Shaina Reads

I think my feelings about August can best be summarized by a recent tweet:

The closer we get to September, the more I feel my motivation returning. I swear, there's an August demon that feeds on productivity.

— Shaina (@shainareads) August 27, 2015

Stress and anxiety ruled the month, between buckling down to GRE studying, adjusting to a brand-new set of expectations at work and a couple of pieces of bad news. After a great streak of reading during Bout of Books 14, I found it impossible to finish any new books, despite the fact that I was enjoying them. I finally got back into the swing of things with an audio book last night (!!!).

About the only thing that went right this month was the blog. I read a bunch, reviewed it all, and churned out a few good discussion posts, if I do say so myself. Let's recap:

I read/reviewed:

"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. 1977, May 3, six thirty in the morning, no one knows anything but this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast." - pg. 1, Everything I Never Told You

I'm pretty sure that everyone and their pet cats have already reviewed this book, but, as some wise people once tweeted, you can spread book love months (or years!) after it comes out and there's so much to love (and discuss) here. So, without further ado, another glowing review of Everything I Never Told You.

The opening drops us right at the start of a normal day—that would turn out to be anything but—for the Lee family. Lydia is the "prize flower" of James and Marilyn's three children and, on that morning in May, she appears to be poised for success in advanced physics, her social circles and beyond. As Ng walks us through the days directly before and after Lydia drowns, we quickly learn that Lydia's—and everyone else's—veneer is not quite what it originally seems.

Rather than shifting narrators at chapter breaks, Ng moves through the minds of the Lee family within each scene. While this type of technique could end up being clunky or confusing elsewhere, it works beautifully to show us the many sides of the Lees' interactions with each other and the few people they know outside their family. In her review of Nekropolis, Amanda talked about how the multiple narrators allowed the reader to see how everyone "thinks they see and feel things the same way, when they really don’t." Ng works the same magic here, quietly pointing us toward what goes unspoken, misunderstood or willfully ignored.

This book sucked me right in and didn't let go, a fact I lamented after choosing to start it at midnight. It packs together a bunch of heavy themes: the stigma that once surrounded (and can still surround) interracial marriage, the weight of parental expectations, deep-seated loneliness and fear of abandonment are just a few. The message that ultimately comes through clearest, however, is what can go wrong when you fail to communicate and what can go so, so right when you do. A handful of (spoiler-y) moments in the story didn't quite ring true or were a bit too tidy for me, but all were minor blemishes on an otherwise exquisite piece of storytelling that I still cannot believe is Ng's debut. I eagerly await whatever she spins for us next.

Also, y'all should follow her on Twitter, if for nothing but the livestream of her four-year-old's excellent questions.

A headline making the rounds on Twitter caught my eye last week: "Australian Parents Angry Over Books in Happy Meals."

You can check out the article from GalleyCat (or the longer piece it cites) for more information, but the gist is this: an Australian children's health advocacy group is angry at McDonald's for its "Happy Readers" promotion. Instead of receiving a toy with a Happy Meal, children are offered a choice of a soft-cover physical book or a code for a digital book via a McDonald's-branded reading app. There are 23 books in total, and parents can opt to buy the books individually at a rate of $2 AUD each.

As someone interested in both early literacy and public health, I've been mulling over the implications of this program since I first saw the article. On the one hand, I believe that putting a book in a child's hand, regardless of the source, is a net positive. Scores of research findings agree with me; in fact, on the very same day that GalleyCat tweeted its piece, the New York Times tweeted one summarizing two recent studies showing how important early reading may be to kids' brain development. If a child is getting a Happy Meal anyway, why not give them a book instead of a possibly vulgar Minions toy?

On the other, I understand why framing the book collection in a "gotta catch 'em all" fashion could entice kids to ask their parents for McDonald's more often or encourage parents to buy it for them more than they otherwise would. While the Golden Arches does offer lighter options these days, not all will order them; considering that rates of childhood obesity have more than doubled in the United States in the past 30 years, it's likely in a child's best interest to limit the number of smiling red boxes in their diets.

