Zoë's 2019 Challenge

I'm hoping I'll have more time to read after the first quarter of the year, but it will be pretty hectic until then—I have a tentative defense date set for March 1, but there's still a huge amount of work to do before then. My temporary contract also comes to an end in August, so I need to be looking for a new job and potentially moving, though I barely have time for the job applications because the academic job cycle operates so far in advance. My backup plan (though also something I'd really like to do) is to spend the next year doing another graduate degree, this time in education. And meanwhile my father has been in the hospital for the past couple of weeks, so I'm a bit distracted and may spend a lot of my time visiting him rather than working in the near future.

Still, I'm optimistic that I'll have time to read again by the summer at least, so I'll set up this thread for future use. And I have so many half-finished books that I should be able to make good progress on finishing them once I do have the time ;)

This first message will be for tracking books completed. In the next message I'll list all the books that I read in part each month, regardless of whether they're finished. And I'll track various other things that will probably take the first ten messages.

Books Read in 2019

January
1. What If It's Us

February
2. From Twinkle, With Love

March
3. Wonder

April
No books completed, but dissertation defended!

May
4. Bull

June
5. You Don't Know Everything, Jilly P!
6. Make Time
7. Evicted
8. The Rosie Result
9. Outer Order, Inner Calm

July
10. There's Something about Sweetie
11. When I Walk through That Door, I Am

August
No books completed, but house purchased!

September
12. The Prince and the Dressmaker

October
13. We Contain Multitudes

Reading Progress by Month

January
Completed What If It's Us
Make Time (78%)
We Wear the Mask (p. 146 of 204)
From Twinkle, with Love (p. 253)
21 Things You May Not Know about the Indian Act (p. 34)
Why Nations Fail (p. 42)

February
Completed From Twinkle, With Love
Unf*ck Your Habitat (13%)
Wonder (14%)

March
Completed Wonder
Unf*ck Your Habitat
Evicted

April
Make Time (81%)
Outer Order, Inner Calm
Bull (p. 154 of 185)

May
Completed Bull
Outer Order, Inner Calm (p. 79)
Make Time (85%)
Becoming an Academic (p. 43)
Evicted (?) (p. 242)
When I Walk through That Door, I Am (p. 22)
You Don't Know Everything, Jilly P (p. 131)

June
Completed You Don't Know Everything, Jilly P
Completed Make Time
Completed Evicted
Completed The Rosie Result
Completed Outer Order, Inner Calm
Becoming an Academic (p. 93)
When I Walk through That Door, I am (p. 38)
Atomic Habits (4%)

July
Completed There's Something about Sweetie
Completed When I Walk through That Door, I Am
Atomic Habits (28%)
Throne of Jade (p. 296)
Becoming an Academic (p. 97)
From Student to Scholar (p. 51; skipped foreword)
The Obesity Code (17%)
The Uninhabitable Earth (p. 32)

August
The Uninhabitable Earth (p. 44)
The Minimalist Way

September
Completed The Prince and the Dressmaker
The Uninhabitable Earth
Teach Students How to Learn

Reading Goals
1. Complete 12 books started in previous years
2. Complete 6 Social Justice Book Club selections
3. Complete 6 books by black authors
4. Complete 4 books by or about Indigenous Canadians
5. Complete a total of 50 books

Guesses About 2019 Reading

Social Justice Book Club Selections
1. Just Mercy
2. Evicted
3. We Wear the Mask
4. Strangers in Their Own Land
5. The Color of Law
6. Why Nations Fail

Books by Black Authors
1. Children of Blood and Bone
2. Odd One Out
3. Whistling Vivaldi
4. On the Come Up
5. Between the World and Me
6. Hidden Figures

Books by or about Indigenous Canadians
1. All Our Relations
2. The Marrow Thieves
3. The Break
4. The Haida Gwaii Lesson

Books Started in Previous Years (pre-December)
1. Hold Fast to Dreams
2. The Slow Professor
3. In Defense of a Liberal Education
4. White Working Class
5. Science Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity
6. Nemesis: One Man and the Battle for Rio
7. Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
8. *Throne of Jade
9. Children of the Broken Treaty
10. Happiness Is: 500 Things to Be Happy About
11. Weapons of Math Destruction
12. Could It Happen Here? Canada in the Age of Trump

Other
1. Make Time
2. What If It's Us
3. China Rich Girlfriend
4. Rich People Problems
5. From Twinkle, with Love
6. Circe
7. Starsight
8. Children of the Nameless
9. Hunger
10. Lord of Shadows
11. Down among the Sticks and Bones
12. Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds
13. Romancing the Werewolf
14. Manners and Mutiny
15. Barracoon
16. Wonder
17. Finish
18. Educated
19. Reading with Patrick
20. Heartland
21. You Don't Know Everything, Jilly P!
22. Tears of Salt

Books Started in Previous Years

Titles in bold (without strikethrough) indicate books started before 2018 that I actually made progress on in 2018, or books started in 2018 that I've already made progress on in 2019; these are more likely than others to actually be finished.

Started 2018
Dreamland (p. 78)
Science Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity (all but annotated bibliography)
We Wear the Mask (p. 141 of 204)
*Lioness Rampant (p. 39)
Children of Blood and Bone (p. 483 of 600)
Nobody (p. 54 of 184)
Another Day in the Death of America
The Making of a Dream (p. 14 of 330)
Could It Happen Here? Canada in the Age of Trump (p. 17 of 192)
21 Things You May Not Know about the Indian Act (p. 22)
The Slow Professor (p. 35 of 90)
The Marrow Thieves (p. 44 of 231)
The Color of Law (p. 43 of 251)
Just Mercy (p. 127 of 318)
Path to the Sky
In Defense of a Liberal Education (35%)
Make Time (37%)
What If It's Us (12%)

Started 2017
The Productivity Project (17%)
I Know How She Does It (p. 78 of 286)
Strangers in Their Own Land (p. 110 of 261)
Happiness Is: 500 things to be happy about (p. 48 of 271)
Educating Esmé (p. 75 of 263)
Doing the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Mathematics (p. 7 of 206)
Requiem for the American Dream (p. 11 of 157)
The Shame of the Nation (p. 34 of 338)
Hold Fast to Dreams (p. 210 of 302)
Nemesis: One Man and the Battle for Rio (49%)
Between the World and Me (p. 82 of 152)
Children of the Broken Treaty (p. 140 of 290)
P.S. I Still Love You (31%)
Small Teaching (p. 51 of 272)
The Boy on the Bridge (20%)
Hidden Figures (p. 189 of 265)
Achieving Quantitative Literacy (p. 10 of 115)
Evicted (p. 167 of 336)
White Working Class (p. 43)

Acquisitions

Personal Reading
1. Why Nations Fail

Personal Reference

Academic

....and now by month, starting with what I remember of March....

