Farah Rocks Fifth Grade (Read 10/7/19)

I received this book as an Advanced Reader's Copy (ARC) through NetGalley. It will be published January 1, 2020

The main character is Farah Hajjar which is Arabic for Rocks. She is in 5th Grade. Her brother Samir is in kindergarten and has some disabilities, he was a preemie baby and that seems to have affected his speech. Allie Liu is Farah’s best friend and is Chinese.
Farah and Allie are applying to attend Magnet Academy, a special public school with a focus on math and science. Both the girls have been in advanced “gifted” classes since 2nd grade. There is a new girl on the bus Dana Denver, she is a transfer student from Texas, and she is really tall. The first time we meet her she is mean to Samir. Dana trips over Samir's feet getting on the bus, then he pulls her hair, I think because it is red and he meant to just stroke it. But this upsets Dana and the feud begins.
I really liked the way this book handled bullying. That it can be a quiet and subtle thing, not overt. I truly felt like it was written from a 9/10/11 year old’s perspective. My son is 10, and in fifth grade, and Farah’s decisions fall right in line with his decision-making patterns. I also liked that the characters had variety, Farah being Arabic, her best friend Chinese. It didn’t make race an issue but it acknowledged that sometimes if we look different than everyone else that we can get made fun of, or have problems related to that. It wasn’t “The Theme” of the book, but it was there as an undertone. I also think the idea that adults don’t take kids seriously or understand when they say something is wrong, is true. Kids get brushed aside, because it’s no big deal, but I liked how this book addressed that and said yes but keep trying, someone will eventually listen if you just give them a chance.

I had my 10-year old son read the book too. As a disclaimer, I bribed him with unlimited tablet time today if he read the book. It took him about an hour to read. I have never seen him read a book so fast.
Son’s Comments: The words sound weird to me when I pronounce them because they speak a different language. It was pretty good there were a lot of simile’s which I liked. The part where she purposely got bad grades was weird, when she wanted to protect her brother from Dana. Dana is going through a divorce. The story itself had a pretty good layout. I didn’t understand Arabic words. He thought Farah was pretty nice to protect Samir. It really stuck with him that Farah kept saying she was Samir’s hero.
He liked that Farah was in fifth grade because he is in fifth grade, and he liked that she stood up for her little brother. He said he would recommend it, it is a good book.



#FarahRocksFifthGrade #NetGalley

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn (read 9/29/19 to 10/6/19)

This is my selection for the Quarterly Book Exchange Facebook group I have joined.  There are 4 of us in a group, and we each select a book, then highlight mark, ask questions, make comments, etc. in it and then mail to another person in the group.  Eventually we read and comment on 4 books via mail, and our original book returns to us.  I think it will add a fun new element to the book reading experience.

This is the story of two women Eve and Charlie.  The book covers both WWI and WWII.  Charlie is looking for her cousin Rose after WWII ends.  And her hunt brings her to Eve's door, Eve was a spy in WWI, and is now a very damaged woman in a lot of ways.  The hunt for Rose takes them from London and into France.  As the story unfolds we learn more about Eve's past and how it effects Charlie's future.

This was a great book, I gave it 5 stars.  I wasn't sure I was going to like the timeline skipping, but I really did, it allowed both women's stories to unfold simultaneously.  The characters were really well written, I liked Charlie, but by the end of the book I love her.  We got to see her grow into such an amazing woman.  And Eve, oh where to start on Eve.  She was my favorite character, I love her attitude from the start.  I also really liked that this book is based on true event and true people, a little creative license was taken for story sake, but for the most part it was based on a real person, Louise de Bettignies, was really knows as the Queen of Spies in WWI.  And Quinn used a memoir by her 2nd in command to help write this book, even going so far as to use actual quotes by Louise.  Additionally there is an event near the end of the book, that was a real horrific act by the Germans, that I had no idea happened.  I love a book that entertains me with great story and characters but also teaches me about history.