Beyond this is where things get hairy for me. Some of the comments on the Herald Sun article suggest that parents buy the Happy Readers books individually or take their children to the library or bookstore instead. While most likely well-intentioned, they miss the fact that not all families have these options. The individual books and books from other stores cost money, and if the choice is between a book (or, like, half a book, if you compare a bookstore paperback to a Happy Meal) and dinner, what's going to win out? At least in this case, when a parent opts for the meal, the child gets the book, too. As for libraries, they may not be conveniently located or, even worse, they may not exist at all.

As for the health aspect of the debate, there's a difference between discussing the physical health ramifications of fast food and lambasting the moral characters of the individuals who eat it, one that gets confused far too often for my taste and, again, reeks of classism. While I didn't notice any particularly egregious comments on either article I linked, I would not be surprised to see them crop up eventually.

Like I said, there's a lot to think about here, and I'd love to hear your opinions on the matter! Feel free to bring up things I didn't touch on here, because there are plenty of 'em.

Good afternoon, class! I assume you're all here because you're ready to embark on the lifelong journey of learning how to Give a Shit™—or, in other words, how to care about what's going on in the world and what's happening to the people in it, particularly people who face inequality due to their gender, race, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, nationality, and more. Maybe you're looking for a few tricks and tips to get you started on the path to mastering the art of caring.

The first thing you need to know is that there is no fast-track or easy A when it comes to caring about things, because caring is hard. It's so much easier to plug your ears, bury your head in the sand, and pretend that everything is just dandy out there. No effort or uncomfortable feelings required! Unfortunately, avoiding work and discomfort is an excellent recipe for maintaining the status quo. To really excel at Giving a Shit™, you have to accept that it won't often feel good, but that these feelings of anger, sadness and frustration are the first steps toward enacting meaningful change.

The efforts you can expect to make include but are not limited to: keeping your eyes open and thinking critically about not only what happens, but also why it happens and to whom it happens; learning when to speak up and when to shut up while someone else speaks; asking (respectful) questions when you're uncertain; and recognizing when it isn't someone else's job to educate you.

To get going on the education bit, here is a non-exhaustive list of some books that will set you on the right track.

We Should All Be Feminists (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Michelle Alexander)

The Fire Next Time (James Baldwin)

Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People (Mahzarin R. Banaji, Anthony G. Greenwald)

Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice (Adam Benforado)

Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (Johann Hari)

Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World (Tracy Kidder) 

The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan (Jenny Nordberg)

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Bryan Stevenson) 

Possessing the Secret of Joy (Alice Walker)

Bout of Books 14 has come and gone, and I did ALL of the reading last week.

Pages read: 1,039
Books completed: The Book of Strange New Things (Michel Faber) and Everything I Never Told You (Celeste Ng)
Books read from: Above + Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice (Adam Benforado), endnotes for Unfair (they're online-only, 300+ pages, and a psych nerd's dream), The Killing Moon (N. K. Jemisin) and A Game of Thrones (George R. R. Martin)

I'm very happy with my stats, especially considering that I read exactly nothing on Friday (Exploding Kittens can be kind of distracting) and spent Saturday evening at a jazz festival and bar. I participated in only one mini-challenge, but it told me I'd be hanging out in Middle Earth with a billion cats, so that's worth all the mini-challenge prizes put together in my opinion.

I'm at home today after a long week of feeling physically and emotionally off. Maybe I had a "bout" of something.. eheh... *crickets*. I plan to spend my day off doing whatever peaceful activity strikes my fancy, and there will most likely be plenty of reading. Both of my unfinished BoB reads are calling my name, especially Jemisin's high-fantasy wonderland/nightmare world of Gujaareh (another tick in the "Julianne made me do it" box).

Book images from Goodreads.

Whoever says that social media is a waste of time and brain cells is dead wrong, because I got my last two book recommendations straight from Twitter: Station Eleven from a "what to read next?" poll I posted in a fit of indecision and The Book of Strange New Things from the fact that I was reading Station Eleven.


At first blush, the only thing Station Eleven seems to have in common with The Book of Strange New Things is a spaceship, drawn into whimsical comic books in the former and carrying a Christian missionary to a faraway planet in the latter. Now that I've gotten through the 836-page bulk of both of them (with Strange New Things clocking in at 500, that chunkster), I can see Derek's point.

