Sunday Salon -- No Big Deal

Autumn Purple Ash. This tree dumps its leaves quickly. It may be bare by the time we get home in a week.

Weather: The weather has really turned this week into deep autumn temperatures. The meteorologist on the TV news keeps warning us of freezing temperatures at night and possible snow in the mountains. Here we go folks! 

No big deal: Ever feel like that? Like every day is filled with stuff but when you look back on what you did that day you think everything was no big deal. That seems to be my life lately. Even some things which I thought might be hard or emotional, like taking my friend to his radiation treatment for cancer, was really no big deal. It helped that J. was so positive and the appointment so short. Actually it was an honor to help him.

I'm taking that attitude with me this weekend when we help Mom move to her retirement apartment: Mom is healthy, all my siblings will be together, a moving company is moving the big stuff. It will likely be an emotional time for Mom but there is no need to stress out. There is no time-crunch and plenty of hands to help. We've got this. I refuse to make this into a big deal.

Rescheduling events/appointments: Oddly, a whole month of appointments all were concentrated next week, including both of my book club meetings. The appointments were easy to reschedule  and other gals were willing to take over a few of my tasks in my one book club where I'm the secretary, including returning the book kit to the library. I will miss talking about the books but really it is no big deal.

The end of the summer tomatoes. We pulled up the plant to avoid a goopy mess if we waited until the freeze. Sad but really no big deal. There is always next summer's sunshine for more tomatoes.

No Kings Rallies! Demonstrate to remind the administration We Have NO Kings in America, Oct. 18th. Unfortunately I won't be able to attend because I will be driving to Eugene. So I am encouraging all my readers to do what they can to lend your support for this movement. (Find a rally in your area here.)

Actually this is a really big deal.

Reading:

• Audiobooks:
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. Don and I are listening to this horror novel together. It is an Indigenous story. Very well done. Quite disturbing. 62% complete.
• My Friends by Fredrik Backman. A book club selection. I was able to listen to enough today to get me, finally, into the story. 27% complete.
• Timecode of a Face by Ruth Ozeki. A nonfiction book by a favorite author. On deck.
• Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. A novella. On deck.
• Currently reading print/e-books:
• The Afterlife of Data by Carl Ohman. I've only read the introduction so far but already I've been mulling over this fact ---Pretty soon there will be more dead people on Facebook than living people. 10% complete.
• Persuasion by Jane Austen. Reading for the 250 years anniversary of Jane Austen Challenge. Her last complete book. A reread. 20% complete.
• Recently completed:
• Gender Queer: a Memoir by Maia Kobabe. The #2 most banned book last year. A graphic memoir.
• Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep. A nonfiction book for an upcoming book club.
• The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware. One of the book club selections I'll miss the meeting for next week. A retelling of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
• What Does It Feel Like? by Sophie Kinsella. A fictionalized story based on the brain cancer diagnosis and treatment the author had. I cried my way through it.
• A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle. The first Sherlock Holmes story.
• Flamer by Mike Curato. Another banned book and graphic novel. This one was the 10th most banned book in 2024.

Blogging:

• TTT: Book Series I've Never Finished
• Banned Book Review: Gender Queer
• Review: Broken Country
• Review Banned Book: Flamer
• Classics Club SPIN #42 Intro Post
• TTT: Books I'd Like to Read Again, for the First Time, Pt. 2
• Audiobooks with Don review: There's Always This Year
• Getting Ready: Novellas in November
• Review: The Turn of the Key

Reading choices: I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what I will/should read next. I set myself reading challenges and then try to obtain then. This probably causes me more stress than I need but in actuality as long as there is something to read and something to listen to, I'm good. No big deal if I meet these challenges or not. 

