The Only Good Indians

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This book review will put me all caught up through the end of October, save for the three books in Elin Hilderbrand's Paradise Trilogy. I'm currently reading the third book in the trilogy and I'll do a review for the full trilogy when I'm done with it. 

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones is an adult horror novel based on American Indian lore. Stephen Graham Jones is a member of the Blackfeet tribe which is the same as the tribe in the book. It follows four friends who have an incident while hunting elk just before Thanksgiving one year and now nearly ten years later some entity they've angered is after them. I really enjoyed this book, it's a more cerebral slow burn horror that challenges what is real and what is not real and how much of what the four men experience is real and how much is interpretation due to their own paranoia and fear. I read this book from the 15th to the 26th and gave it a solid 5 stars. As always spoilers after the picture. 

The prologue of the novel follows Rick, the first of the four friends to die. He has since left the reservation and is having a drink in a bar. He leaves the bar to pee and sees an elk in the parking lot. As he tries to get away from the elk, one that reminds him of a mysterious hunting incident in his past, he sees more elk who begin to cause damage in the parking lot coming after him. He picks up a crowbar to fight back and begins destroying cars trying to fight back. As the men outside the bar begin to pursue him, that's when we realize that only Rick can see the elk and as far as the men know he's the one destroying the cars. They hunt him down and beat him to death as he sees the elk looking on.

After the prologue we're introduced to another of the four friends, Lewis, who is the only other one who has escaped the reservation. He's living a distance away and working as a mailman, married to a white woman. When we first see him he's fixing their ceiling light and when he looks down through the ceiling fan he sees a doe elk laying on the living room floor and falls off the ladder. Through Lewis's perspective we find out what happened with the four friends during the elk hunt. The weekend before Thanksgiving they had been hunting, unsuccessfully, and crossed into the area of the reservation restricted for the elders and came across a herd of elk in a little gully by the lake. For the teenagers its like shooting fish in a barrel. They kill more than enough elk to keep them supplied with meat for a long time. In amongst the herd of bull elk however, is a single young pregnant cow. She fights valiantly and is shot three times before she dies. Then their hunt goes from triumphant to disgraceful. The boys are caught by the game warden and made to abandon the entire hunt, except for the cow. The boys receive a ten year hunting ban which culminates in the supernatural destruction that takes place in this book. 

After seeing the elk on the floor, Lewis becomes obsessed as his life begins to spiral out of his control. His dog is found hanging from his chain over the fence and while he's languishing in the garage, Lewis and his wife find the dog has been trampled by something in the garage. Lewis begins to see an elk=headed woman everywhere and becomes convinced its the Crow woman he works with at the post office. He lures her to his house and kills her, then when his wife returns home he kills her too and cuts an elk fetus out of her womb before going on the run. He is caught just before arriving back on the reservation and shot by state troopers who acknowledge the elk calf he's got with him when they throw them in the back of the truck. The truck later crashes when a young Indian woman jumps from the bed and when they look later, the elk calf is gone. 

After Lewis's death you see Gabe and Cassidy, the last two boys, preparing for a sweat with a boy who goes to school with Gabe's teenaged daughter. During the sweat the elk-headed woman appears. She kills the boys father, a reservation cop, and then begins to exact her revenge on the other two men. She stomps Cassidy's dogs making it look like Gabe did it and stole Cassidy's money. Then as the two friends fight, Cassidy's girlfriend is squashed by a broken down truck (the same truck that they took on the hunt so long ago) when Gabe shoves it off the cinderblocks. Cassidy shoots at him and hits what Gabe believes is his daughter. Gabe beats Cassidy to death before Gabe is killed as well. When Gabe's daughter, Denorah, comes to get money her dad owes her and finds the spirit masquerading as Lewis's coworker. 

The two young women square off on the basketball court before Denorah flees the spirit. The boy from the sweat lodge, barely alive, runs across her while he's fleeing towards town on a horse and she tells him to get her step-father, the game warden who busted her father and his friends and that she's leading the spirit to the lake. With the spirit in pursuit, Denorah leads her down to the same clearing where the elk hunt took place and the elk suddenly gives up her pursuit of Denorah as she digs up the grave where Lewis buried the calf all those years ago. As the elk spirit is reunited with her calf, Denorah's step-father appears on the ridge and takes aim, Denorah gets between them and stops him from shooting. 

And that's where the novel ends. It's gruesome adn bloody, especially Lewis's killing of the two women and the entire scene with the sweat lodge massacre but it ends with a moment of peace, Denorah righting the wrong that took place all those years before. The elk-headed woman is reunited with her calf and has her revenge on the men who behaved so shamefully those years before and Denorah (Gabe's calf) gets to live as well. The precipitating event wasn't necessarily the hunt, it was the disgracefulness of slaughtering more elk than they could've packed out plus having to throw most of them back due to breaking the rules on the reservation by hunting where they weren't allowed. 

This was an excellent book and I enjoyed every moment of it. It was dark and macabre and I enjoyed the native spirituality at the heart of it. All in all a most excellent horror novel, one I think I will end up buying (this was an ebook I got from the library) and rereading from time to time. 

Happy Reading!

Richelle

Docile Rant

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This is sort of a review but mostly a rant. I tried the book Docile by K.M. Szpara and DNF'ed it at 100 pages in. There are not words to express how much I absolutely hated this book but I'm sure I will find plenty. As always after the picture are spoilers and ranty, sweary ones at that. 