March
Parkland Speaks
Outer Order, Inner Calm

April
Bull
The Montessori Toddler
The Third Reconstruction

...

July
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
Fibonacci
Not a Crime to Be Poor
Liberal Arts
Math with Bad Drawings
The Uninhabitable Earth
Living Proof: Stories of Resilience along the Mathematical Journey

August
Hellenistic Science at Court
Calculus Reordered

Monthly Reading Goals

January
□ Complete Make Time
✓ Complete What If It's Us
□ Complete In Defense of Liberal Education
□ Complete any other novel
□ Read 100 pages of Why Nations Fail
□ Complete one story in We Wear the Mask
□ Read 10 pages in Just Mercy (to p. 137)

February
□ Complete Make Time
□ Complete In Defense of Liberal Education
✓ Complete From Twinkle, with Love
□ Read to page 100 of Why Nations Fail
□ Complete one story in We Wear the Mask
□ Complete any other novel

March
✓ Complete Wonder
□ Complete Make Time
□ Complete In Defense of Liberal Education
□ Complete Children of Blood and Bone
□ Read (and complete) Bandwidth Recovery
□ Read 80 pages of The New Jim Crow
□ Read to 30% of Unf*ck Your Habitat

July
□ Complete Children of Blood and Bone
✓ Complete When I Walk through That Door, I Am
✓ Read (and complete) There's Something about Sweetie
□ Read (and complete) Atomic Habits
□ Read to p. 150 of Becoming an Academic
□ Complete We Wear the Mask
□ Complete Hold Fast to Dreams
□ Read to p. 160 of Just Mercy

August
□ Complete Throne of Jade
□ Complete The Uninhabitable Earth
□ Complete From Student to Scholar
□ Read (and complete) On the Come Up
□ Read to 56% of Atomic Habits
□ Complete at least five books in total

Yearly Releases I Want to Read

2020
Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed
Rick by Alex Gino
10 Things I Hate about Pinky by Sandhya Menon
Of Curses and Kisses by Sandhya Menon

2019
Starsight by Brandon Sanderson
On the Come Up

2018
Tempests and Slaughter
Circe
Barracoon
Odd One Out
All Our Relations
The Prince and the Dressmaker

...accidentally updated in 2020, but I think I'll leave it.

more more

the end

Happy new thread/new group! Sorry to hear about your dad.

Welcome back, Zoë!

Welcome back!

Sorry to hear about your father, Zoë.

Wow your life sounds full, Zoë. Sending best wishes for your dad and wishing you all the luck with your defense and job hunting. 2019 will be full of adventures for you at the very least.

Thank you all! Yes, it should definitely be a year full of adventure.

Not much change with my father; he has a problem with his gallbladder, but they don't want to do surgery because of various liver issues. Also he's not allowed to have most normal painkillers. He's currently in a physiotherapy wing of the hospital, but the physio seems a bit too intense given the lack of actual resolution for the gallbladder issue (no gallstones, so there's no treatment without surgery) and the lack of regular painkillers. He did his first physio on the 24th, and it completely wiped him out—which makes the gallbladder pain flare up—so they gave him some sort of opioid because that's basically the only painkiller he's allowed to have. So then he was excessively drugged-up and still worn out from the physio for the next couple of days (though we finally said to stop with the opioids). Then he did another physio session on the 27th, and was again worn out/in pain and again they gave him an opioid, so he was mostly asleep yesterday. Someone eventually said he could have a tiny amount of regular Tylenol, so he was more like himself this morning, when a nurse came by and said he's "out of compliance" with his physio program. Argh. I asked yesterday whether he could ease into the physio more gradually—e.g., when he has enough energy to walk again, just let him walk to and from the dining room for *one day* before starting him on the weights and stuff—but she said they only have one physio program (???) and if he's not well enough for that then he'll have to go to some other, more medical wing of the hospital.

Happy New Year Zoe!



Sorry about all the troubles with your dad! Good wishes!

Happy reading in 2019, Zoë!

Sorry to read about the troubles with your dad in the hospital, sending good thoughts.

Happy New Year to both of you, and thanks for the good wishes!

Not much change with my father. His upper body seems better (he's more alert, sleeping more naturally, not coughing as much and not complaining about gallbladder pain) but his lower body is worse; his legs and feet are swollen and he hasn't done any walking for days. They haven't figured out the cause of the swelling yet, but it could be a million things, some serious and some not. I hope they'll find some way to get him moving again without overdoing it.

Dropping off a star, Zoe! Hope your Dad's recovery picks up soon. You've got a lot on your plate, I wish for you moments of downtime here and there that provide refreshment between challenges.

>20 dk_phoenix: Thank you! Some restful moments of downtime would be wonderful.

Happy New Year, Zoe. I hope your father starts to feel better soon.

Happy new year. Best wishes that your dad recovers quickly! Also, good luck on your thesis defense and the preparation leading up to it. I know how stressful it can be!

>22 BLBera: >23 figsfromthistle: Thank you! The regular doctor is finally back from his Christmas break today and it sounds like he's much more helpful than the replacement doctor, so I'm feeling optimistic.

Hope your dad starts to feel better soon!

Happy New Year and happy new thread! Wow, your year sounds hectic -- hope all gets accomplished to your satisfaction. Glad to hear that the regular doctor is back, and I hope your dad continues to improve.

Happy New Year, Zoë! I hope that your father is doing better, and that he will receive better care from his regular doctor.

>25 Berly: >26 foggidawn: >27 kidzdoc: Thank you all!

>26 foggidawn: Yeah, the year will be completely crazy. I almost wouldn't mind a year of unemployment after this, if my minimal job-searching doesn't lead to anything (though I wouldn't do nothing, i'd just do further education).

My father is stable but not particularly improving. At this point it seems that the original issue may be less problematic than just having spent so much time nearly-immobile in the hospital. In particular, his legs have been swollen for several days so he's been getting up even less than before.

I did consult with my friend who's a geriatrics specialist, and he says my father should probably go back to a more medical ward for actual treatment—e.g., something like an albumin infusion. The regular doctor also identified albumin as the issue (as opposed to the temporary doctor, who just said swelling could be caused by anything) but recommended just eating more protein.

