Less Doomed Shelves

While I'm at it, here's ANOTHER storify: me live-tweeting the 2016 offerings from Abrams Kids:

Holy cow, it's been a while, hasn't it?

I've been busybusy, and winter was garbagegarbage.

We'll see whether or not I have it in me to start posting again with any regularity, but in the meantime, here's a storify of some thoughts I have about an upcoming picture book:

...I've written about Natalie C. Parker's Beware the Wild and Behold the Bones:

It plays with classic horror tropes as well as elements from fairy tales—the danger and wild in nature, the power of belief, the importance of origin—but it’s also very much a story about siblings and family. It deals with domestic abuse—the long-term fallout and how hard it can be to break the cycle—and it explores the lines between love and obsession, the instinct to protect and the desire to control.

...as well as a little about Marilyn Nelson's American Ace, as well as a list of books it inspired me to pick up:

 It deals with family and culture and race; with the relationships between fathers and sons, between extended family and immediate. Ultimately, it’s less about the mystery itself, and more about how a shift in a person’s understanding of his own identity can affect how he sees the world and his place in it. It’s about discovering history in terms of the macro and the micro—about seeing the larger patterns of history and about how individual people fit into that pattern, about the Tuskegee Airmen as a group and about the individuals who made up the whole.

...and finally, I put together a list of the books I went ahead and bought MYSELF for Valentine's Day:

So, Laura begins:

The city that Sunday morning was quiet. Those millions of New Yorkers who, by need or preference, remain in town over a summer week-end had been crushed spiritless by humidity. Over the island hung a fog that smelled and felt like water in which too many soda-water glasses have been washed. Sitting at my desk, pen in hand, I treasured the sense that among those millions, only I, Waldo Lydecker, was up and doing. The day just past, devoted to shock and misery, had stripped me of sorrow. Now I had gathered strength for the writing of Laura's epitaph. My grief at her sudden and violent death found consolation in the thought that my friend, had she lived to a ripe old age, would have passed into oblivion, whereas the violence of her passing and the genius of her admirer gave her a fair chance at immortality.

NOTICE ANYTHING INTERESTING ABOUT THAT?

(Okay, there's actually a LOT that's interesting about that paragraph—and that last sentence is flat-out FANTASTIC for multiple reasons—but I'm talking about something very specific.)

IT HELPS IF YOU ARE A TWIN PEAKS FAN.

Dead woman? Named Laura? And then a narrator named Waldo Lydecker? 

Laura Hunt's public face—like Laura Palmer's—was beautiful and kind and generous, but as the story goes on, you learn that different people knew her in entirely different ways, and the detective who is on the case gets more and more emotionally invested in it... there are more parallels than the names, is what I'm saying. This is not remotely a new connection—the second I Googled it, I discovered that a zillion and six people had already found it—but as I haven't seen the movie and it was the first time I read the book, IT WAS NEW TO ME.

...I wrote a bit about some of the first contact stories I've been binging on lately, including Adaptation and Inheritance by Malinda Lo:

...I wrote about Meg Medina's Burn Baby Burn and HOW FANTASTIC IT IS:

Medina weaves in details about the time—the movie Carrie prompted the “little knives” conversation—as well as specific events and slang and ’70s culture and descriptions of clothing and so on in a way that is so entirely organic that I felt like I was watching a movie that had actually been filmed in the ’70s. (I say “watching a movie” because I didn’t even notice myself turning the pages—I was that engrossed.)

SO GOOD SO GOOD SO GOOD!

As you probably know, Lee & Low books has been working to put together a Diversity Baseline Survey of the book industry for over a year now:

Countless panels, articles, and even conferences have been dedicated to exploring the causes and effects of this lack of diversity. Yet one key piece of the puzzle remained a question mark: diversity among publishing staff. While the lack of diversity among publishing staff was often spoken about, there was very little hard data about who exactly works in publishing.

At the beginning of 2015 we decided to conduct a survey to establish a baseline that would measure the amount of diversity among publishing staff. We believed in the power of hard numbers to illuminate a problem that can otherwise be dismissed or swept under the rug. We felt that having hard numbers released publicly would help publishers take ownership of the problem and increase accountability. We also felt that a baseline was needed to measure whether or not initiatives to increase diversity among publishing staff were actually working.

...I talk about Heidi Heilig's upcoming The Girl from Everywhere:

From the Telegraph:

Established in honour of Klaus Flugge, an influential and long-serving figure in picture books publishing, the award's full title is The Klaus Flugge Prize for the Most Exciting Newcomer to Picture Book Illustration. It is the only prize to reward a published picture book by a debut editor, with the winning illustrator to receive £5,000. 

...

Lagoon is everything I want in a first contact book, and everything I want in a book, period.

