Books

Book 655: Upside Down – N.R. Walker

Sometimes you just have to eat your own words. I really don’t like reading self-published works. In general, they are not edited (structurally, thematically, copy) appropriately, but then I stumble across a self-published book, like this one, and I am pleasantly surprised.

Don’t get me wrong there were a few copy editing errors—I’m looking at you “Hans Solo”, ouch—but no more than what I’ve found in some big publisher books before (cough ** Mr. Dancy ** cough ** Signett Classics ** cough). And in general, I found this to be well paced and complete. Maybe this is because I found it versus the author reaching out to me? I honestly don’t know.

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ARC, Books

Book 651: Sorted – Jackson Bird

I am always on board for reading anything from LGBTQ+ authors, but particularly nonfiction (memoirs, biographies, autobiographies, etc.). So when the publisher reached out about this one I downloaded it (and somehow actually got to it the week it was published).*

Overall, I really enjoyed this. I mean page one is a J.K. Rowling/Albus Dumbledore quote, of course I was going to enjoy this. I had no idea about Bird’s connection to Harry Potter (or that the Harry Potter Alliance, now known as Fandom Forward even existed)! This being said, I wasn’t totally enamored with the book and didn’t figure out why that was until roughly 80% of the way through the book.

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Books

Book 650: We Are Lost And Found – Helene Dunbar

This was an achingly beautiful book and I’m glad I stumbled across it after I saw someone else had read it. I can’t find the blog where I first read about it, but if it’s you let me know and I’ll add a link to your review! It took a while for my local library to get it, but because it’s a sleeper/quite book I was able to keep it for two check out periods and actually absorb it.

Set in NYC in the early-1980s We are Lost and Found takes a look at one teen’s coming out and coming of age (sort of—it’s only a year) as the AIDS crisis begins to unfold. There were some parts that I wasn’t a fan of (hello to my old nemesis, no quotation marks) and for some reason Part 2 really dragged for me—it took me two weeks to read that portion, but Parts 1 and 3 I read at a lightning pace.

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Books

Book 648: Honestly Ben – Bill Konigsberg

This one was pretty forgettable for me, which is sad because it’s actually a good book. I think the problem is that I read Openly Straight, basically the first half of this book/story a little over five years ago. If I would’ve read these back to back I would’ve probably had much stronger feelings about this one.

Let’s start with what didn’t work: the swimming analogy. The book opens with Ben, the protagonist, going to swimming lessons for the first time and sinking to the bottom of the pool. Konigsberg uses this as a very clunky metaphor for Ben’s life and thoughts at the start of the book. I was honestly hoping it wouldn’t resurface at the end of the book—which isn’t totally fair because I would’ve been more pissed if he didn’t complete the metaphor—but it did and it just made me sigh and shake my head.

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Books

Book 645: The Porcupine of Truth – Bill Konigsberg

And, I’m back to playing catch up. The downside of all these teen/young adult rom-com books is that I read them so fast and I just want more that I end up going from being ahead on blogging to being two-to-three books behind in just days!

I got this this on Kindle download after reading The Music of What Happens and realizing I was only two books from finishing Konigsberg’s current works. It so happens I downloaded this the same day I went to the library too pick up two books and came back with six books, including the final Konigsberg I haven’t read, Honestly Ben, which I’ll get to probably in two-to-three days at the rate I’m reading these!

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