Beyond the Horizon by Ella Carey (Read 10/2/19 to 10/4/19)

I received this book as an Advanced Reader's Copy (ARC) through NetGalley.  It will be published October 15, 2019.
This is a fictional account of the real-life stories of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) in WWII.  Many of the events are real, but the characters are all fictional.  The story if from the point of view of Eva Forrest, née Scott.  She is testifying at the 1977 congressional hearings on giving the WASPs military recognition.  The book opens with Nina and her husband Jack and son Alex at a market. Her son has met women organizing for the WASPs to testify in front of congress, and it triggers a flashback for Eva.  She was in a horrible crash, that killed her co-pilot Helena.  It is after this that she defies her husband and decides to testify, unless the records are militarized she cannot access them to find out what happened the day of the crash, and she fears she is to blame for her friend’s death.  The remaining chapters start out with a question from congress and Eva’s response, then it moves into a flashback to 1943/1944.  We follow Eva from her choice to join the WASPs with her best friend Nina up until the fateful accident.

I really enjoyed this book.  It was full of very strong women characters overcoming discrimination.  I felt that at times the timeline jumps were jarring. Sometimes Carey forgets to give lead ins that 3 months have passed, or that someone has entered the room.  This happened more at the beginning then the middle and end, but it caused me pause.

I also felt like a good portion of the book was spent on Eva and Nina getting into the WASP program, and training in Sweetwater.  The parts once they were assigned to Camp David and aftermath of the crash seemed really short, but maybe it was because the storyline had really picked up by then.  I admit I spent the last part of the book crying, from the moment  the hearing ended until the end of the book.  It was so heart wrenching in a good way.  Needless to say this was a book "Couldn't Put Down" as I finished it in two days.

#BeyondTheHorizon #NetGalley

Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady’s Guide to Sex, Marriage and Manners by Therese Oneill (read 9/25/19 to 9/29/19)

This was a library hold that came in unexpectedly.
From Goodreads description "Ladies, welcome to the 19th century, where there's arsenic in your face cream, a pot of cold pee sits under your bed, and all of your underwear is crotchless. (Why? Shush, dear. A lady doesn't question.)  UNMENTIONABLE is your hilarious, illustrated, scandalously honest (yet never crass) guide to the secrets of Victorian womanhood, giving you detailed advice on:
~ What to wear
~ Where to relieve yourself
~ How to conceal your loathsome addiction to menstruating
~ What to expect on your wedding night
~ How to be the perfect Victorian wife
~ Why masturbating will kill you
~ And more"

I like the tone of the writing, it is informative and a bit snarky.  It provides and insight, I mostly already knew,  life was hard in the 19th century.  But is also provides some tidbits I didn't know.  Pantaloons were crotchless!
I know that for the most part women had little say over their own lives, but even one of the worst mysoginistc writers of the time, felt they should have some say.   “Of all the rights to which a woman is entitled, that of the custody of her own body is the most indubitable.”  Ladies' Guide in Health and Disease: Girlhood, Maidenhood, Wifehood, Motherhood By John Harvey Kellogg, published 1884
Maybe some of our politicians etc should listen to that wisdom.
I learned that the Comstock law of 1873 changed what could and could not be mailed. No advertisement for products relating human sexuality or contraceptions. It didn’t make contraceptions themselves illegals but the ability to obtain them was. It started the idea that contraceptions were in equal footing with abortions, an idea we are still having debates over 146 years later.
On cooking in the 19th century “Unless you are excruciatingly careful and sometimes even if you are, look forward to intestinal worms, lead poisoning, and four-day-old unrefrigerated pork with a side of botulism.”  Well no one said good food easily obtained.

Overall it was a fun book, I enjoyed the facts, nothing was really mind-blowing news though.

War of Honor by David Webber (read 9/18/19 to 9/28/19)

