OMG Ya'all, yesterday was the premier of Star Trek Discovery season 4, and also the Kindle ebook debut of the second book in the Wayward Souls series by Devon Monk, titled Wayward Moon! So thrilling! I love it when two of my passions come together! So you can imagine where I've spent the last 24 hours...immersed in two of my favorite worlds, watching Captain Michael Burnham, the first woman of color to captain a Star Trek starship, boldly going out to find strange new worlds and civilizations with her extremely diverse and oh-so-cool crew and her boyfriend Book with his huge cat Grudge. I loved every minute of it, just as I'm loving Monk's newest installment of her Wayward series, as Lula and her husband Brogan begin their journey in this book in a thrift store that has magical items for sale! So awesome! Anyway, today here's a bunch of tidbits and 4 book reviews.
This is a great idea, and I wish that I could have one of these boxes from Ames, Iowa, which is a stone's throw from where I went to school in Ankeny, Iowa.
Cool Idea of the Day: Main Street Holiday Box
Dog-Eared Books https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50297234, Ames, Iowa, has introduced the Main Street holiday box, featuring four items from four different local Main Street businesses, including Little Woods Herbs & Tea, Z.W. Mercantile, and Oak Lane Candle Co.
"These local items, curated for the Main Street 2021 holiday box, are meant to give the ultimate feel of winter coziness," Dog-Eared Books noted. "In each box you'll find Perestroika in Paris by Jane Smiley, Royal Pomander tea, Honey Cream Balm, & a Hand-Poured Candle. Holiday boxes are available only for in-store purchase at Dog-Eared Books. Make gift-giving easy this year and grab one for yourself or someone in your life who you know loves to be cozy."
I can't imagine anyone who doesn't love Dr Seuss, and who wouldn't want to see this sublime book brought to the screen. Sounds like they'll be producing another Cat in the Hat movie as well...which is exciting!
Movies: Oh, the Places You'll Go!
Dr. Seuss Enterprises and Warner Bros. Animation Group have set Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians, In the Heights) to direct a new animated feature based on Oh, the Places You'll Go! https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50298134, which is expected to debut in 2027. Deadline reported that Bad Robot Productions is adapting the book, originally published in 1990, "marking the award-winning production company's first foray into feature animation."
J.J. Abrams will serve as producer along with Hannah Minghella, Bad Robot's Head of Motion Pictures. Deadline noted that Oh, the Places You'll Go! is "part of a growing slate of animated projects that Warner Animation Group and Dr. Seuss Enterprises are developing, including a film adaption of The Cat in the Hat that will kick off the new Dr. Seuss movie slate in 2024 with Erica Rivinoja (South Park, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2) and Art Hernandez (Planes, Planes: Fire and Rescue) on board as directors; and Thing One and Thing Two (working title), an original feature-length animated adventure. Additionally, the hit Netflix series Green Eggs and Ham, another joint project, debuted its second season on Netflix on November 5."
This is reprehensible….banning and burning books is antithetical to what America is all about!
A Frenzy of Book Bannings' and the First Amendment
The precarious state of free expression and of the First Amendment was highlighted in the past week by what New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg called "A Frenzy of Book Bannings https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50340212." In the Friday piece, Goldberg noted "an aggressive new censoriousness tearing through America, as the campaign against critical race theory expands into a broader push to purge school libraries of books that affront conservative sensibilities regarding race and gender. As Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, told her, "There's always been a steady hum of censorship, and the reasons have shifted over time. But I've never seen the number of challenges we've seen this year."
And this month, there's a new twist: two members of a Virginia school board that voted unanimously to remove books with "sexually explicit" material in them from system's libraries also called for the removed books to be burned, which brings to mind images of book burnings in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Among the many titles at issue in recent months: Beloved and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez, The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.
Goldberg noted that "With the rush to ban critical race theory, conservatives already gave up posturing as defenders of free speech. Still, this sudden mania for book banning is striking. It's part of a broader attack on public schools, one that draws on anger over critical race theory, mask mandates and sometimes even QAnon-inflected fears about pedophile conspiracies."
