Like sand through the hourglass

Today I'm talking about The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. It took far longer to finish than I had anticipated and that was mostly because I expected it to be one thing and it was decidedly another. I had thought (and hoped) it would be heavier on the historical fiction side of things and while it did start out that way it ended up leaning more towards romance (not my fave genre as you know). The reader follows a young woman named Addie LaRue (as the title suggests) who in a moment of desperation cries out to the universe for help and the answer she receives is not at all what she expected. In order to truly be free and live a life of her own choosing she is sentenced to be forgotten by everyone she meets. The story bounces between time periods beginning in the early 1700s and ending up in 2014/present day. Schwab's descriptive writing is truly beautiful and there were many passages that gave me Hamnet vibes (i.e. they were deliciously written) but these sections were brief and generally devolved into Addie's relationship with the god who cursed her. I also appreciated the chill LGBTQ+ vibes that were threaded throughout. However, if I have to distill all my feelings about this book into one word it would have to be: lukewarm. 4/10

[A/N: If you've read this book and want to discuss the ending hit me up in the comments but make sure to tag it as SPOILERS just in case anyone else happens upon it.]

Source: StoryGraph

What I'm currently reading: Spring by Ali Smith and Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

**If you're interested in buying any of these books or any books really, you can click here. This will re-direct you to AbeBooks which is a site I use all of the time to find used books at an excellent price. A lot of the time I don't even pay for shipping! Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made through this link. You will not be charged anything additional for my commission. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) ** 

Heavy material in a light package

Sunny is looking forward to her awesome summer vacation going to the beach with her best friend...and then she gets sent off to stay with her grandfather at his retirement community in Florida. What Sunny views as a punishment is actually her family trying to shield her from her brother's trip to rehab. Sunny Side Up by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm looks at substance abuse from the viewpoint of a younger sibling which is rather refreshing and ultimately important when a child is trying to find books that relate to themselves. (I don't know anyone with a picture perfect childhood so it's a good idea if children's literature reflects that.) The references to substance abuse are rather oblique for the majority of the book so it's not heavy handed in the slightest. For the most part, we see Sunny acting pretty snotty as she comes to terms with the fact her summer is not going to be anything like she had planned but intermixed with that is a healthy dose of fear, anxiety, and shame. Remember she has no idea what has caused her family to send her away but she think she must have done something terribly wrong. (Also, her grandfather is the mack daddy of the retirement community and it's hilarious.) She does manage to make a friend of commensurate age though and the two of them develop a mutual interest in superheroes and comics.

It's hard to say where the author lands in terms of keeping family secrets (they experienced something similar to Sunny in reality) but what the reader does see is Sunny learning about the difficulty of maintaining secret identities as she gets into reading comics. By the end, she is told what has happened with her brother and the reader (if they hadn't already figured it out) sees all the puzzle pieces fall into place. Because the reader is seeing everything through the eyes of Sunny the reading experience is quite different from some of the realistic fiction on this topic that I've read before. I think from that standpoint this is quite a unique and important book especially for children who have experienced this and are feeling quite alone and isolated. In fact, at the end they tacked on a bit about talking to someone if you know a family member is struggling with substance abuse. If you're creating a booklist for your students and you're looking for material that touches on substance abuse and/or family dynamics you could do a lot worse than picking Sunny Side Up. 8/10

Source: Barnes & Noble

The illustrations reminded me of Sunday newspaper comic strips. [Source: Scholastic]

What's Up Next: 5 Worlds Book 1: The Sand Warrior by Alexis & Mark Siegel and illustrations by Boya Sun & Matt Rockefeller

What I'm Currently Reading: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

**If you're interested in buying this book or any books really, you can click here or here. The first will re-direct you to AbeBooks and the second will re-direct you to The Book Depository. These are great websites for purchasing books (AbeBooks carries inexpensive used and out-of-print books and The Book Depository ships free everywhere in the world). Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made by following either of these links. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **

Essential Reading

Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions by Russell Brand is the 4th book of his that I've read and possibly the one that's hit the closest to home. This book outlines the 12 Step Program from Russell's perspective with personal accounts from each step of his journey towards recovery. It is an excellent book for those struggling with addiction (of any kind) or those who have witnessed that struggle in others.

