Tag: reading

Fence

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: C.S. Pacat & Johanna the Mad
Genres: Graphic Novel, Young Adult, Fiction
Pub date: July 2018 (read Nov. 2018)

Disclaimer: This is a review for the first 3 volumes. However, I’ve kept it spoiler free so read on!

Why is this so good?!?! I really don’t understand, it’s just a comic about a couple of pretentious boys trying to make their high school’s fencing team, and yet I got so into it! Usually I just wait for the volumes to be released, but after reading the first volume, I had to go in search of the individual issues because it was just so good! (and I knew I would forget who all the boys were) I just finished issue #12, which encompasses the first 3 volumes, I’m just going to review them all here.

Fence is ultimately about two freshman fencers, Nicholas and Seiji, but it features an extended cast of secondary characters. Nicholas is new on the fencing scene and just really wants to be a fencer like his estranged father was. Nicholas is lacking in technique because of his lack of training, but he is very fast and has natural instinct. In contrast, Seiji has been fencing his whole life and is very technically skilled. He’s ranked 2nd nationally to fencing all-star Jesse.

Everyone expected Seiji to go to Exton, an elite fencing academy, but at the start of term, he shows up at Kings Row, expecting to win one of the 3 coveted spots on the fencing team, even though he’s only a freshman. Nicholas has won a fencing scholarship to Kings Row, but he’s only allowed to stay if he makes the team. In a surprise twist of fate, Nicholas and Seiji are roommates and quickly become rivals.

The entire first 3 volumes are just about the tryouts to make the fencing team. The boys compete in 24 matches and the top 3 ranked fencers make the school team to compete against Exton. It shouldn’t be so interesting to read 12 issues about high school fencers competing to make a school fencing team (like who actually cares about fencing these days?), but it is extremely readable and enthralling. Fence has a great extended cast that explores the rivalries and relationships that exist between all the fencers, what it means to be a good fencer, and a good sport, and how our familial relationships and support affects our abilities and psyche. There’s lots of drama between the fencers, but there’s also camaraderie. You come to like each and every one of the fencers (and the coach) and we start getting the back stories of some of the fencers.

My assumption is that after the team is established in the first 3 volumes, Pacat will expand the series to include Jesse (the #1 ranked fencer) and the rivalries between Exton and Kings Row. The first 3 volumes were fantastic and I can’t wait to see where this series goes in the future!

The Simple Wild

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: K.A. Tucker
Genres: Fiction, Romance
Pub date: Aug. 2018 (read Nov. 2018)

5 Stars?! Are you okay Maria? Are you really going to give a romance novel 5 stars??

This book was so out of my element that I feel like it actually came full circle so that it was exactly in my element. I don’t read very many purely romance novels, but I definitely love a good romance subplot in other genres. However, I was drawn to this book for the setting over the plot. I’ve been obsessed with Alaska ever since I read The Great Alone earlier this year and I couldn’t turn this book down,

I say it’s out of my element because it’s romance. But the setting is right up my alley. I’ve been living in Vancouver for the last five years and I’ve become a little bit obsessed with the great outdoors. I spent almost every weekend this summer either hiking, backpacking, camping, or kayaking, so I love books with isolated settings. Even though I would have had a totally different approach to visiting Alaska than Calla did, I still found this book very relatable.

Calla Fletcher was born in Alaska, but she’s spent her entire life in Toronto. Her mom fell in love with an Alaskan bush pilot, but she couldn’t handle the Alaskan wilderness and moved back to Toronto when Calla was only 2. Her dad, Wren, couldn’t bear to leave his plane company, Alaskan Wild, and over time, Wren and Calla became estranged.

Fast forward 24 years; Calla is 26 and has just been restructured out of her bank job. She loves city life and has been pursuing fashion and lifestyle blogging with her best friend Diana when she receives a call from Alaska that her Dad is sick and this may be her only chance to finally re-connect with him and re-visit the place where she was born. She’s out of a job and her and Diana think the photos would be great for their blog, so she makes the trip up to Bangor, Alaska.

In the beginning, Calla struggles with Alaskan life. She’s used to fast paced city life, being able to get a soy latte where ever she wants, and spending lots of time every day making herself look good for photos. Next to the wild people of Alaska, she seems vapid and vain. I’m a lot different than Calla. I don’t wear very much makeup and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash at wearing the same grungy outfit every day if I had to (I certainly would never bring two large suitcases on a one week trip to the wilderness). But even so, she’s very relatable. I understand her desire to look good and take beautiful pictures. She’s in the great unknown and I would definitely be posting pictures all over my instagram if I was her. But she has a hard time adapting to the change of pace in Alaska and struggles with other emotional issues, like re-connecting with her sick father.

