Recommended Reads, September 2016

I'm actually on pace to finish 150 books this year, though November may slow me down, since I'm planning to take part in NaNoWriMo, and writing time will be more important than reading time!

In September I read 13 books. Looking back at the list, these three stood out the most for me:

Coyote America by Dan Flores

I didn't know much about coyotes when I started this book--they just don't have the same mystique about them as their larger, rarer, and more glamorous wolf cousins. But I finished it filled with respect for and interest in these scrappy, resilient, clever survivors who've only thrived more in the face of attempts to eliminate them.


Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Literary fiction is generally among my least favorite fictional genres (I'm also not much of a reader of horror, Westerns, or hard science fiction). Rightly or not, I expect it to be depressing, self-important, and prone to putting fancy writing ahead of an engrossing story.

I'm glad I made an exception for Homegoing after hearing it raved about up and down the internet. (I think maybe Sarah Wendell or one of her guests on the Smart Bitches podcast was raving about an advance copy, and that was what put me over the top to putting it on hold at my library.) This is a beautiful book, and while it's not a happy, escapist read, it feels honest in both its ample sorrow and occasional joy as it follows the descendants of two Ghanaian half-sisters, one who lives out her life in Africa while the other is enslaved and taken to America, over ~250 years.


Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans De Waal

More natural history, this time a general overview of the current state of the science of animal cognition. Basically, we're becoming increasingly aware that many animals are more intelligent and thoughtful than we believed even two or three decades ago, especially when we try to see from their points of view. (E.g. early studies thought chimpanzees couldn't recognize faces...based on studies of their ability to distinguish between HUMAN faces. Turns out you do the same studies with OTHER CHIMPANZEE FACES, and they're quite good at it. By the same token, some studies suggested dogs were smarter than wolves because they're better at understanding human facial expressions, hand gestures, etc. Never mind how well wolves communicate AMONG THEMSELVES in their cooperative hunting.)

Recommended Reads, August 2016 (Summer Book Bingo BLACKOUT!)

I'm proud to announce I achieved blackout in Seattle Public Library Summer Book Bingo. OK, so I went really easy in the Read Out Loud section...but the Elephant and Piggie books really were my favorite picture books when Miss Fraser was little, and I truly have wanted to catch up on the ones that have come out since then.

August reads are marked NEW.

