Books I Read and Other Assorted Oddities

 I've heard a lot of good things about this book, so I picked it up on Audible before I'd finished The Nightingale . This is what I rolled last time for an audiobook. I finished it really pretty quick for as long of a book as it is. The Women  follows the story of Frankie McGrath as she fights for her parents' approval. It starts with her father's "heroes wall" in his office: a wall of pictures depicting men in service of their country, and women getting married. When Frankie's brother leaves for war, his friend tells her "women can be heroes too." This sparks something in Frankie, and she joins the army as a nurse. She ships out to Vietnam shortly after learning of her brother's death. There, she serves in two evac hospitals, treating wounded soldiers as a surgical nurse. Frankie serves two tours in Vietnam, then returns home to find a country unwilling to recognize the service of any Vietnam vets, and especially the women. First of all, I d...

 This was a book club book for my teacher book club. I was initially kind of excited to read it because the title is intriguing and it's science fiction. Death of the Author  follows the story of wheelchair-bound Zelu. At the start of the book, Zelu is an unsuccessful author and university professor. She loses her creative writing teaching position due to her arrogance and insensitive comments toward some of her students. In her frustration and desperation, she sits down and pounds out a novel like nothing she's ever tried to write before: Rusted Robots, a sci-fi novel about robots after humanity. The book is wildly successful and propels her into fame. I really don't know where to start with this book. For one, I found the main character, Zelu, to be utterly intolerable. Nothing was ever her fault, and everything was always someone else's fault. Everyone was always judging her, and she was overly concerned about what everyone might have been thinking of her. I felt tha...

 This was one of the book club choices for my neighborhood book club. We called it historical fiction, but I didn't really feel like it was actually historical fiction, but I did enjoy it. The Names follows the storyline of a woman Cora and her abusive husband. Cora is in a terrible marriage. The story starts with Cora on her way to the registrars office to fill out the birth certificate for her newest child. Her oldest child, Maia, thinks the boy's name should be Bear. Cora wants to name him Julian. Her husband, Gordon, wants to name him after himself as it's a family name. The story follows all the way through what would happen depending on which name the baby is given. The concept of this book was really fascinating. I highly enjoyed the way this book was written and told, though it was a little confusing at the start. I also had a hard time with the time jumps that happen in between each chapter. Really though, I loved the characters in the book. Bear, Julian, and Gordo...

 This book is highly recommended online and from some of my book club friends. It's taken me months to get through this, but I ended up enjoying it. The Nightingale  follows the story of two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle. Vianne is the older sister, married with a daughter, Sophie. Isabelle is a beauty, but a wild spirit. Never one to follow the rules, Isabelle frequently shows up where she's not supposed to be. As the war breaks out, Isabelle finds herself disobeying everyone's expectations again, and throwing herself into the resistance. With her husband gone, Vianne is forced to billet a German officer. This only gets more complicated as Isabelle's resistance life clashes with Vianne's attempts to protect her family. I loved this book, but I also hated it. I struggle a bit with violence against children, and while it is historically accurate, I really had a hard time with that aspect of the novel. The characters were interesting, though I was a bit annoyed by both...

 This was a book club choice for this month, and I've never read it before. I will say, going into this review, (as I do frequently) that romance is not my genre... Lina thought she knew her mother. It had always been the two of them, and her mother was a force of nature. Then came the diagnosis, and the details of the man that her mother said was Lina's father. After her mother's passing, Lina agreed to go and stay with her father in Italy, where he lived. Upon arriving, she finds that he lived in a WWII memorial graveyard, and she met Ren, the most gorgeous boy she'd ever seen. Then comes the journal. It's from her mother, and the first words say, "I made the wrong choice." Can Lina uncover the truth about her mother's time in Italy and her own self? Overall, this book was cute, but predictable. I had most of it figured out before I was very far into the book, and it felt almost like a formulaic YA romance (the first boy is always the  boy, no matter...

