My March Reading: Fire, Letters and Girls

My March reading is introduced to you by Little Wooden Mouse! (By the way, we bought her in Tallinn.)

• Jenny Han “To All the Boys I've Loved Before” [USA]
• Stephen King “Firestarter” [USA]
• Takako Shimura “Wandering Son” vol. 6 [Japan]
• Nell Brinkley, Trina Robbins “The Brinkley Girls” [USA]

Short stories available online:

• Kameron Hurley “Our Faces, Radiant Sisters, Our Faces Full of Light!” [USA]
• Nghi Vo “Lotus Face and the Fox”
• Ada Hoffmann “The Scrape of Tooth and Bone” [Canada]

To All the Boys I've Loved Before

“Lara Jean keeps her love letters in a hatbox her mother gave her.

They aren't love letters that anyone else wrote for her, these are ones she's written. One for every boy she's ever loved—five in all. When she writes, she can pour out her heart and soul and say all the things she would never say in real life, because her letters are for her eyes only. Until the day her secret letters are mailed, and suddenly Lara Jean's love life goes from imaginary to out of control.”

A cute YA slice-of-life, pretty low on romance (and plot) despite the title. It's mostly about sisters and friendship. Main character is biracial, by the way. Lots of baking in this book, so maybe don't read it when hungry. ;)

Firestarter

“First, a man and a woman are subjects of a top-secret government experiment designed to produce extraordinary psychic powers.

Then, they are married and have a child. A daughter.

Early on the daughter shows signs of a wild and horrifying force growing within her. Desperately, her parents try to train her to keep that force in check, to "act normal."

Now the government wants its brainchild back - for its own insane ends.”

One of King's earlier works. It was a bit slow for me, but overall I liked it. Firestarter explores what it's like when your child has a superpower since birth. How do you teach a toddler not to burn things down when they are sad or angry? Then there's also government sanctioned experiments on people – they want to create a supernatural human weapon. But does our little firestarter want to be used like that?

Wandering Son vol. 6

“Shimura Takako's sensitive and charming manga series about two middle-schoolers wrestling with their gender identities continues.”

Can't stop reading this sweet manga! I hope one day all of its volumes will be translated to English.

The Brinkley Girls

“For over thirty years Nell Brinkley's beautiful girls pirouetted, waltzed, Charlestoned, vamped and shimmied their way through the pages of William Randolph Hearst's newspapers, captivating the American public with their innocent sexuality. This sumptuously designed oversized hardcover collects Brinkley's breathtakingly spectacular, exquisitely colored full page art from 1913 to 1940.”

A beautiful artbook, even though the art style isn't exactly my usual cup of tea.

I liked the dogs a lot, so many dogs! ^u^