When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Goodreads Summary:

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. 

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. 

Kalanithi wrote this book while battling lung cancer and the ripe old age of late 30s....He was a renaissance man who got his degrees in literature and history of science before heading off to med school to become a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist. He shares his journey with us from what ultimately turned his attention from literature to becoming a doctor. He wanted to face death and experience it with his patients. But then he became the patient.

Kalanithi pulls from science, philosophy, and literature to bring together his thoughts and experiences on death and dying.

"...the physician's duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence."

It's a moving and poignant memoir. It makes me ponder my own existence and how to approach life and make it a good one so when I finally meet death I can say I'm ready.

Mini Book Reviews: Lincoln in the Bardo...

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Goodreads Summary:

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy’s body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul.

I listened to this one and I am sure glad that I did. It had a wonderful cast of characters...I think around 166 different narrators!

It was a great story on grief and penance. I've never read anything by Saunders so his style was very different and it was hard to get into the flow of the story so it wasn't my favorite but I can appreciate why it's been a lauded work this past year.

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown

Goodreads Summary:

Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable, or to dare greatly. Whether the arena is a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation, we must find the courage to walk into vulnerability and engage with our whole hearts.

In Daring Greatly, Dr. Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability. Based on twelve years of research, she argues that vulnerability is not weakness, but rather our clearest path to courage, engagement, and meaningful connection. The book that Dr. Brown’s many fans have been waiting for, Daring Greatly will spark a new spirit of truth—and trust—in our organizations, families, schools, and communities. 

Amazon lists this as 100 top books to read in a lifetime and I wholeheartedly agree. After I finished listening to it, I ordered the book and am going to reread the hard copy. She has so many beautiful things to share on vulnerability and how that truly, in practice, lead to a transformative life. I especially identified with the parenting section.

The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste

Corinne La Mer isn't afraid of anything. Not scorpions, not the boys who tease her, and certainly not jumbies. They're just tricksters parents make up to frighten their children. Then one night Corinne chases an agouti all the way into the forbidden forest. Those shining yellow eyes that followed her to the edge of the trees, they couldn't belong to a jumbie. Or could they?

When Corinne spots a beautiful stranger speaking to the town witch at the market the next day, she knows something unexpected is about to happen. And when this same beauty, called Severine, turns up at Corinne's house, cooking dinner for Corinne's father, Corinne is sure that danger is in the air. She soon finds out that bewitching her father, Pierre, is only the first step in Severine's plan to claim the entire island for the jumbies. Corinne must call on her courage and her friends and learn to use ancient magic she didn't know she possessed to stop Severine and save her island home.

G and I both enjoyed this fantastic tale from the Caribbean. It had a great group of kids who care about each other, a big bad to get the best of, and growth for everyone involved. I try to read books to G from varying genres, sex, and diversity. And this one was perfect.

You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie

When his mother passed away at the age of 78, Sherman Alexie responded the only way he knew how: he wrote. The result is this stunning memoir. Featuring 78 poems, 78 essays and intimate family photographs, Alexie shares raw, angry, funny, profane, tender memories of a childhood few can imagine--growing up dirt-poor on an Indian reservation, one of four children raised by alcoholic parents. Throughout, a portrait emerges of his mother as a beautiful, mercurial, abusive, intelligent, complicated woman. You Don't Have To Say You Love Me is a powerful account of a complicated relationship, an unflinching and unforgettable remembrance.

Wow. This memoir blew me away. Alexie takes us along for the journey while he processes the death of his mother and his relationship with her. But we also learn along with him the complexities of his mother, all the good and bad and in between. It's gut-wrenching. I listened to this and he breaks down a few times while reading his poems and thoughts. It's a must-read for all humanity. Alexie for world leader!

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty

Fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for their dead. In rural Indonesia, she observes a man clean and dress his grandfather’s mummified body. Grandpa’s mummy has lived in the family home for two years, where the family has maintained a warm and respectful relationship. She meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette- smoking, wish- granting human skulls), and introduces us to a Japanese kotsuage, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved- ones’ bones from cremation ashes. With curiosity and morbid humor, Doughty encounters vividly decomposed bodies and participates in compelling, powerful death practices almost entirely unknown in America. Featuring Gorey-esque illustrations by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity introduces death-care innovators researching green burial and body composting, explores new spaces for mourning— including a glowing- Buddha columbarium in Japan and America’s only open-air pyre— and reveals unexpected new possibilities for our own death rituals.