1. Recommended by a Librarian: How to Repair a Mechanical Heart by JC Lillis - A delightful m/m coming-of-age love story that's also a love letter to geek culture and fandom. NEW 
2. Cookbook or Food Memoir: Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuelsson - a worthwhile read, especially if you like Samuelsson as a Chopped judge.
3. You've Been Meaning to Read: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol 1: Squirrel Power by Ryan North and Erica Henderson - Somewhere in the last year or two I went from being someone baffled by comics and graphic novels to someone who seeks them out, and this one is fun, hilarious, and full of girl power. NEW
4. #We Need Diverse Books: The Lawyer's Luck by Piper Huguley - African-American historical romance novella, and a quick, sweet read currently free to download on Kindle.
5. Collection of Short Stories: Under My Hat, edited by Jonathan Strahan - anthology of short stories about witches by noted fantasy authors, many of whom are new to me authors I mean to try again. 
6. From Your Childhood: By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder - This wasn't my favorite Little House book as a child, but re-reading it now as an adult and the mother of a 12-year-old (Laura is 12-13 over the course of the book), I was struck by how Laura's adolescent restlessness and uncertainty is mirrored in the family's circumstances. 
7. Prize-Winner: The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood - I really intended to pick a Rita, Hugo, or Nebula winner for this category, but when I saw that the nonfiction history I was reading as research for my new manuscript was a Pulitzer winner, I just counted it. I will show my respect for the fantasy and romance genres in other ways. 
8. Set in a Place You've Always Wanted to Visit: The Graveyard of the Hesperides by Lindsey Davis - historical mystery set in Rome. (While present-day Rome is certainly on my bucket list, believe me I'd jump at the chance to visit the ancient city if the TARDIS happened by.) 
9. Recommended by an Independent Bookstore: Born for This by Chris Guillebeau - Advice and inspiration for career changers. NEW
10. Banned: Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin - a thoughtful and thought-provoking book profiling six transgender teens.
11. Collection of Poetry: The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton by Lucille Clifton - I rarely seek out poetry, but as long as the library puts it on their annual summer reading bingo, I'll manage a volume a year. And, really, I'm glad I got to spend a week's worth of evenings looking through Clifton's view of the world. NEW
12. Young Adult Book: Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant by Tony Cliff - a graphic novel full of pure swashbuckling fun in the early 19th century. Gorgeously illustrated, too.
13. FREE! Recommend a Book to a Friend: Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines - I've been recommending books to my fellow former Sleepy Hollow fan friends that hit some of the same sweet spots as Season 1 of that show, but without falling apart as the story goes forward, betraying and shredding their premises, and killing their heroines in a particularly disrespectful and painful way. (Not that I'm BITTER or anything.) This series definitely qualifies (and would make awesome TV for a network that would be sufficiently faithful to the source material).
14. Translated from Another Language: The Odyssey by Homer (Fitzgerald translation) - I do love my ancient Greeks, though I'm not sure I chose wisely in terms of translation. Fitzgerald was highly recommended in a book discussion thread I googled, but I read DH Lawrence's translation lo these many years ago (like at least 20) and seem to remember the story seeming far more vivid and lively. NEW
15. Non-Fiction: The Other Slavery by Andrés Reséndez - about the enslavement of Native Americans, especially in Spanish-colonized areas before and after independence.
16. Novel: Fortune Favors the Wicked by Theresa Romain - character-driven historical romance, at once tender and hot.
17. Local Author: The Triumph of Seeds by Thor Hanson - I found this book on a list of recommended reads at Powell's and therefore meant it for the independent bookstore category, but when I saw that the author lives on one of our Puget Sound islands and used his experiences gardening there intensively in this history and biology of seed plants, I decided it belonged here instead. 
18. Written by a Seattle Arts and Lectures Speaker: Falcon by Helen Macdonald - because I find raptors endlessly fascinating. NEW
19. Reread: The World of Jennie G. by Elisabeth Ogilvie - A favorite from my teens that still holds up well to rereading, and I've just discovered it's back in print! But it's the middle book of a trilogy, so you'll want to get Jennie About to Be first.
20. You Finish Reading in a Day: League of Dragons by Naomi Novik - a satisfying end to a wonderful series, though I thought the denouement was too short and didn't spend enough time on the characters I liked best. 
21. Read Out Loud: A Big Guy Took My Ball by Mo Willems - Seriously, if you have a little kid or are buying a present for one, this series is the best. NEW
22. Out of Your Comfort Zone: Girls and Sex by Peggy Orenstein - I decided this qualified for the category insofar as reading it as the mother of a 12-year-old daughter filled me with horror to think of the gauntlet of sexism, misogyny, and even rape adolescents and young women all too often endure.
23. Memoir: Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi - The most harrowing thing I've read this year, because it's so painful to acknowledge brutality committed by my own government, paid for by my own taxpayer dollars, and therefore in some sense in my name. But I feel like it was important that I read it for the same reason. Slahi has FINALLY been approved for release, but is still awaiting transfer. NEW
24. Written More than 100 Years Ago: Anne of the Island by LM Montgomery - published in 1915, so it just qualifies. This was one of my favorites of the series when a college friend introduced me to Anne, possibly because I was the same age as the characters. Now...it's fun, but I'd put it behind Anne of Green Gables, Anne's House of Dreams, and Rilla of Ingleside.
25. Recommended by a Friend: Lead Me Not by Ann Gallagher - Another male/male romance, this one a Christian romance about a deeply closeted man from a family that runs a Westboro Baptist Church-style ministry and his journey to a more welcoming faith. NEW

Recommended Reads, July 2016 (Summer Book Bingo Edition)

Two months of Seattle Public Library Summer Book Bingo down and one to go! Despite my good intentions it's going to take a push to fill in the remaining nine squares by Labor Day. I've got a couple of poetry collections out from the library, but I'm eying them askance, since I rarely read poetry, and I'm far from enthusiastic about "Read Out Loud," not least because we haven't read aloud as a family since Miss Fraser started reading chapter books on her own in second grade, and she starts seventh grade this fall. It's so much slower than just reading, you know? But I'm more than halfway to a blackout, so I'll make a push.

July reads are marked NEW.

