Who Are You?

Game Changer by Neal Shusterman

New York, NY : Quill Tree Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2022.

387 p. ; 21 cm.

This will probably be my last posting here. Why? Because in just over a week, I'll be retired from my high school library job! I wanted to end this review blog with a recent book, and one I liked--Game Changer is that book.

The best thing about this book is its appealing set up. Ash, a young white guy who plays high school football makes a hit and - the shock of the hit - propels him into a slightly different universe. Further hits in later games send him into other alternate universes, each one more radically different than the original universe he started out in. In these alternate universes Ash is a somewhat different person with memories that match that new universe (while he retains memories of previous ones too). 

As Ash figures out who he is in these new circumstances (worlds where segregation never ended, where he is gay, where he is rich, etc.) he has to confront how much of him is essentially "him" and how much who he thinks he is, is the result of circumstance. Also given the disturbing nature of these worlds (the racist segregation world persists throughout) Ash also wants to get back to the original universe he came from. He sort of does and let's just say getting there is an adventure.

Shusterman manages to keep the plot believable, especially in how he wraps it up. He also has an ambitious scope for his novel - taking on racism, sexism, poverty, relationship abuse, etc. I think it stretches the novel a little thin at times, but given the wackiness of the plot, the humor and the likeability of the main character - I think it's overall an effective effort. And with a Netflix deal in the works, this one is likely to be in high demand. I would recommend it.

Whose Selection?

The Selection by Kiera Cass

New York : HarperTeen, 2013, c2012.

327 p. ; 22 cm. 

I was not planning to read this YA novel, but about two months ago a student returned it and said she loved it and I should read it. So did I have a choice? Not really. 

I can't say I loved the book, but I certainly did enjoy reading it. It was fun. It's kind of a Hunger Games meets The Bachelor - no, seriously! In the fictional world of the hero - 16 year old girl America Singer - there is a post-war county that is a Monarchy where the laws are harsh, poverty is endemic, and the country is divided up by caste - 8s are the lowest and 1s the highest. America's family is a 5. So that's the world she lives in. In this world, instead of a yearly mortal combat competition as in the Hunger Games, there is a once-in-a-generation chance for 35 randomly selected, eligible young women to compete for a chance to marry the prince of the land and eventually become queen - a grand version of The Bachelor. Just being in the competition has status and monetary benefits, and becoming royalty means attaining the highest status there is.

The hero of this tale already has a beloved (a lowly 6!) and only enters the competition to help her family out. But the prince turns out to be a much better person than she had imagined. Through complicated twists, she finds herself wondering who she really does/should love. All this while competing against a selection (sorry!) of the best and worst of competitors. There's love, drama, intrigue and even danger (rebels twice storm the palace where the competition is being held). Do you wonder how it turns out? Well you'll have to read it to find out - no spoilers here. However, I will warn you that the novel ends without resolution as it sets up for the next installment in the series.

Is is a serious read? Nope. Was it a fun read with some nice touches? It was! So if you're looking for a little escapist fun, this might be just the thing.

Better Than Hollywood Stars

The Secret Life of Stars by Lisa Harvey-Smith

New York : Thames & Hudson, 2021.

182 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.

     

This is a light (but super informative) read. At times the over-anthropomorphizing of stars is a bit much, but that's the only fault I have with this really good introduction to the wild variety of stars that astronomers and astrophysicists study.

From the sun to massive black holes and all the weird variations in between, this book offers a tempting exploration through what is currently known about stars and also introduces readers to some of the stellar mysteries that astronomers hope to unravel when they get the chance to employ tools like the new Webb telescope. 

Harvey-Smith does a great job explaining some pretty complicated concepts about how stars produce their light and heat and how elements are created in the collapse and explosions of huge stars. I would recommend this to both astronomy fans and to students who are just curious about the stars and current astrophysics.

Sad Sadie

Sadie by Courtney Summers 

New York : Wednesday Books, 2018. 

311 p. ; 21 cm.

I think I picked up this book after a student returned it last month and said they liked it. It's a thriller dealing with a dead girl and a her missing older sister. The novel is woven from two strands. The narration from the missing older girl - Sadie - and the transcripts of a fictional podcast "The Girls." The podcast is one that was set in motion when the producers heard of the murdered young girl and her missing older sister. We follow the podcast host as he tries to figure out - through visits, research and interviews - what happened to Sadie.