Goldberg emphasized, "This spreading moral panic demonstrates, yet again, why the left needs the First Amendment, even if the veneration of free speech has fallen out fashion among some progressives. Absent a societal commitment to free expression, the question of who can speak becomes purely a question of power, and in much of this country, power belongs to the right." She again quoted the ALA's Caldwell-Stone: "What we're seeing is really this idea that marginalized communities, marginalized groups, don't have a place in public school libraries, or public libraries, and that libraries should be institutions that only serve the needs of a certain group of people in the community."
RIP to a great bibliophile and lover of science fiction/fantasy novels. She was too young to pass so soon...she will be missed.
Obituary Note: Petra Mayer
Petra Mayer https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50349214, a books editor on NPR's Culture desk and "a proud nerd with a penchant for science fiction, comics and cats," died on November 13, apparently of a pulmonary embolism, NPR reported. She was 46. Prior to joining the NPR Books team in 2012, she had been an associate producer and director for All Things Considered on weekends, and also spent time as a production assistant for Morning Edition and Weekend Edition Saturday.
In a statement on Sunday, NPR said: "This is a heartbreaking loss for all of us at NPR, our member stations and the millions of listeners in the public radio family. Petra's passion for her work, her love for her colleagues and her joy sharing books with public radio listeners have made a lasting impact."
Senior v-p for news Nancy Barnes noted in an e-mail to staff: "Petra was NPR through and through. To say that Petra will be missed simply seems inadequate."
Mayer shared her passions "with readers and listeners through her reviews of sci-fi, fantasy, romance, thrillers and comics, her trusty on-the-scene reporting at Comic-Con, and her contributions to the Book Concierge, NPR's annual literary-recommendation tool. She brought her zeal to the guest chair on occasional Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast episodes," NPR wrote.
Mayer first joined NPR as an engineering assistant in 1994, while attending Amherst College. In 1997, she was briefly at Boston's NPR member station WBUR as a news writer, then returned to NPR in 2000, after earning a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University and spending two years as an audio editor at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
"She is like the keeper of a certain wonderfulness of NPR," said Rose Friedman, a books and culture editor. "She is the spirit of the place." Mallory Yu, a producer and movie editor for All Things Considered, observed: "Her passion and enthusiasm was indelible, and she was generous about sharing both with you."
Beth Novey, a producer and editor on the Culture desk, added: "She was always up for anything--whether it was taking on a last-minute edit, dressing up as the AP Style Guide for Halloween, or making a hedgehog out of cheese for an intern farewell party. She'd been knitting hats for the new babies on the Arts Desk--and it's impossible to imagine even a single day at NPR without her."
In a 2018 Faces of NPR interview https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50349215, Mayer explained what she loved about public radio: "EVERYTHING. No really. We tell stories in a way no one else can, we lift up voices no one else does, we'll bring you the news but we'll also bring you the joy in a way no other medium can."
Though I haven't read this book, it sounds like a stellar cast and crew...I will be keeping an eye out for it's premier.
Movies: Mothering Sunday
Sony Pictures Classics has released the official U.S. trailer for Mothering Sunday https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50349238, based on Graham Swift's 2016 novel, IndieWire reported. Directed by Eva Husson from a script by Alice Birch (Succession, Normal People), the film stars Odessa Young (Shirley), Josh O'Connor (The Crown), Olivia Colman and Colin Firth.
The film marks the English-language debut of French director Husson, who "began her career as an actress before transitioning to directing; her feature debut, Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story), premiered at [the Toronto International Film Festival] in 2015. Her sophomore effort, Girls of the Sun, premiered at Cannes three years later," IndieWire noted. Sony Pictures Classics will open Mothering Sunday with an Oscar-qualifying run in Los Angeles on November 17. It hits New York and L.A. theaters beginning February 25, before expanding nationwide in the following weeks.