On the first contact end of things: The aliens are ALIEN. Like, they aren't just deely-bopper-wearing human beings in green suits. They can look human, but their movements are different, their perspective is different, their general energy is different. And they don't know everything there is to know about people—through their ambassador, they're learning about humankind.

Also on the first contact end of things: Okorafor goes into how people react to the news of first contact, as individuals, as groups, as nations. She introduces such a huge cast—some characters who appear throughout the book, others who only appear for a page or two—and every single person she creates feels entirely real. It's so cinematic and so emotionally and psychologically astute.

And now it seems that I've veered into the Everything Else portion of the program. 

It's the story of a biologist, a soldier, a rapper, an alien ambassador; it's also the story of a city and a country and of the entire world. Okorafor tells it on a micro level and a macro level; she tells it through the filter of technology and the filter of myth. 

The setting—Lagos, Nigeria—is very much a character unto itself. It feels real and vibrant and you can hear the sounds and smell the smells and Okorafor incorporates class—from people who have NOTHING to people who have EVERYTHING AND THEN SOME—and religion and sexuality and politics and code-switching and Nollywood. She writes from the perspective of multiple people as well as animals—and even a portion of a highway—and those perspectives all feel entirely different and again, emotionally complex and again, real. Some of the characters speak entirely in Nigerian pidgin English, and that adds to the ENTIRELY IMMERSIVE feel of the whole book.

*fans self* SO GOOD. SO GOOD.

Where I'M TOTALLY GOING TO GO from here:

Akata Witch, by Nnedi Okorafor: This one is about twelve-year-old Sunny, the American daughter of Nigerian immigrants who move back to Nigeria. Sunny has albinism, is an outcast among her new peers... and then she discovers that she has magical powers.

The Detectorists (streaming via Netflix):

British comedy written and directed by Mackenzie Crook—who we've both adored since he played Gareth on the BBC Office—it stars Crook and Toby Jones (Dobby and ONE MILLION OTHER ROLES, he's in EVERYTHINGGGGGG) as two guys who spend all of their free time metal detecting. It's SO funny and SO warm and occasionally SO painful. Rachel Stirling (Diana Riggs' daughter!) plays Crook's girlfriend, and she is especially fantastic—so smart and funny and REAL—I admit to yelling HE'D BETTER FIGURE HIS GARBAGE OUT SOON BECAUSE SHE'S NOT GOING TO PUT UP WITH THIS FOREVER at the tv more than once. 

We got so invested that at the end of the season, we CHEERED because the ending itself was so excellent and because we loved it so much in general, but then were immediately sad that we didn't have more episodes to watch. I just watched the trailer before embedding it here and I want to watch the show all over again.

Schitt$ Creek (streaming via Amazon Prime):

Thanks to Kelly for this recommendation—if you follow one or both of us on Twitter, you may well have seen one of our MANY back-and-forths about it.

Canadian comedy created by Eugene Levy and his son, Dan Levy—who co-star with Catherine O'Hara (who, let's face it, should be crowned Queen of the World) and Annie Murphy—as a hideously rich family who lose everything and have to move to a town that Eugene Levy bought for his son as a joke.

Basically, it's Arrested Development, but warmer, starring characters who are actually decent(ish) human beings. Bonus points for casting father/son as father/son, because so many of their mannerisms and facial expressions are so similar and it just makes it even better; bonus points for Catherine O'Hara's wardrobe; and double bonus points for writing David as pansexual.

Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait for season two.

The nominees for the 2016 Edgars have been announced, and after perusing the various lists, these are the books that I've added to my TBR:

Luckiest Girl Alive, by Jessica Knoll: Blurbed by Megan Abbott? SOLD.

Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime, by Val McDermid: Hugely-lauded crime novelist on the nitty-gritty of forensics—from early days up until the present? Don't mind if I do.

Endangered, by Lamar Giles: Teen photoblogger catches her classmates up to no good, and then plasters their exploits on the internet... all anonymously, of course. AND THEN THERE'S A MURDER. I'm getting a distinctly Veronica Mars-y vibe from that description, and it's been praised for diverse representation, and that's always something I'm looking for, so.

A Madness So Discreet, by Mindy McGinnis: The pub copy describes it as a "beautifully twisted gothic historical thriller", which is really all I need to know. Actually, I THINK I'LL PUT IN AN ILL REQUEST RIGHT NOW.

The Sin Eater's Daughter, by Melinda Salisbury: GIRL WITH POISON SKIN? YES, PLEASE.

Little Pretty Things, by Lori Rader-Day: Booklist recommends this one—about a woman working a dead-end job who ends up a suspect in the murder of her high school frenemy—to fans of Tana French, so YAY!

And finally, it's not on MY TBR list, because I've already read it, but you might want to think about adding it to YOURS: The Walls Around Us, by Nova Ren Suma.

