Once again I’m posting two weeks’ worth of reading because I had other fish to fry last weekend. Sorry about that.
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Week ending June 13, including a number of things I’ve acquired for a local education support organization that’s trying to establish its own small library:
1. [re-reads] – my own MM novellas ‘Our Revels Now’ and ‘Make Me’ plus FM novelette ‘This Time.’
2. three small books for the library: ‘Shh! We’re Writing the Constitution’ by Jean Fritz; ‘George vs. George: The American Revolution as Seen from Two Sides’ by Rosalyn Schanzer; and ‘Some of Us: A Story of Citizenship and the United States’ by Rajani Larocca. The latter is more an introduction to the concept than a story but is a nice picture book to lead into the other two, more complex books.
3. [re-read] ‘The Rescuers’ by Margery Sharp. What a clever, inventive, entertaining little book.
4. ‘What is the Declaration of Independence?’ by Michael C. Harris, best read in combination with the others at no. 2; also [re-read] ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ by Dr. Seuss, which is so ridiculous.
5. ‘For Which We Stand: How Our Government Works and Why it Matters’ by Jeff Foster (2020). The author teaches / taught at Parkland where there was one of our many horrific mass shootings. A clear and concise middle and high school treatment that would benefit just about everybody, never boring, highly recommended despite a few awkward word choices & editorial fails.
^^ EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD READ THIS ONE ^^
6. [re-read] ‘Lassie Come-Home’ by Eric Knight (1940). Depression-set adventure story, Yorkshire & Scotland, cracking good; some big emotional moments + realism with no anthropomorphism.
7. finally a romance! ‘The Haunting Between Us’ by Paul Michael Winters. A very good YA MM built around a ghost story (serious, creepy, occasionally grisly, with a resolution that solves a long series of disappearances in tragic / horrific ways, plus mortal peril) set in Port Townsend, WA. The romance manages to be front and center despite the complex & harrowing mystery.
8. ‘Exclusion and the Chinese American Story’ by Sarah-Soonling Blackburn, from the Race to the Truth series. Excellent, well documented, infuriating.
9. [re-read] ‘Big Red’ by Jim Kjelgaard (1945). I last read this *many* years ago and had forgotten nearly everything about it, particularly the violence (bear vs dogs, man, and mule, dog vs. wolverine) and many scenes involving hunting + trapping subsistence life. Realistic and non-gratuitous. Built around insta-love between a teenager and his rich neighbor’s fancy Irish Setter. Set in a fictional wilderness in the mountains of New York State.
10. ‘The Wizard of Oz’ by L. Frank Baum. I had never read this before. Found a really nice illustrated hardcover at the antique mall last weekend. A fun little frolic of a book, free of heartaches and nightmares, as promised in the introduction; though it does feature a few scenes of fantasy mayhem leading to violent though bloodless deaths of enemies.
11. Another romance! ‘Pretty Fly for a Vampire Guy’ by Leslie McAdam & CD Rachels. MM, university setting, and the conceit is that 20 years ago there was a Halloween event in which large numbers of US (and, one presumes, the world) humans were changed into mythological creatures. The university used to be just for cryptids and recently started admitting humans. MC1 is a human premed student, MC2 a vampire. They are good for each other, nicely done sex scenes, abundant sweetness in the MCs’ coparenting of an injured young vampire bat. So many puns, it reminded me of Piers Anthony’s fantasy series.
12. ‘A Young Patriot: the American Revolution as Experienced by One Boy’ by Jim Murphy (1996), a very good nonfiction account built around the 1830 memoir of Joseph Plumb Martin, who served in Washington’s army for almost the entire war, starting at age 16, and died in 1850 in Maine, at 90.
And week ending June 6:
1. [re-read] my own MM novel ‘Giving it Up,’ the one about a closeted TV actor and a dermatologist he meets at their mutual friends’ Thanksgiving party.
2. [re-read] my own FM novella ‘Revved Up,’ about a professional extra and the casting assistant who points him in a new direction. (see Free Reads page for a Prolific Works link)
3. ‘The Handyman’s Happily-Ever-After’ by Nick Poff. An unusual and effective book for those willing to settle in and make the commitment; not a romance novel, though it is a love story. Established couple in their 60s in small-town Indiana in 2015, when then-governor Mike Pence was signing legislation written by evangelicals rather than lawmakers. Concerns many other characters and pulls in stories from the central couple’s entire relationship. Occasional difficulty determining the POV. The Big Event in this one occurs at the end (wedding) and everything else does braid into it. This book has the kind of thorough world-building I don’t see enough of.
4. [re-read] my own FM novella ‘A Random Sequence,’ about two lottery winners. (free at Prolific Works)
5. [re-read] my own MMM novella ‘Our Complication,’ which is a finalist in the First Coast Romance Writers contest this year!
6. ‘A Merciful Sea’ by Katie Daysh, book 3 of Nightingale + Courtney. Gets them to their happy ending, unfortunately via another long separation, filled with angst, during which both men are troubled – about themselves, their careers, and their relationship – over the course of the year leading up to the Battle of Trafalgar, in which Courtney takes part. The editing could have been tighter & more attentive. Still, this was a worthy conclusion to a well-conceived and executed trilogy. The action scenes are nail-biters.
Total number of entries in my reading journal for 2026 to date: 173.