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books and reading

The Hate U Give

Earlier this year I read and reviewed Dear Martin. The other book along the same thematic lines was The Hate U Give (or THUG… and yes, the acronym is intentional and explained in the book). Both of these books touch on several topics facing our world today: racism, police brutality, white privilege, and being a teenager in a divided society, just to name a few. DM and THUG are two sides of the same coin, honestly. Both characters witness an event that changes them forever, both go to a predominantly white private school to get the best education they can, and both leave part of themselves at home while in the school. One main difference between Starr (in THUG) and Justyce (in DM) is their home lives. Starr lives with her still married hard working mother and father. Justyce doesn’t have much support at home and has to find it elsewhere.

I really can’t emphasize how important these books are. I apologize to keep lumping them together, but you really can’t go wrong reading either one. THUG is longer and more detailed, giving more depth to some characters. The author, Angie Thomas, does an excellent job creating Starr’s world in an authentic and realistic way. I usually think pop culture references can date a book, but in books like this, it is an important way to get readers in Starr’s mind and world. Starr loves the NBA, The Fresh Prince Bel-Air, dances the latest dances (which I have no idea what they are……I’m so out of touch, LOL), and uses modern slang (I did have to look a couple up on urban dictionary). In other words, Starr is today. She relevant. She is authentic. She is real. And, more importantly, her experiences are real.

I’m so glad these amazing women, Nic Stone and Angie Thomas, wrote these books. They are, of course, getting banned and backlash, because they are SO TRUE. Some people just can’t face the world we actually live in and want to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that everything is fine. Which is why we must be reading these books. And authors must keep writing them. Thank you for your voices, ladies. I’m so thankful for them and for you.

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books and reading

A Friend of the Family

I’m not a big fan of family drama books. Jonathan Franzen books come to mind here. Dull and boring. Well-written, but not my thing. However, this one sounded interesting in a review I read (I forget where) so I bought it at some point and Kindle lottery selected it for me to read. And even though it really is just about two families and some events that happen between them, it felt more original than others I’ve read.

The story is told from the patriarch of the Dizinoff family, Pete. Pete has a wife and a college dropout wanna be artist son, Alec. They are a white Jewish family; Pete’s a doctor, and life is good. When Alec was a kid, the daughter, Laura, of Pete’s best friend committed a heinous act, was placed in a juvenile home (or some such, I forget the details) and upon her release, she wandered the world for a decade. Upon her return, Laura and Alec get together. Yes, I mean in that sense. Alec falls deeply in love with her. But Pete refuses to see the relationship as a true one.

What I appreciated most about this book was seeing it through Pete’s eyes, rather than Alec’s. A simple shift in narrator and you would have a whiny kid talking about how his parents don’t understand him. We have TONS of those books and simply don’t need anymore. And as a parent of young kids, I know how lucky I am that my kids are still young and love me. Because as they get older, it will get tougher to let them go. Such is a parent’s life. Part of Pete’s dismay is losing his son to college, then as a drop out, never fully understanding who Alec is. But he is also upset that he loses Alec to HER. H. E. R. Her. He knows Laura. He sees Laura for what she did. He can’t forgive. And that’s harder than just about anything for him.

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Killing Hemingway

Back when I was teaching, my primary focus was on gifted and talented students. I taught grades 6, 7, 8, and 10, depending on the year. I had some students just once, but some I had 3 or 4 years. I understood those kids. I was well aware that they were, for the most part, smarter that I was. Maybe not wiser, but they definitely knew more about most subjects, especially ones I didn’t teach, like math and science. But when it came to literature, I could usually handle my own in our Socratic seminars. Anytime I stumble upon a book about gifted kids, I’m both excited and leery. So many authors get these kids wrong. They only write them as “smart” kids without any kind of dimension, flaws, or emotions. Anyone who knows anything about gifted kids knows that their dimensions, flaws, and emotions are just as important a characteristic as the intelligence aspect. I’m pleased to say this book gets it all right.

