I stumbled upon The Drawing Lesson: A Graphic Novel That Teaches You How to Draw by Mark Crilley (Watson-Guptill, 2016) a few weeks ago while looking for books on how to draw. My daughter is fully remote at school and everyone does art remotely, and at the beginning of the year, she expressed anxiety over having to do art by herself. So, not having done art since I was a kid, I decided to jump in there with her and bought myself a sketch book and some colored pencils. It’s been…interesting. I enjoy the process, though I definitely need more practice, but I’ve been looking for some help, and I definitely found it in this sweet little graphic novel.
David is a young kid who wants nothing more than to draw better than his school nemesis when he stumbles upon illustrator Becky drawing in the park. He pesters her enough to give him a drawing lesson, and with that, she becomes his somewhat reluctant mentor, giving advice on perspective, shading, background, and more. As David’s art skills develop, so does Becky’s affection for him, and by the end of the book, they’ve both grown and benefitted from these art lessons.
What a sweet, sweet little book. I read it all in one setting but absorbed a lot of the advice Mark Crilley gave in the pages. David is an eager, somewhat pestery little character, and Becky’s mild (most of the time!) irritation is well-deserved, but they work together well and David is receptive to Becky’s criticism, providing an excellent example for younger (and heck, even older) readers. Aspiring artists would do well to follow this book for some awesome do-it-at-home art lessons. I wish I had time to do exactly that, but even just reading it, I feel as though I’ve learned a lot. (Some of the instruction echoes what I’ve heard from my daughter’s art teacher, which is neat!) We’ll see if my art improves this week! If you’re learning to draw, or would like to draw better, you shouldn’t miss this one.
Apparently Mark Crilley has a YouTube channel as well; I definitely need to find time to check out his drawing lessons there!
I don’t quite remember how Not So Pure and Simple by Lamar Giles (Quill Tree Books, 2020) came to be on my reading list (or at least where I found it), but I know WHY, because it ticks so many of my boxes:
*YA
*diverse book
*characters grappling with religious and social issues
*contemporary as heck
*amazing voice
In fact, Lamar Giles is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books and serves on the Honorary Advisory Board! How cool is that?!?!? (Thank you to the founders and members for this group, for the work you do to keep our shelves stocked with books that represent everyone! It never ceases to amaze me how much better YA now is than when I was young.). By whatever means I discovered this book, I’m glad I did; this is some fabulous YA.
Del’s been in love with Kiera since their kindergarten production of The Wizard of Oz, but she’s always been attached to someone else. Now that she’s finally single, Del’s ready to swoop in and make his move, but he never expected to follow her into his church’s program for pledging purity. *record scratch* Kiera’s not thrilled with Del or his reputation (which he hasn’t exactly earned), but he’s determined to game the system with the help of Jameer, another student in the program with whom Del has made a bargain: he’ll get Jameer answers to his sex questions from the Healthy Living class at school that Jameer isn’t allowed to take, and Jameer will aid Del in his quest to finally get together with Kiera.
But things are always a little more complicated than they may seem. Del’s town has had a rash of teen pregnancies and the community is still reeling from that. His college-age sister has some mysterious new gig. His job stinks. But the friend’s he’s making at the Purity group are turning out to be solid. Del has a lot to learn: about life, about purity and sexual expectations, about what it means to be a good man and how to treat women. The Purity Pledge may not be what he expected, but getting involved leads to everything he needs to move forward in life.
Whew, this is a great book. It’s my first Lamar Giles novel, but already I can tell he’s a master of voice. Not one time during the reading of this book did I go, “Wow, this is absolutely an adult writing for teens;” Mr. Giles is right up there with Angie Thomas, nailing the voice of a Black teenager searching for answers, identity, and his place in the world. Del is a flawed but solid character, and his growth throughout the novel is admirable. He sometimes needs to be shoved there a little, but he readily absorbs the lessons he’s taught by the people who surround him, and he’s not afraid to admit when he was wrong, and to rewrite his life goals when he needs to.