The emphasis made throughout the book is that you must

• seek a Higher Power
• attend meetings to have a community of help
• work the program every single day
• seek help at times when stressed or apt to relapse from a mentor who has worked the program

These excellent quotes from the book do a far better job of recommending it than anything I could say:

But in your life you've faced obstacles, inner and outer, that have prevented you from becoming the person you were 'meant to be' or 'are capable of being' and that is what we are going to recover. That's why we call this process Recovery, we recover the 'you' that you were meant to be. - pg 42

This program helps me to change my perspective when what I would do unabated is justify my perspective staying the same - 'if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got', if you want change, you have to change. You have to make amends. - pg 133

...'you can't think your way into acting better but you can act your way into thinking better.' - pg 160

The literature upon which these movements are founded describe it not as a 'cure' but as a 'daily reprieve'; the disease, the condition, is still there, you will feel it move through you, in fear and rage and irritation, beckoning you back into previous behavior - pg 212 

I cannot say enough wonderful things about Recovery. If you or anyone you love has ever struggled through addiction and the subsequent difficulties on the long road towards recovery then this is essential reading. 10/10 highly recommend

Source: Amazon

What's Up Next: The Recovering: Intoxication and its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison

What I'm Currently Reading: The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity by Byron Reese

**If you're interested in buying this book or any books really, you can click here or here. The first will re-direct you to AbeBooks and the second will re-direct you to The Book Depository. These are great websites for purchasing books (AbeBooks carries inexpensive used and out-of-print books and The Book Depository ships free everywhere in the world). Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made by following either of these links. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **

Eventually your past will catch up with you

I had hoped to keep up the momentum and actually post a new review every single day leading up to New Year's but I got super busy with mom in town and...ah well. :-)

I thought I made notes about every single book that I've read this year and then it's time to review Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew J. Sullivan and I've got nothing. This leaves me in an interesting predicament because I read this book quite a while ago (September to be precise) and so this is going to be a test of the narrative's sustainability in my memory. (Full disclosure: I had to look up the synopsis because all I remembered was 'mystery, death, and bookstore'.) Without being too spoiler-y, the book follows a young woman named Lydia who works at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. Lydia has a secret. Well, it's at least a secret from her closest friends and co-workers. At the very start of the novel, Lydia discovers the body of one of her favorite patrons hanging in the bookstore where she works. (This isn't giving anything away because it's on the book jacket, ok?) This sets her off on a journey to not only discover why he killed himself but how the two of them might be interconnected beyond the clerk/customer relationship. Full of suspense (and not a little gore), this was an enjoyable read. I felt a bit like Sherlock Holmes trying to suss out the real clues from the barrage of information that the author threw my away but it wasn't too overwhelming. This is definitely a novel full of drama so if that isn't your jam I don't recommend this one. (And if you're squeamish I think you'd better steer clear.) 8/10 with a few points lost because I predicted the ending somewhat.

Source: Amazon

What's Up Next: Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories 

What I'm Currently Reading: I FINALLY FINISHED SCYTHE

**If you're interested in buying this book or any books really, you can click here or here. The first will re-direct you to AbeBooks and the second will re-direct you to The Book Depository. These are great websites for purchasing books (AbeBooks carries inexpensive used and out-of-print books and The Book Depository ships free everywhere in the world). Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made by following either of these links. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **

Attack of the clones!

