Girls in the Moon - Janet McNally

First off, can we take a moment to step back and appreciate the brilliance of this cover design?  The New York skyline with Luna and Phoebe's silhouettes, emblazoned against a moon that is also a microphone--whoever did this cover design is a pro.  (Clearly, because I assume they did get paid for it, but you know what I mean.)

Girls in the Moon was my Book of the Month selection for January.  I also picked up Lucky You by Erika Carter (which isn't due out until March) but GITM was my primary choice.  I wasn't actually thrilled by the description, but it seemed to fall into the realm of mildly interesting, so I went for it.  Boy, am I glad that I did.

This is a positively lovely book.  I think that's really the best word for it.  Lovely.  The story is that of Phoebe Ferris, who's finishing out her summer vacation between her junior and senior years of high school by visiting her older sister, Luna, who lives in New York when she's not touring with her new band, Luna and the Moons.  Also to be considered is that Phoebe and Luna's parents are Meg and Kieran Ferris, two of the members of a band that was big in the 90s called Shelter.  Kieran hasn't been in Phoebe or Luna's lives for the past three years, but Phoebe knows he's also in New York, so she plans to see him while she's there, too...and maybe learn something about her parents' rock star past, which she can't remember and which her mother refuses to really speak of, going so far as to pretend she's not Meg Ferris whenever anyone asks.  Oh, and she wants to see Archer, the bassist in Luna's band who Phoebe has been texting since they first met earlier in the year, and who is probably the only person who knows about Phoebe's budding poetic, lyrical talent.

Phoebe is a character with whom it is easy to empathize.  Her summer has pretty much been a disaster for two reasons.  First, she and her best friend got into a fight over a boy.  (Ah, high school.)  Well, not really a fight, but something that has certainly put a damper on things, especially because said friend lives directly across the street.  And then there's Meg herself, who is pressuring Phoebe to talk Luna into staying in college instead of going on tour with the Moons.  She's a little introverted and seems to think in song lyrics sometimes, jotting them down in text messages when they come to mind.  And while she doesn't crave fame and fortune, she wants to know more about her family and where she comes from, something that her mother has been reluctant to discuss and her father hasn't been present to.  She wants to make her own way but isn't sure how to do so, unlike Luna, who always seems to know exactly what to do and when to do it.

None of the characters here seemed superfluous and the setting of New York was perfect here.  I've only been to New York once, and I hated it for the short time I was there, but this made me want to go back and see it in a different light.  Luna's life in New York isn't perfect and Phoebe's aware of it, but she savors her time there nonetheless, and seems to really live.  Then there's the beauty of McNally's writing itself.  It's not overwrought and is actually pretty simplistic, but she has a way of just making things very clear and picturesque at the same time.  I didn't feel like there were any big plot holes here, and the secondary story going on--Meg's story, going back in time from the present to essentially when Shelter first started, in leaps and bounds, just a few pages at a time--lent another dimension to Phoebe and Luna's story in the present.  And the lyrics spattered throughout the book, single lines as they are, seem exactly like lyrics to the sort of songs I would have loved to listen to when I was Phoebe's age, and probably even still today.

Overall, this was an absolutely beautiful read, and a wonderful first Book of the Month for 2017.  It has a sort of nostalgia and optimism that's perfectly suited for these rather grim times, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

4.5 stars out of 5.

Mechanica - Betsy Cornwell (Mechanica #1)

Mechanica has been on my to-read list for a while, and I finally got to it as part of my 2017 reading challenge, for the category of "A book with a title that's a character's name."  Now, to be fair, Mechanica isn't the given name of the main character of the story--no more so than Cinderella is the given name of that character.  Rather, it's a nickname given to the character by her evil stepfamily.

As with the traditional Cinderella story, Nicolette is rather abused by her stepmother and two stepsisters in the years following the death of her father.  But unlike the traditional Cinderella, Nicolette--also known as Nick--is a mechanic and inventor, following in the footsteps of her mother, who mixed magic and mechanics to create fabulous miniature creatures which can create tasks assigned to them in addition to simpler inventions that make life easier.  Nicolette's world is also one that's torn by an ongoing conflict with the Fey, who hail from a continent across the sea and have been suppressed by her country, Esting, for years.

This was a delightfully refreshing fairy tale adaptation.  I don't mind adaptations that stick fairly faithfully to the originals, and I was initially a little disappointed when I found that Nicolette wasn't adhering as closely to the "poor girl treated as a maid finds a prince and falls in love" trope as I'd anticipated, no matter how much mechanical and innovative padding was added to the story.  (I also, from the cover, kind of thought that Nicolette herself was going to be some sort of automaton, but that's mostly because I clearly did not read the description.)  But in the very beginning of the book, Nicolette finds herself fascinated by how the Fey build families and friendships, and that becomes a compelling motivation for her.  She doesn't just want to fall in love.  She wants to be loved, in more ways than romantically, and that is what propels her throughout the story.  Yes, she wants to be free of her stepfamily, but it's more than just that.  That is such a lovely and unusual motivation for this type of story that it was, in the end, very refreshing, as are Nicolette's choices when she is ultimately faced with them.

That said, I still didn't love the story.  I wish that the stepfamily had been given a bit more dimension.  Cornwell tries to give the stepmother a bit of humanity toward the end of the book, but backpedals from it pretty quickly--Nicolette doesn't want to see her stepmother as human.  I found that rather disappointing; I'd hoped for better from her.  There's been a recent trend of giving the stepfamily a bit more humanity and I would have liked to see that continue here, but that wasn't really the case.  Additionally, I would have liked to see more interactions between Nicolette and Fin.  Considering her emotions towards him, I think it would have been good if they'd had more interactions than Nicolette could count on one hand.  There are also a few worldbuilding things I would have liked to have seen fleshed out more--like the Ashes.  Someone mentions they're cursed, and yet that doesn't seem to go anywhere, nor does Nicolette seem to be that concerned about that possibility.  But perhaps those will be ironed out in a future book?

Overall, a refreshing fairy tale adaptation, with some lovely, innovative elements, but I think it could have done with a bit more depth.

3.5 stars out of 5.

Radiance - Grace Draven (Wraith Kings #1)

This was our the latest theme read for the Unapologetic Romance Readers group on Goodreads.  Every so often (roughly once a month, but often times with a bigger gap depending on how lazy we are) the group has a "theme read" alongside the monthly read, to give people who aren't interested in one a chance to read the other.  Radiance was the winner out of a group of nominations for a "slow burn" read.  I'll admit, I was a little disappointed going into it, because I was really rooting for Mariana Zapata's latest--because she is the queen of the slow burn--but I gamely stepped up.

Well, this wasn't quite my cup of tea, and I have to say that I don't see that it was a slow burn, either.  At all.  The story is about Idilko, a human princess, and Brishen, a Kai prince.  Kai are kind of like dark elves but with claws and fangs.  The two are married as part of an alliance between their two countries, since both of them are of the royal line but aren't actually in line to inherit.  But despite having never met each other and being essentially repulsed by each others' appearances in the beginning, the two are lovey-dovey pretty much right away.  They're always calling each other "wife" and "husband" as terms of affection, they're sleeping with each other (literally sleeping) right away on the road and pretty soon after they get to Brishen's home, they're holding hands and giving each other little signs of physical affection.  And then they suddenly decide they're physically attracted to each other and to do the dirty.  There's really no "burn" here at all--it's basically all there to begin with.  There's a little bit of apprehension and a good deal of culture shock to get over, but nothing that is ever seriously presented as a real obstacle to Brishen and Idilko being together.

