books i done read

This is a book about a quadriplegic and the woman who teaches him how to LIVE again! Hahahaha, no. It wouldn't be garnering such accolades if it were so Lifetime Movie-ish.

This is a book about a suicidal quadriplegic whose parents hire a girl to come hang out with him and keep an eye on him and put up with his being a cranky jackass.

And it's much less maudlin than it would be if it were that Lifetime Movie, and once they get over hating each other, they do have some pretty great faux-hate banter, and Louisa does some condescending and boneheaded things with excellent intentions, and Will is like omg srsly, which is what I imagine people with disabilities are constantly thinking about other people's misguided attempts at helping, so THAT part is insightful.

And even though I saw the end coming, I felt all the feelings ANYway, and without the sense that some puppetmaster was lurking in the back, ham-fistedly tugging on my heartstrings (The Art of Racing in the Rain, I am talking to YOU).

You can't just keep killing dogs and expecting me to cry, Books.

This one is perfectly good, like the internet says. I find I have so little to say about books that are basically great. Eight and a half caterpillars, then.

I really love books about sssssecrets, so it's weird that I don't actively pursue more mysteries because that's sort of their whole point.

Better put our best guy on it (that's what she said).

And maybe it's because I prefer my ssssssecrets to be SALACIOUS in nature, and mysteries are more about who did it, so thank goodness this one has a whopper of an omg at the end.

It really is, tho.

So. Paolo Cellini is an art collector and playboy and DEAD AT 30 of a heart thing, only maybe not, because former-detective-turned-chauffeur-because-of-tragic-career-mistake (like, he made a mistake as a detective and a woman BURNED TO DEATH IN FRONT OF HER SON, not like he realized that that being a detective sucked and switched to driving rich people around) Jack Bradley discovers some vitamin C tablets where Cellini's heart pills should be. (He figures out what they are by tasting them. He also dips his fingers in the reddish bath water at Cellini's apartment and tastes them, and I'm like, NO DON'T, IT'S BLOOD, but it's not. It's wine. Still, stop tasting things at crime scenes, detective.)

And it could have been Cellini's lover the jazz singer, but it also could have been his secret lover the whore (who is secretly not a whore [and also secretly omg that other thing {see above}]), or it could have been his nightclub manager who hates him and loves the jazz singer, and there's Jack Bradley trying to figure things out amidst being a chauffeur and having a wife in a wheelchair who wants to be euthanized (wait, I just read that book) and a son who hates him and there are layers, is what I'm saying.

There are also a lot of semi-colons. Like, a lot. What are you doing there, semi-colon? You are not a comma, nor an em-dash. Go hang out between two independent clauses. So James could use an editor there, or where the chipper old lady Jack works for is like, 'I fear death more than death itself.' I mean, I get where she's going but she didn't quite get there.

Alllllllllllmosssssssst...

There are some weird logical slips, like the cops smashing a bunch of valuable religious icons because they suspected they had drugs in them (oh yes, there's a drug ring and loads of religious art involved IN ADDITION to the murder), instead of just x-raying or ultrasounding or whatever sort of space technology we use these days to see inside of things we don't want to smash. But I read it to the end, because I wanted to know who did what, and I'm SUPER good at not finishing books these days, so that's something.

Seven caterpillars!

This is the longest it has ever taken me to read a 167-page book.

Wait, who marched on whom?

Everything I know about WWII, I know from Connie Willis' masterful duology, Blackout/All Clear. That is true both before and after reading this book, because almost the entire thing is just numbers of troupes and names of Russian cities and marching, marching, marching.

Also, at one point he is like (I'm paraphrasing because I had to return my copy before I could write stuff down), So and so was carrying on an affair and then he was nearly bombed so he ended the affair and went back to his wife and family. Also, the girl was apparently quite ugly.

Seriously, though, that's kind of not relevant.

I thought I wanted to learn about WWII but it turns out I just wanted to re-read Blackout/All Clear.

Five caterpillars.

Sometimes you intentionally read back-to-back books about WWII because you’re trying to learn something, and sometimes you accidentally read back-to-back books about female teachers seducing early adolescent boys because weirdly, there are at least two books on this theme, and you actually didn't know what Boy Toy was about before you picked it up (you knew about Tampa, though, on account of having internets and eyes).

Boy Toy is about the experience of victimhood, and the impact of abuse on one boy’s life, how he attempted-rapes a school friend because he doesn’t know any other way to spend Seven Minutes in Heaven. Josh's story starts as he begins a timid reconciliation with this friend, as college looms, and as his abuser's release date approaches. You get the story of his abuse through flashbacks - like, literal ones that crash down on him when he leasts expects it and completely disrupt his life. They are a convenient narrative device and also super harrowing.

It feels sort of wrong to gif my feelings about this book. And yet, here we are.

And Josh's relationship with Eve isn't titillating or lurid, it's awkward. But also innocent and natural-seeming in its inception. But also VERY WRONG. It's a book with complexity and layers, is what I'm saying.

Tampa, on the other hand, is the literal worst. I mean, it's gross. It's beyond gross. I'm no prude; we all know I read Outlander for the naughty bits, but Tampa is repellant from the opening sentence and gets ABSOLUTELY ZERO BETTER by the end. There's just...there's no point.

This is how I read the entire book. Just...waiting for a point.

Celeste is a 26-year-old middle school teacher who became one so that she could seduce 14-year-old boys. She's married to a rich, good-looking cop whose ultimate crime seems to be that he wants to have sex with her sometimes, but you'd never know that from her attitude. As far as Celeste is concerned, EVERYONE EVER BORN EVER has smarmy laughs, or cankles, or shirts with low thread count, or belts that sit too high, or a blobby nose. Even if she weren't raping barely-pubescent boys, you'd be like, Ugh, Celeste is an awful person.