First, Station Eleven. The book follows a band of nomadic performers called the Traveling Symphony, drifting through the desolate landscape of what was once North America, long since ravaged by the Georgian flu virus. No one knows exactly how bad the outbreak was, but, judging from the number of other people they encounter on the road, the survivors can only assume they're in the minority. All the technologies of the old world (the Internet, electricity, transit more advanced than caravans pulled by horses) have long since failed, and anyone born more than twenty years ago couldn't say what an airplane in flight or a working television look like. All the Symphony has now is Shakespeare, fading recollections of the old world, and the stifling but vital company of each other.

The book jumps through time and among perspectives to tell the story of how this new world came to be, and many of the characters are linked in ways they would never imagine nor learn. Kirsten, one of the Symphony members, hunts in vain for more issues of a comic book given to her as a little girl, not knowing they were the pet project of a woman she would never know, the first ex-wife of a man Kirsten acted alongside in King Lear. Sullied with the grit of the post-apocalypse, the book ultimately tells a story about memory: what gets passed on, what does not, and the ways that both we as individuals and larger, uncontrollable forces determine that balance.

After Station Eleven, I barely drew a breath before jumping into The Book of Strange New Things. Pastor Peter Leigh is our aforementioned missionary on his way to the planet Oasis. He's been tasked with bringing the word of God to the native Oasans, and he could only be more thrilled if USIC (the mysterious organization heading the project) had approved his wife Bea to come with him. He promises to write her every day, but he is quickly swallowed by his new life: the cheery but emotionally flat USIC compound; the merciless atmosphere of Oasis; and his Oasan flock, so religiously devoted but personally impenetrable.

I must have been in doomsday mode post-Station Eleven, because I kept expecting something devastating or sinister to happen throughout Strange New Things. There are some dark aspects to the book, but not in an in-your-face flu pandemic kind of way. Letters from Bea detail disasters both big (cyclones and earthquakes) and small (broken windows and suffering friends), and her missives travel billions of miles through space to be read at her husband's leisure. Rather than a shifting perspective, we only get Peter's thoughts, further widening the gulf between him and Bea but thrusting the reader right up against the disintegration of faith—in ourselves, in each other, in our gods—when it's tested over impassable physical and emotional distances. The tragedy here was subtle but potent once I shifted my expectations.

Although the blooks are different in terms of setting and plot, their sentiments are remarkably similar: change comes to all of us, and we can't decide how or when. All we can choose is how we react to it when it does—what will we carry forward with us, and what will it mean where we're going?

I ate both of these books up, St. John Mandel's for her hauntingly beautiful sentences and Faber's for his ability to plunk me straight down in Oasis with nary a bump. I think the books appeal to different audiences, with Station Eleven leaning more post-apocalyptic and Strange New Things more sci-fi, but both are unmistakably (very, very good) literary fiction.

All right, guys. You were so nice to me the last time I told you a bookish secret, and I've got another I need to unload.

I was recently talking to a friend from college who's been doing stage management and light design since his graduation. He's about to start working on a new show:

Me: What's the latest about?

Him: Musical of Much Ado About Nothing.

Me: Very cool! I still need to read Shakespeare. He's on my Classics Club book list. (Side note: Yes, I talk about the Classics Club IRL.)

Him: Nice, but... how have you not read Shakespeare? You of all people?

Me: Dude, you've got me. I don't know.

I really don't know. Everyone and their mother had to read at least a handful of his plays in high school, but Shakespeare apparently wasn't on my district's list of priorities. (Not kidding about the moms: even my mother ragged on me for never having read Shakespeare. If any of you are my Facebook friends, you know how much she loves me, and this gave even her pause.) It's possible I read all of Taming of the Shrew in freshman or sophomore year, but I also may have read only excerpts. I don't remember—how much I read and what it was even about—and therefore I don't count it.

I haven't done a ding-danged thing to change this situation, and part of me doesn't especially care. Katie's post about not having read the classics fostered a great discussion about how we shouldn't feel "guilty" about what we have and haven't read or feel forced to read what we don't want to. I wholeheartedly agree, and yet I do connect with her point about how often these works get referenced and reinterpreted across literary genres. I know my reading experiences might be more nuanced and satisfying if I had some of the bard under my belt, but honestly? I don't even know where to begin, it's intimidating, and I've got so much other reading to do.

