Books of 2019- Installment #11

51. A Marriage of a Thousand Lies by SJ Sindu
I loved this book! A Sri Lankan American woman living in Massachusetts grapples with her sexuality being at odds with her family's values and how to find fulfillment balancing these conflicting parts of her life. I really think the author did a beautiful job of showing the different pulls in her life even though I did not always agree with her choices!

52. Passing Strange by Ellen Klages
I was so interested in this book when I first heard about it, but I didn't read it right away. Then a long time later I got a free copy of it from Tor.com, which made me read it right away! And wow!! I love it!! I love it!! Beautiful!!

53. A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson
I was so excited to get this book when I got Passing Strange. It's gotten rave reviews and the cover is gorgeous!! I loved his article The POC Guide to Writing Dialect in Fiction. This story though was a little hard for me to fall into. I definitely felt like I was walking into a full developed world that I didn't know anything about and didn't speak the language. I googled the story and found a book review that mentioned that it is set in the same universe as The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, which confirmed my feelings. So while feeling a bit lost, the love story was beautiful!

54. The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy
I had seen this book on Tor.com but for some reason I found the cover and title off-putting and had no intention of reading it. Then I got it from Tor.com as part of their celebration of pride month, so I decided to give it a chance. Well, I loved it! Instantly! Danielle Cain is an anarchist, hitchhiking around. After a friend's suicide she finds herself going to a town he described as being pretty utopian. From there a mystery unfolds.

55. The Barrow Will Send What It May by Margaret Killjoy
So... I wanted to spend more time with Danielle Cain, so I immediately bought this book. And put it this way, if there were a third book, I would have bought that one too! I love Danielle Cain. I love the way Margaret Killjoy writes. I want to spend way more time in this world!!

I've read 55 books so far and 39 were by women, 13 by men, and 3 anthologies with both female and male authors two of which were mostly female authors. My year of reading lots of women is still going strong!!

Books of 2019- Installment #10

46. The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
This book has been getting so much positive praise that I had planned on reading it. Then books came to me and this one receded. Then suddenly I put it on hold and got it. The day after I got it (but before I started it), a friend said, "I'm reading a young adult book titled the Hazelwood. I really like it and would recommend!" Clearly the time to read this book was now. And so I did! And I love it!!

47. Time Salvager by Wesley Chu
I'm not sure how I heard about this book, but I'm sure the fact that it is a time travel novel is what caught my eye. It's an interesting dystopian novel set far into the future, where time travelers mine the past for resources, making sure to protect the integrity of the timeline. A little violent in places for me and a little male for me in places but overall really enjoyable!

48. Invited by Jennifer McMahon
This is a ghost story set in Vermont. Nuff said!! Sign me up!! Then I stated reading it, and the book is broken up into sections like foundation, framing, insulation and drywall, floors and trim, and finish work (there are more but this is just a list of examples). Well, as I'm in the middle of garage conversion where everything was completely demo'd and then built from the pouring of the foundation up, I found this element of the book way more compelling than I could have ever foreseen. The book opens with Hattie and then she dies. I was completely bummed because I love Hattie, but it's a ghost story so someone has to die to have a ghost...

49. An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten and translated by Marlaine Delargy
I heard about this book on All the Backlist and just had to check it out! It is a super fast, fun read. It is a short collection of short stories about an elderly lady that has a penchant for murder!! I especially loved the first one, An Elderly Lady has Accommodations Problems, but I also liked the fact that two of the stories are totally related.

50. The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
I got this book for free from Tor.Com and I guarantee I would have not have picked this book up otherwise. I'm trying to read mostly women, horror is not my go-to-genre, and I'm really not enthralled with HP Lovecraft. But this book was great!! I really enjoyed it! I didn't feel it was horror until near the end and I was already hooked! I loved Victor LaValle's depiction of NY in the '20s, and I just felt the main character Tommy Tester was someone I would want to know.

I've read 50 books so far and 35 were by women, 12 by men, and 3 anthologies with both female and male authors two of which were mostly female authors. My year of reading lots of women is still going strong!!