So this fucking book. The tagline "There is no consent under capitalism" and the description both promise a dystopian where people inherit debts and to avoid debtor's prisons they can sell their debt to the mega rich and become dociles, slaves. To be more obedient and passive and not remember their terms of service they use a drug called dociline. We are promised to follow Elisha, a young man who has become a docile to pay off his families' debts but promises he won't use dociline after it destroyed his mother during her own service. He is bought by Alex whose family owns the pharmaceutical company that produces dociline. A romance ensues in all its dystopian glory...at least that's what was promised. 

In the one hundred pages I read we met Elisha and Alex and I hated them both. Elisha is self-sacrificing and noble but has no substance. We're told his family is 3 million dollars in debt and that at some point the government stops warning you about your debt and throws you in prison but it never answers what point that occurs at. In the office where they sign up to be dociles there's Elisha and his 3 million dollars versus another boy who is only a couple thousand in debt from college. There's no context as to when debtor's prison comes into play and why being a literal slave is better than the prison. 

Second Elisha is signed up to be a literal slave and there's absolutely no description as to how the United States got to a point where slavery is acceptable again. There's also no acknowledgement of the original roots and history of slavery in the US. 

Third Alex has to either be in a relationship or manage a docile to prove he can manage his family's pharmaceutical company but there's no conversation as to why and how this is supposed to prove this to his family. Also there's no explanation as to why, when he's been the acting manager/owner of the company successfully so far why it's now being called into question. Also there's no reason why, when he is getting a docile to be a sex slave and to use him as a test subject for dociline, he doesn't discuss that at all with Elisha during his interview with him and doesn't make that a condition of signing him to a lifetime contract. 

I made it a hundred pages which was just past the point where Elisha, having been bought for sex by Alex, is raped by him. The rape scene takes place from Alex's point of view but after its all said and done they both decide it's okay because they're hot and attracted to each other. Literally no one has time for this bullshit. And it was at that point when I was done. 

I read more reviews of it after I finished it and saw a lot of people raising the same issues I had with it. Apparently I didn't make it to the point that the most prominent black character in the whole book is a slave named Ebony. Seriously I couldn't make this crap up. Mostly I couldn't muster up any reason to care about any of the characters so I DNF'ed it with a negative review on goodreads (my first goodreads review) and a single lone star review because you can't give it zero stars and this is a zero star book if I ever read one. 

Anyway Happy Reading (Read better books than this one for me!)

Richelle

Sin Eater

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Also in October I read Sin Eater by Megan Campisi and to be honest this is book was not at all like I was expecting. The description struck me as a sort of Dark Fantasy but it was more of an alternate history/mystery novel. That being said, despite it being not what I expected I still enjoyed it a lot and gave it a solid 4/5 stars. As always there are spoilers following the picture. 

In this book we follow May, a young peasant girl in Tudor England. She is an orphan and is arrested for stealing food and held in prison to be sentenced alongside other girls who have committed similar crimes. The punishments are swift and harsh but when May is impudent in court she is sent back to the jail without being sentenced. Finally they come for her and in the courtroom she is sentenced to become a Sin Eater. A sin eater is a woman who eats ritual foods to take the sins of others onto themselves so that people will go to heaven despite their sins. They lock a collar onto her throat and tattoo an S onto her tongue to mark her as a sin eater and send her out into the world with nothing and no help. She ends up finding her way to the Sin Eater's home and the silent woman takes her in as a kind of apprentice. They don't speak unless its the ritual words during the confessions and the ritual eating during funerals. 

They exist in silence together for a time and then at a eating for a former royal governess that they had heard confession from a deer's heart appears. Hearts are for murder and the governess had confessed to nothing of the kind. The elder Sin Eater refuses to eat the heart for the unconfessed sin and is taken away. May eats the heart and finds herself on her own. The same thing happens again after the death of a second royal servant and May finds that the other sin eater had been killed during her interrogation. May finds herself tossed into a royal mystery trying to discover why these deer hearts are appearing on coffins when they weren't confessed to. 

At the same time a pair of vagabonds appear in her home, having broken in while she was out and she lets them exist with her. Former performers, a woman with leprosy and a man with an ugly and scarred face. They bring more people and one of them reads the book of sins to her until she discovers that a deer's heart is specifically for the murder of a royal baby. She also befriends a Jewish violin maker who eventually removes her collar for her so she can take it off and put it on in turn.

Through much sneaking back and forth she discovers that the royal servants were said to have murdered the Queen's illegitimate baby at her behest when her stepmother was on her deathbed. It isn't until she corners someone she thinks is guilty (and is guilty of witchcraft) that she discovers the truth, that the Queen's stepmother, the dowager Queen died in childbirth and her baby with her. While the Queen's illegitimate child replaced the baby that died and raised as the late dowager Queen's baby. The murders of the servants are being committed by that child now grown who didn't know who she really was. Ultimately May escapes the court and its secrets and lies, roaming from town to town, falling in with other sin eaters in other places as it suits her. 

I really enjoyed this book. I liked the historical setting and the way it explored something that happened in history that doesn't get talked about. Sin eaters were real and it's something I didn't know existed until I looked into it more reading this book. This book takes a lot of historical liberties with the real history but it approaches it as a sort of alternate history. The one thing I didn't really like was the exploration of May's past and why she was sentenced to be a sin eater. It distracted from the mystery and seemed unnecessary in the end. The story could've unfolded just as easily if she had been selected to be a sin eater due to her outbursts in court as opposed to the convoluted story line taking place as an afterthought in which she was the illegitimate child of the magistrate's brother. But aside from that the book was highly enjoyable and I gave it a nice 4/5 stars. 