The setting of this story was different than I expected. I was expecting the gorgeous mountain and glacier views that I got in The Great Alone, but what we get instead is a dingy little town in the middle of the flat, Alaskan bush. I thought Tucker’s description of the run-down buildings when Calla first drives through town was so great because I could just picture this little town in my head and because it doesn’t have the stunning mountain backdrop that I was anticipating, it was a lot easier to relate with Calla’s initial culture shock. This book ended up being a lot more than just the setting of Bangor, but the community of it. You really get a sense of what it’s like to live in a backwater community in rural Alaska – the way people depend on one another and support each other. It gave the setting depth. And though Calla was slow to appreciate it, she got there in the end.

This was my second romance book in the last month (recently read Colleen Hoover’s, All My Perfects) and what I liked about both books was that they weren’t solely romance novels. I wouldn’t really even call The Simple Wild romance because it has so much else going for it. This book is really about all the different kinds of love in the world. It’s about making peace with your past, being open to new experiences, and making time for the things that really matter to you. Tucker strikes a wonderful balance between Calla’s relationship with her dad, the romance, and all the different kinds of platonic love that are showcased in this book.

So on to the romance! I haven’t even mentioned Jonah yet. It’s obvious from the synopsis where the book is going, but it was a super fun ride. Jonah is Wren Fletcher’s best pilot. He’s a little rough around the edges sometimes, but he has a lot of love for his job and helping the villages scattered around Alaska get the supplies and resources that they need. He will go above and beyond to help someone in need. But this is not the person Calla first meets. Wren sends Jonah to pick Calla up in Anchorage and they get off to a bad start. Jonah has seen girls like Calla before and he doesn’t have any patience for them. He thinks she’s entitled and vapid. But Calla also has little time for Jonah. He’s rude to her from the get go and dismisses her intelligence. It’s the classic couple hates each other, misunderstands each other, and then loves each other dynamic. But it worked.

Calla is many of the things Jonah thinks of her, but she is not dumb and she does care about her dad and his business. In the same way, Jonah was many of the things she thought about him, he was very mean to her and his honesty starts them off on the wrong foot, but he is also a deeply caring individual. I definitely loved Jonah. Any guys who loves the outdoors already has brownie points in my book and I liked that he was honest, even though it was sometimes hurtful. He realized his mistakes and apologizes in his own way, but I think he also had a lot of fun bantering with Calla and kept it up because it was fun for him to set her off kilter. I also loved that he was able to laugh at himself and his joy for life.

I definitely got a kick out of all the pranks they played on one another. I was a little concerned when he stole her make-up bag because make-up is definitely a crutch for some people and has the potential to be pretty traumatizing (plus there’s absolutely nothing wrong with loving make-up). But I ultimately decided it was okay because Calla’s prank on Jonah was pretty bold and could easily have crossed the line. She pulled a prank on him that made him more attractive to her and by swiping her make-up from her, he was essentially doing the same thing.

Overall this book makes me yearn for more quality new adult fiction. I am years past lusting over the 17 year olds in YA contemporary and most YA fantasy, but I can’t yet relate to books about parents, their kids, and their failing marriages. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good family drama, but I think the romance in this book appealed to me so much because it’s actually where I’m at in my life. I’ve talked a few times about how literature needs more books about college and university (which I still think it does), but I also think we need more books about mid to late twenties, when people are out of school and starting to figure out their lives, but haven’t yet settled down into the standard family dynamic. I would love some great new adult reads. I’m sure they’re out there already, but they definitely aren’t getting the kind of love and promotion that other types of books get.

Finally, I loved the ending of this book. I love books that hit me with tough choices. Nothing annoys me more in love triangles then when the author makes one of the triangle into a jerk so that we don’t have to feel bad for them getting the axe. There’s no love triangle in this book, but I love stories and decisions that have two equal sides that are both valid. I love when the author doesn’t try to push us toward one ideal or the other or write the story in such a way as to make one choice easier or more obvious. Calla and Jonah are basically re-living her mother and fathers love story. Calla is a city girl, Jonah’s in love with the wild. They know there’s an expiration date on their relationship, but they fall in love anyways. There’s no easy answer to their dilemma. One of them has to be willing to move for the other to make it work and no one wants to be the one to either give up their life, or ask the other to give up their life. I thought the ending happened just a little bit too fast, but I really liked how Tucker approached their conflict.

