I cannot believe, given my life trajectory, that more people hadn't recommended this book to me previously.

This is one of those books that I wish I had written. I basically cried all through the last 30 pages or so.

Lily is a fourteen year-old runaway, who, with her jail-broken caregiver Rosaleen, head to a town two hours away with nothing but a photograph and a name. Eventually, they stumble upon a bee keeping farm and are met with the mercy of three sisters, August, May, and June. We learn about April who has passed, and Lily quickly becomes a Bee apprentice. Set in the civil rights movement, we see snippets of this change, May's wailing wall filled with atrocities against people of color, and the turmoil of the black community from a young person's perspective. All the while, Lily learns about how to care for bees, and ultimately, how to care for and heal herself.

Kidd's imagery and descriptions are unique yet spot on - she has a way of describing ordinary things that bring them so clearly to my mind in ways I wouldn't have thought to describe them - like Rosaleen's lip protruding "like a sunset" and many others. Throughout the whole story, I feel we know very little about what Lily looks like other than she is white with dark hair (her hair is only mentioned a handful of times). I wonder if physical descriptions were kept light so that we readers could insert ourselves in the places where we felt we most fit. So that each of us has a chance to be Lily and be mothered by these four women.

This is a beautiful book, and probably in my top 10-15 favourites of all time. I'd recommend it to anyone, though I'm not sure it would be a wise read for anyone who has recently lost a loved one (but if you have lost someone, especially a parent, I implore you to read this book).

Pairings: Poisonwood Bible, The Supremes at Earl's all you can eat, The Bluest Eye, Invisible Man.

If you need me, you can contact me by carrier pigeon. ;)

Mae, through sheer luck, quits her job in nowhereville, and gets an entry-level job at The Circle, a media monopoly organization that has overtaken internet connectivity as we know it, but remains surprisingly personal in nature. As we watch Mae start her new job and learn what it is to be an "inside" member of this huge company, we learn quickly that not everything is safe, and more is expected of Mae than she first realizes. Will she be able to rise through the ranks...and at what cost?

Eggers drives home this point: connection does not equal friendship, does not equal authenticity, does not equal community as we currently define it. Fabulously executed premise, extremely realistic, and ends just as it should. Eggers speaks a scary truth to a world that needs to hear it.

Some complain the main character is flat. I think this is actually appropriate for the book's premise - someone more self-aware and interesting wouldn't have thrived with this company. We want her to run away but we kind of want her to stay, so that we...the viewers, can find out....

Don't close the circle.

pairings: the time machine,

Another great one by Brené. :)

Brené continues her research observing those who "dare greatly" (a T. Roosevelt quote) and what patterns might emerge. In sharing her own experiences of "failure" and findings in her research, she encourages readers to "rumble" with our "aha moments" (not sure if that's what she calls them) and instead of medicating, focusing on what's making us spin our wheels and reveal our various stories, confront shame and our SFDs head-on so that we might become resilient.

Brené is a lovely writer, and part of her loveliness is that she practices what she preaches and owns up to her own failures, writing about them with the authenticity she teaches. She models as best she can what a life like this actually looks like and pulls examples both from those wildly "typically" successful and regular joes like us.

One jillion stars. Would read again. :)

This is probably one of my favourite books by Lowry.

Littlest is a tiny, wispy dreamgiver who is newly-paired with Thin Elderly to train how to give dreams. Lowry makes sense of the randomization of dreams - dreamgivers "touch" various things in our homes to give us good dreams. Littlest quickly becomes known for her "Gossamer" touch.

The portrayal was a little fuzzy, but I think this was intentional on Lowry's part. It's a lovely explanation of where dreams may come from.

Lowry's writing is spot on in this book–every word counts when writing for children, and this is something she understands. Through her use of third person omniscient (which can often make or break a book, IMHO), even though the book is about Littlest and Eldest, we learn to love John (the boy), the unnamed older woman (the foster parent), and the mom (working hard to get her son back) ,and we feel like we know them all intimately, even though we don't learn the names of the human adults. This is powerful.

Lowry can bring you to tears and laugh in the same sentence. Many of her themes revolve around human connection, and this story all the more shows the importance of connection amidst all kinds of brokenness. We all need good dreams to fight away the nightmares. We all need hope and courage in the midst of waking nightmares.

This would be a great book to read aloud or to read with a grandchild/grandparent combo.

This book made me wonder more about Lowry's life. I'm not much of a biography person, but I need to read more interviews and info about her.

Pairings: not sure yet.

I feel like even rating this book is a spoiler.

The thing that was the most clear is that while J.K. Rowling may have helped (or allowed it to be written, I'm not sure which happened, forgive me), this was not her writing. There were overused phrases that she wouldn't've used, the events were unrealistic (though it was an interesting idea) there was sloppy editing, and the whole thing read like it was rushed to the printer. I'd still be interested in the actual performance (not sure if that's a thing that's happening either - I'm such a bad fan!), but ultimately, I was disappointed.

