Hi there, fellow book dragon! It's almost December, my favorite month of the year! My birthday, Christmas, New Year's Eve, I love all of the sparkle and snow and the festive atmosphere that is part and parcel with the end of the year. There's also the anticipation of a fresh new year to provide us all with hope that things will get better, and provide bibliophiles with tons of new books to add to their TBR lists. So welcome to the last post of November...lets get started with some news and reviews, shall we?!
I just loathe ignorant and prejudiced book banners...they're the information Nazi's of the 21st century. These so-called conservatives are just using their politics and a warped interpretation of the Christian faith to keep children from learning anything about anyone of other faiths, sexual orientations, or color, as if the world were only populated by WASPs. This does a terrible disservice to children, because the world is full of diverse people, and trying to pretend they don't exist or are somehow "less" than white people is just bigoted racist idiocy. I'm with Froot Loops on this one!
Conservatives Are Boycotting Froot Loops for Creating a Library of Diverse Children's Books Online
I am using yet another unhinged right-wing boycott to Streisand Effect a pretty cool little project: Fruit Loops’ free digital library with equity, diversity, and inclusion content. You can go check out really inflammatory things like Maggie’s Chopsticks, which is about a girl using utensils. May their efforts to pressure Kellogg’s into ending this initiative fail.
I LOVE this idea, and I hope that Cider Monday was successful in every indie book shop that participated!
CiderMonday: 'Put Down the Computer. Jeff Bezos Doesn't Need Any More of Your Money'
At Book Passage, Corte Madera, Calif. Cider Monday https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQKPxboI6a9ndUwiGg~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nFXcTypoMLg-gVdw celebrations, held yesterday nationwide, have become more of a complement to indie booksellers' evolving online sales prowess than counter-programming to Cyber Monday's craziness, which had been the initiative's original intent. Willard Williams, who launched Cider Monday in 2013, was co-founder of the Toadstool Bookshops, with stores in Keene and Peterborough (now under new ownership) and the renamed Balin Books ("Cider Monday began with a splash and a few spills 11 years ago among independent stores in New England") in Nashua.
Many other indie bookstores across the U.S. were raising a glass of cider to toast the day, including:
Nowhere Bookshop https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQKPxboI6a9ndUwiGA~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nFXcTypoMLg-gVdw, owned by author Jenny Lawson, San Antonio, Tex.: "Put down the computer. Jeff Bezos doesn't need any more of your money. Come celebrate Cider Monday with us instead! We're sipping cider (both regular and hard) and taking books. Come join us!"
Owning and having books in the home is very important for child development and education, not just here in the USA, but all around the world. As usual, it's the poorest families who can't afford to buy books for their children. I think the folks in the UK need someone like Dolly Parton to start a program that gives away books for free to any child who asks for one.
International Update: Book Ownership Declines for U.K. Children; IPA's New Member Associations
In 2023, more children who received free school meals said they did not have a book of their own https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQLZkOQI6a9mK0xxSA~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nFC5GspoMLg-gVdw compared to the year before (12.4% in 2023 vs 9.7% in 2022), according to a recent study by the U.K.'s National Literacy Trust, which noted that book ownership is "associated with better reading performance" Indeed, a 2023 studyhttps://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQLZkOQI6a9mK0xxSQ~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nFC5GspoMLg-gVdw found it was one of the top three predictors of children's reading performance."
The cost-of-living crisis has a direct impact on families' ability to support reading at home, with 36.1% of parents who were struggling financially saying they were buying fewer books for their children in early 2023, the NLT said. The percentage-point gap in book ownership between children and young people who receive free meals and their peers who do not (6.6%) is now at its largest in a decade, the Literacy Trust reported, adding: "Acknowledging the associations between book ownership and reading enjoyment, attainment and longer-term outcomes, it is essential that support for book ownership should be targeted at groups with the most to benefit, including children and young people from lower-income backgrounds."
I remember reading First You Cry, along with my mother, and both of us found it to be a poignant book about life and death. We watched the Mary Tyler Moore movie of the book and cried our eyes out. I think my mother read the Last Wish, but I don't recall reading it or watching the film based on it. Still, RIP Betty Rollin.
Obituary Note: Betty Rollin
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQLZkOQI6a9mK0x-HA~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nFC5GspoMLg-gVdw>, a network news correspondent "who described intensely personal life passages in two memoirs--First, You Cry, about being diagnosed with breast cancer and having a mastectomy, and Last Wish, in which she revealed that she had helped her pain-ravaged mother end her life," died November 7, the New York Times reported. She was 87.