So, again, I turn to you, dear reader. Is Shakespeare all that and a bag of chips? I have Macbeth on my aforementioned Classics Club list, but is that the best place to start? I've heard his plays are easier to digest when read aloud (meant to be performed and all that), so should I break my no-audio book and no-Shakespeare streak at the very same time? Let me know. I'll be here, probably reading anything other than Shakespeare.

BoB button. All book images from Goodreads.

Happy Monday, book buds! It's been another heck of a week in Shainaland.

In the last seven days, I finally finished my first Jane Austen novel, Pride & Prejudice, for #AusteninAugust. There was sassy humor and unapologetic feminism galore, and I enjoyed it more than I expected I would. I also started and finished Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. I can't believe I hadn't gotten around to it before; it gave me so much to chew on, and I'm excited to settle down and write about it.

In non-bookish news, my boyfriend made it back safe and sound from his business trip, and it's been nice to have non-feline company again. (Amazingly, I did manage to do a couple of social things while he was gone, but Maude and I still got plenty of quality time.) To celebrate his being back, we promptly started bingeing Friday Night Lights together, which has been an excellent relationship decision so far. I also took my first GRE verbal and quantitative reasoning diagnostic and was pleasantly surprised by my baseline score. Those super top-secret life changes I alluded to? I'm *gasp* applying to graduate school! But more on that when we don't have a readathon happening, because Bout of Books 14 is obviously first priority right now.

First of all, if you don't know what BoB is, here's a blurb:

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, August 17th and runs through Sunday, August 23rd in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 14 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

A week of reading calls for an enormous TBR pile! Of the above, I've only started The Book of Strange New Things, which already shows potential for being a pretty outlandish chunkster. I also hope to get to Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice by Adam Benforado (psychology and social justice? I'm swooning already) and Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (also on the "how have I not read this already?" list). The rest are just a selection of books I've got on reserve for if/when I'm not feeling those first three.

The Austen in August event hosted by Adam over at Roof Beam Reader finally lit a fire under my butt and got me to pick up the very first novel on my Classics Club List, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Prior to this reading, the extent of my experience with the story was Colin Firth jumping in a lake and whatever this guy's name is looking brooding and mysterious.

Upon finishing, I realized I had no idea how one attempts to review "one of the most popular novels in English literature," so I made a list of a few of the things that surprised me while reading. Some more seasoned Austenites might roll their eyes at what I considered "unexpected" about the novel, but perhaps some of my fellow Jane virgins will learn something new and, maybe, feel inspired to pick up their first Austen!

1. It's short.

When I think about the classics, I tend to think of door-stoppers à la Tolstoy, Hugo and Melville. Thankfully, Jane must have recognized that we've (unfortunately) got other things to do besides read; my e-book from Project Gutenberg clocked in at a mere 253 pages. Speaking of Project Gutenberg...

2. The e-book is free!

All right, so this isn't about the book itself and I knew it before I even started reading, but it's worth mentioning for my thriftier readers. If you're a digital reader, you can snap up a well-formatted copy of the story from Project Gutenberg for your Kindle, Nook, or any e-reader that supports the ePUB file type. Did I mention that Project Gutenberg has nearly 50,000 other books for your reading pleasure? (I expect those non-profit, public domain dollars to start flooding my coffers for this endorsement.)

And, of course, if you're a dead-trees reader, you know where to go. Not a dig, by the way. I love me some dead trees.

3. It's got some super feminist moments (minor spoilers ahead):

I found a lot to connect with in Heather's post about how she once thought about Jane Austen. While I thought it unlikely that "tea parties and love letters" alone would have allowed this work to endure for as long as it has, I knew that marriage was an all-encompassing concern for women in nineteenth-century Britain. Austen clearly took issue with the expectations of the time, and Elizabeth's round rejection of Mr. Collins's proposal is a prime example:

"I do assure you that I am not one of those young ladies (if such young ladies there are) who are so daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of being asked a second time. I am perfectly serious in my refusal. You could not make me happy, and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the world who could make you so. ... You must give me leave to judge for myself, and pay me the compliment of believing what I say." - pg. 71, Pride and Prejudice

I love that Elizabeth puts herself first when she explains why they would be a poor fit, in a time when modesty and deference were the norm, and that she fully expects to be heard. You go, Lizzy.

