Book Review: Pride: A Pride & Prejudice Remix by Ibi Zoboi

I love Jane Austen's books and I love retellings, so I bought this book (probably at Barnes & Noble). It sat on my Austen shelf for years until I read it last week for Black History Month. Book summary:

Zuri Benitez has pride. Brooklyn pride, family pride, and pride in her Afro-Latino roots. But pride might not be enough to save her rapidly gentrifying neighborhood from becoming unrecognizable.

When the wealthy Darcy family moves in across the street, Zuri wants nothing to do with their two teenage sons, even as her older sister, Janae, starts to fall for the charming Ainsley. She especially can’t stand the judgmental and arrogant Darius. Yet as Zuri and Darius are forced to find common ground, their initial dislike shifts into an unexpected understanding.

But with four wild sisters pulling her in different directions, cute boy Warren vying for her attention, and college applications hovering on the horizon, Zuri fights to find her place in Bushwick’s changing landscape, or lose it all.

I really liked this book. I loved picking up on all the twists on the original story (Benitez = Bennet, Charlize = Charlotte, Colin = Mr. Collins). It's actually a pretty close retelling, despite the modern Brooklyn setting. Zuri, who is Dominican and Haitian American, has such a strong, confident voice. She has dreams and goals and writes slam poetry. It was soul-affirming to have a(n Afro)latine protagonist and family star in this book; they all loved each other and were there for each other no matter what. I also loved the Madrina character, who as far as I can tell takes the role of the Bennets' aunt character. She's a warm and loving Boricua Santeria priestess who counsels Zuri on her problems. I didn't think Darius had the same character arc as Mr. Darcy, as his and Zuri's interactions weren't the same as Mr. Darcy's and Lizzie's. He just chilled out some and fixed his face. The first person present tense this book is written in will also put some readers off, but it does keep us firmly in Zuri's viewpoint as she is the narrator. Anyway, I really liked this book and you should read it. 

Cover notes: Please try to find a big, hi-res image of this book cover, because it is gorgeous. It's a tactile bronze scrollwork deal with flowers and vines and such, with the title being spray-painted across. Just lovely. My hardcover has the Darius and Zuri bust portraits facing each other in the endpapers too. 

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: February 23-24
From: probably Barnes & Noble
Status: tentatively keep

Trigger warnings for this book: a minor's nudes are leaked by an older boy who groomed her, said older boy attempts to groom another young teenaged girl, alcohol use by minors, drunkenness, partying, physical fight, drug dealing mentions, racism mentions, classism, implied colorism, implied respectability politics, teens sneak out of the house to attend parties, police show up briefly

Book Review: Starry River of the Sky by Grace Lin

I bought Starry River of the Sky from the Dollar Store because of the gorgeous purple cover and because I love kids' fantasy books, plus this one is diverse and has folklore I'm unfamiliar with. Here is the B&N summary:

The moon is missing from the remote Village of Clear Sky, but only a young boy named Rendi seems to notice! Rendi has run away from home and is now working as a chore boy at the village inn. He can't help but notice the village's peculiar inhabitants and their problems.

But one day, a mysterious lady arrives at the Inn with the gift of storytelling, and slowly transforms the villagers and Rendi himself. As she tells more stories and the days pass in the Village of Clear Sky, Rendi begins to realize that perhaps it is his own story that holds the answers to all those questions.

The main story is told from Rendi's viewpoint, with various characters telling stories to one another. The accompanying artwork and the gorgeous cover art is all done by the author, Grace Lin, herself! I enjoyed reading the new to me folktales and piecing together Rendi's and the villagers' stories. This story would be a great one to read to kids. The chapters are short and easy to read, as the reading level is for kids 8-12 years old (I would have been able to read this book at 7). I have not read any other books by Grace Lin, but I plan to. It must be difficult to make one's writing lyrical when writing for children, but she does it. This book reminded me a bit of Dragonwings by Laurence Yep, as it's also about an angry, far from home Chinese boy in the "real world" who finds himself dealing with mythological figures. This book also discusses loss, grief, and big feelings. I love fairytales, folklore, mythology, and the moon, and if you do too, read this book. 