In the narration from Sadie we figure out that her young sister was probably raped and killed by someone she may know and she has taken off in a car to see if she can find him. Along the way she interacts with people and tries to figure out who killed her sister and where he lives. We also learn that Sadie has been the victim of pedophiles and is in search of revenge for both her sister and herself. You might be wondering about parents. Her father has never been in the picture and her mother is a long-time addict who abandoned Sadie and her little sister.

So the novel is a mystery, a road trip, a podcast, and a revenge tale - one that will leave you with as many questions as answers when you finish.

I think Sadie is a good novel and I'd recommend it for someone wanting a thriller/mystery dealing with murder/family troubles/ and sexual abuse. However, I just never really found myself taken with the book. I think there were too many times where the plot felt a little overwrought and many times where I got confused about who was who (after all there are several abusive men involved and one of the villains has several aliases). The who podcast set-up also didn't resonate with me, but it might with other readers. I'd say it's a solid read, but one that just didn't appeal so much to me.       

Very Memoir

Genderqueer by Maia Kobabe

[Saint Louis, Mo.] : The Lion Forge, LLC, 2019.

239 p. : chiefly col. ill. ; 21 cm. 

There's a lot to like and admire about Genderqueer.  This graphic novel memoir reveals with great honesty Kobabe's life of coming to terms with eir (Kobabe uses e/em/eir pronouns) gender identity. Assigned female gender at birth, this graphic novel follows Kobabe's intensely personal (often painful) struggle to figure out what eir gender/sexuality/identity is. 

The thing I like so much about this memoir is that it really opens up to the reader how intense and real the gender struggle can be for someone who does not fit into the more "normative" categories of gender and sexuality. Kobabe, a very sensitive person, is often tormented as e figures out what e thinks/feels about dating, coming out, pronoun use, clothing use, appearance, family dynamics, friendship, seeing the doctor, etc. A reader can learn so much about how many obstacles to self-realization exist in our society. However, the book is ultimately hopeful as Kobabe gets closer and closer to figuring out and embracing eir true self.

My only hesitancy about the book, is it's intense preoccupation with self. Of course, it's a memoir, but there were times when I just wanted the author to look beyond eirself and reflect on the lives of others who are in similar or even worse situations - but that's probably just me!

      

Dystopia Now

The Looting Machine by Tom Burgis

 New York : PublicAffairs,  c2015.     

 xi, 321 p. : ill., map ; 24 cm.     

This is a powerful book that examines the power and endurance of the entrenched systems that pillage the resources of Africa. It is an indictment of the many legal (and illegal), but grossly unethical networks of banking rules, corporate laws, governments, militaries and paramilitaries that vacuum up the untold wealth fuel and mineral wealth of the African continent and keep it in the hands of a tiny minority of wealthy and well-connected people (while immiserating the vast majority of citizens in those countries where the wealth is found.)

This is not exactly the kind of book most students would pick up and read cover-to-cover, but it would be VERY useful to students doing any research on globalization, world poverty, corruption, mining, economics, especially in relation to the nations of Nigeria, Angola, South Africa, etc. It is a great resource for understanding how even when liberation governments come to power, they are often overtaken by the global systems of off-shoring, international finance/loans, and powerhouse nations like the US and China that seek to control profits gained from extractive industries.

The author Tom Burgis deserves great deal of credit for doing dogged (and intrepid) research as he visits both the glittering high-rises of corporate/financial power (e.g. Hong Kong, New York, and Harare)  conflict-torn sites (e.g. Nigeria, Congo, Zimbabwe) of mining and extraction.

It's a complicated and painful book to read, but one that anyone who lives in more wealthy countries should read since the wealth of Africa is deeply entwined with the wealth of those better-off countries.

Powerful Debut

Black Girl Unlimited by Echo Brown

New York : Henry Holt and Co., 2020.

294 p. ; 22 cm.

This is a super creative and really well written debut YA novel.  The subtitle of Black Girl Unlimited is The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard, and it's back cover states, it is "Part memoir, part magic" - and these are two good clues to the power of this novel. This is no Harry Potter wizardry, but instead a kind of rare natural/supernatural inheritance of access to the power and mystery of the "in between zone." 