But she is, and it's awful. She's awful. And that is literally the entirety of the book, with every action seen through the lens of how much she wants to seduce one of her students. And then she does, and they have lots of sex because he's fourteen and his parents are divorced and his dad is negligent and that's problematic in itself, but then one day his dad comes home early and discovers them and HAS A HEART ATTACK AND DIES AND SHE STANDS THERE AND LETS IT HAPPEN SO SHE WON'T GET CAUGHT.

THAT'S NOT THE ONLY THING THEY'RE FROM, BRITTANA!

And then later she does get caught and goes to court and is given a plea bargain because hotness and moves to a beach town where she can get paid under the table and not give out her real name and seduce teenage boys from out of town. ANNNNNNND SCENE.

Amanda makes the excellent point that Celeste is exactly what society wants from women: super-hot, very into sex, yet friendly and polite (OUTSIDE HER OWN HEAD, I MEAN), and discusses the social culpability in creating such a monster. I agree that said point could have been louder-made if it wasn't so drowned out by the And here's what it's like to have sex with a fourteen-year-old, IN DETAIL.

So if you're in the mood for a book about teachers and students (I don't know what you're into), but don't want to feel super-gross for the rest of the week, I'd recommend Boy Toy. If you want to be an educated part of the discussion of how gross Tampa is, here be dragons. Bosomy, rapey dragons.

(Sidebar: OMG the alternate cover.

I mean, right?)

My aunt once asked me why I never read the sequel to The Sparrow, since I loved the original so much. But, ok, I loved The Sparrow like I love a dog that dies. I mean, it was AMAZING, but that doesn't make me want to get another dog.

But here I am, on the other side of the sequel. And if The Sparrow left you cold then you ~~should figure out where you've misplaced your HEART~~ won't like CoD much either. Because it has all the same features: aliens, Jesuits, betrayal, death, total and terrifying loss of faith, banter.

Then I cried into my pillow. Then I lol'd some more.

And it's so, so good. So Emilio is at home, recovering from how completely ruined his last trip into space left him, both physically and psychologically, and he meets a lady and they fall in love and everyone is planning another trip to space and is like, YOU SHOULD COME, and he is like,

And then some people very high up are like, No really, you should come. It's possible that kidnapping ensues. There is some facing of demons. You know, usual shit.

And my feelings were all over the place from page one, because I'm still residually sad from That Time I Read The Sparrow Three Years Ago (I feel like I should clarify at this point that no dogs are killed), so I was very invested. And there's action and adventure and a civil war in space and really, I liked it very much.

Eight and a half caterpillars.

This is just...I mean...it's the best. I want to bake it into a cake and then eat it. I want to paper my walls in it. I want to fill a tower full of copies, and then swim in them, like Scrooge McDuck.

I can't see it being any less comfortable, really.

Brief caveat: Meg Rosoff and I are internet-friends. You know how it goes. Second caveat: first person present tense is the worst, right? I mean, the second-worst, because second person ANY tense still exists in the world. But it's almost never good. But then I read a book like Picture Me Gone and I'm like, EVERYONE, come look at this, and no more 1P-PT unless you can do it like this. As you were.

So. Mila and her dad are going to America from England to visit her dad's old friend Matthew, only right before they go, Matthew wanders off ABANDONING WIFE AND BABY AND DOG. Mila and her dad go over anyway and, taking the dog, get a-questing.

And Meg Rosoff is never terribly long on plot. I mean, the entire plot of What I Was is boy meeting boy, boy and boy hanging out in a shack by the sea, boy turning out to not be what boy had seemed and I know that last bit sounds like plot, but it's really only the last ten pages of the book so it hardly counts.

But her characters, I mean REALLY. Mila has heightened powers of perception, like if Dr House was a young girl and not an asshole, and if his observational gift was more a Point of Interest and not an Entire Character. Or like if a dog were a human.

We all know how that would go.

And as much as I love jive-talking John-Green-y teens, I think I love this sort of quiet, introspective teen more (ok, pre-teen. Mila' is 12). (It goes without saying that I hate beyond hating the thesaurus-using overblown Flavia-de-Luce-style child prodigies. Hate them.) The novel is less about Where Matthew Is and more about Mila Thinking About Things. I KNOW. I thought I hated books about people thinking about things, but that's like thinking I love books about people dying of plague when I really only like that one excellent book in which everyone dies of plague. (Evvvvvvveryone. It's fantastic.) This is one of those times when I state the super-obvious but it all depends on how well you execute your thinking/plague-dying novel.

A sample: Mila is trying to be methodical about Matthew's disappearance and her father, Gil, isn't cooperating.

Look, I say. You can't just let your thoughts float around in the ether and hope eventually they'll connect with something. It's absurd.

No, it's not, Gil says. Lots of good things happen that way. Penicillin. Teflon. Smart dust. Something happens that you weren't expecting and it shifts the outcome completely. You have to be open to it.

When I open my brain, I tell him, things bounce around and fall out. They don't connect with anything. Maybe I haven't got enough points of reference stored up yet.

You're young, he says, that's probably it. When I let my thoughts float around, I trust that they'll latch on to something useful in the end or make an association I wouldn't necessarily have predicted. I'm trusting that they'll find the right thought to complete, all by themselves. The right bit of fact to go ping. You have to trust your brain sometimes.

