Friday Reads: Sourdough by Robin Sloan

Delightful and effortlessly readable. That's the description I kept coming back to as I was reading today's Friday Read. As many of you know, I'm an enthusiastic subscriber to the Book of the Month club. (If you want to check it out, my referral link will get you your first month for 9.99 and a cute tote bag.) And one of the things I like best about the club is that it forces me out of my reading comfort zone. Sourdough by Robin Sloan is a book I never would've picked up and checked out on my own. A book about a slightly magical sourdough starter? What?

But I'm telling y'all, this was the perfect book for the reading slump I was in. It was so fun and quirky and just a delight to read. There was even a tiny little romance in it. I like books that make me feel good and smile, and this one definitely did. So if you find yourself in a funk or a bad mood, give it a try. Bonus: The cover on the hardback glows in the dark!

Also, be warned. It's going to make you crave bread. It made me bake, lol.

See...

So books and bread, a winning combo. I bought this author's other book while the bread was still cooling off. That's the highest compliment because my TBR is like whoa and I do not need to be adding more books. 

About the book:

Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her—feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.

Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens up.

When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly? 

Leavened by the same infectious intelligence that made Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore such a sensation, while taking on even more satisfying challenges, Sourdough marks the triumphant return of a unique and beloved young writer.

Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | Book of the Month Club (where you can get the hardcover for about half the price)

What are you reading this weekend?

Friday Reads: I'm Not You Manic Pixie Dream Girl by Gretchen McNeil

So I didn't think I was going to have a Friday Reads today because I haven't had much reading time this week. However, this book arrived on my doorstep yesterday at 3pm and by 10pm last night, I'd finished it. It's been a LONG time since I've finished a book in one evening. (It's 350 pages so not exactly short.) So yay, a Friday Read!

First, let's talk briefly about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope in case you haven't heard of it. It was a term coined by movie critic Nathan Rabin (which he now regrets inventing) that describes a female character in movies that is "a fantasy figure who 'exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.'" (see the whole article here.)

Basically this is the flighty, zany, kind of outrageous girl who convinces the broody hero to embrace life or whatever. The problem is that the character exists solely for the purpose of helping the male protagonist and doesn't have any goals of her own. So it's not a positive term. What comes to mind for me is Kate Hudson's character in Almost Famous. 

There's a list here if you want to see more movie examples. But this is the back story that brings us today's Friday Read: I'm Not Your Manic Pixie Dream Girl by Gretchen McNeil. I picked this up partly for the title, but also because I enjoyed TEN by this author, which was a horror based on And Then There Were None. McNeil writes the 80s-90s style teen horror that I adored growing up (think Christopher Pike, Lois Duncan) so this is a little bit of a departure from her normal genre, but I still enjoyed it a lot.

Here's the back cover summary:

Beatrice Maria Estrella Giovannini has life all figured out. She's starting senior year at the top of her class, she’s a shoo-in for a scholarship to M.I.T., and she’s got a new boyfriend she’s crazy about. The only problem: All through high school Bea and her best friends Spencer and Gabe have been the targets of horrific bullying.

So Bea uses her math skills to come up with The Formula, a 100% mathematically guaranteed path to social happiness in high school. Now Gabe is on his way to becoming Student Body President, and Spencer is finally getting his art noticed. But when her boyfriend Jesse dumps her for Toile, the quirky new girl at school, Bea realizes it's time to use The Formula for herself. She'll be reinvented as the eccentric and lovable Trixie—a quintessential manic pixie dream girl—in order to win Jesse back and beat new-girl Toile at her own game.

Unfortunately, being a manic pixie dream girl isn't all it's cracked up to be, and “Trixie” is causing unexpected consequences for her friends. As The Formula begins to break down, can Bea find a way to reclaim her true identity and fix everything she's messed up? Or will the casualties of her manic pixie experiment go far deeper than she could possibly imagine?

Buy the book: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

So this book has a fun premise and absolutely reads like a movie. I felt like I'd watched a teen comedy when I was done (which isn't a bad thing.) Very light and funny. Nothing gets too dark. If you're thinking about it for your pre-teen or teen kids, there's no sex in it, just a few f-bombs. If you're thinking about it for yourself, it's an enjoyable ride and will make you want to go do your own research on the manic pixie dream girl trope. Also, it has a good female empowerment message, which is always welcome. :)

So, what's your Friday Read?

Friday Reads: This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel

It's been a quiet week on the blog because I've been fingers-to-keyboard all week while I FINISHED BY THE HOUR! Woo-hoo! This is the second book in the Pleasure Principle (Off the Clock) series. I hope to reveal the cover to y'all next week and to get it up for pre-order. Release date right now is April 2017 and that should stay on track. So yay! New book!