Doughty travels around the world to see what other cultures do to celebrate and mourn their dead. I enjoyed the closer-up details of what these cultures do. She added a nice personal touch and let her thoughts be known. She muses on western culture and our lack of true ritual when it comes to death. We hold no spaces for our dead and those grieving. She inspires me to face death head on and search out my own held space for the present and the future.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Just after midnight, the famous Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, the millionaire Samuel Ratchett lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. One of his fellow passengers must be the murderer.

Isolated by the storm and with a killer in their midst, detective Hercule Poirot must find the killer amongst a dozen of the dead man's enemies, before the murderer decides to strike again...

I wanted to get this read before I saw the new movie adaptation. I'm glad I did. It was fun to see how Hercule Poirot solved his mysteries. It wasn't great but it was fun!

Nonfiction November Wrapup

I enjoyed sharing my nonfiction reads of November with others. It was fabulous to get new books on my ever-growing TBR pile and to meet new bloggers. But the one thing I didn't get to...my reviews. So without further ado, here are my mini-reviews.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

I'm still processing this book...that's kind of the theme of the whole book, though. How we ignore death and dying and never process it until it's too late. Well, that's kind of what I've been doing after I read this. I've known I needed to write a reviews and I've put it off and put it off. Ha!


"Looking mortality straight in the yes is no easy feat. To avoid the exercise, we choose to stay blindfolded, in the dark as to the realities of death and dying. But ignorance is not bliss, only a deeper kind of terror."


"Death drives every creative and destructive impulse we have as human beings. The closer we come to understanding it, the closer we come to understanding ourselves."

Doughty has tried to turn the funeral industry upside down by providing a good death for those who want it. Her stories bring love and humor to death. She has started a death positive movement The Order of the Good Death. She wants everyone to accept mortality and to come at it head on.

"Whether my mortality caught me at twenty-eight or ninety-three, I made the choice to die content, slipped into the nothingness, my atoms becoming the very fog that cloaked the trees. The silence of death, of the cemetery, was no punishment, but a reward for a life well lived."

We are mortal; let's face death head on, not with a sense of dread or terror, but one of acceptance and knowledge of a full life.

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Coates offers up eight articles he wrote for The Atlantic during the eight years Barack Obama was president. He adds in new introductions for each one and a final epilogue.

I don't quite know how to quite sum it up properly. America is the great tragedy. Our country was built on the backs of slaves and genocide and we as a nation have never come to terms with that. It's a cycle that is perpetual. We can see it now with Trump in power and his cronies in the senate and congress.

"He was deliberate to a fault, saw himself as the keeper of his country sacred legacy, and if he was bothered by his country's sins, he ultimately believed it to be a force for good in the world. IN short, Obama, his family, and his administration were a walking advertisement for the ease with which black people could be fully integrated into the unthreatening mainstream of American culture, politics, and myth. And that was always the problem."

Can we ever come together and look into the eyes of our terrible past and present and move forward from that point with eyes wide open? Or is our country doomed to this tragedy until we are no more?

Coates knows how to lay it all out simply and profoundly. This book is a must-read.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

I listened to this one and that means it's going to be difficult to mark passages and go over them. But I can tell you that this was a powerful book. I cried during many passages as I was driving around town.

I felt her loss. Her year of dealing not only with the sudden death of her husband but also the illness of her daughter was horrible. It was a sad reminder of how our culture wants us to grieve but not too much. Get over it and move on and don't let us know how much you are grieving because it makes us uncomfortable and we don't know how to handle that....

I want to pick up a hard copy and reread and mark it up. Beautiful and profound.

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Goodreads Summary:

Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother's loneliness. Believing she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author. Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the lost love who, sixty years ago in Poland, inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn't know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives... 

What I liked:

• The characters were all very interesting and different.
• The overall story was a beautiful concept.
• I enjoyed Alma's search for the author of this amazing book.

Didn't like:

• The story was hard to follow. There are various characters and there are various times in history as well. I'm still a bit confused.
• I wanted the story to have more impact for these characters at the end. It felt a little lackluster. But maybe that's the point. Life is life and sometimes--well, most of the time life doesn't turn out how we expect.