So. Picture Me Gone = Mila learning about what it means to be an adult, which is sometimes great because you have more reference points in your brain, and sometimes terrible because you have understandable (if not excusable) reasons for abandoning your wife and child.

ALSO, I really really love a story with a sympathetic dog, especially when that dog doesn't die. (Patrick Ness, I'm talking to you.)

And never will we.

So while How I Live Now remains the most Raych-shaped of Rosoff's books, Picture Me Gone is maybe her best yet.

Nine caterpillars.

Requisite ass-covering: book received from publisher.

*sits in heap of emotions, looks around bleakly, doesn't cry as hard as That Part In Code Name Verity When That Thing Happens, which she supposes is something*

So. Remember how great Code Name Verity was? And DEVASTATING, right? And the events therein are obliquely referenced in Rose Under Fire and I am like, pause for weeps. Because that book killed me like Doomsday Book killed me, like The Sparrow killed me. This review isn't even about that book, seriously Raych.

So wise, words inked on anonymous hand.

Rose Under Fire! Different book, same feels. And because it doesn't hinge on the twist, I feel like I can actually tell you what happens this time. Rose is a transport pilot during WWII, and it's fun but also THE WAR and also they don't let girls fly into France or something but Rose's uncle pulls some strings and she gets to drop him off in France (I sort of forget the specifics of this part) and then GAP IN THE DIARY, which gap is filled with letters and notes from Rose's friends and family all, Woe unto us, for Rose has disappeared behind enemy lines.

And then the diary picks up in Rose's hand again, all Here I am, returned from Nazi Germany! Only it's more like, Here I sit, naked, with the lights on, because I can't put my dead-woman's clothes back on and I can't be in the dark and I am literally afraid of everything because Nazi Germany.

Not nearly as hilarious as the internet would have you believe.

And then she tells you about the concentration camp. And you forget how, at the time, reports of various atrocities were leaking out, and the rest of the world was like, Pfffffft, that's outrageous. And after she gets back, someone says something along those lines to Rose and you feel personally offended because you are super, super invested right now.

Rose befriends some of the Rabbits, so called because they had experiments performed on them, and it is APPALLING. I mean, it's a concentration camp, so the whole thing is appalling. But this is appalling with a bonus side of harrowing. And reading it is sort of a Lest We Forget exercise, like, This is hideous, but it is also a witness to Real Things That Happened To Real People. Which, it turns out, is the point of the book. Bearing witness, I mean.

I joke because I cannot handle my own feelings right now.

And one of the things that impressed me most about Code Name Verity was the depth of horror Wein could convey with so little detail. Which is really the only way I made it through this book. The abominations are given their maximum due, without being treated voyeuristically.

And then there is bravery and triumph and altruism and enduring female friendship, that last of which there is not nearly enough in the literary world.

Nine caterpillars.

I don't read fanfiction because I don't have time, but I DO know that it is a weird thing that exists. DON'T BE OFFENDED, ff afficionados. It's like when people say, The internet is weird, and you're like, Yes it is. Because even though the internet is full of friendship and creativity and humor, it's also full of stuff like this:

So to recap: fanfic is a thing. Cath used to co-write it with her twin sister, Wren, but they've drifted apart and now Wren doesn't even want to room with her when they go to college and Cath is like, FEELINGS. Also, Cath is a massive hit in ~~Harry/Draco~~ Simon/Bas fic (straight up it is Harry Potter, even though this is a universe where the HP series also exists, and at one point Cath is called out by an English teacher for her fanfic being plagiarizing, and I LAUGHED OUT LOUD because literally no one in the series is like, BUT SIMON IS A BLATANT RIP OFF OF HARRY IT'S NOT EVEN SUBTLE).

Still good.

What was I? Ok, Cath and Wren go to college and Cath is UXXXXTRIMMMMMLY introverted and Wren is a good time girl and they drift still further, and Cath's roommate is rude in a way that eventually becomes endearing (to both you and Cath) and her boyfriend is charming and always around and there's this boy in her fiction-writing class...you know. College stuff.

And Cath has to figure out how to navigate between her fanfic world (where she's comfortable and popular) and the real world, and to balance her priorities (finishing her fanfic before the 'real' final book in the series comes out vs. finishing finals and taking care of her occasionally-manic father and dealing with the reappearance of her long-vanished mother and becoming less of a socially hopeless nerd, and also boys. College stuff).

And remember how funny Attachments was? THIS IS THAT FUNNY. Cath is thinking about texting her lame boyfriend back home, first day of college and all, but '[i]f you come off all moody and melancholy in a text, it just sits there in your phone, reminding you of what a drag you are.' Or, when Cath is telling the roommate's boyfriend about how Simon and Baz are actually obsessed with each other, she tells him, 'Simon spends the entire fifth book following Baz around and describing his eyes. It's like a thesaurus entry for "gray."'

ORRRR (last one, I swear) when Cath calls her dad and he answers the phone stating who is speaking, and is all, 'I don't like hello. It makes me sound like I have dementia, like I've never heard a phone ring before and I don't know what's supposed to happen next. Hello?'

How do I make it do internet?

And then, of course, while I love a funny book, I love it more if it includes heartbreak and triumph and failure and betrayal and KISSY TIMES. Also, snippets of the 'real' Simon books and Cath's fanfic are interspersed throughout, and not only do the excerpts have their own internal logic (like, they read like they're bits from another, totally coherent series) but they (each) sound like they're written by different people WHO ARE NOT RAINBOW ROWELL.

