An author I truly admire, Jo Walton, is a long-time blogger for Tor.com. Nearly every month she posts a list of books she read the month before with a quick sum-up/review. She reads, usually, around 20 books a month. I’m jealous. I wish I could read that fast. I average about 7 to 8 books a month.  I’ve decided to make a similar blog post this month.

The Kingdom, by Jess Rothenberg
This is a recent YA Sci-Fi/Fantasy about a cyborg princess who is one of the star attractions at an immersive theme park. The princesses aren’t supposed to have independent thought, yet Ana finds herself having real feelings for a young park employee. I read this one on the excited recommendation of some coworkers at the bookstore. It’s a very readable book told in a first-person narrative combined with court records and company memos. I liked it, but didn’t love it. I felt that the ending was not true to the story. It’s like the author wrote the novel, then getting a contract for a series (yes, this will be a series) changed the ending to lead into the next book.

Stargazing, by Jen Wang
I’ve been a big fan of author/illustrator Wang since the first Flight anthology which had an early story of hers. Last year she had a big hit with The Prince and the Dressmaker (that book makes me so happy) and later this year (I read an ARC) will release her first middle grade graphic novel, Stargazing. This book is sweet and funny, but also does a great job of highlighting the awkwardness of sixth grade—trying to fit in, trying to figure out who you are. For the characters in Stargazing, the discomfort also comes from being in a tight-knit Chinese American community and the pressures to be both Chinese and American.

A Free Man of Color, by Barbara Hambly
This was a reread and I’m not going to say much here as I wrote a whole post about this book, except that this is a wonderful book. Great mystery, rich characters that are fully formed—even some of the side characters that don’t have a place in the action. The hero’s mother is one of the least sympathetic/most empathetic characters I’ve read. She’s hard, cold, and judgmental, but given her past, what else could she be. The Benjamin January mysteries have long been a favorite of mine and I can’t recommend them enough.

Sanity & Tallulah: Field Trip, By Molly Brooks
The is the second in this graphic novel series. The first is beyond charming, and this one equally so, but it also raises the stakes for the two best friends living on a space station in the middle of nowhere. When the girls’ class goes on a field trip to a planet the worst-case scenario happens and brilliant Sanity must figure out a way off planet while dreamy Tallulah uncovers secrets held within the planet. This series is meant for kids, but it’s so well drawn (literally and figuratively) that I think it has a lot to appeal to adults too. It definitely satisfies my constant need for good space stories.

The Sweetest Fruits, by Monique Truong
As a huge fan of 19th writer Lafcadio Hearn, I was so excited to find there was a novel coming out about his life. Got the book the week it came out and I loved it. Truong examines Hearn’s chaotic life through the eyes of three women who loved him. His mother, a Greek woman who married an English soldier, his first wife, a former slave in Cincinnati, and his second wife, the daughter of a Samurai family in Japan. This is a beautiful book about a subject I’m interested in, so I loved it. I’m not sure what it would offer (other than lovely prose and authentic voices) to those who don’t know who Hearn is. Still recommended.

What Makes This Book So Great, by Jo Walton
This is a book of blog posts that Walton wrote between 2008 and 2011 reviewing classic Sci-Fi and Fantasy. I started this book months ago, but it was on my night table and I’d only read a chapter or two a night. My list of TBR books got infinitely larger after reading this. Walton has an encyclopedic knowledge of Sci-Fi/Fantasy, and other types of, books. There were so many that I’d never heard of that sounded wonderful. That said, I skipped several sections that reviewed books in long series that I’m not interested in reading. All in all a fascinating read.

Gaudy Night, by Dorothy Sayers
I got this book from the library and as I was finishing the previous book, there is a chapter on it. I didn’t read it then, so I could enjoy the book first. Then I saw a blog post referencing it, and after that it was referred to in an article I read. The universe was definitely telling me to read it. I did and I enjoyed it, even though it was hella long and there wasn’t much mystery. As someone who hasn’t read any Sayer before, it was not what I was expecting, and from what I read, it’s not in her usual style. But I loved the immersion in a 1930s ladies college at Oxford. A lot of the book is taken up with the few choices that women can make for their lives—careers versus family. It was particularly interesting to me since a similar conversation still takes place today. I wouldn’t recommend this book as a mystery, but as a slice of life examination of the lives of women in the 1930s, I would.

The Magnificent Nine, by James Lovegrove
This was a potato chip read. It is a book set in the universe of the TV show Firefly—of which I’m a huge fan—and reads like an episode. The one is the second in a series of three and takes place after the show but before the movie. What can I say? I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you like the show or are a fan of space westerns based on a movie western based on a Japanese samurai movie, you’ll love it too.

The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman
I listened to this on audio—a reread/relisten. This is about as perfect as a book and an audio reading can get. Gaiman reads his Newbery winner so simply that really makes you feel like you’re in that graveyard too. The story follows Bod, a boy whose family was murdered and who is raised by ghosts in a graveyard. It’s a beautiful book about growing up and becoming a real person. If you haven’t read it, do yourself a favor.