The characters themselves are fine.  I really liked both Idilko and Brishen, who both had good backgrounds and personalities of their own.  The side characters were very promising, too, from Brishen's female warrior cousin to the neighboring lord-across-the-border who has a good relationship with Brishen despite their countries being at odds.  Draven also does a good job building up the culture of the Kai realm.  They're a nocturnal race, and a race with magic, in comparison to humans who have none; they have a basis of trade and a court that's functional but absolutely vicious at the same time.  The contrasts between human Idilko and Kai Brishen are extremely apparent, and I think that really helps put the reader in Idilko's frame of mind as she struggles to adapt to her new surroundings and her new people.  BUT.  This book was supposed to be a romance, and I didn't get that at all.

There's another little side-plot going on here, with someone trying to kill Brishen and/or Idilko, and then something else with Brishen's mother being a royal and potentially homicidal bitch, that may or may not be connected to the central murder plot.  Including the epilogue, this is pretty clearly a setup for future books that will deal more with political machinations and international relations than with building the relationships between the characters, which was the focus of this book.  It seems like a strange combination, but maybe there will be another relationship built up in the second book.

Overall, I like the characters, and the writing and world-building are decent, but the book didn't ring as romance at all to me, and since that's what the description, cover, etc. all clearly indicated it was, I was definitely disappointed.

2 stars out of 5.

Sparrow - L. J. Shen

This was the buddy read for January 2017 in the Unapologetic Romance Readers group on Goodreads.  It took me a while to get around to reading it, but I finally approached it without actually knowing anything about it.  Yeah, I hadn't even read the sentences on the cover...so going into this, I had no idea that it was a mafia romance.  I clearly know that now, and before I dig into this review, I'm going to have to say this: mafia/mob romances are clearly not my genre.

The story here starts with Troy Brennan, the hero, killing a priest.  Things pretty much go downhill from there when he forces Sparrow Raynes, the daughter of one of his dead mobster father's employees, to marry him.  Sparrow has no idea why this is.  But she's totally hot for Troy and he's hot for her.  Cue drama.

I have serious reservations about the characters in this book.  Clearly the book starting with the hero murdering one person and talking about the very brutal murder of another isn't a great start.  And then there's his mistress and the way he taunts Sparrow with her.  Does he cut this relationship off eventually?  Yes.  But not until significantly after his marriage to Sparrow.  There's a lot I'm willing to tolerate in a romance hero, because it's fiction and escapism and all, but infidelity and outright murder are two of the things on my very short "absolutely not" list.  And then there's Sparrow herself.  While she professes to be deeply disturbed by Sparrow's actions, she doesn't actually appear to be very disturbed.  When he ultimately confesses the murders to her, she's actually elated because he told her, rather than being worried about what these past actions might mean for her.  And then there's the end... Sorry to anyone who feels differently, but I have deep concerns about that.  Because if a guy is willing to kill for you, I don't think there's anything to stop him from killing you if you do something he doesn't like.  And that's not hot at all.

The writing here is fine.  People who like rough sex and danger will probably like this.  The side plot is pretty see-through, with the person who called the hit on Troy's father being pretty evident from the beginning, but I guess that's not the main appeal here.  I think that people who like this genre and legit bad boys will probably like this, but I also think that I've pretty clearly established that this is not my genre, and I didn't really enjoy reading this much at all.

2 stars out of 5.

Blood Bound - Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson #2)

Let me tell you, the covers of this series drive me crazy.  No one dresses like that to fix cars OR to fight evil.  Since this is a series that's pretty clearly aimed at women, I am baffled that it's marketed so blatantly to men in the cover department.  But I picked it up anyway, because it was available from the library, the first one was okay, and I needed a paranormal romance title for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' 2017 Reading Challenge.  (For more information about that challenge, you can check out our forum here.) 

This book finds Mercy repaying a favor she owes the vampire Stefan, and getting mixed up in the hunt for a demon-possessed sorcerer in the process.  Meanwhile, she tries to balance Samuel, her werewolf roommate who she was at once point in love with, and Adam, the sexy werewolf Alpha of the local pack.  And there are definitely some indications that Stefan might have some romantic feelings towards Mercy, too.  Hm... I'm not sure how that works, being as Briggs has pretty clearly laid out that vampires in her world really are dead, but I guess it does, somehow.

Anyway, I do like Mercy as a heroine.  She recognizes her strengths and weaknesses, and she does her best not get in the way when she realizes that something is above her abilities.  Does she ultimately get involved?  Yes.  But she does it only when she sees that she's uniquely suited to solving the problem and when pretty much everyone else qualified to go in on it has either been devoured by it, or refuses to get involved...and when everyone she loves seems to be in danger.  She's also doing her best to figure out the Adam/Samuel thing without unnecessarily hurting anyone or having to give up any of the things that are important to her.  The way she and Adam interact is absolutely delightful.  They banter, they annoy each other, they sometimes infuriate each other, and yet they also want to kiss each others' faces off at the same time.  Adam had claimed Mercy as his mate prior to the series starting, supposedly to keep her from getting in trouble with the other wolves, who would otherwise kill a coyote shifter like Mercy--and yet those very wolves seem to recognize her authority as his mate anyway, indicating there's probably something more there.  Very interesting...

The romantic tension isn't resolved here, and the main plot is bloody.  Very bloody.  It's indicated that probably forty more more people have died by the time it is.  In the process, Mercy gets pretty messed up and also opens a door that can't be closed, hinting at a lot of turmoil involving vampires in the very near future.  It's hard to say a lot more about this without involving a lot of spoilers, but suffice to say that I really liked it, and it definitely intrigued me to read more of the series, much more so than the first book did.

4 stars out of 5.

Silvern - Christina Farley (Gilded #2)

Silvern is the second book in Christina Farley's Korean YA fantasy trilogy, which began with Gilded.  The main character is Jae Hwa, an American Korean who has moved to South Korea with her father for his work a few years after the death of her mother.  In the first book, Jae Hwa broke a curse on her family that had doomed generations of women to death at the hands of the demi-god Haemosu.  Now, just when she's starting to think that life might get back to normal, she finds out that the god of darkness, Kud, wants her to find the White Tiger Orb, one of the six that are supposed to protect Korea, and bring it to him...or he'll kill her friends and family.

This was not a good book.  This series had a lot of promise in the beginning and while the first book had its issues, the promise of a non-white MC, Korean mythology, etc. made me want to read this second volume.  I finally got around to it (despite having owned it for a long while) because it has a tiger on the cover and I needed a book to fulfill my 2017 reading challenge category of, "A book with a cat on the cover."  I went into it with high hopes, but found myself so terribly disappointed.

In theory, Jae Hwa should be an awesome heroine.  The book starts with her preparing to get her second-degree black belt in tae kwon do.  She lives in Korea and has killed a demi-god and is kind of mistress of his realm now.  So cool, right?  But her martial arts trend toward descriptions of back flips and cartwheels--which, of course, are terribly efficient modes of transport, much more so than, you know, running--and flying kicks which would be more at home in a bad martial arts movie than in any sort of efficient fighting scenario.  She can shoot a bow but she never has it with her when she needs it.  (This is probably semi-excusable, because walking around with a bow in modern Korea all the time would be a bit weird, but still.  One would think that if one was being stalked by murderous magical creatures, one would pass up being weird for being prepared, at least some of the time.)  And on top of my frustrations with Jae Hwa, the plot itself is just whack.