4. Mr. Bennet is every curmudgeon lover's dream.

Elizabeth Bennet's father is the sassiest nineteenth-century gentleman around. You all know how much I love my cranky old men, and Mr. Bennet has taken top billing on my list of favorites. His sarcasm-laced love for his family was one of the highlights of my reading. Observe:

"Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves."

"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty years at least." - pg. 2, ibid.

5. One of its most famous quotations is regularly taken out of context (again, minor spoilers).

You know the one I'm talking about, right? It's on bags, t-shirts, bookmarks and temporary tattoos (though, thankfully, I couldn't find anyone with a real tattoo of it).

Anyway, it's spoken by Miss Bingley, who's super into Mr. Darcy and wants him to be into her. After seeing him take up a book for pleasure, Miss Bingley grabs her own and utters her famous words and then some. Directly afterward:

"No one made any reply. She then yawned again, threw aside her book, and cast her eyes round the room in quest for some amusement..." pg. 35, ibid.

Yup, clearly a big reader right there. The Guardian noted this little-mentioned fact when the Bank of England printed the quotation on its new ten-pound note in 2013.

While undoubtedly an early nineteenth-century text in style, Pride and Prejudice was a remarkably swift and enjoyable read, and I'm thrilled to finally have some Austen under my belt. Thank you again to Austen in August and Adam of Roof Beam Reader for the motivation!

Rabbit Hayes is dying, and she's only got a few days left to sort out loose ends, the most important of which is the fate of her twelve-year-old daughter, Juliet. Thankfully, Rabbit isn't alone; her cheering squad includes her tough-as-nails ma, her frazzled but well-intentioned sister Grace, and her man-child of a brother named Davey, among others. To add to the mix, the one great love of her life, Johnny Faye, won't quit haunting her dreams. Surrounded by love and ample good humor, Rabbit faces the physical and mental anguish of terminal cancer and what her death will mean for those she leaves behind.

I knew from the get-go that The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes would not be in my typical wheelhouse. I've been making an effort to read outside the box this summer and, having had some very good luck with it so far, I thought there was no better time to give something different a spin.

As you might expect, a book about a dying woman can be devastating to read, but McPartlin succeeds at lightening things up with a mix of black humor and genuine optimism. Some of the character arcs are predictable and others just this side of improbable, but I never once doubted the family's depth of grief and their resilience in pulling through the loss of their daughter, sibling, mother and friend. Rabbit was a journalist before falling ill, and the book includes a few posts from a blog she began to chronicle her journey with cancer. These were a wonderful insight into our titular character's strong and confident nature, and I wish there had been more of them.

Unfortunately, the parts that didn't work as well for me overshadowed the parts that did. I expected some graphic scenes (it's set in a hospice, after all), but there was way too much attention devoted to the state of Davey's bowels. I'm not anti-toilet humor, but I don't need it every fifty pages. There were also a few references to sexuality and fetishes that struck me as disrespectful and out-of-keeping with the rest of the story. It's possible I was being overly sensitive, but it stood out, especially because it didn't appear to add anything to the narrative.

I know this book would be excellent for a certain type of reader—the general consensus on Goodreads agrees with me there—but that reader just wasn't me. If you enjoy poignant and ultimately hopeful family stories with a bit of black humor (and more than a few poop jokes), this could very well be your bag.

The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes was released in the United States on August 4.

Disclaimer: I received this book through the Goodreads First Reads giveaway program for review consideration. Thanks so much to Goodreads and St. Martin's Press for the chance to read it!

This is just a smattering of the list, so as not to irk the copyright police.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and Bookish.

Today's topic—top ten authors I've read the most—got me thinking about how I tend to give many authors a shake but rarely go back to read more by them, for better or for worse. I think this is a fairly recent development, because I used to devour authors' backlists as a kid and young teenager.

For this list, I decided to only consider authors from when I began tracking my reading on Goodreads in 2012. Otherwise, this list would be completely overtaken by Fyodor Dostoevsky (from when I took a course in college), Chuck Palahniuk (from when I was super edgy in high school) and Cecily von Ziegesar (from questionable childhood days).

Amazingly, there are only nine authors from whom I've read more than two books in that time period. I've linked up to any reviews I've shared for them below.

