Reading

What I Read in June

June 30, 2015 by Abbigail Kriebs 5 Comments

June. One of the loveliest months of the year here in Wisconsin. It’s harder to sit still and read when the great outdoors, blissful temperatures, and all sorts of distractions are calling.

Aside from June Dairy Month taking over my life, June was a good month. And even the events for Dairy Month were good, just exhausting. Here is what I read in June:

Fiction

Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen – This was my second Dessen this summer and I’m not entirely sure I’ll read more of hers. There doesn’t seem to be much that happens in these books, and the plot lines thus far have been pretty predictable. Maybe her later stuff is more complex? Please tell me it is – I want to like Dessen’s stuff.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows & Mary Ann Shaffer – This is one of my favorite books. This is the third or fourth read for me, this time for book club. If you like stories with great ensemble casts, this one is for you. I’ll write a full review on Thursday for you all.

The Land of Milk and Uncle Honey: Memories from the Farm of My Youth by Alan Guebert and Mary Grace Foxwell – Mary Grace, i.e. Gracie, is a friend. When we first met this winter, she was putting the finishing touches on a book where she and her journalist father pulled all of the columns he has written about the family farm he grew up on and compiled them into one place. This was a delightful read that reminded me so much of my own farming family. I’ll plan to write a full review next week.

Nonfiction

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand – I am about two chapters away from finishing this one, and considering the size of the book, I’m going to shelve it here in the “done” pile. :) It’s been a great but slow read for me – I recommend it if you like military history and stories of survival against unbelievable odds, and if you can stomach some gore on the page – it’s about time spent in a war and POW camps, after all.

In Progress

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.

Up Next

We Were Liars by E. L. Lockhart – This is another YA recommendation from the lovely Callie – and I am excited to dive in!

What have you read lately that blew your socks off? What’s next on your TBR pile?

Story in Review: Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie by David Lubar

June 23, 2015 by Abbigail Kriebs 7 Comments

A quirky Young Adult novel, Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie by David Lubar was adorable, heartfelt, and a wonderful picture of what it looks like to make it through your freshman year. Scott Hudson starts his freshman year already feeling behind, and then his parents dump some big news on him at the end of the day: he’s going to be a big brother. In addition to navigating high school, he’s now got to deal with a pregnant mother, a dad who doesn’t always understand him, and the fact that he is crushing hard for a girl he sat next to in kindergarten. It makes for some funny material along the way.

Callie Feyen always has the best book suggestions hidden in her “My Week in Words” posts, especially when it comes to middle grade and YA fiction. I suppose teaching middle school English gives you an edge, huh?

Favorite Quotes:

(please forgive the lack of page numbers, as I read it on my iPad)

“That’s the weird thing about flea markets—books and tools seem to cost about the same amount per pound.”

“He’d broken his nose way back in first grade. It had healed kind of crooked, which made him look tough. Everyone figured he liked to fight. The truth is, he broke it falling off a rocking horse. But that didn’t matter. Once you had a reputation, good or bad, it stayed with you.”

“Would anything be left: of my memories of high school fifteen years from now? It was weird to realize I was going to forget things I hadn’t even experienced yet.”

“Which brings me to my first piece of advice: be careful with big words. People don’t like show-offs.”

“‘What is it? A girl?’ ‘How’d you know?’ He threw a shirt at my head. ‘It’s always a girl. So what’s the problem?'”

“The other team scored eleven times. Final score, 76 to 7. They should have had seventy-seven, but they missed one of the extra points. Not because of our defense. I think their kicker was getting tired.”

“I mean, I was a good reader, but that wasn’t like being a good ballplayer.”

“Don’t ever be afraid to ask for what you want. Nobody can read your mind. People always assume you want the same sort of things they want.”

“There’s something you need to know about the cafeteria. It’s a miniature map of everyone’s social standing.”

“Everyone around me looks so tired, I feel like I’m an extra in a low-budget zombie movie.”

“New Year’s is sort of like starting a new school. You can make all sorts of plans and promises about being better or changing your habits. Then you go on being yourself.”