Books of 2019- Installment #9

41. If, Then by Kate Hope Day
As I read this book, I kept getting flashes of The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin. They are not the same but The Lathe of Heaven is set in Oregon as is If, Then. A mountain (Mount Hood) is omnipresent in The Lathe of Heaven, as there is (Broken Mountain) in If, Then. There are these weird fractured realities in both The Lathe of Heaven and If, Then. With that said, the similarities fall away, but I gotta say I think that deepened my appreciation of this book!

42. The Future is Female! edited by Lisa Yaszek
When I heard about this book on Geek's Guide to the Galaxy, I knew I had to read it. I wondered if the stories would appeal or not, but I needed to read them. Quite a few really were amazing to me. A couple left me scratching my head, and only one was a story I had read before- Ursula K. Le Guin's Nine Lives of course!!

43. The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
Funny story... I first learned of the infamous Judge Crater disappearance from an ESL grammar book! When I learned about this fictionalized account, I knew I had to read it! I loved it!

44. The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager
I'm in a horror bookclub and this month's book was The Last Time I Lied. I like this book. It isn't scary to me and not particularly deep, but I definitely enjoyed it and didn't see where it was going!

45. Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse
OMG!! I loved this book! I loved the first one, and I loved this one!!! So good! Now I will admit I had forgotten some details between reading Trail of Lightning and reading this one, but in my defense I read 97 books (and I'm not even sure how many I started but I know I read over 40% of at least 2 books) in between the two! I would say I would like to hear the audiobook since I don't know how to pronounce the Navajo words used in the story.

I've read 45 books so far and 32 were by women, 10 by men, and 3 anthologies with both female and male authors two of which were mostly female authors. My year of reading lots of women is still going strong!!

Books of 2019- Installment #8

36. Supernatural Enhancements by Edgar Cantero
This is a book my horror bookclub picked and so while I've read Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero, I probably wouldn't have picked this book up. But I would have been missing out!! This book reminded me of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (but I liked this more) with hints of Umberto Eco a la Foucault's Pendulum.

37. Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia by Christina Thompson
I love Easter Island! Love it!! I love Hawai'i! Love it! And have heard that Polynesians are the most amazing navigators in the world but not how they were/are able to navigate in a way that the rest of the world isn't- until now! This book delved into so much more than I expected but it was fascinating!!

38. Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
This book is getting rave reviews!It is a very nostalgic mockumentary in book form. It took me a little bit to get into it, but I'm glad I read the whole thing. I enjoyed reading the different perspectives on the same events and hearing the voices of people who in some other story wouldn't get any say because the two main characters take up all the oxygen in the room!

39. Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear
I love this book. My husband and I having been talking about what makes this book so good, and it's hard to convey what we love about it. It is really engaging without being a pulse-pounding action thriller. It's got big ideas and discussion of society without being preachy. It's got fascinating, well-developed characters without being a character study. It's got alien species without being all world-building all the time. It's an amazing balance of a million awesome components. I don't know if that makes it sound exciting, but I loved reading it and am excited to read book two when it comes out!!

40. Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi
This is a super engaging story that people keep calling a modern fairy tale, which I see but it isn't how it struck me. It really reminds me of Alice Hoffman's writing. Three generations of women navigating a dangerous world where gingerbread is central to their lives.

I've read 40 books so far and 28 were by women, 9 by men, and 3 anthologies with both female and male authors two of which were mostly female authors. My year of reading lots of women is still going strong!!

Books of 2019- Installment #7

31. The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa and translated by Philip Gabriel
This is a sweet book about a man and his love of cats and two cats in particular. He adopted a stray and then years later can't keep the cat anymore, so he takes Nana (Seven) to different friends to see who would make a good home for Nana. My favorite part is Nana's narration!

32. The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
A novel told in verse! I had to check it out. It's really good but sad!! My year of reading women throws into stark relief the universal experience women have of being boxed up, told to be this, that, more, less, better, different, less, less, less. This is a heartbreaking experience to have to go through. To have it happen to so many of us, over and over and over again, is wrenching. To have your parents be the one giving you the message is devastating.

33. The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye
I have never heard of Lyndsay Faye and have no idea about her, but man, oh, man, the book sucked me in with its first words. Oh, how I wanted to savor this book!! And I did... I did... It's good. It is good, but there are things in this book you don't want to savor, things you want to be over, to be firmly in the past since we can't undo them. Oh, to have never had a society like this, that would be grand. But to have them happening anew! Horrifying! Horrifying!! And sadly all to real and omnipresent.

