The sequel to Lonely Werewolf Girl. I was So! Excited! when I randomly ran across this! YAY MORE KALIX!!!

I will say, though, that the beginning felt very stiff to me and if I owned the previous book, instead of having read it from the library, I would have gone back to see if that one felt that way as well. But then the story picked up and sucked me back in. And ultimately I really loved it. There are so many hilarious relationships in these books and so many miscommunications. Oh, Kalix.

These are fantasy + werewolves + lots of humor. They’re a cut above your typical werewolf genre fiction.

A gift!

So you know how David Mitchell’s first few books were all told from multiple (and in some cases MANY) points of view, alternating by chapter, sometimes showing you different viewpoints of the same event, sometimes unconnected? And then he came out with Black Swan Green, from just one viewpoint, which is honestly such a tour de force book, it’s breathtaking? (You can search for it on this page to read my brief thoughts at the time.)

So I started this book, and it kept going from chapter to chapter in Jacob’s viewpoint and, while obviously well written, there was a point at which I thought “You know, I’m really not sure I can make it through an entire book in Jacob’s voice, I just don’t know that I can…” And suddenly: it wasn’t his voice anymore!! Much fewer viewpoints than some of his early books, each viewpoint is in a much longer stretch of the novel, and the interlockings are very clear. And the voices he chooses are so the right ones, and I’m always amazed how he can write both women and men and make them sound right (and he’s also, in this case, writing Dutch AND Japanese and some Brits as well).

The beginning dragged for me a bit, and I did have to make a chart of the characters early on (so many Japanese names to keep track of!) but oh! oh, the ending! The ending really won me over. It’ll never be my favorite of his books. But it was SO worth reading.

A gift from some generous twinsers.

I think Gina Frangello is really a fantastic writer and she’s someone I learned about in Chicago from other Chicago writers and eventually heard read/met back in the earlier days of me living here.

Her previous novel “My Sister’s Continent” (read in 2006 on Mariko’s and my flight to Australia–you can search this page for “Frangello” ) was really dark and nasty and sadomasochistic and brutal and really, really good.

These stories are, if anything, even darker. To the point where, WOW, some of them were really tough to get through. Some I liked despite their nastiness…some were actually too cruel for me, very hard to deal with.

I would highly recommend her novel–if you can handle the darkness–but I would tread lightly around these stories. And if you’re in a bad, depressed, emotional frame of mind, good heavens, people, do NOT read them then.

Yes, that’s right, I am reading education books even outside those assigned. I’m so studious. Heh.

Inside Mrs. B.’s Classroom, by Leslie Baldacci
How good (or not) teachers are = so only a TINY PART of the problem.

Death at an Early Age, by Jonathan Kozol
So extremely horrifying and sad. I cried through some of it and had to only skim some parts.

Letters to a Young Teacher, by Jonathan Kozol
Good and not quite as terrifying as, say, Death at an Early Age. Lots of great advice.

I Won’t Learn from You, by Herbert Kohl
Not as traumatic to read as the Kozol. Some pretty interesting stuff goes on. We* are so determined to keep racism alive in this country, that is a HUGE PART of what’s holding us back, particularly in education.

White Teacher, by Vivian Gussin Paley
She’s not as strong a writer as the others, but I can certainly foresee coming across similar problems in my future classroom and her advice about not pretending to be colorblind but rather to celebrate those differences is right on the money.

*That “We” most definitely does not include my personal actions but sadly as a citizen in a Democratic country, anything our government does is something we all do.

A prequel to her Mortal Instruments series.

I really enjoyed this while I was reading it. I loved all the steampunk-y stuff hangin’ about and the creepy sisters were eeeekkkkk sooooo creepy!

BUT this seems pretty derivative of her own previous work. Love triangle, same old same old. I was hoping for something that felt a bit more fresh.

I’m sure I’ll read the next one; hopefully these characters will find their own path by then.