• Remaining 2025 reading challenges and optional books which will fulfill them:
• Booker Prize winner or long/short list nominees (Read one)
• Audition by Katie Kitamura and/or 
• Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
• National Book Award winners or shortlist nominees (Read two books choosing from the five categories)
• I Do Know Some Things by Richard Siken (Poetry longlist) -- COMPLETE
• The Teacher of Nomad Land by Daniel Nayeri (Young People's Literature longlist)
• Novellas in November (Limitless, but I want to read at least four)
• Seascraper by Wood (also on Booker list), 176 pages
• The Teacher of Nomad Land by Daniel Nayeri (also on the NBA list); 192 pages
• Audition by Katie Kitamura (On the Booker list); 197 pages
• Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (Already checked out); 163 pages
• Nonfiction November (Limitless but I want to read at least one)
• The Afterlife of Data by Carl Ohman (currently reading)
• The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (on the NYT Best books of the 21sst Century list)
• Classics Club SPIN (Read a classic from the spin list, announced Sunday) My list is here.
• Goodreads Seasonal Challenges (Read one per category)
• Dark Academia -- Options: Theory and Practice by Michelle de Kretser (also novella) or Katabasis by Kuang.
• Mystery category announced Nov. 1st
• Jane Austen's 250th Birthday
• Persuasion - her final published book (Currently reading)
• Book Club selections
• My Friends by Backman for RHS Ladies Club December meeting (currently reading)
• TBA for SOTH Gals December meeting
• Totals: If all lines up properly (or with luck), that is a minimum of 12 books, since I can double up on books in more than one category. I know it sounds like a lot but with this blueprint I think I can finish all the challenges with time to spare. If not, no one cares!

I'll close with this funny video about the anti-ICE demonstrations in Portland: A Message from the Frog Resistance.

-Anne

Me and Northanger Abbey

When I was a very young teenager or preteen I got ahold of a book like no other I'd read to that point or since...a gothic romance. I'm sure the book was too mature for my age and I had no idea really what was going on sexually but I found the story completely titillating. I reread my favorite bits several times and imagined my future self being ravished by some man in a black cape with a candelabra as the only source of light. The action probably took place on a dark and stormy night, too. 😚 

I have no idea what the title of the book was or how I got ahold of it. Was it my mother's? It couldn't have been my mother's book. She didn't read stuff like that, surely. More likely it was a book making the rounds among my friend group. I'll blame someone else's mother then. Forgetting the title hasn't wiped the book from my mind, however, and periodically I think back to that book and the young girl who was reading it. She (me) was so naive as to believe the types of interactions in the story were an accurate portrayal of male/female relationships. Surely every woman wants to be ravished, right?

Fast forward several decades to 2008. As an avowed Jane Austen fan I finally decided it was time for me to read Northanger Abbey. I know little about the book other than what I'd heard -- it the first novel written by Austen but one of the last to be published and therefore it is not surprising that the writing isn't as mature as her later books. But I was charmed from the beginning. And imagine me meeting young Catherine Morland and finding her fascination with gothic novels which ignited her overactive imagination, like the book I read as a preteen did for mine. There were seven "horrid novels" mentioned in Northanger Abbey: The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian by Ann Radcliffe and The Castle of Wolfenbach and Mysterious Warnings by Eliza Parsons, and several others. Some were written by women authors and contemporaries of Austen, who must have read them or at least was aware of their reputation before including references to them in her book. By including them, Austen is claiming her place next to them -- women authors.

Now in 2025 it makes me giggle at Catherine Morland's innocence. On a walk with Henry and Elizabeth Tilney, Catherine is reticent to talk about novels, since many people look down on novel-reading in her day including John Thorpe another one of her pursuers. But Henry assures her, "The person...who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid" (Ch.14). In a way he is saying John Thorpe is intolerably stupid, which we come to find out, he is.

Catherine is excited to be invited to Northanger Abbey, fantasizing about a place with a dark past, perhaps there is even a ghost of a scorned nun to haunt the place. The first night she stays in the Abbey there is a terrible storm, which reinforces her notion that terror abounds in such places. She is sure a locked chest in the room must contain some a hidden manuscript or some other secret. All these ideas she gained from the "horrid novels." Later she learned nothing important was in the truck, just a list of household items, and the storm was just a storm. But do you know what? I can imagine myself as Catherine Morland all atwitter with a lit up imagination thinking something brooding is around any corner.