But today, I have a book to recommend for you if you're looking for something a little different to read. In between writing this week, I read Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is. I'd call this Contemporary Fiction if you're looking to pin down a genre. I found out about this book on the Modern Mrs. Darcy blog and the plot intrigued me. What to know what it's about?

Back cover:

This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them.

This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated.

This is how children change…and then change the world.

This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.

When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.

Laurie Frankel's This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.

So this book is about a transgendered child and her family, but it's about so much more than that. It's about secrets--when to keep them, when they become damaging, what happens when you get caught up in them. The family in this novel is big and loving and well-intentioned. This isn't about a family not accepting their child. Quite the opposite. But all that acceptance and support and sheltering from the world can also create its own problems. I loved the nuanced way the topic was handled. 

I also just adored the family. The characters were people you feel like you could hang out with. Funny and imperfect and good-hearted. The whole book just had this warm feel to it even though it tackles some serious topics. I devoured it in a few days.

Some of my favorite quotes...

The mother on sending her son to school when he started to transition to wearing girl clothes.

"She wanted to go to school with him. She wanted to don a gang jacket and sit in the back of the classroom with a bat so that everyone understood what would happen to them if they messed with her kid." 

Haven't we all felt that way at some point as parents?

And on what people say when your child is dealing with something. I've had this very thought because my son is on the autism spectrum and I've gotten these kinds of comments. I appreciate kind words but we're not doing some different kind of brand of parenting. We're doing what everyone tries to do: be the best parent to meet the needs of their individual child/children.

"Or they would lay a hand on her arm and say, 'You're so brave,' or 'You're such a good mother. You're doing so well with all this.' Rosie appreciated the support but wasn't sure parenting ever really qualified as brave--or maybe it always did--because it's not like you had a choice."

And on time passing with kids. This one made my heart clench.

"Parent time is magic: downtempo and supersonic all at once, witch's time, sorcerer hours. Suddenly, while you aren't paying attention, everything's changed."

Also, I loved this from the Author's Note at the back of the book. This is how my writing process is as well.

"The novelist in me is inspired by how much raising children is like writing books: You don't know where they're going until you get there. You may think you do, but you're probably wrong. Corralling and forcing them against their will to go where you first imagined they would isn't going to work for anyone involved. Never mind you're the one writing and raising them, they are headed in their own direction, independent of you. And scary though that is, it's also how it should be."

So if you're looking for something that will warm you heart, make you think, and is a page-turner, grab this one.

Buy the book: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

Friday Reads: Texas Destiny by Lorraine Heath

This Friday I have a bit of a throwback book for you. I've mentioned before that I didn't grow up reading romance, so I'm playing catch up with some of the oldies but goodies. And one thing I couldn't ever remember reading was a historical western romance. So I decided to give one a try, and I'm so glad I did.

I'm not sure what originally made me download Texas Destiny by Lorraine Heath. I believe someone recommended it to me but my memory fails me. But I saw it when I was skimming through my Kindle titles, seeing what I was in the mood for, and I thought, "Oh, well, I'll read a few pages and see if it captures me." You know how this goes, I didn't stop and finished the book in about two days, lol.

So this one has a mail-order bride set-up in the American West. The brother of the man the heroine's supposed to marry picks her up and is supposed to bring her on the month-long journey to the ranch. Well...guess how that works out? ;)

I really liked the hero in this one. Houston Leigh was injured, half of his face disfigured in the war, and he's a guy who would just rather keep to himself. And though he does some brooding, he's gentler than your normal brooders. Tough on the outside (he's a real deal cowboy after all) but he's more beta hero on the inside. Sweet and kind. And tortured. Because what good is a hero if he's not a tortured one? ;) (Oh, how I love my tortured heroes.)

The heroine, Amelia, also holds her own. She's tough, kind, and good-natured. You root for her.

What was particularly interesting about this book for me is that it *felt* kind of steamy but there really wasn't much sex on the page. Usually, I like my romances burning hot, but this felt like the right amount and tone for this story. And there's a scene with a tent and a latern that totally made me smile.

Be warned that the Kindle version of this did have a few formatting issues, at least on my Kindle. There weren't always breaks between dialogue so I'd stumble on figuring out who was speaking. And there were some paragraph breaks missing. But it wasn't enough to distract too much. I think that's just the nature of the beast when pre-ebook stories are converted into electronic form. 

