Books of 2020- Installment #4

16. Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn
My friend recommended this sweet love story. And it is so wonderful! If you need just a lovely romance with some art written into it, this one is for you!! Love it so much!! And inspired by it too!

17. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
This book is part script, part novel. And while there are funny things in this book, I would not call it funny. Worth reading- absolutely! Funny not to me! It really is about perceptions of Chinese people in the US. The author Charles Yu really delves into racial stereotypes and ways they limit us.

18. Betwixt by Darynda Jones
If I have not made it clear that I absolutely adore Darynda Jones's books, I'm very sorry. She is utterly amazing! I can't get enough! My friend mentioned that this book had just come out. I got it. My husband read it and said that I needed to read it. I had a bunch of library books and so was going to wait. He said read it now. I did and now I'm devastated because all I want is new Darynda Jones and have none. Don't get me wrong some are coming my way but they're not here now. Then again neither is toilet paper so.... Priorities that's what I'm saying. Priorities!

19. A Lovely Drop by Darynda Jones
One of the reasons I don't have any more Darynda is because this was the only thing I hadn't read yet and well, I more or less did the book equivalent of chowing down on a canister of Pringles. You can't just pop one! Sigh- April 7th for my next Darynda fix!!

20. Quarantined in the Office by Lucy McConnell
Hey, it's coronavirus all the time these days and here's a short little romance trying to find something positive amidst all this craziness. It's cute and fast.

I've read 20 books and 18 were by woman, 1 was by a man, and 1 was a translation. My year of reading lots of women and at least 12 translations is going well so far!

Books of 2020- Installment #3

11. The Deep by River Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William, Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes
This book is amazing! There are so many reasons why and so what follows is a stream of consciousness of order and not necessarily in order of importance. One the cover is AMAZING!! It is so beautiful!! I just love looking at it!!! Second the history of this book is so incredible. It was a song and became this book and will hopefully continue to grow. The way I first learned about this book is via this Switched on Pop podcast episode. Third River Solomon writes such a heartbreaking story that while sad wasn't oppressive, which I was afraid of... It's truly beautiful from its origin story to its music to its characters to its writing to its cover to its potential! Read this book!! I didn't really tell you anything about it. It's basically a science fiction alternative world slave narrative-sort of. It's based on the utterly horrific, terrifying, devastating true practice of throwing pregnant abducted women overboard on the trip from Africa to the Americas because they were too much trouble. So what if those women gave birth to babies that could survive and thrive in the ocean? What would that society be? It's incredible!! But the way this story came into being is amazing! It's collaboration at its most beautiful- well, the narrative being told about its origin is beautiful!

12. My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time by Liz Jensen
A time travel book from a Danish prostitute in the 1800s perspective! It's really fascinating. It's fascinating learning about Denmark in the 1890s and reading her perspective on the world. It's pre-the-metoo-movement and it was written pre-the-metoo-movement as well and I couldn't stop thinking about that as I read it. A little HG Wells and a whole lot of fascinating!

13. Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
I was very excited to read this book, especially because there's been a spate of articles about horesback riding librarians. This book was good, but I did it as an audio and that's not my preferred method for reading. I might have to revisit this book at a later date.

14. Blind Date with a Book Boyfriend by Lucy Eden
This is a cute novella about love found in the bookstore. They have some trials and tribulations but in the end love conquers all!

15. The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Kahn
Holy crap!!!! This book is awesome!! Awesome!!! It starts out like a murder mystery novel. But it ends up being so much more, and if you like learning about history in your fiction, this is for you! The writing is so engaging, and I learned so much. You might not be of an age to remember the Bosnian genocide or maybe you are. I am and this book told me some things I forgot and some things I never knew, but all of it was fascinating. I was worried this would be too much for me, but it is so well-written, so engaging, so "I want to know what happens next" that I really just devoured this book!! I've been recommending it left and right and am really interested in reading book two in this series!!

I've read 15 books and 14 were by woman, 1 was by a man, and 1 was a translation. My year of reading lots of women and at least 12 translations is going well so far!

 

Books of 2020- Installment #2

6. A Madness of Sunshine by Nalini Singh
The thing about putting books on hold at the library and then reading them is I'm never quite sure how I learned about them. That's the case with this book. It's a murder mystery set in New Zealand, but it doesn't read like a typical murder mystery, which I quite liked. The main character is a Maori woman who left her small coastal New Zealand town and went on to become an internationally acclaimed classical pianist, which is interesting but not the focus. She returns home after a horrible revelation that comes on the heels of her husband's surprising death. Once home she is faced with a murder that is reminiscent of a spate of murders that happened when she was a teen. She is grappling with a lot of terrible things all at once.

7. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
This book isn't a self-help book and it isn't really about doing nothing. It's more about reevaluating our relationship with society and the world and not being driven to produce, produce, produce all the time. Perhaps maintaining would be a more admirable goal. Additionally she examines our relationships with nature. She talks about resistance and the labor movement and about the indigenous people of the region she lives in- Oakland and the Bay Area. Everything that we can do is because of some privilege we have. Right? If you can't make ends meet, you don't really get to protest. You need support. Even resistance requires privilege. Sometimes you can only be a witness.

8. Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference, and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls by Jessica McDiarmid (my last book of January)
This book examines in a very caring and I felt illuminating way about the violence and systemic racism leveled against indigenous girls and women in Canada, particularly on a stretch of highway that's become known as the Highway of Tears. When literally thousands of indigenous girls and women (and let's be clear many of the people discussed in her book are under the age of 17!) are disappeared and raped and murdered and nothing is being done to end it, it's shocking and horrifying and terrifying. When I was 13, I was walking to school which was along a highway and these two men definitely tried to abduct me and it is out of sheer dumb luck that I wasn't abducted. That event has haunted my entire life and reading this book reminded me again and again of how I managed not to be abducted. And this book is painful, but I felt compelled to read it if for no other reason than to be a witness of sort.

9. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
This book is the first of my books in translation for the year. And it grabbed me from the get-go! I was immediately entranced by the narrator. One of my first thoughts was, "This is what I wanted from An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good!" And when I finished it, one of my first thoughts was, "That was what I wanted from An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good!" The main character lives in a rural part of Poland near the border with the Czech Republic. At first a neighbor turns up dead, and then another and another. She has her theories and they seem to be rejected out of hand. We're in her mind seeing the world through her eyes and so she seems totally reasonable and on top of things even if you don't agree with her- she's really big into astrology and has lots of thoughts on the matter!! But you do wonder about things. And that's a big part of why I think this book is soooo good!! I love this book!! I love the main character, love her thoughts on animals, nature, humanity, anger, translation, and I love the fact that the author took me places I did not expect to go! I would say my first translation of the year was a huge success!!!!

10. Ayoade On Top by Richard Ayoade
If you've watched the IT Crowd, you've seen and most likely fallen in love with Richard Ayoade. I've watched a bunch of YouTube clips of him on various British show, and he is always- always- a delight! So when I learned I could get a copy of this book through my library I had to!! It's a pretty deep analysis of the Gwyneth Paltrow movie View from the Top. It's quite extensive!

I read 10 books and 9 were by woman, 1 was by a man, and 1 was a translation. My year of reading lots of women and at least 12 translations is going well so far!