Teddy is a precocious 6-year-old when we first meet him. He’s in 1st grade and his teacher is fed up with him. Nearing retirement, the teacher thinks Teddy needs to keep his smart mouth shut and sends him to the principal for discipline. The principal quickly realizes Teddy is simply bored and needs to be mentally challenged, so he moves Teddy up to 3rd grade. Making friends is difficult for Teddy (such a GT problem), but he finds one friend this year.

Fast forward to high school. Teddy is 12, but has already skipped 4 grades. He also has a handful of friends, but realizes he will never fully understand the dynamics of high school popularity. He gets involved in computer programming, but things go awry, to put it mildly.

Fast forward to college. Teddy has already graduated from MIT and, at 18, is going for his PhD, but Teddy realizes he has missed being average. He spent his 4 years at MIT in his room, alone, studying, cramming his brain full of knowledge. He vows to enjoy life this time around. His roommate is on the baseball team and vows to show Teddy the time of his life, beer, girls, and parties.

We get glimpses into Teddy’s life in these three stages to see how his life evolves. Teddy longs to be normal at just about every moment in his life. Although he is happy doing math problems, programming computers, and reading books, the social aspect is tricky to navigate for him most of the time. I really enjoyed seeing how Teddy changed from child to adult. I taught some kids in 6th grade and through social media, have been able to follow their lives: degrees, marriages, babies, jobs, etc. It was wonderful to do the same with Teddy.

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The Ninth Circle

I have read and taught Dante’s Inferno several times. I’ve dug deep into the story, the language, and the history behind it. So when I stumble across a variation of the story, I will make a point to read it. I got The Ninth Circle for free on the kindle a few years ago, and the Kindle lottery system I use put this one as my next read. It took me only a few hours to read it, but I can’t say I recommend it.

The story follows Dan as he runs away from home to join the circus. I don’t mind coming-of-age stories, but I really couldn’t relate to Dan. I didn’t like him as a person. And most of the circus people weren’t fleshed out enough. They were thinly written, and I didn’t really care about most of them. Some had sad backstories, but as Dan travels through the circles of Hell (more on that later) we didn’t spend enough time with the characters to really connect with them. By the time I was nearing the end, I realized that I could have not finished and been just fine never knowing what happened. I just wasn’t into the book.

And although this is connected to Inferno, it really isn’t as well tied as I had hoped. Yes, Dan travels through circles, as indicated by the chapter titles, and in each circle we meet a new circus performer who is in his or her own version of hell. But even without this link to Inferno, the story would have been just as thin. The author, Brendan Deneen, is known for his comic books, and I have actually read a few of them and really enjoyed them, but this book just wasn’t for me.

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Chaos Walking

I love this series. Let me just say this from the get go. This was my second time to read it all the way through without reading other books in between, and it is just as great as the last time I read it. Of all the YA dystopian series I have read this is one of the top few I’ve read. For the record, The Hunger Games, Legend series, and Red Rising are the others.

This story is one of the most creative I’ve come across. Instead of humans being the victims of a society disaster, they are the perpetrators. Convoys of ships landed decades ago on an uninhabited planet. The settlers were supposed to start building cities, farming, making life sustainable for other settlers. Much to their surprise, the planet did have life in the form of Spackle. Think people, but bigger and more reptilian like. The war against the native creatures began and the Spackle were destroyed. Another big surprise was that all the mens’ thoughts were heard by everyone else. So whatever thought a man had, every other man and woman in his proximity could hear it. The “Noise” was unexpected and very difficult to deal with.

Our main character, Todd, lives in Prentisstown with his adopted fathers Ben and Cillian. Todd’s mother died after he was born, committing suicide like all the other women in the town. The 100+ men left in the town are the only remaining settlers on the planet. With no way to reproduce, they are facing imminent demise. Then, Todd finds a crashed ship and a girl and quickly learns that all he has been told might not be exactly true. This is simply the first few chapters of the first book. The entire trilogy continues much more into Todd’s revelations, the girl, and the truth about the settlers and Spackle.

