💻🛜⛱️✍️👩‍🍳🪄A Week of Interesting, Quirky Books

 

"I felt like living my life through screens had trapped me in this dark little cell, my own black box of doom."
― Jason Pargin, I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom

I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin was a blast! There were many good elements contributing to the deliciousness of this book. Given its title, I was surprised by how good-hearted and kind its characters were. It has many familiar storylines. It is a quest--what's in the box, with a buddy journey--Abbott agrees to drive an unknown woman and a strange box from LA to Washington DC; coming of age--Abbott takes the wheel of his life; redemption--wrongs are righted, relationships repaired, plus an education about the glory and ruin that is the internet. The book has wonderfully broken, fascinating characters, lots of action, and gentle moralism. A great read.

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 Don't Forget to Write by Sara Goodman Confino is a historical fiction set in 1960. It is also adjacent to the romance category--not its primary purpose, but when your protagonist is sent as punishment to live with her strict seventy-plus aunt, who also happens to be an in-demand matchmaker, there is going to be romance. This book is balanced with interesting characters, a surprising plot, and good writing. Its central theme is self-determination. Marilyn Kleinman misbehaving as she chaffs under her father's strictness becomes a purposeful path towards knowing herself and what she wants. 

☀️⛱️✍️🐩

    I found Something Close to Magic by Emma Mills on a list of cozy fantasy novels--just the right book for post-Christmas, Artic blast doldrums.

https://modernmrsdarcy.com/cozy-fantasy-novels/

It contained several books I'd already read and enjoyed. Emma Mills does a good job of creating an ensemble cast with a downtrodden but spunky protagonist, Aurelie, the apprentice baker. She is trying to make a stable, dependable life for herself. Still, it is disrupted by Illiane, the bounty hunter who needs her special magical skill to find people, specifically a prince named Hapless. This was a lovely adventure. The book is YA, but it is a fun read.

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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️Three 5-Star Books and a Weird One!🎉

 

    What a great book to start off the year! The Frozen River is the first book I've read by Ariel Lawhon, and it won't be the last. Lawhon creates a spirited, compassionate protagonist in Martha Ballard, a real-life midwife. The book is based on the journals she kept from 1785-1812. Lawhon weaves a captivating life story in colonial America, birth, murder, and justice.

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    Guide Me Home by Attica Locke is the third and final book in the Highway 59 series. I have been reluctant to read it because Locke creates a flawed, tragic hero in Darren Matthews, a black Texas Ranger. His twin uncles raise him after the death of his father, convincing his sixteen-year-old mother to give him up. Darren reflects Texas: independent, burdened with racism, and proud of its history, but refusing to see the hidden damage. Darren wants to love his state but is being crushed by its shortcomings. He fights to regain his hope and confidence, but he must face the pain of his past to move into his future. Locke created a beautiful, complex man who lives a powerful story of an honorable man. I highly recommend it.

Here are my reviews of the previous books in the series: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Attica+Locke

⭐️🛣️🌲

    This is my second time reading Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds. After the shooting death of his older brother, a young man, Will, is wrestling with the rules of his community: No crying, No snitching, Revenge. Will doesn't cry and doesn't snitch. He takes his brother's gun and gets on the elevator to get revenge. As he descends, he meets those whose lives reflect following the rules. They challenge Will to consider his plans.

"ANOTHER THING ABOUT THE RULES

They weren't meant to be broken.
They were meant for the broken

to follow."

😵🚬🚬🚬🚬🚬🚬🛗

    If the title didn't clue you in--The Village Library Demon Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner--let me assure you, this was a weird book. Like if Agatha Christie's Miss Marple suddenly discovered St. Mary Mead had a demon problem. The book is quirky but enjoyable. I wondered where it would go next. The mystery solver, a 60+ librarian named Sherry Pinkwhistle, is the one everyone turns to when there is a suspicious death in the community. Then, she becomes suspicious of so many suspicious deaths. She assembles her crime-solving, demon-hunting squad, including her possessed cat, Sir Thomas Cromwell, and they get to work. 

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🎄🎄🎄Belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! My Final Books of 2024

 

   The Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna was a fun romantasy. It had a creative concept surrounding the history of witches. They must conceal their magic from the world and have limited contact with each other because their powers increase when they are together. Mika Moon is a young witch who longs for connection with others but continually hides her true self. So, she started a YouTube channel about potion-making! The pacing was slow, but the story was delightful.

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Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters is a book of poetry. It is a collection of free-verse monologues by dead people buried in a cemetery in the Spoon River. Masters captures the essence of each person in a few paragraphs. It is a fitting book to read at the end of December when I evaluate the setting year and anticipate the dawning one. The characters shine from their brief words--abusers, heroes, cowards, thieves, sour-spirits, broken-hearted, and more. I heard about Spoon River Anthology from How to Read a Book. A prison book club read it. https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/2024/12/forgiveness-and-fierce-grandmother.html

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    How to Walk Away by Katherine Center is a romance book at its center. It has a gruff frenemy with a panty-dropping accent. A main character with significant problems to figure out. Many side stories contribute to a propulsive plot. There is the benefit of learning much about spinal cord injuries. Center has done good research for her story, but it doesn't detract from plot.