(Did I mention that I picked it up one afternoon and charged through it, stopping only to be like, Ugh, I have to go to bed now, or to a pumpkin festival with my child, and I finished it the next day. It's, like, 430 pages.)

To sum up:

Nine caterpillars.

You guys didn't make NEARLY enough fuss over this book when it came out, so I thought it was another Book About Bookstores, The Smell Therein, Etc. And I can't really get down with those. But THIS is bookstore meets the internet meets trashy fantasy novel. It's basically a Venn diagram of Things Raych Likes.

So Clay works at a 24-hour book store, and he pulls the graveyard shift, and it's weirder than you'd expect a graveyard shift at a bookstore to be. Because the store has a section he calls the 'Waybacklist' and the pages are just covered in strings of characters, like some kind of code, and all sorts of odd ducks come in to return a book off the Waybacklist and choose their next one, and they have ID numbers and Clay has to log their appearances at time of book retrieval and everything. It's eerie.

But kind of adorably so.

EVENtually Clay uncovers this secret club of readers, who have to crack the code in one book before it'll tell them which book is next, and then they have to crack that one, and so on until the pattern emerges. But Clay is like, Fuck that, I live in the future. So he borrowsteals one of the log books and has his new, cute, working-at-Google girlfriend Kat scan it in and then they just *plok plok plok* and hey presto, the giant computer hive mind filters out the pattern.

Technically it's 'TECHNOLOGY!', but I can't really hear your semantics over how awesome science is.

And then, obviously, there's more quest to go on, and it's very A Quest. It's bankrolled by Clay's childhood friend Neel, once a nerd and now a CEO of a computer animation company, with whom Clay once bonded over a series of awful fantasy novels (which is not just an add-in Reason For Friendship but a Thing That Is Important Later, as well as an Amusing Running Joke. At one point, Clay has to go do a thing and he's trying to explain to Kat why he has to do it alone and he's like, 'I'm the rogue in this scenario.' And Kat is like, *eyebrow* and he's like, 'He's [Neel] the warrior, you're the wizard, I'm the rogue. This conversation never happened.' And it's so dorky and embarrassed and apt).

There are like ONNNNNE or two times when Sloan is all, 'If fidgets were Wikipedia edits, I would have completely revamped the entry on guilt by now, and translated it into five new languages' and I am like, TOO CUTE, no thanks. But mostly it's just the right amount of jokey, and adventurous and bantery and it's about READING and TAKING READING SERIOUSLY but also THE INTERNET.

The internet is made of caps lock, basically.

I'm running out of ways to say AND THIS BOOK WAS ALSO GREAT. I'm really just having a string of excellent reads. I need to read some Jodi Picoult to cleanse my palate and froth up a little enthusiastic rage.

But this! Eight and a half caterpillars.

This wasn't the WORST J-Pic I've ever read.

So. Chris and Emily grew up together, like RIGHT NEXT DOOR, and then started dating, and I know they aren't blood siblings but they were raised like siblings, so basically the opposite of whatever argument you can make for adult step-siblings dating, which I think is totally fine.

Also, if this is your ex-stepbrother, you hit that.

So, I'm like, Gross. But everyone else in the novel is like, FINALLY. Except Emily, who is like *kills self*

I mean, allegedly, and the whole novel is all, DID CHRIS DO IT? I am here to spoiler you that he did, SORT OF, because she was all, I want to die for reasons I can't tell you (pregnant, really not into sex due to past [secret] child abuse, kind of with me on this whole Being Basically Siblings And That's Sort Of Gross thing) but I can't do it myself, so you shoot me. Ok?

When this all comes out at the end of the novel, the jury is like, Aw, poor guy, he just loved her so much, Not Guilty, and I am like, WHAT, NOT EVEN OF MANSLAUGHTER OR ANYTHING BECAUSE HE PROBABLY ACTUALLY PULLED THE TRIGGER AS WELL AS BEING THE ONE WHO BROUGHT THE GUN TO THIS KNIFE FIGHT.

My feels exact.

Needless to say, the parents (formerly bffs) are all tore up, and Em's mom blames Chris' mom and NO ONE IS FRIENDS ANYMORE and everyone behaves exactly as you would make them behave if you were being super lazy and obvious about character motivations.

And I hesitate to keep saying things like 'Her editor drinks!' because her editor is a living, breathing human being, one who has probably been driven to drink by lines like 'that exotic element, which James suddenly recognized as the sweet, heated scent of a lie', and that causes her to miss things like 'redolent with the scent of coffee' (so...exuding the scent of the scent of coffee?) or when a casual smoker smokes an entire cigarette over five rapid lines of dialogue, but there is no excuse for an inappropriate semi-colon three sentences in. You have to have more stamina than that.

And Jo-Pi wants things to happen, but she refuses to do the work to set up circumstances in which they WOULD happen. Like, Chris is on his swimmer's mark, puts on his goggles (among other things), and then finds Emily in the crowd and winks at her. We are in Emily's POV right now, and as much as it communicates about the nature of Chris and Em's relationship to have him wink (literally nothing that hasn't already been established ad nauseum), I refuse to buy that you can see someone wink through swimmer's goggles, at a distance.

Or, Em's dad is going to grab champagne on NYE and 'It's 11:26, he thought, unaware that the Timex's batteries had died just moments before. I'll run back to the condo and get a bottle of wine. But it was actually two minutes before midnight.' Total DUN DUN DUNNNNN after that last line because she's trying to sound portentous but your numbers have to actually line up. If his Timex had JUST stopped at 11:26, it is currently, at the latest, 11:27. For him to stay gone, he needs to think he has time, but it needs to be closer to midnight, so that he catches Chris and Em kissing, but his watch COULD have stopped half an hour ago instead of 'just moments.' Easy fix, ok? Ok.

