{"id":6312,"date":"2021-12-13T00:35:46","date_gmt":"2021-12-12T13:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/?p=6312"},"modified":"2021-12-13T19:35:30","modified_gmt":"2021-12-13T08:35:30","slug":"what-ive-been-reading-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/what-ive-been-reading-12\/","title":{"rendered":"What I\u2019ve Been Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

My author website and blog have had major technical issues over the past month, but everything’s now restored with a new web hosting service, so hopefully there won\u2019t be further problems. FitzOsborne Press<\/a> is also back with a new website, for those who\u2019d like to buy a copy of Dr Huxley\u2019s Bequest<\/em><\/a> for Christmas\/New Year\/winter vacation\/summer holiday reading.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also very relieved that my local library is open again and I\u2019ve been reading some good books (also some not-very-good books, but I don\u2019t blog about them).<\/p>\n

\"'WhenWhen the Ground is Hard<\/em> by Malla Nunn<\/a> was a fascinating YA novel set in a Christian boarding school in 1965 Swaziland. Sixteen-year-old Adele, the daughter of a Swazi woman and a white South African married man, is a sweet, rule-abiding student until she\u2019s abandoned by her mean-girl friends and forced to share a room with angry, rebellious Lottie. The two girls’ growing friendship is beautifully portrayed as they face profound challenges, including a fire at school and the disappearance of a classmate. There are grim, constant reminders of how class, race and sex determine who has power in their society and there are no easy resolutions to Adele\u2019s problems, but female friendship and family bonds are celebrated and Adele\u2019s kindness and optimism are shown to be strengths. Malla Nunn is best known in Australia for her adult crime fiction, but she has another YA novel out now, Sugar Town Queens<\/em><\/a>, and I\u2019m looking forward to reading it.<\/p>\n

\"'RoomI also enjoyed Room for a Stranger<\/em> by Melanie Cheng<\/a>. This is a thoughtful, empathetic novel about two vulnerable people \u2014 an elderly white woman living alone in her Melbourne house and a lonely university student from Hong Kong who is struggling with his studies \u2014 who are brought together through a homestay program. The writing is incisive but compassionate, the story is moving without lapsing into sentimentality, and even the minor characters are multidimensional. I read this in a single day because I was so invested in how things would turn out. I\u2019d previously liked this author\u2019s collection of short stories, Australia Day<\/em>, but this novel, her first, is even better.<\/p>\n

\"'TheFinally, The Apothecary<\/em><\/a> by Maile Meloy was an enthralling, fast-paced fantasy set in Cold War England in 1952. Fourteen-year-old Janie has been forced to leave her Hollywood home because her screenwriter parents are under suspicion of being Communist sympathisers. Arriving in London, Janie meets a mysterious apothecary and his teenage son, and soon she\u2019s caught up in an international conspiracy to save the world from destruction, led by a secret society of alchemists who can freeze time, become invisible and transform into animals. It did seem as though the publishers weren\u2019t sure whether this was young adult or middle grade fiction – the main characters are fourteen, there\u2019s romance and kissing, and there\u2019s a lot of discussion of Cold War politics, but the illustrations make it look like middle grade and the serious moral dilemmas aren\u2019t explored in any depth. I also must point out that despite enjoying most of this book, the final few pages really annoyed me. Without being too spoilery, the good guys do something to Janie that completely removes her agency and is a terrible invasion of her privacy and dignity, so that they can escape the bad guys. Worse, when Janie finds out what they\u2019ve done, she isn\u2019t angry \u2014 she giggles<\/em>. I can understand why the author thought this was a neat magical ending. But why on earth didn\u2019t her editor point out that this destroyed the Girl Power message of the rest of the book and suggest some changes that gave Janie some choice in the matter? It bothered me enough that I\u2019m not inclined to read the next two books in this trilogy, but if anyone has read them and liked them, please do let me know. This was otherwise a really engrossing adventure with an interesting historical setting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My author website and blog have had major technical issues over the past month, but everything’s now restored with a new web hosting service, so hopefully there won\u2019t be further problems. FitzOsborne Press is also back with a new website, for those who\u2019d like to buy a copy of Dr Huxley\u2019s Bequest for Christmas\/New Year\/winter … Continue reading What I\u2019ve Been Reading<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,293,11],"tags":[315,314,313],"class_list":["post-6312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1950s-and-1960s","category-childrens-books","category-young-adult","tag-maile-meloy","tag-malla-nunn","tag-melanie-cheng"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6312"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6319,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6312\/revisions\/6319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}