Kyrie
The Unwanteds reads very much like what it is - a dystopian story for middle-grade kids. So much of the story is written down for a younger audience.
I've gotta admire its imagination, though.
It's also got a really good message about being open with your emotions. Male characters have vulnerable moments, and cry, and they're not ridiculed for it. So, props to you, book! I appreciate what you're doing.
I read a fair amount of time travel sci-fi. It's my favorite sub-genre, by far, even when it's not strictly sci-fi. (I'm looking at you, Susanna Kearsley.)
But I've never read anything quite like this before.
I'm pretty sure that the main reason time travel appeals to me as a story device is the same reason I like stories with well-crafted magic system - I like watching stories unfold working within a defined set of rules.
Psychology of Time Travel manages to both break standard time-travel story conventions, and create its own rules built around those broken conventions.
For example, there's no rule saying that you can't interact with your past/future self. In fact, it's encouraged. There are endless numbers of a time traveler moving around in the timeline, visiting themselves, or reliving past events at any given moment. There are slang terms for going back/forward in time to have sex with one of your past/future selves. But, there's also a strict timeline involved. If a Future You visits a Past You just once, then Future You knows that they never travel back to see Themselves again, because Future You never experienced that happening.
You can't travel back in time to a point before the invention of the time machine, and you can only travel about 200 years into the future.
There are also paradox items that have just always existed, because an older version of a time traveler will gift it to a past version of themselves. So, the older version will always have had the item because they were given the item in the past, by themselves.
That's the sort of shit I live for in time travel stories. ✨
And all of that's just me gushing about the technical aspects of the book. I haven't even started on about how all of the main cast are strong female characters, a good portion of them are romantically involved with other women, the close look the book takes at the psychological effects of time travel and mental health, OR the murder mystery.
There's a lot going on in this book, and it is all wonderful.
Running Interjection Tics Count:
53 - “of course”
33 - “you see”
32 - “it seems”
34 - “they say”
10 - “it turns out”
I have so much fun getting these tallies. Like the previous two books in the series, The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures and The World of Lore: Wicked Mortals, if you're a fan of either the Lore podcast, or folklore in general, you'll like this book.
Running Interjection Tics Count:
45 - “of course”
58 - “you see”
37 - “it seems”
18 - “they say”
18 - “it turns out”
Wicked Mortals vs Monstrous Creatures
- 10 “of course”s
+26 “you sees”
+12 “it seems”
+1 “they say”
+9 “it turns out”
As with the first book in the series, Wicked Mortals is a collection of Lore podcast episodes, this time gathering together stories about the worst of humanity. And H.H. Holmes. So much H.H. Holmes.
If you like the podcast, you'll like this book. If you like true crime stories - famous, and obscure - you'll probably also like this book.
I found it neat, both when I listened to the episode, and when I saw them in the book, that the two Southern Ax Man stories were mentioned. Further fun fact about the Ax Man who traveled between Louisiana and Texas (as opposed to the New Orleans Ax Man) - even though Jack the Ripper is popularly considered to be the first “serial killer” the Ax Man was active before him. One of the major theories of the time was actually that the Ax Man escaped overseas, and he and Jack the Ripper were the same person.
Then again, the tabloids of the day thought EVERYONE was Jack the Ripper, so...
I'm just going to put this here:
“Unless you want to wind up like Severin of Fairfold, encased in glass for centuries while mortals line up to take pictures with his body, you're going to stay awake.”
Confirmed same universe as Dark Part of the Forest.
I'm dead. This was an amazing sequel. It took all of the best parts of the first book, and ramped up the stakes.
I need Book 3. NOW.
There were no running pony jokes in this one. THANK GOODNESS.
I'll take the running Evil Overlord list over pony jokes any day.
This book in general had a more mature tone than the first. There aren't as many jokes and crammed in moments of snappy dialogue. The writing gives the more serious moments a chance to settle in and breathe, without immediately undercutting the scene. Callum and the rest of the group are forced into more morally grey situations. They do right things for the wrong reasons, and wrong things for the right reasons. I always love seeing fantasy worlds that aren't strictly Good vs Evil, and I love even more seeing them in books written for children.The plot is still a bit erratic, though, especially at the start of the book. The first few months of the time at the Magisterium flash by - several months pass while the book focuses on Havoc's daily walk routine. And once the main plot kicks in, all semblance of this being a “magical boarding school” gets thrown out of the metaphorical window.
In general, the book is an improvement on The Iron Trial. I was going to just ignore this series, but I came across the next few books, so I suppose I'll continue on with it.
