The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

I read The Midnight Library primarily because I needed an upper and Matt Haig's books are pretty much guaranteed to be uplifting in some way. Bingo. Definitely a book that gives you hope. 

The heroine in The Midnight Library has problems that she can't see her way out of. Nora Seed's lost her parents, her brother seldom speaks to her, her cat has died, and she's just lost her job. She can't find any reason to go on and decides to end it all but instead finds herself in a library, where she's told that she's between life and death by the woman who actually used to be her school librarian and helped her get through another rough time in her life. In this library, Nora can choose to relive her life if she'd made different decisions, large or small. All of them exist parallel to each other (so, it's a metaverse book). If she finds a life she prefers, she can stay. But, even the smallest thing that doesn't feel right will send her right back to the library.

At first, Nora relives changes to the most obvious regrets in her life. But, eventually Nora finds out that she can try things that are a bit outlandish. However, she doesn't have forever because it's possible that back in her known world, the body she tried to kill may die. If the clock in the library hits midnight, it's all over. Will she be able to find her perfect life and keep living it? 

Highly recommended - The Midnight Library gets some pretty polarized reviews and I can see both sides but the bottom line, for me, was that I couldn't put it down and it makes a nice point about life being imperfect but worth living. It's schmaltzy, but I loved it. I gave it 5 stars. Having said that, the ending wasn't what I'd hoped for and I think Haig got the same theme across better in The Humans. But, his writing is clever and compelling and I can actually visualize myself rereading The Midnight Library in the future, when I need an upper again. 

©2022 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

The Gap by Benjamin Gilmour

During a summer in Sydney, Australia, paramedics Ben and John face daily tragedy while both dealing with personal struggles. "The Gap" of the title of this book is both a scenic outlook in Sydney where suicides occur frequently and a metaphor for being on edge, the story much like a real-life version of Bringing Out the Dead but with a sense of humor. 

I enjoyed Paramédico by Gilmour and was excited when I heard the author had written another book about his experiences as an "ambo". It took me a long time to acquire a copy of The Gap but it was well worth the wait. Funny, moving, at times shocking and sad, the book is a testament to the courage, compassion, frustrations, danger, and other immense challenges paramedics face daily. 

Highly recommended - Stellar writing. I love medical memoirs (especially about emergency medicine, thanks to my early obsession with the TV show Emergency!) and books about such things as emerging diseases, so The Gap was right up my alley. I have, in fact, a collection of EMS books and I think Ben's writing is by far the best I've read. He takes you to the scene without going too far into detail about the gruesome and disgusting side of patient care, focusing instead on the emotion of patients and those that care for them. 

Trigger Warning for frequent descriptions of depression and suicide.

My review of Paramédico

Note: The Gap does not yet have a US publisher and I knew about its release because the author told me about it. It took a while to find it at a price I could afford but if you're interested and you're in the US, I got my copy from Book Depository. 

©2021 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Out of Left Field by Ellen Klages

Out of Left Field is about a girl named Katy Gordon. Katy loves baseball and she's an excellent pitcher, the best in her neighborhood. The boys all know it and they're happy to have her pitch in their local sandlot ball games. But, when a man comes to one of the ball games and mistakes Katy for a boy, she doesn't correct him. He observes her skill and invites her to try out for Little League. Katy is excited until she gets to the tryouts and is turned down flat. It's 1957 and the rules are clear: Little League is for boys only, no girls allowed.

Katy's parents are divorced and her all-female family is accustomed to discrimination against females. Her mother and one of her sisters work in male-dominated fields. So, when her mother suggests researching women in baseball to try to sway the minds of those in charge of Little League, she's excited. And, she's stunned to find that women's baseball leagues and women playing baseball with men were a lot more common in the past. But, will her research be enough to get Katy into Little League?

There were several things I absolutely loved about Out of Left Field. One is that it becomes clear up front that Katy is not going to succeed and she pretty much understands that. But, she learns to take joy from the research itself and her mother, a scientist, is very helpful and supportive. I particularly liked this quote by her mother:

"Good research skills are a secret weapon that will come in handy down the road."

I also loved the fact that while Out of Left Field describes a discriminatory practice, it also shows that when you're really good at something, those around you will notice. You may run up against institutional discrimination but you'll also find people who appreciate your skill (the neighborhood boys, in this case). That's a decent lesson, since girls/women still experience the frustration of being treated differently because of their sex.

