September Wrap-Up

September Snapshots

1. What even happened last month? I’m staring at a blank blog post and realizing that I did nothing in September. I worked. I read. I blogged. I watched terrible horror movies. I read terrible news stories. I basically did nothing for 30 days. Go me.

2. Oh! I made (very practical) plans for what I’ll do if I ever get rich. Last month, I hosted my first-ever giveaway on the blog. The winner was Cait @ Paper Fury. I liked hosting the giveaway, so if I ever get rich, my blog will be all giveaways all the time. I’ll basically be the Oprah of books. “You get a book! And you get a book! And you get a book!”

3. I won’t ever get rich because nature is still plotting my demise. I ran three days a week in September. On one of my runs, a squirrel jumped out of the bushes right by my foot. I literally almost tripped over a squirrel. I’m glad I didn’t trip because then I’d have to tell people that I hurt myself falling over a squirrel.

A few weeks after my near-squirrel-tripping, I was running along a barbed-wire fence, and there was a herd of deer grazing on the other side of the fence. I was like, “Oh, look at the pretty deer!” Then one of the pretty deer suddenly jumped over the fence and almost landed on top of me. What the hell, nature?! I know I look like a stampeding buffalo when I’m jogging, but why are the animals running at me instead of away from me?

4. I’m way too spoiled for this. The water in my neighborhood broke. Again. This has been happening every few months. There’s nothing like waking up on a cold fall morning, turning on the sink, and having gallons of mud shoot out. Then the water gets shut off, and we don’t have any water at all for the rest of the day. I’m a squishy first-world girl! I like frequent hot showers! And I whine while manually dumping water into the toilet so I can flush it.

Fixing the water. Again.

5. Life is like a Hitchcock movie. Have you seen the Hitchcock horror movie The Birds? My life sounds exactly like that movie. There are flocks of migrating blackbirds hidden in the trees around my house. I can’t see them, but I hear their nonstop squawking. I’m waiting for them to swoop down and peck me to death. I know they’re plotting something. Nature is always plotting something. 

Books I read

In September, I read 11 books and DNFed 1.

Company of Liars – Karen Maitland

The 19^th Wife – David Ebershoff

A Parcel of Patterns – Jill Paton Walsh

Hidden Figures – Margot Lee Shetterly (DNF)

We Are Unprepared – Meg Little Reilly

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: and Other Lessons from the Crematory – Caitlin Doughty

The One Hundred Nights of Hero – Isabel Greenberg

All the Broken Pieces – Ann E. Burg

The Body – Stephen King (reread)

Adam of the Road – Elizabeth Janet Gray

The Poet’s Handbook – Judson Jerome

Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage – Alfred Lansing

Best Books Of September

1. The Body – Stephen King (reread)

2. Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage – Alfred Lansing

3. The One Hundred Nights of Hero – Isabel Greenberg

Most-Viewed September Reviews

1. Inside Out & Back Again – Thanhha Lai

2. The Serpent King – Jeff Zentner

3. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

Most-Viewed September Non-Reviews

1. Discussion: When Should You Keep Your Opinion To Yourself?

2. Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Loved In 2014

3. Top Ten Tuesday: Recent DNFs

All The Things!

All The Things! (AKA number of unread books on my TBR shelf) = 12 books.

I’m currently reading The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy The Shocking Inside Story by Ann Rule.

What did you do in September?

Review: The Bombs That Brought Us Together – Brain Conaghan

The Bombs That Brought Us Together – Brain Conaghan

Fourteen-year-old Charlie Law has lived in Little Town, on the border with Old Country, all his life. He knows the rules: no going out after dark; no drinking; no litter; no fighting. You don't want to get on the wrong side of the people who run Little Town. When he meets Pavel Duda, a refugee from Old Country, the rules start to get broken. Then the bombs come, and the soldiers from Old Country, and Little Town changes forever. 

Sometimes, to keep the people you love safe, you have to do bad things. As Little Town's rules crumble, Charlie is sucked into a dangerous game. There's a gun, and a bad man, and his closest friend, and his dearest enemy. 

