February Books

Howdy, Folks!

Welcome to the February 2019 installment of what I've read this month! Let me know what you've read, love or hate, this month!

First up in February is A Spark of Light, the newest novel by Jodi Picoult. While I loved this book, I (as usual) had a difficult time reading it. I have a love/hate relationship with Ms. Picoult's books, partly because she gives everyone's opinions through various characters' points of view (including racists and bigots in some books, in this book they're anti-choicers at an abortion clinic) and partly because she's so good at tying things up with a bow at the end we don't even realize the bow is crooked, we just accept the ending as inevitable. For my library reading challenge I'm filing this under "a book with a cover you love" because it's just gorgeous!

Next up is a great YA novel I waited 6 months for through interlibrary loan! I can't remember how I first heard about this book, but the title hooked me and the summary made me add it to my Goodreads TBR list. Why? Because Heretics Anonymous by Katie Henry is about an atheist forced to attend a Catholic High School and I'm an atheist who only had to go to Catholic Elementary School (Sacred Heart in Brockton, MA is now a Seventh-Day Adventist school with a different name). I thought the story and characters were great and I can't wait to read her next novel!

My third book of February is another YA novel, The Madman's Daughter by Megan Shepherd. This book is based on H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau, and is told by the point of view of Moreau's daughter, Juliet, who travels to the island to find her father and see if the accusations against him are true. Since I've never read the original story I only had a vague idea of what this novel would be about. I love the suspense of this novel and I'm looking forward to the sequel, based on another horror/science fiction classic: Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Next up is the second book in Nora Roberts' Chronicles of the One series. I've never read a book of hers until last year and that's only because Year One sounded so damn good. Honestly, it was just good enough to make me put the second book on hold at the library. Of Blood and Bone has a lot of problems and wasn't remotely as interesting as Year One but I finished it because I'm invested in the characters and storyline, even if neither is all that good. The characters seem flat and stereotypical, and because there are so damn many of them, sometimes I got confused who was who because very few stood out. I'm also incredibly disappointed in the (lack of) inclusion for the LGBT+ community. Literally the only mention of a non-heteronormative couple was a "teaching moment" used to call out one character's religious bigotry. It's 2019, we need more LGBT+ main characters and a woman with 200+ published novels should know this.

I'm on a roll this month so book #5 is Lauren Oliver's Rooms, one of her non-YA novels. This is aimed for adults and is a story told from the point of view of two ghosts haunting a house. It is definitely the creepiest book I've read this year and probably the creepiest since I read The American Girl by Kate Horsley in 2016. (Funny story: Amazon recommended this book because I had read other books by the author, but it was a different Kate Horsley, which I figured out about five pages into the book because the writing style was so different.) The narrators are two ghosts watching the family of a recently deceased man (who thankfully didn't die in the house or he'd be stuck there with them) who are cleaning out the home and preparing for the funeral. Each character, alive and dead, has issues to deal with. The only problem I had with this book was the obvious fat-shaming of one of the characters. She's a drunk and a horrible mom, maybe don't worry about her weight that much? A great read, just like every other Lauren Oliver novel I've read.

Right now I'm reading A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I'm thoroughly enjoying it but it is a tome, and the first of three to boot! So I'll include that in March's post because there's no way I'll be finishing it tomorrow, my hubby's birthday. (No, he wasn't almost born on the 29th, he wasn't born in a leap year. It's amazing how many people automatically ask this question when someone's birthday is February 28.)

My Writing Life: An Introduction

I don't remember exactly when I started writing, but I was in middle school when I started writing angsty white girl poems. Those were the first things I wrote that I saved. I've lost many stories since then, thanks to flooded apartments and outdated technology. But no matter what, I still write.

My first official writing class was a creative writing class my senior year in high school. I didn't consider myself a writer then, just a theatre kid who adored books and wrote poems about my feelings, something I figured all teen girls did in the final decade of the 20th Century. When I graduated in 2000, I had helped publish a literary magazine but I wasn't published because I couldn't bear to submit anything I'd written.

I started college planning to get a BS teaching high school English because that's what I always wanted/expected I would do. Applying to the College of Education at my university was a big deal because it's the original NC Teacher's College, so they take this very seriously. I registered for a class that was required before I could even declare myself a teaching major, but because I didn't have a car to get me to the required tutoring at one of the local schools, I had to drop the class before the semester started.

So I switched my major. Instead of pursuing a BS in English Education, I received a BA in English, Creative Writing, with a minor in History because all BAs need minors.