The supporting characters are fabulous; they’re all distinct characters with distinct personalities and goals and character arcs (have you ever read a book where the other characters are kind of interchangeable? Absolutely none of this going on here!). There’s religious and social commentary here, stated in a way that makes sense to teenagers (who will absolutely call you on your crap if it doesn’t add up, something that Mr. Giles seems to understand well!), but never, ever in a preachy way. This isn’t a faith-based novel whatsoever, but it’s a story set in a family whose members are searching for various things, and those things are occasionally conflicting, which adds extremely readable drama.
I’m looking forward to reading more from Lamar Giles, because this was just a super solid, thought-provoking, entertaining YA that deserves to be read far and wide.
My fascination with strict, cult-like (or straight up cult) religious movements extends to the Christian Nationalist religious right that has taken over much of American politics (and boy, is there a lot of overlap between the cultier groups and this political movement), so I was excited in a kind of want-to-read-it-but-dreading-it-at-the-same-time kind of way to learn about Katherine Stewart’s latest offering, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism(Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020). Along the same vein, I deeply enjoyed her The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children and highly recommend that one as well. I had to wait to read this one, though, until I was in a better place, mentally-speaking. It’s difficult to read about the power-seeking people who think my friends and I are close to the pinnacle of evil and everything wrong about this country, especially when these people are the ones in charge.
Katherine Stewart has once again penned a deep dive into the members of the far religious right who want nothing more than power, power that includes the ability to force everyone to live the way they think is right, according to their extremist interpretation of their religious scriptures. It doesn’t matter if you’re a different religion or of no religion at all; you still need to follow their precepts because that’s what their religion says, and according to their interpretation, they and no one else should be in charge of the government.
Her calm, measured style exposes the lengths to which they’ll go in order to achieve their goals; nearly everything they do is based on lies- easily disproven ones about the founding of the United States and the goals of the Founding Fathers, but they’ve twisted the meanings of these original sources to fit their warped ideas of how American society should function. Women should have little to no place in public life. Gay people should be executed, rape and slavery are totally cool (to be fair, these views are somewhat more of a fringe belief even in their groups, but I’m well acquainted, through my years of cult-watching, with the awfulness of one of the men who has publicly stated these things. He was ousted from his now-defunct ministry after being sexually inappropriate with a nanny. So Christlike and God-fearing, amirite?). Our nation has become ‘pussified,’ as one of these pastors has claimed, and he goes on to say that when Jesus returns, his sword will be an AR-15. I wish I were making this up, but it’s all in the book, and all documented.
The content in this book is deeply disturbing, but it’s important that people realize what’s been going on in this country, what these groups have been working towards, and how much progress they’ve already made. I don’t want my daughter’s only option for a future to be a wife and mother (and I say that as someone who is a full-time wife and mother and have been for pretty much the entirety of my adult life). I hope my son, should he choose to get married, can marry someone who has been raised to be a full partner in marriage. I don’t think everyone marching in lockstep in terms of beliefs, ideals, and actions is ever a good thing, and I fully believe that, should these people ever manage to force our society into the one they want, the infighting would start immediately, with certain denominations who helped them achieve their goals getting thrown under the bus right from the start (they team up with certain factions of Catholics when it comes to things like banning abortion, but as soon as they got into power, the Catholics- whom they don’t see as real Christians- would be one of their targets. I was raised Catholic and ran into some of this as a teenager; it took me a few years to discover exactly why that woman treated me the way she did). It would be messy and not at all the complete restructuring they want to imagine it would be; with so much power at stake, I can’t help but believe that these people would begin tearing each other down in order to grab as much power for themselves as possible.
I was pleased to see Ms. Stewart’s takedown of David Barton, who remains a champion of the Christian Nationalist movement even as his work has been debunked time and time again by nearly every history department who has taken up the task. If the only way you can make your point is by lying (which goes directly against those Ten Commandments they claim to live by), you don’t have a point, and David Barton seems like the biggest liar of all.