So overall, I really liked this book. My only problem was that it took me a little while to get into it at the beginning. I’m not really sure why. I wouldn’t change the beginning. Overall it’s a bit of a slow burn type novel, but it reads really fast and once I got invested in the characters, I totally flew through the book!

 

SPOILER: The ending is still left pretty vague, but I really liked Jonah’s compromise. It actually broke my heart to see him in Toronto because it’s obvious he wouldn’t be happy there and that it would never work. But he wasn’t willing to give up and he was still willing to move somewhere where they might both have a chance at being happy. Would moving to anchorage so that Calla could still have a semblance of city life be enough? Maybe not, but I loved that he recognized what wouldn’t work for them and decided to try and find something that would work. With this approach, I feel like there are a lot of places that the two of them could be happy. There are many Canadian centres where Calla and Jonah could make a life and still be on the brink of rural life. It was such a simple approach and I really think it could work for them. Relationships don’t have to always be about sacrifice – they shouldn’t be about sacrifice – but about compromise, and this compromise made me really hopeful for this fictional couple. Plus I think it sends a way better message then having Calli give up her life in Toronto for a guy. Women and girls have been preached that message enough.

Saga, Volume 9

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples
Genres: Graphic Novel, Science Fiction
Pub date: Oct. 2018 (read Nov. 2018)

So I can’t stop talking about Saga this year. For some reason Volume 8 affected me more than any other volume and I found it incredibly meaningful. So I was really looking forward to Volume 9, but apparently Vaughan decided that this will be the volume in which he kills us all.

This volume was brutal. I loved it in the way I’ve loved every issue of Saga, in that it’s very original and fun, but it also destroyed me and left me feeling a little concerned for the series. Vaughan took some risks in the plot and I’m interested to see where it goes, but also a little worried! I’m trusting him to bring this story back from the brink, but losing it over the fact that Vaughan and Staples appear to be taking a bit of a hiatus after this volume!

 

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW – Read no further unless you’ve read Volume 9!

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If you’ve read this volume, then you of course know that I’m talking about the high death count in it. Killing off characters can be a great device to move your story forward, test your characters, and inspire your readers. But I fear 3 MC’s in one volume is a bit too much. Honestly, I can totally get over the deaths of the journalist and the robot guy (I’m seriously the worst with names), but you cannot kill off Marko!! This series has a ton of supporting characters, but let’s be real, we’ll all here for Marko, Alana, and Hazel. I’m hoping Marko comes back somehow in the next issue because I seriously don’t think I can do this series without him. Their family unit is the backbone of this series and is what makes it so special!

I Might Regret This

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Abbi Jacobson
Genres: Non-fiction, Memoir, Humour
Pub date: Oct. 2018 (read Nov. 2018)

Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

First of all, I LOVE Broad City and it was definitely the primary motivation in me reading this book. I’m a bit late to the game and I only discovered Broad City last year, but I actually love everything about it. So when I saw Abbi was publishing a book, I had to have it.

I Might Regret This is a collection of essays and drawings circling around a road trip Abbi took last year across the US. She shares some thoughts about her trip, some general thoughts about her life and recent break-up, and some stories about her experience working in comedy. It was a fun book and I really enjoyed some of the essays, but unfortunately others felt a little bit like, what’s the point?

The full title of the book is “I Might Regret This: Drawings,Essays, Vulnerabilities. and Other Stuff”. I want to highlight the vulnerabilities, because I think that was the strongest part of the book. I think one of the reasons people like to read celebrity memoirs is to learn something new about that person and what makes them human. Famous people can sometimes seem really unrelatable, so showing us some of their vulnerabilities makes them seem a little more human.

I really like Abbi’s stories about making it in comedy, the challenges of being a woman in comedy, and how scary and debilitating it can be to achieve success and when to acknowledge it’s time to try something new. I liked reading about her experiences and the challenges she has faced. I liked reading about her break-up, fears, anxieties, and vulnerabilities. I think Abbi and Ilana are both already very relatable and reading about her experiences re-iterates the point that she’s really not that different from anyone else. Plus, it’s cool seeing someone make it on their own.