In fact, even though I am now on the 70 side of 60, I still cannot read horror/gothic novels at night. My imagination just doesn't allow me to sleep well if I read a horror novel before bed. Some people love the thrill of being scared. Not me. What if this or that were real? (What was that noise?) Why just the other day I was at the point where I could finish a book before sleep. But the novel, The Turn of the Key, a retelling of the very creepy The Turn of the Screw, was too frightening to read at night. As it turned out I was close enough to the end I should have finished it since I tossed and turned all night fantasizing a ghostly ending, when the ending was actually much more tame. 

While some would say Northanger Abbey isn't Austen's best it may be her bravest. Here in the pages Austen stands up as a woman and says that her gender needs to be recognized for their writing talents, too. Perhaps all the books women write need not be horrid novels (gothic romances) but they should be published based on talent, just like men. Perhaps it is Austen speaking for herself in this novel when, extolling the virtues of the  reading novels, says "...work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humor are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language" (Ch. 4).

Thank goodness for novels, well written or a little less well written, which have kept this woman-child enraptured for a lifetime. Thank goodness for Jane Austen novels! I can reread them over and over, always getting something different out of them each time.

Happy 250th Anniversary Jane Austen! #ReadingAusten250 

-Anne

Review: THE TURN OF THE KEY (+Friday56)

Title: The Return of the Key by Ruth Ware

Book Beginnings quote: 

3rd September 2017  

Dear Mr. Wrexham,

      I know you don't know me but please, please, please you have to help me.

Friday56 quote: 

It was hardly a work of art, just stick figures and thick crayoned lines. It showed a house with four windows and a shiny black front door, not unlike Heatherbrae. The windows were colored in black, all except for one, which showed a tiny pale face peeping out of the darkness.

Summary: A modern retelling of The Turn of the Screw. Rowan Caine answers an ad to be a live-in nanny for three children living with their parents on an estate in Scotland. The home is a luxurious, smart house, with all modern conveniences.  What Rowan doesn't know is she is stepping into a nightmare -- with ghosts (or rumors of them), poisonous plants, children who seem to be against her from the beginning, and house that seems to be haunted by its own technology. In the end, a child is dead and Rowan is in prison for murder.

Review: I read The Turn of the Screw last year for the first time. It is a chilling ghost story with a haunted manor house and two malevolent children, seemingly under the spell of the ghosts. Henry James, who didn't normally write horror, basically wrote the story that launched a whole oeuvre of stories involving creepy malevolent children. Think of Linda Blair in The Exorcist, the twins in The Shining, the devil boy in The Omen, and Children of the Corn. All of these creepy children were inspired by Henry James' book. Now I can add two more from this book: Maddie and Ellie.

We selected The Turn of the Key for an upcoming book club meeting. Since the title alone hints at the retelling of the classic, I was expecting a governess (nanny), a haunted manor house, creepy children, and ghosts. Since it is modern I also expected cars, phones, computers. What I didn't expect was the smart house with its automated lights, showers, and alarms. So many things that could go wrong or become spooky! I think we will have fun comparing the classic vs the retelling at the meeting.

While James wrote a nuanced tale with several hidden themes -- repression, incest, and love scorned-- Ware's tale also has some surprising plot twists at the end of the mystery. It is not as good as the first -- are they ever?-- But a worthy second.

My rating: 3 stars.

 

Sign up for The Friday56 on the Inlinkz below. 

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader (If you want to improvise, go ahead!)

*Find a snippet, but no spoilers!

*Post it to your blog and add your url to the Linky below. If you do not add the specific url for your post, we may miss it! 

*Visit other blogs and leave comments about their snippets. Expand the community. Please leave a comment for me, too!  

Also visit Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader and First Line Friday hosted by Reading is My Super Power to share the beginning quote from your book.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

-Anne

Getting ready: NOVELLAS IN NOVEMBER

It’s almost time for Novellas in November, hosted by Cathy of 746 Books and Rebecca of Bookish Beck.

