A friend recently clued me in on the fact that Placentia Library District allows ANY California resident to sign up for a virtual card online! If you are an ebook or audiobook reader, this is a perfect way to support yet another public library! I filled out the application form online, and I had my library card number by the next morning. Thank you, Placentia Library District! 💖

New bookstack! ☀️ What is everyone reading this long weekend?

The illustrations are what make this edition so special. The art highlighting the text drives home everything Snyder is trying to say with his 20 lessons.

In the back of the book are notes about each illustration. The descriptions of the photographs in particular are often heartbreaking. And the Krug integrates the artwork with the text is beautiful.

So before you decide if you should read this book, google Relf v Weinberger. This novel is inspired by that case. 😬

Our protagonist is Civil Townsend, a brand-new Black nurse in her early 20s who has secured a good gig with a federally-funded family planning clinic. She realizes that the instructions she is receiving about two of her very young patients are highly suspicious.

In the early 2000s, Lenz, a devout Christian, joined a Hollywood Bible study group mostly for some camaraderie. She quickly found herself sucked into “the Family” cult, giving them access to all her money and eventually marrying one of their own.

I would never call what Lenz experienced “harrowing,” but I definitely found myself thinking, “oh, girl, no…” many times as she was coerced into making choices advantageous to the Family.

Incredible research, insider sources, and engaging writing combine to detail the creation and rise of the Wagner Group and its leaders. This is some dark and horrifying stuff, y'all. If "war crimes" is on your content warning list, take care. I did not anticipate how jumpy this book would make me during my nighttime reading. Really gripping. For nonfiction fans and readers interested in current events and Russian history.

Heavenly Tyrant picks up pretty close to where Iron Widow left off, although it took me a few pages to figure that out because from the get-go this book is a hot mess.

Iron Widow was a brilliant story of feminine rage with unforgiving sharp teeth. The novel is grounded in the Zetian/Yizhi/Shimin relationship. Not only is that triad torn apart in Heavenly Tyrant, we are introduced to a new love/hate interest for Zetian, which I had 0 interest in.

This is a dual-timeline novel, one timeline taking place in Pakistan in perhaps the early 2000s, and the other taking place in California “now.” Our two California characters are Salahudin and Noor, teenaged best friends who have had a falling out. Our Pakistan POV character is Misbah, Salahudin‘s mom (hopefully this is not a spoiler; you find this out quickly within the novel). She is telling the story of her marriage and move to California.

Lauren lives with her family in the hellish California dystopia of 2025 where everything is on fire and the president of the US is an oligarch fascist.

Spooky, no?

Lauren also dreams of traveling north where life is better (supposedly) and starting a new religion she calls Earthseed. I‘ll try to spoil as little as I can in my review.

Unpopular opinion alert… I did not love this book. But I am curious enough to read the second one.

I worked our county‘s Pride event a few days ago, and I was happy to see a booth for the Queer Sacramento Authors Collective there. I had to pay them a visit, of course! It was hard to choose which title to get, but I really liked this cover and the author was cool, so I got Surviving Sentience 2040 by Sharon A McDonell.

May reads…so far 🌸

Fitz is smiling because my hold finally came in. 😸

This brief werewolf tale was a total treat. The conceit of each chapter being one month of the year was clever. I loved the illustrations, and was genuinely shocked at the werewolf identity reveal. I do have to take away a star, though. I‘m sad to report that I‘ve realized that 1980s SK suffered from a terrible case of fatphobia. I do not see this in his later novels, but it‘s so obvious in these earlier ones. (And I‘m reading Thinner next. 🤦‍♀️)

New #bookstack 📚

Who has read these?

This short comic is Stephen King‘s homage to the pulp horror comics of the 1950s with all their goofy gory gruesomeness. Our guide, the Creep, takes us through five stories of terrible people and their horrible demises.

There were a couple of panels that did make me giggle, but overall the book is pretty meh. The first and last stories are the strongest.

If by some chance you are super into those old horror comics, you‘ll probably like this.