This is a great book, but it’s dense and packed full of information, so read it when your 2020 brain isn’t too exhausted to handle it all.
It’s December already! Although, technically, I think it’s actually still March, right??? What a weird year.
Slow but steady month around here, folks- nothing new. My stomach is still recovering from the stress it went through with the elections earlier this month. Our Covid numbers are horrible where I am. 11-12,000 cases per day, 150-200 deaths each day. My daughter’s school decided to go virtual for the week after Thanksgiving; I’m thinking they’re hoping that anyone that’s going to be symptomatic will be by the time the kids go back. I wish they’d go all virtual until after winter break; I think that would be the smarter, safer move for everyone, especially since yesterday’s return to virtual school involved stories from all the students about where they traveled to to spend Thanksgiving and with whom they spent it (one girl is *still* out of state and will be all week). It’s all such a nightmare.
But we’re doing okay and staying healthy at the Not-At-the-Library-Because-They’ve-Returned-to-Curbside-Pickup-Only household! I’m not getting much reading time in; I can’t read during the day because I also have to pay attention to my daughter’s classes so I can keep her on track and reinforce what she’s learning, and then we do extra stuff when she’s released from her virtual learning sessions. But I’m making my way through my last stash of library books and then I’ll move on to reading some from my own shelves, because I promised I’d be better about that this year, and I will. 😊
Let’s get this recap started, shall we?
What I Read in November 2020
1. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh (no review; read out loud to my daughter)
8. The Frog Princess by E.D. Baker (no review; read out loud to my daughter)
9. An Introduction to Judaism by Nicholas de Lange (no review)
Quiet month around here! Five of these were from my TBR; two were read-alouds (don’t bother with The Frog Princess; the writing was so awkward and the dialogue so stilted that it made for a kind of terrible read-aloud); one was an impulse grab. An Introduction to Judaism was a short book but a slow read; the author is at Cambridge and writes in such an academic style (and in a way that shows he is way, way smarter than I could ever dream of being!) that getting through this took all month, especially with my limited reading time. Six fiction; three nonfiction.
Reading Challenge Updates
Nothing from my own shelves this month (other than the two read-alouds, but that’s solely because I’ve been anticipating another library shut down, so I grabbed a STACK of books), but I’ll do my best to get back to those next!
State of the Goodreads TBR
173 last month; 176 this month! Not too much creep, so that makes me happy! We’ll see what this looks like next month, haha! All those ‘Best Books of 2020’ and ‘Most Anticipated Books of 2021’ lists should be making their way to the internet soon. Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaapppp…
Books I Acquired in November 2020
Um…none? I don’t think?
Bookish Things I Did in November 2020
So, not entirely bookish, but at the beginning of the month, I virtually attended a seminar on the future of Holocaust education in the US, which was both sobering and super interesting, and I added a book or two to my TBR from this (one of which I have checked out from the library right now!).
Current Podcast Love
Still listening to Judaism Unbound, and I’ve added in Stuff Jews Should Know, which is super fun and informative. 😊 The iTunes podcast player keeps shutting it down and telling me some episodes are temporarily unavailable, which is annoying and wakes me up at night, so I’ll only be able to listen to this one at certain times.
Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge
On hold until life goes back to normal, although I’m trying to keep a Judaism-themed book going at all times (I have one on stories from the Talmud next), which also factors into my other reading time, so this kind of counts? Maybe?
Real Life Stuff
Just another month of quarantine life around here! We just did virtual parent-teacher conferences for my daughter; she’s doing really well in everything (especially reading!), so I’m very happy with her progress- not that I doubted it, because I’m literally RIGHT BEHIND HER at all times during school, haha! Her math has improved as well; I really love the curriculum the school uses, as I feel it teaches math in such a logical way. She has such a better grasp on math than I did at her age, which makes me incredibly happy. She’s also started picking up chapter books and reading them on her own, which is a HUGE deal. She’s currently enjoying the Bad Kitty series; I get such joy out of watching her read and giggle.