The novel deals head on with hard issues of sexual assault, drug addiction, poverty and crime - but does it in a way that is not despairing, but also not falsely optimistic. The hero of this novel is the main character, Echo Brown (see, there's the part memoir) who is academically talented and motivated. She only gradually realizes that she is a wizard and that her power as one is limited but can grow.  One of the coolest aspects is that as a wizard she can occasionally stop time and use that stopped time to try and influence others for the better.

The novel is a great story of the power of determination, bravery, family ties, intellectual curiosity and bravery in the face of addiction, poverty, racism and violence. 

My only hesitations with the novel (which I was surprised to not see brought up in reviews) are the heavy use of vernacular from characters in her poor neighborhood (including her Mom and brothers). And then there is an unfortunate description of one of the most powerful elderly women wizards as being "a quarter Cherokee on her mother's side" according to everyone in Echo's neighborhood, and who is also said to have "learned all her magic stuff from her grandmother." 

That said, it's a powerful novel about obstacles and triumphs facing a young black girl as she comes of age and gets in touch with her inner strength and power.

     

It's Confusing Down There

The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright

New York, N.Y. : A Library of America Special Publication, [2021] 

 xii, 228 p. ; 22 cm.

When you see that there is a "new" Richard Wright novel out in the world, well of course you have to read it - which is exactly what I did! Apparently this compact novella appeared as a short story, but in its full form was rejected by Wright's publisher. It seems the opening set up of the hero, a Black man named Fred Daniels, being arrested and tortured by police into confessing to a double-murder he's innocent of was just too much.  The scene is still excruciating, but not so shocking in this age of learning about police abuses of power. 

Though this portrayal of racist police violence and terror is horrifying, it serves as the launching off of the main action of the book: Fred Daniels escapes the police and goes to live for a number of days in the sewers beneath the city.  Here he wanders through the maze of the city's underground digging and tunneling into several places where he wrestles with guilt, greed, corruption and disillusion. He is able to peer into a Black church service, view a savings vault, and jewelry storage area. In his isolation and darkness he also begins to become a bit unhinged.

I liked a lot about this book, but I have to say that the movements and the descriptions of the underworld actions of the protagonist are pretty confusing. How he chisels through bricks and squirms into basements is hard to follow. The passage of time is not clear, and extreme changes in the main character make it seem like he is underground for months, when in fact it is only three days. I wish the writing had been a little more exact; I think it would have really added to the power of the book.

These issues aside, the book is also wonderful for including a long essay - "Memories of My Grandmother" - that is an exquisite revelation of Wright's thoughts about his writing, discussing origins, influences, the blues and jazz among other things. It's well worth the read.

I'm glad I read this novella and I will definitely recommend it to any student interested in Richard Wright. 

Bent Twisted Broken

Bent Heavens by Daniel Kraus

New York : Square Fish, Henry Holt and Co., 2021.

1st Square Fish ed. 

291 p. ; 22 cm.      

Pretty much everything I wrote about Kraus' earlier novel, Scowler, applies to this novel. I wanted to like Bent Heavens, but I found it profoundly unsatisfying on several levels. I feel bad being so negative because Kraus explains (in an author's note at the end of the book) that he wrote this as a protest against the torture regime implemented under the Bush-Cheney administration.  It feels odd to dislike this book so much since it got starred reviews in Booklist and School Library Journal. 

The premise of the book is interesting. High schooler Liv's father (a high school English teacher) had a complete mental breakdown years previous when he insisted he was abducted by aliens. Then after being released he actually disappears and has been gone for two years. He left behind gruesome contraptions for trapping said aliens. Liv and her loner friend, Doug, check the traps weekly until one day, they catch an alien! 

Instead of turning the creature in to the authorities, Doug suggests torturing it as a way of both punishing it for what the aliens did to Liv's father and possibly getting it to reveal what happened (it can't speak but can squeal and whimper). There's a lot of gruesome beatings, cutting, and hurting that goes on in a torture shed on Liv's property - and I just NEVER believed Liv would go along with it.  I also think that Doug is that stereotype oddball loner type that supposedly is predisposed to sadism. By two thirds of the way through the book, I had guessed at the "wow" plot twist that ends the novel and so was neither surprised nor moved (unlike reviewers).