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I read A Novel Love Story a few days before Christmas and confess I didn't give it my full attention. It has a clever and complex premise. On her way to a private book retreat, a woman finds herself in an idyllic small town, just like the one from her favorite romance series. Her car has broken down, and she finds herself stranded there for several days. Things are mysteriously weird, and the grumpy, hot bookstore owner isn't helping matters. I liked it, but I wish I'd read it at a less harried time and could appreciate it more.

🚗🐈📚❤️‍🔥

🎄🎄🎄📚📚📚Forgiveness and a Fierce Grandmother!

 

How to Read a Book by Monica Wood was a delightful book that spoke deeply about forgiveness and how difficult and vital it is. The story is told by three different people: Violet Powell, a young woman serving time for manslaughter; Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher leading a prison book club; and Frank Daigle, a retired machinist and husband of the woman Violet killed. Will they meet? Will they all face challenges? Yes, and yes. Is forgiveness portrayed as easy? Is the cost light? No, and no. Highly recommend!

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    These three books by Richard Peck are a series. They are humourous, wise, and quite enjoyable. The first, A Long Way From Chicago, recounts the trials of Joe and Mary Alice traveling from Chicago to stay with their grandma in rural Illinois for a week each summer throughout the Depression. Grandma Dowdel reminds me of Loki--tricky and naughty--but with a fierce sense of justice for the underdog. Rural life is a lot for two city kids. In A Year Down Under, Mary Alice has to stay with Grandma Dowdel for a year because her father has lost his job. She learns much from Grandma about what matters. The final book, A Season of Gifts, jumps to 1958. Bob and his family move next door to Grandma. He endures bullying for being the new kid in town but gets help from Grandma Dowdel. It is the era of Elvis and Bobby Sox. Grandma is equal to it all.

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🌝 📚So Many Good Books!😵🕷️🪄

 

    At times, I find the holidays hectic and overwhelming. It is not the time for me to read painful, heartbreaking books. So, I am revisiting The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill. It is an excellent fantasy book where the evil witch is also the good witch, dragons are small, and unlikely people are brave heroes. I feel unfailingly hopeful when I read it. 

🌝🐉🧙‍♀️🌋🪄🐦‍⬛

I liked the goals of The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods. It is a clever, intriguing romance book where females in a magical bookshop in Ireland find their power against the evil status quo patriarchy. I had several unanswered questions at the end. The book felt divided about men--abusers or angels, not much between. Woods clearly loves books, and that makes it a good read.

📚🍀❤️

    The Book That Broke the World by Marc Lawrence is the second of a trilogy. Trilogy middle books are the most difficult. As a reader, I want to finish the book with a feeling of completeness but also have significant unanswered questions that make reading the final book compelling. Some themes that Lawrence is tackling are knowledge of good and evil, sibling relationships, revenge, rags to riches, sacrifice, and more. Lawrence has a layered plot narrated by several characters. The ending feels muddled, and I don't fully understand what is happening. This may become apparent in the third book. It is still some of the best fantasy I've read.

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Mystery, podcast, amnesia, Texas

    True crime podcasts are big. In Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera, Lucy's best friend, Savvy, was murdered. Everyone in Lucy's small Texas town believes Lucy is the killer.; however, Lucy has amnesia surrounding the fatal night. She flees her hometown for LA. But, a podcaster starts to stir up trouble, and Lucy is drawn back to Plumpton, Texas, to face the hatred of the town and the ghosts of the past. This book was dark and humorous. It has a feisty grandma. I enjoyed this a great deal. It is terrific on audio.

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    Marilyn Singer invented a form of poetry called Reverso. Her book Echo, Echo: Reverso Poems About Greek Myths are poems read in one direction and then reversed. A poem that stands out is King Midas's daughter lamenting the lack of touch from her father. Her father then groans over, touching his daughter, causing her to become a statue. It is difficult to describe but amazing to see. Here is a link to an example:

https://kellyrfineman.livejournal.com/544639.html

This would be a good gift book for elementary school-age children because of its poems and intriguing illustrations.

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📚A Week with Two🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Books!

 

   The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Marc Lawrence was nominated for the Good Reads Fantasy Award. It is written by someone who is deeply knowledgeable about fantasy literature and skillful in crafting intricate stories. Two outsiders find each other in a quiet wood between their worlds. A guinea pig nibbles in the grass nearby. Lawrence creates a compelling, mysterious story with grand themes of xenophobia, the blessing and curse of knowledge, and the cost of friendship. I would easily compare it to The Lord of the Rings in its scope and reach. It has spunky, contemplative characters that captured my heart. I have the next book reserved and hope that Lawrence quickly finishes the final book!