See, to get this mysterious orb, Jae Hwa has to go to North Korea.  Yes.  North Korea.  And she convinces her school to send her, along with her best friend, boyfriend, grandfather, and another young member of her grandfather's secret society, who, by the way, is also putting the moves on Jae.  Hmmm...  Can this possibly go well?  No.  No it cannot.  Even the thinnest veil of logic is missing here--this is a school trip, supposedly, but fully half its members do not belong to Jae's school.  And Jae's father, who believes his daughter to be mentally unstable, agrees to it.  What?  He doesn't like it, but he still lets her go.  As an American.  To North Korea.  Ugh.

And then there's the pacing, which is entirely off.  There are chapters where different creatures are attacking Jae & Co. every two paragraphs, and then long stretches of chapters where she and her friends do nothing but plan parties or read books.  It's very uneven, stacked in some places and lacking in others.  I thought that an interesting love triangle might actually liven things up here, but that clearly didn't go as planned, so that ended up being a no-go, too.  Ugh.  The end of the book has a bit of promise, but honestly I can't go through another book of this stuff, so I don't think I'll be reading it.

I'll give it 2 stars out of 5, but it's more for the promise it displayed than the actual delivery.

The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick

Everyone is talking about the new season of The Man in the High Castle that recently came out on Amazon.  I am not one of those people.  I've seen a handful of episodes from the first season, but the show requires more attention that I typically have to give TV shows and so I haven't made it much farther, despite liking what I did see.  But, of course, there's a book!  How convenient!

Well, for those looking to the book from the show, I think I can safely say this: they're not very similar at all.  So you can just put that aside.  The structure of the world--an alternate reality in which Germany and Japan won World War II and essentially divided up the rest of the world between them, with Africa being destroyed and the free United States relegated to a strip of land called the Rocky Mountain States--is the same between the show and book, but that seems to be about it.  The plot revolves around a few characters.  Nobusuke Tagomi is a Japanese trade minister working in San Francisco (under Japanese control).  Frank Frink is a Jewish American also living in San Fran.  Juliana Frink, his estranged wife, is living in the Rocky Mountain states teaching judo.  Robert Childan is in San Fran, too, and sells American cultural artifacts to the Japanese, who are apparently crazy for them.  The one thread running through all of these is the I Ching, a sort of oracle book, and a book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which depicts another alternative reality in which the US and Great Britain won the war and took over the world.

Over the course of the book, Tagomi tries to attain new technology for Japan but finds himself instead embroiled in a conversation about a plot against the Home Islands by Germany, the leader of which has recently died and the position is which is in a state of flux.  Frink tries to set up his own business.  Childan finds out that some of the artifacts he has are fakes and tries to re-establish his position.  And Juliana, all the way in Canon City, Colorado, finds herself mixed up with an Italian truck driver who introduces her to The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, and eventually sets off with him to meet the mysterious author, Hawthorne Abendsen, also known as the Man in the High Castle due to a fortress he purportedly built to protect himself against his detractors--his book is banned in all German-controlled territories.

While alternative histories typically have fascinating premises, I didn't find myself enjoying this very much.  It was mostly the writing; it's very abrupt and choppy, and I couldn't find myself engrossed in it at all.  It almost reads like a bad translation of a book written in another language.  Granted, some of the main characters are speaking English but it's presumably not their first language--but even the characters whose first language is English speak in such an abrupt and choppy manner, and all of the characters' internal dialogue, which one would assume would be smoother, is the same.  All of the people start to blur together and while some of the events were interesting, I couldn't seem to care about any of the characters as individuals.

The end of the book is thought-worthy.  Juliana's discovery regarding The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is definitely the thing that leaves an impact, rather than any of the other story lines.  It's very meta and did appeal to me, even though the rest of the book did not.  I think this is probably what will ultimately tie into the Amazon series the strongest--this ultimate end concept, even though so much seems to be different.

Overall, an interesting world and end concept, but not a book I enjoyed very much.

2.5 stars out of 5.

Book of the Month Review

So, instead of doing a typical review today, I instead want to put forth a review of one of my favorite subscription services, Book of the Month--this is my referral link, by the way.  If you are interested in signing up for Book of the Month, you can use that link and I'll earn a free extra book for my next box.  Anyway, I have slight subscription problem.  I get a lot of subscription boxes, most of them makeup and skincare related.  Heck, I even now get my razors delivered (Dollar Shave Club) and I just bought an electric toothbrush where they'll send me a new brush head every 3 months (Quip).  But Book of the Month is probably one of my favorites.  Here's the run-down.

Every month, Book of the Month has five new books up for offer.  You choose the one that's of the greatest interest to you, and they ship it.  That's it!  You can choose your book between the first and the fifth of the month, and if you don't choose a book, your subscription will automatically skip the month and you won't be charged.  For the past few months, one of the books they have available is one that's on pre-lease exclusively for Book of the Month members.  For January, this book was Lucky You by Erika Carter, which is due out in March 2017.  For the box, prices range from $14.99/month if you pay monthly to $11.99/month if you pay for a year up front. 

All of the books are hardcover copies and have special Book of the Month branding on the covers and spines, something that they started earlier this year--it makes them look really nice all lined up on a shelf next to each other.  The genres vary greatly because the "judges" for the books change each month.  There's usually a mystery or thriller of some variety, because they're quite popular these days, and the other books vary.  For January, the books were Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (featuring an older woman reflecting on her life and the times she's seen in New York City), Lucky You (about three young twenty-somethings going "offline" and looking for purpose), Girls in the Moon (a beautiful young adult novel about music and finding yourself), The Most Dangerous Place on Earth (another young adult novel, but with a darker side about bullying and suicide), and Homesick for Another World (a short story collection). 

Additionally, you can add up to two extra books to your box each month for $9.99 each.  They can be books from the month of selection (I got Girls in the Moon and Lucky You for January), books from previous moths, or books from Book of the Month's "Other Favorites" page, which currently includes works by Jillian Flynn, Neil Gaiman, and Anthony Bourdain among others.  $9.99 is a pretty good value for a hardcover book even by Amazon standards, so I get the extra 2 books every month and am slowly working through their previous months.  I don't want all the books they've offered, but a good deal of them seem interesting to me, so I'm picking them up two at a time.  They also tend to include a little "something extra" in each box.  One month it was a magnet, another a crazy straw, another a pair of sunglasses.  This month it was a little, individually-bound copy of Gillian Flynn's ghost story "The Grownup."  If you're interested in discussing the books you read, they also have some social media components worked into the site, but I can't really speak as to how active or informative they are, as I haven't used them personally.

Overall, I love my Book of the Month subscription.  It's a great value and, more than anything else, has forced me to read outside my typical genres.  I've gotten several books through here that, while I thought they just looked "meh," I really ended up enjoying.  Even the books that I haven't loved have always provided an interesting perspective, setting, character, or plot.  I've never felt the urge to abandon a book I got through Book of the Month.  I've even re-arranged a few shelves in order to line up all of my books right next to each other, and they look very handsome there indeed.