I really can’t recommend this series enough. There is a movie coming out in 2019 (I think) with Tom Holland (Spiderman) and Daisy Ridley (Rey) as Todd and the girl. I CANNOT wait to see how they film the Noise and how far into the series this movie goes. There’s plenty of time to read the series before the movie comes out.

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Desert Flowers

Big thanks to Goodreads for this free book! I have discovered that they now have Kindle book giveaways and not as many people enter these, so the odds of winning are greater. I’ve won a couple actual books, but several Kindle books. I’m picky about which giveaways I enter, too. Nothing too sad, dramatic, or romantic in nature, so I’m only entering a few here and there and am still winning books, so you should look into this!

So, this book was one that sounded intriguing enough to enter, but I didn’t remember a lot about it when I picked this one to read (back to Kindle lottery system. Literally, I pick a page using a random number generator and then a book with the same system. It’s brilliant. Desert Flowers was the lucky winner.) The story takes place in Mexico, a hundred miles from anything. The father, Elmer, drives that distance to a job every day, leaving his wife, Rose, and daughters, Iris, Melissa, Daisy, and Dahlia (all flower names and they live in the desert, hence the title) behind. The family has a secret and keeps to themselves, aside from one daughter at a time visiting town once a month and a teacher coming to visit to educate the girls. Aside from that, they are completely isolated with no phone. One day, a traveler comes to the house. This immediately seems fishy because they are so remote, but this guy, Rick, swears he was there at random, had just been walking and stumbled into their area. We quickly learn Rick isn’t truthful and has secrets of his own. About halfway through the book, revelations begin pouring forth. They were believable and seemed to come out naturally. There were a few plot points that were a bit forced, but overall, the book was interesting.

This book was translated into English (from Spanish) and I wonder if anything was lost in the process. This book was very much character and plot driven, rather than language driven, so I would guess that not much would change. This book is 3.99 on Amazon right now and is worth reading, overall, but I’m not sure I would buy it. Maybe check your local library for this one.

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The Southern Reach trilogy

My very favorite trilogy is His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. See reviews here: The Golden Compass and here: The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. And when I first read the Southern Reach trilogy, I had found my second favorite. A friend recommended the first book to me, but I was skeptical. I had read so many dystopian novels that finding any that were good and well-written just seemed like an impossible task. But I gave it a go. And I devoured the first book in days. It was terrifying. And it was brilliant. It was just as much science fiction as it was horror, and it was a perfect blend of the two. So, with the new movie coming out, trailer, I decided to give the books a reread. Here’s a link to the review of the first book, Annihilation, that I wrote a few months ago.

After the first reading of the trilogy, the second book, Authority, was my favorite. Book one takes place in Area X and book two takes place in the Southern Reach, which oversees Area X and the expeditions sent there. The third book combines the two areas and books, sort of. This time around, I think the third book is my favorite because so many crazy things happen that you just can’t see coming. There are horrifying events that happen in every book, but there’s scene that stands out in the second one that absolutely made shivers run down my spine, though.

There are many questions presented in the first book that are definitively answered in the second and third, but not everything is tied up for us. And I was okay with that, even after the first reading. After this second time around, I feel like I uncovered even more answers, since I knew where the story was ultimately heading. I know others who read the trilogy that were disappointed, and I get that, but I felt like I got more answers than I was expecting. The author, Jeff VanderMeer has written another, unrelated book Borne that has been also well-reviewed. He’s an author that I can guarantee I will read everything he publishes.

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Turtles All the Way Down

I have a lot of respect for John Green and the books he writes. He doesn’t shy away from difficult topics, and his characters are real. I feel like so much YA lit today is so unrealistic and watered down. I get that a lot of it is escapist, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t also be honest, so I appreciate books where the characters deal with difficult stuff and frequently fail at it.

And this one hit home. Hard. The main character, Aza, has anxiety. She gets into thought spirals that she has trouble escaping. She is constantly worried about germs, C diff, infections, etc. And, my gosh, can I relate to this. This book was really difficult for me to read because it was so accurate. And while Aza seems to struggle more than I do, her thoughts are my thoughts a lot of the time. I related to her in such a basic way. I have had anxiety most of my adult life. I was okay as a teenager, but it has definitely ramped up in the past decade.