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: February 15
From: Dollar Store
Status: give away

Trigger warnings for this book: attempted kidnapping, child tied up and threatened with death and violence, animal maimed by accident, verbally abusive father, violence and killing mentions in stories, adults are drugged with poisoned wine but recover, death mentions, theft, wine mentions (several), child teases/bullies younger child, period-typical sexism, angry child with attitude problems, child runs away

Book (and Show) Review: All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

Spoilers for the current show All Creatures Great and Small (last couple paragraphs)

As you know, I am an enthusiastic consumer of British period pieces, and when I heard about the new TV series All Creatures Great and Small (ACGAS), I immediately knew I would watch it, as I loved the James Herriot books as a kid. Watching the show made me want to reread the books, so here we are. 

For those of you who don't know about this series, it's the slightly fictionalized memoirs of a veterinarian in Yorkshire, England (I think it's a county? or series of counties idk) in the 1930s. They're very funny and full of amazing, gross animal facts and illnesses and treatments. The title is chosen, for obvious reasons, from a hymn. ACGAS is actually the second line, so the second book in the series has the first line in the hymn, the third book has the third line, and so on. Here's the summary of the first book from Barnes & Noble: 

For over forty years, generations of readers have thrilled to Herriot's marvelous tales, deep love of life, and extraordinary storytelling abilities. For decades, Herriot roamed the remote, beautiful Yorkshire Dales, treating every patient that came his way from smallest to largest, and observing animals and humans alike with his keen, loving eye.

In All Creatures Great and Small, we meet the young Herriot as he takes up his calling and discovers that the realities of veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire are very different from the sterile setting of veterinary school. Some visits are heart-wrenchingly difficult, such as one to an old man in the village whose very ill dog is his only friend and companion, some are lighthearted and fun, such as Herriot's periodic visits to the overfed and pampered Pekinese Tricki Woo who throws parties and has his own stationery, and yet others are inspirational and enlightening, such as Herriot's recollections of poor farmers who will scrape their meager earnings together to be able to get proper care for their working animals. From seeing to his patients in the depths of winter on the remotest homesteads to dealing with uncooperative owners and critically ill animals, Herriot discovers the wondrous variety and never-ending challenges of veterinary practice as his humor, compassion, and love of the animal world shine forth.

I enjoyed reading this, of course. I think that this first book, ACGAS, is covered by the first two seasons of the current adaptation. They of course fleshed out the characters (Mrs. Hall, the housekeeper, especially) and swapped some things around (in the show, Tristan gets kicked in the leg by a horse, whereas it's James that gets kicked in the leg in the book). They also made the strange choice of making Siegfried, James's boss, a lonely widower in his 40s who is afraid to get back into the dating world. In the book he's in his early thirties and is a total ladies' man. I guess the series thought it'd be better to have Tristan be the ladies' man. He is one in the book, and he's also depicted as being really smart, which doesn't get really depicted much in the show (television deals in absolutes). 

I really like Helen (James's eventual wife)'s character in the show, although of course they made her more spunky. She did wear trousers in the book a lot, and consequently in the show, which I thought was cool. Helen was depicted in the book as being this nice, perfect daughter who didn't talk much but served her dad and doted on him. They made the dad all gruff and kind of scary in the show, while he was all quiet and small in the book. They kept Helen's little sister, expanding her role (great kid actor. She and Helen really look related), but for some reason excised her little brother. They turned a throwaway comment in the book about Helen's dad maybe wanting her to marry his rich friend's son into a whole love triangle, of course, even going so far as to have Helen leave him at the altar. They've also left out the domineering secretary, but maybe they'll add her in season 3. Tricki Woo remains my favorite, although his mom needs her head checked. Anyway, check out the show! It's a sweet, gentle British dramedy (fairly light on the drama).

Score: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Read in: February 12-13
From: gift, I think
Format: hardcover
Status: keeping at my parents' house, where it has been all along

Trigger warnings for this book: animal death; human death mention; animals injured, in pain and suffering; gross medical descriptions such as body fluid mentions, organs, etc.; alcohol and drunkenness (lots of mentions), animal mistreatment out of misguided love, period-typical sexism, poverty, pipe smoking I think

January 2022 books

 'Twas a picture book-heavy reading list this month. I am very firmly a mood reader, so I never set my reading list ahead of time. These were mostly lying around the house.

