I just had to mention how much I enjoyed Merit and Mallory's friendship, didn't I? This is why we can't have nice things.

Wow. I definitely was not expecting

Ethan to actually die. Be put in mortal (immortal?) peril, absolutely. I was expecting a revelation about his coincidental presence at the park when Merit was attacked. Love interests don't usually die! I am shocked, but a little impressed.

That being said, it sucks that Morgan was introduced as such a fun character and turned into such a giant douche.

This is a drama and a tragedy. Not a romance. I repeat, NOT A ROMANCE.

That being said, Hey Arnold! did the best incarnation of this play.

Mary Roach's unique combination of a broad spectrum of research and an engrossing narrative tone is excellent for me as both a reader and a writer; the off-the-cuff tid-bits she offers as footnotes have spawned several story concepts that are now rattling around in my Very Special Notebook. There's a lot you can do with a cadaver dressed in orange and yellow Lycra.

I find it incredible that when you donate your body to science, you have to sign a specific waiver specifying you are also okay with being used for testing that involves "impacts, blasts, ballistics testing, crash testing and other destructive forces." I want to know who got to that point and refused? It's odd to draw a line in the sand right there. It's okay to be sliced n' diced by a first year med student but not to be used for safety protocols? Personally, I would be thrilled to sign that form - my carcass would love to test out those new Kevlar undies.

The very short portion of Grunt she spends talking about the effects of underbody blasts to the feet was actually far more disgusting than her whole book on dead people.

Without the [fat padding of the heel], the pain of walking is acute. When vitamin A poisoning caused the soles of Antarctic explorer Douglad Mawson's feet to slough off, he stuffed them in the bottom of his boots like Dr. Scholl's cushioning insoles. It was the only way he could go on.

This is a fact I can never unknow and I have Ms. Roach to thank for it.

Reading this was much like looking up just that one article on tvtropes - I have several pages of notes and that was before I even laid my eyes on her bibliography. I imagine one google search will lead me down the rabbit hole for hours. I can't wait.

NEW THING I LEARNED:
A tip on how to steal someone's phone, if I wanted to:

Smart smartphone thieves use the startle reaction to their advantage. They come up behind unsuspecting texters and whap them on the back of the head. The startled victim's arms bend, launching the phone, which is effectively tossed to the thief.

What I adore most about Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (other than Doreen and her unrelenting cheer and her vaguely one-sided friendship with Tony Stark) is her roomie, Nancy.



But Mary, Mary, my love.



MARY AND NANCY TOGETHER.



Be still my heart. The supporting characters for this series are so excellent. The writer clearly has just a ton of fun mixing the absurdity of classic comic shenanigans with modern humor and sensibilities.

I'm a big fan of Jon Klassen's children's books, so I picked this up without even looking at the inside flap. I was also familiar with enough with Pennypacker's writing to anticipate a good story, regardless of plot.



I was delighted to see my expectations were exceeded; Pax is a lovely story about a boy who struggles with loss - that of his mother, his pet fox (the titular Pax), his familiar home as his father goes to war and leaves him with his grandfather.

The chapters switch off between Pax and Peter as they wander through the countryside separately looking for one another, after Peter's father forces him to abandon Pax in a heartbreaking scene right out of The Fox and The Hound. Their connection is a steady thread throughout the novel, even as they encounter new allies and new enemies. Pax befriends a wary vixen and her playful younger brother while Peter breaks his foot on his journey and is found by Vola, a veteran who is living in the woods.

Peter's friendship with Vola is truly a marvelous thing - it isn't often we meet veterans in fiction who are women, who have acknowledged PTSD, who are physically disabled from war. Vola has been living away from people for twenty years, carrying the blood of her opponents on her hands. She believes herself dangerous, a weapon because of how the service molded her and she's been trying to find the truth of herself ever since she lost her leg. She helps Peter with the anger he does not allow himself to feel, too afraid to be like his (heavily implied abusive) father:

We all own a beast called anger. It can serve us: many good things come of anger at bad things; many unjust things are made just. But first we all have to figure out how to civilize it.

Similarly, their friendship allows her to consider rejoining the world for just a little bit.

Pax is filled with a lot of Big Concepts (war, nonduality, falliability of authority figures, etc.) but I think they are presented truthfully and simply enough for the demographic to grasp easily. The bittersweet ending is a killer. Be warned.

The foreword, preface and introduction of this edition were so overt about their evangelism and religiosity that I was concerned I would not be able to enjoy this memoir as it stood, but I see now that The Hiding Place offers a more common human experience than just Christianity, even if that part was overwhelmingly present. Those authors felt the depth of it through their religious similarities, whereas I enjoyed it by merit of a story about courageous deeds and kindness in the face of overwhelming adversity. Neither is wrong, but I was relieved that it is more even-keeled than I suspected. I can appreciate that people draw strength from different things.

If Corrie had not mentioned she was a spinster "of a certain age" (forty-five, to be exact) in the very beginning, I would have assumed she was sixteen at the very oldest. Her mein and comportment reminded me of an innocent young girl in literature, excitable about how her new party dress fit and riding a bike to her sister's house. Actually, it reminds me of a formulaic YA novel - innocent teenage girl faces unspeakable horror and tragedy, powering through it by virtue of inner strength and force of will (but no love triangle). Maybe this true story is where it all started, decades ago. Maybe I'm just a cynical modern woman.

Regardless, The Hiding Place does tell an incredible story of a kind-hearted family who aided dozens of displaced asylum seekers during WWII and faced the unjustifiable punishment for it with bravery. It's worth reading, because what happened must be remembered.

I missed the discussion at my book club for this title, unfortunately. I'm wondering how it may have gone, since most of the members are closer to the author's age (64) than my own (29) - the way she relates to both words and her environment definitely speak to that generation gap.

Regardless, this was a fun little book. Grammar should always come with interesting examples and anecdotes; more people would commit the rules to memory that way. I also appreciated her emphasis on how subjective the job can be in regard to changing prose when it comes to said rules - authorial intent is just as important.