Tag Archives: Diverse Stacks, Diverse Lives

Series You Should Check out: To All The Boy’s I’ve Loved Before and P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han

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to all the boysNot that long ago, Barnes and Noble was having a sale on teen books, buy 2 for $20, basically you get one for free.  I kept seeing To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before pop up on my Tumblr dashboard that I decided to check it out.  Contemporary Fiction and Romance are not my usual go to reads but I do dabble in it from time to time and since both it and it’s sequel, P.S. I love You were apart of the sale, I decided to just go on get them both.  If they are as good as Tumblr insists then I should read them, right?  Tumblr would never steer me wrong.  Tumblr did introduce me to Rainbow Rowell after all.  It was a wise decision because once I finished the first, I had to read the second. Actually, I read the sequel in one day, it was good.  To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before and P.S. I Still I Love are both delightful.  True they are not really groundbreaking, besides it centers on a Korean American teenage girl but it’s sweet, kind and lovely.  Lara Jean is the middle Song sister.  Her older sister, Margot is about to go to College in Scotland and her younger sister Kitty is well a firecracker.  Their mother died unexpectedly when they were little so it’s just been the girls and their dad.  Margot has been their surrogate mother the last couple of years but with her going it’s now Lara Jean turn.  Lara Jean is a romantic in true sense of the word.  She is sixteen and is about to start her junior year in high school.  She’s never had a boyfriend but she’s been in love before.  More accurately she’s had crushes, five of them and she wrote all five letters and hid them in her hat box.  One day she finds out that her letters that were never meant to be seen were mailed out to the boys she loved before and well this is a problem.  One of those goes to Josh, Margot’s boyfriend that she just broke up with and Lara Jean had a crush on before they had started dating and those feelings for him start to return. Another one went to Peter a former friend from Middle School that was her first kiss and her ex-best friend, Genevieve’s recent ex-boyfriend.   Lara Jean and Peter decide to fake a relationship to save face with Josh and to make Genevieve jealous.  Of course in true Rom-Com fashion they end up falling in love for real and things get messy.

P.S. I still love youIn the sequel, Peter and Lara Jean decide to date for real and well it’s not as simple as it once was. Old insecurities come up and when another recipient of Lara Jean’s letters shows up it complicates things even more.  John Ambrose McClaren was also apart of Lara Jean’s middle school group of friends until he moved away.  Lara Jean goes from a reserved girl, who lived in her sister shadows to a more confident girl who knows what she wants but a lot happens for her to get there.  First she has to get over this idea that she is not worthy.  Peter is the golden boy.  He’s the boy that every girl in high school wants to be with and Genevieve is the beautiful blonde girl that you would expect to be with the golden boy.  Lara Jean is not popular or in the “in crowd”.  She constantly compares herself and her relationship to Genevieve to the point her jealously and insecurities take over.  It’s something that all of us have dealt with from time to time. This is Lara Jean’s first relationship and she is closer to her sisters then to anyone else, so it’s hard to open up and trust other people.

Now let’s talk about the guys. Josh, her sister ex-boyfriend and the literal boy next door.  He’s nice and caring but I felt he was more of the big brother type then anything else.  It’s a shame that their friendship never truly recovered after the break up and the letter but they did find a way to be friends again.  John Ambrose McClaren is nice.  He’s the kind of boy who would be perfect for Lara Jean.  He’s smart, sweet and unassuming but he doesn’t really enter the story until the second half of the second book so we don’t get to know him as well as the other two.  And finally Peter.  He comes at first as egotistical and vain and well there is some of that too but he’s also caring and observant. Of all the guys he’s the one who truly challenges Lara Jean the most.  He brings her out of her shell without forcing her to change or wanting her to be different.  I liked that Lara Jean had different suitors.  She didn’t fall for the first guy that noticed her, she realized she had options.  I think that’s important to girls to know that if a relationship doesn’t work out that they are going to be others too.  Another important element of the story is the double standard between boys and girls.  At one point of the story, a video goes viral of Lara Jean and Peter kissing in a hot tub. Typically, all the comments on the internet are about slut Lara Jean is even though she is doing nothing wrong.  As far as anyone knows, Lara Jean is only kissing her boyfriend.  Of course nothing is said about Peter.  When she goes back to school, teachers and counselors talk to Lara Jean about the video and how disappointed they are in her but no mention of Peter.  It’s sad how true this scenario is.