Charlie Law wants to keep everyone happy, even if it kills him. And maybe it will . . . . But he's got to kill someone else first.

Review: This is one of those books that sound really cool when it’s described to you, but the execution left me disappointed.

The narrator, Charlie Law, lives in Little Town, which has been at war with Old Country for years. One day, a refugee family from Old Country moves into Charlie’s apartment building. At first, everyone is nervous about the refugees because Old Country’s army has just invaded Little Town and toppled its government. Now Little Town is run by soldiers and vicious bands of “Rascals.” Charlie becomes friends with the refugee family and their son, Pav. When the escalating conflict in Little Town starts to threaten Charlie and Pav’s families, the boys are drawn into the orbit of a dangerous gang leader. The leader agrees to protect their families . . . if Charlie agrees to assassinate one of the leader’s enemies.

There’s a lot to like about this novel. I think it does an excellent job of showing the complexities of war. There aren’t many good guys in this story. Both Little Town and Old Country are messed-up places. Pav’s family is treated horribly by the residents of Little Town, but the author helps the reader understand why Little Town doesn’t trust Old Country. The characters’ suspicion of Pav’s family is understandable, even if it isn’t morally right.

Charlie goes against everything Little Town has taught him to become friends with Pav. He knows that the refugees aren’t responsible for the bombs. The government of Old Country deserves Charlie’s anger, not the Old Country refugees. I like that Pav and Charlie are best friends, but they still have communication problems. Pav is depressed and needs help, but Charlie is so focused on his own issues that he doesn’t notice. It’s realistic.

I have mixed feelings about how this story is told. It’s clear that the author is trying to make this book relatable for kids who have never lived in a war zone. Little Town has shopping centers, apartment buildings, and skate parks. That’s all you’re really told about it. It could be a stand-in for almost any major city. Since the setting is so nonspecific, it’s bland. It was hard for me to imagine it as a real place.

The names of things didn’t help the setting feel more real. The warring countries are called “Little Town” and “Old Country.” The characters speak “lingos” instead of languages. The bad guys are called “Big Man” and “Rascals.” It was impossible for me to take any of it seriously. I think the strange word choices undermine the important messages of the story. This is a middlegrade book, so maybe the author was trying to tone down the scariness of war? I don’t know. It made me roll my eyes. I appreciate that he was trying to make the story relatable, but I think it would’ve been more effective if he’d used real places.

My biggest issue with the book is Charlie. This is just personal preference, but I didn’t like his “voice.” He repeats himself a lot and speaks in clichés. He’s also an annoying blend of naïve and arrogant. I actually put the book down several times because I couldn’t stand him anymore. It didn’t help that the pacing is really slow in the first half of the novel. I may have liked Charlie more if he’d been doing something. The only thing I like about him is his friendship with Pav. They’re loyal to each other. It’s cute.

Maybe I’m not the right audience for this book. It is meant for kids, after all. It may be a good teaching tool for kids who are learning about war and refugees. It captures the refugee experience, but it wraps it in a thick layer of fiction to keep the experience from being too intense.

Review: My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry – Fredrik Backman

My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry – Fredrik Backman

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy, standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-men-who-want-to-talk-about-Jesus-crazy. She is also Elsa's best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother's stories, in the Land of Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal. 

When Elsa's grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa's greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother's letters lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and totally ordinary old crones, but also to the truth about fairytales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.

Review: I was unsure of this book when I bought it. The synopsis sounds quirky, which I like, but I wasn’t sure if it was quirky-clever (good) or quirky-fluffy (gag).

Now that I’ve read the book, I can happily inform you that it’s quirky-brilliant. I adored this novel. As soon as I finished it, I immediately added all the author’s other books to my To-Be-Read list. This is one of those novels that made me sit in silence after I finished it and think, Why can’t I write like that? Damn.

