This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share the top ten book events or festivals we’d love to attend someday.

Who knew back when Jana set this topic that we’d all still be wishing to go anywhere?

Anyway, mine are all real:

1. BookExpo (I used to take part in a virtual version — Armchair BEA.)
2. Hay Festival (I have been to Hay on Wye on a normal day; I can’t begin to imagine it during a festival.)
3. Edinburgh International Book Festival (Scotland is on my list of places to visit, and this event coincides with the Edinburgh Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival.)
4. The Fforde Fiesta (The intermittent festival celebrating Jasper Fforde’s works held in Swindon, the real-world home of the fictitious Thursday Next.)
5. Shakespeare in the Park (this seems the easiest one to cross off my list once we’re allowed to gather in groups again)
6. YallFest/YallWest (I partook of YallStayHomeFest this spring and loved it.)
7. International Quidditch World Cup (Because don’t you just wonder…?)
8. Utah Shakespeare Festival (Oregon’s would also be great.)
9. Miami Book Fair (It’s the oldest book festival in the U.S. apparently. Who knew?)
10. The Youth Media Awards (Presented annually at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting, this breakfast is where you hear who’s won the biggest and most prestigious prizes in children’s and young adult literature. I went to several Midwinter meetings, but never managed to get to the YMA breakfast.)

How about you? Are there real-world or fictitious book events you’d like to be able to visit?

The unraveling is mostly only in my reading. In Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore, the main character suddenly starts experiencing years of her life in non-chronological fashion. In Livingston Girls by Briana Morgan (thanks, Jenn!), Rose’s new all-girls school turns out to be a little … witchier … than she expected. In Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez, Sal accidentally brings his dead mother back to life for a little while for a festive meal. And in Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed, Jamie and Maya are trying to figure out what their relationship is during the final, frantic days of a crucial local election.

On the sock front, I have turned a heel! Now I just need to pick up the stitches and we can start flying toe-ward! I’m looking forward to taking something off the needles finally!

Head over to As Kat Knits for more of what folks are crafting and reading.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is top ten books that make me smile:

1. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
2. Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus
3. Landline by Rainbow Rowell
4. Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy
5. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
6. Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence
7. A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman
8. Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
9. A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd
10. Nicola Yoon’s The Sun Is Also a Star

I’m a sucker for a happy ending and these ten all deliver in one way or another.

How about you? What books make you smile?

I only finished two books in April:

Stargazing, by Jen Wang

When they hear Moon’s mom is struggling to pay her bills, Christine’s parents offer to let the two of them live in their detached in-law apartment. Moon has a reputation of being violent, so Christine is reluctant to get to know her, but once she does, she finds the girl confident, funny, and fun to be around with a with a free spirit mom unlike her own strict Chinese-American parents. And Moon also has a secret — angelic alien beings visit her sometimes to tell her she’s not really from this planet. When the cause of these visits emerge, will Christine have the strength to be the friend Moon needs her to be?

I was having a really hard time concentrating for the first few weeks of being home. I had lots of books out from the library, and would read a chapter and then put it down. Then I’d read a few pages from another book. This sweet graphic novel, inspired by some real events in the author’s childhood, is the first thing that held my attention long enough for me to actually finish it. After reading this and The Prince and the Dressmaker, I feel confident recommending Jen Wang as a graphic novelist at the top of her game.

Pages: 224. Library copy.

Size 12 Is Not Fat, by Meg Cabot

Heather Wells a former teen pop star, who was dropped after she told her record label (which happened to have been owned by her fiancé’s father) that she wanted to record songs that she wrote. And then she walked in on her fiancé and another woman (also a pop singer). Oh, and her mom ran off with her manager and all her money. So, life could be better. But she’s got a job at an NYC dorm (or, residence hall, as the college insists it be called) as assistant manager, the opportunity to start taking classes if she can hold onto said job for six months, a BFF, a dog, songs that she works on in the quiet of her apartment, and a crush on her fiancé’s brother, who offered to let her live in an apartment in his house in exchange for doing the books for his P.I. business. So things are starting to normalize. That is, until a girl in her dorm plummets to her death while elevator surfing, the current stupid dorm trend. The police suspect an accident, but Heather’s not so sure. The girls in her dorm don’t, as a rule, elevator surf. So she starts asking some questions. But asking questions may not be the safest move for Heather.

I picked the fourth book in this series off the library shelf several years back and thought I’d see how it began. It’s definitely a light mystery and you will not be kept up at night by gristly descriptions. Light was what I needed back in the early days of the pandemic, when it was just starting to get nice enough to want to spend time outside, but the parks had closed. So I’d listen to it for half an hour as I walked round and round and round the traffic circle at the end of my street. It wasn’t a compelling enough story to make me want to keep going so I could find out what happened next, but was enough of a distraction to keep me moving, which was exactly enough. I’d probably read the rest of the series, but would likely switch back to paper to move through the story faster.

Pages: 345. Library audiobook copy via Overdrive.