Finding Narnia: The Story of C.S. Lewis and His Brother Warnie is the first book I read this year. As you know, I collect books about Narnia and C.S. Lewis (and by him). This one is a picture book biography by Caroline McAlister and illustrated by Jessica Lanan. It briefly tells the big-picture, broad-strokes story of C.S. Lewis's imaginative, creative, and physical life, from his childhood to his middle age (when he wrote The Chronicles of Narnia). It focuses a bit more on young Jack and Warnie's fantasy kingdoms that they made up, and how they joined them so they could play together. I learned a few things, such as that Warnie was the one who typed the manuscripts of The Chronicles of Narnia, which CSL handwrote! The illustrations appear to be watercolor, and I was pleasantly surprised to find an illustrator's note after the story where Jessica Lanan wrote about going to these places in Lewis's life (the Kilns, Oxford, etc.) and how she patterned places and objects to look like the real thing. She includes endnotes about liberties she took (for example, she painted the wardrobe that inspired THE wardrobe lighter than the one in real life, in order to show off the carved details). I appreciated this, and the illustrator's notes made me like this book even more. This book was a real treat, and CSL fans will love it. It deals with Narnia less than the title suggests, but Narnia fans will like this too, I think. I'm not sure how kids will like it past Jack & Warnie's childhoods. 4.5 out of 5 stars, keeping obviously. Source: Book Outlet. Trigger warnings for this book: death, war mentions, wound mention, grief mention, atheism and Christianity

 

 

Next up was the book itself by the man himself, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe! This is obviously a reread for me; I decided to reread the entire series this year since I haven't in quite a while. It was actually surprisingly difficult for me to read this; for some reason I could not stop thinking of reading this book aloud *while* reading it and of the voices I'd give each of the characters, often doing so. It kept taking me out of the story. I enjoyed it, of course. It strikes me each time I read a book I loved as a child that when I revisit it, the story is over too quickly, and it is no longer as deep and magical and mystical as I found it as a child. Now I just think of me reading it out loud to children myself. Such is growing up, I suppose. What I'm going to do next is read all of Tor's blog entries on LWW for the Great Narnia Re-Read and see what the author had to say about it. I'm going to read a book a month this way. I of course own multiple copies of the Narnia books; I read the full-color one (they added color to Pauline Baynes's illustrations). 4.5 stars, permanent collection. Source: thrift store I think. Trigger warnings for this book: war, death, murder, threats of the above, blood, spit, violent mob (lynching?), scary fantastical creatures, evil magic and enchantment, magic referred to as dark or light which we now know is racist, child endangerment, child soldiers, children using weapons, suspense (mostly kid-friendly)

After that I read The Mystery of the Venus Island Fetish by Tim Flannery, which is a historical fiction/mystery novel set in Australia and partially the Venus Islands in the 1930s. This young museum anthropologist guy goes to live with the Venus Island people for five years, then has to readjust to white Australian life and keep the museum director happy while finding out what happened to missing museum curators. He suspects the VIF has something to do with it (see title). He also has to try to win back his girlfriend and would-be fiancee, who flipped out when he gave her a penile love token as a proposal. This had that fun retro vibe I look for in comic early twentieth century lit, but it was weighed down by period-typical racism towards Aboriginals and Venus Islanders (and Italian immigrants). The main guy's roommate sets out to learn about Australia's bloody, horrible colonial past (it's much like America's with the genocide and child murder, etc.). It's good that the author didn't shy away from that and just pretend colonial Australia was hunky dory, but it did make this a much more difficult read than I was anticipating. The fact that so much of museums' historical collections are stolen from indigenous and non-European/Western people  is also included in this book (the VIF is stolen). Personally, we spent way too much time with the roommate and the rich museum donor (sort of a Trump type); it didn't really add anything to the story. I wish we'd spent more time with the Venus Islanders; they were cool. The ending was kind of rushed and weird? I also didn't get the literary device of pretending the story was found in a stuffed monkey in the Sydney museum; it also didn't add anything to it. I did like reading a book from Australia; usually everything I read is from the US or England. I did overall enjoy this (minus the awful colonial racism parts). 3.5 stars. Source: Dollar Tree. Trigger warnings: all the awful colonial racist violence I mentioned, murder (including of children), violence, racism, genocide, candid descriptions of body parts and bones from dead people and animals, cultural insensitivity and theft of "foreign" items for the museum, racist evolutionary ideas, inappropriate museum and archival/preservation practices

 

 I went back to children's lit after this, reading two different picture books about libraries and books.

