MADreads Reviews

From what I hear from other readers I'm not alone in, more often then I'd like, struggling with my ability to really sink into a book. I don't know if the attention deficit comes from work, too many devices, or the general stressiness of life, but often I find that I have to work to stick to a book, even if I was sure I'd love it. But one genre lately has really been working for me and that is fantasy fiction. Something about entering a completely different world has just been easier.

As I sit wrapped in my turtleneck and sweatshirt, I find myself turning to books to warm up with. So here are some new picture books to enjoy together.

Chaiwala!, Priti Birla Maheshwari, ill by Ashley Barron.
A mother and child have just enough time at the train stop to go to the chai counter for a bit of sweet indulgence.

Paula Hawkin's latest mystery thriller takes the reader on a twisty tour down a London towpath full of murder and mayhem. A towpath in England is a path beside a canal or river, used by people or animals towing boats, also called a towing path. A considerable amount of action in this novel takes place on the towpath as characters travel to and from a neighborhood of houseboats. This provides a noteworthy setting. 

The Lakeview Mystery Book Group had been meeting in person over the last few months but decided to go back to meeting on Zoom now that the nights are longer and are getting colder. Last week was our return to Zoom and given how the online platform can change the shape of meetings, I was wondering if our talk would be as comfortable and free-wheeling as it had been for our in-person meetings. The answer? It certainly was a relaxed, energetic discussion. But was that the group or the book?

Early in Matrix, Lauren Groff’s stunning new novel, Marie of France recalls a nightingale that Queen Eleanor had raised by hand, caged among the ladies of the English court. She despises this bird, which sings the same song, unlike the wild birds that Marie knew from her days when her mother and aunts were alive, free and fierce to pursue a life away from the strictures of court and the stringent roles of the ladies there. Marie herself defies easy categorization, as both bastard and royal, the product of rape from the lanky Plantagenet king and her Amazonian French mother.

There's a trope in the romance genre that almost always entertains me. And there is an author who does likewise. So you can imagine my happiness when I realized that After Dark with the Duke by Julie Anne Long has both.

I just finished the Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman and I have to say that it was a pretty fun & clever book, with adventure to spare. There are WAR COVIDS! Bigger than a person! And goblins and giants, and magical tattoos and an assassin...on the craziest road trip ever. And it was funny, which is something I feel is missing in many fantasy settings.

I've been waiting to tell you about John Scalzi's forthcoming title for a while now as it was just the antidote I needed for a reading slump. At the time most things I'd been reading were eliciting a tepid, 'ah it was fine' response. And then came the Kaiju. Not only were they a saving grace for me, but based on the author note included in the book, were one for Scalzi as well. He'd been struggling with another book as the pandemic worsened and just couldn't make progress when the idea for this story popped into his head.

Kazimieras “Kaz” Zemeckis was bound for the stars.  At least, that was the plan before a bird strike on a routine fighter training flight left him with a glass eye and a job shepherding astronauts through the sort of space flights he was supposed to be on himself. By 1973, the Apollo missions are winding down as budget cuts take their toll, but the Apollo 18 trip promises to be like no other.

Anna Kang's fuzzy purple and brown creatures from You Are (Not) Small and That's (Not) Mine ​are back in this silly and delightful picture book about facing your fears. There are a lot of things to be scared of out there: tubs of hairy spiders, pits of lava, or (eeek!) snakes! But not a roller coaster! Roller coasters are fun! Uh oh, until there is a snake riding on the coaster with you... However, our two brave friends still hop on the coaster for a hilariously illustrated adventure. I love how this book ends.

Karen Brooks gives Chaucer's Wife of Bath a chance to tell her side of the story in this vivid and absorbing tale of how a woman could gain agency in her own life in a time when she legally had none.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that we’d like to have Mary Roach in our high school science classes. Her ‘can-you-believe-this’ odd factoid interjections would likely liven up most classrooms while making those facts that teacher presents stick all the better.

Recently the National Book Foundation announced the 2021 Finalists for the National Book Awards.  According to their website "the mission of the National Book Foundation is to celebrate the best literature in America, expand its audience, and ensure that books have a prominent place in American culture."   The categories include Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, Young People's Literature.

October and the spooky season are just around the corner and I have the book for you. Elly Griffiths' (best known for her Ruth Galloway series of mysteries) Stranger Diaries is suspenseful and even spooky at times (there's even a ghost) and is a gothic book about a gothic story that is being written about for a book. Okay that sounds like nonsense, I know.

The graphic novel adaptation of Nnedi Okorafor's short story "On the Road" takes the reader on a journey that connects the mind and body with an infinite past of cultural heritage. Chioma, a young Nigerian-American police officer from New York City, visits family in a small, rural Nigerian village during a terrible storm and unleashes an unidentified power. Chioma's western sensibilities try to reconcile what's happening but she struggles, even with the help of her family.

It may seem incongruous that The Ninth Hour, Alice McDermott’s exquisite family saga of faith, sacrifice and grace, should begin with a suicide. When Jim shoos his young wife Annie out of their Brooklyn tenement to do some shopping, locks the door behind her and turns on the gas, it looks as bleak as could be for the young widow. Early-twentieth century Brooklyn is a tough place for its many inhabitants, and particularly so for a young Irish widow with a baby on the way.

There are some books that make me feel like I'm smiling from the first page to the last. I finish the book and immediately want to tell everyone about the delight I had in reading it (I think I've already mentioned it to multiple co-workers). Such was the case with A Marvellous Light, a debut queer fantasy novel full of "magic, contracts, and conspiracies".

Mila Has Two Beds shares a story familiar to many children – going between two houses and two parents. Mila says goodbye to “Sweet Daddy” and her dog, Pepper, and returns to the “Mommy-house” and “smiling Mommy”. The illustrations are drenched in color and show happy and cozy scenes and each parent’s house. Mila has a different bed, a different toothbrush, and a different bedtime routine at each house. Even the goodnight wishes are different: “Good night, my darling,” says her Mommy, and “Nighty-night, little princess,” says her Daddy.

The fall sports season has started and what better way to start it with a top 10 list from Booklist. The latest is for new sports books. This diverse list includes books about polo in the inner city, tennis stars, soccer players, a woman boxer, football in WWII, and Victorian spiritualists. Are there any titles that you would add?

Thirty award-winning authors and illustrators share stories and discussions about "the talk" - the conversations they have with their children about race and racism, identity, and self-esteem. For some parents it's a way to prepare their kids, for others it's a way to protect them, for still others it's a way to explain. All of the talks and the reasons for the talk are varied, just like humans are varied.