These two NBA winners exemplify what book awards should be about, reaching out to kids and adults who need to hear these messages of inclusion and imagination and the evils of censorship (ie book bans).
National Book Award Winners
Last night, for the second year in a row, the National Book Awards were held virtually, hosted this year by Phoebe Robinson and livestreamed from Penguin Random House offices in New York City. (Watch the entire presentation here https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz50379489.)
The winners were:
Fiction: Hell of a Book by Jason Mott (Dutton)Mott said in part that he dedicated the award "to all the other mad kids, to all the other outsiders, the weirdos, the bullied, the ones so strange that they had no choice but to be misunderstood by the world and by those around them, the ones who in spite of this, refused to outgrow their imagination, refused to abandon their dreams, and refused to deny or diminish their identity or their truth or their loves, unlike so many others.”
Young People's Literature: Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda
Lo (Dutton Books for Young Readers) Lo noted in part that when her first novel came out in 2009, "it was one of 27 young adult books about LGBTQ characters or issues published that year. This year hundreds of LGBTQ YA books have been published. The growth has been incredible, but the opposition to our stories has also grown. This year schools across the country are facing significant right-wing pressure to remove books about people of color, LGBTQ people and especially transgender people from classrooms and libraries. I urge every one of you watching to educate yourselves about your school boards and vote in your local elections. 2022 is coming, and we need your support to keep our stories on the shelves. Don't let them erase us."
Book Reviews:
The Girl Without a Name by Suzanne Goldring was an ebook that I picked up for a cheap price, and after reading it, I was glad that I'd not spent more on this flimsy book that reads like a paint-by-numbers novel, riddled with tropes and cliches. The prose is juvenile, and isn't helped by the author using limited omniscient POV, which leads to a great deal of passive sentence construction. She also belabors each point she's trying to make with redundant dialog and views into the minds of facile characters. The plot, therefore, plods along, dragging each beat of the book out way past it's due date. Here's the blurb: September 1940. As the bombs of the Blitz rain down on the East End of London, Ruby and Stevie are
falling in love. United by a shocking experience when they were
evacuees, brave sixteen-year-old Ruby believes she and Stevie are
kindred spirits, and they find solace together surrounded by the
bombed-out shells of London houses. But when Stevie is posted abroad,
handsome and smart in his khaki uniform, Ruby can’t shake a sense of
foreboding. As she waits desperately for letters with foreign stamps
that never come, she begins to fear that he is lost forever…
August 2004. Billie rushes
to her father Dick’s hospital bedside. A terrible stroke has robbed him
of his speech and he is a shell of the man he was before. Billie holds
his hand, hoping her presence will bring him peace. But when she finds a
crumpled black and white photo in his wallet of a smiling dark-haired
girl she doesn’t recognize, Dick frantically tries to talk. Billie knows
this is important, and she must ask the questions her father cannot.
All she has to go on is the name he is just able to mumble. Ruby.
How
is Ruby, a lonely East End orphan with no family, connected to Billie’s
beloved father? What dangerous things has Billie’s father seen and done
that he never told her? Who is the frightened young boy behind the man
she knows? And can Billie lay the ghosts of the past to rest, even if it
means revealing the darkest secrets of her father’s life and breaking
her own heart?
Ruby is a rube, an oh-so-innocent girl who becomes an even more naive and stupid young woman. Stevie is a classic asshole, an abused and mouthy kid who becomes an abusive, sexual predator young man. Billie's father, who suffers a stroke (which I felt he deserved, but he actually deserved to be in jail), is actually Stevie, who apparently feels bad about leaving Ruby to die after he spends a weekend raping her and leading her on, when in reality he has no plans to leave his wife and three children (Billie is one of them). Ruby, of course, because she's so "innocent" (and stupid) doesn't recognize that her old childhood friend is getting her drunk and raping her, and trying to force himself on her repeatedly (though it is clear she doesn't enjoy any of the sexual encounters she has with him, she keeps allowing it to happen because she doesn't know any better, and mistakes his abusive lust for love), and just focuses on her luxurious accommodations and her pretty dresses and too tight shoes that she chose for vanity instead of being able to walk in them. (insert eye roll here).