“As much as I know he’s always within an inch of doing something dangerous, I get the funny feeling he has a set of rules he lives by. It’s just that they aren’t any rules I ever learned.”

“Unlike cars, lives don’t have a way to go in reverse.”

“So there I was, at the last social event of the year, dancing with a great girl. A girl who wasn’t afraid to be herself. And who wasn’t afraid to step away from the safety of her chosen identity. I doubt there were many other kids in the gym—or anywhere else, for that matter—who had the courage to do what [she] had done.”

Why this was a great story? Lubar’s narrator, Scott, is witty, smart, and a genuinely nice guy – even if he is 14 and still trying to figure out just who he is. The material isn’t anything earth-shattering: there’s bullies and girls and teens being teens as in most YA novels, but the way Lubar presents it in the first person diary of a freshman boy lets you follow the drama up close. And of course, by the end, all is well and wonderful and you smile as you lay the book down for the last time.

What could have made it better? At times, Scott seems too self-aware, too smart for a high school boy, let alone a freshman. And maybe this is also the book’s magic: that one young kid is just enough different that he does have some wisdom to pass onto the rest of us – even at 14.

So… have you read Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie? What other books about being a high schooler have you enjoyed?

Story in Review: Sea Creatures by Susanna Daniel

June 16, 2015 by Abbigail Kriebs 1 Comment

This was a lovely novel.

Sea Creatures by Susanna Daniel takes a hard look at what it means to be a parent stuck in a tough decision, but without becoming grim like so many do. This novel was lyrical, full of twists, and hit all the right notes by the end.

I don’t want to give anything away, so I’m going to let the book speak for itself.

(and sorry no page numbers – reading on an iPad is less than ideal)

Favorite Quotes:

“Sometimes you have to remind yourself after adventure comes that there was a time when you went looking for it.”

“This was a testament not to Graham’s lack of self-awareness, I believe, but to the confused nature of each of our personal histories, the mess of contradicting passions and aversions developed over a lifetime.”

“The course of a life will shift—really shift—many times over the years. But rarely will there be a shift that you can feel gathering in the distance like a storm, rarely will you notice the pressure drop before the skies open.”

“When you build a house beyond the edge of a continent, you’re not looking to make friends.”

“It was terrible, this wealth of detail, this avalanche of precision.”

“There should be another word for a second marriage like theirs, which was as distinct from the first as retirement from work.”

“You can sort of remember what it was like before—maybe you vaguely recall a certain uncluttered pattern to your days and conversations and thoughts—but that ease of existence you once felt, that personal comfort, no longer matters.”

“The empty vessel that consumed so much space, the thunderous void. I didn’t believe in ghosts or spirits or even angels, though I’d always loved the idea of these things and wished I could believe—but how else to define the bellowing, chest-beating presence of absence?”

“One could tell he was a father, looking at him. He wore fatherhood on his skin.”

“How many times, in the decade since Graham and I had met, had I had the experience of barely registering something until he turned my head and forced me to look at it?”

“I don’t love him like I did. But I love him in a new way, and we are in this thing together. We are going to raise these children or die trying.”

“Marriages die in pieces, I thought. That’s how it happens.”

“The disquieting underbelly of loss that comes with getting something you badly want. The thing I’d always understood, even before my mother got sick, was that anything started will inevitably end, anything loved will be lost.”

“As with so many things, there was no choice but to forgive.”

“It seemed I’d never before understood the meaning of the word regret. Now it seemed regret was the desperate desire to reverse a specific amount of time.”

Why this was a great story: The pacing was incredible. I raced through this book in two days. It was a perfect, all-consuming vacation read, but with plenty of substance to remember it long after vacation is gone. The characters are each unique and wholly developed, and the plot is genuinely one that I could not have guessed had I tried (I usually do, and I am usually right).

What could have made it a better story? I don’t know as that I have a single critique. All of the characters deserved their time on the page, it was long enough to fully flesh out the story without ever becoming rambling. The imagery was gorgeous. I just loved this book.

Have you read Sea Creatures or anything else by Susanna Daniel? I’d love to hear about it!