And, I loved the extra material at the end of the book. There's a nice section with mini-bios of women who were well-known baseball players. Some didn't get very far, some had careers that lasted as long as a couple decades. And then there were the all-women's baseball teams that were created to keep baseball leagues earning money during wartime, like the women in the movie A League of Their Own. The history of women in baseball was fascinating and describing it through the fictional eyes of young Katy made the learning fun.

Highly recommended - A fun story and also a very informative middle-grade novel about the surprising history of women in baseball and how the history was almost entirely erased, women's ability to join baseball teams quashed. While the book is mostly about Katy's choice to research, the author kept it interesting. I loved learning about women in baseball. Apart from watching A League of Their Own, I had never read or heard anything about women in baseball. Only one of the women described was familiar to me: Babe Didrikson Zaharias. And, that was because of yet another movie. I also thought the author did a marvelous job of describing the historical setting, a time when the Soviets were winning the early space race. I'd heard of the Sputnik satellites but hadn't heard of the Vanguard satellite failures, so I ended up watching a video of the failed first launch on YouTube. The 50s setting was nicely described; I really enjoyed that.

The book includes a glossary of terms used in the book and a list of additional reading materials.


©2018 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik by David Arnold

Mr. Tuttle instructed us to open our Steinbeck tomes, and our laughs were replaced with visions of dust and booze and haggard tires on the road West, where the busty, analogous milky white breasts of rural America patiently awaited our arrival. 

~from p. 38 of ARC, The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik by David Arnold

The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik is the story of Noah Oakman, a high school student with two extremely close friends, siblings named Alan and Val. Toward the beginning of the book, Val pressures Noah into going to a party. Noah has been a little off since he faked a swimming injury and his parents have been nudging him to make a decision about the college scholarship he's been offered. He doesn't want to go to a party. He doesn't want to go anywhere. And, he really doesn't want to swim in college. But, he and the Rosa-Haas siblings are close so he reluctantly agrees to go to the party with them.

At the party, Noah does something he doesn't usually do: he drinks. Heavily. And, then he says something regrettable to Alan and goes to hang out with a guy named Circuit. What happens after he leaves Circuit's house is as psychedelic as the cover of the book. Suddenly, things around him have changed. His weird little dog has become normal, his mother has a scar he's never seen, and his best friends are no longer planning to attend colleges that are close to home. What's happened? Circuit's father was an inventor and Circuit is equally geeky. Did Circuit do something to Noah's brain? To find out, Noah zones in on the few things that haven't changed: his sister and his Strange Fascinations among them. By researching these things, maybe he can figure out what's happened to the world -- or to his mind.

The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik is told in first person, so you're in Noah's mind while he's trying to figure these things out and it's sometimes merely disorienting, sometimes confusing. As I mentioned earlier, the first part of the book befuddled me so much that I stopped at page 66 and started all over again. After that, I began to feel like I understood what was happening -- something had happened to Noah and he was on a quest to solve the mystery of why things had changed -- but I still often felt unbalanced during the reading and occasionally wondered if I would have set the book aside entirely, if not for the fact that I was obligated to write a tour post.

Having said that, I eventually began to embrace the hallucinogenic aspect of the book, even if I didn't always thoroughly understand what was happening. Throughout the book, it continued to feel a bit like the author was herding cats, or trying to and failing. But, the last 50 pages or so is where the cats all end up piled on top of each other on the same warm blanket; meaning, the ending is satisfying and pulls everything together.

Recommended - While this book felt, at times, like a rambling mess, it all comes together in the end and it's worth sticking it out through the insanity. At least, that's how I felt upon closing the book. I would suggest saving this book for when you're in the mood for something truly weird but clever. The writing is, in fact, almost too wise to believe it could be the thoughts of a 16-year-old, at times, although perhaps I'm too far removed from 16 to have any idea how a teenager thinks. What I liked best about the book was the relationship between the three friends. The author did a great job of emphasizing how rare and beautiful that kind of deep friendship is and why it should be treasured.

