Brandon

Such a beautiful story, a love letter to her mother and the Korean culture to which the author desperately longs to stay connected. Michelle Zauner is a thoughtful writer who says more less, never trying to overexplain things or soften the emotional edge. She took the grief of losing her mother and made something beautiful out of it, in her own version of Japanese kintsugi.

THE RENEGADES, by Lee Rudnicki. Rating: 7 stars (out of 5)

Disclaimer: I will try as much as possible to be impartial in my review of this book, but it is a steep challenge because I am a character in it (as an attorney with respect for footnotes, finding myself the subject of a footnote on page 48 is one of the highlights of my life). The San Francisco Renegades drum and bugle corps existed from 1996 through 2013, but Rudnick's book covers the most important three years in the corps' history, when the corps went from being a "softball team who occasionally plays music" (a not-unfair critique) to a legitimate Drum Corps Associate finalist with possibly the best marketing plan in the activity. As one of the key architects of that marketing and growth plan, Rudnicki is the perfect narrator for this story. THE RENEGADES is a complete reworking of Rudnicki's "The Renegade Journal," written in 2002, and readers of both will notice stylistic similarities such as the choice to write large parts of both stories as date/time stamped diary entries. THE RENEGADES includes much more storytelling, especially about the early years, and the author acknowledges in the introduction that he has taken some liberties with the facts to make the book flow better. When I heard this, I was not sure how to feel, because these are events that actually happened to me and my friends, but now that I have seen the finished product I can tell you that none of the modifications have changed material facts of the story. If anything, changes enhance the chaos and insanity of events that were, on their own, EXTREMELY chaotic and insane. It is very difficult to fictionalize events without modifying the underlying truth of them, but Rudnicki did a masterful job of it. He also appears to have done an amazing amount of research for the book - every email that he included is VERBATIM from my recollection of the emails as they were sent and received, and dates and scores feel accurate to my memories of them. Even if you are not a drum corps fan I hope you will read this book, because it is the story of creating something extremely complex and wonderful out of nothing with 100+ of your friends, and the infectious joy of seeing something go from being a dream to a reality before your eyes. The story is funny, revealing, touching, and very, very true. As thankful as I am for what Lee got started 25 years ago, I am even more thankful that he took the time to record these stories so the world - and those who lived it - can remember them forever.

Hats off to Grady Hendrix for another creative twist on the horror genre. HORRORSTOR tells the story of a haunted ORSK warehouse (a knockoff IKEA competitor) through the story of Amy, one of the company's young associates whose career is not exactly going places. But the story is almost secondary to the format of the book, which is laid out in the fashion of an IKEA catalog. If you normally read e-books or listen to audiobooks, I strongly consider you make an exception and pick up the print edition of HORROSTOR. Each chapter is named after a different piece of furniture, and the products - and their descriptions - get weirder the deeper into the book you get. I tore through this one in two days, so HORRORSTOR is a great choice for anyone trying to hit a reading goal late in the year. The story itself is good, although the ending doesn't wrap up as much of the plot threads as I would have liked. 4 stars.

The thing about human/ghost romances (it's got to be it's own genre) is there really is no "will they/won't they" tension, unless there's a twist, and I won't spoil for you whether there is or not. The "dead boyfriend" is often a convenient way to tell a story about saying goodbye. Author Ashley Boston took an interesting angle in this book by making the protagonist's family run the town mortuary, and the examples of how the Day family has supported so many people in the town through the worst time in their lives makes an interesting backdrop. The story started a little slowly for me but pace picked up dramatically when it is revealed how Florence's ex-boyfriend betrayed her. He was such an SOB that I would have added an extra half-star to this review if his comeuppance had been more satisfying. Overall an interesting story and a quick read/listen.

Reading Michael Chabon's "Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" is like taking a meandering walk through a neighborhood with someone who grew up there. You are not going to take a direct path from point A to point B, but in stopping and dwelling on the details you learn to see them through the eyes of the characters themselves. It helps to have a dictionary handy too, which surprised me for a tale based largely around comic books. As a die-hard Marvel Comics reader from the 1980s, I was ecstatic that Chabon chose to set the heart of the story in the origins of the Golden Age of Comics. The story from there - the relationship, love, sacrifice, forgiveness, and reuniting that occurs between Sam, Joe and Rosa - is as heartbreaking as any I have read. Each faces their challenges, sometimes devastating, as they pursue happiness among the backdrop of WW2. Five stars.