This was a bit of a sad month for us. We lost six trees in our backyard because they were growing into the power lines. I miss the shade and privacy and park-like feel they gave the yard. Having read Katherine Applegate's Wishtree, I also feel guilty. For killing healthy trees. For displacing all the birds and squirrels that lived in those trees. It sounds silly, I know. My husband and I plan on planting smaller, flowering trees away from the power lines, so I guess that's some consolation, for us and the wildlife.
Anyway, I feel like I didn't read as many books as I usually do this month, but the books I did read were really good. That's probably because almost all the books on the list are repeat authors.
1. Starfish by Lisa Fipps
I was a fat kid. By middle school, I was probably obese. It was a combination of parents who had no interest in proper nutrition and comfort eating from growing up in a toxic household. I could have really used this middle grade book back then. Even reading it as an adult, I found catharsis. I would recommend Starfish to adults as much as kids.
Ever since Ellie wore a whale swimsuit and made a big splash at her fifth birthday party, she's been bullied about her weight. To cope, she tries to live by the Fat Girl Rules--like "no making waves," "avoid eating in public," and "don't move so fast that your body jiggles." And she's found her safe space--her swimming pool--where she feels weightless in a fat-obsessed world. In the water, she can stretch herself out like a starfish and take up all the room she wants. It's also where she can get away from her pushy mom, who thinks criticizing Ellie's weight will motivate her to diet. Fortunately, Ellie has allies in her dad, her therapist, and her new neighbor, Catalina, who loves Ellie for who she is. With this support buoying her, Ellie might finally be able to cast aside the Fat Girl Rules and starfish in real life--by unapologetically being her own fabulous self.
2. The Realm of Possibility by David Levithan
David Levithan never lets me down. Every book of his I pick up, I fall in love. This one is no different. It is the first collection of poetry of his I've read.
Here’s what I know about the realm of possibility—
it is always expanding, it is never what you think
it is. Everything around us was once deemed
impossible. From the airplane overhead to
the phones in our pockets to the choir girl
putting her arm around the metalhead.
As hard as it is for us to see sometimes, we all exist
within the realm of possibility. Most of the limits
are of our own world’s devising. And yet,
every day we each do so many things
that were once impossible to us.
Enter The Realm of Possibility and meet a boy whose girlfriend is in love with Holden Caulfield; a girl who loves the boy who wears all black; a boy with the perfect body; and a girl who writes love songs for a girl she can’t have.
These are just a few of the captivating characters readers will get to know in this intensely heartfelt new novel about those ever-changing moments of love and heartbreak that go hand-in-hand with high school. David Levithan plumbs the depths of teenage emotion to create an amazing array of voices that readers won’t forget. So, enter their lives and prepare to welcome the realm of possibility open to us all. Love, joy, and these stories will linger.
3. Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
I love Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming, which is a middle grade novel-in-verse (I've definitely developed a love for this genre, if you couldn't tell). This is the first adult novel of hers I've read, and it doesn't disappoint, though it is heartbreaking.
As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody's mother, for her own ceremony-- a celebration that ultimately never took place.
Unfurling the history of Melody's family – reaching back to the Tulsa race massacre in 1921 -- to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they've paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history. As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at the ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives--even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be.
4. The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
This book is a reread. I first read it through the library, quickly fell in love, and knew I needed to own it so I could reread it whenever I wanted to. My husband bought it for me for Yule, but I had so many library books to get through, I kept putting it off. I finally got to it this month. I love it as much as the first time through.
Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues—a bee, a key, and a sword—that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians—it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction. Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose—in both the mysterious book and in his own life.
5. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
I fell hard and fast for this book. It instantly went on the to-own list. I love that it is magical realism that is completely character driven.
France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever―and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.
But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
Comments