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    My book club is reading Newberry Award winners, and this month, we read A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck. At the book's center is fierce, larger-than-life Grandma Dowdel, who lives in rural Illinois in 1937. Fifteen-year-old Chicago-raised granddaughter Mary Alice is forced by financial circumstances to live with her grandmother for a year. Mary Alice learned so much that year. She is like a city cat that moves to the country and discovers the joys of living a less gentile life. 

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👽☕️😭All Books Published (In English) in 2024

    James S. A. Corey--the pen name of the writing duo Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck--writes masterful science fiction. The Mercy of the Gods is an excellent story with incredible world-building, science, and a propulsive plot. Multiple storylines are unfolding, coming together, and branching off again. The basic premise is that a human-populated world is invaded by an aggressive, robust species of aliens who relocate the "best" of the world's citizens. It's excellent.

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    Before We Forget Kindness by Toshikazu Kawaguchi continues his series "Before the Coffee Gets Cold." Individuals risk becoming ghosts to return briefly to the past to say what they failed to say to a loved one who is gone. It is complicated and also refreshingly hopeful. The author is Japanese. One woman returns to talk briefly with her husband, who died before their baby was born. She wants to know what name he wants to give the child he never met. It is a rule that it is impossible to change the future by returning to the past, but the book demonstrates that you can change how you understand the past. It is a lovely book. 

☕️👶🏻💔💖

    The Women by Kristin Hannah has received much well-deserved attention and accolades. It tells the story of a young woman, "Frankie" McGrath, who volunteered to go to Vietnam as a nurse in the Army and had very little nursing or life experience. Her time there was horrendous, but she rose to the challenge and became an excellent nurse and a traumatized veteran. This book should have trigger warnings. Hannah does an exceptional job of showing how damaging untreated PTSD can be, and she compounds the trauma with tragedy after tragedy. I found it to be overwhelming to the point of melodrama. In the end, I didn't like it. I think it was because the central character lacked warmth and a connection with others. 

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🐈‍⬛💊 🐕Murder Trouble, Drug Trouble, and more Murder Trouble!😍

 

    I love the whacky series featuring senior citizens who local murders called "The Thursday Murder Club"  by Richard Osman. He is starting a new series, and its first book is We Solve Murders. Osman writes quirky characters that get into ridiculous problems while trying to solve a tricky murder. He starts with a fresh cast. Steve Wheeler is a retired policeman comfortable with his well-ordered life. His daughter-in-law Amy works as a professional bodyguard for a high-end protection business. A mysterious trail of influencer deaths clusters around Amy. She needs to solve who is behind them and why before she ends up in jail or dead herself. She finds help in the unlikeliest of places. I'm going to like them!

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    The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing by Lara Love Hardin was recommended by my sister, and when I started reading it, I thought it was fiction. It begins at a desperate point where Lara uses a stolen credit card to stay in a hotel with her young son. She waits there for her husband to bring heroin for them both to get high. She goes on to explain how their drug use has dismantled her comfortable suburban life as she steals and lies to support their habit. This is about the time I realized it was a memoir. Hardin tells her gripping story of addiction, jail, and recovery. 

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    I have seen the Netflix series advertised, but I wanted to start with the book. I was surprised that A Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson was a  YA book. The mystery: a five-year-old disappearance of 17-year-old popular high school student, Andie, becomes the capstone project for straight-A student Pip. Andie's boyfriend Singh is believed to have killed Andie, then killed himself out of guilt, but her body was never found. The deeper Pip digs, the more things don't add up. When she starts receiving threats to stop looking or else, Pip knows she's onto something. I liked this twisty story. The pace was good. My only complaint is never go to confront a killer alone! There are two other books in the series, and I'm excited to read them.

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🧩Why is Everything I Read Depressing? 1 Horror, 2 Dystopian, 1 Opiod Crisis, and 1 🧩

 

    I have read Matt Dinniman's "Dungeon Crawler Carl" series and looked forward to Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon, another LITrpg short for literary role-playing game. LITrpg is a work that uses the structure of a computer role-player game with monsters, quests, battles, and multiple players. Where the "Dungeon Crawler Carl" series has a loss of players and mystery,  it has a playful silliness. Carl has dedicated himself to helping others succeed and survive. His mantra is, "You will not break me." Duke, in Kaiju, repeats, "This is too much," as he makes dark choices necessary for survival.   

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    I don't love The Giver. Dystopian fantasy stories aren't my favorite in general. Even though I would like to live in a world where people don't suffer, and everyone has what they need materially, the cost is high. Only one person understands what has been sacrificed. He has the knowledge of good and evil and it's time for his successor to receive it. I read a review that referenced the Biblical imagery, that I had completely missed and now I want to reread the book. 