I hadn't written anything other than essays for class in a long time, and stories for class were close to essays. In my writing classes I learned more than my literature classes could teach me. I wrote about my best friend's addiction and our falling out. I named characters after her in my fictional short stories. I had characters that looked like her but were my version of who I wished she was instead of the best friend who deserted me.

I graduated and continuted working at local restaurants, eventually working my way to Assistant Manager of a local pizza joint. (This restaurant and one of the business owners becomes the basis of an important aspect of my current WIP.) I left the restaurant business in the summer of 2013, months before the birth of my son.

I didn't write again until a few months after my son's second birthday. We had moved right before his birthday, not far, just two miles from our last address. But something changed and that led me to my current project.

I'm not ready to say too much about my current WIP but it's a YA contemporary dystopian novel, if that's even a thing. If not, I guess it's an alternate reality dystopian novel? I really don't know how to describe it right now because I'm undergoing a major revision right now that includes adding both characters and narrators. (Sorry Amanda and Nikki, you've got more to read!)

A Question for February

Happy February, Readers!

While January lasted approximately 6,000 years, February is like 3 days long so let's get down to business (to defeat the Huns).

I want to start by telling y'all about the first book I couldn't finish this year, A Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak. I loved The Book Thief and was disappointed in myself for not liking this one. A Bridge of Clay has a lot of dialectic Australian dialogue that I had a hard time reading, which kept me from focusing on the story.

Before I get to the books I have read this month, I have a question for those of you who read this (and I know there aren't many of you). I'm curious if there's anyone out there who's interested in hearing about what I'm writing instead of just what I'm reading. I'd like to add a post every so often about where I am in my writing process and, if enough people are interested, I might be persuaded to even let you know what the book is about.

If you're interested in reading about my writing, comment on this post or head on over to follow me on Twitter and drop me a line there. (Disclaimer: My Twitter is at least 75% anti-Trump/GOP/the religious bigots who call themselves the religious right so if that bothers you, don't bother following me because you won't like me or my novel anyway. Hate follows will be immediately blocked.)

January Part 2

So there's one thing I forgot to mention in my first 2019 post: I love reading challenges, and there's two I'm planning on trying this year.

The first is put out by my local library and is usually a contest between the three counties that make up Appalachian Regional Library. There's 52 challenges, one for each week, and they range from the obvious (a book published the year you were born) to the weird (a book with garlic in it...seriously? Cheesy vampire novel or cookbook?).

The second reading challenge I'm attempting this year is Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge. It only has 24 challenges, working out to two per month, but the categories are very specific (A book published before 2019 with less than 100 reviews on Goodreads!).

So far I've read four books for 2019 and all four have a home on my library's Reading Challenge but nothing on Book Riot's. Here's a quick run down of 2019 so far:

I started the year off with The Once and Future King as a leftover from 2018 but then three library books came in at once so I had to set it aside.

So, the first book I finished this year was Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver, one of my favorite authors. This was a story about home, family, and a specific house that spans two centuries, the 19th and 21st. This fulfilled "A book by an Appalachian author" on Watauga's Reading Challenge since Kingsolver lives in southern Appalachia.

Next up was Circe by Madeline Miller, a story of a nymph/witch who is sentenced by her Titan father Helios to live on an abandoned island on Earth. I used this for "a book about ancient mythology" because this fits the time period and has characters from Greek Mythology.

When I texted my bestie the cover of Unsheltered she texted back the cover of American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures by America Ferrera, I immediately put it on hold at my library. This fulfills "a book about culture" because it's full of personal essays by famous POC, mostly the children of immigrants to America. This book made me laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time!

Last but by no means least, is the "book about American History," Hanging Mary by Susan Higginbotham. This is the fictionalized story of the first woman hanged by the US government. The relationship between John Wilkes Booth and Mrs. Mary Surratt, owner of a Washington City boarding house is examined in great detail in this novel.

So that's it for January. I just started Tayari Jones' An American Marriage so that'll be my first book in February. I also have two other library books waiting on my nightstand: A Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak (author of The Book Thief) and Jodi Picot's latest, A Spark of Light.

LAST MINUTE UPDATE!!!

I had this set to publish on January 31 but then An American Marriage hooked me and I finished it just before bed and wanted to include it in January's post because it's a January book! This book was intense and heartbreaking and I'm still trying to process it. I recommend it to everyone, especially other white folks trying to learn more about the effects of the American prison system on black Americans.