There are no categories this year, although participants are invited to start the month with a My Year in Novellas retrospective looking at any novellas read since last NovNov, and finish it with a New to My TBR list based on the novellas that others have tempted them with over the course of the month.

There are also two buddy reads this year – Seascraper by Benjamin Wood and Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde. I have Seascaper on hold at the library since it is a nominated Booker Prize longlisted book so I was already going to read it before I knew it was a read-along choice for the month. I will need to see if Sister Outsider is available at the library, too.

Here are some of my possible options for my novella month:

Short Classics

• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (1972, 166 pages)
• Flatland by Edwin Abbott (1884, 96 pages)
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1962, 192 pages)
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Sparks (1961, 150 pages)
• White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1848, 84 pages)
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (1937, 107 pages)

Short Fiction

• Theory and Practice by Michelle de Kretser (2024, 192 pages)
• We the Animals by Justin Torres (2011, 128 pages)
• Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (2016, 163 pages)
• This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar (2019. 209 pages)
• The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story by Daniel Nayeri (2025, 192 pages)
• Audition by Katie Kitamura (2025, 197 pages)

Nonfiction (I know, not really a novella!)

• Timecode of a Face by Ruth Ozeki (2015, 135 pages)

-Anne

Audiobooks with Don Review: THERE'S ALWAYS THIS YEAR: ON BASKETBALL AND ASCENSION

Imagine for a moment a book as a basketball game, structured loosely into pregame, four quarters, several intermissions, a time-out, and the postgame. That book is There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib. The book is a very challenging read as the game flow is interrupted by asides and back story in the same way a real game might go. Partly a sports story, as you would guess from the subtitle, the book explores the popularity of basketball in the region of Ohio where the author grew up. There's Always This Year is also part essay, part memoir, part social commentary, part cultural/racial observation, and part poetry, all moving far beyond basketball. 

Abdurraqib grew up in Columbus, Ohio in the 1990s and was a witness to a golden era of basketball as a young LeBron James became a legend of the game while many others with similar talents did not. Why does that happen, some make it and others with equal talent don't? And what does it mean to make it? Who deserves success? What role does the community play in terms of the tension between excellence and expectations on the individual players? These questions are just a few which Abdurraqib grapples with as he also dribbled (get it?) out details of his life growing up poor, black, Muslim, motherless, and in trouble with the law from an early age. Always. Always his focus returned to basketball, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and LeBron James.

I gave this book to my husband for Christmas. He is a sports fans, though he tends to enjoy watching football and golf more than basketball. I thought this would be a book he'd enjoy, but unfortunately the book doesn't allow for easy admittance. One has to pay at the gate to get into the basketball game, right? Well, that is the case with this book, too. It starts with the pregame and begins with this sentence: "You will surely forgive me if I begin this brief time we have together by talking about enemies." What? Enemies? That was not what I was expecting to read in a book about basketball. Let me backup to the epigraph because I think it provides a better launching spot for the 3-point shot of a starting place:

"Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down." -Toni Morrison

I'd say this is pretty good way to start this book. Over the course of the book, the author has to give up a lot of things that are weighing him down: to some degree even Columbus, Ohio, his old neighborhood, his memories and dreams, and yes, even basketball.

Hanif Abdurraqib is described as a poet, essayist, and cultural critic. But I think his poetry leads the way in all he writes. Here are a few examples of his writing. Can you sense the poetry behind the words?

About the death of a high school basketball star on the cusp of making it in the NBA, he writes:

"Sometimes there are funerals, and sometimes there is nothing. No portal through which grief can be passed, no housewarming for the new grief that furnishes the ever-growing tower we carry, that we are responsible for, whether we want to be or not" (90).

About memories of his childhood, Abdurraqib writes so descriptively and says:

"My childhood beloveds, my beloved childhood blocks, it is not you I swear. It is my own memory -- memory that I, even now, cannot detach from dreaming. Which is a more whimsical way of saying that the block doesn't look like the block that I once knew and loved and dribbled basketballs on, dodging cracks in the sidewalks or the glass, broken tenderly enough to take the shape of a small brown mouth" (93). 