1. Recommended by a Librarian 
2. Cookbook or Food Memoir: Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuelsson - a worthwhile read, especially if you like Samuelsson as a Chopped judge.
3. You've Been Meaning to Read
4. #We Need Diverse Books: The Lawyer's Luck by Piper Huguley - African-American historical romance novella, and a quick, sweet read currently free to download on Kindle.
5. Collection of Short Stories: Under My Hat, edited by Jonathan Strahan - anthology of short stories about witches by noted fantasy authors, many of whom are new to me authors I mean to try again. NEW
6. From Your Childhood: By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder - This wasn't my favorite Little House book as a child, but re-reading it now as an adult and the mother of a 12-year-old (Laura is 12-13 over the course of the book), I was struck by how Laura's adolescent restlessness and uncertainty is mirrored in the family's circumstances. NEW
7. Prize-Winner: The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood - I really intended to pick a Rita, Hugo, or Nebula winner for this category, but when I saw that the nonfiction history I was reading as research for my new manuscript was a Pulitzer winner, I just counted it. I will show my respect for the fantasy and romance genres in other ways. NEW
8. Set in a Place You've Always Wanted to Visit: The Graveyard of the Hesperides by Lindsey Davis - historical mystery set in Rome. (While present-day Rome is certainly on my bucket list, believe me I'd jump at the chance to visit the ancient city if the TARDIS happened by.) NEW
9. Recommended by an Independent Bookstore
10. Banned: Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin - a thoughtful and thought-provoking book profiling six transgender teens.
11. Collection of Poetry
12. Young Adult Book: Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant by Tony Cliff - a graphic novel full of pure swashbuckling fun in the early 19th century. Gorgeously illustrated, too.
13. FREE! Recommend a Book to a Friend: Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines - I've been recommending books to my fellow former Sleepy Hollow fan friends that hit some of the same sweet spots as Season 1 of that show, but without falling apart as the story goes forward, betraying and shredding their premises, and killing their heroines in a particularly disrespectful and painful way. (Not that I'm BITTER or anything.) This series definitely qualifies (and would make awesome TV for a network that would be sufficiently faithful to the source material).
14. Translated from Another Language
15. Non-Fiction: The Other Slavery by Andrés Reséndez - about the enslavement of Native Americans, especially in Spanish-colonized areas before and after independence.
16. Novel: Fortune Favors the Wicked by Theresa Romain - character-driven historical romance, at once tender and hot.
17. Local Author: The Triumph of Seeds by Thor Hanson - I found this book on a list of recommended reads at Powell's and therefore meant it for the independent bookstore category, but when I saw that the author lives on one of our Puget Sound islands and used his experiences gardening there intensively in this history and biology of seed plants, I decided it belonged here instead. NEW
18. Written by a Seattle Arts and Lectures Speaker
19. Reread: The World of Jennie G. by Elisabeth Ogilvie - A favorite from my teens that still holds up well to rereading, and I've just discovered it's back in print! But it's the middle book of a trilogy, so you'll want to get Jennie About to Be first.
20. You Finish Reading in a Day: League of Dragons by Naomi Novik - a satisfying end to a wonderful series, though I thought the denouement was too short and didn't spend enough time on the characters I liked best. 
21. Read Out Loud
22. Out of Your Comfort Zone: Girls and Sex by Peggy Orenstein - I decided this qualified for the category insofar as reading it as the mother of a 12-year-old daughter filled me with horror to think of the gauntlet of sexism, misogyny, and even rape adolescents and young women all too often endure.
23. Memoir
24. Written More than 100 Years Ago: Anne of the Island by LM Montgomery - published in 1915, so it just qualifes. This was one of my favorites of the series when a college friend introduced me to Anne, possibly because I was the same age as the characters. Now...it's fun, but I'd put it behind Anne of Green Gables, Anne's House of Dreams, and Rilla of Ingleside.
25. Recommended by a Friend

Recommended Reads, June 2016 (Summer Book Bingo Edition)

I'm going to do something a little different with this month's book recommendations post and talk about how I've filled out my Seattle Public Library Summer Book Bingo card so far.