I know.

Or a giant poster of Emily is hung up during her memorial, 'a trick of the light making her gaze spookily follow students in the audience.' SPOOKY, RIGHT? WHAT COULD IT SPOOKILY MEAN? Oh, that's just how most straight-on portraits seem to do, usually? It's just a perspective thing? Ok.

And the metaphors, the imagery, the ADJECTIVES. I can't even. Chris's mom takes him to Emily's grave, and he kisses it, obviously, and then they're driving home and his 'mouth was ringed with a lipstick of soil as branding as any kiss.' Kisses. So branding, right? I mean, that's how cowboys marked their cattle in 1998. Or 'Just because you can't see the wound doesn't mean it isn't hurting. It scars all the time, but it heals.' Either make a point about some wounds being invisible, or about healing. Also, scarring is a form of healing, and 'scars' is a super-weird continuous verb to use here.

And when she isn't being Extra Creative, she's mad lazy. The lawyer (who, I think, pops up in other books. I recognized his tall, beautiful, yet STILL SOMEHOW COMPETENT OMG assistant) gets a call from his client late one evening and has to kick a woman out of bed and she's like, Srsly? And he actually literally says, 'It's a job, but someone's got to do it.' I think he probably means 'It's a rough job' or 'a dirty job' or 'a job where I sometimes get called late at night.' At any rate, he should probably have his Crime Fighter's Phrasebook updated.

Anyway, like I said, not the worst Jodi-P (that was probably Salem Falls. GOOD LORD, that book) but weirdly boring, despite or maybe because of that. Five and a half caterpillars.

I need to delete some files from my brain, things are starting to bog down in there.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home - Carol Rifka Brunt

I'm in a glass case of emotion.

June's BFF is her uncle Finn but then he dies of AIDS. Like, right off the bat. And it is hell of sad, and to add to the sadness, her older sister and former bff has entered the Righteous Bitch stage of teenagerhood, her mom is like, Nope, we do not discuss your uncle Finn or that nasty man who gave him AIDS and killed him (it's 1987, btw), and also June is large and awkward and may also have been in love with her uncle Finn. How uncomfortable.

But then she gets a letter from That Nasty Man (henceforth: Toby) and they meet and at first she is like *caution* because her family, you know, but they BOTH loved Finn SO MUCH and they both MISS HIM and they become friends and it is adorable but you can see how, from the outside, it probably looks weird, and then misunderstandings occur and terrible shit happens and hearts are warmed but also I cried, like, a river of tears.

It does indeed, JT. Thank you for asking.

And it's a debut, and you will read it and be like, No, because the writing is flawless. The characterization is ADEPT. The heartstrings are tugged, but not so hard as to roll the eyes.

The Last Time They Met - Anita Shreeve

MAYYYYJOR spoilers in this one.

Woe unto M Night Shyamalan, for he hath ruined for me any sort of None Of It Was Real ending. I find myself so annoyed that she was dead the whole time, that she died in a car crash early on and the rest of it, how they both married other people and then met years later and had an affair and so on, was all his invention, that I can't even TELL you whether the book was good or not. NONE OF IT WAS REAL.

Cuckoo's Calling - ~~Robert Galbraith~~ We all know it's you, J K Rowling

Sure, this was good, right? Solid characterization, JK Ro-level of descriptive greatness, a mystery that I didn't figure out on my own.

I'm literally going to use this for every mystery from here on in.

I enjoyed this book immensely and have nothing bad to say about it.

Sleeping Murder - Agatha Christie

I enjoy the Miss Marples so much more than the Hercule Poirots. I mean, I enjoy her character more, but I also think they are a better quality of mystery, right? It's probably that MMarp is always a distant periphery character who totters onstage from time to time to be like, Quite interesting, this overlooked fact, while everyone else is running around going

See?

So in this one, Gwenda gets married and buys a home in the English countryside but then starts to sense things, like how there should be a doorway here (and lo, there was, it was just plastered over) or a set of steps here (and lo, there had been, they had just been moved), and then she has a sudden vision of a dead woman lying in the hallway, and I'm like, Hold up. Christies don't usually go in for spooking. But it turns out Gwenda had lived there as a toddler and forgotten (or repressed) it all, and then she and her husband have to go figure out who the woman was, and who killed her (even though Miss Marple is like, You probably should just let that go).

Red herrings, tidy resolution, no small amount of gardening. It's exactly right.

The Keep - Jennifer Egan

This guy gets invited to come work at the castle of an old childhood friend (whom he once contrived to abandon in a subterranean cave, traumatizing said friend for AGES) and the guy is Super Chatty Internet-Having Friend-Phoning-Constantly Guy but this castle is totally off the grid and then a bunch of really weird shit happens.

Weird and slightly baffling.

It's pretty good.

Mange Tout: Teaching your children to love fruit and vegetables without tears - Lucy Tomas

This book is based on a great program where kids interact with produce in a no-pressure environment, and usually end up eating things the otherwise wouldn't. It talks a lot about exploring the food, discussing the food, and involving children in food prep (all things I am VERY INTO), but it also advocates all kind of food-based games and crafts, and I sort of feel like food is FOOD, you know? It's for eating. I don't want my kid to think that beets are for squeezing and coloring with. I also don't want to reward my kid for eating veggies, since studies show that ANYTHING we're rewarded for eating, we automatically like less. So no gold stars for E.

Good ideas, though, of different ways of preparing different veg. I'm always sort of strapped for ideas.

