fun

“I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons” by Peter S. Beagle

October 20, 2024 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Recommended to me by: being a longtime fan of Peter Beagle’s work

Long ago, I read and loved Peter Beagle’s books “The Last Unicorn” and “Folk of the Air.” Later there were a string of books I didn’t like as much, but I see that I liked Summerlong back in 2016. This is his latest book, new in 2024.

“I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons” starts out with a main character with the quirky profession of dragon exterminator in a standard medieval fantasy setting . Then it intentionally and delightfully subverts all the expectations that come along with that setting. At 18, the main characters are grown adults, not children being sent on adventures. Their parents are very much present, complex characters in their own right. Women characters have as much strength and autonomy as the men, if not more. Men have emotions and tenderness right along with the women.

The book is complete in itself, and I would love to see a sequel in the same world. My only complaint is that it was over too soon.

Highly recommended.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Discount Armageddon: InCryptid 1” by Seanan McGuire

May 29, 2024 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Recommended to me by: Sean Eric Fagan’s Kindle giveaway @wandering.shop

This urban fantasy is not at all my kind of book, with a hard-boiled first person narrative and a lot of violence. I nearly put it down a couple of times, but kept reading because I have some time on my hands and the plot kept humming along. In the end, there was less dance involved than I hoped for at the beginning. It’s great that the main character is a woman, although the male side character is the one who grows and changes.

While the main character’s parents seem loving and involved in her life, raising child soldiers is still child abuse.

I appreciate the anti-xenophobia message of the book. At the same time, I wonder why none of the characters in New York City read as Black (thank goodness the monsters don’t read as Black) and some of the non-humans read very much like exoticized Asian women.

This is the first in a long series of InCryptid books with “discount” themed titles, per the InCryptid page on Seanan McGuire’s website, good news if they’re your kind of thing.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Afterglow: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors” edited by Grist

March 30, 2024 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Grist is a non-profit news organization that reports on climate change with a focus on equity. They run an annual short-story contest called Imagine 2200 and publish the winning and runner-up stories. This is the 2021 collection. The stories are available on Grist’s website

Many of the stories create a plausible future world that includes disaster and moves beyond it to show thriving and surviving communities. The stories are written by diverse authors and include characters from a variety of cultures, with a variety of skin colors, sexual orientations, genders, and abilities or disabilities. These futures include us all.

I had read Marissa Lingen’s story A Worm to the Wise before, and was happy to see it again. The other stories and authors were new to me, and I liked almost all of them. One of them made me cry, in a good way.

The stories all include some kind of hope, and they all include grief for what is lost. This is not “lalala we can ignore climate change,” but “let’s talk about how we can learn new skills and change our priorities so we can survive and thrive.” Recommended.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Boston Girl” by Anita Diamant

February 17, 2024 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Recommended to me by: thistle in grey

I picked this up because I enjoyed “The Red Tent” a long time ago. They have in common gripping characterization and story, careful research, and being centered on Jewish women. The writing is note-perfect and pulled me forward through the whole book.

This is the sweeping story of Addie Baum’s life, as told to her beloved granddaughter from the vantage point of being 85 years old. She was born in 1900 to struggling immigrant parents from Russia who settled in Boston. She seizes any bit of luck, care, opportunity, and friendship that comes her way, and works fiercely to make her way and succeed. She offers luck, care, opportunity, and friendship to people struggling around her when she can. She both flees and stands by her family.

She faces a lot of grief and loss. The book tells the stories, but does not linger on the pain. Perhaps it makes sense from the vantage point of being 85 years old. Perhaps a relief for the modern reader when the losses touch too close to home, like those from the 1918 flu pandemic (although this was published 5 years before the start of the Covid pandemic). At times it felt dismissive, although “face forward and don’t think about it” must have been the mantra of the times.

As a Jewish reader with immigrant parents who settled on the East Coast, I appreciated the resonances in the book, even though my parents arrived half a century later and did not struggle with poverty in the same way. I wonder sometimes what it’s like to be part of the dominant culture and have almost everything resonate like that.

Highly recommended!

Available at bookshop.org.

“Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry” by Rosalie K. Fry

January 27, 2024 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Recommended to me by: Sanguinity

10-year-old Fiona McConville doesn’t thrive in the city, so she’s sent back to her beloved islands to live with her grandparents. Imbued with the fierce magic of the sea, this book shows what can happen when children and adults are attuned to the sea and to each other. The events in the story are not always gentle, but the storytelling is gentle and everything comes right in the end.

The pen and ink illustrations are also delightful. Highly recommended! Originally published in 1957.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Day You Begin” by Jacqueline Woodson and Rafael López

December 30, 2023 by Sonia Connolly 1 Comment

Spanish title: El Día En Que Descubres Quién Eres! (The Day You Discover Who You Are!)

Recommended to me by: the Little Free Library down the street

What a gorgeous, loving picture book. “There will be times when you walk into a room, and no one there is quite like you.” Full of colorful flowers and multi-cultural children, the illustrations contrast their inner liveliness with their feelings of disconnection at school.

On the cover, a brown-skinned girl with tightly curled hair emerges through a partly opened door that is marked like a ruler. Later, a Korean girl protects her “too strange” lunch from the other children’s stares at a cafeteria table that is also a ruler. A boy excluded from playground games leans against a tree drawn with ruler markings. When two of the children make friends, they swing from a tree drawn with bark.

Highly recommended for children who might not quite fit in, and for adults who remember that experience. It made me cry, both times I read through it, and I’m taking it right back to the Little Free Library for someone else to find.

Available at bookshop.org.