J. R. R. Tolkien (4)

I have an ongoing, on-again-off-again project to read a bunch of books I think I should have read in high school or college (or, as I call it on GR, my 'high-school-college-book-tour'). Tolkien's stories of Middle Earth were on that list, and I finally succeeded in reading them all last year. I've read The Hobbit (6/24/12), The Fellowship of the Ring (5/15/13), The Two Towers (6/13/13), and The Return of the King (11/22/14).

Jeannette Walls (3)

I swallowed up most of her memoir in one sitting in a Barnes & Noble while on spring break (as one does). I didn't love her fiction quite as much, but I continue to be floored by this woman's strength. I've read The Glass Castle (3/27/13), The Silver Star (8/25/13), and Half Broke Horses (9/16/13).

David Foster Wallace (3)

Speaking of being edgy in high school... I don't care how cliché it is; this (sexy, sexy) man's non-fiction makes me, as Liberty Hardy would say, want to swallow my brain out of envy. I've read Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (11/2/12), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (11/15/12), and Both Flesh and Not: Essays (9/11/13).

Lois Lowry (3)

I couldn't help but get suckered in by her Giver series, though I never finished it out. I've read The Giver (10/15/12), Gathering Blue (11/3/12), and Messenger (11/8/12).

Philip K. Dick (3)

The heaviest of sci-fi heavyweights. So many more to get to! I've read A Scanner Darkly (3/13/12), Mary and the Giant (5/25/14), and Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (4/14/15).

Joan Didion (3)

What's there to say? She's Didion: biting, devastating and unafraid. I've read The Year of Magical Thinking (3/15/12), Blue Nights (9/20/12), and Play It As It Lays (8/29/14).

Kurt Vonnegut (3)

Another writer for whom there aren't words. He's iconic and always will be. I've read Breakfast of Champions (7/7/12), Mother Night (8/12), and The Sirens of Titan (1/10/15). I also read Slaughterhouse Five in high school.

Jeff VanderMeer (2.33)

I loved the start of his Southern Reach trilogy but ultimately couldn't make it through to the end. I've read Annihilation (2/7/15), Authority (3/7/15), and abandoned Acceptance a third of the way through.

Shirley Jackson (2.1)

Shirley helped me fall in love with horror last year. She gets an extra .1 because the short story I read is, like, half a second long. I've read The Lottery (9/20/14), We Have Always Lived in the Castle (9/27/14), and The Haunting of Hill House (10/18/14).

Carl Sagan (2)

Weekend Cooking is a weekly meme hosted over at Beth Fish Reads. Go check it out to see what else the blogosphere cooked up this week!

Happy Sunday, everyone!

About a week ago, I mentioned that my boyfriend would be going out of the country on a business trip soon. He left in the middle of the night on Wednesday, and I've been enjoying playing single lady ever since. (Read: dinners with friends, quiet nights in, and one particularly binge-y evening of Friday Night Lights. I blame these four.)

Before he left, I asked him what he'd like to be sent off with. At first he wanted brownies, but then he said that chocolate cookies might be easier to transport. Lucky for him, the chocolate chocolate chip cookies I picked out ended up being the gooiest, most pillowy treats ever. He only left four for me to snack on, which was probably for the best. I wonder how many are still hanging around with his team in Honduras.

A photo posted by Shaina (@shainareadsbooks) on Aug 4, 2015 at 5:46pm PDT

Disclaimer: I received The Library at Mount Char from the publisher for review consideration. Thanks to Crown Publishing for giving me the chance to read it!

"Carolyn, blood-drenched and barefoot, walked alone down the two-lane stretch of blacktop that the Americans called Highway 78. Most of the librarians, Carolyn included, had come to think of this road as the Path of Tacos, so-called in honor of a Mexican joint they snuck out to sometimes. The guacamole, she remembered, is really good." - pg. 1, The Library at Mount Char

And here we have another case of a book surprising me in the very best way.

I was initially on the fence about trying The Library at Mount Char. It certainly sounded weird (kidnapping, ancient gods, and an all-powerful library), but for whatever reason its blurb didn't grab me. Its creepy cover and a smattering of thumbs-up reviews, including a "practically perfect" rating from Stefani at Caught Read Handed, tipped the scales when a Crown rep (hi, Danielle!) asked if I'd be interested in a review copy. And I'm so glad they did!