If you have any questions about Book of the Month, I'd be happy to answer to the best of my ability, though I don't work there so I can't speculate as to what they might have planned or what their inner workings might be.  And again, if you'd like to sign up, I'd appreciate it if you'd use my referral link here.

Reading Challenge Updates

Completed
-A book recommended by a librarian.  The first book I read this year was The Woman in Cabin 10, which was recommended at Library Reads.  I really enjoyed it.  It's not as twisty as some and I felt like the "alcoholic female main character" trope is a bit overdone at this point (and not as well done as with The Girl on the Train) but this was still an intriguing weekend read which had me trying to figure out the mystery.  The end felt a bit truncated, though.

-A book with a cat on the cover.  As planned I went with Silvern for this--it has a tiger on the cover.  While I saw a lot of potential in the first book in this series when I read it a couple of years ago, Silvern didn't really do anything for me and I don't intend to read the last book in the trilogy.

-A book with a title that's a character's name.  Though it features a character's nickname rather than given name as the title, I read Mechanica for this category.  It's a Cinderella story but with a focus on finding family rather than necessarily love.  And if you're concerned it might overlap too much with Cinder, don't worry--other than the Cinderella structure, the details of them are nothing alike.

-An espionage thriller.  For this, I went for the sequel to a book I read a few years ago, Red Sparrow.  Palace of Treason, the sequel, is a spy novel set in contemporary Russia, Greece, and the United States.  Oh and a little Paris, too.  While the author is a former CIA agent and the spycraft in this is interesting, I got so sick of there being no twists, no suspicious motives, and instead being bombarded with descriptions of the female characters' nipples in every imaginable situation.

-A book with a red spine.  I wanted to use one of my backlog of Book of the Month books for this.  I've been subscribed less than a year but I get the full 3 books every month so they're building up.  So I picked The Magician's Lie, which has a lovely red cover and a spine to match.  It's a historical fiction set around a female illusionist trying to both fulfill her passion and escape an abusive past, and I really enjoyed it.

-A book set in two different time periods.  I was originally going to use The Bone Clocks for this, but read Girls in the Moon and determined it probably fit better, with two distinct time periods rather than what seems like will be a variety.  This was an absolutely lovely contemporary young adult book and I definitely recommend it.


Still to Come
-A book that's been on your TBR list for way too long.  Enchanted, Alethea Kontis (added Dec. 2011)

-A book of letters.  The Color Purple, Alice Walker

-An audiobook.  The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah

-A book by a person of color.  The Stone Sky, N. K. Jemisin

-A book with one of the four seasons in the title. Devil in Spring, Lisa Kleypas

-A book that is a story within a story.  Afterworlds, Scott Westerfeld

-A book with multiple authors.  Mutiny on the Bounty, Charles Nordhoff and James Hall

-A book by an author who uses a pseudonym.  Seven Minutes in Heaven, Eloisa James (Mary Bly)

-A bestseller from a genre you don't normally read.  Carrie, Steven King

-A book by or about a person who has a disability.  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-TimeT, Mark Haddon

-A book involving travel.  SEAsoned, Victoria Allman

-A book with a subtitle.  Frozen in Time, Mitchell Zuckoff ("An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II)

-A book that's published in 2017.  Given to the Sea, Mindy McGinnis

-A book involving a mythical creature.  Nice Dragons Finish Last, Rachel Aaron

-A book you've read before that never fails to make you smile.  Cress, Marissa Meyer

-A book about food.  In the Devil's Garden, Stewart Lee Allen

-A book with career advice.  Garlic and Sapphires, Ruth Reichl

-A book from a nonhuman perspective.

-A steampunk novel.  Boneshaker, Cherie Priest

-A book set in the wilderness.

-A book you loved as a child.  Squire, Tamora Pierce

-A book by an author from a country you've never visited.  Mornings in Jenin, Susan Abulhawa (Palestine)

-A novel set during wartime.  Atonement, Ian McEwan

-A book with an unreliable narrator.

-A book with pictures.  No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain

-A book where the main character is a different ethnicity than you.  A Disobedient Girl, Ru Freeman

-A book about an interesting woman.  Notorious RBG, Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik

-A book with a month or day of the week in the title.  A June of Ordinary Murders, Conor Brady

-A book set in a hotel.  A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles

-A book written by someone you admire.  A Court of Wings and Ruin, S. J. Maas

-A book that's becoming a movie in 2017. Beauty and the Beast, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont

-A book set around a holiday other than Christmas.

-The first book in a series you haven't read before.  Shadow and Bone, Leigh Bardugo

-A book you bought on a trip.  The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

-A book recommended by an author you love.  The Lace Reader, Brunonia Barry (rec'd by Tamora Pierce)

-A bestseller from 2016.  Magic, Danielle Steel

-A book with a family-member term in the title.  Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor

-A book that takes place over a character's life span.  The Kitchen God's Wife, Amy Tan

-A book about an immigrant or refugee.  Stealing Buddha's Dinner, Bich Minh Nguyen

-A book from a genre/subgenre you've never heard of.  The Six-Gun Tarot, R. S. Belcher (Weird West)

-A book with an eccentric character.  Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloan

-A book that's more than 800 pages.  Voyager, Diana Galbadon

-A book you got from a used book sale.  Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen

-A book that's been mentioned in another book.  Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift (mentioned as Gullible's Travels in Marissa Meyer's Heartless)

-A book about a difficult topic.  Rape is Rape, Jody Raphael

-A book based on mythology.  Olympos, Dan Simmons

The Woman in Cabin 10 - Ruth Ware

Guys, I have a confession to make.  I lied to you.  Idol wasn't the first book I finished in 2017.  The Woman in Cabin 10 was.  I just forgot about it because I'm terrible at writing reviews in a timely manner.

Anyway, I got this through Book of the Month and decided to read it as the FIRST BOOK of my 2017 Reading Challenge, as "A book recommended by a librarian."  It was recommended on the Library Reads website.  It's one of those psychological thriller books, and takes place almost entirely on a boat.

Main character Lo wakes up one night after some heavy drinking to discover that she's being burgled.  The burglar locks her in her room and it takes her a few hours to get out, and though overall unhurt (she does get a cut on her cheek from a slamming door, but it was unintentional) she's pretty understandably shaken up.  It gives her a serious case of ongoing insomnia, in which she can't sleep because she's afraid the burglar is going to come back.  Eventually she seeks refuge at her boyfriend's flat, as he's out of town, only to wake up thinking she's being attacked--and smashing the hell out of his face with a lamp.  He actually takes it pretty well, but it becomes clear through other things that their relationship is in a bit of an iffy spot.  And in the midst of it all, Lo takes off for a week-long cruise on the luxury yacht Aurora Borealis, which she's covering for the travel magazine she works for while her boss is on maternity leave.  But the Aurora is small, lending to Lo's claustrophobia, and her insomnia continues, so she self-medicates with lots and lots of alcohol on top of the anti-anxiety medication she already takes.

And then she hears a murder.

The only problem with this is, the girl who was murdered--the one who was next door to her, in Cabin 10, who Lo asked to borrow mascara earlier in the night--never existed.  There was no one booked in Cabin 10.  No one of the girl's description is on the boat.  And Lo can't get anyone to believe her that it happened, except her ex-boyfriend who is also on the cruise, but he's looking mighty suspicious himself.  And someone is certainly trying their hardest to get Lo to "STOP DIGGING."  Interspersed with all of this are emails and other sorts of documents, letting us know that Lo hasn't been heard from by her friends and family back in the UK for days, and that a body was found...