1. What If It's Us by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera



I've really enjoyed books by both these authors (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli and They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera), so this was one of my most-anticipated books of 2018.

The basic idea is that Arthur and Ben meet randomly at a post office and ultimately pursue a relationship despite various complications, like the fact that Arthur is just in NYC for the summer.

The book lived up to my expectations in being a readable story that (mostly) held my attention, with a lot of funny moments. I don't regret reading it, but ultimately I didn't come away satisfied. Arthur and Ben both had some really obnoxious moments, and they had no particular reason to be interested in each other in the first place, and the main conflict was pointless and juvenile, and the ending was blah. But the secondary characters were great, and the book kept me entertained, so that list of negatives isn't quite as bad as it might sound. Still, I'll elaborate on each of them in more detail.

Obnoxious Moments
*Arthur is a high-school student interning at the law firm where his mother works—a position that he did nothing to deserve—and he spends his time there distracting the summer law students who are actually trying to work. They repeatedly complain that he's preventing them from working and sometimes suggest that his antics could actually get them fired. This is in no way funny.
*For their first date, Ben chooses to take Arthur to an arcade (without any consideration of Arthur's interests), where Ben reveals himself to be basically an ultra-competitive jerk who cares more about winning than having a good time. I honestly didn't recognize this Ben as the same person from the other chapters.
*Ben literally refuses to order a meal in a restaurant that Arthur takes him to on an early date, because he can't imagine eating an expensive hamburger even with someone else paying.
*Arthur creates ridiculous drama about nothing (see: main conflict)

Why?
So, they met at the post office and each thought the other was cute. Then as they tried to start actually dating, there was no chemistry. But they tried again and again for some reason, until suddenly they were really into each other, and it really wasn't clear why. They had almost no shared interests, except maybe Harry Potter. They had completely different attitudes toward life and the future—Arthur was a good student thinking of going to Yale, and Ben was in summer school with no prospects of a scholarship to any college.

Main Conflict
So, this was basically fabricated out of nothing. Arthur found out that Ben and his ex-boyfriend were in the same summer school class, and immediately ended the relationship because he assumed Ben had been two-timing him all along(???). I hate conflicts where "just find out what actually happened" is the entirety of the resolution.

The Ending
I think this ending is supposed to impress with its realism, but it actually didn't seem remotely realistic to me. After going on and on about how the universe has brought them together, Ben and Arthur decide to part ways because they can't stand the thought of long distance and they want to preserve their friendship. (Um, they had no friendship before this.) There's a ridiculous emphasis on the fact that Arthur will be going back to Georgia, and somehow no one even thinks to mention that the separation would be temporary because he's looking at colleges in the northeast. But they can literally only imagine being together if they're in the exact same city. Apparently they've never heard of the Metro North.

So then Arthur does end up at a school in Connecticut, and we read an epilogue set 15 months later, and he's never even been back to NYC at all. And I absolutely didn't buy it. Even if he didn't care at all to see Ben (although I don't really understand why he wouldn't), his primary character trait is his obsession with Broadway. And he comes from a comfortably well-off family and is going to college within easy day-trip distance from the city. How did he let two months go by without making a trip to see a show? It seemed like the authors were so determined to create a surprising "realistic" ending that they forgot to think about how their characters would really act. Arthur has already visited Jessie at Brown during those two months! And he thinks about visiting Ethan at *UVA*, which is not an easy trip at all! How is NYC suddenly a different universe?

Basically, I expect a Becky Albertalli book to have a nice happily-ever-after, and I expect an Adam Silvera book to have a powerful but not happy ending (my Silvera sample size is one, but that book was called They Both Die at the End). It seems like when those authors are combined, we get an ending that's neither powerful nor happy, just meh.

I think I just enjoy writing out all my annoyances with a book, whereas I don't want to over-analyze the parts that I enjoyed. I should probably add more balance to this review later; I still have it a 3.5 star rating, after all. But this will do for now.

>29 _Zoe_: I think I also gave that book 3.5 stars, and you articulate so well the issues that I had about it, particularly concerning the main conflict.

>30 foggidawn: Thank you! That makes me feel better about my long list of complaints :D

>29 _Zoe_: Well that was amusing... spoilers and all because it's not a book I anticipate reading.
Happy New Year! Looks like it'll be a full one.

>29 _Zoe_: I also read all the spoilers because I find myself much less likely to pick up YA lately. And it doesn't look I'll be picking this one up at all. Sorry it wasn't a thoroughly enjoyable reading experience for you.

Hi Zoe! I hope your father is doing better. I know how much stress aging parents can be. :(

>29 _Zoe_: I have no intention of reading this one, but I really did love your examination of plot and characters flaws! Thanks. : )

>32 qebo: I'm glad it amused you!

>33 MickyFine: I seem to be finishing nothing but YA this past year, though I think I'm getting close to the end of an adult book. One way or another, my life will be calmer in a few months.

I did have two phone interviews this past week, and one of them just invited me for a campus interview as well, so there's hope for an ideal outcome this fall. And if not, at least I can go into next year's applications knowing that it's not entirely futile. Considering that I literally only had time to submit four applications, I'm pretty happy with this outcome already.

>34 The_Hibernator: Thanks for checking in; he is continuing to recover, but slowly. He's started going up and down a two-step triangle in his physiotherapy, so that means my parents will probably be able to stay in their house and not move immediately to a condo. But it will definitely be a challenge at first. They've started saying that they might send him home as soon as Wednesday, but he's still only done two steps at a time, plus he can't get up from chairs without arms (so, that's a problem for the bed), he's still walking with a walker, etc. He's only in his early seventies, so this isn't just regular aging; we'd like him to regain the strength that he had at the beginning of November.

>35 Berly: Thank you!

I was at a conference last week and my planned flight home was cancelled due to snow, so I ended up driving back with one of my colleagues. As soon as I got into the car, he asked if I'd mind taking a 45-minute detour to visit one of his friends. I eventually realized that this unscheduled stop was in the same town where Katherine lived, and she was able to come meet me with only fifteen minutes' notice. So at least the slow trip back had one unexpected benefit :D

>37 _Zoe_: I'm glad you thought to message me!

>37 _Zoe_:, >38 qebo: Hooray impromptu meetup!

Glad to see you back, Zoe! Sorry to hear about your father and his health issues. I hope the doctors getting them sorted out soon.