The story follows Elsa, a genius seven-year-old whose grandmother dies and leaves her a treasure hunt to follow. As Elsa digs into her grandmother’s letters and stories, she starts uncovering the not-so-pleasant details of her grandmother’s life. The treasure hunt also leads her to the apartments of her grandmother’s neighbors. Her grandmother has wronged all of the neighbors in some way. To reach the end of the treasure hunt, Elsa must figure out what her grandmother did wrong and deliver her grandmother’s apology letters.

“Death’s greatest power is not that it can make people die, but that it can make people want to stop living.” - My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry

The best part of this book is how the characters are developed. It’s so good, guys! In the beginning of the book, Elsa lives in a fairytale world. Everything is over-the-top. Her grandmother is a manic hero who causes mayhem but somehow always manages to save the day. Elsa’s apartment building is inhabited by monsters and other fantasy creatures. Some of the creatures are scary, some are funny, and others are just confusing.

As the plot progresses, the characters become more complex. Elsa uncovers their strengths, weaknesses, and histories. By the end of the book, the characters—even the minor side characters—are all very human. Granny’s death forces Elsa to grow up and see people as complex instead of as “good” or “evil.” Everybody has a little bit of both in them. Fairytales are great, but people aren’t fairytale characters.

“Elsa decides that even if people she likes have been shits on earlier occasions, she has to learn to carry on liking them. You’d quickly run out of people if you had to disqualify all those who at some point have been shits.” - My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry

The book also shows how stories can help kids get through grief. Granny is gone, but Elsa still has the stories that Granny invented. Elsa uses the stories to ease herself into a post-Granny world.

Despite the book’s heavy themes, Fredrik Backman’s writing style is hilarious. I laughed so many times. The book kept me up late at night because I was having too much fun to put it down and go to sleep. I love Elsa so much. She’s very smart, but she has no filter. Everything she thinks comes out of her mouth. Her observations about the world are heartbreaking and funny at the same time.

“‘Only different people change the world,’ Granny used to say. ‘No one normal has ever changed a crapping thing.’” - My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry

 

“Never mess with someone who has more spare time than you do” - My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry

I’m pretty sure this will be one of my favorite books I read this year, but I have to come up with something to criticize. I’m being too nice right now.

Okay, here’s something: I think some of the transitions between fairytales and reality are too abrupt, and there are so many fairytales that I had a hard time keeping them straight. That didn’t impact my enjoyment of the book, though. I love the characters, the story, the dialogue, everything.

If you’re hesitant about this book because of the somewhat-fluffy synopsis, don’t be. Trust the author. He knows how to tell a good story, and he’ll make you smile while he does it. I can’t wait to read his other books. For me, this one completely lived up to the hype. Go read it.

“One day at a time. One dream at a time. And one could say it’s right and one could say it’s wrong. And probably both would be right. Because life is both complicated and simple. Which is why there are cookies.” - My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry

The Sunday Post #116

The Sunday Post is hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to recap the past week, talk about next week, and share news. It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? is hosted by Book Date. I get to tell you what I’ve read recently.

On The Blog Last Week

• On Monday I reviewed The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli.
• On Tuesday we talked about cult characters.
• On Wednesday I reviewed Good Bones and Simple Murders by Margaret Atwood.
• On Thursday I did the Liebster Award Tag.
• On Saturday there was a book haul.

On The Blog This Week

• On Monday I review My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman.
• On Wednesday I review The Bombs that Brought Us Together by Brian Conaghan.
• On Thursday I wrap up September.

In My Reading Life

Last week, I finished The Poet’s Handbook by Judson Jerome and Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray. Then I read Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. Right now, I’m reading The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy The Shocking Inside Story by Ann Rule.

In The Rest Of My Life

Five things that made me happy last week:

1. I won a giveaway! I get a new book.
2. I ate a pumpkin-flavored cupcake, and it was good.
3. Survivor started. (Yes, I love reality TV. Don’t judge me.)
4. Speaking of TV, who’s watching American Horror Story: Cult? I think it’s terrifying, but I’ve heard that people who don’t follow American politics are completely baffled by it.
5. It’s October! October is my favorite month because Halloween.

Take care of yourselves and be kind to each other! See you around the blogosphere!