The Cats of Roxville Station

 

Written by: Jean Craighead George 

First line: A lady in a fur coat threw a fighting, hissing cat off a bridge, got back into her car, and sped into the night. 

Why you should read this book: It illuminates the normally invisible lives of the feral cats that live all around us, in a narrative made vibrant and believable by the careful research and observation of a noted naturalist writer with a unique perspective on the behavior of humans and animals. Ratchet, a young cat with nothing but her instincts to fall back on, makes a new life for herself among a loose group of wild cats that live near an old railway station. With precise language and a keen eye, the story follows the cats through a year as they struggle to survive and thrive. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: George's opinions about human beings in relation to animals is no secret, and she depicts man's casual cruelty to cats, kids, and other creaturs with a deft hand; some readers may find descriptions of abuse upsetting, but that said, it has a happy ending.

Catherine, Called Birdy

Written by: Karen Cushman 

First line: I am commanded to write an account of my days: I am bit by fleas and plagued by family.

Why you should read this book: Catherine, called Birdy due to her love of birds, feels put upon by her life as the only daughter of a landed knight, her station too high to allow her to run wild and free, but too low to avoid onerous tasks and live a life of leisure. And now that she's coming of age, her father is doing his utmost to make a profit by marrying her to a wealthy man, and he doesn't seem to care which wealthy man it is, or that Birdy doesn't want to get married at all. Birdy has to work overtime to run off the line of unsuitable suitors, but a girl of her position cannot avoid the inevitable indefinitely, can she?

Why you shouldn't read this book: You've been recently forced into a very unhappy arranged marriage.

A Taste of Colored Water

Written by: Matt Faulkner 

First line: It was Abby Finch who started it all. 

Why you should read this book: It's an introduction to the concepts of Jim Crow, segregation, racism, and the civil rights movement for very young readers. When small town kids Lulu and her cousin Jelly hear that the water fountains in the city dispense "colored water," they imagine rainbow streams of candy-flavored drinks, but when they finally finagle their way to the city, they receive a rude awakening; not only is colored water plain old water from an old fountain, racism, which apparently does not exist in their small town, creates a sad ending to their adventure. Includes a nice appendix in which the author discusses Jim Crow laws at greater length. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's a decent book and I enjoyed it, but as much as I'm a huge fan of Matt Faulkner, there's a much better book called White Socks Only by Evelyn Coleman that covers this same territory from the perspective of a Black child and is slightly less circumspect and slightly more self aware. 

Horns and Wrinkles

Written by: Joseph Helgerson 

First line: My cousin Duke's troubles on the river started on the day he dangled me off the wagon wheel bridge. 

Why you should read this book: Claire's stretch of the Mississippi River has always been rumored to be a little strange (even the adults know about the mysterious goings-on, which is pretty rare in a children's book) but Claire doesn't realize how strange until her bully cousin Duke falls in with a trio of river trolls with a mission. Against her will, Claire is dragged into all kinds of troll nonsense involving humans being turned to stone, fairies in bright orange tennis shoes, compulsively lying crickets, shooting stars, rhinoceroses, missing fathers, and a tyrant rock troll with an army of slaves. Things are so crazy Claire begins to question her own humanity, but maybe she's just been hanging around with trolls a little too long. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: While it's engaging, inventive, and well-written, it's the sort of story that probably appeals more to younger readers.

Amina's Voice

Written by: Hena Khan 

First line: Something sharp pokes me in the rib. 

Why you should read this book: Amina is terrified of singing (or speaking) in public, even though she has a beautiful voice, and when her best friend Soojin wants to hang out with a popular white girl, Amina doesn't know what to say (and when she does say something, it turns out to be the exact wrong thing). Now she's afraid her best friend hates her, while at home she's terrified of upsetting her uncle and being pressured to participate in a Koran-recitation contest. Singing in public is the scariest thing she can imagine, until something that truly rocks the community gives Amina the courage to use her voice. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You've never been afraid to speak up.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

Written by: Jacqueline Kelly 

First line: By 1899, we had learned to tame the darkness but not the Texas heat. 

Why you should read this book: Callie Vee, intelligent, thoughtful, and curious, realizes that she wants to be a naturalist when she grows up, just around the time that Callie's mother announces that she wants Callie to be a debutante. Guided by her eccentric grandfather, Callie becomes comfortable with the scientific process, the pursuit of knowledge, and the reading of difficult and forbidden books, chief among them Darwin's Origin of the Species, while desperately trying to escape a future that includes being tied down to a house, a husband, or children. Just an all-around delightful novel. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You'd rather be a debutante than discover a new species.