>37 _Zoe_: Hooray for LT meetups, even impromptu ones!

2. From Twinkle With Love by Sandhya Menon



I picked up this book because I'd read Menon's previous book, When Dimple Met Rishi, so I had some idea of what to expect here: basically a quick easy read that might not be entirely satisfying. And it was essentially that, though I don't think it was as good as her first book, which made it drag on at the end—I was glad when I finally finished with it.

The basic premise is that Twinkle has always wanted to be a filmmaker, so when some guy at school suggests that they make a film together for an upcoming school event, she agrees. (Needless to say she eventually falls for said guy, who conveniently has been in love with her forever.) Meanwhile Twinkle's best friend has suddenly ditched her to become friends with the popular girls, and Twinkle spends a lot of her time obsessing about how she can become popular herself. She thinks her best bet would be to date the most popular guy at school, who conveniently must be the secret admirer who's just started sending her messages—obviously "N" couldn't refer to anyone else. (Incidentally, it was 100% obvious from the beginning who the secret admirer actually was; he literally handed her a piece of paper with a coded message saying "I think you're cute" or something along those lines, but she couldn't be bothered to go to a computer and look up what the ASCII characters meant.)

The main problem with Menon's works is that she makes her male love interests so perfect, and so devoted to the heroines, that the romantic build-up can't endure for the entire length of a YA novel. The couple should really be together by the halfway point (which is what actually happens in When Dimple Met Rishi, IIRC). The only way to avoid ending the romantic narrative arc too soon is for the heroine to generate unnecessary problems by being either an idiot or a jerk, or a bit of both. In this case, while Twinkle quickly finds herself falling for Sahil, she's determined to hold out for her secret admirer because increasing her social status is what matters most. So she moons about how her life is so terrible and complicated when really the solution is pretty straightforward: date the amazing guy who's right in front of you, who's repeatedly expressed his interest, and forget about the secret admirer who probably isn't the popular guy anyway.

So, there's that plot line. Meanwhile there's the fact that best friend Maddie is suddenly spending all her time with the popular girls and excluding Twinkle. I was initially interested in this plot line because I thought it would eventually be revealed to have some logic behind it, that Maddie would have some sort of explanation for what she'd done. But no. The only explanation we get is that the mean girl who most actively excluded Twinkle from the group did it because she was jealous, because while Maddie was her best friend, Twinkle was always Maddie's best friend. But that wasn't the explanation we needed; a mean girl being a mean girl could have been pretty self-explanatory. The mystery was why Maddie participated in this: why did she suddenly switch to a different friend group and stop spending time with Twinkle? Why did she go along with it when Hannah tried to keep Twinkle out, especially if she considered Twinkle her best friend all along? The only explanation she gives in the end is that she had a hard time balancing her new friends with her old friends, which really doesn't explain how the situation came about in the first place.

So, it was pretty meh overall, and I'm glad it's done. I should add the obligatory comments about yay diversity: it's nice to see a protagonist with a South Asian background; her family story was interesting and her grandmother was great. But that doesn't quite make up for everything else.

>37 _Zoe_: Yay for spontaneous meet-ups!!

>41 _Zoe_: I've been wondering about that one but didn't really want to read it myself, so thanks :-)

>42 Berly: :D That seems to be the only kind I do these days!

>43 norabelle414: You're welcome :)

So, it seems that my life has magically turned out okay: on Thursday I received an offer for a tenure-track job! I'll provide more details once the contract is actually signed, but it's a teaching-stream position where the other duties are related to curriculum and student success rather than research, and it's still in New York but a bit closer to home. I'm still somewhat in shock.

And it came quickly enough after the interview that I don't need to go to my other interview next week, which will free up a lot of time. Meanwhile I'd pushed my defense from March to April because the interview process was taking over, so this means I actually have a bit of breathing room.

And my father is home from the hospital, continuing to improve, so all is well.

Great news, all around. Congratulations, Zoe!

Wow, tenure track! Congrats!

>44 _Zoe_: Wonderful news, Zoe! Congrats on the tenure track, and glad to hear your father's continuing to improve.

Great news, Zoe! Can't wait to hear more about the new position.

>44 _Zoe_: This is all fantastic news, Zoe! I'm so glad things are falling right into place for you.

Great news all around, Zoe! Congrats!

>44 _Zoe_: magically
Possibly your own efforts contributed...
Congratulations!

That is so awesome! Congrats!

Congrats Zoe!!

Congratulations! That's wonderful news.

Wow. Great news about the tenure-track job, and good news about your father. I hope his health continues to improve.

Can't wait to hear which school you'll be teaching at.

Congrats on the TT - that's huge!

>44 _Zoe_: What lovely news, Zoe.

Congratulations on all the good news, Zoë!

Thank you all for the congratulations!

I'm nearly at the finish line now. I successfully defended my dissertation on Monday, and there are no further revisions required (though I can still do some optional revisions over the next week, and write some acknowledgements, and such).

May 10 is the final dissertation submission deadline and also the final grade submission deadline for the courses I'm teaching. Then I have a bit of other paperwork to do, but basically I'll be free! I'm looking forward to reading again.

A week after that I'm heading to NYC for graduation, so I'll make meetup plans with the locals sometime before then. I already have tickets for Hadestown and the Yiddish Fiddler.

And tomorrow we'll go look at houses for the first time :)

>59 _Zoe_: - Congrats on the successful defense! And I am jealous you will be seeing Hadestown. It's on my list!

Have you divulged where you'll be teaching next year?

Hope to see you when you're in NYC!

>59 _Zoe_: That's fantastic! Well done!

The sun is certainly shining for you, Zoë! Best wishes on your good fortune, happy house hunting, and continued recovery for your dad.

Will you be in NYC in early or mid June, Zoë? If so it would be great to see you!

Thank you all! And thank you Katie for the reminder to fill in details of my earlier announcement; I wasn't meaning to be secretive, I was just busy. The position is at SUNY Oswego (as I know you've just seen on Facebook, but for the benefit of everyone else), in the math department. It's a teaching position where I'll be supervising the courses before calculus.

I did actually have an interview scheduled somewhere in Manhattan, but I cancelled it after receiving this offer, because I think this position will allow me to make a greater impact (and the Manhattan job wasn't tenure-track, just endless three-year contracts).

Why don't you come with us to Hadestown? We're going on the evening of the 21st, I think. (I'll check the tickets to confirm if you're interested.) But we'll make other meetup plans if that doesn't work for you!