Monthly Stats

Books: 2
Authors: American. One Asian-American.
Pages: 569

Look! It’s most of a heel flap! I meant to finish it while I was waiting for the laundry just now, but instead I took a nap. I regret nothing.

On the book front, I took a break from Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez last week to devour Nic Stone’s debut middle grade novel, Clean Getaway, and to put a dent into my audiobook, Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed’s Yes No Maybe So. But I’m back to the Miami art school and I can now see why breaking the universe is such a problem. No one wants a hole into another dimension in their neighbor’s locker, particularly a rather large one that looks directly into a chicken packing plant. A lot of nasty things can get through that…

Head over to As Kat Knits to see people who take fewer naps and get more done with their crafts and reading.

Here’s what I was reading way back in March, just before the pandemic shut things down locally. I finished the third read that month the day we were sent home “for the next two weeks” and in time to return it to the library the weekend it closed down.

And then I didn’t finish anything else for a month.

But that’s a story for another day. Today, I’ve got three books to talk about:

New Kid, by Jerry Craft

In this graphic novel, artistic seventh-grader Jordan is embarking on his first day at a prep school across the city (and the world) from his Washington Heights neighborhood. For his first day, he’s picked up by his student liaison, whose father tells him to lock the car doors while he rings Jordan’s doorbell. This is just the first of many microagressions that Jordan is going to face as one of the few students of color at a school that features an auditorium named for his student liaison’s family. Middle school is tough even without that baggage, but Jordan is going to get through it. But he’s going to have to do that while dealing with teachers who call him by other Black kids’ names, hearing about fancy vacations, navigating city bus rides to school through neighborhoods where no one looks like him, wishing he could attend art school instead but not being able to convince his parents, and listening to taunts from the kids he grew up with about why he thinks he’s too good to hang out with them now.

Middle school sucks, but inevitably we find our way forward and through. We find our group, we find the classes where we excel, and we find teachers who see our potential. And this is true of Jordan, as well. The universality of this transition makes it easy for us all to connect with Jordan’s story, but the specificity of his struggles will either reflect a shared experience to some or provide insight for others. Either way, this is a great book for anyone to read, and I highly recommend it. It’s got the Newbery Medal, the Coretta Scott King Award, and the Kirkus Prize to prove that I’m not the only person to endorse it. (“Don’t just take my word for it…”)

Pages: 256. Library copy.

A Fatal Grace, by Louise Penny

In the second of the Three Pines series, we find Inspector Gamache and his wife on Boxing Day having a look through cold cases of another precinct. When his wife finds the recent murder of a homeless woman they recognize, he agrees to look into it. Meanwhile in Three Pines, a horrible woman who is cruel to her daughter and husband and spitefully mean to artist Clara, dies while watching an outdoor curling match with the whole village present. Gamache is summoned to the scene and must begin piecing together the truth from the beloved cast of characters from the first book, the woman’s family and paramour, and a trio of old women, one of whose yoga studio has the same name as the dead woman’s self help business. He is joined by his faithful #2, his devoted team, a new, local sergeant, and the hapless and disgraced sergeant he dismissed the last time he worked in Three Pines. Is her return a sign of trouble to come from police headquarters in Quebec? And how do they relate to Gamache’s past?

When I had the chance to hear Louise Penny speak, she described the series like a new friendship. The first book is getting coffee. The second is drinks. The third is a meal. And soon after that you’ve got in-jokes and shorthand and are old friends. And she’s right. Her character-driven series is solid, and if you could be convinced that you won’t be the one murdered, you might really aspire to live in the charming Quebecois village.

Pages: 311. Library audiobook copy, via Overdrive.

Brown, by Håkon Øvreås, Yvind Torseter (illustrations), Kari Dickson (translation)

Rusty’s grandfather has just died and Rusty and his family are struggling. His mom is sad and anxious, and Rusty misses his grandfather. One night, after bullies destroyed the fort that he and his friend were building, he awakens to the sound of his grandfather’s broken pocket watch ticking. He realizes that this means he’s supposed to take on the role of being a superhero and seek vengeance on those who’ve wronged him. So, dressed in a hodgepodge of brown clothing and armed with brown paint from his grandfather’s garage, he heads out to paint the bike of one of the bullies. And the next day, the bully’s father comes to ask if Rusty and his family know anything about this. “Brown” is joined, after a few nights, by other young superheroes, “Blue” and “Black,” (who closely resemble Rusty’s friends, Lou and Jack) in exacting revenge. Each night, as he is returning home, he meets his grandfather’s ghost, who counsels him, until one final night.

I’ll be honest; I’m a little fuzzy on the details of this one after several months, but I liked it a lot in the immediate wake of reading it. I’d recommend it to those early chapter book readers who might be fond of notebook novels or someone grieving for a loved one.

Pages: 136. Library copy.

Book totals: 3
Page totals: 703
Authors’ profiles: 1 American (Black), 1 Canadian (white), 1 Norwegian (white)