 

The Night Library by David Zeltser, illustrated by Raul Colón. This cute picture book has one of the famous New York Public Library lion statues coming to life at night and taking a little boy who doesn't like books to discover the magic of the public library. I liked the dreaminess of this one and its art. This is the sort of book I'd have pored over and loved as a child. Recommended for both children and adults, although if you read a lot like I do, the story is not unique. It also feels more like it should be a short film than a book. Supposedly the boy is latino; I did not pick up on that. Bonus diversity points, I guess? It was probably Raul Colón's doing. 3.5 stars, probably keeping. Source: Book Outlet. Trigger warnings: can't think of any. Might make children think lions are safe to ride? They might also start throwing library books around to make them fly

Waiting for the Biblioburro by Monica Brown, illustrated by John Parra. This book is about a little girl in Colombia who has only one book and dreams of more. Luckily, her town is visited one day by the Biblioburro, a traveling library on the backs of two burros named Alfa and Beto (I cry. Get it, alfabeto? Alphabet?). The bright, colorful, naive-ish Latin American-inspired illustrations are nice to look at. The librarian with the Biblioburro is real; this is based on a true story. I enjoyed this, and it's nice to see a library-related picture book that is from Latin America. Both author and illustrator are latines. 3.5 stars, probably keeping. Source: Book Outlet. Trigger warnings: hinted-at poverty, hinted-at educational neglect of children, suggested parentification of child, can't really think of anything else

Books Read in 2021

• Total books read during this year: 27
• Total books that I started to read but didn't finish: 1
  
• physical books read: 27
• ebooks read: 0
• physical books started but unfinished: 1
• ebooks started but unfinished: 0
• Library books read: 0
  
• Library books started but unread: 0
• Books I liked: 15
• Books I loved: 5
  
• Books I hated: 1
  
• Books I disliked or found meh: 3
• Books I felt neutral about: 2
  
• Books I felt strongly about but can't classify as love or hate: 2
  
• Books given away: I think 0, although I do have piles of books I want to get rid of
• Books purchased: This year BookRiot included a page in the reading log google sheet for keeping track of book purchases, which is how I know I bought 128 books this year 😑
  
• #1 most loved book this year: probably Under the Tuscan Sun
  
• #1 most hated book this year: She's Come Undone

 I'm actually kind of really proud of all the reading I did this year. We were back in person at work for fall quarter, so I was able to read several books while sitting at the reference desk. In 2020 I read 22 books, and in 2019 I read 25. I'm back to pre-pandemic reading levels!

As always, a thousand blessings on BookRiot's reading lot google sheet and the people who made it! Here are some charts it automatically compiled of my reading stats:

 

Here you can see that my pandemic reading block lasted until June. 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, while I read quite a few of my purchased and backlog books, I regressed in terms of reading diversely. Hopefully this year will be better!

December books

As you know, I've been on a cozy mystery kick lately, so I picked up The Glass Is Always Greener by Tamar Myers from the same thrift store I got my Agatha Christie books from (it also cost 50 cents). It's a Den of Antiquity novel, which is a series of cozy mysteries about a mystery-solving antiques dealer in the Southeast. (I refuse to call it the South; that would actually be the bottom third/half of the US. The south of the eastern part of the US should be called the Southeast, to be correct.) That sounded intriguing to me, as I like antique shops and cozy mysteries. Read TGIAG's synopsis here. Anyway, this is the type of book whose calling card is EXTREME ZANINESS. I was choking on it. Everyone is very South(east)ern and insane. I couldn't keep up with all the characters and their weird names and who they were to each other. Barnes & Noble says this was the last book in the series (there were 16?!?!), but I should still not be this lost. With a series this big, a newbie should be able to pick up any book and be able to keep up. The way Abby (the antiques dealer/mystery solver and narrator) described people's physical appearances was weird. Her petiteness (she's 4'7") and that of her mother was remarked upon way too often. The murder wasn't really explained that thoroughly, and even though it's the last? book of the series, it ends on a cliffhanger. I will not be keeping this book and I won't be reading the others in the series. 

Cover notes: The cover has nothing to do with the book at all. I don't think the artist read any of it. Abby's cat (who doesn't even come into the story at all) is shown in front of a broken window of green glass. The green glass in the story is not that of a window. I mean come on.