Well Met, by Jen DeLuca
This book only tangentially relates to my “romances in bookstore/romances around books” predilection as it takes place, mostly, at a small Renaissance Faire. There is a bookstore involved and a shared love of Shakespeare, so it counts—my official judgment call. In this delightful little romance follows Emily, a newcomer to town, who has moved there after a bad break-up to take of her older sister and niece after a car accident. She gets roped into volunteering to be a wench at the local Faire, but immediately butts head with the organizer, Simon. As this is a romance, you probably can guess what happens, and it does. What makes this a great story is that both Emily and Simon have character arcs, growing and changing to be better people by the end. Much recommended.

     I’ve been reading Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January mystery series since the first book, A Free Man of Color, came out in 1997. I’m not a big mystery or thriller reader, though to do read a few each year. I’ve kept up with this series for much the same reason I read all the Tony Hillerman books as they came out—the characters and atmosphere. Sometimes the mystery doesn’t even matter since I’m so into the people and places. Reading a new Benjamin January book now is like visiting with old friends.
      The series takes place in 1830s New Orleans, when the city was still in the process of changing from a French/Spanish city to an American one. Many of the stories have to do with clashes between the uncouth Americans and the genteel Creoles. As the title of the first book indicates, Benjamin January is a black former slave who was freed as a child and given a world-class education by his mother’s protector. Much of the conflict in the stories is about racism and class—especially class among the free people of color. (Having at least one white grandparent made you colored, not black—an important distinction. Benjamin is considered colored.)
      I’m a big fan of Barbara Hambly’s writing. She has a gift for sketching out details that make you gather in a whole scene in a few lines—including the clothing and attitudes of the people involved. Her books are extremely well-researched (she lived in New Orleans while writing the first few) and she creates an atmosphere that draws you right in.
      I decided to reread A Free Man of Color, realizing I hadn’t read it since it came out. Although, I remembered a lot of the story, I couldn’t remember the “who dunnit.”
      What a pleasure it was to be reintroduced to the New Orleans of Benjamin—scholar, surgeon, pianist, and informal detective. In the intervening years since I first read this book, I have read a lot of Georgette Heyer (Barbara Hambly is a fan too) and can see her influence on Hambly’s writing about clothing as well as the interpersonal relationships of the “demimonde” (as opposed to Heyer’s “upper ten thousand”).
      What fascinated me most in this reread are the topics of misogyny and racism, that play major roles in all of these books, and how prescient they were in A Free Man of Color about conversations happening twenty-two years later. The story follows a recently widowed woman who is trying to get back jewelry and slaves that belonged to her that her dead husband had given to his “colored” mistress. She attempts to get into a space reserved for “colored” mistresses, but is intercepted by Benjamin January, her former piano teacher, who agrees to carry a message to the mistress. When the mistress ends up murdered, Benjamin must track down the killer or face murder charges.
      Hambly’s descriptions of how powerless women are—their possessions all belong to their husbands—and how powerless people of African descent are is heartbreaking and enraging. But all to good effect to make the story move along at a quick pace.
      A problematic element in 2019 that wasn’t as much a worry in 1997 is that Barbara Hambly, a white woman, is writing the story of a black man and other people of color. In my opinion, as another white woman, I feel she does an amazing job of characterizing the constant fear that Benjamin has that he could be kidnapped and sold as a slave at any moment. His humiliation at having filthy river boat men condescend to him or brutalize him, because they can.
      Coming from my vantage point of privilege, my first reaction is “they can’t get away with that” or “people wouldn’t really do that.” Of course, they can and do. Being so closely aligned to Benjamin’s POV, it’s hard not to take umbrage as he does, but where he has to swallow his pride, I could get in the face of the perpetrator. I feel like Hambly does such an immersive job in her writing, that it gets to the deepest parts of racism and exposes it for the idiocy that it is. How a person of color would react, I don’t know.
     Maybe what this book does best is create an atmosphere of embedded racism that allows me to get an inkling of what pervasive racism can be like. Benjamin is a dynamic hero—clever and smart and very aware—and the reader can’t help but be fascinated by him and his world.

This is the first time I've worked with straw. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I had a tough time decorating it, though, as that pink was supposed to be red. It all came together when I matched it to the cherry blossoms.

It's been a long few months since I've made any hats. Other projects kept getting in the way, but I've finally carved out some time. I'm very pleased with the results.

I’ve just finished the second book in Mary Robinette Kowel Lady Astronaut series, The Fated Sky. This was the perfect follow-up to The Calculating Stars, one of my favorite books from last year (maybe one of my favorite books). These two books are so well researched, the world so developed, with wonderful writing to wrap it all in a gorgeous adventure.
 
The Calculating Stars concentrates on the climate changing event of the meteor strike and Elma’s struggle to be taken seriously as a mathematician physicist pilot. Elma, the Lady Astronaut, has such determination in the face of harrowing misogyny. Her anxiety is visceral—I could feel how upset she was. The completely undramatic loving relationship she has with her husband is what so many books should aspire too.
 
