It’s Not Monday Anymore, But I Still Want to Know What you are Reading? 11/30/21

This post is actually on Tuesday, but life has been a little hectic lately, and I can’t figure out how to post this on my phone. I wrote it on Monday, hopefully that counts. My town in BC was fully evacuated due to flooding two weeks ago. I am part of the largest section of town that is still not allowed back in our homes. We did get one day pass to go and check everything out on Saturday. We are okay, and our home is okay, we are among the very lucky. However, there is a lot of sewer and water infrastructure that needs to be repaired in order for our home to be considered safe.

We are fortunate to be staying with my wife’s parents, nearly two hours away. My school may go back this week, but I will likely remain here for a bit longer until infrastructure is repaired. Life has changed a lot. First world problem, but we don’t have much for Internet here compared to home, and it has made it hard to read the digital ARCs that I had lined up for late November. We have become familiar faces to the local public librarian, and that has been nice. I did manage to do some reading over the last couple of weeks, and I will highlight a few here. I am hoping to be able to link these reviews up with the others at Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers. Thanks to those sites for hosting the It’s Monday, What are You Reading? Posts.

Spell Sweeper

It’s easy to compare any book that takes place at a school for wizards to Harry Potter but this book (it is out today if you are reading this on Tuesday) but Lee Edward Fodi has gone out of his way to build his own wizarding world that stands on its own, but does kind of poke fun at some of the differences between what people might think wizards are like (from Harry Potter and other stories, I assume) and the way they “really are.”

Instead of the main character being the “chosen one,” like a certain scarred young boy, Cara Moone is practically flunking wizard school, and is given the role of cleaning up the messy spell dust left behind after the brilliant spells of others, including her nemesis, the real prodigy of the school, Harlee. Cara discovers that there is something peculiar that seems to happen when she is cleaning up after Harlee, and this becomes a mystery she must solve.

The story is filled with this mystery, its impact on the wizarding world and the world of the Bliss (similar to Muggles, they are ignorant of the wizarding world), as well as Cara and Harlee’s back stories. There are many humorous details along the way, creatures and for me the setting of the Pacific Northwest was well written and added to the story. This was a fun, entertaining read that I will be purchasing for my library.

Network Effect

Like most of you, when faced with a natural disaster and pending evacuation, you ask yourself important questions, like what books should I pack. This was one of the first books I grabbed. I probably shouldn’t make light of that, as we really had plenty of time to leave town, giving me lots of time to think about things like books. Others may not have been as lucky. We thought we would be gone for a couple of days, tops. I thought, why not catch up on some of the more adult reads I have and then go back to MG when we get home. This book was meant to be an escape during my second forced vacation of the year. It did its job.

Its excellent. I am sure that a few of you have read it, so you know that the first full length Murderbot story is not disappointing. Absolutely hilarious lines as this robot continues to explore its humanity. The return of a character from the earlier novellas, one that Murderbot has something in common as well as new characters that they have even more in common with was very compelling. A must read for fans of this series.

Switch

I have long been a fan of A.S. King but somehow I forgot to buy this one when it came out in May. But, lucky for me the very small town library that is currently my third home had it. This is a surreal book that has a kind of Vonnegutesque quality to it. In this story “real time” has stopped and humanity struggles with what to do without something that seems to have governed a lot of their actions. Tru Beck wants this to be something that radically changes the world and how people treat each other. Much of the world just wants to re-create the old system. Tru has other odd stuff going on in her life, like suddenly being able to throw a javelin well past all world records. But really, she just wants the people she cares about to see the things that are really important. This was a great book to read while under some odd circumstances, such as I was/am.

 

I did read a number of other books, several picture books, but really these three are the standouts for me. Read them all, if you haven’t already. I hope you have a great reading week, and I hope to check up on what you all have been reading later on Tuesday.