34. The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O'Meara
I listen to a podcast called Reading Glasses, and one of the hosts is the author of this book, which is how I learned about it. Ostensibly this book is about Milicent Patrick, but it's also about women in the film industry that also didn't get any recognition. Another group of hidden figures!

35. Famous Men Who Never Lived by K. Chess
I kinda hate the title because so what, but the book is really good! Basically an Earth has some horrible cataclysm and around 150,000 people from that Earth come to another Earth (very similar to ours but not necessarily ours...) It is a one-way trip and the ultimate refugee experience. I was asked if there is really any sci-fi in this book or if it really is just a refugee story. That's such a challenging question to answer. For me it had plenty of sci-fi. But the sci-fi drives the refugee storyline.

I've read 35 books so far and 24 were by women, 8 by men, and 3 anthologies with both female and male authors two of which were mostly female authors. My year of reading lots of women is still going strong!!

Books of 2019- Installment #6

26.  (Don't) Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Start the Conversation about Mental Health edited by Kelly Jensen
I am not sure how I came across this book, but it is excellent! I really enjoyed all the different perspectives on an array issues people face! Really thoughtful!!

27. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
There's been so much great buzz around Circe that I wanted to read it. Then I learned that Madeline Miller wrote this one first, so I checked it out. It's a great retelling of the story of Achilles from the perspective of Patroclus. He is from what I understand Achilles closest friend but not well-fleshed out in the Greek myths. This one does that.

28. The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea edited by Ellen Datlow
I love the sea and I love short stories, so when I saw this combination of the two I had to snatch it up. This is a great collection of scary stories of the sea. Some are truly horrifying and some are just spine-tingling, but they are all engaging!

29. The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas
This book is so good!! I devoured it! A page-turner indeed! The cast of characters is fascinating, the plot keeps you engaged, and there is a pleasing old school Doctor Who reference at the very beginning of the book.

30. The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark
I love reading stories about jinn. This wasn't about jinn exactly but jinn figure prominently in the story AND it is an alternate history of Egypt with tons of supernatural elements AND part of the alternate history was women demanding more rights! Yay!! (Plus I super loved the England part of this alternate history!)

I've read 30 books so far and 19 were by women, 8 by men, and 3 anthologies with both female and male authors two of which were mostly female authors. My year of reading lots of women is still going strong!!

Books of 2019- Installment #5

21. Gmorning, Gnight!: Little Pep Talks for Me  & You by Lin-Manuel Miranda & Jonny Sun
Oh, my how sweet is this book!!! And the drawings put me over the moon!!!

22. Earthly Delights by Kerry Greenwood
I love the Phryne Fisher mysteries, so I was excited to start another series by Kerry Greenwood. This is like and not like Phryne. The main character Corinna is a baker and is surrounded by cats, so I'm so happy!

23. The Bees by Laline Paull
My friend keeps meeting beekeepers, and I heard that this book had a nonhuman narrator. Sign me up! I am fascinated with the societies of the other inhabitants of this planet, that we for the most part act like don't exist. So this book is really fascinating because we are immersed in a beehive and their society.

24. Disappearance at Devil's Rock by Paul Tremblay
I joined an online horror book club, and there was a poll to see which book would be our first book. This book was in the lead and I was afraid if I waited until the book was chosen that I wouldn't be able to get. The library had it so I got it. Now I'm not really into horror, but I have enjoyed quite a few books that are considered horror and I was considering A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay a long time ago, so... here we are. Turns out, I devoured this book and don't think it was horror at all. Scared me but not as much as other books but definitely good!!

25. Dead Man's Chest by Kerry Greenwood
This is the 18th book in the Phryne Fisher mysteries. I have been enjoying it so very much that I decided to savor them. And I have, but this year I decided I would finish this series. I even started a different Kerry Greenwood series (Earthly Delights is the first!) to prep myself! And this book is so good! I'm so glad I read it! It really lifted my spirits!

I've read 25 books so far and 17 were by women, 7 by men, and 1 by mostly women. My year of reading lots of women is still going strong!!