In 1932, a pregnant Margret Wittmer moved with her husband and young stepson to Floreana, a small island in the Galapagos. They believed that getting out of the city and going back to nature was the only way to cure their sickly child. This is her memoir of how the family managed to survive then thrive on this basically uninhabited (at the time) island. This is a story about strong people who had more courage and fortitude than I could ever have.

I take such pleasure in a historical fiction novel as expertly written as this. And I really love a multigenerational drama. So this story of one family during Japan's occupation of Korea and beyond was wonderful perfection. I can't wait to read more of Lee's work.

A pretty short and very enjoyable science book about the Galápagos Islands and everything on them (including the people). I think if you‘re going to the Galápagos (yes, I am doing that), this book is a must-read primer for understanding the formation of the islands, all the life on them and in the ocean around them, and exactly why they are so unusual.

Okay, to get this out of the way... The dog does NOT die!

This book was too dense and too long. The whole book was slow. I thought the sex scenes were pretty ew and the ending was a cop out. The major point the entire plot pivots around was frustrating to me. And it was not at all scary.

However, I was always glad enough to pick it up and keep going, I wanted to know what was going to happen. So I guess I just have to give it a solid Meh rating.

This very simple and charming story is about a girl who is sent back to the islands of her birth to live with her grandparents. She has vague memories of her time there, but one very strong one: her baby brother being swept out to see in his boat-like cradle. She is determined to find out what became of him.

I've been meaning to read this since 2017, but kept putting it off. I had to wait awhile for my library hold to come in. So many people are reading this right now. 🤔

This is a succinct list of 20 lessons we (should) have learned from the last century on how to turn away from fascism and tyranny. I feel a need to keep running this info through my brain, so I have also placed holds on the audio and the graphic novel versions of this book.

It‘s fun to come across a bookshop I‘ve been to in a novel. If you‘re around Oakland, CA, Marcus Books is well worth a visit!

Library hold attained! 😱

#books #bookrecommendation #bookstagram #booknerd #bookobsessed #currentread #booklover #bookcommunity #librarylife #bookstack #bookhaul #bookclub

This book was respectful, beautifully written, exhaustively researched storytelling at its finest. Even though I knew how things were going to end up, this was still a nail-biter. I caught myself thinking, wow, I really really really hope they call off this launch… It might not seem like a glowing recommendation to say, “Read this! It gave me nightmares!” but it really is one of the best nonfiction books I‘ve ever read.

It‘s okay, Steve. They can‘t all be winners. The cover is rad. 🤷‍♀️

Sunday morning read

This is exactly the kind of book I would have been super into as a kid. Genuine sweetness mixed with true peril and darkness. The illustrations are adorable. This is a story about family, responsibility, and loyalty. I loved it and can't wait to read the second one. (The movie is also very good, although different in some key ways.)

I was not excited about picking up King's 1981 nonfiction book about the horror genre, but his engaging style of writing made this read super enjoyable. I would have given it 5 stars, but for the fact that is is really outdated. Which is, of course, not the book's fault. Most of the writers/filmmakers discussed are white men. There are a couple of white women. Zero creators of color (again, 1981). But overall an enjoyable book.

Morning read ☀️

As much as I liked Harlem Shuffle, I loved Crook Manifesto. This is really more like three novellas, and Pepper is as much a main character as Carney (maybe even more so). Fast-moving, dark, and funny, big recommend from me.

It's been a loooooong time since I read the og 6 Dune books. And I've been avoiding these non-Frank Herbert sequels and prequels because I just kind of did not care, even though Dune 6 ended on a cliffhanger, then FH died. But I enjoyed the latest Dune films and am enjoying the series Dune: Prophecy, so I thought "could be fun to get back into that world."

"Fun" is not the right word, unfortunately. This book was fine bordering on lame. ?‍♀️

My current reads 📚📚

✨ Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin is an absorbing cradle-to-grave bio of the writer. I am loving it.