Well, obviously I did not like this novel. Instead of the heavy handed torture, a more subtle use of torture like that endorsed by Bush-Cheney would have been more pointed - e.g. forced nudity, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, water-boarding, etc.  Also having the alien able to communicate in some basic ways would have been more effective, too. Instead the plot zig zags into the nonsensical and absurd which left me wondering if I even read the same book as the people who starred this mess.

Picture It!

A soldier's sketchbook : the illustrated First World War diary of R.H. Rabjohn by R.H. Rabjohn/John Wilson

Canada : Tundra Books, [2017]     

112 p. : ill. ; 22 x 24 cm.

I'm always interested in WWI, the war that turned the European violence inward instead of outward and ripped the façade off the elegant civilization of Europe at a cost of the deaths of millions of combatants and many civilians.

This WWI book is a special addition to the literature of that "Great War." It consists of the sketches from the war done by R.H. Rabjohn, a soldier from Canada, who saw combat from April 1917 until the end of the war on November 11, 1918. 

It was Rabjohn's official duties as a soldier-sketch artist that allowed him to carry a sketch book (something that was prohibited to other soldiers). He also kept a diary and the author, John Wilson, has done a fine job of organizing the sketches and diary entries into a logical and easy to follow whole.  Doing drafts and support work at the front meant that Rabjohn was frequently in great danger and witnessed first hand the horrors of trench warfare that marked WWI.  

Given its visual appeal, shortness, and direct narrative, this book would be a great way of introducing World War I to teens and hopefully would interest some in wanting to know more about this nation shattering event - the tragic consequences of which continue into the present.

 

     

Piece of My Heart

Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing by Ann Angel

New York : Amulet Books, 2010.

vii, 120 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 27 cm.

This is another outstanding biography for young people, which again confirms my suspicion that the best biographies are those written for young adults. I'm thinking e.e. cummings, Georgia O'Keeffe, Yoko Ono, etc. One of the strengths is that these biographies are lean and specific - and if (as in the case of this biography of Janis Joplin) they include great photos and graphics then it's hard to put them down.  

I really liked the breezy and yet serious tone of this biography.  Breezy, in that it tries to convey the liberating influence of the times (1960s) and the excitement of a talented woman coming into her own, but serious in following Joplin's struggles with bullying and boredom as a teen, insecurity as a rising star, and addiction as she became extremely famous (addiction that would kill her by overdose as a young woman).

I also enjoyed learning about Joplin's roots in Port Arthur, Texas, and her rise to fame based solely on her natural talent and hard work developing that talent. It's really hard to believe that she did not come from any musical or singing background.  I also appreciated reading about the widespread and fertile cultural landscape of the 60s as cafes, music venues, and coffeeshops proliferated. 

It's a sad story, too, of course as we follow Joplin's phenomenal rise to fame, the encouragement of excesss from fans and the industry, and her battle with alcoholism and heroin addiction - a wicked combination that would prove to be fatal to her when she was still very young.   

It's a super biography that I would recommend. Oh, and the title of this post, is the title of one of her well-known songs.

 

Art Lives!

Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older 

New York, NY : Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., c2015.    

297 p. ; 20 cm. 

I had been wanting to read this book for quite a while. I was going to read it during Hispanic Heritage Month, but a students checked out the copies we had (which is great!). So when they came back in I checked it out to myself and read it.

Shadowshaper is the debut novel writers dream of - it was a "Top Ten" on ALA and YALSA lists, a "Best Book of the Year" at NPR and Publishers Weekly, and received stellar reviews, etc. The praise was not undeserved. It's a wonderfully creative novel - undergirded by concerns of ethnic heritage, sexism, gentrification, cultural appropriation - that manages to be a supernatural thriller, urban fantasy, and coming of age story all at once.

At the heart of the story is Sierra a Puerto Rican teen artist/muralist living in Brooklyn. As the story unfolds she learns that her powers are not just artistic, but connected to an age old spiritual power that allows her to bring spirits into her works of art - literally bringing them to life.  This of course would be a ho-hum story without an evil force that seeks to destroy shadowshapers like Sierra so as to gather all that power into himself.  It is a life-and-death danger and Sierra must confront it head on with the help of a another shadowshaping artist - Robbie - and her friends and brother.  The battle between the forces of Sierra and her allies and their nemesis provides the action of the novel.