I don't recommend a TON of books to Josh, because he's WICKED picky, and he knows what he likes and he's perfectly capable of finding his own stuff. (Lately he's been barreling through Christopher Fowler and Caro Ramsay.)

But I do have a pretty good feel for what he likes, so when I read something that I think will be a good fit, OBVIOUSLY, I tell him. (Worldbuilding is key—while I'm all about the characterization and relationships, he usually tends more towards the intricacies of How Things Work. Two cases in point: He preferred the whaling chapters to the story chapters in Moby Dick, and he preferred the Building of the World's Fair stuff to the Serial Killer stuff in Devil in the White City.)

So recently, when he needed a break from his aforementioned Ramsay/Fowler kick, I brought A Darker Shade of Magic—which I wrote about briefly at GoodReads—home and threw it in his general direction. 

Twenty or so pages in, and he turned to me and was like, "Hey, this is GOOD." 

(WHY IS HE ALWAYS SO SURPRISED? I MEAN, COME ON. THIS IS WHAT I DO.)

Anyway, he's had his nose in it for the last week, and last night—IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT—we had this exchange:

Me: *sits bolt upright in bed* *looks around wildly* *asks unintelligible question*

Josh: *half asleep* It's probably Lemon.

...

Oh, I finished that book.

Me: Just now? But you went to bed when I did.

Josh: But I couldn't sleep because I wanted to finish it. So I got up.

...

Is there going to be a sequel?

Me: Yeah, it's coming out soon. End of next month, I think.

Josh. Huh. Yeah, I'll read that. *promptly falls asleep*

Me: *awake for another twenty minutes, running mental victory laps*

Tell Me Again How A Crush Should Feel might mark the first time I've read a book with a heroine who shares my name. It's such a JARRING experience, I had no idea! Anyway, on to the actual book.

Leila has made it through most of high school staying under the radar—as an Iranian American, she deals with annoyances on a daily basis ("Where are you from? No, I mean where are you REALLY from?" and so on), and so while she's entirely aware of the fact that she likes girls, she hasn't come out, because she doesn't want to add another Layer Of Difficult to her life. 

Also, she doesn't want her parents to find out. Because she knows that BEST CASE SCENARIO, they'll have a really hard time with it. Up until now, it hasn't been much of an issue, because she's never had a crush on anyone at school.

Enter the new girl in school, Saskia.

PARDON ME WHILE I MUPPET FLAIL AROUND THE ROOM.

I loved this book. It's smart and funny—I ended up reading a ton of it aloud to Josh, which is always a major sign that I'm loving a book—and it's just as much about friendship as it is about romance. The secondary characters are all well-developed, and the relationship and dialogue between Leila and her older sister is spot on. SPOT. ON. Her relationships with her parents—as a unit and as separate people—are lovely as well, in that there is complexity and there are travails, but SO MUCH WARMTH throughout.

I've seen complaints about the pacing of Leila's realizations about Saskia—why do I look up books that I love at GoodReads?—to which all I can really say is: DO YOU EVEN REMEMBER BEING A TEENAGER?

I mean... bad decisions are not exactly uncommon, and messed-up friendship/romances can be REALLY hard to walk away from at any age, ESPECIALLY when you're dealing with someone with an enormous amount of charisma. It's always easier to see that stuff from the outside, and points to Farizan for portraying the arc realistically.

Where I might go from here:

If You Could Be Mine, by Sara Farizan: Her debut, which largely deals with the trans community in Tehran. It got a boatload of starred reviews and inclusion on various lists and looks a lot more fraught, heart-wise, than Crush. I already requested it from the library.

Annie on My Mind, by Nancy Garden: Sooooo... I've never read this. I KNOW. I have no IDEA how that happened, it's a CLASSIC. OBVIOUSLY the situation must be rectified, stat.

Sons and Other Flammable Objects, by Porochista Khakpour: Story about an Iranian American family living in California, with a focus on post-9/11 life. I've seen it described as a comedy AND a tragedy, so... I'm guessing that the humor is dark?

Silhouette of a Sparrow, by Molly Beth Griffin: Historical about a girl working in a hat shop who has a romance with a flapper. TONS OF LIST INCLUSION AND HONORS. This one doesn't sound remotely similar tonally, BUT DID I MENTION THERE'S A ROMANCE WITH A FLAPPER?

From PhillyVoice:

"I told her I was sick of reading about white boys and dogs," Dias said, pointing specifically to "Where the Red Fern Grows" and the "Shiloh" series. "'What are you going to do about it?’ [my mom] asked. And I told her I was going to start a book drive, and a specific book drive, where black girls are the main characters in the book and not background characters or minor characters.”

...

Books collected will be donated to a low-resources library in St. Mary, Jamaica, where Janice grew up -- in the spirit of giving back to their roots.

THIS GIRL IS ELEVEN YEARS OLD. HOW AWESOME IS SHE?