The story just follows Aza and her circle of friends trying to solve a mystery. The plot isn’t all that complicated, or even all that interesting, but being inside her head is the best (and worst) part of this book. As hard as this book was to read, I still enjoyed it because how easy it was to relate to Aza and her best friend, Daisy. Daisy doesn’t have anxiety and she struggles with how to help Aza. She is also frustrated with how Aza gets wrapped up in her own thoughts. But the thing about anxiety is that the person truly can’t help it. Anxiety isn’t being self centered or narcissistic. The anxious person doesn’t WANT to have these thoughts, doesn’t enjoy having these thoughts. So the struggle is keeping them at bay while preserving some kind of life outside of them. It is hard and John Green captured this struggle well.

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Dear Martin

Let me get right to the point. This is one of the best YA books I’ve read in ages. Most YA these days is just drivel. Maybe it’s because I’m not in that age range anymore, but I feel like so much of it is watered down with nonsense. Finding a well-written book with meaning and heart is hard to find. But, this book has it all. I was so moved by the book’s first chapter that I decided to live tweet as I was reading, which I haven’t done in I don’t know how long.

Justyce is a black teenager from a single mom household. He goes to a very expensive private prep school. He doesn’t have money, but has great grades, a good head on his shoulders, and aspirations to be something great. But he is struggling with who he is and his place in the world. In the first chapter, he has a run-in with a police officer who gives Jus zero opportunity to speak, explain, or justify his actions. Jus was simply trying to help someone he cares about, and the officer jumped to conclusions and slapped Jus in cuffs. Sound familiar? This story draws from what is happening today and is relevant in so many ways.

Justyce quickly gets the situation resolved, but doesn’t forget what those cuffs feel like. He begins writing to Dr. Martin Luthur King, Jr. (hence the Dear Martin title) and you get some first person insight into Justyce’s life. The rest of the story is told in third person. There are several white kids in the book that are perfect representatives of white privilege and ignorance. There are a few conversations between these teens in class that just made me cringe because I’ve heard these words time and time again, whether it be in my own classroom, the hallways, or on the Internet. There are white people in Justyce’s life who, thankfully, aren’t ignorant and are very aware of their privilege, namely his debate partner, Sarah Jane and her family.

There are many things I want to say about the book’s plot, but I hesitate to give anything away. Let me just say that the book takes a turn that I didn’t want it to and it broke my heart. But what happens is today and now and relevant and current and impactful and powerful and honest and I could go on and on. At just over 200 pages, this is a book that is accessible to students who might not like to read because books can be intimidating. What the author, Nic Stone, has done is create a story that is meaningful to teenagers (all people really, but especially teens) today. The situations Justyce and his friends (and enemies, even) find them in are recognizable and probably ones that readers have already faced. Kids need to read this book. Teachers need to teach this book. Libraries need to purchase this book in multitudes. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

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Parable of the Talents

This book freaked me out. Entirely. My jaw literally dropped as I was reading it. See my review of the first book in the series here: Parable of the Sower. And as much as I liked Sower, this one just absolutely blew me away. Because in 1998, Octavia Butler saw the future. She knew we would be making American great again. I shit you not.

Jarret is the hypothetical president of the United States in this future society. His followers are uneducated and zealous. They will follow him anywhere in the name of Christianity and “progress.”

Our story picks up a few years after Sower ends. The family Lauren haphazardly collects has started to thrive and Earthseed is spreading. I love that fighting the evils of Christianity, within this book, means creating a new religion of love and change. Because the Christians in the book are evil, plain and simple. Not all, of course, but enough that it is a major issue in the book. The story is Lauren’s, but some details are added by another narrator, who I won’t name here to avoid spoilers.

This is just a two book set, and it is worth every word. I don’t know how Butler did it, but she had the foresight almost 20 years ago to know where our country was headed. I look forward to reading much more from her.