January '24 Mid Month Wrap Up
I feel like every book I read is taking me forever to finish, but I've read 5 books this month already. So maybe that's not the case? Anyway, this is what I've read so far in January.
The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow - Obviously, I started this one in December and I even listened to the first half of it on audio. Then I decided I liked it enough to pick up the paper version and get serious about it. I really enjoyed this one! The first section basically retold the events of Pride and Prejudice from Mary's perspective. It added conversations that we wouldn't have seen in the original because Elizabeth wasn't present. Then it skips to a couple years after the events of P&P and Mary is at loose ends. Her father has died and she and her mother are living with the Bingleys. This includes Caroline Bingley who is absolutely horrendous to Mary. She bounces around to various homes trying to find a permanent spot, and in the process she finds herself. Hadlow did an excellent job taking the pompous, mousy, clueless Mary of P&P and showing her growth into an intelligent, caring, confident woman. The change made perfect sense and I loved it. 10 bookmarks.
In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette by Hampton Sides - You may remember in a Friday Reads post a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I thought this book was following a bunch of rabbit trails and I was only hanging on because I believed in Hampton Sides. This was a good call. I didn't think I cared about polar adventurers, but it turns out I cared about this one. There are a lot of characters in this story and they did not run together. I could remember that Collins was the one with the terrible puns and Melville was the magical engineer who could get anything to work. I was turning pages as fast as I could after the boat sank and the men were left on the ice pack. I didn't even throw the book when the dogs started dying. This book will stay with me for a long while. 8 bookmarks.
The Perfect Guy Doesn't Exist by Sophie Gonzales - I was disappointed with this one. The storytelling was good, but the premise required more suspension of disbelief than I was willing to allow. Ivy is our main character. She and her best friend Henry are major fans of a TV show where some teens have super powers based on the elements. They love the dude Weston and hate his love interest Jessica. Ivy writes fanfiction about Weston. One morning Ivy wakes up and Weston is in her bed. Not the actor who plays Weston, but the character Weston. He is exactly like she wrote him in one of her fanfic stories. Only, her parents can't find out about him, and he follows her around everywhere. The next day he's verbally abusive and obnoxious, just like in another of her stories. She and Henry and her ex-best-friend Mack have to join together to figure out what to do with him. There was a lovely page or two about being aromantic/asexual, but mostly it was just too much. One of the things I like most about Gonzales' books is how she always has a scene about sexual identity and what that means. My favorite one was about a girl who identifies as bi-sexual and was concerned if she was still bi-sexual if she dated a boy. This one just didn't pack as much punch, nor did it include all the witty, intelligent banter I'm used to in her books. 5 bookmarks.
Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine - I know Rankine as a poet, so I was surprised when this turned out to be essays. There are some poems, of course, but mostly it was personal essays. Rankine is a highly-educated black woman married to a highly educated white man. These essays were written while Trump was in the White House, and she mentions that a lot, for obvious reasons. I got a lot to think about from this book. Things like, as a white woman what am I doing to promote black women's voices? How can I use my privilege to empower them? How can I make sure my privilege doesn't stomp on them? It was eye-opening. It will probably require a re-read because I'm sure I didn't understand it all. One thing I noticed: she used the word imaginary in place of the word imagination. This is bothering me and I need to look into it more. 8 bookmarks.
Heartstopper, Volume 5 by Alice Oseman - This one took me about 90 minutes on my couch one day. It's a graphic novel. The series is about Charlie and Nick who are teenage boys in high school in England. Basically, it's their love story. At the beginning Nick didn't know he might be bi. So we've come a long way in five volumes. One of the best parts of this series is how it deals with the problems these regular middle class boys have. Charlie has an eating disorder. It is handled beautifully by Oseman. This series is the epitome of heart-warming YA romance in a graphic novel format. 8 bookmarks.
Ok. Those are the five books I've read so far in January. What have you read?