Happy Reading!

Richelle

The Rise of Kyoshi

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I finally got around to delving more into the Avatar: The Last Airbender world with The Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee. This is the first book in the Kyoshi novels, of which there are two, and deals with Avatar Kyoshi, the Avatar two cycles before Aang of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I read this from September 27th to October 1st and gave it four stars. As always spoilers abound after the picture. 

The Rise of Kyoshi is the origin story of Avatar Kyoshi, who isn't discovered as the Avatar until she's sixteen years old, much older than any Avatar. She's an earth bender and big and clumsy and not very naturally talented, especially lacking in subtlety. She can Earth bend on a grand scale but not on a small one. When we meet Kyoshi she's a little girl while the friends of the former avatar, water-bending Kuruk, are performing tests to find the Avatar. Kyoshi picks the belonging of a former avatar but before they can continue the test she runs away with the toy. 

Flash forward to the present timeline of the story and Kyoshi is sixteen years old and working in the household of the "avatar" a young man named Yun. Her best friend is Rangi, the avatar's fire bending personal guard, and her surrogate father is air-bender Kelsang who was a friend of Avatar Kuruk. Yun asks Kyoshi to go with them to a meeting with pirates that will end in a peace treaty and everything changes when the pirates sneak attack them and Kyoshi raises the sea floor to provide ground for bending on the iceberg. When she wakes up back at home, Kelsang reveals he always believed she could be the Avatar. They keep it quiet at first but then Jianzhu, the Earth bender friend of Avatar Kuruk and Yun's master reveals his own suspicions. 

Jianzhu takes Yun and Kyoshi to a spirit to reveal who is the true Avatar. The spirit indicates Kyoshi and Jianzhu sacrifices Yun to it to get the two of them away. Back at their transportation Kelsang meets them with his sky bison and Jianzhu kills him. Kyoshi temporarily subdues him, long enough for her to flee on the sky bison. She returns home to the compound just long enough to gather her personal belongings and to collect Rangi before the two girls flee. 

Kyoshi tells Rangi everything that has happened and decides to ask her parents' people for help, a band of criminals called the Flying Opera Company. Reluctantly these outlaws of her late parents take her in and as she reveals her identity as the Avatar the water bender and earth bender in the group begin to teach Kyoshi and Rangi begins to teach her fire bending. They work with some other criminal gangs and Kyoshi wins her first victory as the acknowledged Avatar. 

Along the way Kyoshi and Rangi begin a romantic relationship and Kyoshi learns more about her parents from the people who knew them best and realizes there was a reason she was left behind as a child, to give her a different life, a noncriminal one. After defeating the corrupt ultimate leader of the outlaw group Jianzhu kidnaps Rangi and ships her back to his compound. Kyoshi goes to meet him to negotiate her release but it turns out to be a trick by Kyoshi and her new "family". While she deals with Jianzhu, the others rescue Rangi with the sky bison. She and Jianzhu are fighting to a stalemate when Yun appears out of nowhere and kills Jianzhu, leaving it unclear as to whether Yun is a ghost or survived somehow. They leave and end up splitting up at the end. 

The Flying Opera Company goes off one way, Kyoshi goes to the Air Temple where Kelsang was from to continue to her air bending training, and Rangi goes to her mother to help her recover. 

Through the book you discover some truths about how Kyoshi became the Avatar we know from the show. You see her lonely outcast childhood, her relationship with Rangi, her experiences with criminals that make her the law and order Avatar from later, the way her experiences shape her into a defender of the weak and downtrod, and why she wears the make-up you see her wear in Avatar: The Last Airbender which is reflected in the Kyoshi warriors. It was a story I didn't know I needed but I am very glad I got. 

I gave this book a solid 4/5 stars and I highly recommend it to any fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender or Avatar: The Legend of Korra. I am both and I loved it. 

Happy Reading!

Richelle

Illuminae

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Here's another book review for you. This is the first YA Sci-Fi novel I've read in a really, really long time and quite frankly I loved it. Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, is the first book in the Illuminae Files, a young adult sci-fi trilogy. As always spoilers abound after the picture. 

So Illuminae is written in a nontraditional found document format. The story is entirely told through interviews, emails, security footage analysis and various other documents. It tells the story through what I consider to be three primary characters: Kady Grant, Ezra Mason, and AIDAN. Kady and Ezra are both teenagers 17/18 years old. They were dating but broke up prior to the events of the book. 

The book opens on them being interviewed about the attack on their home of Kerenza IV, an illegal mining operation by the Lincoln battleship. The two of them are rescued by the military led by the military battleship, Alexander. Ezra is taken aboard the Alexander while Kady is taken aboard the scientific vessel, Hypatia. 

After the opening about the attack Ezra is enlisted as a fighter pilot while Kady is trained in computer analysis, although a hacker ends up enlisting her help in figuring out the truth of what's going on, especially after AIDAN, the AI aboard the Alexander orders a missile strike on the other science vessel with survivors, the Copernicus. A few escape ships reach the Alexander and are quarantined in one of the hangers. 

As the mystery unfolds, mostly discovered by Kady and her hacker buddies it is revealed that the Copernicus evacuated the mines on Kerenza IV, mines that were gassed by the attacking ships. The gas is some sort of bioweapon that turns the victims into murderous zombies, sort of akin to the Reavers in Firefly. Eventually AIDAN takes over the Alexander and releases the quarantined escapees from the Copernicus, gradually infecting the crew of the Alexander. 