For some this action will be what draws and holds them in the story.  For me this was the weakest part of the novel. The climactic battle scenes feel like they owe too much action movie staging. I found the most moving parts of the novel were the beginnings of Sierra's understanding of her powers and the descriptions of the art works coming to life, and her meeting with her grandmother's spirit.  But that's me, and I recognize that the gruesome creatures and the bone-crunching fights will be what keeps many readers going right to the satisfying end.

Cold (blooded) War - US Style

The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins

New York: Public Affairs, c2020, 2021.

ix, 340 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm  

It's hard to say whether US citizens have very short memories or face such a powerful propaganda apparatus that it takes a bit of hard work and (soul-crushing honesty) to learn the dirty truths of US history and foreign policy. Considering this, books like The Jakarta Method are wonderful (and painful) antidotes to the flood of official misinformation and willful forgetting that plague the US. 

How many US citizens realize that their government actively helped and encouraged the slaughter of about 1 million unarmed, harmless, and law-abiding civilians in Indonesia in 1965 because of their actual or alleged connections to the completely legal and open communist party of Indonesia.  And how many people who know of this vaguely or in more detail, know that it set the pattern for US sponsored/supported ruthless attacks on civilians in Asia, Africa, Central and South America? Bevins does a remarkable job of pulling together this lethal history from the overthrow of Iran to the rise of the extremist president Bolsonaro in Brazil. The reader learns about the deep connections of the Indonesian slaughter with slaughter and atrocities in Brazil, Guatemala, Angola, Vietnam and other states. The numbers and cruelty are truly appalling.

Bevins also does a good job in scoping out to consider the profound effects that such widespread and cold-blooded killing has had in shaping the world we live in now.  He questions what it means to "win" the Cold War when the means were so depraved and terrible.  He wonders about what kind of world we might live in if the pro-democracy, constitutional parties that leaned left or opposed US hegemony had been allowed to survive. Would we see the same appalling wealth inequalities that plague the world, would the rule of law be stronger, and would there be better human rights protections today? 

His book is profound and timely as both in the US and abroad many leaders are encouraging authoritarian rule and promoting lies and violence as a way to preserve their power.

It is a book I highly recommend.

No American Dream

American Street by Ibi Zoboi 

New York, NY : Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2017]

324 p. ; 22 cm. 

American Street is a super book. I'm glad to see it got a lot of recognition - starred reviews and a finalist for the National Book Award. The book is the story of Fabiola, high school aged young woman who was born in the US, raised in Haiti and has returned to the US with her mother so they can rejoin the mother's sister and her three girls in Detroit. Of course, nothing goes smoothly: the mother (not a US citizen) is detained at the NYC airport by ICE while Fabiola is sent on to Detroit and tries to fit in to her aunt's family - a family full of love - but also serious troubles (debts, drug dealing, a dead father, and a crumbling neighborhood). 

The novel follows Fabiola as she tries to navigate the huge, strange country that is the United States, the dicey/lively city of Detroit, and the complicated relationships of her three cousins, who both form a formidable front, though each young woman has a striking and different personality.  

There are many sources of dramatic tension in the novel. Fabiola desperately wants to get her Mom out of ICE detention, she also falls hard in love, and she has to prove herself to her streetwise cousins, etc. In her desperation to get help for her mother, she makes the mistake of becoming an informant to a narcotics detective and things get VERY complicated and VERY dangerous. 

I won't give away the twists and turns of the plot, but after the first chapter things get very interesting. Readers are also easily introduced to the worldview of vodou through the perspective of Fabiola who believes in it and sees the world through that lens - to the point where there is a blurred boundary between the real and the magical/spiritual in many scenes.  In a lesser writer these could be a real weakness, but in this novel they add to its richness.

As you can tell, I'll definitely be recommending this book to readers.

Stunning Science and a Couple of Stunning Mistakes

The Universe in Your Hand by Christophe Galfard

New York : Flatiron Books, 2017, c2016.

First US edition

386 pages ; 22 cm

Christophe Galfard tries and mostly succeeds in leading the lay reader through the current state of knowledge about cosmology and astrophysics - taking the reader through Newtonian, Einsteinian and quantum physics along the way. It's an ambitious undertaking, and I think Galfard succeeds better than most at creatively introducing the reader to mind-bending worlds of quantum fields and some of the truly bizarre quandaries and realms of modern cosmology - dark matter, dark energy, and string theory.  