>63 kidzdoc: Unfortunately I don't think I'll be making a third trip to NYC in as many months. Are your June plans firmly set? Because we're actually going to be in Berkeley the third week of June, if you want to meet us there instead....

>64 _Zoe_: I plan to spend two or three weeks in June visiting my parents, so unfortunately I doubt that I'll make it to Berkeley, Zoë. I wouldn't completely rule it out, though.

>64 _Zoe_: - I wish I could join you for Hadestown, but my niece is coming to visit in early June, and I'm taking her to two shows. And we are buying a house, so I am trying to be (slightly) more responsible with my disposable income, at least until we are finished with the rent + mortgage situation :)

Congrats on the job, Zoe. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Weirdly, Hadestown was workshopped in the theatre here in Edmonton so I saw a version of it a couple years ago. Fun to see it being nominated for Tonys now.

>65 kidzdoc: We'll just have to plan for another meetup if that one doesn't work out! I look forward to having much more free time now.

>66 katiekrug: I can completely understand! We're also looking at buying a house. Obviously it's much easier and more affordable in upstate NY, but still not completely easy given various constraints in terms of commuting distance etc. (and the fact that I don't want something utterly generic). I'd really like to be on the water, which is theoretically manageable in an area full of rivers but still challenging in practice. We made an offer on one house, but the seller passed away, so now we're waiting to see whether the heir is still interested in selling.

>67 MickyFine: Thank you! I would have loved to see Hadestown in Edmonton, but didn't have an opportunity to make the trip. I did see it before at the New York Theatre Workshop, and I'm curious to see whether it still manages to have the same power when playing in a larger venue.

Oh hey, I actually finished a book! (I also finished Wonder in March and didn't post about it, but I think the time for that may be past. So I'll just stick a placeholder here.)

3. Wonder by R.J. Palacio



4. Bull by David Elliott



I was fully prepared to love this one. The myth of Theseus and the Minotaur is one of my favourites, whether told by Catullus, Mary Renault, or Roberta Gellis. I haven't typically been interested in novels in verse, but this one was different enough to be compelling, at least at first.

It was disgusting!
   The royal nerve of her!
I said, "Look, Your Highness,
   I'm an engineer, Not a pornographer."

And she said, "Look, Daedalus,
   I'm the queen, Minos's wife.
It all belongs to me,
   including your life,

which if you want to keep,
   you'll do what I ask.
It isn't much,
   this little task

I have in mind. Build me
   a cow of wood and hide.
Life-size but hollow.
   Then I'll crawl inside

and..." Her voice trailed away.
   No need to say more.
We all knew what she wanted.
   That unnatural whore"

So, initially the writing kept my interest, but ultimately the characterization let me down. Everyone is completely one-dimensional. Ariadne, who's typically the most interesting and sympathetic character, was particularly disappointing. She despises her father ("Minos is a complete shit") despite earlier describing herself as "Daddy's girl" and receiving nothing but praise from Minos ("What a beauty! She'll do her duty one day soon and marry a great prince.") It would have been a lot more interesting to read about some tension in their relationship, but instead there were just absolutes that didn't entirely make sense to me. The main conflict stems from Ariadne's sympathy to her brother Asterion, the Minotaur, whom Minos treats pretty badly—but a long time was supposed to have passed before the creation of the labyrinth, with Asterion living in the palace and then being exiled to a shepherd's hut to live alone with his books, so it's not clear why Ariadne wouldn't have built up any sort of relationship with her father in that time. She also hates the idea of being married off to someone, because she'll be bored as a queen, so she plans to just run away... and it just didn't make much sense to me in the context of the time.

Daedalus too complains about having to serve the king, so he plans to fly away and be free—and again, it seems like a modern sensibility rather than a realistic plan for survival in the ancient world. For both Daedalus and Ariadne, I'd think a best-case scenario would be to tie themselves to a reasonable ruler (or maybe Ariadne could become a priestess), but they somehow both see individual freedom as a feasible outcome.

So basically I didn't really like any of the characters, even the ones I might expect to like, and their interactions with each other were pretty uninteresting. Still, I'm glad this book exists because more mythological retellings are always welcome.

5. You Don't Know Everything, Jilly P! by Alex Gino



This is one of the most progressive children's books I've ever read, dealing head-on with contemporary issues like police violence against Black youth and marginalization of various forms. The basic plot of the book is that Jilly's baby sister has been born Deaf, and her family is trying to come to terms with that; Jilly turns for advice to a friend in an online fandom community, who's both Deaf and Black, and there are many awkward encounters as she makes mistakes and makes her friend feel bad for being seen as a token rather than a person. In an extended side-plot, Jilly's Black aunt encounters micro-aggressions and racism of various levels at their family dinners.

This book has been criticized for not being #ownvoices: both the author and the protagonist are white and hearing, when the focus of the book is on being Deaf and Black. But I honestly don't have a problem with this; I think there's room for books about how to be an ally, and I think it's valuable to see Jilly explicitly asking the questions about why she caused offense by doing things that she didn't realize were harmful. (Some will say that the book is a bit too didactic and heavy-handed, but I found it enjoyable and realistic.)

I picked up this book because I'd really enjoyed the author's previous work, George, about a trans girl. I didn't find this second book quite as compelling, but that might have been my own fault rather than the book's: since I've been too busy to do much reading this year, my overall reading speed has slowed down, making all books take longer. I was still very satisfied with this book overall, and look forward to reading Gino's future work.

6. Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky



I started this book almost six months ago, and really enjoyed the beginning. It provides some helpful productivity advice in a light and breezy writing style. There's nothing really groundbreaking here, but I still found it helpful: the key ideas are to choose one Highlight for each day, use various techniques to increase your focus (often by reducing distractions) and increase your energy, and refine your process continuously by reflecting on what works and what doesn't. Many of the techniques are tiny and straightforward but still impactful, like signing out of social media accounts so that you need to put in just a little bit more effort and thought before getting caught up in a distraction.

What I didn't like was the energy section's emphasis on evolutionary psychology and living like a caveman (the caveman was called Urk, which I found irritatingly cutesy). The basic idea is that there's a "huge disconnect between our hunter-gatherer roots and our crazy modern world", and we should try to live more like a caveman because our bodies evolved for that lifestyle. This perspective requires some extreme simplifications that often seemed pretty dubious. Here's one passage:

Urk was a hunter-gatherer. He didn't eat unless he collected, caught, or killed his food. Can you imagine going out to gather berries or hunt for buffalo every morning, noon, and evening, plus any time in between when your blood sugar started to feel low?