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    I enjoy hearing what Malcolm Gladwell says and have read many, if not all, of his books. The Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering was meaty, engaging,  and well-told. He digs into painful topics like COVID-19, the opiate crisis, teen suicide, and more with insightful kindness and hope. I come away from reading his book, especially this one, feeling educated and given tools to interpret the world around me. 

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    I am excited to read the latest from James A. Corey. who wrote "The Expanse" series, which spawned an excellent series that ended too soon. The pair that makes up James A. Corey combines all the sci-fi elements. As Frederik Pohl says, "A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam." I have yet to read the start of the next series--a matter of when not if--but I did read this short novella called Livesuit about soldiers who fight the war against alien invaders in a livesuit. A livesuit is a body armor loaded with tech. A soldier is encased at the start of his/her enlistment of seven years and decanted when the enlistment is over. The suit makes the soldiers practically invincible. 

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    I picked up the The Puzzle Master by Danielle Trussoni because I wanted something intriguing but not too much thinky-thinky. Mike Brink becomes a savant through a traumatic brain injury. He has the ability to see patterns that others can't see which makes him . . . a master at solving and creating puzzles. He is presented with the puzzle of a convicted murderer that hasn't spoken since the death of her boyfriend until she gives her prison therapist a puzzle for Mike Brink. It leads down a weird and hard to sustain rabbit hole. 

😇אה🧠🧩

🧛🏻‍♂️Horror and 😇Self-Help

 

    The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix is a horror story of the vampire variety. Unfortunately, Hendrix is such a good writer that his creepy scenes have burrowed into my brain like a cockroach into an ear. I don't know if I'll read any more of his books because he does a brilliant job of showing, not telling, and I like to sleep at night.

🧛🏻‍♂️🍑🏚️🪳

    I heard about No More Mr. Nice Guy: A Proven Plan for Getting What You Want in Love, Sex, and Life by Dr. Robert Glover on Marriage Therapy Radio (https://marriagetherapyradio.com/2024/08/06/ep-332-no-more-mr-nice-guy-with-dr-robert-glover/) where Dr. Glover was interviewed by Zach and Laura. He has counseled many "nice guys" to help them toward healthier ways of navigating life. He does not advocate toxic masculinity but encourages men to ask for what they need and appreciate their worth. I found lots of things to apply in my own life. If you seek to get your emotional, physical, social, and financial needs met by taking care of others to the extent that you don't care for yourself, then you will probably not get your needs met. 

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A British Romance🇬🇧, A Pulitzer Finalist🏅, and Only One Giant Fantasy Book🐉

 

Sometimes, after reading two massive fantasy books, you need a world that is not built from scratch but more grounded in reality- like a romance novel! I read Flatshare by Beth O'Leary. There are many, many romance books and movies in the world, and it is challenging to create a novel "meet-cute." This one was quite creative. Our main characters, Tiffy, a worker bee at a craft book publishing house, and Leon, a nighttime hospice nurse, share a flat with only one bed. Tiffy sleeps in it at night, and Leon sleeps in it during the day. On weekends, Leon stays with his girlfriends. Perfect! What could go wrong?

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O'Leary created well-crafted backstories for both main characters, with room for change and discovery. With deftly juggled storylines and characters, I found the book quite diverting.

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    Iron Flame, by Rebecca Yarros, is the second book in the series The Empyrean series. The many problems introduced in the first book continue into the second but in a good way. There are still mysteries to be resolved. Violet Sorrengail is still a feisty, intelligent dragon rider in training. Her understanding of her extraordinary power, her connection to her dragons Tairn and Andrrna, and to complex bad-boy Xanden. The second book of a series is difficult. The characters have traits and trajectories that must remain "true" to the first book but still surprise and delight the readers. Iron Flame mostly succeeds. The ending sets up the third book of the series, which is due out early next year. According to my research, Yarros plans to have five books in the series. 

    People have strong feelings about the series. There are many five-star and some one-star reviews. I'm a three-star. I like the series, but it feels like a contrived YA book with adult scenes created to sell. At its center, it lacks passion. Violet and Xanden know they love each other because of their intense attraction. Yarros tries to balance it with "and you're smart," but I'm not buying it; however, it's entertaining.

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    James by Percival Everett is a brilliant book. Everett retells the story of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain from the perspective of Jim, the enslaved man who travels the Mississippi River with Huck. Several blurbs mention that it is humorous. It epitomizes irony, but harsh realities give the book gravitas. Even though it is based on Huckleberry Finn, it stands on its own and could be read without knowing the plot of Huckleberry Finn, but it would be helpful to read over a summary. It is fast-paced without sacrificing thought-provoking. 

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