The Cay

Written by: Theodore Taylor 

First line: Like silent, hungry sharks that swim in the darkness of the sea, the German submarines arrived in the middle of the night. 

Why you should read this book: When war comes to the island of Curaçao, Phillip's mother insists on returning to America for safety, but it turns out that Philip's father, who thought it would be safer to stay put, was right, and Phillip finds himself drifting through the ocean in a lifeboat with a concussion, a cat, and a very old sailor called Timothy. Phillip's head injury resolves itself into blindness and although the ship washes up on a tiny and uninhabited cay, he must confront the reality of the prejudices his mother instilled in him regarding Black people, and the reality of being shipwrecked, and blind, and needing to learn from Timothy all the skills necessary to survive on a desert island. Both a cracking good adventure story and a classic resource for unlearning racism. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: This is one of those books that everyone should read, and it's probably weird that I just read it for the first time this week.

The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

Written by: John Bolton

First line: One attraction of being National Security Advisor is the sheer multiplicity and volume of challenges that confront you. 

Why you should read this book: Usually I don't review books that I didn't finish, but I did slog my way through over four hundred pages of this bloated testament to John Bolton's massive ego before accidentally deleting the file when I got a new phone, so I can tell you that the only reason to read this book is because you are interested in the tedious details and minutiae of foreign policy or the more tedious details and minutiae of Bolton's self-aggrandizing thought processes. I originally started it because I was interested in lurid revelations regarding the president's failures, which are remarked upon, but take a back seat to Bolton's repeatedly stated sense of his own importance and omniscience: he never misses an opportunity to quote, word for word, every single incidence of someone telling him he was right about something between April of 2018 and September of 2019; he never misses a chance to explain why something was Obama's fault, or Clinton's fault, or, occasionally, John Kerry's fault; he never misses a chance to make a snide remark about someone making a mistake ("mistake" being defined as "not doing the thing John Bolton thinks they should do;" he himself only admits to being wrong about anything once in the 400+ pages I read, even though it's abundantly apparent that taking the job of National Security Advisor was a huge mistake on his part); and, most egregiously, he makes it abundantly clear that he's only ever respected three people: Henry Kissinger, Vladmir Putin (!), and (sometimes, on some issues) George Bush Senior. In conclusion, John Bolton is a terrible human being. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You have literally anything else going on in life. I'm not even going to post the link to the actual book, because I don't think Bolton should profit off this crap. I think he should pay the American people for what he's done. The retail price of this book being something like $20 for a hardcover, and having read at least 2/3 of its contents, I really feel like he owes me $13 and some change (in compensation for my pain and suffering; obviously, my copy was pirated because I wasn't going to buy anything that might benefit John Bolton).

Praise Song for My Children

Written by: Patricia Jabbeh Wesley  

First line: Some of us are made of steel. 

Why you should read this book: This collection of new and selected poems offers a stunning journey through the author's work, the central thesis of which goes something like—the world is very hard and painful but women, by necessity, are tough and good at survival. Wesley's voice carries the reader through the war in Liberia and its aftermath, love and marriage and motherhood, the refugee experience, her fight with cancer, her life in America. Each poem stands as its own microcosm, a perfectly formed bubble of reality and experience, into which the reader can enter and be immersed. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It took me two months to finish, because I had to put it down every time it made me cry, and it made me cry a *lot*.  

What If It's Us

Written by: Becky Albertalli & Adam Silvera 

First line: I am not a New Yorker, and I want to go home. 

Why you should read this book: Arthur, who's never been kissed, is in town for a summer internship to beef up his college applications the summer before his senior year; Ben, who's mourning the loss of his first serious relationship, is in summer school so he'll be allowed to start his senior year. Following a chance encounter outside the post office, the two teens activate their in person and digital networks, and defying all odds, managed to find one another in the big city and intitiate a relationship, but Arthur's lack of experience and Ben's issues with his ex complicate the romance between two guys who don't have a whole lot in common aside from being awkward, self-conscious, and out. Will this summer romance blossom or whither on the vine? 

Why you shouldn't read this book: So one convention of romantic comedies is that there must always be some force keeping the potential lovers apart, and in this case, the "force" is the fact that they are teenagers who don't know anything about relationships; I think I was just too old for this one.