The point is that just because we can eat all the time, that doesn't mean we should.

I'm not convinced at all that someone who gathered berries in the morning couldn't keep any berries to eat throughout the day, or even the next day. And I'm really not convinced that any random thought the authors happen to conceive about caveman life is automatically correct and should be used as a guide for healthy living.

Beyond the potential of being incorrect and unfounded, I think that evolutionary psychology can also be actively harmful. The authors are both former Googlers, which brings to mind that other infamous Google guy with a penchant for evolutionary psychology: James Damore, who wrote a memo about the biological differences between men and women to explain why he opposed programs intended to increase representation of women in tech. Damore argues that "differences {between men and women} aren't just socially constructed because... They're exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective".

So, I wish Knapp and Zeratsky had focused on empirical studies about how to increase energy and focus, rather than relying on speculative theorizing about the past and its influence on the present. That weakened an otherwise good book and made me much less likely to recommend it to others. The book does contain plenty of valuable ideas, and the writing is often humorous and entertaining, but much of it has to be taken with a big grain of salt.

>70 _Zoe_: I *loved* George, so I think I need to add this one to the list. I can't decide how I feel about the #ownvoices issue; I understand the concern and I definitely agree that it can be abused (? kind of not the right word, but yeah), but I also agree with you that How to Be an Ally books are really important, too, and if they're properly researched and respectfully written, I don't see the bad.

>72 scaifea: If you loved George, I'd definitely recommend Jilly P. I'll look forward to hearing what you think of it!



7. Evicted by Matthew Desmond



This is an excellent and important book: powerful, unique, and readable. I didn't write an immediate review since I finished it while on vacation, so this is a placeholder for now; maybe I'll come back to it eventually.

8. The Rosie Result by Graeme Simsion



I approached this book with some trepidation: I love the first book in the series, but the second was a huge disappointment. Fortunately Simsion redeemed himself with this third installment, focusing on Don's 11-year-old son.

The series as a whole deals with the entertaining misadventures of Don Tillman, a character whose unusual way of looking at the world would lead most readers to identify him as autistic. The first book is basically a romantic comedy, while this third one delves deeper into some more serious issues about labelling and identification. Don's son Hudson, who appears to have many of the same traits as Don himself, is having some issues at school, and the school strongly recommends getting him assessed for autism. So Don and Rosie have to explore what the consequences of that would be: would a diagnosis be helpful, or would it just create additional challenges and pressure to medicate? Meanwhile Don sets out on a mission to help Hudson develop the skills he needs to fit in, with mixed results.

I enjoyed the combination of serious issues with a humorous touch, and I loved many of the supporting characters in addition to the protagonists. There were all sorts of side-plots going on here, which added a lot of depth; I was cheering for all of these characters to succeed. My main reason for deducting a half-star is because one of these side stories wasn't satisfactorily resolved, and it happened to be the one that I cared about most—so that was disappointing.

As an example of one of these side-plots: Hudson's friend Blanche wants to be a scientist, but her parents are strongly opposed to science in general and medicine in particular; Don (a scientist himself) has many entertaining but meaningful interactions with Blanche's mother Allannah while their children play together, and when Blanche wants medical attention, he has to deal with a moral conflict about whether to help her obtain that medical attention against the wishes of her parents. I'd love to see a future book from Blanche's perspective, though I suspect that isn't going to happen.

This is the thread that goes horribly unresolved: Blanche is afraid of her father, and at one point Allannah attends a school event with a black eye from where he's hit her, but she ultimately decides to stay with him anyway. That's just not a satisfactory resolution for this family, even if Blanche does manage to get her vaccinations.

But on the whole, this is a satisfying and entertaining novel, and I enjoyed seeing the characters celebrate numerous triumphs throughout. This book is so much better than The Rosie Effect that I'd actually recommend skipping that one and going straight from the first book to the third, which is pretty much unprecedented for me. I don't think you'll lose much of the narrative—it had been almost five years since I read the sequel, so none of the details were fresh in my mind, and that really wasn't a problem for understanding or appreciating the current book. You might as well skip the unpleasantness of the Don-Rosie conflict (why do authors ever think it's a good idea to take the happily-ever-after of a first book and break it apart in the second?) and move on to this more enjoyable and pleasant read.

9. Outer Order, Inner Calm by Gretchen Rubin



I enjoy Rubin's rational approach to de-cluttering. Unlikely the extreme perspective of Marie Kondo, Rubin argues that you should de-clutter only to the extent that it makes your life better. This means keeping not just what you love, but also what your use or need. In some cases, it may even mean increasing or spreading around your possessions: Rubin recommends keeping pens and paper in every room so that you immediately have them on hand when needed. She advises the reader to be on guard against clearing clutter as a means of procrastinating on some more important task, and suggests that we ask ourselves whether we actually care before undertaking some de-cluttering process. There's nothing wrong with a junk drawer, and it's actually encouraged as a way to keep the rest of your home tidier. Basically, this was a welcome breath of fresh air compared to the more popular and more extreme approaches.

There's still plenty of good advice here, including to immediately accomplish any task that will take less than a minute ("no one ever regrets having replaced a light bulb") and setting aside an hour each week to work on tasks that somehow keep getting postponed. I'll try to implement the 10-minute "closer" at the end of each day, doing basic tasks like clearing the table and counters and then taking time to relish that accomplishment. I also appreciated the idea of doing some tidying whenever you struggle to find something.

There are certain suggestions that I'm never going to implement, like the idea of "designat{ing} a chief order officer" at work, "to give someone the specific responsibility and authority to tackle office disorder". I'm fortunate enough to have my own office, but I can also imagine the conflict being created when one person tries to de-clutter someone else's stuff. Still, I found Rubin's suggestions worthwhile on the whole.

The format of this book isn't particularly exciting; it's a fairly disjointed collection of individual suggestions, some of them only a sentence or two long. I found that it worked best to read a small number of pages each day, rather than reading the book straight through. In any case, I often read this kind of book not so much for the specific suggestions as for the general motivation that comes from reading about de-cluttering, and it certainly served its purpose in that respect. It may not be a groundbreaking book, but it's still a satisfying one, and I don't regret the time spent reading it.