Then there was the poetry poetry: 

(165)

After Don's aborted attempt to get into the print version, we decided to listen to the audiobook together. I confess I found the opening five minutes philosophically dense and hard to penetrate, too, but soon we settled in to the author's narration of his story. With only seconds left in the game/book (Do the Cavaliers win the championship with LeBron at the helm, or not?) I start sobbing. Don, who is driving and has other things to pay close attention to, isn't sure why and looks over at me with a question in his eyes. It was this: all the sudden I knew everything the author was saying about life, memories, and dreaming was true. What if our childhoods are still going on in an alternative universe? And we, the livers of that life, are living in two places at once?

"When Brian Wilson completed the song "God Only Knows," he spoke of the impulse to fade the song out on a loop of the chorus, suggesting that it creates a sort of infinity spiral. A world where the song is still going on, always, somewhere. And you, the listener, are still in it, as you were at the time of listening. A dream with no exit. There is a universe, always, where you are joyfully encased in the endless return of chorus, and you might age there, but let's say you don't. Let's say you and the chorus both lock into a type of eternity, a forever of wondering God only knows what I'd be without you, an eternity of praising the fact that you'll never find out. And it is both beautiful and heartbreaking this, that we go on living while a past version of ourselves remain locked, peacefully, in a euphoric dream" (316).

I think the reason I got so choked up at this point related to Don and I both celebrating this summer with our high school classmates the 50 years since our graduations. We took big, long walks down memory lanes. We both lived idyllic childhoods filled with games, friends, sunshine and swim meets. Don especially had a childhood filled with freedom and fun in a small Eastern Oregon town. He'd leave his house on his bike every morning of the summer, bike to the school for baseball practice, stop off for an ice cream on his way to the swimming pool where he'd swim all afternoon, not biking home until dinner, when he knew his folks would begin to wonder where he was. I think I was crying as much for his memories as I was for mine. And I love thinking about that little boy biking around town in an endless, happy summer. It's a rare book that makes you reflect so deeply on your own childhood and feel so connected to a story so different than your own.

Both Don and I loved the audiobook and rated it with 5 stars.

-Anne

TTT: Books I'd like to read again, for the first time. Part 2.

Top Ten Tuesday: 

Books I'd Like to Read Again, for the First Time. Part 2.

I did this exact post in August 2021. At that time I listed these ten books: To Kill a Mockingbird, Hitchhiker's' Guide to the Galaxy; The Harry Potter series; The Goldfinch; Ready Player One; The Little Prince; A Confederacy of Dunces; The One-In-A-Million Boy; Going Bovine; and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I still want to reread all of them for the first time. But since there are so many other books I'll name ten more recent reads I'd like to read again as if I've never read them before.

James by Percival Everett, 2024
I was so delighted with this retelling of the Huck Finn story, I'd love to read it again with the same enthusiasm I had for it first time.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, 2022
I could happily add all of Kingsolver's books to this list. I love them all. This is her most recent and it is inspired by another classic: David Copperfield.

North Woods by Daniel Mason, 2023
I need to reread this book because I missed so much on my first pass. It was surprisingly wonderful.

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill, 2022
This book spoke to me about the empowerment of women and the strength we have within us, and, um, dragons. I was so delighted by it, I want to relive that feeling.

Encyclopedia of An Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, 2005
I read this book in 2023 at the recommendation of another book blogger. I loved every minute of the book. After I finished it I learned the author had died of cancer in 2017. I was heartbroken. Still am. I want to go back and reread it not knowing about her death.

Strange Planet by Nathan W. Pyle, 2019
I needed this book so much when I read it in 2022, while the life was still being strangled by COVID. I laughed and had so much fun with it, somehow I'd missed the whole Strange Planet on Instagram, so I was coming to it new. When I read of few of the comics a few weeks ago, I didn't think they were as funny as I remembered it. I want to go back and read it for the first time again.