So in conclusion, I really loved these two books.  With beach season coming up soon, these are the perfect books to take on vacation with you to read and just mellow out.  Also for anyone participating in our reading challenge, this is a good choice for a book with an Asian American character.

P.S. If Jenny Han somehow reads this, can we have a spin-off series about Kitty?

Review: Half Lost by Sally Green

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Half Lost

I don’t even know where to begin with this review.  After finishing this book I said this on Twitter.

So yeah.  That ending.  I can’t say what it is because that would be an obvious spoiler but damn.  I’m still in tears thinking about it.  This series has been very surprising.  Sally Green did not hold back in the finally. It was chaotic and tense and painful.  I’m heartbroken for so many characters, Nathan and particular.  He is a boy who his whole life has been told he is bad for because of who he’s father is.  He is not and has never been.  Yes, he has done bad things. Some forgivable and some quite questionable but not a bad person.  He has from a young age been tortured and manipulated.  Used for one groups goals for another.  He had few people who truly cared about him and betrayed by one he truly cared about.  Only to find his true love, his soul mate.  The one person who truly believed in him and that is Gabriel.  I spent most of the first half, hoping that Nathan would look up an see Gabriel for who he really is and see that his love wasn’t just one way.  Gabriel questioned Nathan, he challenged him not because he didn’t believe in him but because he did.  He wanted what was best for Nathan and willing to go along with him no matter what.  It was a beautiful love story.  Nathan is not in a good place at the beginning of book but works his way through.  He may have thrown himself with the Alliance because it was best chance for revenge but by then end he understood that the Alliance was the best way to get his freedom.  As long as Soul and his White Witches continue to rule, he would always be watching his back.  So he does what no one else can.  He leads the fight.  War is hard.  There is always a price and the price Nathan paid may have been too much.  I know it was for me.  I felt a little broken like Nathan was by the end.  The ending was nothing buy heartbreaking and tragic but happy endings don’t always happen in real life either.

Half Lost unexpectedly helping me with my Diverse Lives, Diverse Stacks Reading Challenge by being a book with a Queer Character.  In the previous books, Gabriel’s feelings for Nathan were pretty clear but besides a kiss and some hints in Half Wild I didn’t think that Nathan would return Gabriel’s feelings.  I hope he would.  There was no confusion.  No pronouncement, I am Gay or Bi or Queer.  Just this was the person he wanted to be with and that was it.  I do believe that Nathan did love Annalisse but not in love with her.  She was first person outside his Grandma and siblings that treated him like he could be good or was good and he so desperately wanted but that wasn’t love.  There was nothing fake or forced about his relationship with Gabriel it was true.

Review: Captain Marvel Vol. 1 by Kelly Sue DeConnick

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Captain marvel I didn’t know much about Captain Marvel besides she is soon to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe. OK, maybe not that soon since she has yet to be cast and her movie keeps getting pushed back.  (Thanks a lot Spider-Man!) So, I thought I would give her a shot. If I’m going to start reading comics, I figured I might as well start with a character that I don’t already have a history with and start fresh.  Not to mention I wanted to read a story with a female lead.