As the crisis on the Alexander is unfolding Kady is lured over the Alexander with Aiden's promises that he'll help her rescue Ezra if she comes over and helps him battle the Lincoln. She hacks the systems on board the Alexander from various points on the ship, aided by AIDEN who helps her destroy the Lincoln as the Alexander is also destroyed and AIDEN with it. Kady escapes on an escape pod badly injured by radiation poisoning. When she wakes up she finds that Ezra is on the Hypatia, having been in one of the first groups to evacuate and never having been in danger on the Alexander at all. As she recovers they draw nearer to the jump base where they're not sure what they'll find. And that's where the first book leaves off. 

I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I was going to. It was a solid sci-fi story very similar to plotlines in the early seasons of the Battlestar Galactica reboot before it got weird. Kady and Ezra were interesting characters both individually and their relationship to each other. I consider the AI, AIDEN, to be a character of its own as it gains more and more sentience and acts towards Kady in a more human way than computer programming would normally allow. I haven't gotten around to them yet but I have the other two books in the trilogy, Gemina and Obsidio, waiting to be read. I really enjoyed this book and the nontraditional format of it. Despite being 600 some odd pages this was a very fast read and I was continually left hanging as to what was going to happen next and what was going on. 

I gave this book a solid five stars as well. I'm not usually the biggest fan of sci-fi but this one was really engaging and I look forward to the rest of the series. 

Happy Reading!

Richelle

Where the Crawdads Sing

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Another book review for you. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. This book is in the running for my favorite book of the year. I had put off reading it because the synopsis was pretty vague and I wasn't sure it was something I'd enjoy. Until this year I haven't read much in the way of Adult fiction unless it was horror or mystery/thrillers and this book is placed securely in the realm of historical fiction/literary fiction. Since I started my Book of the Month subscription last year and since I branched out my YouTube booktubers I started reading more adult fiction of all genres. Then with quarantine I've been craving new and different books and started using Read with Jenna and Reese's Book Club selections as recommendations, especially via their Instagram and Facebook pages. One book I kept seeing recommended was this one and I have to admit, although I was very late to the game, this may be one of the best books I've ever read. In fact, I bought a copy and sent it as a gift to my grandmother who is housebound due to health issues and COVID (she never had COVID but her health issues would make it really bad if she did). As always spoilers abound after the cover image. 

Anyway so this book is about a girl named Kya who lives in the marshes of North Carolina. In the beginning of the novel she lives there with her parents and her older siblings. Then her mother walks away from the family and doesn't come back. Then her siblings walk away one by one leaving her with their abusive father. She spends a summer alone with her abusive father who has cut back on drinking and teachers her something about the marshes and fishing and boating in them before they receive a letter from her mother which angers him and he disappears as well leaving the little girl, who is six or seven years old, alone. 

She experiences the pinnacle of kindness from others who live on the fringes of society: Jumpin' who runs a gas station and bait shop between the marsh where Kya lives and the nearby city of Barkley Cove. He gases up her boat for her and finds resources for her, covering up the charity his help is by making her feel like she's doing equal bartering; Mable, Jumpin's wife who claims that Kya's disgusting smoked fish is exactly what people in her neighborhood need and gives her clothes and mothering and other supplies as she needs them under the guise of trades; and Tate who is Kya's love interest throughout her story as well as the boy who teaches her how to read. 

As the book goes on you meet Chase Andrews, who you know at the outset will end up dead with Kya accused and tried for his murder. He's a popular boy in the city of Barkley Cove who romances Kya and then attempts to rape her. His body is found on the ground at the base of a fire tower in the marshes not terribly far from Kya's home and she is the only suspect in what they assume is a murder. 

Mostly this story is a coming of age story for Kya as she grows from child to adult on her own in the marshes with no formal education. She learns to read from Tate who comes to teach her every week adn after the trial and after many ups and downs, ends up marrying her and living with her in the marshes. She loves the marshes and gathers anything she can that she likes: feathers, shells, plants, etc. She eventually becomes a celebrated naturalist, with her nature books on the marsh and its inhabitants being published full of her own drawings/paintings and words. 

In the end, after her death, Tate is going through her private things and finds poems that he had seen published in the local newspapers dating back to when they were teenagers and she first began reading and writing for herself: poems published under a pseudonym and written by Kya. The last of which being an unpublished one that as good as confesses to the murder of Chase that she was acquitted of all those years before, a murder that was done in something like self-defense with a victim who had it coming. 

I loved this book. It was engaging and entrancing and from the very beginning when Kya's family leaves her on her own in their shack in the marsh you want to know where her story ends up, especially with the chapters that interrupt the "current" timeline with future glimpses into Chase's murder and Kya's trial. You want her life to end up happy and successful and accepted and she finds all of those things. The prose is beautiful and the descriptions make you feel as if you are there in that time and place and I loved every moment of it. An easy 5/5 stars and one of my favorite books of the year, if not of all time. I highly recommend this book to everyone. 

Happy Reading!

Richelle

Black Enough Review

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This is my second of many reviews to catch me up on September and October, at least for the most part. The book I read between this one and Here for It will be waiting until I finish the other two books in the series, which I am currently reading. 