 Continuing the Inheritance Games  series, I was really excited going into this book. I've enjoyed all of the characters and the story, the riddles and puzzles, so I was so eager to continue in this series. The Final Gambit  raises the stakes of the series immensely. Toby has been kidnapped, and Avery must find him before it is too late. Each clue seems like a dead end, and when Toby's daughter shows up at the House, the stakes rise even further. Will they be able to find out who is behind it before it's too late? This book was intense from start to finish. Barnes made the stakes high with the abduction of Toby, and that intensity carries throughout the novel. I loved the added character development in this book, especially in Avery and Jameson. I also liked that as part of that development, we started to move past the love triangle that The Hawthorne Legacy  set up. It was good to see Grayson finally letting someone in, and watching his character fail in The Final G...

 I've wanted to read this book since it came out. Yes, I know that was a long time ago. Dr. Ryland Grace wakes up on a spaceship. He has no idea who he is, how he got there, or why he's there. All he knows is that he's alone. Two other members of his crew didn't survive the trip. Slowly, we learn that Grace is a scientist, sent on a suicide mission to save Earth from Astrophage, a lifeform whose invasion has made the sun dimmer. In a desperate bid to save humanity, a ship was launched to the Telceti system, the only star apparently unaffected. The hiccup? The Hail Mary isn't alone. I LOVED this book. I can't stop thinking about how much I loved this book. I know I didn't love Artemis (I liked it, but felt it had issues), but this book was totally different. I loved the non-linear / flashback method of the storytelling. We gradually find out small nuggets about Dr. Grace, his background as a teacher, his mission, what's happened back on Earth before he le...

 John Green is a world-famous author, but he isn't typically known for nonfiction. Instead, Looking for Alaska , The Fault in Our Stars,  and his other works are typically geared toward teen readers. However, this book is different. I started following John Green on Instagram maybe a year or so ago, and enjoyed his reels. There was a definite shift in them after a while, as Green started talking more and more about Tuberculosis. I was fascinated by his perspective on the disease, and so I've wanted to read this book. There are bonus points with this one, because I'm also planning on adding it to my AP curriculum. Everything is Tuberculosis  explains just that: how so many things are tied to TB. Green discusses the history of the disease, how treatments were developed, and (I think) most importantly, the stigma tied to TB. It all started years ago in Sierra Leone, where Green was visiting with an organization he works with. He wasn't there to study TB, but a different cr...

It was summer 2023. I remember coming across breaking news headlines about two children who were found in Ivins, Utah, in deplorable condition. These two children had been abused by their mother, Ruby Franke, and her friend, Jodi Hildebrant. The children were malnourished and had been forced to do horrible punishments, outside in the stifling Utah desert heat in the summer. This has been one of the major child abuse cases to come out of Utah in recent years, a string of others not far behind. It's a case that I remember distinctly following. One of my coworkers recommended this book to me, and I'll admit, I was hesitant at first. Sometimes people who experience this kind of abuse and trauma become extremely anti, and I just wasn't sure I wanted to read about that. However, as I dove into Shari Franke's book, I found her to be the opposite. That impressed me, and just added to what I liked about this book. In The House of My Mother , Shari Franke (Ruby Franke's oldes...

 I picked this book up on Audible because it sounded interesting and didn't disappoint. A Woman of No Importance  describes the incredible true story of Virginia Hall, an American woman who served as an SOE spy during World War II. Virginia, rejecting her family's expectations of a highly advantageous marriage, pursued a career in the State Department. She dreamed of serving her country as an ambassador or in other roles high within the department. Blocked at every turn because of her gender, and then later, as a result of her amputated leg, she left the State Department at the start of World War II. She served as an ambulance driver as the German army advanced across the Maginot Line and into France. From there, Virginia was recruited to SOE - the Special Operations Executive. This secret branch of the British government was formed to conduct clandestine operations in Nazi-controlled territory. Virginia was sent to France as a journalist and spy. She made contacts in the Vich...