Where is the Green Sheep? by Mem Fox and Judy Horack, 2005
Back in 2022 I was on a mission to read 100 books with my pre-kindergarten grandson before he started school. This book was on the list and though I was familiar with Mem Fox I'd never heard of this one before. Both Ian and I loved it so much we instantly reread it like five times in a row, finding more and more treasures inside each time through. That whole experience is one I'd love to repeat.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, 2021
I know I probably need to reread this wonderful Sci-fi book but I'm worried it won't be as wonderful as the first time through listening to the audiobook version.

Persuasion by Jane Austen, 1817
I read Pride and Prejudice as a pre-teen. I read it so early it is incorporated into my very fiber, so I can't imagine reading it again for the first time. But I first read Persuasion, Austen's second best, as an adult. I loved it so much I told everyone it was my favorite Austen for years. I'd love to jump back and read it for the first time again to see if I'd still be in love with it to that degree. 

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green, 2021
I had to put a John Green title on my list this week. He is my favorite author. This collection of essays on life on our planet is associated with family love and a fantastic trip in my memory. It would be fun to relive it all, including the book.

-Anne

Classics Club SPIN #42

It is time for another Classics Club Spin. 

The spin happens on Sunday, October 19th. At that time a number will be announced and I will have until Dec. 21st to finish that book. All you have to do, if you want to join in, is create a numbered list of 20 classics you still want to read and wait for the announcement, then commence reading.

My last ten choices are novellas, as I will be participating in Novellas in November and think this would be a lovely way of knocking off two challenges at once. We'll see if the dice helps me out.

My Classics Club SPIN #42 list

1. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
2. Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
3. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Highsmith
4. The Master and the Margarita by Bulgakov
5. Cry, The Beloved Country by Paton
6. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by Le Carre
7. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
8. Persuasion by Jane Austen
9. The Westing Game by Raskin
10. A Passage to India by Forster
11.  O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
12.  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
13.  Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
14. Siddhartha by Hesse
15. Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville
16. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
17. White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky
18. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
19. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Sparks
20. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Abbott

-Anne

Banned Book: FLAMER

Today is the last day of Banned Books Week 2025 so I made it just under the wire with this review. 

Flamer by Mike Curato is a graphic novel based on some experiences from the author's life. It was the 10th most banned book in 2024.

It is the summer before high school. Aiden is fourteen, a boy on the cusp of manhood. He still has not has his growth spurt so he is short and pudgy for his age. He is constantly teased for his physique and bullied because he doesn't act like other boys think he should. Now at Boy Scout camp for the summer, Aiden finds that bullying hasn't stopped at the school doors. He has made some friends at camp, including his tent mate, Elias. In fact, he keeps having dreams about Elias.

Boys keep calling Aiden "gay" but it can't be true. "I know I’m not gay. Gay boys like other boys. I hate boys. They’re mean, and scary, and they’re always destroying something or saying something dumb or both. I hate that word. Gay. It makes me feel . . . unsafe."

At one point in the book Aiden is so distraught by his attraction toward Elias, the feeling of being abandoned by everyone he cares about, and the near constant bullying that he decides to kill himself.

He makes his way to camp chapel where he ends up wrestling with his soul eventually life winning out over death. The scene was a powerful reminder to any readers that all people are deserving of love and acceptance and joy.

I thought long and hard after I finished the story about how desperate a person must feel to want to end their own life and how importance it is that we accept people for what they are and not try to make everyone conform to some gender standard that is out of reach for most. Then I wondered at the type of person who would want to ban this book, making it not only not available for their child to read, but also so no child could read it.What if that child needed to read this book so they didn't feel alone? Some people are so heartless and thoughtless. I know some people are so frightened that their child might "become" gay by reading a book like this they must do whatever it takes to keep the book away from them. Obviously these people didn't read the book, or they would have seen how agonized Aiden was about his own sexual awareness and identity. This was not a choice for him. He was born this way!

