MADreads Reviews

Little Women was originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869 making the classic 150 years old this year.

Celebrate National Poetry Month by reading some poetry. Throughout the month of April I'm going to feature new poetry titles.  Poetry isn't everyone's cup of tea, but as with a lot of genres, sometimes it's just a matter of finding the one that works for you. So check out some of the new and upcoming poetry books listed below and let us know if you find the one.

This is the book I'm going to be recommending to everyone in 2019- it's the delightful, funny, and very relevant story of Alex, the First Son of the US, and Henry, Prince of England and their journey from having a PR driven "friendship" to a real relationship and love. The story takes place a kind of alternate reality where a progressive female with biracial children has won the presidency. Her son, Alex, believes that he's meant to go into politics, and behind his seemingly party lifestyle, he works tirelessly to campaign and research in preparation for his mother's hopeful reelection.

As war overtook their home in Iraq in 2010, the al Rabeeah family sought a safe refuge. Their choice was the ancient and vibrant city of Homs in Syria. But within a year, their hope had turned into a nightmare as Homs became the epicenter of struggle against Syrian president Bashir al-Assad. Abu Bakr al Rabeeah was ten and one of eight children in the al Rabeeah family when the violence broke out, and witnessed the devastating siege of his new home before his family was able to finally escape to Canada.

This novel is all the things. All the words. All the awards. All the feelings.

The most tragic shipwreck in history may be one very few people remember.  It’s not the Titanic.  It is the World War II sinking of the German military transport ship Wilhelm Gustloff in January 1945.  On a ship designed to carry 1,465 passengers and crew, 10,582 desperate refugees from the Balkans and Eastern Europe, fleeing the advancing Russian troops, crammed on-board.  Two torpedoes fired from a Russian submarine sank the ship and 9,343 passengers drowned, including 5,000 children. 

Khoury's new YA novel is a science fiction imagining that plays on the mythos created around the last Romanov, Anastasia, rumored to have escaped when the rest of her family was murdered. 

Purple and Black is brilliantly done - a gem of a book (if I may be so cliche). Tightly woven. Thought-provoking. And all of that in a slender 113 pages. This is a fantasy novel, but don't let that prevent you reading it. It's only a fantasy in that it has a made up country. Everything else about it reads like historical fiction.

One of the awards announced Monday in Seattle is the William C Morris YA Debut Award. This is a lesser known award (compared to the big hitters like Newbery and Cadlecott), but it's the one I look most forward to. They release a list of finalists in December, so right there you have a handful of brand new YA authors you know you should keep an eye on. And the choices are always thoughtful, exciting, and fresh. 

In the second of her new series set in 1920s New York former con artist Elizabeth Miles helps a friend whose husband has died (killed by a streetcar). As though grieving her suddenly dead husband weren't bad enough, Priscilla Knight learns after his death that all of her money is gone. She'd come into this second marriage a wealthy woman and somehow in less then a year her husband Endicott made all that money disappear. Now Priscilla isn't sure how she'll support herself and her two young daughters.

Fans of Sally Thorne's debut novel, The Hating Game, have been RABIDLY waiting for her second book for what feels like decades, but was actually three years. Her hilarious, galloping writing never lets the reader rest a beat between moments of chemistry-- it has a wonderful dizzying effect. Almost everyone I know has read The Hating Game at my insistence, and many of them simply and reverently refer to it as The Book. 

This fictionalized biography of Artemisia Gentileschi is as beautiful, powerful, and haunting as the paintings its subject produced. Gentileschi is best known as a celebrated Italian Baroque painter, and for insisting on trying her rapist in a court of law-- two things that were near unheard of for women of her time. 

MG Martin is a writer working for the comic book publishing company responsible for the comics that spurred the geekdom of her youth. Her dream job, or so you'd think. But things have stalled. She struggles to have her ideas heard in a building full of men and while she still wants to write the comics she loves, she's wondering if she should be pushing for more or even pursuing her love of costume design. Then into her lap falls a real-life mystery.

Well the votes are tallied and the results for the hashtag #libfaves18 are in. With 1873 votes from librarians across the country the favorite books of 2018 have been picked. Topping the list - in a tie! - are Circe by Madeline Miller and Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover.

It's 1919 in England and the Great War is over, but its shadow still looms large over England and all of Europe. Verity Kent is one of those struggling with a new life and her attempts to find a new normal. She's grounded in the here and now, but when a friend asks that she attend a seance, she agrees. Verity is a skeptic, to say the least, so when the medium channels a woman Verity once worked with in Belgium during the war, her suspicions are raised. Why would the medium make mention of a woman who worked as an anti-german spy?

I posted a couple "best of" lists last week. Today starts the 10 day #libfaves18 countdown. Each day for the next ten days library workers across the land will be posting their favorite 2018 titles, one day at a time. They'll use the hashtag #libfaves18 on Twitter so you can follow along. Tallying is happening each day and at the end of the countdown the biggest vote-getters will be posted.

What a time to be alive. What a time for poetry that gives life. Rupi Kaur, Nayyirah Waheed, Danez Smith, Ada Limón, Morgan Parker, Tommy Pico, Chen Chen, Kaveh Akbar, Ocean Vuong, Solman Sharif, Mai Der Vang, Yesika Salgado. There is no shortage of new school poets with distinctive viewpoints and a moving way with words. Add Hieu Minh Nguyen, the Minnesotan son of Vietnamese immigrants, to that list.

Tasha Suri is a librarian who studied creative writing at University and both of those facts are evident in her debut fantasy novel which is clearly well-researched and oh so creative.

NPR's Book Concierge is back for 2018 and there are more then 300 titles for you to sort and peruse. You can look at all 319 titles or you can break it down by category. Or if you want to narrow it down even more, pick a couple of categories and see which titles fit your new criteria. There is quite simply something for everyone in this massive catalog. So take a look. Do you want to see which two books work for Art Lovers and Book Clubs? It's possible. How about the Comic/Graphic Novel that is Rather Short? You got it.