My son has taken up cooking as a hobby, so I hang out with him in the kitchen and help out when he needs advice (I also chop onions for him; he reacts pretty badly to them!). He’s made some seriously amazing food so far, including a baked ziti that was restaurant-quality and better than anything I’ve cooked in the last eight months. I highly approve of this new hobby!
My husband and I have been watching The Path on Hulu at night, and since it’s about what basically amounts to a Scientology-like cult, you know I’m in. I’ve been knitting hats for a mobile homeless shelter (for whenever things go back to normal) while we watch (at least most nights! Some nights I’m too tired), so I’m at least trying to make the best of that time.
Thanksgiving was quiet here. I made a turkey-flavored seitan with white bean mushroom gravy, my son helped make not-crab cakes (made with black-eyed peas; he also made crab cakes for the rest of the family) and a red pepper tomato mayo sauce, cheese potatoes, green beans, and rolls. We had a store-bought cheesecake for dessert. Everything was SUPER delicious! I’ve spent half of my adult life living out of state from the rest of my family, so Thanksgiving with just the four of us was really nothing new. We did meet up with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law for a masked, distanced outdoor walk afterwards, but that was the extent of our gathering. No virus-sharing for us!
That’s about it for us, it was a quiet month. Hang in there, friends. We’ve got Hanukkah and Christmas coming up, still distanced- except for the people who won’t, and that’s going to overwhelm our healthcare system. The small hospital where I was born is at capacity with HALF of their patients in there because of Covid. Don’t be one of those people; wear your mask, keep your distance, celebrate virtually so we can all be here to celebrate in person next year. And, as always, fight for justice and equality wherever you go; elevate the voices that get pushed out of the way; lift as you climb. Society doesn’t function to the best of its ability unless we’re all able to participate equally.
Happy reading, friends! May your December be full of warmth, light, love, and amazing books.
I’m a sucker for royal romances. For someone who has zero interest in real-life royalty or royal families, there’s something deeply charming to me about a prince falling for a commoner (it’s probably related to my adoration of stories where a celebrity falls for a regular person- and again, I have almost no interest in actual celebrities, so…). It’s how The Heir and the Spare by Emily Albright (Merit Press, 2016) made it onto my list, and I grabbed it in a last-minute dash to the library before they went back to curbside pickup only, because our Covid case numbers are so high. It’s a bummer, I’ll miss my quick dashes in to grab my items, but at least curbside pickup is still available!
Evie, a 19 year-old American college student, is off to Oxford, the alma mater of both her parents. Her English mother died when Evie was just six, leaving behind a stack of letters, one for Evie to open on each birthday, and now a series of letters which send Evie on a quest around England to discover her family’s past and her mother’s secret. Complicating things is the fact that the cute boy Evie began falling for her first week at Oxford turns out to be none other than Prince Edmund, second in line for the crown. His parents have ideas about whom he should marry, and that doesn’t necessarily include a common. It may, however, include Jax, aka Lady Jacqueline, who loves nothing more than to set Evie’s teeth on edge by draping herself all over Edmund like ill-hung wallpaper.
As Evie falls harder and harder for Edmund, the truth about her mother’s true identity comes out, and Evie is shocked to learn she must prepare herself to inherit a title, an estate, and a way of life she never expected. She’ll have to figure out who and what she wants to be, and how to maintain any kind of relationship- friendship? more?- with the prince she’s not sure can ever fully commit to her.
So.
This is an adorable story. Evie is the Heir in the title, with Edmund being the Spare; I thought that was a clever switcharound. Edmund is charming as possible, and Evie’s mother’s letters are sweet and wistful.
The problem is that the writing is barely strong enough to carry the story. There’s so much telling and very little showing, and this began to irritate me early on. Had I not enjoyed the storyline so much, I likely would have DNF’d due to this.