Meanwhile, we're meant to believe that poor old Stevie can't help himself, due to PTSD, which is a load of BS, because he was a slimy little bastard long before he joined the army in WWII. The author also focuses on every grotesque moment of death and dismemberment of the London Blitz and the bombing of Palestine, to the point of nausea. It's like watching a repeat of a bad horror flick's more disgusting scenes...it goes beyond haunting into irritating. We also see things through the eyes of the cast of crass characters surrounding shallow little Ruby, including her filthy pub-owning aunt and uncle and her fellow evacuee Joan, whose sole purpose is to be a caricature of what a mother is supposed to be like, basically a stupid, oblivious brood mare. In fact, the only decent people in the book are Mrs Honey, who takes in Ruby during the evacuation, and the wimpy Joan, who cares about nothing but her family and all but abandons Ruby and Stevie once she's married (prior to that she's a little helpful to Ruby). Even the ending is ridiculous and unsatisfying. I've made it clear that this book is a waste of time and pixels, so I'd give it a D-, and recommend it only to those who find paint-by-numbers historical fiction interesting.
State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny is a fantastic political thriller that will even have those who are not fans of politics (myself included) turning pages into the wee hours. The prose is clear and sublime, while the plot is intricate and yet fast-paced enough to keep you on the edge of your seat. Here's the blurb: After a tumultuous period in American politics, a new administration has
just been sworn in, and to everyone’s surprise the president chooses a
political enemy for the vital position of secretary of state.
There is no love lost between the president of the United States and
Ellen Adams, his new secretary of state. But it’s a canny move on the
part of the president. With this appointment, he silences one of his
harshest critics, since taking the job means Adams must step down as
head of her multinational media conglomerate.
As the new
president addresses Congress for the first time, with Secretary Adams in
attendance, Anahita Dahir, a young foreign service officer (FSO) on the
Pakistan desk at the State Department, receives a baffling text from an
anonymous source.
Too late, she realizes the message was a hastily coded warning.
What
begins as a series of apparent terrorist attacks is revealed to be the
beginning of an international chess game involving the volatile and
Byzantine politics of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran; the race to
develop nuclear weapons in the region; the Russian mob; a burgeoning
rogue terrorist organization; and an American government set back on its
heels in the international arena.
As the horrifying scale of
the threat becomes clear, Secretary Adams and her team realize it has
been carefully planned to take advantage of four years of an American
government out of touch with international affairs, out of practice with
diplomacy, and out of power in the places where it counts the most.
To
defeat such an intricate, carefully constructed conspiracy, it will
take the skills of a unique team: a passionate young FSO; a dedicated
journalist; and a smart, determined, but as yet untested new secretary
of state.
State of Terror is a unique and utterly
compelling international thriller cowritten by Hillary Rodham Clinton,
the 67th secretary of state, and Louise Penny, a multiple award-winning
#1 New York Times bestselling novelist.
I agree that this novel was compelling and fascinating, though some of the characters are thinly-disguised versions of real politicians (such as Eric Dunn, stupid and evil, being the stand in for former president Donald Trump) and I would guess that many of the situations of terrorism around the world are close to what actually happened during Hillary Clinton's reign as Secretary of State. I loved that Louise Penny was able to sneak in her beloved character Inspector Gamache toward the end of the book. I also found it interesting that SecState Ellen Adams has a son who is Muslim and a journalist, who falls in love with a Pakistani FSO. Adam's daughter is heir to her media empire, and due to the way that Hillary Clinton was often vilified in the press, I was surprised that they get a fair shake in the book. While I won't spoil the ending for you, I will say that it was worth every hairpin turn of the plot. I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to readers who like political thrillers or just plain thrilling, fast paced stories.
Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid is the December book for my Library book group, and I was surprised by how much I liked it, considering it's the fictional biography of a rock band that makes it to the top in the 1970s/80s. I was a teenager during that era, and I loved listening to popular rock music, so the story of Daisy Jones and the bands squabbles seemed very realistic to me, because I read Rolling Stone and other magazine/newspaper articles about my favorite bands at the time. I gather that Reid used Stevie Nicks as something of a template or outline for Daisy Jones, but in my head, I kept hearing Ann and Nancy Wilson's sublime music as they toured the world with the band "Heart," which was all guys except for the sisters. Here's the blurb: A gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic
1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery
behind their infamous breakup. Everyone knows DAISY JONES & THE SIX, but nobody knows the reason
behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . .
until now.
Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late
sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock
stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs
are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n’ roll she loves most. By the time
she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of
heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.
Also getting
noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve
of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and
with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little
wild on the road.
Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer
realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two
together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.
The
making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable
novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the
seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work
to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.
Though I found more parallels with Heart than with Fleetwood Mac, I have to admit that the songs I heard in my head while I read this book were "Dreams" and "Gypsy," sung by Stevie Nicks (from Fleetwood Mac) in her deep and distinctive voice. Once you've heard Nicks sobbing, "have you any dreams you'd like to sell" (dreams of loneliness like a heartbeat drives you mad/in the stillness of the memories of what you had/and what you lost) out of a speaker either on a record player on over the airwaves of the radio, you'll be haunted by it for the rest of your life, trust me. Since most of the book was dialog from interviews, the pages fly by, and it took me about 4 hours to read the entire novel. Though it was melancholy and moody, it was still a pleasure to revisit the late 70s as a time of some breakthrough rock and roll bands and music. Everything now is electronically enhanced, so it doesn't seem as real and raw as music was back then. But anyway, I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone who loved the music of the 70s.
Private Property by Skye Warren was another cheap ebook that grabbed my attention, and I had high hopes for it, based on the reviews I read on Amazon and Goodreads. I was surprised, then, when this contemporary retelling of Jane Eyre became instead a mashup of Jane Eyre and 50 Shades of Gray, complete with an abusive and pedophile billionaire who finds ways to get off on practicing light BDSM on his Latina nanny (who, because she's young and innocent, of course allows him to do anything he wants to her...yuck. Male rape fantasies are just revolting). Here's the blurb: When I signed up for the nanny agency, I didn't expect a remote mansion on a windswept cliff. Or a brooding billionaire who resents his new role.
His
brother's death means he's now in charge of a moody seven year old
girl. She's lashing out at the world, but I can handle her. I have to. I
need the money to finish my college degree. As long as I can avoid the
boss who alternately mocks me and coaxes me to reveal my darkest
secrets.
"An insanely absorbing and addicting contemporary tale
reminiscent of Jane Eyre with all the sex and secrets you never knew you
needed." -- #1 New York Times bestselling author Rachel Van Dyken
Private Property is a full-length contemporary novel from New York Times
bestselling author Skye Warren about secrets and redemption. It's the
first book in the emotional Rochester trilogy.
I completely disagree that this book is about "secrets and redemption," it's about a rich asshole who takes advantage of his young Latina governess to act out his humiliation and domination fantasies. Not that she's unwilling, because of course she's attracted to someone with so much money and power...aren't all girls overawed by such things? (no, is the answer to that question, and it's sexist and racist to think that they are). When she's not drooling over Rochester, who hates everyone, including his daughter, (and himself) she makes some halfway decent progress in helping her young charge get her school work done and move slowly out of her grief over the death of her mother. The prose is okay, though a bit overwrought (especially during the long sex scenes) and the plot is sufficient, though the ending is abrupt and poorly written. Therefore I'd give this book a C- and recommend it to anyone who really liked the horrible 50 Shades books, and those who don't mind bad reworkings of the classics.
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