His was one of the first books I've read about quantum fields where I started to just appreciate and even accept the way in which our "common sense" understandings of the world (which works fine on most of the scales we evolved in) are just not capable of reckoning with the way particles are manifestations of the quantum fields. It's heady stuff, and I'll probably reread those sections later to try and take in more of what they offer. Given the positives about this book, I have to qualify it with the following observation.

There is such a glaring mistake early in the book that I'm a bit befuddled that editors and early readers didn't check it. Galfard describes the future demise of our sun as being one where it "explodes, firing all the matter it was made of into outer space" (6). A while later he describes this ending as "spreading into space all the atoms the Sun has forged throughout its life while creating some more - the heaviest ones of all, such as gold" (19).  This was so unlike any scenarios of the sun's demise I had ever read that I thought maybe I had misread previous books and explanations - or that the latest science was radically different. I searched books and online astronomy sites, and so far, I've found nothing to indicate that the sun will blow away all its mass or that a star of the sun's size can forge anything heavier than carbon in its last stages. From what I've read it will end up as a white dwarf that will then last for billions and billons of years as it slowly cools. 

So I'll suggest the book for its navigation through quantum realities and string theory, but hedge my praise based on the beginning of the book.

       

Tough and Tender

The Closest I've Come by Fred Aceves

New York, NY : HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2017]

310 p. ; 22 cm. 

I'm a sucker for a book with heart, and this novel had me pretty early on.  It's about a Latinx young man growing up poor in Tampa, Florida and struggling to find love, a way out of his impoverished neighborhood, and a way out of the restrictions of having to keep up a tough macho front.  He also is trying to survive a negligent alcoholic mother and her racist and abusive boyfriend who lives with and sponges off of them.

What are the things I especially liked about this book? I love that though Marcos, the main character, is smart and at times humorous, he is not constantly throwing out witty, hip comments and comebacks. In some YA books the protagonist feels like an attempt by the author to come up with a contemporary Holden Caulfield that doesn't ring true. In this novel, Marcos is so believable. He is also believable in his struggle to become a more authentic human being - we get glimpses of his true feelings through his inner thoughts and those feelings get expressed imperfectly (as they do with most people growing up).  I also love the romance (or desired romance) that forms a core of the novel.  It doesn't follow the conventional route in resolving itself and that is refreshing. I appreciated the portrayal of teachers in the book; they are not stereotyped as saviors or villains, but as people who have a tough job and can be really kind. The book also deals with race and cliques in ways that don't feel incredibly heavy handed or unrealistic.

I also love a book that bluntly reveals the struggles of being poor as just the matter of fact situation someone finds themselves in. Marcos just gets by with having to wear crummy shoes and just enough clean t-shirts to look good at school. One of his buddies - the academically most successful of the bunch - starts dealing drugs for an aunt in order to make more money - a decision that is treated realistically. Finally, I should mention that the book helpfully portrays the complicated situation a young person can find themselves  in when an adult in their household is physically and emotionally abusive.

Would I recommend The Closest I've Come? I definitely would. I think it would satisfy a lot of different kinds of readers.

Shadow and Bone Shines

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

New York : Square Fish, 2013.

358 p. : map ; 22 cm. 

If you've seen any of my other posts, you'll know I'm not a huge fan of fantasy/high fantasy novels.  It's not that I dislike them; it's just that they don't completely thrill me.  That being said, I really did enjoy reading this first novel of the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the opening book of the larger Grishaverse series of books by Leigh Bardugo. 

The writing is strong in Shadow and Bone; Bardugo is really good at creating atmospheric settings and has a good ear for dialog. She's able to create her imagined world with subtlety and suggestion.  Also the plotting and action builds and accelerates as the novel goes on, so that by the end I found myself racing along to see what would happen and did not want to put the book down.

The novel has been extremely popular (becoming a Netflix series in March of 2021) - receiving favorable reviews, and becoming a NYT's bestseller.

This is a fantasy novel I'd be glad to recommend and we have many more of her novels in the collection so that a fan of Bardugo would have a lot more to read.