Overall, it's a pretty story but a little harsher than I was expecting.

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Goodreads Summary

Certain Dark Things combines elements of Latin American mythology with a literary voice that leads readers on an exhilarating and fast-paced journey.

Welcome to Mexico City, an oasis in a sea of vampires. Here in the city, heavily policed to keep the creatures of the night at bay, Domingo is another trash-picking street kid, just hoping to make enough to survive. Then he meets Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers. Domingo is smitten. He clings to her like a barnacle until Atl relents and decides to let him stick around.

But Atl's problems, Nick and Rodrigo, have come to find her. When they start to raise the body count in the city, it attracts the attention of police officers, local crime bosses, and the vampire community. Atl has to get out before Mexico City is upended, and her with it.

What I liked:

Moreno-Garcia sets up a fascinating world where vampires exist as other evolved hominids. It's truly fascinating.

What I didn't like:

I felt like this was a very short introduction into her vampire-filled world. The first half of the book was really slow. And it's a very short book.

Terrible things happen to our characters without a lot of time to process it. We care but she won't let us care too much.

Her two protagonists had zero chemistry. That's weird, right? She made them both up. But I didn't feel it; it felt very forced.

I liked it but I wanted to love it. I hope she delves back into this strange world with a better plot and character development.

The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp

Goodreads Summary:

Jack Sparks died while writing this book. This is the account of his final days.

In 2014, Jack Sparks - the controversial pop culture journalist - died in mysterious circumstances.

To his fans, Jack was a fearless rebel; to his detractors, he was a talentless hack. Either way, his death came as a shock to everyone.

It was no secret that Jack had been researching the occult for his new book. He'd already triggered a furious Twitter storm by mocking an exorcism he witnessed in rural Italy.

Then there was that video: thirty-six seconds of chilling footage that Jack repeatedly claimed was not of his making, yet was posted from his own YouTube account.

Nobody knew what happened to Jack in the days that followed - until now. This book, compiled from the files found after his death, reveals the chilling details of Jack's final hours. 

What I liked:

• This was very creepy and I had at least one bad dream. Once again I read this mostly at night in a hotel room with only a headlamp...so that could have something to do with it!
• I liked the take on demon possession. It was way creepier than the Exorcist.
• Also funny. Jack was a horrible person but he made me laugh.
• I enjoyed the style of the book. The book is put together after his death by his brother and he adds in emails and transcripts and letter from other characters so we get two different takes--Jack Sparks' and what really happened.
• He's an unreliable narrator. Is he telling the truth? Has he gone mad

What I didn't like:

• The skeptical part of Jack's character was highly cliched. He wasn't believable.
• But once again he's an unreliable narrator so maybe that's the point?

Overall this was a fun book to read. It's different from anything I've read before and it was super creepy. I look forward to more from him.

I Remember You by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Goodreads Summary:

In this terrifying tale, three friends set to work renovating a rundown house in a remote, totally isolated location. But they soon realize they are not as alone as they thought. Something wants them to leave. Meanwhile, in a nearby town, a young doctor investigating the suicide of an elderly woman discovers that she was obsessed with his vanished son. When the two stories collide, the shocking truth becomes horribly clear.

In the vein of Stephen King and John Ajvide Lindqvist, this horrifying thriller, partly based on a true story, is the scariest novel yet from Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, who has captivated the attention of readers around the world with her mystery series featuring attorney Thora Gudmundsdottir. Now, Yrsa will stun readers once again with this out-of-this-world ghost story that will leave you shivering.

What I liked:

• It was scary. I read most of the book at night in a hotel room with only a small headlamp while my son and my hubby slept. I was creeped out.
• I loved how the two stories come together in the end.
• It's also a really sad tale of two lost boys.
• The scene was superb. Everything was cold and icy and lonely. It set the perfect mood for the whole story.

What I didn't like:

• The ending was rushed.
• The two different stories were a bit distracting at first.
• There were some editing errors.
• I think some ideas were lost in translation.

Overall it was a fantastic ghost story and I did enjoy the contemplation on grief and loss.

The Troop by Nick Cutter

Goodreads summary:

Once a year, scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a three-day camping trip—a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story and a roaring bonfire. But when an unexpected intruder—shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry—stumbles upon their campsite, Tim and the boys are exposed to something far more frightening than any tale of terror. The human carrier of a bioengineered nightmare. An inexplicable horror that spreads faster than fear. A harrowing struggle for survival that will pit the troop against the elements, the infected...and one another.