Hey guys, remember The Thirteenth Tale? THAT was a great book. Bellman & Black is kind of good, only it's not. Which sort of makes me thing TTT might not have been as great? I'm an idiot like that.

Ok so. William is 10 and he and some pals are doing 10-year-old stuff and then he's like, I bet I can hit that rook with my slingshot. And his pals are like No you cannot but this is fiction so obviously he does. And the rook dies and as William is heading home, he sees a bunch of rooks just staring at him, silently, and you are like, OHHHHHH DIP, those rooks are going to take some terrrrrrible revenge.

And then William grows up and starts working at his uncle's mill and marries a lovely girl and has lovely children and prospers at the mill and you are like

but again, fiction, and in fiction, when everything goes well, something eventually goes VERY BADLY. Starting with one of the 10-year-old pals, who is a drunk now until he falls in the river and drowns and Will is the one to pull him out. Will is a character in fiction, so he is like, That's too bad, but you are like, IT BEGINS.

And then really a lot of people die. I feel like all this is not spoilering because the whole time I'm thinking, D-Sett is being really obvious about what's going on here vis-a-vis the rooks and their vengeance. But then, as his daughter lays dying, Bellman makes a deal with a shady character in black, and things start to get muddier. Especially because William doesn't remember making the deal, just that he talked to a guy in a graveyard and then the next morning his daughter didn't die. But he keeps feeling like he's forgotten something...

That's not it... Also, give me your head-suit.

And it's OKAYYY, but it's one of those novels that has to end well for the whole thing to have been worth it. The ending...ends. Weirdly, it doesn't end with Total Rook Domination, which is what I was anticipating. So, good on you for catching me out, I guess. But I think TRD would have completed it more nicely for me, and made more sense, and been more viscerally satisfying. Also, like, visceral.

BUTTTTT I learned a lot about the collective nouns for rooks, of which there are apparently many.

Kinnnnd of a good R.I.P. read, but not actually. Six caterpillars.

Requisite ass-covering: book received from publisher via NetGalley.

Ursula is the undyingest. Like, she keeps dying and then not dying. It's wacky.

She shoots Hitler in the opening pages, the delight of which helps you get through the next bit where you don't know at all what's going on. Because you don't. A baby is born, but the cord is wrapped around its neck and the doctor doesn't get there in time and she dies. But THEN she DOESN'T die because the doctor arrives in time. But she goes on to get the Spanish Flu in childhood, and then she dies. But then she doesn't. You see?

I sort of...wait, what?

It's basically The Post-Birthday World with more timelines and MUCH less fornicating. And as with TP-BW, echoes of the other lives keep appearing in poignant and meaningful ways. And the prose is lovely and the characterization is rich and the idea is EXCELLENT, like, what if you kept living your life over, restarting from new spawn points, so that THIS time you've successfully avoided rape and later suicide BUT you end up in Germany during WWII and that sucks.

But ok, with an idea that great, how do you finish it? Because she kills Hitler, but obviously she doesn't kill Hitler, because Atkinson isn't writing some parallel-universe shit here. So she kills Hitler but then she 1ups a few more times and other stuff happens and it just sort of ends.

Where 'joke' is 'the overall point which I somehow missed.'

I mean, the experience of reading the book was good, but when the ending falls flat for me I have trouble recommending it. Do with that what you will.

Eight and a half caterpillars for 9/10ths of the book, minus about two for a lackluster ending. Six and a half.

Ugh this was so good. I'm kind of over YA dystopia as a Thing, and I nayyyyyver would have picked this up on my own because the cover totally says Hey, You Guys Read Divergent And Liked It, Right? And no, I did not (like it, I mean. Obviously I read it). But people said good things about this and I read your reviews for a reason, folks.

So. Em is in a prison cell and fixated on the drain and doesn't know why but eventually she steals a plastic dinner spoon and pries off the drain cover and finds a LETTER from several past iterations of her SELF and for a bit you are like, I am reading the second novel of a trilogy, somehow I have missed the first and that's why this isn't making sense, but you just have to WAIT.

It is worth it. TRUST.

Because it turns out that Em's childhood friend invented time travel to Fix The World but it ended up ruining everything and Em keeps breaking out of her prison cell and going back in time and trying different ways of fixing it and then leaving herself this growing list of things she has tried.

And it's splendidly done. About 80 pages in, I figured out the identity of one of the shadowy future figures and it broke my heart a little bit, because I was already VERY INVESTED EMOTIONALLY. And Em is yet another strong female heroine, with emotions and insecurities and also stalwartness and there can never be enough of these to suit me.

And the writing is competent to good, occasionally venturing into extremely good. There's a moment where one character 'stares at the floor with a fine line creasing his brow. Like the thin maroon carpet has insulted him.' That's JK Rowling-level descriptioning right thurrrr.

There is a love triangle, obviously. How else would you know what genre of book it was? But I liked it, and felt like it augmented the Actual Story instead of leeching from it. All Our Yesterdays is, as far as I can tell, a stand-alone and not the first of a trilogy so way to break the mold on that one.

I mean that in all sincerity.

I don't want to say too much, not because it's all TWISTY, but because for some books, figuring out what's happening is at least a quarter of the fun. Maybe a fifth.

Eight and a half caterpillars!

This time-travel book isn't about the plague and none of the main characters dies, AND YET I STILL LIKED IT. I am coming along.

Well then. Nicholas Falcott, Marquess of Blackdown, is about to be battle-slaughtered so he jumps ahead a few hundred years. Like you do.