I think that Abbi and Ilana are pioneers in their own way. Their characters are real and gritty in a way that we don’t often see on television. They’re not afraid to be real – they don’t have their lives figured out, they make mistakes, they don’t have good jobs, and they smoke a lot of pot. They care about the world and social issues, yet it’s so much easier for them to navigate the world by virtue of being white and they get away with a lot of bullshit. But I love that their friendship is central to Broad City and everything else is secondary. They don’t really fight with each other and they always put another first in every situation. It’s so lovely to see a female relationship like that portrayed on TV. I know they care about social issues like equality for women, people of colour, and every spectrum of LGBTQIA. I would have loved to hear Abbi’s opinions on social issues or stories about her relationship with Ilana, but instead this memoir tells some kind of trivial stories about her road trip that are kind of funny, but mostly lacking in any kind of real talk.

It hurts me to say that because I think Abbi has created something really unique and important with Broad City, and I enjoyed her stories about her experience, but some of the content in this book seemed a little trivial and I was just expecting more. It probably doesn’t help that I immediately followed up Abbi’s book with Phoebe Robinson’s new book, Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay, which is both smart and funny and doesn’t shy away from pulling the punches on social issues such as institutionalized racism and how white women need to show up for women of colour and make their feminism more intersectional. Robinson’s writing has been totally blowing me away and in retrospect, makes this book seem a little trifling.

That said, this is Abbi’s first book (and not Robinson’s) and it is a little unfair to compare the two. I think Abbi was going for something very different in this book, but as much as I wanted to love it, it fell a little flat. I still think it’s a 3-star read, it just didn’t blow me away. But I’m still stoked for season 5 of Broad City!

November Monthly Challenge

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Okay, I have to admit, I discovered and read some great new books earlier this year thanks to my monthly reading challenges, but I’m now feeling burnt out by them. There’s definitely a benefit in being intentional about what books you read, but it also removes the spontaneity of choosing a book based on your emotional needs at that exact moment. My monthly TBR’s were getting onerous by trying to accommodate my challenge, book club, and ARCs each month and it didn’t leave much (or sometimes any) room for spontaneity.

Book club is pretty much the highlight of my month and I’m really enjoying starting to work with publishers, so I think I will probably part ways for with my monthly challenge in the new year, but I’m going to try my best to see it through the rest of this year. As a side note, it’s coming up on my 1-year anniversary of starting this blog and I just want to say a huge thanks to all my followers and everyone who reads my reviews! I just surpassed 100 subscribers a few weeks ago and while that doesn’t sound like a lot, I really appreciate everyone who has given my voice power by reading and subscribing. I started a travel blog in 2010, but I didn’t really post in it that much the last few years, so I wasn’t sure how this experiment was going to go, but it has been a tremendous amount of fun for me. I’ve really enjoyed having a platform for my bookish thoughts and I’ve started actually building some relationships with publishers, which has been a really interesting learning opportunity for me and I’m really excited to see where it will go in the future.

But back to my monthly challenge. This challenge feels like a bit of a cop out, because I was totally going to do this anyways, but hey, you have to go with what inspires you. November is pretty much my favourite month as a reader because of the Goodreads Choice Awards. I LOVE reading new releases because it makes me feel hip and ahead of the curve, and I love celebrating those new releases by having the opportunity to vote for them. Since I’ve been more involved in the book world over the last year or so, I’ve gotten pretty good at guessing what books might be nominated for certain categories and once the nominees are announced, I always try and read as many as I can before the end of the voting period. This year I have already read 25 books that were nominated in the first round (more will be added in the second round), so I had a pretty sweet head start and have already voted in several categories.

So my challenge for November is to read as many of the Goodreads Choice Award nominees as possible.

I tend to read a lot of books in the fiction, mystery, historical fiction, young adult, and YA Fantasy categories and then focus on some of the other categories in November. Since the nominees were announced I’ve read All Your Perfects by Colleen Hoover (romance) and For Every One by Jason Reynolds (poetry). I just started Everything’s Trash, But That’s Okay by Phoebe Robinson (humour) as an audiobook and I’m about halfway through Vicious by V.E. Schwab, with the intention of reading Vengeful, the sequel which was nominated in Sci-fi.

Once the winners are announced, I’ll follow up with a list of all the books I decide to vote for! In the meantime, I love hearing from you, so let me know if you’ve read any of the nominees? If so, what books did you love? Are there any nominees you’re planning to read this month?