So this review is for Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America by Ibi Zoboi (editor). This is a short story anthology with contemporary short fiction stories by YA authors of color that I found by accident on Libby. I read my way through the collection between September 18th and October 1st and I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Honestly, I can't remember every short story I read in this book but I remember that I did enjoy all of them. These stories were a variety of narrators and situations but all undercut with the themes of being young people of color in America. Of the contributors I've read and enjoyed stories by just two of them: Justina Ireland and Ibi Zoboi. Justina Ireland wrote the Dread Nation duology which is one of my favorite duologies of all time, one I will definitely reread time adn time again. Ibi Zoboi wrote Pride, a book I got in an OwlCrate way back when which is a modern day retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice if it took place in the hood and featured themes of racism and classism. I loved both of their contributions to this book as well. 

All these stories had different tones and writing styles but they all were engaging and I loved them. I highly recommend this story collection despite your race, religion, sexual orientation, or age. I gave it a very solid 4/5 stars. 

Happy Reading!

Richelle

Here For It

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This is my first review in a series of them so I eventually get caught up again...hopefully. This review is for Here for It: OR, How to Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas. 

This was the August (??) Read with Jenna pick. At least I believe it was the August pick, or rather, one of them. I read both the picks in August and I just didn't care for this one. It wasn't necessarily a bad book but it definitely wasn't for me. I definitely liked parts of the book. I liked the whole piece on Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and Lady Elaine Fairchilde, one of the antagonists in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. He's right that Lady Elaine Fairchilde had mad LGBTQIA energy. 

To be fair at this point I don't remember a ton about this book so this review won't have much in the way of spoilers. I liked R. Eric Thomas's writing style and I thought he was very funny but at the same time I couldn't relate to most of his writing. He's a flamboyantly gay black Christian and I am...none of those things. I am a very white, biromantic, asexual, kitchen witch. I could relate to the parts about having to keep pieces of himself to himself to escape the judgement of his family/friends/community. I also related very strongly to his struggles while attending college. I also struggled with finding my way back in college and as a result I have an associates degree in paralegal studies that I obtained after....seven years at three schools and which I don't use in my currently occupation as a CNA. 

All in all this wasn't a terrible book. It wasn't a great one either for me but I don't think I was necessarily the intended audience for this one. I read this from August 22nd to September 15th 2020 and gave it a pretty mediocre 3 stars. 

Happy Reading!

Richelle

Nonfiction November

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Happy almost Halloween! I can't believe it's almost the end of October and I've posted exactly nothing on my blog this month. I have a whole slew of book reviews and other posts that need to happen soon. Recently motivation has been such an issue for me recently. All I want to do is sleep and go to work but hopefully this reading challenge will give me the motivation to do some good reading. 

Nonfiction November is something I found out about through a YouTube channel I've recently discovered abookolive. She mostly reads and reviews nonfiction books. Nonfiction November is run by Olive (abookolive), Sabrina (Deliciously Autumnal Banana), Natalie (Curious Reader), Jill (The Book Bully), and Andreea (Infinite Text) and it is exactly what it sounds like, for the month of November you read as much nonfiction as you want to. There's a variety of social media platforms involved and things happening on all of them. 

Twitter

Instagram

goodreads

and TicToc, which is @NonfictionNovember. 

So here's abookolive's introductory post which outlines everything very well including everything I'm going to try to convey in my own clunky kind of way. Announcing Nonfiction November. The only requirement to participate is that you read one nonfiction book during November. I'm planning on trying to read one for each of the four prompts as well as the group book. The four prompts are:

1. Time
2. Movement
3. Buzz
4. Discovery

Each prompt is open to any interpretation you wand to give them. They can be a word in the title/subtitle of the book, it could be a book about the subject, or any other interpretation of it. Time can refer to the vague cosmological concept of time or a time period, movement can be literal physical movement or a pollical/social movement, buzz can be about something literally buzzy, such as bees or sound or it can be a popular book that has a lot of buzz about it, and discovery could be a scientific discovery or a discovery of something personal or anything you'd like. 

Finally there's the group book The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom. The readalong of this book will begin on November 1st and from November 1-18, the goal is to read two chapters a day and the main chat will happen the weekend of November 21-22. 

So for Nonfiction November I have picked four books that can fit into each category as well as a number of alternates to fit into each category. So here's my definite TBR. 

• Group Read: The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom (2019). This is a memoir about home and family set in a neglected New Orleans neighborhood. In 1961, the author's mother bought a house in the New Orleans East neighborhood. It follows the family's struggles using the house as a backdrop until it was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina. 
  
  
  
• Time: Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950s by Jennifer Worth. I chose this book (and I might read the two sequels to it as well depending on time) for time because it is very distinctively set in a particular time period, the 1950s. I also like the idea of memoirs for time because they are all about remembering times gone by. 
  
  
  
• Movement: Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacobs. This is my pick for movement because this book is a memoir by a first generation American. There is a lot about immigration in this memoir since the author's parents are immigrants which gives it a strong theme of movement both worldwide and on a social scale. This book is also written as a graphic novel and the art style gives me a very real sense of movement within the pages of the physical book. 
  
  
  
• Buzz: My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This is a buzz-worthy book because of Justice Ginsburg's untimely death recently and the drama surrounding her successor on the Supreme Court. I have been meaning to read this book which is a collection of her writings and speeches and other wisdom for a long time and this is the perfect opportunity. 
  
