This Week in Reading: Volume X

Written by: Kelly on November 23, 2014.

This is a big old round-up of the last two weeks in books I’ve bought, borrowed, or received in the mail. I’m breaking it up into a few different pictures for organizational reasons and because I want to talk a bit about the books I got at Toronto International Book Festival at the First Nations bookstore in a little more depth than usual.

First up, the library books:

Words and Their Meanings by Kate Bassett: A contemporary YA about teen girl writer working through grief and it’s got a Sara Zarr blurb. I think that checks more than one of my boxes.

Ugly Girls by Lindsay Hunter: An adult novel about a teen girl friendship. That cover is awesome, and the reviews suggest this is an intense book.

Paper Airplanes by Dawn O’Porter: I read this one this week and was really let down. It did some of what Fiona Wood’s Wildlife did in terms of being open about sexuality and toxic friendships between teen girls, but the budding relationship between the two girls here felt rushed and underdeveloped. I got bored about 3/4 of the way through.

The Sky is Falling by Kit Pearson — I picked this up at the book festival and it’s a Canadian children’s classic.

Ignite by Sara Larson (January 6) — I’ll probably pass this on to Kimberly.

Walking Home by Eric Walters — Another title I picked up at the book festival. The Kenyan setting was what caught my eye.

The Swallow by Charis Cotter — This is a middle grade ghost story that came highly recommended by a couple of people at the book festival, so I bought it.

Strong Female Protagonist by Brennan Lee Mulligan and Molly Ostertag — I’m here for this graphic novel!

The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma (March 24) — I read this one, and then I got into a conversation with a fellow Book Rioter about it, and I realized how much I need to read this a second or third time before I can write about it here. I found a REALLY interesting detail that made me requestion something I’d read, and I know this is Suma’s trademark, so I’m excited to follow this path again.

Seed by Lisa Heathfield (March 10) — Cults! Enclosed communities! This sounds a little bit like Gated by Amy Christine Parker.

Things I’ll Never Say edited by Ann Angel (March 24) — There’s gotta be a trend on short true stories by YA authors now, between this and Love & Profanity.

X: A Novel by Ilyasah Shabazz and Kekla Magoon (January 6) — A novelization about Malcoln X, co-written by his daughter.

Read Between The Lines by Jo Knowles (March 10) — This one wins for one of the best YA covers I’ve seen.

These are the books I picked up at INSPIRE: Toronto International Book Festival at the First Nations book store. Aside from the bottom title, all of these are tough to track down in the US, and I know that there are others who might be interested in checking the store out and discovering First Nations titles from Canada.

The store has a website, GoodMinds, and they do ship worldwide. It is a Native owned business, as well. I popped into their store before the show officially opened on Sunday, so I didn’t get a chance to ask for book recommendations, but Ana and Thea of the Book Smugglers said that the staff was exceptionally knowledgable and helpful in recommending titles to them, based on their interests and tastes. I suspect the same would be said through contacting them on their site.

A couple of these books I would never have picked up based on the covers, but because I was in Canada for a show, I wanted to put that aside and pick up the books that sounded great. This is what I decided on:

The Night Wanderer by Drew Hayden Taylor — A Native gothic novel? Yes, please.

Nobody Cries at Bingo by Dawn Dumont — A coming-of-age story. The cover was tough to pick up, but I read the description and kept coming back to pick the book up. I figured if I didn’t buy it, I’d be mad later.

Peace Pipe Dreams: The Truth and Lies About Indians by Darrell Dennis — I wanted an easy-to-grasp non-fiction title and this fit the bill.

If I Ever Get Out Of Here by Eric Gansworth — I’ve been meaning to read this one, and I saw a copy, so I bought it.

Aside from Paper Airplanes, I also read an early copy of I Am Not A Slut by Leora Tanenbaum, a non-fiction exploration of slut bashing and slut shaming. I didn’t agree with the entire book — at times her exploration of what slut shaming is and isn’t actually is slut shaming in and of itself (which was weird) — but in general, a solid read for anyone who works with teen girls and is interested in the problematic term “slut” and why it can’t and shouldn’t be reclaimed at this point.

Around the Web:

Summer wrote this fantastic post called “I am not oppressed” about YA books, covers featuring girls wearing hijabs, and what the implications of those things may be. This is powerful and important and eye opening.

Enough other people have written and talked about Daniel Handler’s racist comment at the National Book Awards, but this post at the Lee and Low blog about what those comments said about publishing more broadly is really worth a read.

Four mistakes made in children’s literature about Natives and books that fix them.

Leila wrote an incredible review of Gabi, A Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero I am linking to because I really want more people to read and love this book as much as I do and as much as she does. Then go read Isabel’s post over at Diversity in YA about making herself visible.

23 things I’d rather read than another think piece about what’s “wrong” with children’s literature made me laugh so hard. I got an even bigger kick out of the male who reblogged this from the Book Riot tumblr and asked what toxic shock syndrome was.

Over in the UK, Ladybird is dropping the “for boys” and “for girls” labels from their books.

On the heels of that post, there’s this one at Paste Magazine about excellent graphic novels for adolescent girls. Ignore the “for girls” label there: this is really a list of female-led comics.

A peek at the next projects on deck for comic artist Sara Varon. Kimberly and I are both fans of Varon, and I love this look at what’s next.

Angie wrote a really great post about how librarians and library users can do real work in bettering diversity within the library.

Looking for current read alikes to Pretty Little Liars? Molly put together a great reader’s advisory guide.

And over at Leila’s blog, 7 YA books about graffiti artists.

I’m putting the final touches onto Contemporary YA week here at Stacked, which will run December 1-5. I am thrilled with the guest posts I’ve gotten so far, and I’m so eager to share them and the ones that are rolling in soon. These are all fresh topics, fresh takes on topics, and should spur some great discussion.