I highly recommend the book. Read it even though Banned Books Week is over.

My rating: 4.75 stars 

-Anne

Review: BROKEN COUNTRY

Title: Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall

Book Beginning quote:

Friday56 quote:

Summary:

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become (Publisher).

Review: I don't remember how I heard about Broken Country. Maybe it was on a list of possible book club selections or maybe one of you mentioned it on your blog but whatever it was I determined I needed to read it without doing much research. I didn't even know it is a love triangle story until I started it, months after I initially placed a hold on it at the library. I tend to avoid these types of stories because I find myself getting all judgey-judgey and second-guessing all the decisions the characters make. 

Anyway, I started it and was hooked right from the beginning. The setting, a farm community in North Dorset, UK, was so pastoral. The years, 1955 and 1968, made life seem simpler and less chaotic. All of the characters, except for Gabriel's mother, were sympathetic. And the story was completely heartbreaking. I am pretty sure I cried through the last half of it nonstop. So much of the heartbreak hinged on the son, who died tragically. There is even a mystery. Reese Witherspoon, who selected Broken Country for her book club, said, "It is a masterfully crafted mystery that will keep you guessing to the last page. Seriously, that ending! I did not see it coming." There you have it. I dare not say more or I will spoil the book for you.

My rating: 4.5 stars

-Anne

Banned Book: GENDER QUEER

Gender Queer is a graphic memoir written and illustrated by Maia Kobabe. It recounts the author's journey from childhood related to gender identity.

After coming out as nonbinary in 2016, Kobabe, a graduate of the California College of the Arts with an MFA in Comics, began drawing black and white illustrations about gender identity and published them on Instagram. These cartoons became the basis for this book, Gender Queer. Kobabe, who prefers the Spivak pronouns: e/em/eir, stated e was motivated to create something to explain gender to eir parents after coming out.

The book, published in 2019, was met with critical acclaim. 

• In the February 2019 issue of Publisher's Weekly the reviewer said, "this heartfelt graphic memoir relates, with sometimes painful honesty, the experience of growing up non-gender-conforming. [...] This entertaining memoir-as-guide holds crossover appeal for mature teens (with a note there's some sexually explicit content) and is sure to spark valuable discussions at home and in classrooms" (PW). 
• And the reviewer for School Library Journal that same year called it a, "great resource for those who identify as nonbinary or asexual as well as for those who know someone who identifies that way and wish to better understand"(SLJ). 
• In 2022, Sophie Brown commented that  "Gender Queer isn't an especially easy book to read but it is a powerful one. [It] will be a comforting voice from someone who has walked the same paths"(GeekMom).

In 2020 it was awarded an Alex Award, an award given out to adult books with cross-over appeal for teens. It also won the Stonewall Award, for books with a LGBTQIA theme for teens or children. These awards led to the book becoming widely available in high school libraries. 

Gender Queer was the focus of many book challenges and book bans in 2021 and has remained on that list ever since. According to the American Library Association it was the most challenged book of 2021, 2022, and 2023 and the second most challenged book in 2024. Admittedly the book has some sexually explicit drawings and descriptions. A few even made me squirm. But what I appreciated so much about the book was the candidness and the author's honesty about eir own confusions surrounding gender identity. This was clearly not a person who woke up one day and decided to try on being gay or trans or bi or as asexual. This is a person who has struggled a lifetime to accept and embrace eir self. 

Kobabe published an opinion piece in the Washington Post which was partially reprinted on the ALA blog:

“Queer youth are often forced to look outside their own homes, and outside the education system, to find information on who they are. Removing or restricting queer books in libraries and schools is like cutting a lifeline for queer youth, who might not yet even know what terms to ask Google to find out more about their own identities, bodies and health” (Kobabe).

I am so glad I read this book for Banned Books Week 2025, which is happening right now. It opened my eyes and gave me additional empathy about individuals' gender identity issues. It helped cement my feelings that we all need to find ourselves in books, no matter our race, creed, gender, or religion.

My rating: 5 stars.

-Anne