Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

 

My reading time is still woefully short, but I did manage to finish Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust and wanted to write a little bit about it.

I didn't realize this as I was starting, but this novel is a Snow White retelling, and it's a very good one. It centers around the relationship between a teen princess named Lynet and her stepmother Mina. Both of these women have magical origins. Lynet was crafted from snow by a magician in the image of her dead mother and Mina, born with a weak heart, has a magical glass replacement heart. Mina is the only mother Lynet has ever known, and they were quite close as she was growing up. When the king of their country dies, however, they become torn apart in a conflict over who will rule.

That summary is leaving quite a bit out, because this novel was surprisingly rich. I really enjoyed how Bashardoust took some of the elements of the classic Snow White tale and wove them into a story that was completely different and new. I also really liked how it focused on the mother and daughter relationship between Mina and Lynet rather than a romantic storyline. Those elements were present, but they took a backseat to the complicated dynamics between mother and daughter. This story has a lot to say about love, loyalty, and family--more than you would think you'd find in a young adult novel. The world building, magic system, and secondary characters were similarly complex and interesting. I was very engaged the whole time I was reading, even if my lack of free time made my progress a lot slower than I wanted.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable and memorable read. I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in this genre.

2024 Reading Challenges Tally:

Goodreads Reading Challenge: 4/30

Clear the Shelves 2024: 4

Reading Roundup

  

The months have been slipping by at an alarming pace, but I'm still here and sometimes I'm even reading. I managed to finish two books in a very disjointed fashion over the past three months and I'm most of the way through a third. I have no time to sit and write about them with my classes and job going into overdrive, so I thought I'd write a thoughts on them here.

I read Once and Future by A.R. Capetta. This was a science fiction retelling of the King Arthur legend staring a female protagonist. It was an okay read. There was great representation and diversity among the characters and the updated setting was an interesting take on the classic tale. I wasn't blown away by it, however. I enjoyed it well enough while I was reading, but I don't think it will stick in my mind as time goes on. I would give this one 3/5 stars.

After that, I moved onto Conversion by Katherine Howe. This novel was a historical fiction story about the Salem Witch Trials, but not in the usual sense of the genre. It alternated chapters about the trials of the 1690s with chapters set in modern times about a group of girls at a private prep school that fall mysteriously ill with strange symptoms. The experiences of the two groups mirror each other in interesting ways as the stories go on. Howe examines themes ranging from the desires of young women to be heard to how easy it can be to get swept up in the excitement of a scandal. I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It was a new way to look at an old historical event and make it relevant to some of the troubles young girls struggle with today. I gave this one 4/5 stars.  

I'm afraid this is all I have time for now. I am hoping to return to blogging more normally once things settle down a bit. 

2024 Reading Challenges Tally:

Goodreads Reading Challenge: 3/30

Clear the Shelves 2024: 3

The Adventures of Captain Hatteras by Jules Verne

 

For the ninth year in a row, I started off my new year of reading with a Jules Verne novel. I began reading his Extraordinary Voyages series in order last year after making my way through his most famous works. The Adventures of Captain Hatteras is the second book in the series, right after Five Weeks in a Balloon, which I read as my first book of 2023. I didn't have any idea what the story was about before I got started, but I was ready to kick of 2024 with a new adventure. As such, I got nice and cozy with a cup of coffee and got started.

**This review will contain spoilers for the whole story - it's very hard to discuss the plot without them!** 

The Adventures of Captain Hatters is composed of two parts. Part One is about Captain Hatteras' dangerous and daring 1861 expedition to the North Pole. He believes that the Pole will be surrounded by an open ocean and will stop at nothing to be the first to discover it and bring glory to England. This won't be his first try at the voyage, however. His past attempts were unsuccessful and ended in the loss of all of his crew. As a results, people aren't exactly rushing to sign up for his latest trip. To solve this problem, he disguises himself and prepares for the trip under a pseudonym. He engages the services of a Commander Shandon to act in his stead, passes him orders by letter, and then joins his own crew as a deckhand when everything is ready. He reveals himself only when it is too late for the ship to turn back and formally takes on his role as captain. The crew is understandably angry about this, but he is temporarily able to maintain his authority with the promise of a big payday for everyone once the North Pole is reached. He does have a few men on the ship that are loyal to him, including the brilliant Dr. Clawbonny, who is both the ship's doctor and resident scientific expert, but most of the voyage is extremely tense, with the crew frequently considering mutiny. 

