Notices by Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us), page 5

Book 21: Playground. Another epic tale from Richard Powers. This one appears to be about friendships and class and the competitiveness of young people, the differing trajectories of lives. It's also about the way the world is mostly ocean and the complex ecosystem that exists there mostly unseen. But it's also about AI and there are about two sentences where you realize, you might realize, that the plot is different than you expected or thought. And I had all sorts of weird feelings about that.

Book 22: We Had a Little Real Estate Problem. An excellent book highlighting the range of Native Americans doing comedy and the challenges they face, from overt racism, to large amounts traveling, to trying to make jokes about the grim history of colonization, residential schooling, land theft and massacres. Each chapter is an anecdote which builds upon the general theme. Some standout names like Charlie Hill and Will Rogers (and attendant controversies) and some new names you'd like to know.

Book 23: The Rabbi Who Prayed for the City. This is the six-years-later sequel to the first Rabbi Vivian book about a lesbian Rabbi in Providence trying to work with her congregation to bring more justice into the world. This one deals with a hurricane (and citywide preparations led by Rabbi Vivian's partner) as well as the launch of an autonomous robot which, for money-raising reasons, is also having its AI shared with Israel. Written in 2023, hits a bit different in 2025, but still a good read

Book 24: Big Jim and the White Boy. A re-telling of the story of Huck Finn but centering Jim and making his story his own, not written by someone informed by all the racism of the time and told by a white man. It's the 1800s so there's still a lot of gnarly shit going down but the author and illustrator do a great job showing you another way this story could be told and there are ample notes and reading lists in the back. A quick read and pretty accessible to all kinds of readers.

Book 25: We Are Not Strangers. A "based on true stories" tale of the friendship between a Sephardic man (Papoo, a first generation Jewish immigrant) and a Japanese businessman, Sam Akiyama, who form an alliance when Sam gets sent to an internment camp. This is all told through the eyes of Papoo's grandson, who only learned about this story after his grandfather had died. It all takes place in Seattle, so it's extra interesting for people who are familiar with the area.

DNF: Wires and Nerve. This was probably a great story IF you had read The Lunar Chronicles series which it is based off of. Instead we got a whole host of characters at the beginning and a lot of unstated motivations which were opaque to me. Well-illustrated and lively, but I couldn't keep track of the people and places and when I was halfway through it and still not tracking, I decided it was not for me. Nothing wrong with it, it was just made for people who know the series.

Book 26: Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master. A short graphic novel about the rise of video games and who really deserved the credit for them, a tale about Nolan Bushnell (Atari, Chuck E. Cheese) and Ralph Baer (Magnavox Odyssey, Simon). I didn't know much about this history and liked learning about it. Each man wound up with some credit. The story is great, though told in a slightly weird style with equally not-that-engaging (to me) graphics. A quick read if you're into the topic.

Book 27: Continental Drifter. Kathy lived in Bangkok with a Thai mom and an American (and older) dad. Her family is quiet. They take summer trips to Maine. Kathy doesn't feel at home in Thailand OR the US and this graphic novel takes place mainly as she goes to her first year of summer camp in Maine and tries to figure out her family, and herself. I liked the storytelling, didn't feel like the usual angsty memoir.

Book 28: Five Star Stranger. A world basically the same as our own except there's an app where you can hire a person to play a role for you in your life. Usually this is just "Attend a wedding/funeral/party with me" but sometimes it's "Help me raise my young child, come every Thursday and pretend you're her dad" Told through the eyes of the stranger/Dad who has his own story that only slowly gets told. I liked it, weird and a little funny with some empathy and some "wtf?"

Book 29. James. Suggested by the librarian after I returned "Big Jim and the White Boy" This is another Jim-centered reimagining of Huck Finn. My enjoyment of this was only marred by thinking "What is wrong with me that I haven't read anything by Percival Everett before?" Really well-told, a mixture of his relationship with Huck but also the US's relationship to slavery and enslaved people just before the Civil War. Hard to read in parts, as you would expect; more humor than you might expect.

