Books July 17

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I’ve been taking pictures of my library returns pile and doing little reviews in the captions of my Instagram, which is fun for sharing what I’m reading right now with my mom and friends but it’s not searchable or easy to find later, and Instagram is notorious for mystifying and often racist moderation policies so I worry that I should keep stuff I might want later in places I own. I tried cutting/pasting the reviews on Mastadon but the size limit is too short and half my pictures won’t upload without manually editing them. And I tried using LibraryThing but it’s a lot of work to add each book and cut/paste so I haven’t been consistent there yet either.

In the meantime, book reviews are going to get duplicated here to archive them where I can search them and I’ll see if that works better. We usually go to the library on Sunday (there’s a joke about my version of church waiting to happen there…) so these are yesterday’s returns and caption below.

A set of books laid out in a square. A child’s hand is visible in the upper right, since my kid helped with book layout.

The most memorable kid read was the Fauci book, which kind of raised my mental critical thinking/propaganda alarms (it’s very clearly “help make your kids feel better about vaccines”) but the message wasn’t bad just… You know that vibe? It’s very common in kids non-fiction, a side effect of the necessary simplification I guess. J and I spend a lot of time saying stuff like “that’s only partially true…” when we read. I did like their little pull quote (second picture).

A picture of the inside of the Fauci kids book. It works a kid and his father together at a table with papers in front of the kid. The page reads “Anytime Anthony struggled with homework, his father reminded him that every problem has a solution.” Then in larger decorative text it says “don’t get discouraged. Don’t run away because you don’t understand the problem. Think about it carefully and try to work it out.”

My books:

Hamster Princess: Of Mice and Magic probably would have been a hit with my kid but again, he only sat through part of it and I read the rest myself.

The preserves books we got for making strawberry jam last weekend, and that was a success!

Mango, Mambo and Murder — I decided I should try searching for diverse cozy mysteries, and the library had this one on the shelf. I really enjoyed it, and while her MIL is *much* worse than mine I could definitely relate to some of the culture clashes.  Also, I loved that the main character has a kid and manages to juggle childcare and sleuthing realistically.

Cover of F. T. Lukens’ book “In Deeper Waters” which depicts two young men in the rigging of a ship.

In Deeper Waters — queer fairy tale romance. So adorable, and it’s a delight that in this society the boys-liking-boys was not the point of tension, it was all about the magic and bargains with the sea witch and…

Cover of Lyla Lee’s book “Flip the Script” which shows a picture of a young Korean woman holding her finger to her chin with a slight smile on her lips.

Flip the Script — k-drama queer kids changing the world. Very sweet YA romance.