Ellen Marson, a close friend who disclosed the death to the Times, said the cause was voluntary assisted suicide at Pegasos in Switzerland: "Betty recently told a few close friends she was going to do this. True to form, she was resolute in her decision; Betty made it clear she did not want to hear our objections to her plan.... She felt she didn't have much more to contribute."
Rollin belonged to Compassion & Choices, an advocacy group that supports expanding access to end-of-life medicine, and had been a board member of the Death with Dignity National Center for nearly 20 years.
She wrote the first two of her seven books, I Thee Wed (1961) and Mothers Are Funnier Than Children (1964), the latter of which was published soon after she was hired as an editor and writer at Vogue magazine. She joined Look magazine as a senior editor and writer in 1966 and stayed until it folded in 1971. Rollin then went to work for NBC News in the early 1970s and stayed until 1982, when she left for a two-year stint as a correspondent for the ABC News program Nightline.
In First, You Cry (1976), Rollin wrote candidly about her delayed cancer diagnosis, her mastectomy, a divorce and the love affair that followed it, and her acceptance that her life did not end with the loss of a breast. The book was adapted into a CBS television movie in 1978, starring Mary Tyler Moore.
Her mother had ovarian cancer and died in 1983, an episode recounted in Rollin's bestselling book Last Wish (1985). When her mother said she was ready to die, Rollin and her husband "found a sympathetic doctor who suggested that her mother take a combination of drugs that would lead to death," the Times wrote, adding that Rollin "had ignored her lawyer's advice not to tell the story. 'I figured it was worth it,' she said in an interview last year with the Kunhardt Film Foundation, adding, 'I mean, I certainly didn't want to go to prison.' "
Last Wish was also turned into a TV movie, on ABC in 1992, with Patty Duke portraying Rollin and Maureen Stapleton as her mother.
Rollin told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1976 that she felt she had no choice but to be as open as possible when she was writing about her breast cancer: "I do not enjoy the fact that everyone who's read my book knows everything intimate in my life. But I think it's important for people to tell the truth. It makes you feel better to get it out, and I think it makes other people feel better, too."
I loved Henry Winkler as the Fonz, and I would love to see him in conversation and I'd also like to read his latest memoir.
Image of the Day: Henry Winkler, D'Arcy Carden and Friends
Book Passage https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscQLZkOQI6a9mK0x-Sw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6nFC5GspoMLg-gVdw partnered with the Curran Theater in San Francisco to present Henry Winkler in conversation with D'Arcy Carden. The two discussed their careers, their friendship, and Winkler's memoir Being Henry: The Fonz... and Beyond (Celadon).
I've read books by Margot Livesey, but this one looks to be right up my alley. I hope that I'm able to get a copy for my birthday or Christmas.
Book Review: The Road from Belhaven
In The Road from Belhaven, Margot Livesey eloquently traces the fictional life of Lizzie Craig, a girl from eastern Scotland in the late 1880s. Lizzie struggles to navigate a life detoured with challenges and disappointments that draw her away--physically, emotionally, and spiritually--from the safe and familiar.
After her parents die when she's a year old, Lizzie is raised by her loving, hardscrabble grandparents at Belhaven Farm--located inland, in the part of Scotland called "the Kingdom of Fife." Lizzie is just a toddler when she starts to have premonitions--secret visions she calls "pictures" that reveal future events that often confuse and frighten her. Sometimes these intuitions involve "ordinary things: her grandmother choosing which hen to kill; a cow stuck in the mud by the river." But other times, they prophesize harrowing actions and accidents over which she has no control. Or does she?
Lizzie is a lonely, responsible child--happiest on the farm, doing chores and being around animals. When her grandfather hires help for the farm, Lizzie and her 13-year-old world begin to open like a chrysalis, exposing her to new adventures and experiences. This includes her learning for the first time that she has an older sister, Kate, who was sent to live with her paternal grandparents after their parents died. Circumstances change so that 16-year-old Kate now comes to live at Belhaven.
The sisters, disparate in personality, struggle to adjust to one another, but in time they find ways to bond. When Lizzie learns that her sister, being the oldest, will, in all likelihood inherit Belhaven Farm with her husband someday, Lizzie makes life choices that are dictated by that knowledge. At the age of 14, Lizzie falls in love. Much to the dismay of her grandparents, she eventually chases after her love interest, becoming a caretaker and moving from rural Belhaven to the city of Glasgow, where her life takes heart-wrenching twists and turns. Is there any way Lizzie can harness her powers of perception in order to change the course of her own life and destiny?