Really Big, Really Small - and Just Right

The Cosmic Mystery Tour: a High Speed Journey Through Time and Space by Nicholas Mee

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2019.     

207 p. : ill. (chiefly col.) ; 21 cm.

This was an ambitious little book.  I say "little" in that 207 p. is fairly brief for an attempt to introduce the wonderous scope of current science about forces, particles, fields, gravity, time, the elements, supernovae, galaxies and - well - the whole universe! The book looks at the very small and the very large - from fermions and bosons to a supermassive black hole with an estimated  mass of 8 trillion suns (yes, that's 8 TRILLION!) 

What I liked about The Cosmic Mystery Tour is that it succeeds in being readable, interesting and keeping up a brisk pace.  After reading it, I found myself ruminating on the vast expanses of the cosmos, along with the strange and remarkable subatomic world that is so hard to fathom.

In spite of a few parts that are just hard to follow (the explanation of the fundamental particles being one of these) most of the book does a great job of being very accessible to the lay reader.

If I had a student ask about a good overview of modern science regarding the universe/cosmos, I'd definitely recommend this little gem.

Long Book Sad War

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

New York : Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995, c1940.

 471 p. ; 21 cm.     

I have to be honest, I didn't really plan to read this book, but after watching the PBS series on Hemingway, and then reading a book from our library about the Spanish Civil War, I was curious to read this novel of his. 

I found the PBS series problematic in many ways. It overly lionized Hemingway, and tended to minimize what an awful and incredibly sexist person he was.  But there was great footage and lots of other information worth taking in about this really important literary figure.  

I initially sat down to read just excerpts of the novel, but the writing is compelling and I ended up enjoying reading it, even when I felt like the movement of narrative was overly ponderous.  Like Mario Vargas Llosa in the documentary, I too felt that the love affair in the novel was overwrought, immature and something of a distraction.  However, the portrayal of characters in the guerrilla band that the main character works with and the ludicrous characters running the war for the Republic are really strong points of the novel.  Hemingway's ability to convey the moral degradations and salvations of people at war are also striking. And knowing as we do that the fascists triumph in Spain, it is sometimes exquisitely painful to read this novel that was written before the outcome was determined. 

I can't say I would recommend this book to a student, but occasionally students pick Hemingway for their senior literary research paper and I'm glad I'll have read this as a point of reference going forward.  

A Terrible Beauty

Vincent and Theo: the Van Gogh Brothers by Deborah Heiligman

New York : Goldwin Books, Henry Holt and Co., 2017.

454 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 24 cm. 

This book brings up some of the problems I find with the whole YA book marketing enterprise.  This is a superb book - one that anyone with the slightest interest in the visual art of painting should read, and by anyone I mean young person, young adult, middle-aged adult, or senior citizen.  It is a wonderful book that lovingly tells the story of artist Vincent Van Gogh and his slightly younger brother Theo, who devoted himself to supporting and championing the work of Vincent. But it is packaged as a YA nonfiction selection - and has deservedly won awards in that category. It may seem I'm nitpicking, but it really seems wrong to me that this book didn't get equal promotion as an adult nonfiction book - it's that good! Also, as much as I hate to say it, it's length (454 pages) is just going to turn off a lot of younger readers - even those with an interest in art.

With all that said, I can say that I loved this book.  I learned a lot from it (e.g. how Theo correctly pushed Vincent to add more color to his palette which was originally muted and grounded in earth tones). The book really opens up the terrible mental anguish and affliction that Vincent suffered and also does justice to the truly inspiring (and sometimes difficult and contentious) love between these two brothers.  Both Vincent and Theo emerge from this telling as very, very human and also very heroic figures.  One finishes the book with a great appreciation for how doggedly Vincent worked at teaching himself and practicing his art and how unstinting Theo was in supporting him.  Importantly, Heiligman gives credit to Theo's wife Jo, who also (in spite of being married to Theo for only the last year and a half of his short life) ensured that Vincent's work and legacy was championed and preserved.

Another positive feature of this book is that it includes excellent end material: a descriptive list of prominent characters, a timeline, copious notes, and a thorough index.

I'll add in closing that I was surprised at the emotional impact of the book. Heiligman's retelling of Vincent and Theo's deaths (just six months apart) left me teary eyed. This is a wonderful book and it is one that I'll be recommending to young and older readers alike.