I do want to note that this edition uses maybe the most annoying font I've ever seen in print, where the periods literally overlap the expected serifs on certain letters (specifically m, n, and k). They're unreasonably close to the o's. I'd recommend reading it as an e-book instead, except this is the sort of book that benefits from a casual flip-through. So I'll just hope that they change the font in future editions, or adjust this font to have more appropriate kerning. I hope this isn't an attempt to be "artistic" or a harbinger of trends to come.

I don't want to end with a font complaint, so I'll add one final note about the author: I'm aware of her previous books (The Happiness Project etc.), and already had them on my TBR list, but I haven't actually read them. My experience with this book makes me more likely to pick up her other works as well. I think Rubin's background in examining what makes people happy gave her a valuable perspective on de-cluttering. It helps to keep in mind the bigger picture: the goal is ultimately to create spaces that make you happy, and de-cluttering is just one tool that brings you closer to that goal.

I've now read more books in June than in the first five months of the year combined. Which really isn't saying much, but at least it's something.

>75 _Zoe_: - I may pick this one up, thanks to your review. I have enjoyed 2 other books by Rubin. And I truly had issues with Kondo and her insane *approach*… so yeah, this one may sit better with me. Or at least, may align more with my own style, such as it is... ;-)

>76 _Zoe_: Yay for reading!

>77 jessibud2: I would definitely recommend it; I find her advice sticking in my head more than a week after finishing the book. One of my favourite tips is to "store things at the store", which is particularly applicable to books. In the bookstore the other day I very nearly bought a couple of books because they were on sale, and I had to remind myself that I could wait to buy those books until I was actually ready to read them (which, given my historical rates of book acquisition, often never happens). I spend more money buying sale books that go unread than I would if I just bought things full-price as I actually wanted them.

That said, I noticed on Amazon that people who had read Rubin's previous books tended to be most disappointed with this one, because it's just so different from the rest. You have to be prepared for a collection of tiny tidbits rather than a continuous narrative.

>78 MickyFine: Yay indeed! I still feel like I've forgotten how to read—I end up reading passages multiple times because I'm not convinced that I've grasped every detail, and I need to get over that—but I'm moving in the right direction.

10. There's Something about Sweetie by Sandhya Menon



I think this is the best of Menon's books so far. Like the others, it's a contemporary YA romance with Indian-American protagonists, which is still unusual enough to feel fresh and different. It's technically the sequel to When Dimple Met Rishi, focused around one of the side characters from that book, but I don't think they really need to be read in order.

In the past, I've felt that Menon's weakness was making her characters too perfect for each other, so that they really had no reason not to get together immediately. In her first two books, she attempted to resolve this issue by making the heroine behave in an unnecessarily obnoxious way, creating conflict that didn't really have to exist and irritating the reader. Here she finally comes up with some welcome new approaches to keeping the characters apart just long enough to fill a novel: they don't meet until almost a quarter of the way through the book, one of them is still caught up in a recently-ended relationship, and they face various parental restrictions. So that was nice.

The book is also strengthened by the fact that the romance isn't everything: Sweetie's main conflict is actually with her mother, who constantly makes negative comments about Sweetie's weight. Much of the book is about Sweetie's attempt to prove to herself that she's just as worthy as anyone else despite being fat. I definitely appreciate that storyline, though I did have a couple of concerns about that way that it was implemented.

First of all, Sweetie is absolutely perfect in every other way: she's a star athlete (the fastest in her school, getting scouted for college track teams), she has an amazing singing voice, she's a great student, she makes Pinterest-worthy crafts. And to me it all sort of weakened the message about her weight, taking it from "fat girls are just as good as anyone else" to "fat girls can compensate for their fatness as long as they have zero other flaws and are the best at everything they do". Which isn't nearly as satisfying.

Second, I have to admit that I was dubious about the whole running-star aspect. I absolutely believe that overweight people can still be healthy and athletic, but I just wasn't quite convinced about a fat person being the absolute fastest at running in particular. Maybe I'm just being judgemental in the way the book is trying to refute, but I do have some personal experience of running at different weights, and I've seen what a difference it makes. And I've read a fair amount about running, including articles like this one about the effect of weight, or discussions about how guys don't want to put on too much upper-body muscle because that's also additional weight to carry. I don't know about the performance level of high school track stars in particular, but I thought they tended to be pretty good, to the point where all factors need to be somewhat optimized. And I've seen in Menon's other books that she doesn't tend to do careful research about her characters' hobbies and interests, so I wasn't willing to just take her word on it here: Dimple attended a coding camp whose overall structure made zero sense, and Twinkle's approach to film-making also seemed dubious (though I have to concede ignorance about that field). So, I don't know. This wasn't a huge issue, but it strained my suspension of disbelief just a bit more than I would have liked. Maybe I'm just a bad person and further reading will prove me wrong on this point.

Overall, though, I was satisfied by this book. It wasn't exactly groundbreaking, but it certainly held my attention. I'm glad Menon finally wrote a female protagonist I could wholeheartedly support, and I'm glad Sweetie's triumphs went beyond just the romance. I'll continue to pick up more books by this author in the future.

>80 _Zoe_: I was dubious about the whole running-star aspect.
Yeah. Some track events require more heft, e.g. shot put, but whether running is short bursts of power or long stretches of endurance, speed wins. So different body types may excel at different distances, but "fat" in the sense of weight that has to be carried but isn't contributing to the effort would suggest room for improvement. Not a moral judgement! Just from my perspective as an observer of the local HS track team (my brother some years ago and his kids until recently), casual stardom is implausible. The top runners are really really good and work really really hard to be competitive at the state (and in rare cases national) level, and to have just a bit of an edge over other top runners sometimes.

>75 _Zoe_: This book is one that might help me right now. Every room has too much clutter, and I have little energy to de clutter.

>81 qebo: Thank you! I'm glad for the confirmation that I'm not just being prejudiced and judgemental. It's interesting that Menon makes this a big issue in the book without really looking into the plausibility of it.

I checked back for what exactly the book says about Sweetie's speed: I'm the fastest runner at Piedmont High School, and the second-fastest high school student in the state of California.

I wish Menon could have celebrated a healthy fat girl without making her pretty much superhuman.

>82 Whisper1: I completely agree with you about too much clutter and too little energy! I think you'll appreciate this book.