Compassionately drawn and emotionally charged, Margot Livesey's novel maps the tenderest places of the human heart and soul and once again displays her indelible grasp on the human condition. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines
My latest reviews:
Bring me Your Midnight by Rachel Griffin is a delicious romantic fantasy (they're calling it "romantasy" these days, a fun portmanteau of a word) that tells the story of an island of witches who have had to tone down/release their magic until it's only useful for small, mundane things like flavoring tea or making special pastries, because the mainlanders are frightened of witches and magic, and this is the only way the island residents are allowed to live their lives in safety. All "dark magic" practitioners were said to have died out long ago, or been hunted to extinction by the mainlanders. Hence, when Tana learns that she's to wed the Governors mainlander scion and live a life without magic on the mainland, she accepts this as the only way to keep both parties safe and secure. Here's the blurb:
Tana Fairchild's fate has never been in question. Her life has been planned out since the moment she was born: she is to marry the governor's son, Landon, and secure an unprecedented alliance between the witches of her island home and the mainlanders who see her very existence as a threat.
Tana's coven has appeased those who fear their power for years by releasing most of their magic into the ocean during the full moon. But when Tana misses the midnight ritual―a fatal mistake―there is no one she can turn to for help…until she meets Wolfe.
Wolfe claims he is from a coven that practices dark magic, making him one of the only people who can help her. But he refuses to let Tana's power rush into the sea, and instead teaches her his forbidden magic. A magic that makes her feel powerful. Alive.
As the sea grows more violent, her coven loses control of the currents, a danger that could destroy the alliance as well as her island. Tana will have to choose between love and duty, between loyalty to her people and loyalty to her heart. Marrying Landon would secure peace for her coven but losing Wolfe and his wild magic could cost her everything else.
First off, the prose in this novel is lush and gorgeous, to the point where you feel you can smell the salty ocean breezes and feel the cool sand on your feet. This really helped the plot move along with a steady rhythm to it's HEA conclusion. Second, I enjoyed Tana's forceful insistence on finding out the truth about her magic and the lies her mother has been telling her and everyone else to be fascinating and satisfying. I revere truth-tellers and whistleblowers, and I appreciate that being one is never an easy road to travel. I also appreciate the "enemies to lovers" trope, and in this case found that Wolfe's realization that Tana and her people weren't as crass and stupid as he'd assumed just as good as Tana's discovery that "dark" magic isn't evil at all, but powerful and life-affirming. Like fire, magic here is shown to be only as good as the practitioner wielding it. I'd give this riveting novel (that I read in one sitting, it was that engrossing) an A, and recommend it to anyone who likes magic and diverse stories of its lore and practitioners.
On The Plus Side by Sabrina Morgan is a YA contemporary romantic fantasy that reads like it was written by a teenager who also writes bad fan fiction full of "Mary Sue" relationships. The prose was rife with mistakes, and the plot full of holes. The only thing this ebook had going for it was that it was a fast read. Here's the blurb:
Annabeth (Anna) is a curvy 18 year old high school senior who moved from California to Last Fall, Michigan after her parents death in a car accident. She just wants a boring mundane senior experience, but she gets the opposite after running into Lucas Ryder (Luke). Luke is considered bad news; rumors always flying around that he is in a gang and dangerous, the thing about rumors is that though exaggerated they do have an ounce of truth. Luke does work for Frank to do some semi-illegal stuff and he does have his close friends who are with him during it all. The one thing the rumors don't seem to know is why?
Anna and Luke seem to gravitate to each other even when they don't want to. What starts as typical high school drama from a bully named Christy, parties, and feelings unsaid; soon twists into something more devastating. What Anna hasn't told anyone is that she has been getting anonymous notes from someone. What started off as harmless soon transforms into something Anna would never have imagined.
Through all the ups and downs can love win?
Anna doesn't actually sound like a true plus-sized protagonist, and she's constantly putting herself down, though it is made clear that her size is on the small side of "plus," mostly in the breasts and rear and thighs, all acceptable areas for so-called "curvy" girls to be fat in. And her love interest, Luke, sounds like a real skeevy guy who does illegal stuff and runs hot and cold in his desire for Anna. The dynamic between the two (her desperation to fit in with the other teenagers and have a boyfriend, and his desire to have sex with a vulnerable, self-effacing girl who would do anything for him, so he has all the power in the relationship) seemed to me to be unhealthy and not a great example for other "plus sized" young women looking for ways to be happy and not bullied in high school. The story reads like a teenager telling it to her friends in the bathroom during a break, and the use of tired tropes and cliches is laughable. I'd give this book a C, and only recommend it to those who enjoy listening to teenage girls whine and be melodramatic about their lives, especially their love lives.
Star Mother: A Novel by Charlie N Holmberg, is a beautiful folkloric fantasy that reads like a myth from another age. The prose is graceful and neat, and the plot intricate and engrossing. You will never look at the stars the same way again, once you've read this beautiful tale of love and motherhood. Here's the blurb:
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