This was a good book.  It's a quick read and pretty light despite the dark subject matter.  I had fun trying to figure out who the murderer was, and got that bit right though the details of the plot I got wrong--the plot itself is a bit twisty, though the killer isn't.  What annoyed me here was that Ware was kind of trying to make Lo out as an unreliable narrator, and she's not.  But how does Ware go about doing this?  By making Lo into a drinker.  This seems like such an out.  Want an unreliable narrator?  Add alcohol!  They'll always be drunk and never really know what was real and what they imagined!  Ha ha!  It seems like a cheap trick.  I enjoyed how it was done in Girl on the Train, because there was outright manipulation there along with the alcohol, but this was a bit cut-and-dry for my tastes.  And the ending...did it seem a little too happy to anyone else?  I would have been happy without the last few pages, leaving a little mystery as to what exactly happened on the Aurora.  It was also a bit rushed in general, in comparison to the rest of the book.  So many other events took so much time, when they weren't even as major, and yet Lo's flight only takes up a handful of pages, at most.

The documents were definitely a nice touch.  It let us see into the future a bit, and work up a true dread of what might be coming.  We know Lo is fine at the time we're reading...but by the time those documents are taking place, something else has clearly happened, and I was left peering between the lines, looking for any hint of what might be coming.  And while I found Lo's drinking to be a bit tiresome, I found the reasons behind it realistic.  I can only imagine how terrifying it would be to find an intruder in your house, in your private space, even if you do get away unscathed.  Yes, it could have been so much worse--but honestly, should we denigrate Lo for being upset even though it wasn't worse?  No.  I don't think we should.  It's certainly something that would keep me up at night, tuned in for any little noise that might make itself heard.

Overall, I really liked this one.  The alcohol part of Lo's characterization was a bit tired, with nothing new or twisty added to it, and I saw who the murderer was pretty easily, but the details of that were the fascinating part.  The ending could have done with some work, though.  This is one where I wouldn't have minded being left wondering.

3.5 stars out of 5.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - Barbara Kingsolver

This was the January 2017 pick for the Deliberate Reader Book Club.  I was a little leery of this book because of the title.  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle... It sounds like it's going to be preachy, doesn't it?  I've read some other Kingsolver books, though, and they weren't preachy, so I went for it.  What I didn't realize before starting it was that this is a nonfiction book!  Gasp!  The other Kingsolver books I've read were The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees, which were both fiction, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect with this.  (Clearly, I did not read the description beforehand.)

Well, it turns out that this is a book about Kingsolver and her family's year of eating locally--or at least as locally as possible.  Moving to southern Virginia from the deserts of Tucson, the family takes up a life of heavy-duty gardening, prowling farmer's markets, and canning every vegetable they can get their hands on.

The book is a bit preachy, with the first chapter probably being the worst.  Or maybe I just got used to it.  Either way, I almost didn't read this one because I didn't really want Kingsolver sneering down her nose at my non-local-food-eating ways for the duration.  But it's not preachy in a religious sense, and there's actually a lot of good information in here about why eating locally is good not just for you, but for your community and the environment.  The book is also partially authored by Steven Hopp, Kingsolver's husband, and Camille Kingsolver, her daughter.  Hopp contributes mini-essays about various topics, and always includes some additional resources at the end in case you'd like to look up more information on a particular topic.  Camille writes about her experiences with the "locavore" experiment and also includes recipes and meal plans that go with what's typically available seasonally.

Now, clearly eating entirely locally isn't possible for everyone.  It's not possible for me.  I live in a city and while there are farmer's markets, they're not present year-round, and I certainly don't have access to a garden plot.  (There is a community garden near my apartment but there's a two-year waiting list to get a spot in it; I might not even be here in two years!)  Even if I stocked up during the summer, I don't know where I would put all the food needed to get me through winter in my city-sized apartment.  It's not even strictly possible for the Kingsolver family to eat locally; she notes that they still have to buy some things, such as flour, olive oil, and pasta, from the store.  But there are some good points here that are applicable to a lot of people.  The one thing that struck me the most was that, if everyone at one meal per week that consisted of local foods, it would drastically lower the carbon emissions produced by transporting food across the country and across the world.  With global warming looming large, this is a huge thing to consider, and it's a very small change of habit to do.  I also found some of the insights about eating free-range and grass-fed meats (cows, chickens, pigs, etc.) to be very interesting; in addition to the animals themselves being healthier and (presumably) happier, the products are much better for us overall, too.  More good fats, less bad fats, lower cholesterol, etc.  And yes, those products are more expensive, but maybe it's something to keep in mind?

This book also presents something of an idyll.  "Oh, look how healthy and happy we are!" says Kingsolver.  Yes, she says there are still arguments, demands to get stuff off the table before it gets thrown out, but there are relatively few conflicts that actually seem to come from the locavore experiment itself, which seems strange and maybe not entirely honest.  All problems encountered here are easily solved and no great inconveniences presented.  But Kingsolver has such an eminently readable style that it almost made me forget about this.  Still, I have to eye it a little suspiciously, because hey, surely something must have gone horribly wrong over the course of this year-long experiment?

Overall, though, this was a much more enjoyable read than I anticipated.  I'm not sure how much of it will carry through into my life, but it definitely presents things to think about, and I'll try to keep some of them in mind while perusing the grocery store next time I'm there.

4 stars out of 5.

Idol - Kristen Callihan (VIP #1)

Hello to the first book I completed in 2017!  Idol is one I've had for a while (though apparently not as long as I thought, as it came out in 2016 after both Prince AND Bowie died), and that I picked up while I was binge-reading Mariana Zapata books earlier this year.  It came up on Amazon as one of those "If you liked this, you might like..." books, probably when I was reading Rhythm, Chord & Malykhin, which was Zapata's rock star romance.  I honestly wasn't expecting that much out of Idol, but I wanted a fast romance read for the last day of my winter vacation, so I went for it...

And I really liked it!  The story follows Killian James, one of the founding members of the rock group Kill John, who are basically the hottest thing since sliced bread, and girl-next-door Liberty Bell (yes, really).  The book starts with Libby finding Killian drunk on her lawn, and then finding out that he's to be her new neighbor.  She's initially less than pleased by this, but over the course of a few months the two end up close...and then Libby finds out that he's Killian James, and makes the connection.  And Killian has to go back the band, which is reuniting after a year apart in the wake of another member's attempted suicide, and he ASKS LIBBY TO GO WITH HIM AND PERFORM.  Gasp.  Because clearly Libby is also an amazing singer/songwriter/guitar player.  Obvs.

Okay, okay.  I admit it.  The premise of this book is basically super cliched.  But I did still like it.  Libby and Killian have undeniable chemistry, and there was a nice switch in the story where the woman is the one who wants to keep the relationship secret, rather than the man.  (It's normally the other way around.)  The other band members are fun, as are Scottie and Brenna, their manager and publicist (and Killian's cousin), respectively.  There are some hot scenes in here, and the main conflict was one that I found believable.  Killian and Libby both want each other and they both know they want each other, but they're simultaneously trying to protect each other, which causes some problems.  Libby doesn't want to put pressure on the fragile dynamics of the newly-reunited band (she doesn't want to be a Yoko) and Killian wants Libby to be able to pursue her own career and have her own life, and not just be subsumed by his.  While they could have communicated a bit more (you almost always can in romance novels) I thought this was a really realistic way to go with it.