Running thoughts while reading this book:
“Wait - haven't they used the Sario Rip time-travel plot before?” * scrolls through summaries of the previous books* “
Yeah, there we go. The Forgotten (Animorphs #11). This makes me think so much of The Forgotten. And why do none of them seem to remember that they've been in a Sario Rip before?”
“How is Tobias the only one who recognizes the dinosaurs? Like...how? I mean, I get the rest not knowing the names of everything...but really? It should not take that long to figure out that you're being attacked by dinosaurs, and not some remote, undiscovered reptiles. Especially when - I cannot stress this enough - THEY HAVE TIME-TRAVELED BEFORE. This is a thing they know can happen!”
“Sario Rip? More like saurio R.I.P., amiright???”
“Did Ax ever pay attention in school? Every time something alien comes up, he immediately starts on about how they covered that in school, but he didn't really pay attention to the lesson that day. And again - he's already told them about Sario Rips. Why does no one remember the Sario Rips???”
In all seriousness, though, this one was fine. The lack of dinosaur recognition by everyone but Tobias was a bit strange, and it was obnoxious that the ending basically just hit a reset button on everything that happened, but I did like the moral dilemma that the kids ended up facing. So, there's that. :/
I really wish my brother's school had had all of these when we were kids. As it was, we read the series piecemeal, based on what was available at any given time. This is one of the books we missed. I think we had skipped over this one, straight to the start of the whole David arc.
GAH.
This book got all sorts of dark, and ethical. AND IT WAS AMAZING THAT THIS WAS A CHILDREN'S BOOK.
The plot device that saves Cassie at the end of the book was a little goofy and contrived, but I'm willing to let it go. It's Animorph Town, Jake.
2018 was a terrible year. Personally, and just in general.
The year started with my mom dying, and only went downhill from there. The only upsides have been that I've found I've got a wonderful, supportive group of friends, and I'm closer to moving out of my cramped, broken apartment than I've ever been. (I got my first car this year, as well as all of the bills that come with it.)
But I know that 2018 wasn't kind to a lot of people. So I'll just get on to the books.
I said in 2017 that I wanted to cut down on some of my TBR. I stuck to my guns, and most of the books I've read were from one of my...4 TBR lists? I think I'm up to 4 lists: Want to Read (for physical books I own), To-Read-Kindle, Library-Hold, and Recommended. I finally feel like I've gotten them all to manageable levels.
I also started going to my local library again. It definitely helps that my library got renovated this year, and is so much more up-to-date! They've got self-check outs now, they moved the “Hold” section out from behind the circulation desk, so that people can pick up their own books, AND they've got these really fancy scanners that you just set a stack of books on, and the entire stack gets scanned at once.And of course, all of this happens as I'm finally getting ready to move out of the state. But that's fine. Where I'm going, the libraries are super nice. (I scouted ahead of time.)
It was difficult choosing a Top 5 list this year. I didn't read as much as I usually do, and I was more focused on cleaning off those dusty TBR shelves, so I didn't have as much freedom as the past couple of years, where I could just pick exactly what I wanted to read at that moment. It also made me start keeping notes on why certain books were on my shelf...some of them have been sitting around for so long, I've forgotten why I wanted to read them in the first place. But, they were on the list, so I read them.
I had to go over everything I read before I started writing this end of year review, just to try to find a few more books to pad the list out.
1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - I finally did it. I finally started reading the Sherlock Holmes stories. I didn't make through all 56 stories, like I was planning, but it was a good start. I made it through Memoirs. I ended up enjoying more of the stories in Adventures, which is why this one makes the list.
2. I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer - This book is heartbreaking. So, it fits in well with the rest of 2018. It took me until November to be able to get my hands on a copy of this book from the library. I read it in a single sitting. This one hurt to read, especially when you get towards the end of book, where Michelle's friends who put it together write about how they tried to honor her voice, because she wrote in such a way that it didn't feel like you were reading a book written by an author - it felt like you were talking to a friend. And I could totally see that.
3. Homestuck: Book 1: Act 1 & Act 2 - I enjoyed Homestuck, and it's even more amusing with Hussie's commentary. I'd forgotten a lot of the tiny details from the start that didn't have much to do with the plot. And Homestuck's magical power of providing crazy instances of synchronicity...like John's obsession with Harry Anderson, who died on April 16th this year. Which, since the book was published for John's birthday on April 13th, means that I was reading about Hussie talking about writing about Harry Anderson the day Harry Anderson died. And if that doesn't sum up the feeling of reading Homestuck, I don't know what does.
4. Spinning Silver - I figured I'd end up enjoying this one. I really liked Uprooted. But as the story unraveled, I found myself cheering for the various ways the story re-imagined the fairy tales that went into it. I loved the way it all came together. I loved this book.