>83 _Zoe_: I'm the fastest runner at Piedmont High School, and the second-fastest high school student in the state of California.
In real life, that claim would be attached to a multitude of qualifying specific numbers e.g. distances (100 meters? 3200 meters?) and records (personal, competitors, school, county, state, national, world) and time frames (so far this season? all time?). "I hold the current record" (which could be by a fraction of a second) is not the same as "I win all the races" (a whole 'nother aspect of competition, losing graciously). Also, out of curiosity, I checked... Top high school boys (https://www.bringbackthemile.com/history/u.s._high_school_boys_mile_all_time_top_10) can run a mile in 4 minutes. Top high school girls have a single instance under 4:30 (https://bringbackthemile.com/history/u.s._high_school_girls_mile_all_time). Kids who are nowhere near these times get recruited by colleges (http://studentcaffe.com/enrich/collegiate-sports/levels-of-competition). People who can run a mile in 8 or 9 minutes are well head of the general population.

Yeah, I'd get irritated too. There are entire realms of existence below "best" that most of us occupy... so "best" seems sort of a cheap shortcut that skips the interesting details of how to achieve competence.

>85 qebo: "skips the interesting details of how to achieve competence" - An excellent observation. Art and phys-ed education always felt like foreign territory to me when I was growing up, precisely because no teachers explained how to improve.

Um, books. What are these books again? Life continues to be hectic just when I was hoping it would calm down—we bought a house in August and are undertaking major renovations, which is more stressful than anticipated considering that we're not actually doing any of ourselves. I'll post pictures eventually. Also at the end of August I started my new job, which is excellent but time-consuming. I'm teaching two new courses, which I haven't done since the first semester I started teaching, four years ago. I'd somehow forgotten how much time it takes to plan every day from scratch. But we have the day off today for Yom Kippur, which I appreciate for multiple reasons, so I can try to do a bit of catch-up.



11. When I Walk through That Door, I Am by Jimmy Santiago Baca

I finished this book back in July, so the details aren't fresh in my mind. It's a super-short book in verse about an asylum-seeker from Central America dealing with the horrors of the American border. It's a really important topic, but it took me forever to finish because it's so unpleasant. Her husband is murdered in their home country; her child is taken from her by American immigration officers; she's raped by the officers detaining her. It became a struggle to pick up the book every time.



12. The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang



I expected to love this highly-rated YA graphic novel about a prince who enjoys wearing women's clothing and the seamstress who makes it for him. And I did enjoy it, but I couldn't help being slightly disappointed. It may have been just a case of over-inflated expectations (did I mention this book has really high ratings?), but I was also bothered by the treatment of the historical setting. It's set in Paris in roughly the 1830s, but the language and attitudes are so 21st-century. I don't expect my historical fiction to be written in historical language, but I do prefer language that's a bit more neutral and timeless. Maybe I'll look for examples later, when I have the book on me. The story takes place around the time of the first department store opening, and it's a big deal for an aspiring fashion designer to have work shown at the opening show. So this is a very specific historical moment, but the author didn't really help me understand the moment or even trust that she understood it. The interaction of traditional monarchy with modern progress seems like something that could have been explored further, but I just found myself confused when the prince was excited by a chance meeting with the store-owner's son—couldn't princes meet whoever they wanted, whenever they wanted? Characters also behaved in various modern ways that I won't get into due to spoilers.

I know I shouldn't read fiction with such a critical historical eye. And I know I always struggle with graphic novels anyway—there's a limit to how much explanation there can be in that format. This really is a nice and enjoyable story; I just found myself wanting even more.

13. We Contain Multitudes by Sarah Henstra



This book basically destroyed me. It was extremely powerful and also extremely miserable; it kept me up way too late two nights in a row, and I still can't stop thinking about it the next day.

I picked it up initially because the premise reminded me of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda: a gay teen romance that develops through letters, in this case part of a required English assignment to write weekly correspondence to another student. And the initial buildup was equally satisfying, but then We Contain Multitudes took some much darker turns. There's lots of heavy content here: violence, drugs, abuse, PTSD, etc.

I loved both of the protagonists: Adam Kurlansky (Kurl) is a football player repeating his senior year after failing too many classes (who of course turns out to have more depth and intelligence than you might expect). Jonathan Hopkirk (Jo) is a sophomore who loves poetry and gets bullied for dressing like Walt Whitman on a daily basis. They may have seemed like complete opposites, but they complemented each other well. (Incidentally, some people have trouble with that age gap. I personally didn't care; they're both in high school.)

The entire book is written in letters. This requires some suspension of disbelief—they get into the habit of documenting events that happened even when they were together in person, which is necessary for narrative coherence but not entirely natural. I had no problem with it; they had basically become each other's journals.

I expected the romance to be a slow build, especially because we couldn't see into their heads except to the extent that they were expressing their thoughts to each other. So I was pleasantly surprised when they actually got together halfway through, and their happy moments were delightful. I hoped that the following conflicts would then be external: Jo's family was a mess; Kurl's home life was bad; Kurl was dealing with the idea of applying for college as a first-generation student with limited academic success and an unsupportive family. (As an educator, that last plotline was especially of interest to me, and it made me realize that I haven't actually read another YA treatment of the issue.) But instead the misery began all too soon, and continued far too long.

This book has some significant weaknesses. Not least is the rushed and unsatisfactory ending; I was getting really stressed looking at my Kindle saying it was 98% complete and wondering whether anything would get resolved at all. After all of the horrible things that happened, there should have been a lot more grovelling and apologizing and begging for forgiveness. I can't believe Kurl just *forgot* that he broke up with Jo to protect him from his anger issues?? The lack of real verbal resolution also highlights that the central relationship isn't exactly a healthy one, bordering on codependence. I don't know that I'd want an actual teen reading this book and getting the wrong ideas (there's also lots of profanity and sex, but teens can handle that).

But I loved the characters anyway, and the book was impactful enough to compensate for its flaws—I think. I'm actually still angry, so maybe I'll revise my opinion later, but I certainly won't be forgetting these characters any time soon. I may even buy a paper copy so that I can flip through and enjoy the good parts again.

I saw that there's going to be a Gentleman's Guide novella about Monty and Percy getting together after the conclusion of their story, and that's really what this book needs as well: a whole 100+ extra pages of further resolution and positivity. I know that's extremely unlikely to happen, but I'll read whatever Henstra writes next regardless. I'm really glad I picked up this book.

Nice to see you around, Zoe! Enjoy your small break! :)

Thank you for keeping me company in 2019.......onward to 2020.

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Solstice, some other tradition or none at all, this is what I wish for you!