There are a few issues, though.  Callihan doesn't seem to have a firm grasp of the timeline for her book.  The length of time that Killian and Libby spent together before he returned to New York fluctuates several times, from a few weeks to two months.  There are also a few typographical editing issues; several times I found myself re-reading a line because I was confused, only to realize that it was because there was a word missing, or a word that was where another word should be.  Nothing major, and the spelling and grammar are overall very good, but it was something that tripped me up.  And yes, I did find myself eye-rolling a few times at the sheer ridiculous of it all, but I'm still looking forward to reading the books about the other band members and Scottie.

Overall, though, I really enjoyed this, and I can't wait to read Book 2, Managed.

A Torch Against the Night - Sabaa Tahir (An Ember in the Ashes #2)

This was the last book I finished in 2016!  It came in through the library just in time for me to breeze through it.

The book picks up right where An Ember in the Ashes left off, with Elias and Laia fleeing Serra.  They are on a mission to get to the prison of Kauf and free Laia's brother, who knows the mysteries of Serric steel that could held the repressed races and classes of the Martial Empire throw off their oppressors.  Meanwhile, Helen, as the new Emperor's Blood Shrike, is put in charge of the Black Guard and ordered to hunt Elias down for public execution, or her family will pay the price.

I don't think that this book was quite as breathtaking as its predecessor, though it doesn't quite fall prey to Second Book Syndrome.  A lot of this is because Elias and Laia, despite starting the book together, end up separated for a large portion of it, and so the chemistry between them that is so intriguing is, obviously, not there, because they're not together.

What I really did like here was the way that Keenan's reintroduction was handled.  His plot is developed and his role in the Elias-Laia-Keenan love triangle is made so that it's not just a love triangle for a love triangle's sake; there's actually a compelling plot point behind it, which I absolutely adore.  It's so refreshing to see a love triangle that exists for a reason other than "Oh no I don't know which drooling boy to chooooooose!!!!"  This was something that really bothered me for a lot of the book, but how it was tied up really made up for it and showed that Tahir has a firm grasp of what's going on with that particular story thread.  I also liked Helen's plot.  While I hated that her chapters tore me away from Elias and Laia, the way she struggles with her choices and lack thereof is very real, and I appreciate that.  And the way the Soul Catcher plotline is integrated--at first, I had no idea where it was going and couldn't see the point, and was in agony over wanting Tahir to just move on.  But in the end, I did like where it went, though I'm unsure of how it will make the third book in the series really possible.

Still, the strange time jumps continued in this book.  We'd have a few chapters with Laia and Elias, and then there would be a "Two Weeks Earlier" sort of chapter with Helene.  The notations of time changes are helpful, but they still disrupt the flow of the story overall.  I also would have liked to see more of Helene's family.  Ultimately, despite the peril they face, it's a bit hard to feel much for them because we just don't know that much about them.  Even Livvy, her nicer sister, isn't truly seen enough to be a catalyst in our emotions, though she clearly is a focal point for Helen's own feelings.  Finally, while I liked the inclusion of the Soul Catcher's story line because I love that sort of trope (escorts to the other side FTW, people literally tied to their jobs FTW, disgraced spirits trying to make amends FTW) it did feel sort of senseless for much of the book.  The obvious path with Elias' injury was not taken, and while that's nice in one way, it also would have been nice for it to take that route--it would have been neat and tidy and tied Helene even more closely to Elias' cause while forcing her to still be Blood Shrike.  I liked it but I still wonder what on earth Tahir is planning on doing with it, and I'm not totally convinced it will work for future books.

So, yes, I liked it!  But some of the issues from the first book persisted here, some of the magical chemistry between Laia and Elias was lost due to their separation, and while I liked the things Tahir introduced as their own elements, I'm not convinced they fit properly into the story as a whole.  I guess we'll have to see when the other books eventually come out.

3.5 stars out of 5.

The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi

This is the second Bacigalupi book I've read, the first being The Water Knife.  He seems to delight in writing stories that detail all of the ways that humanity is fucking itself over and what might happen after that.  TWK focused on the water crisis in the American west.  The Windup Girl is about genetically modified organisms.

As with TWK, TWG has several main characters.  Anderson Lake is living in Thailand and working undercover for an American food company called AgriGren.  He's investigating varieties of foods that have started popping up in Thailand (which has restrictions against dealing with the big food companies) because something is not quite right about them, and he suspects a Western geneticist (or generipper) of working with Thailand's seed bank on bringing the foods back into existence.  (Because, of course, no one in Thailand could do this themselves.)  As part of his cover, he runs a factory that makes kink springs--this is a spring-powered world, as apparently most gasoline has been used up, and there are strict carbon emission restrictions in place.

Our other big characters are Emiko, the titular windup girl.  Windups are genetically engineered people created by the Japanese to fulfill different tasks.  Emiko was built as a secretary/assistant/all around pretty girl, and lived a life of luxury until her owner abandoned her in Thailand instead of paying to bring her back to Japan after a business trip.  Now she works at a strip joint/brothel where she is raped onstage nightly by one of her fellow performers.  She's also reviled by the people of Thailand in general because they believe windups have no souls.  Tan Hock Seng is Anderson Lake's factory manager who's using his position to advance himself, and Jaidee, the head of a band of "white shirts" who work as enforcers for the Environment Ministry and are the arch enemies of the Trade Ministry.

This did not appeal to me as much as The Water Knife did.  Something about the passion of the characters that moved TWK was not really present in The Windup Girl.  Emiko yearns to be free, but that's about as passionate it gets.  Even Jaidee, with his hatred for the Trade Ministry and his love for the people of Thailand, doesn't seem to embody the same passions that the characters in TWK did.  The world here is fascinating; the genetically-modified organisms that populate it, from the plants to the megadonts (like elephants, but not) to the windups (who also come in many-armed varieties, for factory for field work, and presumably other types, too) and more.  But what initially seems like a strong central plot revolving around Anderson's search for the new food and the generipper behind it and Emiko's quest for freedom, seems to quickly get derailed into a plot that more revolves around the de-evolution of relations between the different Ministries into a scramble that will determine the country's future.  While this makes sense for the character of Jaidee, it doesn't seem to really "fit" the other characters, who sort of all end up along for the ride.  And while Emiko ultimately is a catalyst, and I thought that part worked well, I feel like this just missed the boat for me overall.  It did win a Hugo and a Nebula, though, so clearly not everyone feels the same way.  The ending is powerful and open enough that it lets the reader imagine the different ways the story might go from there, but again...the body of the book just didn't capture me.

3 stars out of 5 for wonderful world building and a good catalyst and ending, but an unconvincing body.

The Reader - Traci Chee (Sea of Ink and Gold #1)

What an interesting start to a new YA fantasy series.  The Reader follows Sefia, a teenager who's been on the run for most of her life with her aunt, Nan, following the murder of her father.  In her possession, she has an object she's never encountered before, and hardly dared to look at--but when Nan is captured by the same people who killed Sefia's father, she looks into the object further and finds one thing that clearly defines the rest of her journey: This is a book.