I wanted to love this one so much. I'd heard it was horrifying. It was boring at first and more gross and disgusting rather than terrifying.

It's an interesting premise. What do you when a Scout troop loses its Scoutmaster and a viral agent takes over? That alone would've been great. But Cutter had make all his boys stereotypes and tropes. I knew who would die and who would live.

But it is disgusting. Just think genetically-modified tape worms that are highly contagious and are set loose....there is some low-hanging fruit here. Cutter went more low than high but his descriptions of the worms were pretty terrifying. Those scenes alone were probably worth the read.

It by Stephen King

Goodreads Summary:

Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real.

They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers.

My Thoughts:

This was my first Stephen King horror. I've tried others like "The Stand," "Firestarter," and "The Tommyknockers," but I couldn't get more than a hundred pages in any of them. I did read "The Green Mile" and really enjoyed it but it was also very short compared to King's other books.

I pushed through and I finished! Woot! It is cause for celebration. I didn't think I'd finish it back in July when I started it. But with the new movie and a read-a-long and all the Halloween horror reading I was planning on doing, I knew I needed to keep chipping away at it. Spoilers ahead....FYI

What I liked:

• The world-building. King is obviously known for this. I've heard most of his books take place in the same world. He's fantastic with the seedy-side of Derry.
• The Loser's Club kids. Only King can make a great coming-of-age novel inside a horror story.
• It was creepy. The parts I loved best were when the kids were being haunted by It. I kept the lights on.
• How the past and present start combing toward the end. We had a back and forth during the first part of the book and then the suspense picks up and we are taken quickly in and out of the past and present almost where you don't quite know which time we're in....
• The new movie! Was awesome. It took the best parts of kids coming together and facing awful stuff and made it better than its source (in my opinion, which I know many will not agree).
• I liked the old mini-series, especially the kid focused first part, but the adult half was awful and the special effects did not hold up.

What I didn't like:

• His tropes. One girl who's beautiful, surrounded by 6 dopey and awkward kids....seven dwarves trope.
• The ending got too weird...turtles, and tunnels, and spiders oh my! 
• Kid orgies? um...nope. Did not need to go there at all.
• He needed a lot more editing. Did we really need to know about Patrick's awful sociopathic activities? Nope.
• What happened to Tom? It's like King forgot he was there and threw some vague dialogue in at the end to try and wrap it up...didn't work.

I'm glad I read it but I really don't think I'll read any more of King. His storie's are great. I think I'll just stick to his movies and TV adaptations...He's just not my style.

Black-eyed Susans by Julia Heaberlin

Goodreads Summary:

As a sixteen-year-old, Tessa Cartwright was found in a Texas field, barely alive amid a scattering of bones, with only fragments of memory as to how she got there. Ever since, the press has pursued her as the lone surviving “Black-Eyed Susan,” the nickname given to the murder victims because of the yellow carpet of wildflowers that flourished above their shared grave. Tessa’s testimony about those tragic hours put a man on death row.  

Now, almost two decades later, Tessa is an artist and single mother. In the desolate cold of February, she is shocked to discover a freshly planted patch of black-eyed susans—a summertime bloom—just outside her bedroom window. Terrified at the implications—that she sent the wrong man to prison and the real killer remains at large—Tessa turns to the lawyers working to exonerate the man awaiting execution. But the flowers alone are not proof enough, and the forensic investigation of the still-unidentified bones is progressing too slowly. An innocent life hangs in the balance. The legal team appeals to Tessa to undergo hypnosis to retrieve lost memories—and to share the drawings she produced as part of an experimental therapy shortly after her rescue.  

What they don’t know is that Tessa and the scared, fragile girl she was have built a  fortress of secrets. As the clock ticks toward the execution, Tessa fears for her sanity, but even more for the safety of her teenaged daughter. Is a serial killer still roaming free, taunting Tessa with a trail of clues? She has no choice but to confront old ghosts and lingering nightmares to finally discover what really happened that night.