Evie as a character is this side of Mary Sue. She’s super gorgeous and every eligible guy in the book is of course in love with her, including Edmund’s best friend (and of course Edmund is jealous) and Theron, a character that exists solely to evoke Edmund’s jealousy, rage, and protective streak when he assaults Evie on their sole date (the incident and Theron are never mentioned again outside of that chapter). She’s brash and free with middle school-level retorts and insults (which, of course, massively impress all her Oxford friends), which made me cringe quite a bit, especially in the beginning where she goes off on a few characters who are, admittedly, being quite rude. I’m not advocating for tolerating rudeness, but I feel as though one might take a bit more caution in acting crassly during their first days in a country where one is a guest and has been heretofore unfamiliar. Evie acted almost immediately like a stereotypical American, and that irked me.
So many of the characters in this book are flat and unnuanced. Jax and her crew are Mean Girls with no redeeming qualities and no other character traits. Evie is Mary Sue-ish; she’s gorgeous and smart without ever needing to demonstrate her intelligence; people just remark on how intelligent she is (I wondered multiple times exactly why Oxford admitted her other than as a legacy. This seems to be an issue in a lot of books set at places like Oxford, Harvard, etc; the characters’ display of intellect or, more accurately, lack thereof doesn’t exactly merit their place at a top university, and I find that irritating. Don’t just tell me how smart they are; show what makes them smart. Have them reminisce about their discovery of something interesting during a high school research internship. Let a friend or professor stumble upon their publication of a literary criticism paper from a summer program. SOMETHING other than having characters go, “You’re so smart!” or discussing how swamped with schoolwork they are). Her Oxford friends are almost interchangeable in terms of personality, and every phone call she has with her supposed best friend from back home is entirely about Evie, nothing ever about Abby. This would have been so much more enjoyable if all the characters had been better developed.
I didn’t hate this, but I didn’t love it, either. It had a lot of potential but fell short of the mark for me.
I ran across Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States by Samantha Allen (Little, Brown and Company, 2019) in the library last year and thought, ‘Ooh, that looks good,’ but at the time, I didn’t know if I could handle more political talk (I don’t remember what was going on at the time, but whatever it was was taking up a lot of my emotional energy). After stumbling upon a discussion of the book again a few months later, I remembered how intriguing it sounded and plopped it onto my TBR, where it sat until I finally grabbed it in my last trip to the library. And boy, am I glad I did.
Samantha Allen, a transgender journalist and author, has lived most of her life in the places known as red states, politically conservative areas with a history of enacting harsh measures against their LGBT population and refusing to accept them as full citizens with the same rights as everyone else. After the 2016 election, she began travelling through these red states, searching out the LGBT communities and learning how their members survive and even thrive in the places they love that don’t necessarily love them back. What makes them stay? Why not flee to somewhere where every day isn’t a struggle?
In traveling and interviewing, Ms. Allen began to clarify the feelings she’s felt about these places. Community is often stronger in places where the fight to survive is at the forefront. Supportive chosen family becomes easier to find, and more cohesive. Nothing changes if no one fights for it, and these are the people who refuse to give up, who refuse to have the places they love taken from them. She makes an amazing case for staying in places that are oftentimes hard to live in (though not always!) and being the kind of person who fights for change.
This is a powerful book, filled with people who have grown strong and resilient out of necessity, and who are using that growth to affect much-needed change in places that have been resistant to it. Ms. Allen made me check my attitude toward those red states; having lived in several, I understand how difficult it can be, and the sometimes PTSD or PTSD-like reactions that can come from the maltreatment received there, but she helped me to understand what it takes to remain there and thrive, what it takes to live there and fight, and that these people should be commended for their determination, not pitied because they choose to remain. They deserve a place at the table where they choose to live, those places they live because they love it there, and they need to be supported in their oftentimes uphill battle to be respected and treated with dignity. I think I had fallen into the trap of wondering why so many people stay in places that don’t want them there, but this helped me to understand the why of it better. (I mean, I’ve long understood having ties to a place; no matter how many times I’ve left Illinois as an adult, I always come back because I love it here so much, but my ability to live here isn’t compromised or threatened because of who I am or who I’m attracted to. I have, however, lived in a town where people are regularly threatened or ostracized due to their political leanings and their sexuality; I’ve seen it happen to friends, and I’m aware of what it takes to stay in a place like that. But seeing it through the eyes of the LGBT+ folks who are on the front lines of this was a much-needed perspective for me.)