See, Sefia lives in a world where things are not written down.  Stories are passed down in an oral tradition, and if someone stops telling your story, you've essentially vanished from the world, forever.  It's also a world that consist of islands and ocean, no large continents, which is a setting that I always like to see.  But as Sefia begins to examine the book and slowly unlock its secrets, she also begins to unlock an interesting ability, one that allows her to read not only words on paper, but the very world and people around her: their pasts and their futures.  And in the process she discovers Archer, a mute young man a year or two older than she who has been captured and forced to fight in the ring, and who Sefia frees and then can't get rid of as she continues to search for Nan and revenge for her father.

Meanwhile, there are two other stories going on: the story of Captain Reed and the Current of Faith, a privateer ship whose captain has led his crew to the edge of the world and beyond.  His story unfolds simultaneously as part of the main narrative and as part of the book that Sefia reads.  And then there's Lon, a young man who's taken to a library and inducted into its secrets, leading to an interesting duality in the story, because Lon is one of the people who works to keep books and the written word secret from the rest of the world, whereas Sefia is clearly out in the world.  This would have been a very interesting duality to keep going through the rest of the series, but unfortunately it falls apart by the end of the book; I wish it had continued, because having real protagonists on both sides of the issue could have been a very compelling storyline and one very unusual in young adult fiction.

Sefia and Archer are both compelling characters for their backgrounds, and they reminded me a lot of Laia and Elias in Sabaa Tahir's An Ember in the Ashes, though the stories themselves are certainly different enough to merit reading (though there are some commonalities between them, as in many YA books these days).  I do wish that Archer had remained a mute, however--that is such an unusual character trait that having it magically fixed at the end of the book was somewhat disappointing.  I think that Chee did a very good job of having him being an interesting, compelling, and involved character without him ever actually speaking that it would have been nice to have it continued.  I was actually hoping his loss of voice had something to do with his vocal cords being injured by the scarring around his neck rather than psychological trauma.

Anyway, the real strength of the story here is the intertwining of the stories.  The layering of the stories from the book with what is actually happening in the world isn't an entirely new concept, but it's very well done and the layers work here in a way that enhances the whole rather than re-treading ground or being used as an unnecessary exposition device.  Reed and his crew were awesome and I hope they continue to be prominent in future books.  I think they were arguably more interesting than Sefia herself, and I would very happily read books just about them, though I didn't dislike Sefia.

Overall, this was a great YA story in an interesting world, but I think several of its best elements fell off at the end.  I hope that Chee can manage to bring back what made it compelling in future books, though it might be hard because so many of the things that did it can't really be brought back without the story ceasing to make sense.

4 stars out of 5.

Heartless - Marissa Meyer

Wow, guys.  Wow.  What a book!  I knew I liked Marissa Meyer, but this was like a sucker punch to the gut, especially following up on The Lunar Chronicles.  But let me back up...

Following Meyer's last novel, Winter, I was a bit disappointed with how the series had ended.  And when I saw that she'd put out Heartless, about the Queen of Hearts from Lewis Caroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, I eyed it a bit skeptically.  I haven't been very impressed with any of the recent takes on Alice, and while I know that Meyer can weave a tantalizing tale, I wasn't entirely convinced this was the best route for her to take.  Still, I picked it up to read while on winter vacation.

I started it, and I was still skeptical.  And I kept reading, and I was still skeptical.  In Heartless, Meyer looks into the backstory of the Queen of Hearts, and how she came to hate white roses, have a deep desire to chop of people's heads, etc.  But for much of the book, this seems like a simpering teen romance, albeit set in a strange place.  The protagonist is Catherine, the daughter of the Marquess of Turtle Cove, who loves to bake and dreams of opening her own bakery with her maid, Mary Ann.  For some reason these two are also the only people to have "normal" names in all of Wonderland.  But Catherine's parents have other plans for her, primarily having her marry the King of Hearts, something Catherine decidedly does not want.  But when she attends a ball that's supposed to end in a proposal, she ends up running off and encountering the king's new fool, named Jest.  And of course they're immediately attracted to each other.  But Cath is supposed to marry the king and Jest is apparently on a secret mission from another country in the land of Chess, so there are some obstacles to their romance.

Things have a bigger hiccup at the midway point, and then calm down until the end when everything goes to hell in a handbasket.  Having read Meyer's Lunar Chronicles books, I expected this to happen, but to find that there would be another book and it would all be neatly wrapped up, happy ending with a bow on it, voila!  BUT.  NO.  This is not a series book.  According to her website, this is a STAND ALONE NOVEL.  Which means that ending is the end.  Period.  Full stop.  And wow, what a punch to the gut it is.  It's a perfect ending for this, I think--it is, ultimately, a villain origin story, after all.  But it's not a happy one, and I think that could have a lot of people throwing the book across the room in frustration.

But the ending is really what this book has to offer.  Everything comes together wonderfully, but there are no big surprises, and while the writing is solid, it's not tantalizing like some of Meyer's other books are.  The romance didn't have me longing to read more, and I actually didn't really care about Jest that much.  I also found Cath's decisions in the end, that lead to the terminal events, rather questionable.  She seemed to have a strange sense of ethics, even when faced with one of those dilemmas about "Do you let the train kill one person on the tracks, or five?"  I didn't really care for her as a character, either.  The dazzling ending of this one had me pushing all of that aside, forgetting it easily...but looking back, I'm not sure I can quite let it slide.  It was a gut-wrenching conclusion, one that fit perfectly, but honestly I don't think this book was as strong as Meyer's others, though I wouldn't mind seeing her write more in this version of Wonderland, even if they're not direct sequels.

3 stars out of 5.

And a Bottle of Rum - Wayne Curtis

Let me put this out there to begin with: I am not a big drinker.  I can nurse a cocktail all night long, and beer and wine?  No, thank you.  That said, I don't mind reading about drinking.  And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails seemed like an interesting title, so I tossed it into my Amazon cart a while back when I needed something to push me over the limit for my add on items to ship.  It's a food history, and I love those, and also seemed like a fun spin on American (and Caribbean) history, which is a field I'm normally not too fond of because I find it boring compared to history in the rest of the world.

Curtis' book does focus exclusively on rum, though a few other types of alcohol are mentioned in passing.  The portions of the book are all named after a cocktail, though the section sometimes only bears a loose connection to the cocktail it's named for and "themed" to.  And this isn't a very comprehensive history, to be sure.  It focuses mostly on the United States, with maybe two chapters looking more at the Caribbean.  And because this book is rum-focused, it doesn't really touch on "New World" history until rum production began, which is significantly after the New World was "discovered" by Europeans, and obviously far, far after the history of people living in the Americas began.  (Remember, there were people in all of these places before the Europeans sailed onto the scene and began killing and enslaving people.)

Curtis keeps his history brief and high-level, glossing over a lot of the messier aspects of history such as slavery (vital to rum production in the Caribbean because of the labor commitments required to grow and process sugarcane, the byproduct of which is molasses and is what rum is based on), war, and even rum production itself.  For example, he talks about producers throwing in things like dung or the contents of a chamber pot to assist with fermentation, but doesn't really go into what this would do or the potential health consequences it might have.  He breezes over a lot of things, focusing on the romantic and patriotic instead of dirtier side of history that is always there, only really lingering on how awful the original rum must have tasted.

This book is basically the cocktail of the history genre: light and fun without a lot of depth.  True, some of this might be attributable to the checkered history that alcohol in general and rum in particular has; with periods of dry states and countries, rum running, and smuggling rampant in the various periods Curtis touches on, there's a lot of documentation on rum that just doesn't exist to be drawn on.  It's a historian's nightmare, and I think probably is a big reason why this is as surface-level as it is.  Still, it did make me want a tiki drink!