Side note: One of Noah's obsessions (or "Strange Fascinations", as he refers to them) is a book by a fictional author named Mila Henry. Her oddities are so believable that I ended up looking online to see if there really was a famous author named Mila Henry that I'd never heard about. Well, no. She's fictional, all right. Oddly, there is a Mila Henry who pops up when you do a general search -- a New York based pianist, coach, and music director. Music plays a heavy role in the book, as well (David Bowie's music) so I thought that was an interesting coincidence.


©2018 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Sleep Train by Jonathan London and Lauren Eldridge

Sleep Train. 

Jiggling down that track. 

Ten sleepy cars

going clickety-clack.

With an engine in front 

and a caboose in back. 

Sleep Train by Jonathan London and Lauren Eldridge is a bedtime story about a little boy counting the train cars of the train he's riding in -- instead of sheep. He's in the sleeping car, "all cozy in bed" (a very fancy sleeping car), reading the same book we are. While he lies in bed counting the cars, the reader gets to learn about the different types of train car: tender, boxcar, tank car, cattle car, hopper, gondola, flatbed car, coach, dining car, and sleeping car, each illustrated and labeled. The engine and caboose are mentioned in the opening but not added to the count. And, he slowly falls asleep.

Recommended - I'd particularly recommend this book to lovers of anything that moves (my eldest son was one of those -- and still is). Not only will the train enthusiasts love the beautiful illustrations but they'll also get to learn about the types of train cars that they see when stopped at a train crossing. The illustrations are dark and soothing, but the book loses a point for words like "jiggling" and "clickety-clack" that are not particularly relaxing to hear. There are other words that have hard sounds or sound upbeat, so you have to read the book very softly to make it sound soothing. But, it's easy to slow down and lower your voice even more, toward the end of the book, to make it a little more relaxing. And, I can't say enough about the insanely gorgeous illustrations. They are absolutely beautiful.


©2018 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Down and Across by Arvin Ahmadi

In Down and Across, 16-year-old Scott (real name Saaket) is an Iranian American with helicopter parents and a focus problem. Because he hasn't found his passion, he has a tendency to give up on everything he tries. He's distressed about it but doesn't have any idea what to do to change himself until he finds out about a professor who has dedicated her life to studying "grit" (determination). She's found that people with a high level of grit are more successful.

Scott's parents are traveling to Iran for a month because his grandfather is ailing and his father has arranged for Scott to spend the month doing an internship in which he has zero interest. After giving the internship a try, Scott quits and takes a bus to Washington, D.C. to seek out the professor. Maybe she can teach him how to discover grit. On the bus to DC, Scott meets Fiora Buchanan. Fiora is spontaneous, whimsical, and fun but her delightful personality hides the darker side of her life. While Fiora and a friend of hers from Charleston help Scott navigate the area, Scott pursues his search to discover grit and learns some surprising things about himself in the process.

Recommended - Within the first 50 pages of Down and Across I was almost certain I was going to have to painfully force myself through it or give up. But, eventually the author began to woo me and in the end I found it quirky, surprising and endearing. I loved the uniqueness of its plotline, using crossword puzzles as a metaphor for life, and the fact that I never knew quite where the author was going to take me, next. I'm quick to abandon books that don't grab me up front but I'm glad I stuck this one out.

©2018 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles is, as I may have already mentioned, a book I resisted reading because I tend to dislike a Russian setting. I don't know why that is and I do, at times, manage to overcome my resistance but it's a strong one. A selection for discussion in my F2F group, the book was only available in hardback (another thing I try to avoid) so I just decided not to buy it. And, then I missed the meeting. When I was told that the book is "delightful" I was kind of surprised. That was not a word I expected. What did I expect? Oh, probably a lot of dark, dreary scenes with grumpy people stabbing each other in the back . . . in the rain.

The reality of A Gentleman in Moscow could not possibly have been more of a contrast to my expectations. After the Russian Revolution, Count Alexander Rostov is lucky not to have already been killed or put in prison, but being a part of the aristocracy is still a problem. Put under house arrest in 1922 and told he'll be shot if he sets foot outside the Metropol Hotel in Moscow, A Gentleman in Moscow tells the story of the count's decades-long imprisonment, how he survives the passage of time, changes to the hotel and to Russia, and the many friendships he makes over the years.