What I liked:

The book springs back and forth between Tessa at present day as she's trying to figure out how to help Terrell get a new hearing so he doesn't get executed for the crime she's sure he didn't commit, and the Tessa (Tessie) a year after she was found and how the trial went that convicted Terrell in the first place.

The book builds the suspense as we get closer and closer to the end. The breaks between past and present are shorter and quicker. It was an interesting way to build.

What I didn't like:

The back and forth was a little incomplete overall. We only got tidbits of her best friend Lydia who was there for the young Tessie. We know something happened between them but we aren't sure what. So I didn't quite get to know Tessie or Tessa. And therefore it was harder to care about her much.

The author also adds a little epilogue that keeps up some of the suspense. But I felt it didn't work for how the story was built and finished. It was unnecessary.

Overall, it was a quick mystery read. I did like her thoughts on trauma and how we deal with it.

White Crow by Marcus Sedgwick

Goodreads summary:

Some secrets are better left buried; some secrets are so frightening they might make angels weep and the devil crow.

Thought provoking as well as intensely scary, White Crow unfolds in three voices. There's Rebecca, who has come to a small, seaside village to spend the summer, and there's Ferelith, who offers to show Rebecca the secrets of the town...but at a price. Finally, there's a priest whose descent into darkness illuminates the girls' frightening story. White Crow is as beautifully written as it is horrifically gripping.

It's a quick and thought-provoking read. It read more like a scary story by the camp fire or a fable. It's a world not truly apart of this one. The setting of Winterfold and the character Ferelith are just creepy.

Rebecca and her father don't belong.

The mad preacher and scientist from the late 1700s add to the forboding tale. It parallels along with Rebecca and Ferelith's tale.

I enjoyed the creepy experience and I liked the philosophical discussions. It was a fun and interesting read for Halloween time.

*read for

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Image Source

Roxane Gay's memoir "Hunger" is the most visceral and beautiful memoir I've ever read. It's true. It is a must-read for anyone who is human. So everyone.

I was introduced to Roxane Gay when she came out with "Bad Feminist" a few years ago. I loved her raw and unflinching style. She shares her thoughts with us about her body. She's a large woman and has struggled with her weight since she was brutally gang raped as a young girl. She writes:

"I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I had been because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere....I was trapped in my body, one I made but barely recognized or understood. I was miserable, but I was safe."

Goodreads.com

Fat shaming is still a thing. I guess because it's what we wear every day and cannot hide. If we're thin or even within an acceptable plus size we can still move through life without getting too much attention (unless we're in our teens...but that's different). I read about women who get looks of disgust or told advice on how to lose weight all the time...like that is exactly the thing they needed to magically help them lose ALL THE WEIGHT!

Somehow it's always ok to comment on women's bodies all the time, but especially if they're too big. Unfortunately, that's still ok. We have no idea why people are the way they are. Our experiences as humans are so varied. So instead of condemning each other, let's listen and be sympathetic to all the stories out there. And this is why I love Gay's memoir so much. Her story is horrible but so real. We don't have to love our bodies or hate them but we can appreciate them for what they do for us today, whether big, small or in between. Let's just love and accept people and hear their stories. Maybe then we can be good humans and take care of each other.

Her story is one that is horrific yet hopeful. Sympathetic and terrifying. She hasn't gotten over anything and yet she's willing to let us in on her experiences, good, bad and in between. It's a moving and poignant memoir and one that needs to be read.

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Image Source

From Goodreads.com:

The first science-fiction written by a black woman, Kindred has become a cornerstone of African-American literature. This combination of slave memoir, fantasy, and historical fiction is a novel of rich literary complexity.

Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. After saving a drowning white boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life.

During numerous such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes the challenge she's been given: to protect this young slaveholder until he can father her own great-grandmother.

My thoughts:

I thoroughly loved listening to Kindred. It was a short and smart but also brutal story. I don't know how Butler managed to pull it all together like she did but it was brilliant. How does one deal with the past and how it connects to your future? She offers up a wide range of feelings from horror to empathy.

I look forward to reading more of her sci-fi works.

Warren the 13th and the Whispering Woods by Tania del Toro

Quirk Books

Warren the 13th is back for his second adventure with his walking hotel and all of his friends. Things start off going pretty well but this does not last long when his uncle accidentally drops his drink on the hotel's controls. Warren must find parts for the repairs and hope he can get his hotel back up and running and get his guests back.