Things do not go smoothly on the voyage. The ship is constantly in danger of being trapped or crushed by icebergs, the temperature is continually dropping, and the storms are violent and dangerous. All these problems increase in intensity as the winter approaches. There are many times where turning around or finding a safe place to stop for the winter would have been the safest course, but Hatteras is unwilling to stop exploring for any reason and continues forward. He does not listen to the concerns of his crew and burns through the ship's supply of coal at a speed most consider to be imprudent. Eventually, his supplies run out and the icebergs hem him along a frozen coast. He is forced to stop for the winter. With the need for coal becoming urgent, he is forced to mount a small trip over the ice to try finding an old supply cache left along these shores by previous explorers. He sets out with a few men, but is unable to find anything useful. When he returns, he discovers that the crew he left behind have finally mutinied. They have taken the smaller boat they were carrying and are attempting to go back to England. They burned the remains of Hatteras' ship in anger, leaving him and his four remaining loyal men with nothing.

Part Two is about Captain Hatteras and his few remaining friends trying to survive alone in the Arctic. Luckily for him, Dr. Clawbonny is among the group, and his intelligence helps the men establish a dwelling the spend the winter in. They run into trouble with bears, cold, and supplies, but after finding an old shipwreck to salvage supplies from, they are able to get along comfortably enough until winter ends and the seas start to open up again. Incredibly, Hatteras still wants to continue his journey to the North Pole and is able to get the rest of his very small crew to agree. They build a boat out of the old shipwreck and continue northwards. Eventually, they do reach their destination and find that the North Pole is situated in the middle of an active volcano sitting in the middle of an open ocean. Hatteras, mad with the desire to plant his English boot on the exact location of the North Pole, breaks away from the group, runs up the volcano, and throws himself into it. He somehow survives this, but is driven insane by the experience and never speaks another word. His friends recover his body, manage to make it home to England, and place him in an asylum where he spends the rest of his days always attempting to walk to the north.

This book was wild, and pretty different from the other Jules Verne books I have read so far. There was still a grand adventure, of course, and lots of scientific information from the time period. It was the characters that were a bit unusual for me, especially Captain Hatteras. I'm used to Jules Verne protagonists being generally faultless. They are smart, brave, and the kinds of leaders that men follow to the ends of the earth. Hatteras was...not that. He was obsessive, deceptive, and quite careless with human life. Most of his crew was mad at him for the duration of part one of the story, and for very good reasons. However, their mutiny was portrayed negatively, and it is eventually revealed that they fail in their mission to return to England and end up cannibalizing each other. So, as a reader, as I supposed to feel like they should have continued following Hatteras, even though he was clearly completely unconcerned with their welfare? The characters that stick by him, including the smartest character, Doctor Clawbonny, view him as an admirable leader and the way he is written in the story makes it clear that I am supposed to view him similarly, but I had a hard time doing that. Much like Commander Shandon, I never got over his initial deception of the crew. I suppose there is something grand and dignified in the way he never gave up on his goal, but that goal led him to jump into an active volcano and then drove him insane. I'm not sure that's a win.

However, the fact that Hatteras was an unusual character kept me very engaged in the story. I honestly had no idea what this man would do next and I kept turning the pages to find out. Both the sailing and survival sections of the novel were interesting, with lots of dangers for the characters to overcome. Some of this was somewhat realistic and some was not. My favorite unrealistic bit was when a group of polar bears teamed up to try and deliberately suffocate Hatteras and his buddies by piling snow all over their shelter. Dr. Clawbonny eventually figures out a way to blow up the bears using some gunpowder. The whole sequence was amazing. Of course, being a Jules Verne novel, there were several sections of scientific and historical information that dragged on a bit too long, but those parts weren't bad to get through and didn't take away from the story too much. The pacing was actually better than a lot of other Verne novels I've read in the past. The accuracy was not great, but as usual, it was correct for its time. The writing itself was nice as well. This was a book set in the Arctic and it felt cold. It was the perfect read for winter.  

Overall, The Adventures of Captain Hatteras was a pretty good time. It wasn't my favorite Verne novel, but it was a fun (and strange) one. I would place it solidly in the middle of the pack out of what I have read from him so far. It was most definitely a grand adventure and a great way to start off what will hopefully be a productive year of reading.

2024 Reading Challenges Tally:

Goodreads Reading Challenge: 1/30

Clear the Shelves 2024: 0

Clear the Shelves 2024

 

Once again, I'm setting the modest goal of trying to read from my own shelves throughout 2024. I still have several hundred books on my TBR pile that I want to be able to read and donate. There's not an official number of books I'm trying to get through this year, but I would like to do better than I did in 2023, which would mean reading at least 14. I will keep track of the titles I finish here on this post.

1.

Reading Resolutions: 2024

 

Much like last year, 2024 is not destined to be a productive reading year for me. I just have too much going on with graduate school. However, I do want to aim a little higher than last year. Having a year without a lot of reading has made me miss it terribly. It really is something I need to make more time for, in spite of my busy schedule. 