Perhaps more hardcore fans enjoyed the book, but I was left unimpressed.

After losing her father and an accidental death (out of self-defense), Samantha and Annabelle, basically strangers to each other, decide to leave everything behind out of desperation and fear. Disguised as boys to arouse less suspicion, they are befriended by a band of cowboys, and with this accepting group, we see a glimpse of how their lives play out in the open country (and how it was even still an issue there) as they meet others and travel to their various destinations on the many routes out to California.

I am not a western or period piece reader, and I loved this book. Sam and Andy were lovable, believable, and strong characters. Sam was second-generation to a T, and I loved the way she (both the character and Lee herself) articulated the "rules" of a man's world, along with the "rules" she grew up with as a second generation immigrant...I love the way Sam struggled to find a balance between her culture and her life experience and rested in the tension between the two. Lee's imagery and word pictures were simply gorgeous, and she has an ability to capture much depth in everyday dialogue. Really amazing book. I'm looking forward to reading more of Lee's works! :)

Natasha is about to be deported because of her father's irresponsible actions. Daniel is killing time before his Yale interview. The two happen to cross paths, and we the readers see the happenstance and domino effects that follow.

Yoon's writing is spectacular. I had just finished Everything, Everything a few weeks ago, and while I love that book, this one is even better. Her characters are different and believable, and perfect for YA. The story keeps moving at a good pace (I read both of her books in basically one sitting). Her diction is impeccable, and her omniscient narration is a perfect "voiceover" (the histories, the instances where we see other character's futures, etc.). Down to the images used above each "chapter", this book was near perfection. This is a book I wish I had written.

I think one could argue that this story is actually more about the peripheral characters and their connections rather than Natasha and Daniel, and emphasizes that the sequences of events and time that do change us. The painting that shakes you had to be created by someone who had to be born whose parents had to meet. I love that Irene ends up being such a pivotal character even though we know very little about her. We've all experienced her hurts and want to protect like she does. At the end, I think it's perfect and true to the story that Daniel and Natasha's reunion is left open-ended.

Even the cover art is perfect. I recommend this book to anyone.

Pairings: not sure yet.

NOTE: I'm still pretty new to these conversations, so anything grossly offensive is out of ignorance. Thank you for bearing with me as I learn! :)

Coates narrates a letter in three parts to his son about being a black man in the 20th-21st century, woven with recollections of events in his life concerning his heritage and things that happened to him and his friends that have shaped him and how he's learned to recognize and move beyond his fears...and how he wants something different than fear for his son.

Essential reading for everyone. Coates' poetry soul shines through and paints gorgeous word pictures about hard truths. I knew very little about this book before I read it, and I'm so glad I read it.

I love the way he used the word "bodies" not just speaking about physical bodies, but also as a literary device. I'm not quite sure how to explain this just yet. I will definitely be re-reading.

A few quotes:

"...I came to understand that my country was a galaxy, and this galaxy stretched from the pandemonium of West Baltimore to the happy hunting grounds of Mr. Belvedere. I obsessed over the distance between that other sector of space and my own. I knew that my portion of the American galaxy, where bodies were enslaved by a tenacious gravity, was black, and the other =, liberated portion was not. I knew that some inscrutable energy preserved the breach. I felt, but did not yet understand, the relation between that other world and me. And I felt in this a cosmic injustice, a profound cruelty, which infused an abiding, irrepressible desire to unshackle my body and achieve the velocity of escape." (p. 20-21)

"But the American reunion was built on a comfortable narrative that made enslavement into benevolence, white knights of body snatchers, and mass slaughter of the war into a kind of sport in which one could conclude that both sides conducted their affairs with courage, honor, and élan." (p. 102)

"You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people uncomfortable." (p. 108)

""I examined the pictures of these giant doors in our small Harlem apartment. I had never seen anything like them. It had never even occurred to me that such giant doors could exist, could be so common in one part of the world and totally absent in another. And it occurred to me, listening to your mother, that France was not a thought experiment but an actual place filled with actual people whose traditions were different, whose lives were really different, whose sense of beauty was different." (p. 119)

"...And though I could never, myself, be a native of any of these worlds, I knew that nothing so essentialist as race stood between us. I had read too much by then. And my eyes–my beautiful, precious eyes–were growing stronger each day. And I saw that what divided me from teh world was not anything intrinsic to us but the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named us matters more than anything we could ever actually do." (p. 120 - the rest of this section is amazing)

"...And watching him walk away, I felt I had missed part of the experience becuase my eyes were made in Baltimore, because my eyes were blindfolded by fear.
What I wanted was to put as much distance between you and that blinding fear as possible. I wanted you to se different people living by different rules." (p. 126-27)

"But do not struggle for the Dreamers. Hope for them. Pray for them, if you are so moved. But do not pin your struggle on their conversion. The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle themselves, to understand that the field for their Dream, the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all. The Dream is the same habit that endangers the planet, the same habit that sees our bodies stowed away in prisons and ghettos." (p. 151)