Book 30: Anxious People. A book that is about a lot of stressful stuff--a bank robbery, some bad relationships, people with complicated lives--but you can see partway through it's heading somewhere sweet and gentle. A little less relentless than A Man Called Ove (if you read that one) but the same type of writing. I enjoyed trying to figure out where it might go. Don't let the title make you think it might just be a lot of people being nervous and upset. There's some of that but not too much.

Book 31: Swim Team. A graphic novel for tweens about a girl going to a new school who wants to do math club but winds up in swim club. She doesn't know how to swim and eventually learns as well as learns to be part of a team. This book touches on the racist history of Black people being denied access to pools and beaches (and offers further reading on the topic in the end notes) though it's not the central point of the story which is about teamwork and overcoming fears.

Book 32: September. In a small community in Scotland where everyone knows everyone, one of the families is planning a party. We meet two extended families (the laird and the other his childhood friend - both now grown with families) and the folks in their orbits. It's mostly well-off people and their trials and tribulations as they get ready in the months preceding a very big shindig. I really enjoyed getting to know some of the ins and outs of rural Scotland, at once both familiar and not.

Book 33: Alterations. Kevin brought a stinky egg to school and now everyone is calling him Eggboy. One of his old friends isn't talking to him. His other friends are just as nerdy as he is. His grandma from the old country has moved in with their family because his dad left. His seamstress mom is stressed. There's a school field trip. It's a tough time to be Kevin. This is a great graphic novel, so evocatively done. Kevin feels real, proud to be nerdy but still trying to figure it all out.

Book 34: The Janus Stone. This is the second book in a series I started a while ago. It's one of those "All the books will be at the library" types of series, a straightforward--forensic archaeologist and cops encounter weird stuff on the saltmarshes and need both of their skillsets to investigate-- thing. The archaeologist is a middle-aged Vera-style frumpy no-nonsense woman who, in this book, is pregnant and so there's that subtext as well. Little bit of UK/Roman history. A solid read.

Book 35: The Weight of Ink. A dense book with two parallel stories: one about an older female historian nearing retirement and dealing with infirmities who finds a hidden cache of documents, the other about a Jewish scribe in 1650s London, struggling to survive as the plague approaches. The historian is joined by a young American Jewish man working on his PhD. A LOT of interesting and well-told Jewish history (from Portugal, Spain, the UK, and Israel) and a story line which keeps you engaged.

Book 36: Funny Misshapen Body. This is mostly not a memoir about this man's body. It's a series of vignettes, in no particular order, about the life he's led which got him to where he is now. He's a guy who has sort of lumped through life. Had some challenges like Crohn's disease and weirdnesses at art school, trying to make and keep friends, meet women. He paid his way through some of this doing painting at a wooden shoe factory. It's disjointed at times but a good read overall.

Book 37: Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books. If you're looking for a lightish book about book banning with a bunch of easily-defeated straw man book banners, this is the book for you. It's simple, a bit funny, and does its best to describe just how communities can get to the point where they want to restrict people's access to information, and the knock-on effects of those restrictions. Did not love this one but I liked it well enough.

Book 38: The House at Sea's End. Erosion brought on by climate change has revealed six bodies formerly buried near but not IN the sea. Are they really old, only sort of old, or not old at all? Enter forensic anthropologist Ruth Galloway who has been seconded to the local police to help figure it out. The mystery in this one is almost secondary to the character development (Galloway has had a child that she is raising as a single mom) but there are still some interesting historical aspects.

Book 39: Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea. A tedious retelling of a dramatic shipwreck and the very involved project to locate and salvage the gold from the shipwreck led by one "mad genius" type guy. There is a staggering amount of detail in parts and then a lot of hand wavey "And then they got the rest of the gold" at the end. Looking up the story on Wikipedia, it seems that the mad genius went on the run rather than pay his creditors and investors. That's the book I'd like to read.