I'm still going to keep my goals modest, because I want to be realistic. Once again, I will just focus on reading a few books a month and reading mostly from my own shelves.

My Goodreads goal for this year will be 30 books. That's six more than I managed in 2023, so it's just a small increase. Hopefully this will be achievable for me.

Once again, my other reading goal will be to read books primarily from my own shelves. I barely made a dent in my TBR pile last year, so I still have a long way to go when it comes to clearing my backlog of books. I'm not going to attach a specific number to this challenge, but I would like to do better than 13 books, which is what I read in 2023. I will keep track of my progress here.

And that's it for my 2024! This will still be a very busy year for me, but I'm really hoping to start incorporating a little more reading back in between all of my classes and assignments.

Reading Reflection: 2023

 

The end of 2023 has arrived, so it's time for another yearly reflection. As I predicted at the end of last year, I was not able to read very much at all. The combination of graduate school and my regular instructional coaching job took up most of my time and napping took up the remainder of it. I did still manage to read a little bit though. Here is the breakdown:

My goal was to read 24 books in total and I did read 24. It feels like a very small victory compared to reading 101 books last year, but considering the different demands on my time, I'll take it. You can view my year in reading here.

I was hoping to read 24 books from my own shelves this year, but I ended up getting distracted by books at my school and fell short. I ended up reading a total of 13. I'm hoping to do a little better with this next year. You can see the list of what I read from my shelves here.

Overall, I would not say that I am particularly happy with my reading this year. I did read some really enjoyable things, but the stresses in my life made it difficult to enjoy them like I usually do. I feel like I gained some perspective though, and am getting more used to my busy schedule. I still have another year of graduate school to go, but I'm hoping to relax a little more in 2024 and get a little more reading done. 

Posted by John David Anderson

 

Posted by John David Anderson is another one of the books my school purchased for our middle school book clubs this year. The cover definitely grabbed my attention and I felt like the summary on the back would be intriguing to a lot of kids, so I figured I'd give it a try myself. I read this partially on my lunch break in bits and pieces and then finished it off in a few sittings over winter break. I admit that it had a bit of a slow start, but I ended up being really glad I picked this one.

The story follows an eighth grader named Frost. He's a bit of a geeky kid that likes writing poetry. He has a small group of similarly geeky friends named Deedee, Wolf, and Bench. They've been a tight knit group for years and do everything together. Their comfortable group dynamic begins to shift, however, when two big changes happen at their school. First, after some inappropriate online activity, the school enacts  a complete cell phone ban. Without the ability to sneakily text each other during class, students turn to leaving sticky notes on each other's lockers. The anonymous nature of this leads to a lot of bullying and truly mean comments being flung around, some of which are directed towards Frost and his friends. 

The second change is the arrival of Rose Holland, a new student to their school. Rose's stocky frame and eccentric personality immediately draws a lot of negative attention from the other students. She takes a liking to Frost and his friends though, and inserts herself into their group. Without meaning to, she causes a divide between the boys that leads to a lot of complicated feelings on all sides. Frost is caught in the middle of the divide. He doesn't want anything to change, but he also doesn't mind Rose being around. Eventually the mean sticky notes and the situation with Rose work together to cause problems that can't be easily solved and Frost has to come to terms with the changing nature of people and relationships.

I ended up really liking this novel because everything in it felt very true. The characters acted like real middle schoolers, the conflicts between the boys were realistic, and the resolution wasn't neat and tidy. The main themes of the story centered around the power of words and how they can be used to hurt and to heal. There was a strong anti-bullying message as well, which are all ideas you would expect to find in middle grades fiction. What I thought was unique though was that a good chunk of the story concerned how friendships don't always last. In general, people don't keep their middle school friends for life. People drift apart for a variety of reasons and that's just a normal part of growing up. That happens here, with one of the friends in the group moving onto a different social circle. While there was some drama attached to his exit, he ultimately just didn't fit in with the group anymore and wanted to hang out with other people. It was sad, but it was also understandable. I liked that this was included because it's so relatable. I can imagine having some very interesting class discussions about this since so many kids will have experience with changing friendships to draw on. It's a life lesson that's not clichéd or cheesy to talk about. 

Ultimately, I was pleasantly surprised by Posted. It was realistic in a way I wasn't expecting. I will definitely be recommending this to students this year. This will be my last book read in 2023 and it was a nice book to end on. It was about a lot of things that are difficult, but it contained a lot of hope as well. While the world can be a mean place, the relationships we build with those who move in and out of our lives will sustain us and make us strong.

2023 Reading Challenges Tally:

Goodreads Reading Challenge: 24/24 - Complete!

Clear the Shelves 2023: 13/24