Third Batch of Summer Reading

The stressful times seem to be continuing.  Which means that I have read eight more kid/YA books and have yet to finish another book on the Improving Nonfiction list (That is all right.  I will get them read eventually.)

 I will stop going on about how great Ursula Vernon’s Dragonbreath books are, at least in blog posts, not because they aren’t great, but because I finished them all.  Since I last wrote, that is volumes 7 to 11.  They are all hilarious and wonderful, but the one that particularly stuck with me was the one where they had to go into Wendell’s dreams and his brain is like a giant library complete with card catalog and books about his worst fears.  Please go buy them and read them or give them to someone who needs a break or something.  The world will be a better place, at least for a little while.

 

I also loved Philip Pullman’s The Secret Commonwealth, but damn, I wish I had waited until the third book was out to read the whole series because that was one heck of a cliffhanger ending.  I admire Pullman’s prose.  He combines the lyrical and the economical in useful ways.  He also tackles Big Issues and Big Ideas in interesting ways.  Now I am waiting impatiently for him to hurry up and finish.  Which is not helpful of me, but true.

 

I bought The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper by A.J. Fitzwater because how could I not need a book about a capybara pirate?  Throw in a bunch of gender-fluidity, a wide acceptance of varying sexuality, and some deeply poetic prose and it just gets better.  Even in the places where the writing was less appealing, I found it to be an engaging book and perhaps an important one.  We need protagonists of all kinds to show us that all kinds of people (and rodents) can be triumphant.

 

My now-less-leisurely pursuit of all things Tamora Pierce has brought me to Alanna:  The First Adventure.  Because I am not entirely stupid, I bought all four Alanna books at once, so I do not have to wait impatiently for the next one to arrive.  (Guess what I’m doing this evening…)  The book has all the things I want in a Pierce book, a scrappy girl determined to make her own way, real struggles that involve actual bruises, funny and helpful friends, and, in this particular case, a beautiful horse.  I am so glad these books exist and I wish I had met them when I was a girl who wanted the courage to be scrappy, if not the bruises so much.

 

Summer total so far:  22 books.  Year to date total:  64 books.