I adored Count Alexander: his wit, charm, and sense of humor, his relationships, his young friend Nina's boldness and curiosity, the transformation of the Count's life over the decades, the characters in the hotel, and even the way he managed to transform his tiny living quarters. I also loved the fact that there was a character to have fun hating (including a surprising twist in which he gets what's coming to him). A few of my favorite scenes will probably stay with me forever. A couple of them brought tears to my eyes.

Highly, highly recommended to anyone and everyone - Absolutely the most charming, engaging, delightful, smart, funny, magical book I read in 2017.

Definitely should have bought a copy (I'll certainly want to reread it, someday) and I'm very grateful that my friend Linda said, "You really need to read this."

©2018 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Two YA Novels - We Were Liars by E. Lockhart and Half Bad by Sally Green

I've opted to pair mini reviews of these two YA titles together because neither came from a publisher. Both are ARCs that were sent by a friend and I might have skipped writing about them entirely if not for the fact that I enjoyed them so much.

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart is supposedly one of the hot YA novels of the season and I went into the reading knowing that and nothing else, which is apparently the best way to enter the reading. 

Cadence comes from a wealthy family but a broken one. Every year her grandparents, aunts and cousins, plus a relative of one of the aunts' boyfriends, spend their summer on the family's island. All that changed, two years ago.  Now, Cady has migraines and memory problems and her mother is constantly telling her to stop talking crazy, get a grip. After a summer in Europe, Cady returns to the island and tries to piece together the events that led to her traumatic memory loss. What happened to Cady? 

Most of the reviews of this book are vague, at best, and there is good reason for that.  It is best to go into the reading totally blind. Those who have gone into it after reading the publishing hype have, I've found, been the most disappointed. I thought the book was excellent. I liked the poetic writing, the interaction between Cady and her cousins, the underlying themes about race and privilege, the way everything was explained (even if the explanation was a bit maddening).  I liked it so much, in fact, that I bought a finished copy so I can reread the book with the knowledge of how it ends. Blogger and YA author Lenore Applehans mentioned that reading We Were Liars a second time was revealing from a craft perspective. I've yet to get to that second reading but I'm still glad I bought a copy and am looking forward to seeing the story from a different perspective.

Highly recommended - Loved the natural rhythm of the writing, the characters, the mystery, what I perceived as the themes (sometimes I wonder if I'm getting out of a book what an author intends) and the ending.  If you read the book, I advise going into the reading knowing as little as possible -- maybe wait till you forget the hype if you've read or heard too much. The less you know, the better.

Half Bad by Sally Green is yet another YA that I heard was good from a reliable source (same source and provider as We Were Liars, actually) and read without even bothering to read what it was about. 

In Half Bad, there are White Witches and Black Witches (and regular old humans -- unfortunately, I can't remember what they're called). The White Witches are allegedly good, the Black bad. But what about someone with mixed parentage? Is a half-breed good or bad?

As Half Bad opens, the reader gets to know Nathan, a teenager who lives in a cage.  He has a keeper who makes him do chores and exercise, cook and study. If he runs too far, says something he shouldn't or doesn't do his chores as expected, he's punished. And, he can't run away without dire consequences. But, why is Nathan in a cage?

The book unfolds in several sections, first a look at Nathan's life in a cage, then a return to the past where the reader learns about Nathan's family, most of whom love him dearly and do everything they can to protect him from the people who presume he will someday choose his dark side, as Nathan is half White Witch, half Black. Over the years, the rules regarding half-breeds keep changing, becoming more and more restrictive, and Nathan finds out that the White Witches -- who believe themselves to be the good ones -- may be every bit as bad as the Black Witches, if not worse.  Who is good and who is evil? What will become of Nathan? Will he ever meet his mysterious father, a man the White Witches claim to be one of the most dangerous and prolific murderers on Earth? Will Nathan survive to receive the three gifts he needs to go from Whet to Witch at age 17 and who will give him his gifts if he does?

Highly recommended - Wow, did I love this book. There's a lot to think about, plenty of action, characters to love and hate, and the changes in Nathan are believable. It's one of the darkest YA novels I've read but, relatively speaking, I don't read all that many. I've been told it's mild by comparison with some.  Half Bad is the first in a trilogy but it's wrapped up in a satisfactory way, even though there's clearly more to the story. I can't wait to read the next book in the series.

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.