Remember that second-a-day charity ad from a few years ago:

(link)

So The End We Start From is basically that writ large (and from the perspective of a new mum rather than a kid): London has fallen and they flee to the north. The narrator has a newborn, Z, and while the world around her disintegrates, hers concentrates until it contains only herself and her son. Then, as her son takes his first steps, it widens open again and the book ends.

It’s a quick read, and written by a poet, so it has that written-by-a-poet feel (lyrical rather than prosaic, ethereal rather than solid). It also can be read as a straightforward dystopia narrative or a metaphor for the few months of motherhood — the upheaval, the uncertainty, the one-on-one between primary caregiver and infant to the detriment of all else. The world, in this book, literally and figuratively, falls away. And it’s short, so we never get too gloomy or wallowing, because the forward momentum of the novel keeps us going.

The End We Start From by Megan Hunter went on sale November 7, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Yay! Another book that conforms to my world view! Introverts of the world unite (albeit, separately, in their own homes, with blankets and mugs of hot chocolate and/or tea)!

Now, I’m back — with my cup of hot chocolate.

So if you’re an introvert, read this quiet graphic novel and nod along knowingly. If you’re not an introvert, read it too for insight into why one of your friends seems so antisocial sometimes — you know the one, that friend at the party who somehow finds a bookshelf and sits there reading a book they’ve already read before so they don’t have to interact any more with people.

Now, shush internet; I need some quiet, alone time to recharge.

Quiet Girl in a Noisy World by Debby Tung went on sale November 7, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

So I got to read an assortment of fiction, essays, mystery stories (also fiction), nonrequired reading (also some fiction – GODZILLA!), science fiction and fantasy (also fiction), travel pieces, science pieces, and sports writing — two of each! Like a Forrest Gump sampler box of chocolates, except none with cherries in them or that time I had a chocolate the chocolatier put turmeric in and it was just weird. Even the sports writing, and I’m pretty much the least sports-interested person you could ever meet, was good.

Uh, Meghan as I am sure you are thinking, it’s called the best series and you’re surprised that it was actually good.

Yes. Shut up.

So here’s the info, i.e. I copy and pasted the table of contents and put my thoughts in parentheses.

The Best American Short Stories 2017:
FIONA MAAZEL: Let’s Go to the Videotape (jerk dad story)
JESS WALTER: Famous Actor (jerk people have jerk sex with each other’s jerk selves)

The Best American Essays 2017:
EMILY MALONEY: Cost of Living (yeah, Americans, I know that like 49% of you or whatever despise Obamacare, but seriously, your multi-payer system is ridiculous, seriously ridiculous);
ALIA VOLZ: Snakebit (ophidiophobia)

The Best American Mystery Stories 2017:
TRINA COREY: Flight (murder mystery in a nursing home)
BRENDAN DUBOIS: The Man from Away (revenge fantasy)

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017:
VIET DINH: Lucky Dragon (atomic bomb fallout, fiction)
MASHA GESSEN: Autocracy: Rules for Survival (Trump sucks)

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017:
JOSEPH ALLEN HILL: The Venus Effect (like Margaret Atwood’s Happy Endings, but about race and brutal)
N. K. JEMISIN: The City Born Great (Cities live, didn’t really grab me)

The Best American Travel Writing 2017:
STEPHANIE ELIZONDO GRIEST: Chiefing in Cherokee (one of the three that left me with a meh, the others being “Rules for Survival” and “The City Born Great”.)
DAVID KUSHNER: Land of the Lost (he went to Iceland. I went to Iceland. Hooray!)

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017:
SONIA SMITH: Unfriendly Climate (Texas is weird)
DAVID EPSTEIN: The DIY Scientist, the Olympian, and the Mutated Gene (some people are much better researchers than I am)

The Best American Sports Writing 2017:
BOMANI JONES: Kaepernick Is Asking for Justice, Not Peace (I can’t remember reading this one, so I guess that might say something about it)
LUKE CYPHERS AND TERI THOMPSON: Lost in America (it was sad, but then it got better, but then I realised there were all these other people not profiled in the story for whom it didn’t get better and so I was sad again 🙁 And, either “Lost in America” was the best one in the set or I’m a victim of the recency effect, but “Lost in America” is the piece that stuck with me. That and “The Venus Effect”, which is in the middle, so I guess that one is truly, not only brain-trick, memorable.)

The Best American Series 2017 by assorted (like a Quality Street Tin!) went on sale October 3, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.