And apparently, like lots of people do. Because there's a whole GUILD set up to catch them at the other end and be like, This is the future, here is what cell phones are and a Kardashian is and here's a bunch of money, now go and enjoy, because there is no way to go back in time and you are stuck here.

Some ten years later, Nicholas finds out that this last part might not be true, and the Guild needs him to go back in time to be the Marquess and Do Some Marquessy Stuff.

Probably wander around town taking his scarf off. Or cravat, whatever. I'm not picky.

Also to tell his family that he had amnesia and was lost in Spain, because how else do you account for those three years? Amnesia is the spackle of fine drama.

So he goes home to his lands and his good English beer and raw cheeses, and the girl with the dark eyes whom he is sure must be grown and married by now, only she's NOT, and boy howdy does she ever have Secrets w/r/t time travel (and also a fine ass [and also her own storyline and a personality. She's not just a tasty petit-four]). Also, the Guild obviously has Secrets (nothing called 'The Guild' has been trustworthy since the dawn of literature). And then Nicholas is obviously keeping secrets from ERRRRRRbody and trying not to be too horrified at the lack of female agency or let slip his 21st century American slang.

Basically Nicholas' whole life right now.

Also, did I mention that the future is collapsing on itself? THIS IS WHY WE DON'T PLAY WITH TIME-TRAVEL.

So there's heaps and heaps of glorious plot, and the deflowering of an 19th-century virgin (which I always enjoy), but also literary references, because everyone from the Guild gets steeped in literary and pop culture when they arrive in The Future so they can just casually toss off Shakespeare and nursery rhymes and what-all, but they are the very best kind of references, NOT THE KIND that stick out and make you feel stupid if you don't get them, but the kind that blend seamlessly, and only those who know are like

[Total side-tirade: stop being like, 'Ferris Bueller reference, anyone?' If you have to point out that you've made a Ferris Bueller {or any} allusion, then you're doing it wrong. Be like Bee, guys. Do it subtle, or don't do it at all. I'm begging.]

I knew from Alice's post that there were sequels, but I forgot, so I was getting to the last 50 pages all, Hmmm, there's a lot of plot that needs wrapping up still. So, I'm going to read the next one immediately it comes out, but I'm not mad about it (I'm a little mad about it).

Eight and a half caterpillars!

Well this was boring. But I'm bored by books all the time these days, so I can never tell if it's the book at fault or me. So the best I can say is that it is possible this was a very boring book, about which I don't really have much to say.

And I think it's mostly the tone that put me off, because it felt like a memoir but I'm pretty sure it's not? She keeps being like, And that's when I learned this most valuable lesson, or And he was always a kind and supportive husband, except for when he's totally not (she and her husband have these occasional blow-out fights that crop up over NOTHING and seem COMPLETELY OUT OF PROPORTION to the paragraphs leading up to them, like, she finds out that he knew about her supply factory closing but didn't tell her because he didn't want to ruin their honeymoon and she is like, I WILL GET AN ANNULMENT, DAMN YOU, and they both say total assholey things and it's mostly not addressed later, like those assholey things were said by other people and she can go on talking about how great her husband is).

Neither your arguments nor your blasé good feels.

ALSO, tone-wise, she keeps ending chapters with things like 'All I would remember were Gianluca's polished black wing-tips as he stood in a puddle of red rose petals' and I am like, Portentous! Symbolic! Gianluca is totally going to die soon, and leave her bereft. And

he does, but not til the very end. So the book isn't about her grief or anything interesting like that, it's just about her agreeing to marry an older man, her family being very loud and Italian about it, the two of them arguing a lot about whether her work takes precedence over her family, them having a baby, more arguments because baby, and then at the end he dies. There's maybe a chapter or two of her being like, GRIEF-STRICKEN but then she nuts up because she has a daughter to take care of and shoes to make, etc.

Like I said, maybe it's me. But yet another book gets

Five caterpillars.

This was a weird-ass little book, full of dancing bears and sideshow freaks and meddling assholes who keep trying to get into your mom's pants. It was just this side of heartbreaking, because I could totally see where and how I was supposed to have Feelings, and I'm not totally prepared to say that my Not Having Them was the books fault.

So. Bo is 14 and lives in Toronto with his mother and his sister, Orange Blossom, who is perhaps ironically named since her parents fled Vietnam while she was in utero but not in time to escape Agent Orange, and she is SEVERELY DISFIGURED as a result. Bo's dad died on the trip over, and his mom is kind of like, Ugh, Orange, you are disfigured.

So there's that.

And then Bo starts fighting bears. I mean, he STARTS fighting kids in his class, mostly just because, and then a guy sees him fighting and is like, You should come fight my bears. So he goes to fight bears, only it's more WWF than UFH, and there's a lot of pseudo-boxing and being hilariously sat on and playing to the crowd.

Then the owner of the side-show gets a gander at Orange, and is like YES I WILL HAVE THAT FREAK PLEASE, and then cozies up to Bo's mom and all these things are shady, and everything sort of goes from there.

Badly. It goes badly from there.

And there's one really heart-rending moment near the end when Orange has learned a bit of sign language, and Bo (who had previously just assumed [along with everyone else] that she was non-verbal and hopeless) realizes that a great deal of her frustration and flailing had to do with the inability to share her Real Human Thoughts, and it's a perfectly articulated moment of awful comprehension.

But other than that...I mean, you read the plot summary up there (right?). How sad is that? SUCH SAD THINGS, THOSE, and I don't know whether it was something in the narration or the character development or MY UTTER LACK OF SOUL but it just missed reaching my actual heart-place.