At first I felt I was a little bit behind.  In the early chapters (or is it issues?) there were references of things that happened before the action of the story began.  A previous Avengers mission, for one, Captain Marvel’s ex and why she wasn’t ready to move forward with her relationship with Rhodey, aka Iron Patriot from the Iron Man movies.  So, I feel like someone needs to recommend me comics to read that might explain what happened before.  We open on Captain Marvel and Iron Patriot retrieving an unknown vessel that is hurtling towards New York.  Inside is an alien from a planet that has been destroyed.  Later that night, Iron Man finds Captain Marvel, or Carol Danvers, at home. Which is the Statue Liberty. That’s right, she lives in the Statue of Liberty.  As someone who lives in New York and knows how much rent is, I can’t even imagine what rent would be to live in the crown of the Statue of Liberty!  There has to be a story about how she got such a prime spot.  Just another perk of being an Avenger?  Anyway, Tony Stark has decided that they need an Avenger in space and Carol immediately volunteers. So, she and her cat go into space in take back the Alien, Tic, to her people.  The problem is that Tic’s people are refugees from a destroyed planet.  They were resettled on to an uninhabited planet but now they are getting sick so are being forced to leave and without their sick.  This doesn’t sit well with them. They have lost most of the their loved ones, they were not going to leave behind more.  While in Space, Carol meets up with the Guardians of the Galaxy.  You know, Peter Quill, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot.  This leads to one of the funniest moments between Rocket and Carol’s cat.  It also leads to the real problem of the story which surrounds Peter Quill’s father, who is not a good man.

Carol Danvers is a great character.  She’s smart, brave and little head strong (but who isn’t).  She believes in the missions of the Avengers and will go to great lengths to accomplish those goals, even putting her self on the line.  She’s also pretty funny. I like that.  This was a very fun book.  I’m looking forward to read more about her.  I’m also happy because this helps my Diverse Stacks, Diverse Lives reading challenge.  I’ll admit, I’m a little behind.

 

This Month in Reality: Tidying Up

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When I get home tonight I’m going to take off my shoes and thank them (they are super cute and have done the hard work of keeping my feet out of the mud today). My wallet, essential oils bag (yes, I’m that kind of dirty hippie that brings her own aroma therapy with her everywhere she goes), my planner and the notebook I always carry with me will be taken out of my purse and I will thank them and put them in their new spots. I will hang my purse up and thank it. Then, I will feed my hungry, hungry monsters. Finally, I’ll try not to feel silly for expressing gratitude to inanimate objects. Hey, you know how I said I was done reading self-help books? Well, I lied to both of us. I read The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. All of this thanking is Kondo’s idea. I’m down with expressing gratitude as a regular practice. It’s allegedly good for you. Thanking things isn’t a problem. (It feels weird, but I do all kinds of weird things so what is one more?)

So, I read this book and now I feel like I need to divest myself of half of my possessions. Which, on the whole, is probably not a bad thing. I am kind of a pack rat so I hang onto things longer than I need to. (And, I’m on the job market expecting that a move is in my future if I want to stay in my field, so having fewer things to move would be pretty awesome.)

The Konmari method seems to work as follows: Go through all your possessions one category at a time and get rid of anything you don’t need. Don’t move it to your Mom’s. Don’t put it in storage. Straight up give it away or sell it or throw it away. No longer have it within your reach. Keep the stuff that makes you happy. Not the stuff you feel like you should keep, not the stuff that you have “just in case”. Just the stuff that makes you happy. If you use your stuff as a barrier between you and the world to keep you safe, this is going to be an awful process. However, she gives you something to deal with the anxiety-inducing trash-fest. She wants you to start by thinking about what you want from life. How do you want to be seen? How do you see yourself? What are trying to radiate? How does your space reflect that? So, the life-changing art of tidying up is not just about divesting yourself of possessions. It is also about divesting yourself of ideas, thoughts, and patterns that no longer serve you.

In short, this is going to be a rough ride.

I think this is a great way to approach tidying up your space and your life. But, I also think that confronting your feelings and thought patterns is rough work and that it might be easier when you have Kondo there in the room with you. So, I recommend this book. It was an interesting read. But, if you’re going to use the Konmari method to get rid of stuff in your life you may also want to be in therapy or keep a journal of the process so you can work out your feelings as you throw out your stuff.

 

 

This book counts as my book by an Asian author in the Diverse Stacks, Diverse Lives Reading Challenge.