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and have bought the next one in the series because the two brothers in the story are really strong side characters, especially the youngest, who will get his story in the third book.

About the book:

She was his brother's wife...

Arriving on the Fort Worth train, Miss Amelia Carson, mail-order bride, had never met Dallas Leigh, the Texan she promised to marry. The tall cowboy at the station wasn't Dallas. He was Houston, Dallas's brother, sent to escort her on the rugged three-week trek to the ranch where Dallas waited. Brought up in war-ravaged Georgia, Amelia thought Dallas's letters made Texas sound like heaven, a place for her dreams to grow with the right man beside her.

And his only love...

By all appearances, Houston Leigh would hardly be considered the "right man." The war he survived had scarred him inside and out, and he was little competition for his handsome brother. But from the moment Houston met Amelia, he knew she possessed the courage this wild land needed. She had eyes that could see past his wounded face to his soul. And he would fight any man—except his brother—for her heart. Now he and Amelia were riding down dangerous trails, sleeping under the stars, and God help them, they were falling in love. 

Find the book: Amazon | B&N | Goodreads

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Book of the Month Club

It's that time of the month again--the Book of the Month club picks come out! I have to say I get excited each month to see what's chosen. This month I had a hard time deciding so I ordered three of the five. 

I chose Behind Her Eyes because it's supposed to have some crazy shocking ending. I chose Perfect Little World because it sounded like a fascinating premise that will play to my psychology nerd background. And last I picked The Possessions because it sounded really unique and interesting with a heroine who is a medium and falls for the guy who's dead wife she's channeling. Who doesn't want to know how that's going to turn out?

If you want to sign up for your own trial membership, check it out here. (That is an affiliate link which will earn me free books, but I'm a paying member and they haven't asked me to post about it. I genuinely just enjoy the service.)

That's all I've got for you this Friday. If you missed it earlier in the week, the theme word for February's Read & Watch Challenge was featured along with a ton of recommendations for books, TV shows, and movies. Be sure to check it out. :)

Hope you have a relaxing weekend!

Friday Reads: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Remember how I talked the other day about where I get book recommendations? Well, today's Friday Read seemed to be popping up in all my normal channels of finding book recs. It made some Best Of lists. I heard about it on podcasts. Fellow writers/readers talked about it. Plus, it has a gorgeous cover, so I finally picked it up. I'm so glad I did.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is not a book I'd typically pick up because I'm not a huge literary fiction reader. I love love love deeply drawn characters and beautiful writing but I also need a strong narrative drive in my books. Slow books just aren't my cup of tea. But I'm here to reassure you, even if you're not a lit fic reader, that this one is page-turner, if not in a thriller-esque style. It's compelling because you want to know what happens to all of these characters and how they are all linked. (Having said that, I wouldn't recommend it to my husband because he wants a breakneck pace in his books, and this is not that. So if that's you, it may not be a good fit.)

The premise of the story has a strong hook. The world has been hit by a flu pandemic that's taken out 99% of the population and now the survivors are left with a world without electricity, running water, internet, infrastructure, government, etc. They have lost the people they love. Think The Walking Dead minus the zombies. 

"Hell is the absence of the people you long for." (pg. 144)

You see some of the time before the event, as this is a book that jumps back and forth along the timeline, but much of the book follows a cast of characters 20 years after the pandemic. There's a traveling troupe of musicians and actors who put on Shakespeare plays and music performances. There's also a crazy prophet (isn't there always at the end of the world?) There's a comic book that plays in prominently and is where the title comes from. It's a strange mix of things that all connect in some way, which is part of the drive of the book (the need to know how all these people connect.)

But ultimately, this book is about the human spirit and the drive to create things even when basically all is lost. Art remains. Passion remains. I loved that message. 

I know most of you are romance readers like me, so you like your endings happy, and that's what makes us reluctant to venture outside genre sometimes. I don't want a book to devastate me. It's just not my jam. (Or I have to KNOW it's going to devastate me and prepare myself like when I picked up The Fault In Our Stars). So without giving spoilers, I will say, this book is a hopeful one, but it's tone is melancholy and the narrative almost dreamlike. The ending is not wrapped up in a bow, but it was hopeful and I was satisfied with it. It fit the story. I walked away from the book feeling thoughtful. It's one that takes a little while to process afterward and I imagine will stick with me.

Here's the back cover. (This describes the book but can also be a bit misleading because it makes it sound like it has a big thriller element with the prophet. There is a little bit of that, but this is definitely not a thriller.)

Back cover:

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end. 

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.

Buy the book: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

What are you reading this weekend? Has anyone else read this one?