  
  
• Discovery: The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies by Dawn Raffel. This book is about Dr. Martin Couney, a man who used incubators and skilled nurses to help keep premature infants alive when they were originally doomed, but at the same time he displayed the babies in their incubators as sideshows to carnivals, such as the one on Coney Island. These "museums" with babies on display in incubators was touched on in a book I read earlier this year, Rachel Beanland's Florence Adler Swims Forever, and when I saw this book on the Kindle Daily Deals I was intrigued. 
  
  
  

Those are my for sure books for Nonfiction November. A nice grouping on a variety of subject matters. In case I still want more nonfiction or anything I start doesn't end up striking my fancy. 

TIME: For all my time selections I went for memoirs and biographies that focus on particular times or moments in history, both from a broader historical perspective or from a personal one, except for the last book on this list which focuses on a time period.

• The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne. This is a biography of Jane Austen, probably the best known author of life in the Edwardian Era in England. This is about both the time period of her life and the Edwardian Era as a time period. 
  
  
  
  
• Between Two Fires: Intimate Writings on Life, Love, Food, and Flavor by Laura Esquivel. This is a memoir by Laura Esquivel talking about the time period of her life. 
  
  
  
  
• Below Stairs by Margaret Powell. This is the memoir of a kitchen maid that inspired the TV show Downton Abbey. This memoir was the definitive work about a group of people, domestic servants, that kept England moving for a long time, and this sparked the end of the time of Domestic Servants.
  
  
  
  
• Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years by David Litt.  This is a memoir by one of President Obama's speechwriters about his time spent as Obama's speechwriter during the presidency. 
  
  
  
  
• The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum. This book is about the beginning of Forensic Medicine during the Jazz Age in New York. It's about a specific series of events during a specific time period. I suppose this book could also work for discovery.
  
  
  
  

MOVEMENT: My other selections for movement mainly focus on social movements but the third selection also involves physical movement. 

• Stonewall by Martin Duberman. This is about the Stonewall riots that sparked the first pride parade and the LGBTQIA rights movement in the US.
  
  
  
  
• Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall. This is a book about the feminist movement and specifically about women of color who get forgotten by the movement a lot. 
  
  
  
  
• The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea. This book is about a group of 26 men who attempted to cross the Arizona desert between the US and Mexico in 2001 and the 12 that came out of the desert again. This book involves both physical movement in the action of crossing the desert ot enter the US from Mexico and social movements in the themes of immigration, both legal and illegal.
  
  
  
  

BUZZ: I went with both current events and a book that inspired a popular Netflix show as being buzzworthy topics. 

• A People's History of the Supreme Court: The Men and Women Whose Cases and Decisions Have Shaped Our Constitution by Peter Irons. This book covers the history of the Supreme Court of the United States and how they shape our interpretations of the constitution. This is obviously buzzworthy with the recent death of Justice Ginsburg and the filling of her seat on the court.  
  
  
  
  
• Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of my Hasidic Roots by Deborah Feldman. This is the memoir of a woman who escaped from her very conservative Hasidic community that was recently turned into a very popular (and buzzworthy) Netflix series. 
  
  
  
  
• Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen. I got this book after seeing a lecture by the author at OMSI here in Oregon. This book is about infections in the animal kingdom and how they related to human pandemics. Very buzzworthy considering the current COVID-19 pandemic. 
  
  
  
  
• The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry. This is a book about the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. Buzzworthy for reasons that should be obvious. 
  
  
  
  

DISCOVERY: I interpret discovery to involve both scientific discoveries and discovery in a crime sense, as in discovering "whodunnit". 

• Poisons: From Hemlock to Botox to the Killer Bean of Calabar by Peter Macinnis. This is a book about the science of poisons and their applications in things such as medicine and cosmetics. 
  
  
  
  
• Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest by Gregg Olsen. This is a true crime story about Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard who ran a "clinic" that touted a "fasting cure" for just about anything that ailed you. In reality Dr. Hazzard was a quack who stole from her patients before her "cure" killed. 
  
  
  
  
• Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies by Jared Diamond. This is back to the idea of scientific discovery and specifically the anthropological ideas of what causes human societies to succeed and fail. I was introduced to Diamond through a couple selections from this book and I've read another one of his similar books, Collapse. 
  
  
  
  

So that's my whole TBR for Nonfiction November, both my definite TBR and my alternate selections as well as my reasoning for each book. I'm very excited to delve into some nonfiction this November and I hope you all will join me!

Happy Reading!

October Preview

 Hello Interwebs!

So after my mediocre September wrap-up and my huge I want to read all the things for the Fall TBR here's a more reasonable and excited October preview. Also, who am I kidding, this TBR is in no way reasonable but it is what it is. Anyway on to the TBR. 

The first section of my TBR for October are books I am currently reading, both of which I have now finished. 

• The Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Lee (2019). This is a YA fantasy based on the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which if you don't know I absolutely and 100% adore. Seriously my two favorite birthday presents were the Funko pop figures of Appa and the cabbage merchant from my in-laws along with The Promise omnibus graphic novel. So this is the story of Kyoshi, the avatar two cycles before Aang and how she became to be the avatar and embrace her destiny. This is my physical book. 
  
  
  
  
• Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America edited by Ibi Zoboi (2019). This is a young adult contemporary fiction anthology about growing up black in America. I saw this as an eBook on Libby and I loved Pride by Ibi Zoboi which I got from an OwlCrate and she wrote one of the stories and edited the volume. 
  
  
  
  

The second section of my October TBR are books I physically have from the library or have on hold from the library. I don't know if the holds will come in anytime soon but I'll note that and the wait times. Also I'm aware that one of these things is not like the others but I really want to read the second book in the trilogy and maybe get the third book on its release date so deal with it. 