1. Recommended by a Librarian 
2. Cookbook or Food Memoir: Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuelsson - a worthwhile read, especially if you like Samuelsson as a Chopped judge.
3. You've Been Meaning to Read
4. #We Need Diverse Books: The Lawyer's Luck by Piper Huguley - African-American historical romance novella, and a quick, sweet read currently free to download on Kindle.
5. Collection of Short Stories
6. From Your Childhood
7. Prize-Winner
8. Set in a Place You've Always Wanted to Visit
9. Recommended by an Independent Bookstore
10. Banned: Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin - a thoughtful and thought-provoking book profiling six transgender teens.
11. Collection of Poetry
12. Young Adult Book: Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant by Tony Cliff - a graphic novel full of pure swashbuckling fun in the early 19th century. Gorgeously illustrated, too.
13. FREE! Recommend a Book to a Friend: Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines - I've been recommending books to my fellow former Sleepy Hollow fan friends that hit some of the same sweet spots as Season 1 of that show, but without falling apart as the story goes forward, betraying and shredding their premises, and killing their heroines in a particularly disrespectful and painful way. (Not that I'm BITTER or anything.) This series definitely qualifies (and would make awesome TV for a network that would be sufficiently faithful to the source material).
14. Translated from Another Language
15. Non-Fiction: The Other Slavery by Andrés Reséndez - about the enslavement of Native Americans, especially in Spanish-colonized areas before and after independence.
16. Novel: Fortune Favors the Wicked by Theresa Romain - character-driven historical romance, at once tender and hot.
17. Local Author
18. Written by a Seattle Arts and Lectures Speaker
19. Reread: The World of Jennie G. by Elisabeth Ogilvie - A favorite from my teens that still holds up well to rereading, and I've just discovered it's back in print! But it's the middle book of a trilogy, so you'll want to get Jennie About to Be first.
20. You Finish Reading in a Day: League of Dragons by Naomi Novik - a satisfying end to a wonderful series, though I thought the denouement was too short and didn't spend enough time on the characters I liked best. 
21. Read Out Loud
22. Out of Your Comfort Zone: Girls and Sex by Peggy Orenstein - I decided this qualified for the category insofar as reading it as the mother of a 12-year-old daughter filled me with horror to think of the gauntlet of sexism, misogyny, and even rape adolescents and young women all too often endure.
23. Memoir
24. Written More than 100 Years Ago
25. Recommended by a Friend

I will update this post over the next two months - by which point I hope to have achieved a full blackout!

Recommended Reads, February 2016

I missed last week's recipe and happiness posts because my daughter and I have been fighting the Lingering Cold of Doom 2016, and I spent from Tuesday night through midday Sunday doing as little as possible. This illness, however, led to me getting more reading done than I expected in February, a total of 15 books.

Here are my favorites from those books, in the order I read them. As far as I know, none were actually February releases--I'm rarely quite that up-to-date in my reading--but if your curiosity is piqued, they're all available as ebooks and/or at your local library.

Accidental Saints by Nadia Bolz-Weber

A memoir of faith by an unconventional Lutheran pastor (her congregation is the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver) that was the perfect read for me at the beginning of Lent. It follows the rhythm of the liturgical church year--which is a big part of what drew me from my very non-liturgical Baptist roots all the way to the Episcopal Church, that whole sense of following an ancient rhythm and set of traditions to mark the patterns of the year--and also features the life-affirming grace and humor that have been a source of joy to me as a newbie Episcopalian. (Episcopalians and Lutherans have wildly different Protestant origin stories, but at least in America have grown quite a bit alike, so there's a certain similarity in style and approach, and our congregations often work together.)


The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher

I'd never read anything by Butcher before, though I knew him for a popular and prolific author. So I didn't quite know what to expect from this book.

What I found was purely delightful. Steampunk fantasy with airships engaging in duels a la Hornblower or Aubrey/Maturin in the clouds! Swashbuckling! Talking cats! (The talking cats were my favorite part of all.)

This book is first in a new series which I expect to follow all the way through, and I plan to check out Butcher's backlist as well. There are few things more delightful as a reader than discovering a new-to-you author whose "also by..." list takes up an entire page.


In Her Wildest Dreams by Farrah Rochon

A contemporary romance novella that packed a lot of romance and character develop into a story you can read in an afternoon. It features one of my all-time favorite tropes--friends to lovers--in a pair of New Orleans entrepreneurs (he's a computer programmer turned chocolatier, and she's a high-end event planner) who support and advise each other as they struggle to balance their longing for independence and self-sufficiency with their needs for community, to care for and accept care from friends and family.

I love that this is a city story, and one where love goes hand in hand with work, ambition, and finding a sense of vocation and fulfillment in their careers for both the hero and heroine.


Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes, at Home and at War by Linda Hervieux

This account of black American soldiers during WWII, focusing on the experience of a barrage balloon battalion who landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day, was fascinating, and it left me gibbering with rage at the culture I was born into--that of the rural white South--for the way those soldiers, American citizens fighting to defend our country and to liberate Europe from tyranny and genocide, were treated. Yes, much has changed (though much still needs to change). But the fact that German POWs were regularly given privileges, kindness, and leisure opportunities that black AMERICAN SOLDIERS were denied? It's sickening. Not surprising, sadly, but sickening. (Not that I'm saying the POWs should've been treated badly, please understand.) And it also made me realize that we're almost as far removed from WWII now as WWII was removed from the Civil War. It seems weird that we're so many decades past WWII that it's starting to feel both distant from our world and close enough to the Civil War that you can clearly see the through-lines connecting them in American race relations and military history.

Listen to the Moon by Rose Lerner

While In Her Wildest Dreams was a delicious example of one of my favorite tropes, Listen to the Moon took a trope I usually struggle with--a large age gap between the hero and heroine--and made it work for me. (He's 40 and she's 22.) It helped that they met as adults, and she was never in any sense his ward or otherwise a daughter figure to him, so while there was a gap in their maturity and life experience, they still felt like equals in their relationship.

It's also an unusual historical romance in that the hero and heroine are both servants and stay that way throughout the story. In addition to being a sexy love story is something of a meditation on work, community, and finding your true vocation--so in that way it has a lot in common with my other romance recommendation. More romances like these, please!

Recommended Reads, January 2016

Jumping right back into the blogosphere with my recommended reads from this month, in the order I read them. (Note that only one is actually a January 2016 release--I'm rarely quite that timely in my reading. But in a world of ebooks and libraries, all of these should still be readily available for your reading pleasure.)

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu.

Recommended for: Anyone who enjoys epic fantasy about the fall and rise of kingdoms, especially if they like settings outside the standard medieval European-ish swords & sorcery. (Which, thankfully, is becoming less standard. Though I enjoy a good faux-Western medieval fantasy as much as the next reader, I also enjoy variety in the genre.)

While this isn't an all-time favorite for me--I tend to prefer a somewhat tighter POV approach, either first-person narration or a limited third person with an intimate focus on just a few characters (think Jacqueline Carey, Lois McMaster Bujold, or Naomi Novik), I loved the world-building and setting, which is based on the rise of the Han dynasty and China with elements of other cultures, including Japan and Polynesia, and I plan to read more in the series as it comes out.

A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston

Recommended for: Readers of YA and fantasy who like strong world-building, strong women and girls, and fairytale and legend retellings. (And also beautiful covers. Isn't that just gorgeous?)

I noticed a couple chapters in that I didn't know the first person narrator's name, nor that of most of the other characters--it was all my sister, my mother, my great-grandmother, etc. You'd think that would make it hard to keep track of characters or feel connected to them, but it didn't at all.

I enjoyed the heroine and her sister's resilience and determination. And the part of the world-building that stood out most to me was the character's form of ancestor worship where notable ancestors were set up as "smallgods," who both answered their family's prayers and drew power from being worshipped.

Katrina: After the Flood by Gary Rivlin

Because of the subject matter, I wouldn't say I enjoyed this book, exactly, but I found it readable and engrossing, and alternately encouraging and infuriating.

I followed Hurricane Katrina and its immediate aftermath as closely as anyone living far away from New Orleans, and I thought I knew a decent amount about the recovery and the current state of the city. This book showed me how much I didn't know, and made me think long and hard about how we as a nation handle disaster and recovery--and how our culture's biases with respect to race and class come out all the more strongly in the face of disaster. Have we learned anything that will make us better prepared the next time a major hurricane or big earthquake hits the US? I'd like to think so, but I have my doubts.

New Order: A Decluttering Handbook for Creative Folks (And Everyone Else) by Fay Wolf

I heard about this book on a recent DBSA podcast. Since I am eternally looking to improve my level of organization and time management, I decided to give it a try, especially given that bringing my house's chaos level down to something more manageable is one of my chief goals for 2016. (So far my clothes, bookshelves, and pantry have been decluttered, and it really does make me feel better about life.) This book gave me some great new ideas as I start to tackle some of the tougher projects, like kitchen tools, all the stuff we've shoved into our closets, the piles and boxes of papers, most of which are probably past their retention periods, etc.