Not only did she send me a book, but Danielle also arranged a brief Q&A with author Scott Hawkins. Some responses have been edited for brevity.

Someone (me) asks you for a one-sentence summary of The Library at Mount Char. Go. 

Monty Python presents The Godfather starring the X-Men.

Yeah, so, about this book being weird... the story follows Carolyn, one of several children that Father (their not-so-benelovent overlord) kidnapped to raise in his Library and train in his ancient "catalogs" of knowledge. There's David, the blood-soaked expert in the art of murder; Margaret, who can commune with the dead and may be rotting away herself; and many others who can heal, read the future and control minds with the touch of a hand. And then there's Carolyn, tasked with learning the languages of the world, be they human, animal or even dragon. Now, Father has vanished, and Carolyn is only just setting into motion what he has been preparing his Librarians for from the beginning...

If you could become master of any of the catalogs, which would it be and why?

Probably Felicia’s catalog, transportation. I love to travel, but I hate airports. Raising the dead would be handy too. I really miss my Dad. 

Hawkins doesn't shy away from the rough stuff; this book is more gore-spattered than my usual reads, and it is no way short on psychological trauma. We also have to come to terms with the good and bad of all the characters, including our protagonist. Carolyn may be our troubled heroine, but she isn't above manipulating others, including unsuspecting people outside of the Library, to achieve her ends.

The book deals with a lot of heavy themes; murder, sexual assault, and torture are some obvious ones. What was the hardest part of the book for you to write? (The less spoiler-y, the better!)

The sexual assault scene was far and away the hardest. I really sweated that one. I have, I think, five versions of it, ranging from “something else happened” through PG and PG-13 up to “very brutal indeed.” The version that got published was the PG-13 one—disturbing, purposefully so, but not as immediate and horrifying as it could have been. It’s told after the fact, which gives a little more emotional distance than something told as it's happening.

Although the book can stand on its own, I was abuzz with questions when I reached the end, and I think there's plenty of room for Hawkins to further explore the world he crafted in his fiction debut.

The ending begs for a sequel, but I've read elsewhere that you will only "probably" write it. Any updates on that?

The short version is that I’d like to do a sequel, but I’m not sure I can make it work. In a lot of ways, writing a sequel to an existing story is harder than making something up from scratch. Think how rare it is for movie sequels to be as good as the first in the series. You can mitigate that somewhat if you know you’ll be doing a second one, but I failed to think about that much. When I was writing Mount Char I had no way of knowing if it would ever be published. If I’d been sure, I probably would have done a little more planning. 

Because his bibliography includes Linux Desk Reference and Essential Apache for Web Professionals, here's a bonus nerd question:

How is writing code different from writing fantasy? How is it the same? 

To me they feel like almost totally different skill sets. There’s a certain amount of creativity to both, being able to look at a blank screen, see a goal, and figure out how to get there, but the process of going from blank screen to finished project is completely different.

With writing, I start by trying to imagine concrete scenes without any sort of plan as to what the finished product is going to be. With programming, you start with a goal in mind of what you want the software to do, then start thinking of ways to break that overall functionality into components. With programming, you get immediate and specific feedback about what is and isn’t working. You write code iteratively, and to a large extent you know if it’s working or not. Writing prose is a process of training yourself to recognize stuff that isn’t working. You don’t get feedback until months or years after you’ve written something.  

With its unique blend of high-fantasy, slasher and cerebral horror, and cheeky humor, The Library at Mount Char really does have something for lovers of all genres... or should I say "catalogs"? Maybe I shouldn't. Go read it!

Fall reading is nearly upon us, and between NetGalley, Goodreads giveaways and publisher offerings, there's no shortage of awesome-sounding ARCs to choose from.

Katie from Bookish Tendencies fell prey to all the shiny goodies and has no fewer than five review books for consideration this month. Just typing that sentence made me nervous; I've been trying to stick to no more than two ARCs per month, if that. I'm a lady of extremes, and I know that if I let myself get too request-happy, I wouldn't have any time for my backlist TBR. Kudos to all you book bloggers (including Katie) who manage to balance teetering stacks of ARCs with plenty of older reads!

