Books read in July

Everyone and their mother had been raving about the movie Project Hail Mary, so I impulsively bought a half-price-Tuesday ticket and saw it one day in June after work. Reader, I loved it. It's so good, interesting and sad and beautiful and hopeful. PHM is streaming on Amazon Prime; if you haven't watched it, do. I then obviously signed up to read the ebook on Libby, and because the movie and consequently the book were so popular, the ebook wasn't available to read for like 16 weeks. I also really like the book. If you haven't heard of it, a middle school science teacher wakes up on a spaceship with no memories. He has to figure out why he's there and how to keep an extraterrestrial virus from dimming the sun. The book is much more technical and scientific than the movie, which I liked, but it is sadder because it goes more into what they did to the earth to try to stave off global cooling (even a few degrees cooler can cause famines and therefore mass death). Ryland is such a genius and has such staggering leaps of logic; I never would have come up with half of the ideas he thought of. The writing felt like an older middle grade/younger young adult novel about adventure or survival or something for boys. The science was above my knowledge (which is low; I'm a humanities major) but not too much; it was mostly followable. I feel like the book and the movie are really good companion pieces; reading the book makes me want to see the movie, and vice versa. Trigger warnings for injuries and blood and an instance of consent being ignored (nonsexual but it's a spoiler so I can't get into it). ★★★★ 

 

I was at my parents' home a lot for family reasons, so out of boredom I picked up and read one of my little brother's favorite books when he was a kid, Flat Stanley. I remember that we used to love reading about his adventures as a two-dimensional child. Upon rereading it, I was surprised by how proper and old-fashioned the writing felt. When I looked up the publication date, I found it was actually first published in 1964! That explains the language. The illustrations are modern (at the time of publication in the nineties), so I never picked up on that. It's a fun story, but there is one instance of sexism (Stanley is disgusted at having to dress up as a girl for plot reasons), and of course the medical inaccuracies (a child will not become flat after a bulletin board falls on him). My copy's illustrations had probably zero people of color, so it was clearly published before people cared about that. ★★★½

 

My last completed read of July was Mooncakes, an adorable YA graphic novel I picked up at the thrift store. Former childhood friends (one a deaf witch, one a nonbinary werewolf) reconnect as teens and have to figure out what is haunting the woods and how to defeat it, while figuring out how to be in each other's lives again. This was very cute and cozy, rather Ghibli-esque, but scarier (to my wuss sensibilities) than it first appeared. There is also a couple of adorable grandmothers. I recommend this to anyone who likes fantasy and graphic novels. The witch girl is Asian, Jewish, biracial I think, and a hearing aid user, while the werewolf kid uses they/them pronouns. TW for attempted kidnapping and forced demonic possession, ableism mentions, and a few instances of wrong pronouns usage, if memory serves. ★★★★