 This is another book that I read because of my AP class. I do have to admit that I enjoyed it more than I thought I was going to. The Boys in the Boat  tells the story of the 1936 U.S. Olympic rowing team. This team came from Washington State and was made up of a seemingly rag-tag group of boys. One boy in particular, Joe, came from very humble circumstances. Having been basically abandoned by his family multiple times in his childhood, Joe lacked confidence. By the time he got to the Olympics, his coaches had helped him succeed. I know next to nothing about rowing, but that was not a requirement to understand this book. Daniel James Brown does a great job of explaining the sport, and also introducing the mechanics of the boats themselves. I thought much of the background information he provided about boats and the legendary builder of them fascinating, but at times unnecessary. Joe's story is in many ways inspiring but also heartbreaking. Brown describes his childhood and ho...

 Continuing my reading of Wax and Wayne and trying to get to the last one! Shadows of Self  continues the story of Waxillium Ladrian. Picking up only a few months after the conclusion of The Alloy of Law , we find Wax chasing a criminal through Elendel. As the chase goes on, he sees a face he hasn't seen in a long time: the face of the last man he brought in out in the Roughs, the criminal that killed Lessie. This puts him on the trail of a kandra known as Bleeder. The kandra is missing one of her spikes and has gone crazy. She has murdered multiple people, including the brother of the governor. Intent on wreaking havoc on the city, Bleeder is using her unique talents to strain Elendel to the point of breaking. Can Wax, Wayne, and Marasi catch up to her before it's too late? I loved this book a lot. I finished it and immediately picked up the next book. The twists in this book are amazing. I first of all loved that Sanderson brought back the kandra and other pre-Catacendre cre...

 Again, I had this book finished quite some time ago (shortly after finishing The Hero of Ages ) and I just haven't had a lot of time to get to posting my review. I am now about halfway through the next book, and now that the term is over, I'm hoping I will have a little more time to finish that book. The Alloy of Law  by Brandon Sanderson introduces Era 2 in the world of Mistborn . No longer does the world of the Final Empire exist, but it has literally been remade by Harmony, or the character of Sazed and the Hero of Ages that readers might recognize from The Hero of Ages . In this world, Waxillium Ladrian is a lawman in the Roughs. At least he was, until his uncle and sister unexpectedly died, and Wax is forced to assume control of the noble house he is now heir to. He finds the city is no less in need of a lawman than the Roughs, and is soon embroiled in the investigation into The Vanishers. Once his fiancee is kidnapped, and his butler tries to blow him up, Wax is fully i...

 This is one of Brandon Sanderson's "secret projects" that he wrote during the lockdowns in 2020. I've been really excited to read it! Tress of the Emerald Sea  is the story of Tress who lives on a planet made up of tiny islands and seas made from falling spores from the 12 moons. Tress lives on the Rock, a small island where they have to force people to stay. Tress loves her island, her cups (which she collects), and the duke's son: Charlie. Once the duke finds out about their relationship, he marches Charlie from the Rock and takes him to find a wife. Charlie swears to Tress that he'll resist, and sends a cup and letter at each stop. Then suddenly, the packages stop. It's announced that the duke is returning with his son and new daughter in law. When the ship arrives, the heartbroken Tress realizes that the duke's son is not Charlie. Indeed, the crew of the ship confirms that Charlie was sent to the evil Sorceress in the Midnight Sea and replaced wit...

 I picked this book up on Audible because it was one that I'd heard a lot about. I've had a couple of students read it over the years, and it sounded really interesting. Nora Seed wanted to die. Her life was utterly hopeless: her brother hated her, she had no friends, she lost her job, her cat died, she'd turned down every opportunity that had ever come her way. After attempting suicide, Nora finds herself in a giant library, accompanied by her grade school librarian Mrs. Elm. Mrs. Elm explains to Nora that the books in this library contain every possible life she could ever have possibly lived in, and invites her to undo all of her regrets. Once she found the one that she was most content in, Mrs. Elm explained, she would simply stay there forever. Can Nora overcome her desire to die and find the perfect life? I loved the overall message of this book: that the life you have is a life worth living. This is what Nora finds after all of the lives she chooses to experience. Th...