I gave this book to my mom to read—not a sci-fi/fantasy/alternate history reader at all—and she loved it so much she used it as her book club pick.
 
The Fated Sky concentrates less on misogyny—it’s five years later and the ladies have more than proved their skills and worth—and tackles racism while giving us an amazing adventure of what happens on the long space flight to Mars.
 
While both of these books have the larger themes of misogyny and racism, they are explored through life situations so that it’s easy to forget while reading the social issues the characters face. Yet, when you’re finished, what sticks with you as much as the adventure is those issues and how they must be faced in order to move past them.
 
These two books were wonderfully imagined and written. I can’t recommend them enough.

I’ve started a new writing group with an old friend. So far there are only three of us, but it seems to be working out well. We came up with some guidelines of what we want to accomplish, but mostly we want to support each other in our writing. The two other people are working on getting into the habit of writing. They both have projects they’d like to flesh out. I’m finishing up my fourth novel, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need some help and support too.
 
I was working with a critique group much of last year, and it was a great group, but I just wasn’t getting out of it what I needed. With my current group, my friend and I have been talking about forming a group for probably ten years. We’re just now in a place where we can find some common time.
 
So far, it’s just the kind of support I’ve been looking for—to give and receive. We’re hoping to add more members, but for now it’s just right.

I had the opportunity to go to the San Francisco’s Writers Conference again this year. As always, it was incredibly educational and inspirational. This year it was held in a different hotel, the Hyatt Embarcadero, which is in the mix of everything. It was a nice change. (Though the Saint Mark is a bit more gorgeous than the Hyatt.)
 
I attended some excellent panels on world building, using more than five senses, and on creating beautiful sentences. I did the agent “speed dating” and got some excellent feedback on my just about finished novel, Hideyho. Plus, my husband was with me so we got to do fun stuff together in the evenings—which mostly consisted of eating at fabulous restaurants.
 
All-in-all a great conference.

I’ve recently discovered that I have a soft spot for romance books that take place in a bookstore or are about books--The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Little Bookshop of Happy Ever After, etc. I’ve never been much of a romance reader until I started reading Georgette Heyer a few years ago. Though, I find her far more literary than romantic, but somehow, she’s always cast as a romance writer.
 
I’m still not much of a romance reader … that is until I found this sweet spot. Now I can’t get enough of these books. They are so much fun! I’ve made a list—kind of short, unfortunately—of books that might hit the right notes. Some are not as book-related as I would wish, some are not as romantic, but I’m having a blast when I find ones that are just right.
 
I recently read Little Bookshop of Lonely Hearts, and now I need to add “funny” as a descriptor of romance books about books to the list—which narrows it perceptibly. This one was almost too “romance” for me, but it was so uproariously funny, that it went on the list of my favorites.
 
Loving this niche genre so much, during the last NaNoWriMo, I started my own romance novel that revolve around books. I only got 40,000 words into a very rough draft and I’ve put it on the backburner now for some more pressing projects, but it warms my heart to know that I have my very own romance to get back into when the time comes.

Since, I first heard about it, I wanted to read Pride by Ibi Zoboi. It’s a modern take on Pride and Prejudice, one of my all-time favorite books, setting it in a quickly gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn.
 
This version of P&P is set in a world almost as different from my world as Regency England. The main character is Zuri Benitez, a girl who is proud of her Afro-Latino heritage and proud of her old-style Brooklyn neighborhood, where even though her family is very poor—living seven people in a one-bedroom apartment—they are rich in love and friendship.
 
This starts to change when the super wealthy Darcy family buys the building across the street and makes it into a single-family townhome. What makes it worse for her is that the Darcy brothers are gorgeous and rich and she doesn’t think they belong in her ‘hood. Her older sister quickly falls for the older brother, Ainsley. Even though the younger brother, Darius, expresses interest in getting to know her, she keeps him at arms-length.
 
I loved it. Although, it was really hard for me to get into at first. The rhythm of the language, using local slang, was difficult for me to get into. Zuri’s attitude and strong personality were something I’d never encountered before. But once I got past the things I didn’t know or understand, I enjoyed the story so much. Author Ibi hit all the right points to match it up with the original and added enough to the plot line to make it very much her own.
 
I think some people would pick up this book and be daunted by how very different it is from their own experience. Reading isn’t about staying true to your own experience (though those books can be comforting). Reading should be about exploring new worlds, not only made up ones, but ones that exist in the world now and you just don’t know about yet.

I've been doing Nanowrimo again this year, but I've no intention of winning. I'm using it as a chance to reset my schedule, to get to writing everyday again. And it's working! I've written every day this month and I'm up to 26,000 words on a new novel.

I recently noticed that when I'm working on a manuscript, I tend to fade out between 23,000 and 25,000 words. I think I have four novels where I stalled out around there. That I've already passed the tough part and have plenty of ideas left, I have a good feeling about getting this novel done.