3.5 stars out of 5.

Born a Crime - Trevor Noah

A few weeks ago, my boyfriend was going out for drinks with a friend at a local bookstore and cafe.  I was invited, but am a total homebody and told him have fun, but bring me a book.  He brought back Born a Crime and Neil Gaiman's new nonficton, The View from the Cheap Seats.  Born a Crime was shorter, so I started that first.

Born a Crime is exclusively about Noah's life before he left South Africa, and it's largely about his life before he got into comedy--comedy is only mentioned a handful of times, at best.  The majority of the book takes place during his childhood and teens, when he lived with his mother and, later, his stepfather and younger brother.  During his early childhood, apartheid was still in effect in South Africa, and later on its effects were still being felt even after it was officially abolished.  As a mixed-race child (black South African mother, white Swedish/German father) Noah was literally born a crime, and his anecdotes are about race, discrimination, and the fluidity of identity during apartheid and after.  As a mostly basic white girl, these things were fascinating to read about, because it's a culture I will never be a part of, but something I dearly want to understand in order to be a more educated, worldly, and tolerant individual.

Floating around in the background of many of the anecdotes is Noah's home life, which practically vanishes from the page after his mother marries his stepfather.  This lends a very strange dynamic to the book, because you can tell there's something to do with that, and abuse, floating around in the background, but it seems like Noah's avoiding it.  Which is totally his right, if wants to, but it's a strange feel.  Well, he's not avoiding it.  He comes out with it all in the last chapter of the book, and I can see why.  While much of the book has touching moments, that final chapter is definitely the one with the strongest emotional impact.  It adds so much context that was missing in the rest of the book and makes a lot of things much clearer in hindsight.

Noah has an extremely readable style.  While he's a comedian, this book is frequently poignant rather than laugh-out-loud funny, though a few of his signature jokes are in there--like how, during apartheid, he couldn't walk with his mother when police were around because mixed-race relationships were illegal, and when cops would appear she would drop him like a bag of weed so that they wouldn't be harassed.  Each chapter is prefaced by a shorter section that says something about apartheid and how it affected and still affects the people in South Africa.  He shows both how far South Africa has come, and how far it still has to go, in a variety of ways--from racial equality (not that the United States is exactly a beacon of excellence in this area) to things such as basic sanitation.  But at the same time, he includes touching stories of his relationship with his mother (this book was infinitely better than Maya Angelou's Mom & Me & Mom in that regard) and of finding himself.  It's a great book, an easy read but one that packs a punch at the same time in a lot of areas, and I highly recommend it.

5 stars out of 5.

2017 Reading Challenge

Popsugar's 2017 Reading Challenge went live in early December, and while I hadn't quite finished my 2016 challenge at that point, I immediately started compiling my list of titles to fulfill the 2017 categories.  I tried to do something a little different this year and, instead of just picking things all willy-nilly, tried very hard to stick mostly with books that were already on my to-read list and, whenever possible, that I already owned, or will own when they come out.  There were a few categories this wasn't possible for.  For example, I don't own any audiobooks, and if a book belongs to a genre I've never heard of, I probably don't have it on my list!  This is also the "Advanced" version of the challenge; Popsguar included 40 "normal" categories and then another 12 for people who wanted to go beyond that.  I'm going for the full 52.  (I read more than 170 books last year, so this shouldn't be an issue.) The general list is below, and I've underlined the books that I already own (or are on my auto-buy list) for easy notation, and made notes on the category where necessary, too!  I don't have quite every category penciled in yet, but I've got most of them.  What are you looking forward to reading in 2017?

-A book recommended by a librarian.  The Woman in Cabin 10, Ruth Ware--from Library Reads.

-A book that's been on your TBR list for way too long.  Enchanted, Alethea Kontis (added Dec. 2011)

-A book of letters.  The Color Purple, Alice Walker

-An audiobook.  The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah

-A book by a person of color.  The Stone Sky, N. K. Jemisin

-A book with one of the four seasons in the title. Devil in Spring, Lisa Kleypas

-A book that is a story within a story.  Afterworlds, Scott Westerfeld

-A book with multiple authors.  Mutiny on the Bounty, Charles Nordhoff and James Hall

-An espionage thriller.  Palace of Treason, Jason Matthews

-A book with a cat on the cover.  Silvern, Christina Farley

-A book by an author who uses a pseudonym.  Seven Minutes in Heaven, Eloisa James (Mary Bly)

-A bestseller from a genre you don't normally read.  Carrie, Steven King

-A book by or about a person who has a disability.  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-TimeT, Mark Haddon

-A book involving travel.  SEAsoned, Victoria Allman

-A book with a subtitle.  Frozen in Time, Mitchell Zuckoff ("An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II)

-A book that's published in 2017.  Given to the Sea, Mindy McGinnis

-A book involving a mythical creature.  Nice Dragons Finish Last, Rachel Aaron

-A book you've read before that never fails to make you smile.  Cress, Marissa Meyer

-A book about food.  In the Devil's Garden, Stewart Lee Allen

-A book with career advice.  Garlic and Sapphires, Ruth Reichl

-A book from a nonhuman perspective.

-A steampunk novel.  Boneshaker, Cherie Priest

-A book with a red spine.  The Magician's Lie, Greer Macallister

-A book set in the wilderness.

-A book you loved as a child.  Squire, Tamora Pierce

-A book by an author from a country you've never visited.  Mornings in Jenin, Susan Abulhawa (Palestine)

-A book with a title that's a character's name.  Mechanica, Betsy Cornwell

-A novel set during wartime.  Atonement, Ian McEwan

-A book with an unreliable narrator.

-A book with pictures.  No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain

-A book where the main character is a different ethnicity than you.  A Disobedient Girl, Ru Freeman

-A book about an interesting woman.  Notorious RBG, Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik

-A book set in two different time periods.  The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell

-A book with a month or day of the week in the title.  A June of Ordinary Murders, Conor Brady

-A book set in a hotel.  A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles

-A book written by someone you admire.  A Court of Wings and Ruin, S. J. Maas

-A book that's becoming a movie in 2017. Beauty and the Beast, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont

-A book set around a holiday other than Christmas.

-The first book in a series you haven't read before.  Shadow and Bone, Leigh Bardugo

-A book you bought on a trip.  The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

-A book recommended by an author you love.  The Lace Reader, Brunonia Barry (rec'd by Tamora Pierce)

-A bestseller from 2016.  Magic, Danielle Steel

-A book with a family-member term in the title.  Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor

-A book that takes place over a character's life span.  The Kitchen God's Wife, Amy Tan

-A book about an immigrant or refugee.  Stealing Buddha's Dinner, Bich Minh Nguyen

-A book from a genre/subgenre you've never heard of.  The Six-Gun Tarot, R. S. Belcher (Weird West)

-A book with an eccentric character.  Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloan

-A book that's more than 800 pages.  Voyager, Diana Galbadon

-A book you got from a used book sale.  Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen

-A book that's been mentioned in another book.  Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift (mentioned as Gullible's Travels in Marissa Meyer's Heartless)

-A book about a difficult topic.  Rape is Rape, Jody Raphael

-A book based on mythology.  Olympos, Dan Simmons