Anyhoo, here's a brief list of review copies that I do have on tap for fall. I'm sure a handful of others will join their ranks (*crosses fingers for Ancillary Mercy from Orbit*) as the leaves begin to change.

The Only Woman in the Room, by Eileen Pollack

Eileen Pollack was one of two female students to graduate with a degree in physics from Yale in the 1970s, and her book aims to explore the struggles she faced and those that women in the STEM fields still run up against today. I began this ahead of schedule, but I gave up halfway because it was heavier on the memoir elements than I was expecting. I want to give it another shot before its debut on September 15 from Beacon Press. (Update on September 8: I've since DNFed this one. In a nutshell: I just couldn't get up the enthusiasm to continue. You can read more over on Goodreads.)

The Heart Goes Last, by Margaret Atwood

After seeing April of The Steadfast Reader gush over Atwood's Positron series, I couldn't resist snatching up the rewrite due out from Nan A. Talese on September 29. The blurb includes talk of 24/7 social experiments and alternate realities, and I'm so on board for that.

Science of the Magical, by Matt Kaplan

Science journalist Matt Kaplan (author of The Science of Monsters) takes on some of humankind's favorite ancient and modern mythology—love potions, the fountain of youth, and more!—through the lenses of hard science and history. This request was a no-brainer. Out October 27 from Scribner.

Wolf Winter, by Cecilia Ekbäck

This one isn't an advance review copy because it first debuted in January, but it's being reprinted in paperback by Weinstein Books on November 3. It's described as a "Nordic noir thriller" set in Sweden about a family running from a dark past only to discover far more sinister things lurking in their new home. Some elements of the plot call All the Birds, Singing to mind, and I hope I love Ekbäck's novel just as much as I loved Wyld's.

I love it when a book surprises you. When I first started The Dust That Falls From Dreams, I worried that I was in for a bit of a slog. I like historical fiction well enough, but more than 500 pages about the nitty-gritty of the First World War and its consequences for three intertwined families sounded downright daunting—and it was, for the first 200 pages or so. About halfway through, I suddenly realized that these characters had completely stolen my heart with their resilience in the face of the most devastating war England had ever seen.

The story focuses on the wartime and post-war trials of the McCosh, Pendennis and Pitt families, centering most heavily on the experiences of the four McCosh sisters. I got a distinct Little Women vibe from the McCosh women. From my dim memories of my time with Alcott, they weren't carbon copies of the Marches, but rather the intense love and closeness they felt for each other brought Alcott's sisters to mind. Each of the women takes on a job during the war, ranging from domestic and international nurse to ambulance driver and photographer. Sophie was my favorite of the bunch; she definitely had an early-twentieth-century Manic Pixie Dream Girl™ thing going on, but her spirit and whimsy never failed to make me crack a smile.

I already mentioned that it took until about halfway through for me to really begin enjoying the story; considering the halfway point is nearly the length of a whole novel, I couldn't fault someone else for not holding out. Even after I hit my stride, the sailing wasn't entirely smooth. I was looking up military terms and British slang every other page, and I had to endure some egregiously racist and sexist moments (though, oddly, none felt out-of-character for the time period). There were also whole chapters devoted to the minutiae of life at the front and the inner workings of WW1-era airplanes. Occasionally interesting, occasionally snoozeville.

On the bright side, no chapter in the book is longer than 15 pages, with some clocking in at two or three, so I barely had a chance to get tired of what I was reading before it was over. These shorter scenes allowed de Bernières to jump among perspectives and topics liberally, creating many and varied opportunities to get to know each character. The format would lend itself well to a mini-series, and I couldn't help but think of Downton Abbey more than once while reading.

My boyfriend's mom happened to be reading Captain Corelli's Mandolin when he and I went to visit last month. We both finished our respective books this past weekend and agreed that they were slow to start and detail-heavy, but ultimately lovely. We've got a de Bernières mail swap in the pipeline, and, after adoring his latest effort, I can't wait to explore more of his works.

The Dust That Falls From Dreams is available for preorder and comes out tomorrow, August 4. The book was originally published in Great Britain in July.

Disclaimer: I received this ARC through the Goodreads First Reads giveaway program for review consideration. Thank you to Goodreads and Knopf Doubleday/Pantheon for the chance to read it!