April 2020

Here are the best books I read this month!

Apeirogon, Colum McCann (2020)

This title refers to a shape that looks like a circle, but a close examination will show many sides. McCann looks at a long friendship between two men, based on their grief over the deaths of their daughters, and examines it in myriad ways.  Bassam Aramin is a Palestinian academic, whose ten-year-old daughter was killed by Israelis shooting rubber bullets. Rami Elhanen is an Israeli living in Jerusalem, whose daughter was killed in a suicide bombing when she was thirteen.  Bonded by grief, both men speak around the world for peace. This book is made up of mostly short bits of prose, and this makes reading about their excruciating pain on the edge of manageable. It is a lovely, emotional and intelligent book, and I know it will be on my top ten list in December.  It may be on my top 10 of all time.

Go Down the Mountain, Meredith Battle (2019)

Bee is a teenager during the Depression when she meets (and falls for) a government photographer visiting her mountain outpost in Virginia. Her dad has just died of snake bite, her mother is cruel, and the idea of leaving is romantic.  When she actually is pushed out her home by the government, she and her community resist futilely, losing the beauty of the mountains as well as all their possessions. Treated as an ignorant hillbilly, Bee is thrown out of her home, imprisoned in a mental asylum, and has to use all her resources to stay alive and to fight back.  This story of loss nevertheless has humor, love, and survival. Based on real events, Battle’s book reads like a Laura Ingalls Wilder of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

An Ocean of Minutes, Thea Lim (2018)

I picked this up from the recommended books at my local bookstore, Third Place Books. In 1981, Thea Lim imagines, a deadly, fast moving virus threatens to kill Frank, who has just proposed to Polly. The only possibility of survival is time travel: if Polly becomes an indentured servant in the future, Frank will receive the best of care.  They agree to meet twelve years in the future, and Polly is sure of their love surviving, so sure that it is hard to think of her as a hero. The world Polly flies to has been dramatically transformed by the virus, with a majority of people (and businesses) gone, the country actually split into two, and indentured servitude taking all her autonomy. This science fiction story from 2018 grabbed my attention at a time I thought the only books I could focus on were fantasies.  Its dystopia is strangely insightful in this pandemic, of how even at the worst moments, little things express humanity. 

Trace Elements, Donna Leon (2020)

Commissario Guido Brunetti struggles through another overly hot summer in Vienna, dodging tourists, sipping coffee and large glasses of water, and dreaming of his wife’s meals. He is accompanied by Claudio Griffoni, from Naples, in following up on a dying woman’s request to talk to the police.  Her husband, recently killed in a motorcycle accident, was murdered, she seems to suggest. Senora Elettra is again an amazing research assistant. The corruption, decay, and pandering to tourists that represent Venice is (again) the fascinating subject of Leon’s detective story, and this time I don’t think Brunetti has conquered its influence.

One To Watch, Kate Stayman-London (2020)

Bea is a plus size fashion blogger, chosen to be the lead in a reality show modelled after The Bachelor ( I’ve only watched this show once, so the author may have transformed it in ways I don’t know). Bea was vetted after her posts ridiculing the show for its lack of diversity went viral.  The story bounces between her posts, her story, to blogs and social media reactions and conversations, to descriptions of episodes.  It is a romance, and a fun escape from the loneliness of staying at home.  Bea’s suitors, initially disappointing, are more than I expected, and she realizes that they are not the problem. She needs to change herself and take more risks if she wants to find love.

Young Adult

The Extraordinaries, TJ Klune (2020)

Nova City has superheroes, called Extraordinaries, and Nick is their biggest fan.  How does he know he’s the biggest?  Because he writes the most popular fan fiction, expressing his love for Shadow Star by creating adventures that place him in gay romances.  And Nick is in love, a crush fanned into obsession by a chance meeting where he’s saved by you know who.  This coming of age romance had me laughing so hard my stomach hurt. Nick’s emotions are so over the top, he’d be annoying were it not for his friends.  It was supposed to be out this month, but its publication is delayed until July.  Get a copy then!  Klune had fun writing this, and he shares it so well!

Sword in the Stars, Amy Capetta and Cori McCarthy (2020)

I loved their first books, Once & Future, a mix of science fiction and fantasy.  It imagines King Arthur is endlessly reincarnated, until his soul reaches Ari, a queer space explorer in the intergalalctic future.  In this second volume, Ari and her band of LGBTQ friends are transported by Merlin into the months before King Arthur begins his Round Table.  This is perfect for fans of The Once and Future King and science fiction. It includes lots of relationship growth and addresses communal ethics, which may also be what gets us through this corona virus pandemic. I also think this is for adult fans of YA.

The Grace Year, Kim Liggett (2019)

Ironically, the grace year is a horror story of what girls can do to each other when sent to an island for a year, a mix of Lord of the Flies, “The Lottery,” and Handmaid’s Tale. Tierney has been a tomboy all her life, playing in the woods and being independent, until the county’s ritual forces her into a religious marriage market.  Chosen to be a wife, she travels with the other 16-year-olds to an enclave for a year to destroy the magic that young girls have. Much of the suspense comes from the secrecy that surrounds the year. Tierney quickly sees the cruelty of others, but it takes longer for her to realize the depths of the society’s evil. Violence, brutality, and a lack of survival skills mean that less than half the girls survive what is called The Grace Year. 

Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything, by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

Sia’s mom has been gone for three years.  She left after being harassed by the town sheriff and ICE agents, and her attempt to return across the border illegally ended in her disappearance.  Sia finds meaning in the magic realism of her culture’s spirituality, especially comforted by her abuela’s ghost,  when a new boy in town disrupts her nightly routine.  Spoiler alert: although the first part of the book reads like a romance with important cultural statements, it transforms into science fiction. A UFO is haunting the night sky, and it relates to Sia’s mother.  If you can enjoy a book that takes a new direction midstream, then you should read this. It is graceful, spiritual, and beauty.