I can’t recommend this one highly enough. Ms. Allen shares the story of her own transition in such an open, honest way, not just the physical parts, but the emotional parts, the difficulties, the fears, the triumphs, and who and what helped her along the way. If you’re LGBT+ and in a red state, or the parent/family member/friend of someone who is, or if you’re wondering why people choose to stay in places where the politicians regularly sneer at their communities (often on a national stage), you need to read this book, because it’ll help you understand the why of it all and be supportive of their choices. And it’ll also help you understand that even if you live in a blue state or blue area, you still need to fight for these marginalized communities as though you don’t.
Seriously amazing, eye-opening book. It’s inspiring and hopeful in a way that I wasn’t expecting. Thank you, Ms. Allen. I needed that.
I’m absolutely trying to be better about reading books from my own shelves, but when I ran across a copy of Resistance by Jennifer A. Nielsen (Scholastic Inc., 2018), it leapt from the library shelf directly into my bag and there wasn’t anything I could do about it, sorry. I read Ms. Nielsen’s A Night Divided in 2018; it’s a novel about life behind the Berlin wall, something I knew very little about, and I was hooked. I was curious to see if her skill from that book transferred to this one (and my goodness, check out this powerful cover!).
Chaya Lindner is Jewish in Poland during the second World War, and she’s on the run, working with the resistance as a courier. She passes easily for Polish and is able to smuggle food, medicine, and papers into the ghettos where her people are struggling to survive and the death counts mount on a daily basis. It’s difficult and dangerous, made more so by the separation from her parents (who seem to have given up on life) and the likely death of her two siblings, but Chaya refuses to give in.
Being teamed up with Esther, an inexperienced courier who doesn’t pass as well as Chaya does and who fumbles often in ways that place their group in danger, doesn’t bode well for Chaya’s hopes of living through the war, but a terrifying new mission is assigned to the two girls: sneak into the Warsaw Ghetto to determine if there’s enough will to launch an uprising there. The risks are massive and their lives are on the line with every breath, but Chaya’s willing to risk it all for her people. Is Esther?
This is pretty close to edge-of-your-seat reading, so if you’re not ready for that right now, hold off. Chaya finds herself in a dicey situation in nearly every chapter; there’s an occasional moment of downtime, but it’s rare and doesn’t allow the reader many breaks, placing you right there beside her, on the run for your life and for the lives of the Jewish people. It’s cold, relentless hunger, murderous Nazis, and indifferent townspeople at every turn. On occasion, Chaya and Esther do run into someone who wants to help, but even that is fraught with fear: are these strangers really helpful, or are they trying to trick the girls into revealing their identities? No one can be trusted outright, and Ms. Nielsen illustrates the exhaustion inherent in living this way on every single page.
Being set where it is, during this time period, and among people fighting with everything they have just to exist, there’s a lot of death in this book: death by starvation, death by disease, murder, and all of it caused by outright cruelty or indifference. Chaya is sixteen but has been forced to abandon every vestige of childhood in her fight to live; I’d put the audience for this book at mature fifth grade on up due to its setting and themes of violence and suffering, but there’s a lot to learn and understand for all mature readers.
No matter how much I read about this period of time, I don’t ever feel like I understand it, or that I ever will. I understand the townspeople who felt helpless and felt as though there was nothing they could do- I’m sure it’s a similar feeling to how I feel when I read about some of the atrocities our own government commits against both immigrants and citizens alike; I do what I can in terms of contacting legislators and supporting people who can protest (I don’t trust my bad back), but it’s not enough, it’s never enough when human suffering is on the line. I don’t understand not caring, I don’t understand ambivalence, I don’t understand the hatred some people feel for others simply for existing. I don’t know that it’s possible to fully understand something so terrible, but I’m thankful for Ms. Nielsen and other authors who continue to try to understand and who try to help us understand. We’re obviously in dire need of constant reminders these days.
