My New Year's Resolution (which involves books)

In a world that's scary (more so today than yesterday even; I don't want a war with Iran!) and burning and full of hate, books give me some comfort. And growing up book insecure (my family tried, but we were living overseas), a stockpile on hand is soothing. But I have now crossed the boarder from soothing stockpile to source of stress, which was driven home to me when my son asked what I wanted for my birthday, and when I said "books are always nice" he answered "but you wouldn't read it." And I was Sad.

Also I'm worried about the structural integrity of the house underneath this pile.

nb: review copies and library checkouts (lots of both) not shown

In my defense, my retirement plan is to have a new and used children's bookstore. So a lot of these will become stock, and count as an investment in the financial stability of future me :)

But it is still too many. So in the coming year, I'm going to make an effort to read these. I'm not going to another library book sale until I've read 50 of them, and I'm not buying myself a new book till I've read 100 (repeating as necessary).

Nhận xét

The Princess Who Flew with Dragons, by Stephanie Burgis

I still am busily reading elementary/middle grade speculative fiction a in my roles as a judge for the Cybils Awards (mainly going back to re-read things I read early last year), but I am in good enough shape that I treated myself one dreary day last week to a shiny and new and much anticipated book-- The Princess Who Flew with Dragons , by Stephanie Burgis (Bloomsbury, November 2019). This is the third in the series that began with The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart (link to my review), and it's possibly the one I enjoyed most. I certainly think it was the fastest read; it was a (more or less) single-sitting of about an hour read for me (when I like a book and need to know what's going to happen next, I read faster, and it was relatively short-- 216 pages). Princess Sophia, who we met in Book 2, The Girl with a Dragon Heart , is the main character here, and when her story begins, she's being sent by her older sister, the ruling princess, to a distant city to attend a Worl...

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The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away, by Ronald L. Smith (review and interview)

I first had the pleasure of meeting Ronald L. Smith at Kidlitcon back in 2015 (PSA--come to Kidlitcon 2020 in Ann Arbor next March!). His first middle grade book, Hoodoo, a tale of supernatural horror in the south, had just been published, and I enjoyed it very much ( my review ). I likewise enjoyed The Mesmerist (2017), about kids fighting evil in 19th century London ( my review ). I never reviewed Black Panther: the Young Prince (2018)….someday I will. So in any event, I was very excited about his most recent book, The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away (Clarion Books, February 2019). This is the story of an air force kid, Simon, son of a black mom and a white dad, who's obsessed with aliens. He's convinced owl-like aliens have arrived, watching and experimenting on humans. His family has no time or patience for aliens, so Simon is alone with his fears of the Grays, as he calls them. When something very strange happens on a camping trip with hi...

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The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day, by Christopher Edge

I'm still holding on to the middle grade sci fi/fantasy books of 2019, with a slightly over the top grim determination to read all the ones at hand before the end of January...(fortunately January 2020 is not a huge mg sci fi/fantasy release month, so I'm sure I can catch up on this year's in just a few days of reading!). The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day , by Christopher Edge, is an English import that came out here in the US back in April 2019 (Delecorte), and in 2018 in the UK. It's a story of sisters caught in an altered reality, with time and space gone wonky, with birthday balloons and tasty food meeting a horror of chaos and despair. It's Maisie's tenth birthday, and her parents are making a huge effort to give her a great party. The greatness of the party is supposed to make up for the fact that none of her friends are coming. Maisie in fact has none at all. She's a home-schooled science and math prodigy, who's never had a chance to socialize ...

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