So, yes, indeed, I slacked on this the past three months. Some of it was because of working (yay money, boo no time). Some of it was just laziness. So let’s try and play catch-up, shall we? Yes? Yes. Good.
I read:
Thoughts:
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders: Is a book narrated by ghosts better than a book where it was all a dream? No, not really.
To The Promised Land by Michael Honey: Reviewed in June.
Bettie Page Volume One by David Avallone: Reviewed in June
Shock Anthology by Neil Gaiman, Paul Jenkins, Brian Azzarello, Cullen Bunn, Marguerite Bennett, Frank Tieri, and more: Do you like how they make sure to put Neil Gaiman up there first? I think I am one of the few people I know who are ambivalent towards Neil Gaiman. I mean, I’m not going to kick his books out of bed for eating crackers, but at the same time, I’ve never really felt drawn to something because it has Neil Gaiman written in large letters purposefully to draw people like me in.
In any case, I need to review this.
The Boat People by Sharon Bala: This book is getting a fair bit of press lately and if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all, so it is good that a book about topics like this — specifically separating children from their parents during refugee hearings and not just south of the border, but here, in Canada, because it happens in Canada too — is getting attention, and now I am going to stop talking.
Sheets by Brenna Thummler: I was a lot more forgiving of this book full of ghosts than I was about the last book I read full of ghosts.
I need to review this.
The F Bomb by Lauren McKeon: Another book I need to review.
Operation Paperclip by Annie Jacobsen: Damn book world, you can slap a Nazi swastika on anything and you know I’m going to drop everything and read it, even if I already knew a whole bunch about Operation Paperclip before reading this book, so I probably didn’t need to read it, but I did it anyway.
Dead Fish by Ruth Carrington: A mystery book with fish in the title that’s full of red herrings. Oh, that makes me happy.
Let’s just keep on adding to the list of books I didn’t review over the past three months.
The Dark and Other Stories by Deborah Willis: Yep. More to review.
The End of the Moment We Had by Toshiki Okada: I actually reviewed this one and I was all happy and then realized that it isn’t published until September, so you’re going to have to wait until September for me to have done my job.
Favourite book:
How could this not be my favourite book of the quarter? It’s one of these books that anyone who has read it knows it almost by heart; we’re like a secret club, those of us who have read this weird book from the early eighties. We seek each other out, and we know which ones of us are bookworms, which ones of us should be let loose in the Lake Cachuma reserve, which ones of us kinda feel a little bit bad for the teachers. I started biting my nails because of this book, because Skinny Malinky did and so there had to be something to it. It took me over twenty years to break that habit.
It was supposed to be a trilogy. I have book two. There is no book three.
All I hope is that my book (y’all know I have a book, right?) gives someone the same visceral, life-long feeling this book did me. Books for kids can be strange and difficult and full of big words because The War Between The Pitiful Teachers And The Splendid Kids is and that is the type of books I want to write for the same ages of kids.
Most promising book on my wishlist:
As a facial-hair-possessed woman with a kid on the verge of teenager-dom, I am hoping for great things from Karma Khullar‘s mustache when I read it aloud to her whenever I get my copy from inter-library loan.
I wrote:
Other than some copy-editing for the book I have that just came out (!!!!!), I worked on what I hope to be the sequel. And guess what: Come visit on Friday and get a sneak peak of the first few pages of the sequel before anyone else!