed together pretty well. The style was fantastic, and it was challenging without making me want to headdesk and unleash a stream of profanity. Real talk? I put the border together and then started organizing the rest of the pieces, and when I did I decided to separate out the sky pieces and sign pieces to work on first. I sorted all the pieces, decided "you know, I could put some of these signs together before I go to bed," and somehow ended up accidentally doing like half the puzzle in one go. Sooooo, yeah, 5/5 for this one! Would do again.

July Mystery Book

Ooh, July's mystery book seems bound to be a good one, with lots of mysterious threads coming together to tell a great story. It's Threads that Bind by Kika Hatzopoulou - the story of Io, the youngest of the Ora sisters, all three descendants of the Fates themselves.

Io's work as a private investigator leads her to a job where she has to work with Edei, right hand to the Mod Queen, and the boy with whom she shares a fate thread linking them as soulmates. It also leads her to an encounter with her estranged oldest sister, on the arm of one of her top suspects. Io must unravel clues leading through the darkest corners of the city before her own world unravels.

The moment of Read Harder truth

Vacation reading mode, activated! I didn't have quite as much reading downtime as I usually end up with on this trip, but I still did pretty well. First off, I finished The Grimoire of Grave Fates, which while interesting in concept and studded with authors I adore fell a little flat for me. I think on the surface "a mystery, but make it an anthology" is cool, but when the story is told across eighteen different chapters featuring eighteen different (mostly disconnected) characters, it ends up being disjointed. If it had been like...four or five characters and you revisited characters, I think it would have come together a little tighter, but I also just think seamlessly weaving a whodunnit with so many moving parts is a tall ask.

I also finished Persepolis, which is SO SO GOOD. It has been on my TBR for a very long time, and I can't believe I waited this long to read it. I know woefully little about Iran, and while I've been trying to follow more people from the Middle East to get a better/more accurate picture of what goes on there, that doesn't do much to catch me up on the complicated history of the region. This was a glimpse into some of that history, and Marjane's writing and artwork captures so much emotion and nuance in what she lived through. Incredible.

Finally, I whittled away at Oathbound. I'm still nowhere near finished, but I've made it into the 200s, so I'm inching ever closer. It does seem like maybe it's picking up a little bit, but I'm a little stunned that I'm about 230 pages in and still so little has happened. The plot is moving at a glacial pace.

Up next? First of all, I'm finally KEEPING NOTES! During July, I'll keep working away at Oathbound, unless I decide to admit defeat. It picked up a bit, so I'm hopeful. My other plan for next month was to pay a visit to the library to check out Perfectly Parvin (prompt #10, read a romance book that doesn't have an illustrated cover, in case you forgot like I had), The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding by Alexandra Bracken (prompt #11, read a work of weird horror), and The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop (prompt #7, read a book about a piece of media that you love). I did that. And then? Then I finished Perfectly Parvin, which was excellent and also heartbreakingly timely because it was written shortly after the "Muslim ban" during the orange dicktator's first term and I started reading it just days after his dumb ass decided why not ignore laws and decency and bomb Iran for no fucking reason. So...if we could actually get our shit together and create a better world for kids like Parvin, that would be amazing. 

On a brighter note, I haven't started The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding yet, but I started The Third Gilmore Girl and am loving learning more about Kelly Bishop, who is kind of a badass. I've still got a day in June, maybe I'll finish her memoir before July and roll for some additional July books while I work on reading Prosper Redding's dreadful tale.

The Academy - T.Z. Layton

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

From the cover:

"Born and raised in a small town, twelve-year-old Leo K. Doyle has never seen the ocean or stepped foot on a plane. But Leo is a star soccer player with big dreams in life. Rock-star, Olympic gold, dragon-slaying dreams. While Leo longs to make the pros one day, he has no idea how to achieve this goal - until a professional scout pays a chance visit to one of Leo's games and extends an invitation to try out for the London Dragons youth squad, known as The Academy. 

Leo is stunned. The London Dragons isn't just any old soccer team. It's a world-famous English Premier League team. Soon Leo is off to a whole new country, embarking on the greatest adventure of his life. The downside? Only eleven players can make the team. Eleven out of two hundred of the very best twelve-year-old players on the planet. 

Along with the grueling competition, Leo must also face a bully intent on torpedoing his summer, a roomie who doesn't know how to have fun, a terrifying camp director, and, most of all, Leo's own lack of formal training and the fear he'll never succeed. By the end of the summer, Leo will become a much better player and forever changed by his experience. But will he be good enough to make the Academy?"

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Let me tell you, between my love for Ted Lasso and my students' love for The Most Beautiful Game, I have such a soft spot for books about soccer. This one has a little bit of a Blue Lock vibe (manga about a mysterious and slightly shady soccer "camp" designed to produce a world-class striker in which any eliminated players are no longer allowed to play soccer), but more wholesome and less mysterious. While I wish Leo's backstory had been developed a bit more, I found him so heartwarming and loveable, and I was rooting for him the whole book.

There was a pretty big cast of side characters, which made it hard to really develop them, but a handful of them were given distinct enough characteristics that I still felt like I got a sense of their personalities. In spite of it not being possible to give each of them the development they deserved, I found the camaraderie between Leo and his fellow Iguanas, including Coach Samantha, very endearing. They came off as sort of an "underdog" team, since the other teams were assigned some of the top players in camp, and watching them grow as a team made the former coach in me happy.

Soccer-wise, it's always tough to write sports action in a book, but I thought Layton did a pretty solid job. I am not SUPER familiar with soccer, but I've pieced together a bit, and that was enough to get a picture of what was going on. I thought the matches, scrimmages, and drills were pretty well written and entertaining, and I was impressed with the balance struck between almost-impossible heroic sports moments and realistic "damn, I fucked that up" plays. The entire book, I kept thinking I knew what was coming only to be taken by surprise, which was a very pleasant surprise, since I started the book thinking I knew exactly how it would all play out. That's on me for getting cocky, I guess.

Anyway, pretty solid book. There are at least two more, and I'm looking forward to getting into them!

June Mystery Read

𝅘𝅥𝅮It's the first of the moooooonth...𝅘𝅥𝅮

And that means it's time for a new mystery read! Truly, what does it say about me that even if I looked at my TBR shelf to try and guess which books I have wrapped and waiting for me, I would have ZERO idea of which books are missing? (That I don't have a great memory. It says nothing about the amount of books waiting for me to read them.)

We're getting off topic. The important thing right now is what June's mystery book is! And it's a good one - One of the Good Ones, in fact.

I know this is probably going to be very sad, and "I'm looking forward to reading it" really feels weird to say, given that it's a book about two siblings trying to find a way to honor their sister after she dies under mysterious circumstances at a social justice rally. I think it will be a good book, though.