The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall - advance reader edition, YA, fantasy, early reviewer - YA fantasy/romance featuring pirates, mermaids, and a witch. The two main characters are Flora/Florian, a black gender-fluid pirate, and Evelyn, a wealthy lesbian being sent off by her family to marry a man on a faraway island, on what turns out to be a pirate ship. The first part of the book, involving the mermaid storyline, was the most interesting. The book bogs down in part two about the witch, but picks up again in part three, the 70-page conclusion. Loved the cover artwork by Victo Ngai; it was what caught my eye to select the book in the first place.
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates - mno book club, e-book, fantasy, historical fiction
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates - e-book, nonfiction
The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde - fantasy, mystery - Jack Spratt and Mary Mary (quite contrary) are back in the second book in the Nursery Crimes series, investigating the disappearance of Goldilocks in the midst of the escape of the killer Gingerbreadman from a mental institution. What I liked best was Mary's date with her coworker Ashley (an alien), and the car Jack bought from Dorian Gray that manages to repair itself...but also has a backwards-running odometer. Not as punny as The Big Over Easy, but still an intricately plotted mystery.
The No-Nonsense Guide to Diverticulosis and Diverticulis by Healthful Publications - nonfiction, e-book
Kids Fight Plastic by Martin Dorey - nonfiction, childrens, advance reader edition, early reviewer - Lots of great ideas in this book for reducing the use of plastics in our everyday lives. Kids are encouraged to earn points by trying different suggestions to reach three-, four-, or five-star "superhero" status. This nonfiction book is aimed at ages 7-10, but it will probably be too difficult for struggling readers to read on their own. Fortunately, parents and teachers can learn a lot from this book as well - I certainly did. For example, I did not realize clothing of man-made fibers (such as nylon, polyester, and acrylic) sheds microfibers when washed that can be eaten by plankton and tiny fish - nor that you can put a special ball or bag in your washine machine to catch those microfibers. The book has a list of helpful websites at the end, but oddly, it doesn't include a site referenced within the text, www.terracycle.com. I only found one minor typo in the advance reader edition (ARC, page 14 - "hatetrash" instead of "hate trash"). The final book is supposed to have full-color illustrations like those on the cover (within the ARC, they are all black-and-white).
Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde - fantasy, mystery - The second book in the Thursday Next series; you need to have read the first book, The Eyre Affair, for this one to make sense. I first read that one almost eleven years ago, but fortunately my written review refreshed my memory. I picked up this book in a Friends of the Library sale about twelve years ago, and finally got around to reading it as I try to clear my TBR bookshelf during the pandemic. The plot is complex and fast-moving, and the reader has to accept the alternative-reality setting with dodos, neanderthals, and time travel, as well as “book jumping,” where characters come out of books (as in Inkheart) and people can go into them. Once again, I probably would have appreciated this book more had I ever read Dickens' Great Expectations, as characters from that book appear in this one. And for every British reference that we colonists don't understand, go to this page on Fforde’s website for explanations. I liked the ending the best; there's a clever reference to a character from one of Fforde's other series in it.
© Amanda Pape - 2020