I’ve had The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf (Salaam Reads, 2019) on my TBR list for ages, both because the premise sounded intriguing and also because Hanna Alkaf is wonderful on Twitter (you really should follow her!). It was never in at the library when I checked…and then I finally realized it wasn’t shelved under Alkaf, Hanna, but under Hanna, Alkaf. Whoops. (I’ll ask the library worker about that when I return it, because this needs to be easier to find.) Once I realized the mistake, I located the book and slipped it into my bag.
Everyone knows about the Holocaust. You’re probably also familiar with the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and the Cambodian genocide from 1975 to 1979, and maybe you’ve even learned about the Armenian genocide. But what do you know about what happened in Malaysia on May 13, 1969 and the days that followed? I knew nothing, had never even heard about it (have I ever even read a book set in Malaysia before this? I honestly don’t think so), and that’s one of the reasons I knew I had to read this book.
Melati has OCD in a time where there’s no word or phrase to describe her incessant need to count, usually in groups of threes, in order to protect the people she loves. She pictures the forces compelling her to count as a djinn, cackling at her distress to appease him. It started after her father died; her mother, already stressed over the loss of her husband, doesn’t know how to handle her daughter’s mysterious and shameful problems, and so Melati works hard to hide her compulsions from her.
So life is already tough for Melati, and then the world around her explodes in violence. Separated from her best friend by a group of men wielding knives and wearing sinister smiles, she has no knowledge of where her mother is, no ability to get home, and no idea if she’ll survive the bloodshed. As the bodies pile up in the streets, Melati will need to depend on the kindness of strangers and her own quick wit to not only defeat her own djinn but the evil and hatred that has suddenly pervaded her society.
Ms. Alkaf begins the book with a necessary content warning (told you she’s awesome); this is not an easy book to read for so many reasons, but I think it’s a necessary one if you have the mental space for it. There are a lot of parallels to things going on today, of the way far too many people view those different from them, and the events described in this book are devastating and worrying as a potential conclusion to those levels of hatred. Melati’s OCD is also tough to read, in that it causes her so much distress. I’ve dealt with some OCD tendencies (which were much worse when I was young), so reading her struggles made me want to scoop her up and hug her.
Her growth throughout the novel is admirable and inspiring; it’s hard-fought and incomplete, since OCD is a beast that must be continually tamed, but it’s real. And as in real-life crises, there are no full conclusions, just a sober understanding (as much as that can be possible) of what happened, along with the determination to carry on while never forgetting those who have been lost. It’s heartbreaking and should be eye-opening to any reader, imploring them to examine their biases, delve deeply into their prejudices, and pick apart the reasons why they believe the things they do. Because the outcome of hatred and prejudice is often devastation and death, and at this point in history, with far too many painful examples to illustrate the point for us, we should be better than that. Ms. Alkaf has penned a fictional account of real history that serves as a warning point; don’t let this happen to you, to your country, to anyone.
Excellent book; highly recommended. Just wait until you’re in a good mental space so you can fully process this story, because it’s heavy.
Remember when I read The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez and immediately put its sequel, The Happy Ever After Playlist(Forever, 2020) on hold? That was in August, and it finally came in last week! (Doesn’t bother me. I seriously love that so many people are excited about reading the same things I am, so the wait never bothers me. Besides, my TBR is long enough that I always have plenty of other books to read. Not that I’ve had TIME to read lately… *sobs*) It was a nice surprise to be able to send that bad boy to my kindle and begin reading it the next day.
Ever since Sloan’s fiancé died, life has lost all its meaning and color. She’s mostly stopped enjoying anything about life, but that starts to change the day Tucker, a runaway dog, nearly throws himself under her car tires and then jumps through her open sunroof. Tucker turns out to belong to Jason, a surprisingly famous musician, and he and Sloan begin a flirty relationship via text while he out of the country. Caring for Tucker helps bring Sloan back to life, and flirting with Jason is shockingly exciting. Meeting him in person is even better.