• Sin Eater by Megan Campisi (2020). This is an eBook from Libby and one of the books I've been wanting to read since I first heard about it and it came out in April. It takes place in 16th century England and is about a young woman, May Owens, who is sentenced to be a sin eater for stealing a loaf of bread. The sin eaters are women sentenced to walk among others as silent pariahs to eat symbolic food to take on the sins of the dead to absolve them so they go to heaven. Then a food appears on a coffin representing a sin that the dead woman didn't confess to committing. The older sin eater refuses to eat it and is killed sending May into a mystery. 
  
  
  
•  His Hideous Heart by Dahlia Adler, editor (2019). This is another young adult anthology but this one is a horror/mystery anthology consisting of Edgar Allan Poe retellings. Poe is one of my favorite short story and horror/mystery authors and I have been very excited for this, especially since the very first story is a retelling of one that I'm not familiar with. This book has 13 retellings of stories and poems as well as copies of the original stories. 
  
  
  
• What Happens in Paradise by Elin Hilderbrand (2019). This is the second book in Hilderbrand's Paradise trilogy which is a women's fiction/mystery trilogy (the third book comes out in October) about a woman who discovered her husband's secret life after his death alongside his mistress in St. John in the Caribbean. I loved the first book and am very excited for the second two books in the series. 
  
  
  
  
• Different Seasons by Stephen King (1982). This is a volume with four novellas, each one based around a season. This includes Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, which is the novella that the movie Shawshank Redemption was based on; Apt Pupil; The Breathing Method; and The Body which was the novella that the movie Stand By Me was based on. These are two of my favorite Stephen King related movies so I'm looking forward to reading these books and then doing a movie rewatch for them both. 
  
  
  
  
• The Institute by Stephen King (2019). One of Stephen King's most recent novels and one I've been waiting to read for ages. We follow Luke Ellis who is abducted by men in a black SUV after they murder his parents. He wakes up in "the institute" in a room that looks like his but without any windows adn all the other kids who live there have special talents. They are all in the "front half" but others have graduated to the "back half" where they aren't seen again. Luke becomes more and more desperate to escape but no one ever has. I love Stephen King and this one is one I've heard nothing but amazing things about. 
  
  
  
  
• Docile by K.M. Szpara (2020). This is another new release for this year. This is a dystopian novel where there are people known as dociles who are kept for the uses of the holder of your contract to pay for debts or secure futures. The main character Elisha's family is ruined by debts passed on from previous generations. His mother never recovered from her time as a docile adn taking dociline, a drug taken by dociles to cope. So Elisha decides to try and erase the debt but is purchased by the man whose family is behind the drug dociline and the Office of Debt Resolution but Elisha's refusal to take the drug makes his owner determined to turn him into the perfect docile without it. This book sounds so good and its another one I saw recommended by Chelsea Palmer from the YouTube channel. 
  
  
  
  
• The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware (2016). This is thriller by the same author that wrote The Turn of the Key which I read earlier this year and I've heard its one of her better liked ones. It follows Lo who is a journalist who writes for a travel magazine. She's offered a week on a luxury cruise with a handful of cabins. One night Lo sees a woman being thrown overboard but when all passengers are accounted for and the ship sails on like nothing happens so Lo ends up trying to convey that something is seriously wrong. I love travel based thrillers like Murder on the Orient Express and locked room murders so I have high hopes for this. 
  
  
  
  
• The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones (2020). This is a horror novel about four Native American men who are being tracked by a vengeful entity because of an incident in their youth. This is a mix of horror and Native American folklore. I don't know a ton about this but I'm excited to read it. I have a hold on this from the library and the app promises it will be ready soon. 
  
  
  
  
• Home Before Dark by Riley Sager (2020). This is the latest thriller by Riley Sager and one of the more popular ones. This is about a girl who lived in a so-called haunted house for a short time as a child before her family was forced to leave. Her father wrote a book about it and then she inherits the house and moves in, trying to uncover the truth. I also have a hold on this from my library but I'm very far down on the list so no idea when I'll read this. 
  
  
  

So those are the library books I have in my possession or holds on for October. I also have six books I own (or will shortly own) that I also would like to read this month. 

• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938). This is a gothic horror/mystery/romance novel about a girl who marries a widower and is sucked into a mystery involving his venerated late wife Rebecca. This is becoming a movie on Netflix starring Lily James so I'd like to read the book before watching the movie. 
  
  
  
  
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey (1962). This is  about a man named McMurphy who is a patient at a mental hospital in Oregon that is ruled over by the tyrannical Nurse Ratched. This is a  classic movie starring Jack Nicholson and Netflix just came out with a miniseries starring Sarah Paulson by the creators of American Horror Story called Ratched. So I really want to reread this book before rewatching the movie and binging Ratched. 
  
  
  
  
• Horrid by Katrina Leno (2020). This is a brand new YA horror release about a girl who moves into the house her mother grew up in after her father dies. She discovers a locked room that is a perfectly preserved child's bedroom and is drawn into a mystery and a possible haunted house. I am so excited for this one and want to get to it before Halloween. 
  
  
  
  
• The last three books is a reread and then a read in preparation for the new book in the Practical Magic series by Alice Hoffman. 
• Practical Magic (1995): this is a novel about the Owens family of witches. It was made inot a movie that I love and also intend to rewatch. I read this once years ago and I recently got a copy of the eBook on sale from Amazon so I'm looking forward to a reread. This is the first actual book in the series. 
  