A mimic soon kidnaps Warren and takes his tooth so he can take Warren's place and take the hotel and the perfurmier Beatrice to the Black Caldera in the Whispering Woods to the evil witch.

Can Warren get back to his hotel and save his friends? Lots of fun puzzles and adventures await Warren. My son and I had a lot of fun reading this one together. My son couldn't wait to read this every night.

*I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West

Lindy West comes out swinging. She's hitting everything home. She's funny, she apologizes when she needs to, but mostly no f*cks are given. I loved reading her journey. Her ability to accept her body and to advocate for others is inspiring. How she has dealt with and continues to deal with deh Trollz aka people who are miserable human beings, is astounding. I look forward to reading more from her in the future. I'm definitely a Lindy fan!

"I also love being fat. The breadth of my shoulders makes feel safe. I am unassailable. I intimate. I am a polar icebreaker. I walk and climb and lift things. I can open your jar, I can absorb blows--literal and metaphorical--meant for other women, smaller women, breakable women, women who need me. My bones feel like iron--heavy, but strong. I used to say that being fat in our culture was like drowning (in hate, in blame, in your own tissue), but lately I think it's more like burning. After three decades in the fire, my iron bones are steel."

"It's hard to feel hurt or frightened when you're flooded with pity. It's hard to be cold or cruel when you remember it's hard to be a person."

"We're all building our world, right now, in real time. Let's build it better."

Warren the 13th and the All-Seeing Eye by Tania Del Toro

Warren comes from a long line of other Warrens. In fact, he is number 13. Warren the 1st laid out the plans for the family hotel and Warren the 2nd built it. The hotel was booming for quite a long time until his parents died and his uncle came to take care of him and the hotel. He is not good at either. He married a very wicked woman Annaconda who treats Warren as a slave. So now his home/hotel are run down and his only friends are Bunion the chef and his old tutor.

Rumor has it the hotel hides a treasure called the all-seeing eye and his new aunt Annaconda and her witch's coven plan to find it and steal it and soon others are on their way to look as well.

It's up to Warren to find the treasure and save his family's hotel.

This was a delightful mystery with vivid images and a great locale. The world of Warren the 13th is dark and mysterious with witches and pirates and ghosts, and even octopus guardians in the basement.

There are fun visual nuggets placed throughout the book so kids can hold up pages to mirrors and read secret messages.

It's also a story of the importance of family and friends and learning to work together. This story has plenty of fun fantastical elements and sci-fi to appeal to many readers.

I read this with my son and he loved it. He asked when we could read the next one and was disappointed to learn it wasn't out yet!

*I received this book from the publisher Quirk Books as part of their book tour in exchange for an honest review.

Warren and the Unlucky Day

As part of the tour the author Tania Del Toro has written a short story about Warren called Warren and the Unlucky Day. Also included are some activity pages for kids. Just click on the link under the pic.

Link to the official Warren the 13^th website: http://warrenthe13th.com/

Link to the official book page for Warren the 13^th and the All-Seeing Eye: http://www.quirkbooks.com/book/warren-13th-and-all-seeing-eye

Link to the official book page for Warren the 13^th and the Whispering Woods: http://www.quirkbooks.com/book/warren-13th-and-whispering-woods

Goodreads link to Warren the 13^th and the All-Seeing Eye: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25241871-warren-the-13th-and-the-all-seeing-eye?ac=1&from_search=true

Goodreads link to Warren the 13^th and the Whispering Woods: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30962057-warren-the-13th-and-the-whispering-woods

I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells

John Wayne Cleaver is obsessed with serial killers. Is it because he's a sociopath and has dreams of being one someday? He definitely has sociopathic tendencies and it is really hard for him to feel much empathy but he has rules to keep his 'monster' in check. That is until an actual serial killer pops up in his small town.

I really wanted to like this one. I read Dan Wells' The Partials last year and had a good time. His story was interesting but it was executed badly. The inner psychology of John just didn't ring true. The pacing was a bit clunky. Also the middle took a weird turn and I'm not sure what kind of book he was going for. His world was just a tad confusing. It just wasn't his best work. He did write three sequels so I hope they got better.

Update: I just watched the made-for-tv movie based on this book. It wasn't any better. I was hoping with music and an interesting setting, etc that the story would flow better. Unfortunately, it didn't.