✨ Hunters of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson is book 7 of the Dune series, the first that was not written by Frank Herbert. While it‘s nice for me to be back in the world of Dune, the writing and plot are terribly mid. I‘ll probably finish it, but I‘m not sure that I‘ll move on to book 8.

Feminist Book Club delivery day! This month‘s theme is The Cosmos. 🪐🔭

When your current book stack is accidentally color coordinated. 💙💚

I must admit that I was a bit bored during the first quarter of this book. (Where were the standard romance tropes? Where was the angst?) But after that I was all in. Emmett and Luke were really sweet and I absolutely loved the subplot "mystery" involving Luke's grandma. This felt like an authentic teen relationship. Loved it.

Me: I know everything about Chernobyl now. I'm like an expert.

16yo: Tell me the names of all the people who were involved.

Me: ...Um...Russian names...a lot of them...

I was really pleased with this traditional Sherlockian pastiche, even if the ending did not quite satisfy.

It took me about 25% to get into the story. I really liked the 1960s storyline. I did NOT like the 2010s storyline. I think if it had been axed and Chamberlain had just gone with the past storyline, incorporating the few threads that popped up in the 2010s storyline that moved the plot along into the 1960s storyline, that would have worked much better. I enjoyed learning about the SCOPE project, which I had never heard about.

Good little story in the middle of the Enola Holmes series. An enjoyable easy mystery for Enola to solve, with some high stakes. What makes it so good is the seemingly effortless way Springer always writes Enola's totally charming first-person character and the vivid descriptions of Victorian London street scenes.

I would have done this as 3.5 stars if Goodreads would allow it.

This is a hard book to review. I found it interesting and compelling, but of course Herman is really preaching to the choir here. There are anecdotes that are jaw-dropping and infuriating. I was glad to "meet" women in power past and present I had never heard of before.

Such a boring cover and cheesy title (what does it even mean?), but such a great fantasy! I loved the world building, complex magic system, and dark court intrigue. If you like fantasies that skew a little darker (think His Dark Materials), you‘ll also like this.

As the last person on earth to read this book, I am happy to verify what I've been hearing for the past five years: This romance is 100% delightful in every way. Is it unrealistic? Yep. Don't care. Is it too long? Probably. But I would read a whole series with these guys, so the 421 page count is just fine with me.

Not quite as fun as the previous two installments in the series. It does pick up at the end, and there is a sort of cliffhanger. I think the setting being away from the school detracted from the boarding school atmosphere that I enjoy.

A low-stakes novel about a woman who falls into working for a toxic influencer. Based on the author‘s real-life experiences. I had a couple issues with the plot and pacing, but mostly thought it was pretty enjoyable.

When Scanlon was in college in the '90s, she had a mental health crisis. She checked herself in to a state-run mental facility and lived there for the next four years. A really great read.

Teen girl with severe OCD navigates school, a new love, her friendship with her bestie, all while trying to solve a dark mystery. The author's own OCD diagnosis gives this a high level of authenticity and the strong friendship between Aza and Daisy at the center gave this one 5 stars for me.

If you took the weirdest Kurt Vonnegut novel and inserted a dose of dark stuff, complicated writing, made it way too long, and also took most of the fun out of it, you'd have this book. There are parts of it that are engrossing. There are many parts of it that are overwritten and almost unbearably complex. I'm not ashamed to admit that I had no idea what was going on in the first chapter. I had to google it.

Don‘t read this book unless lots of animal death and racism don‘t bother you and you‘re just super into Victorian science. I‘m Brooke H on Goodreads if you want to read my full review. (And yes, I did read this entire book to prep for a trip to the Galapagos. Of which there was one chapter. So.)

The long-lost identical twin is a ridiculous unbelievable trope, but it was Elyse and Paula's reality. Separated when just infants and adopted out to different families, the two sisters found each other when one of them wrote to the adoption agency asking for information on her birth mother. The two eventually discovered that they were part of a sketchy psychological nature/nurture study by a doctor at their adoption agency. A fascinating memoir.