This is the 10th book in the series and it is quite the tome.
I'm glad to be back in the Honorverse, but I feel like I missed something. There is a big thing about genetic slavery and it's affecting the political landscape, but I missed what genetic slavery actually is. Some of the players I'm having a hard time remembering who they are...mostly I'm frustrated with the current RMN’s Lords games. They remind me too much of the Tump administration. The deeper I get in the book the more this frustrates me. I know as the reader I can see the bigger picture easier than the characters, but the civilian politicians narrow minded decisions really frustrate me. It actually makes me angry that they are looking so intently at their own careers that they put the nation at risk. Again I am sure our own US political environment right now feeds into that anger.
Again I feel that we are so busy talking about the political machinations of the RMN and the Peeps that we forget to talk about our main character. So much so that I actually began to tally when we had an Honor chapter versus a chapter about politics, other navies etc. Out of 60 chapters only 25 maybe 26 involved Honor and her actions. This is one of the reasons I have struggled so much with the last few Honor Harrington books, they have moved more to being about the Honorverse world and politics and not so much about Honor herself. But Honor is why I read them, the politics etc are only background noise in my mind, but Webber has moved them to the front line and Honor seems to be the background noise.
Things finally start to heat up around page 643, we got one chapter of excitement in and went back to political machinations. Things started moving again around page 800 and still there was only 1 maybe 2 chapters that were about Honor.
Another issue I am beginning to recognize, is that every time a minor character dies, even this far into the series I still flinch, I keep hoping the devastation won’t happen. I’m not sure I’m cut out for war novels, but the characters such as Honor, Mayhew, Lefollet, Nimitz etc keep me trudging on through the blood and the loss. And Webster isn’t afraid to kill a major character either we have seen that so many times. I am about at the end of my limit though, the cost benefit is shifting for me. There is getting to be too much politicking, war and death, and not enough focus on the characters that keep me coming back.  I have some other books on my TBR shelf and for book clubs, so I think those will be my next choices, but if the next book isn't about Honor more, the final 3 may go unread by me.

Fire Logic by Laurie J. Marks (read 8/30/19 to 9/3/19)

I got this book as an advanced reader copy from LibraryThing. I won this in December of 2018, and I admit it got lost in the shuffle of life.

GoodReads Description: “The martial Sainnites have occupied Shaftal for fifteen years but every year the cost of resistance rises. Emil, a scholar officer, Zanja, the last survivor of her people, and Karis, a metalsmith, half-blood giant, and an addict … together, perhaps they can change history.”

When I looked this book up on GoodReads I was confused because it showed that it was published in 2002, yet my copy said Advanced Reader Copy January 2019. And when you google it, it says it is being published in June 2019...very confusing.

I had a hard time with this book. I felt like the writing was masterful, Marks has created a complex and beautiful world. But, I also felt like I was coming into the middle of a story. She creates this world but then doesn’t adequately explain it to us the reader. The first few chapters I felt very lost, I wanted to understand the social structure of the characters but there just was not enough information and I wasn’t sure how things fit together.

There is a lot of comments on other reviews about how great the protagonist is a powerful woman of color. The fact that she is a woman of character was immaterial to me, what I liked about her was she was put in a position for her tribe that laid an unimaginable amount of responsibility on her shoulders at a young age. Zanja did the beat she could to help her tribe, she faces horrific loss and still she never gave up. She had her doubts about her abilities as anyone would, but she never shirked her duty to her people despite the cost to herself. Zanja is a beautifully written character that is relatable to all of us.

The Girls of Atomic City: The untold story of the women who helped win World War II by Denise Kieran (read 8/23/19 to 8/29/19)

GoodReads description “This is the story of the girls/women of Oak Ridge Tennessee who unknowingly helped to create the Atomic Bomb. The Tennessee town of Oak Ridge was created from scratch in 1942. One of the Manhattan Project’s secret cities, it didn’t appear on any maps until 1949, and yet at the height of World War II it was using more electricity than New York City and was home to more than 75,000 people, many of them young women recruited from small towns across the South. Their jobs were shrouded in mystery, the penalty for talking about their work—even the most innocuous details—was job loss and eviction. They all knew something big was happening at Oak Ridge, but few could piece together the true nature of their work until the bomb "Little Boy" was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, and the secret was out. The shocking revelation: the residents of Oak Ridge were enriching uranium for the atomic bomb. Though the young women originally believed they would leave Oak Ridge after the war, many met husbands there, made lifelong friends, and still call the seventy-year-old town home.”

From the very start I was excited. I like that there is a listing of who everyone is at the start. Sometimes I get names mixed up in historical books, and it is great to have a reference when I ask myself “who is this again.”

This book contained lots of facts, but a good mix of personal storytelling as well. Still never kept all the characters straight, but it was a really good read. I enjoyed the flow of the book, it really kept the events moving along and never got too bogged down with facts, yet I learned a lot at the same time.

I liked that the authors choose to follow different women from different social and economic backgrounds throughout the book, how were things for a scientist, a secretary, an operator and a janitor. White versus black? It let the reader know what was the same across the board, and what was not. Sometimes the differences were mind boggling.

I also really liked that the last chapter and some of the notes at the end of the nook told more of what happened to the women after the project was wrapped up, a sort of where are they now.