  
  
  
• The Rules of Magic (2017): this is the second book in the series and follows Susanna and her children who are trying to outrun the Owens family curse. I haven't read this one but I want to. 
  
  
  
  
• Magic Lessons (2020): this is the latest installment in the series and a prequel novel that follows the origins of the Owens family of witches in the 1600s and the origins of the curse. I've already ordered this as my October Book of the Month and I am so excited to read it. 
  
  
  
  

So I also have my normal book clubs and their October picks. I don't really intend on reading these this month but I probably will at some point. 

• His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie (2020). This is the Reese's Book Club pick for October. 
  
  
  
  
• Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (2020). This is both the Read with Jenna and the Barnes & Noble Book Club pick for October. 
  
  
  
  

Finally I have a whole list of new releases coming out in October that I'm excited about and may or may not pick up this month. 

October 6

• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. This is a fantasy about a woman named Addie LaRue who makes a deal with the devil to get out of an arranged marriage: she is immortal but doomed to be forgotten immediately by everyone she meets. Until one day when she's remembered. This is my number one must anticipated book of the fall and I have already preordered my book in the exclusive OwlCrate box. 
  
  
  
  
• Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade. This is a chick lit romance novel and is described as a fun romantic comedy set in the world of fanfiction. It's about an actor Marcus Caster-Rupp who is also secretly a fanfiction writer. You also have April Whittier who also has a fanfiction and cosplay hobby. Then she goes viral on twitter over her own plus-size cosplay creation and Marcus takes her out on a date. This book sounds so cute and reminiscent of the Geekerella books by Ashley Poston so I'm down for more geek culture books. 
  
  
  
  
• In a Holidaze by Christina Lauren. Another chick lit romance novel. We follow Mae whose life isn't going the way she wants and is going to be spending her last Christmas at her favorite place, a cabin in Utah where they've spent every Christmas since she was born. During a mental melt down while leaving after vacation there's a car accident and everything goes black before she wakes up on the plane to Utah to relive her holiday. This is basically a Christmas themed groundhog day-esque story by the authors of one of my favorite romance novel (The Unhoneymooners) and I'm so pumped!
  
  
  
  
• Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman. This is a historical fiction/fantasy novel in the Practical Magic series. I described it more in my TBR section above but I've already ordered this book as my Book of the Month selection.
  
  
  
  
• Troubles in Paradise by Elin Hilderbrand. This is a chick lit/mystery/romance, that is the conclusion to her paradise trilogy. I read the first book in the trilogy in September and I'm planning on reading the second book this month and this is the conclusion which comes out on the 6th. 
  
  
  
  
• Confessions on the 7:45 by Lisa Unger. This is a mystery/thriller following Selena Murphy who meets a beautiful stranger on the train while commuting home from her job on the train. The other woman, Martha, confesses she's stuck in an affair with her boss while Selena tells her that she suspects her husband is sleeping with their nanny. But then days later Selena's nanny disappears and she's pulled inot the mystery and who or what Martha was. Definitely a Strangers on a Train vibe from this one. 
  
  
  
  
• The Lives of Saints by Leigh Bardugo. This is another spin off in Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse. This is the red covered book given to Alina in the Shadow and Bone trilogy that details the lives of all the Ravkan saints, eventually including herself. I love Leigh Bardugo and I love her Grishaverse series especially so I'm very excited about this. 
  
  
  
  

October 13 

• Simmer Down by Sarah Smith. This is another chick lit/rom com. This follows Nikki who had to quit her dream job to help her mother in their Filipino food truck in Maui. Then a food truck run by Callum James sets up next to her adn they end up competing in the Maui Food Festival to decide who keeps the coveted spot. A hate to love romance which I can be iffy on but this sounds cute and foodie. 
  
  
  
  
• The Once and Future Witches by Alix E Harrow. This is a historical fiction/fantasy that takes place in 1893. It follows the Eastwood sisters who join the suffragists of New Salem and begin to turn the women's movement into the witch's movement. So witches plus women's suffrage historical fiction and I am down for this. 
  
  
  
  
• Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell. This is another mystery/thriller that centers around the disappearance of a young girl. We have Owen Pick who is in his 30s and living with his aunt and has been suspended from his job teaching geography after sexual misconduct allegations. On leave from his job he is sucked into the incel internet culture. Across from Owen is the Four family: Cate, a physiotherapist, Roan a child psychologist, and their teenaged daughter who accused Owen of following her home from the train station. The missing girl is Saffyre Maddox who was Roan's patient for three years and the last one to see her alive was Owen. I liked her book The Family Upstairs that I read last year so I'd like to read this one too. 
  
  
  
  

October 20

• The Girl in the Mirror by Rose Carlyle. This is another mystery/thriller. This follows twins Iris and Summer. Iris has a rougher life and is envious of her twin sister Summer's never-ending good fortune including her perfect husband. Then she and Summer go to Thailand to sail the family yacht to the Seychelles and everything changes in the middle of the Indian Ocean when she finds herself alone. When she reaches shore, Summer's husband assumes Iris is Summer and she takes the opportunity to take her sister's golden life and works on becoming the first of her manipulative father's children to produce and "heir" and get the hundred million dollar inheritance. This sounds fantastic and I really want to read it. 
  
  
  

So that's my little October preview: library books, books I want to read, and books I am interested in getting. October is going to be a good month for books: both reading and buying, I just know it. 

Happy Reading!