But life with Jason and his fame is even more complicated than Sloan ever could have imagined. Living in tour buses, different cities every night, nothing to eat but fast food, manipulative and drama-heavy acquaintances, music companies that only care about the bottom line, giving up all of her dreams for all of Jason’s… Learning to live again means learning to compromise, and it’s not going to be an easy road for Sloan and Jason.
This ticked so many of my boxes: dual narrative, celebrity romance, cute dog (and the story didn’t immediately make me panic that something bad was going to happen to the dog!). Sloan is grieving hard at the beginning, and though the grief eases throughout the book, I love how her pain is handled throughout the book: she never abandons Brandon’s memory but finds a way to incorporate who he helped her become into her renaissance. His memory is honored at every step, and it’s bittersweet and beautiful. I loved watching her grow and find herself again throughout the arc of the novel.
Jason is a great hero, easy-going, dedicated, and not afraid of commitment. There was one spot where I felt he acted just a tiny bit out of character, not taking Sloan’s feelings as seriously as I thought he would have, but in general, I really appreciated his patience with and respect of Sloan’s grief. He never tried to rush her in anything and was content to wait for her until she was ready. And his love for his dog was beyond adorable, which never hurts.
Despite tackling the heavy subjects of grief and rebuilding a life after loss, The Happy Ever After Playlist is a light, refreshing read that made for a great escape from the world around me at a time when I really, REALLY needed it. I’ve already added the next book in the series, Life’s Too Short, to my TBR, though it won’t be out until April of 2021. Worth the wait. 😊
I’ve always been a big secondhand shopper. Even as a kid, I recognized the value in buying something for less money, and as I grew older, I appreciated that used items were less taxing on the earth’s resources. Yard sales and thrift stores have always been my jam. That’s why I was so excited to read Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale by Adam Minter (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019). What exactly happens to the items we drop off at the thrift store? What happens to the items that don’t sell? Where, exactly, does all this stuff go?
Adam Minter travels around the world, from the US to Japan, from Malaysia to West Africa, following the stream of secondhand stuff, from thrift store drop-offs and rejects, to items cleaned out from homes where the residents have died or left for nursing homes or assisted living. Our lives are full of stuff, and all that stuff has to go somewhere at some point. Japan has excelled in the creation of businesses meant to deal with possessions after the death of their owners; West Africa has done an amazing job of creating industries that repair and refurbish outdated technology, including laptops, computers, and televisions rejected by Americans. The problem of used clothing, which includes fast fashion made from cheap fabric, is a little trickier, however.
While I enjoyed this, I did find it a little dry from time to time, but I will fully admit that this may have been a personal issue due to the timing of my reading (could anyone focus well on anything the first week of November?!?!?). His criticism of planned obsolescence (one of the dumbest concepts ever created) and companies that deny their customers the right to repair the products they’ve purchased is perfection (as is his spotlight on iFixit.com, a website crammed full of repair manuals for products whose companies don’t necessarily offer them). Far too many societies have adopted an attitude of disposability, and that’s obviously a major, major problem. Adam Minter does an excellent job of focusing on this problem without condemning the reader, who has likely been guilty of these behaviors and attitudes at some point in their life, throughout the text. There are problems, yes, but there are solutions, many of which readers can actively engage in.
I’m careful about the clothing I buy- I stay away from fast fashion (especially after having readOverdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Fast Fashion by Elizabeth L. Cline; I cannot recommend this book highly enough); I don’t buy dry-clean-only clothing; I make sure what I do purchase (which is almost always secondhand) are things I can repair if necessary (I’m trying to learn how to darn socks, but so far I stink at it. I am, however, awesome at patching over holes and stains, and I’m working on my embroidery so as to make visible mending more aesthetically pleasant), but Secondhand has definitely inspired me to keep going with all of that. The amount of secondhand clothing in the stream is too high for us to do anything other than take good care of what we own.
She's probably at the library... 