5. The Cruel Prince - This one actually shocked me with how much I ended up enjoying it. I didn't expect I'd like it as much as I did...it was the awesome fairy court portrayal that did it. I'm a sucker for books with complex, morally gray, varied species of fairies. I need The Wicked King. NOW.
Honorable Mentions: I had to scrape to come up with these this year.
*The End (Series of Unfortunate Events #13) - See, I'm straight-up cheating, here. This one was a re-read that I decided on because of the beautiful Netflix adaptation. I couldn't entirely remember how the Series ended (though it turns out I remembered the important parts). In The End (hehe) I enjoyed the entire Series just as much as I did when I first read them 12 years ago. God, I feel old...
* Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale - I really liked this essay, but the real reason it made my Honorable Mentions list doesn't have as much to do with the book as it does the awesome conversations it spawned with my friend Renee. Out of nowhere, she started talking about how she misses nursery rhymes, and how she thought that not teaching our children nursery rhymes or fairy tales does them a disservice. So, when this book mirrored the exact sentiment she was trying to convey, I bought a copy so that I could reference various quotes for her. I'm slowly working on turning her into a Book Friend™ - she's been talking about dusting off her Kindle, and you KNOW I'm all there to help her enable her book habit.
* Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fiction - I love reading books about books, and I grew up with most of these series. (Well, Goosebumps. I was an avid Goosebumps collector as a kid. I read a couple of BSC books back in the day, but I've only recently been introduced to the insanity that it Sweet Valley High.)
And that's it. For 2019, I'm going to continue working on my TBR lists. Maybe this is the year I'll actually get through the backlog books, and keep the TBR lists to current or upcoming titles. (Not holding my breath on that actually happening, but...)I'm not going to repeat last year's mistake of saying that there's no way 2019 can be worse than 2018. Clearly, 2018 took that as a personal challenge. So, all I'll say is, here's hoping that 2019 is a better year.
This marks the furthest I ever managed to read in the Animorphs series as a child. I don't know if my brother's school had caught on to how dark these things were, and stopped ordering them after a certain point, or if they didn't want to factor the entire series into the library budget. There are only so many books you can store in an elementary school library, after all.
This is the last book of the series I remember reading.
I know the reputation of the rest of the David arc. Let's do this.
I had borrowed this from the library, because I've been slowly working on reading and gathering a collection of various folklore/fairy tale histories and anthologies.
About halfway through, I ordered myself a physical copy of the book for my folklore/fairy tale shelf. It's a decent history, and progression of the fairy tale's place in society.
The book is worth it, if only for the reading recommendations.
The more Zora Neale Hurston I read, the more she becomes a personal hero of mine.
I really respect her work as a folklorist. I'm upset that it's taken me this long to get around to reading more of her work.
The first half of Mules and Men is a written narration of Zora's interactions with the people she was collecting the stories from, as well as the stories themselves. The second half of the book documents Zora's investigation of hoodoo culture in New Orleans. She doesn't go into too much detail, though, and mainly focuses on the various teachers she worked with, and the workings they were asked to perform while she was with them. She would later do a more thorough study of hoodoo in Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica, which covers the subject better than this collection.
Running Interjection Tics Count:
55 - “of course”
32 - “you see”
25 - “it seems”
17 - “they say”
9 - “it turns out”
I love Lore. It's one of the few podcasts I can listen to in a single sitting, without my mind wandering too far. Because I'm focusing so hard to paying attention, though, there are some things my brain decides to pick up on.
This is a collection of scripts for episodes of the podcast based on monsters. All of the staples of Lore are here: werewolves, vampires...pookahs.
The nice thing about Lore is that it's really accessible. You don't have to know a thing about the podcast to enjoy this book. It is what it sounds like - a collection of lore.
Rhyme of Rhyme
Wild on the mountain peak the wind
Repeats its old refrain,
Like ghosts of mortals who have sinned,
And fain would sin again.
For "wind" I do not rhyme to "mind,"
Like many mortal men,
"Again" (when one reflects) 'twere kind
To rhyme as if "agen."
I never met a single soul
Who SPOKE of "wind" as "wined"
And yet we use it, on the whole,
To rhyme to "find" and "blind."
We SAY, "Now don't do that AGEN,
"When people give us pain,
In poetry, nine times in ten,
It rhymes with "Spain" or "Dane."
Oh, which are wrong or which are right?
Oh, which are right or wrong?
The sounds in prose familiar, quite,
Or those we meet in song?
To hold that "love" can rhyme to "prove"
Requires some force of will,
Yet in the ancient lyric groove
We meet them rhyming still.
This was our learned fathers' wont
In prehistoric times,
We follow it, or if we don't,
We oft run short of rhymes.
- Andrew Lang