Trigger warnings: murder, death, corpse found in a freezer near food, stabbing mention, poison mention, homophobia, racist/transphobic character, lots of food talk, touching without consent, characters ignore boundaries

 

 

Next was a Savers find, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy by Frances Mayes, another Southeasterner. Mayes and her boyfriend Ed purchase and restore an old Tuscan farmhouse, and learn how to live and eat in Italy. The book is based on the journals she kept while doing this. Mayes was the head of Creative Writing at the university where she works, so of course this book was written beautifully. Her voice is soothing yet intelligent and interesting, and I liked seeing everything through her eyes. She's one of those writers who is familiar with all sorts of literary and historical sources/works and casually mentions what they say about what she's talking about at the moment (Virgil is mentioned the most). My mouth watered reading about the food they cooked and ate there in Italy. At least once in my life, I need to eat at a dinner party in Italy, surrounded by friends, conversation, laughter, and delicious food. She also talks about the churches, architecture, history, art, etc. of the places she and Ed visited there. It made me long to go back to Tuscany, and while I only lived there a month, I feel like she really captured its essence and light. The book also includes some recipes! Highly recommended, and guaranteed to inspire both wanderlust and hunger. 4.5/5 stars because I didn't want it to end lol

Trigger warnings: corpses of human and animals described, death, car accident(s), sex mentions, some Ugly Americanism, lots and lots of food and cooking talk 

 

 

The last book I read in December was The Reading Life: The Joy of Seeing New Worlds Through Others' Eyes by C.S. Lewis, which is a compilation of things CSL wrote about reading and books. I had wanted it for ages and asked for it for Christmas. It was a fairly quick and enjoyable read, as of course I love CSL and books and reading. It made me want to read his books again. Highly recommended if you're a CSL fan and/or love books about reading. I cannot think of any trigger warnings, although he is scornful of people who only read "the right" and "modern" things (aka nonintellectuals). That does come off as a bit classist. All in all, I really enjoyed this book and am glad I asked for it for Christmas. 4.5/5 stars

I also reread Christmas with Anne, as I do every holiday season.

Rest of November books

I found another Agatha Christie novel I'd missed the first time around at the thrift store (or maybe it had just been donated) and bought it, also for fifty cents. Cat Among Pigeons is another Hercule Poirot novel. The synopsis and blurbs on the book cover don't mention this at all, so it was a delightful surprise when he showed up like 3/4 of the way through the book. The book starts off with an Arab prince and his English pilot friend trying to hide some jewels during a revolution in the Middle East, than changes to an exclusive girls' academy in England where murders keep happening. At first the two stories seem very different, then you see how they connect. I figured out where the jewels were hidden like 1/3 of the way through the book, if that. It was pretty obvious. The first teacher who got murdered was totally a lesbian, and she was written to be really nosy and annoying with poor social skills (also she was the gym teacher lmao). There was also a subplot with the prince's cousin, who also went to the academy. I enjoyed this one, although the ending made me a bit sad. 3.5 stars, giving away. Trigger warnings: murder, guns, racism, alcoholic minor character, adult male character flirts with teenage girls (for spy reasons, but still)

I picked up The Fifth Avenue Story Society by Rachel Hauck at Savers because it sounded interesting (synopsis here). You know I'm all about stories set in or about libraries, and the story society sounded intriguing. It was to my chagrin that I quickly realized the Fifth Avenue library in New York City barely figured into the story at all, and that this book turned out to be a Christian novel. 

Five people are sent an invitation to the Fifth Avenue Story Society but don't know why. They decide to meet every week to find out who sent the invitations and why and become friends. Since this is a Christian novel, things end in romance and God-finding. While I found the Christian stuff to be heavy-handed, I found the emotions and problems faced by the members interesting and handled well. The characters endure true grief and pain, and while they didn't feel real to me, I was interested in their stories and wanted to know what happened to them. My favorite (aka least sad) storyline was Coral's; her cosmetics company was going under, and it was resolved in a very satisfying way. True to form, I also liked Jett's author storyline: his favorite author might be a fraud, and he finds an unpublished manuscript in the Fifth Avenue library that contains the truth. The characters' secrets, ranked from most obvious to least obvious: why Coral left her fiancé, why Jett felt guilty about his brother's death, why Chuck lost custody of his kids, Lexa's relationship and connection issues, and Sam's short marriage to his wife. Of all of them, I never suspected anything about Sam's story. I did think he was so insistent on writing his memoir because he had Alzheimer's. There is a stereotypical mysterious librarian who is probably the one who invited them all to the Society; the secret of how and why is not revealed, and it's hinted that the librarian is an angel. Very annoying. Anyway, I enjoyed this well enough, even though all the non-elderly characters are gorgeous and attractive (do not even get me started on the "Nebraska boy"). 3 stars, giving away. Trigger warnings: deaths, violence mentions, gun mention, child endangerment mention, prison, parental abandonment, grief, anger, drug addiction/abuse and alcoholism mentions