If you haven't figured it out by now, my other passion besides books are movies. I watched Home which came out last year and starred (the voices of) Jim Parsons, Rihanna, and J. Lo. Imagine my surprise when I found out that it was based on a middle grade (I struggled over this designation) novel entitled The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex. (Do you see where this post is headed?) Both storylines focus on a little girl named Gratuity "Tip" Tucci as she tries to find her mom in the aftermath of an alien takeover. The aliens are called the Boov and they've corralled the humans into a centralized location and taken over everything. This is where the similarities mostly end. The relationship between Tip and her mom, Lucy, is less than ideal. Her mother drinks a lot, is financially irresponsible, and relies heavily on her daughter who is only eleven. I appreciated that Rex wrote this in a matter-of-fact way. It's a reality that exists for many children and I think realistic relationships such as these are underrepresented. What's important is that despite all of that Tip is determined to find her mother so that they can be reunited. Of course, it's not as easy as that. She's in Philadelphia and the majority of humanity have been sent to Florida. She buys a car with the emergency savings they have in their apartment and sets out with her pet cat, Pig. (That wasn't a typo.) She meets a Boov named J. Lo (Firstly, it's a boy Boov which is awesome. Secondly, the book is actually dedicated to J. Lo and as mentioned above she voices a character (the mom to be exact) in the movie.) who enhances her car so that it hovers. They go on a rollicking, dangerous adventure to find her mom while dodging the Boov and another race of aliens called Gorg (actual race is Nimrogs but they are all named Gorg) who have also arrived to colonize Earth. Rex uses illustration in a clever way throughout the book. There are "polaroids" (pencil drawings) of different parts of their trip as well as comic strip illustrations from J. Lo with written explanations by Tip. It's a quick, fun read that I think would especially benefit reluctant readers. It had a lot of heart and touched on a lot of topics such as substance abuse, race, and loyalty. I really enjoyed it. :-D

**If you're interested in buying this book or any books really, you can click here or here. The first will re-direct you to AbeBooks and the second will re-direct you to The Book Depository. These are great websites for purchasing books (AbeBooks carries inexpensive used and out-of-print books and The Book Depository ships free everywhere in the world). Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made by following either of these links. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **

You'll never look at The Wizard of Oz the same way ever again

Most people are aware of the reimagining of the classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in the form of the book entitled Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire and/or the musical by Winnie Holzman. However, Dorothy Must Die takes a completely different spin on the classic tale. In Paige's version, Dorothy has returned to Oz and she is the epitome of all things evil. The Tin Woodman, Scarecrow, Lion, and Glinda are her willing participants in turning Oz into a fearful, corrupt place devoid of any happiness (other than Dorothy's own). Amy Gumm (also from Kansas) has stumbled into this world and she is tasked with the ultimate mission: Kill Dorothy. This book is the first in a series (which I will HAVE to read just as soon as I can get my mitts on the prequel novellas) and the sequel has just come out entitled The Wicked Will Rise. I highly recommend this to anyone who is 1. A fan of the original Oz series by L. Frank Baum. 2. A fan of Wicked. 3. A fan of fairytales being turned on their head (think Once Upon a Time). Trust me, guys, this one is worth your while.


Whenever I'm feeling conflicted about which book to pick up next, I hit the stacks in the library and wait for inspiration to strike. That's how I came across The Inheritance by Louisa May Alcott. Some of you may remember Little Women, Little Men, and Jo's Boys which were also authored by Alcott. That series was one of my absolute favorites (and still is come to think of it). I remember bringing it home from the school library and telling my mom in excited tones about these sisters (I'm an only child) who lived in a different time. So when I saw that there was a book by her that I hadn't read much less heard of I had to take it home with me. The Inheritance was written when Alcott was just 17 and in fact was her first work. It was unpublished until 1997 when it was discovered by biographers. It's a flowery romantic story that centers on a character named Edith who has all the charms and graces of an aristocrat without any of the legitimacy of the class...or does she? Guess you'll have to check back in later this week for my review to find out (or should I keep it a secret?).


PS It was made into a tv movie and I think you know what means. There's my Friday night sorted!