So close, though.

Seven caterpillars.

Requisite ass-covering: book received from publisher. Pub date Jan 14, so if this sounds like your jam you can put the pre-order on your Christmas list.

Remember how blamey and vengeful Thirteen Reasons Whywas? And what a hypocrite Hannah was for being all, You people bullied me in often very minor ways, and then enacted her own extremely cruel Bullying Parade by forcing twelve people to feel responsible for her suicide? And how suicidal teens really need our sympathy and help but YOU ARE MAKING IT DIFFICULT, HANNAH, BY BEING AN UNREPENTANTLY SHITTY PERSON? Remember all that?

Anywhat. This is not that. This is a guy who has had horrible things happen to him (I'm not trying to diminish Hannah's pain, because some Actually Awful things happened to her and because when you're a teen, things that look like small beans from the perspective of your 30s are Lifechanging. I'm just saying that what she did in return was equally as cruel or crueler and the novel did nothing to address that and I'm still mad about it) and, instead of slathering the blame all over town, he wraps four presents for the four people who made him feel better about life, and then packs his grandpa's handgun so that, when he's done delivering the presents, he can shoot his childhood friend (who you have sort of figured out by this point abused him sexually) and them himself.

So even though the murder-suicide is Pending, and even though two of the four recipients kind of shit on his gifts, it's a hopeful novel? Because Leonard (of necessity) has to explain why he's giving these four gifts, what these four people have meant to him, and how they suggest there might be something more to life than the relentless trod towards a job you hate, or back towards a family you're indifferent towards.

And Leonard is totally the kind of asshat that says things like 'My classmates are all repressed monkeys.'

But he says it in the context of his classmates being all, I would never have been a Hitler youth I would have fought the power and his prof being like, But you all wear Adidas and Hollister and the school mascot because everyone else is, so if your classmates AND ALSO YOUR BRUTAL GOVERNMENT were like, Here, wear this swastika, you probably would, and the classmates are like,

and also

and I am like, That is to an extent how I remember high school being, so yes, your classmates are repressed monkeys, but I didn't need you to be a special unrepressed monkey to have appreciated where this book was going, ok?

So that's maybe my only beef, that Leonard is Different and certain characters keep complimenting him on how Different he is, but that's also sort of the point, that Different is hard. And while AnimeJune was unable to connect to Leonard, I really liked him, even though Slightly Pretentious Rise-Above-The-Herd Shoot Your Former Best Friend-style protagonists don't usually earn my sympathy.

So good work, MQuick. I was disappointed by The Silver Linings Playbook but that's only because the movie got such ACCOLADES and high hopes, they get yeh every time.

It's the only way to go.

This is a solid novel. 8 caterpillars.

Books that remind me of Thirteen Reasons Why for $400, Alex. (Or, Unintentional Teenage Vengeance-Themed Reading Week.)

I was talking to AnimeJune on twitter about TEENAGE REVENGEANCEFULNESS…actually, I think it was about how TRW was so terrible, and she recommended Burn for Burn. Female friendships! Revenge upon tormenters! Homecoming!

So. The early bit is complicated, because of the three rotating narrators, and because Lillia is pretty and popular and friends with Rennie, but Rennie was a bitch to Kat, and Kat was hooking up with Alex who, in turn, hooked up with Lillia's fourteen-year-old sister, and then MARY moves back to the island after years of therapy because of how the object of Rennie's affection, Reeve, tormented her as a child.

Lillia, Kat (who I forgot to mention is motorbike-boots-wearing badass) and Mary (who is quiet and lame) form an unlikely trio to enact VENGEANCE upon Alex, Rennie, and Reeve.

And it explores how friendships between girls can go tits-up because of such small things, or such HUGE things, and how bonds can be formed over something as simple as breaking into a guys car to steal his book of poetry.

It's also good because it's trashy and fun and things keep escalating and you are like

and it's getting close to the end and you are like How is this all going to be wrapped up in the next six pages and it's not, and there is a sequel, thank goodness, because it ends immediately after the shit hits the EVERYTHING and also something really bizarre is going on with one of the girls (basically she is Carrie) and it's never really explored, so that had better be touched on in Fire With Fire or I am going to be confused and upset and hulksmash something.

But this! Eight caterpillars.

Oh hey, guys. Everyone is posting their best-ofs and year-in-reviews and I am reading the shit out of them but I'm not going to do one because I have one of those coughs that just becomes, like, a part of you, and today is Eleanor's birthday, and it's -31 C today, and I'm halfway through brewing another fetus and that is EXHAUSTING so I'm just going to sit around and eat hashbrowns for lunch (BIRTHDAY FOOD)

and cake for snack (I don't think I need to clarify that THIS IS ALSO BIRTHDAY FOOD)

and then paint Eleanor's nails for her while we watch The Jungle Book. Happy New Year, kids. I love your faces.

So much.

Me Before You - Jojo Moyes

Fatal Facade - Linda M James

World War Two: A Short History - Norman Stone

Tampa - Alissa Nutting, and Boy Toy - Barry Lyga

Children of God - Mary Doria Russell

Picture Me Gone - Meg Rosoff

Rose Under Fire - Elizabeth Wein

Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell

Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan

The Pact - Jodi Picoult

Reviewlettes!

Bellman & Black - Diane Setterfield

Life After Life - Kate Atkinson

All Our Yesterdays - Cristin Terrill

The River of No Return - Bee Ridgeway

The Supreme Macaroni Company - Adriana Trigiani

All The Broken Things - Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock - Matthew Quick

Burn for Burn - Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian

This is not a Year In Review