How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen was sourced from the same thrift store as CAtP. It's a short, slim little volume of collected essays on the author's life as a reader, her thoughts on reading, and her favorite books (including lists of book recommendations from her and her friends). I read and liked Quindlen's columns in the newspaper when I was younger and remember her to be a relatable, open, and intelligent writer. If you're a book person, you're probably familiar with this famous quote from this book: "Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home." Don't you just love that? I very much enjoyed this book, although the books she mentions and lists as recommendations are very white and straight. I highly recommend reading this book if you're a book lover. 4.5 stars because I wish it were longer! I'm keeping this one. Trigger warnings: mentions of sex, virginity, birth control, probably trigger-y stuff from books' plots mentioned

Book review: The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason

The first book I read in November was The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason. It's a bibliomystery and is about two friends at Princeton trying to figure out the codes and secrets held in a mysterious Renaissance book, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphilli (which is real!). Murders start happening, and they start searching for clues for those too. They have to find all the answers before their dissertation is stolen or they're kicked out of Princeton. Read the official synopsis here.

The authors are two best friends who also both went to Princeton, so the setting felt real and lived in. The characters felt a bit stiff and formal, more like adults in their late twenties and early thirties than college students, but I was invested in them and their friendships. This may be because the book is set in 1999, but I don't think that would make the characters more mature. I liked the friendships between the four young men. I liked how Tom and Paul's friends helped with the riddles and clues; their med student friend helped with the medicine stuff, and Tom's girlfriend helped with riddles that had to do with her own major. The plot with the Tom and his girlfriend Katie was interesting enough, and she did feel mostly like a fleshed-out character, but I would have rather spent more time with the book. 

The HP incunabulum and its history was my favorite part, of course; there were so many things that I learned about in rare books classes (Aldus Manutius!) and things about Italian renaissance history, science and art (Florence! the Bonfire of the Vanities!).  The cryptology stuff was fascinating, with hidden messages encoded in the text which contained riddles, with the numerical code to the next riddle contained in each answer. The rule of four refers to the last numeric code needed to detect the book's hidden messages. One riddle had to do with who gave Moses his horns, which Paul did not get immediately. I call bull on this; everyone who tangentially knows anything about renaissance art and the Bible knows that Moses has horns in Michelangelo's statue of him because of a mistranslation (rays and horns being the same word). Paul, who knows Italian and Latin and basically everything there is to know about Renaissance Italy and its art, history, you name it, would have picked up on this right away. Paul says in the book that Michelangelo (or Jerome?) depicted Moses with horns because he felt only God should have glory radiating from His face, but I don't think that's true. 

The Hypnerotomachia Poliphilli wove its way through Tom and Paul's lives and the lives of Tom's father and his friends, who became Paul's advisors and mentors. The HP was a source of life-long obsession to these men, and it impacted their relationships with their partners and each other. Tom's father being obsessed with the HP damaged his relationship with his wife and son, while Tom's obsession with the HP strained his relationship with his girlfriend. Tom's father and his friends echoed Tom and his friends. This book deals with loss, obsession, academia, friendship, depression, relationships, and more. It was very sad but very fascinating. I loved the HP parts but I don't think I'll reread or keep this one. It stayed with me for a while. 

Score: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Read in: November 2-3
From: the thrift store?
Format: paperback
Status: giving away

Trigger warnings for this book: murder, death (various methods, some of them violent), car crash, blood, semi-graphic major injury, other injuries requiring hospital stays, alcohol overuse, obsession, depression, sex, mentioned nudity, sexism/misogyny, privileged Princeton pigs