127. With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

Listened to on Libby
narrated  by the author!!
Unabridged audio (7:27)
2019
400 pgs.
YA CRF
Finished 12-16-2019
Goodreads rating:  4.24 - 53,740 ratings
My rating:  4.5
Setting: Contemporary Philadelphia

First line/s:  "Babygirl doesn't even cry when I suck my teeth and undo her braid for the fourth time."

My comments:  Set in Philadelphia, this is the story of a young woman, a brave young woman, who is raising the baby she gave birth to as a freshman.  She's no a senior. wondering what avenue her life will take. A natural, creative cook, raised by her abuela, always wondering and worrying about money.  She is not at all promiscuous and is very hesitant about becoming friends with a new student who appears very enamored of her.  Throughout her senior year we're allowed to watch and listen as she takers her final steps into adulthood.  It's an excellent story.  It's also read beautifully by a narrator that gives just the perfect lilt to this oh-so-interesting protagonist.

Goodreads synopsis:  With her daughter to care for and her abuela to help support, high school senior Emoni Santiago has to make the tough decisions, and do what must be done. The one place she can let her responsibilities go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness. Still, she knows she doesn’t have enough time for her school’s new culinary arts class, doesn’t have the money for the class’s trip to Spain — and shouldn’t still be dreaming of someday working in a real kitchen. But even with all the rules she has for her life — and all the rules everyone expects her to play by — once Emoni starts cooking, her only real choice is to let her talent break free.

27. The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson

listened to on Audible
read by the author, and boy do I love to hear her read her work!
2017 William Morris
342 pgs.
Adult CRF
Finished 3/24/18
Goodreads rating:  4.02 - 9552 ratings
My rating: 5 !!!
Contemporary small-town Alabama

First line/s:  "Superheroes have always been Leia Burch Briggs's weakness.  One tequila-soaked at a comic-book convention, the usually level-headed graphic novel artist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman.  She remembers that he was tall, black, and an excellent French kisser - but not much else."

My comments:  This was a fabulous book.  Beautiful, fluent, often comical writing.  One heckuva story.  I listened to the author reading this herself and it was like a special gift.  I've read a lot of good books recently, but this one will go down as the best I've read in a long time.

Goodreads synopsis: With empathy, grace, humor, and piercing insight, the author of Gods in Alabama pens a powerful, emotionally resonant novel of the South that confronts the truth about privilege, family, and the distinctions between perception and reality - the stories we tell ourselves about our origins and who we really are.
          Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs' weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comics convention, the usually level-headed graphic novelist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman. 
          It turns out the caped crusader has left her with more than just a nice, fuzzy memory. She's having a baby boy - an unexpected but not unhappy development in the thirty-eight year-old's life. But before Leia can break the news of her impending single-motherhood (including the fact that her baby is biracial) to her conventional, Southern family, her step-sister Rachel's marriage implodes. Worse, she learns her beloved ninety-year-old grandmother, Birchie, is losing her mind, and she's been hiding her dementia with the help of Wattie, her best friend since girlhood.
          Leia returns to Alabama to put her grandmother's affairs in order, clean out the big Victorian that has been in the Birch family for generations, and tell her family that she's pregnant. Yet just when Leia thinks she's got it all under control, she learns that illness is not the only thing Birchie's been hiding. Tucked in the attic is a dangerous secret with roots that reach all the way back to the Civil War. Its exposure threatens the family's freedom and future, and it will change everything about how Leia sees herself and her sister, her son and his missing father, and the world she thinks she knows.

16. A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty - Joshilyn Jackson

Audio read by the author (another slam dunk!)

10 unabridged discs

2012, Grand Central Publishing

322 pgs.

Finished 3/12/2014

Adult CRF/Southern Fiction

Goodreads Rating: 3.93

My Rating: 5/Just wonderful - stayed up late to listen

TPPL

Setting:  Small town, rural Mississippi

My comments:  For me, everything that makes a really good read came together in this book.  An exceptionally woven plot.  Characters with personalities that are deeply drawn, real, and believable.  A strong voice - in this case three strong voices.  Three points-of-view that tell this story perfectly.  And to top it off, a reader that hits the absolute bulls-eye.  Joshilyn Jackson once again reads her own book and she's just perfect, including her own wonderful southern lilt.  I'm not a particular fan of southern fiction, but I'd follow Jackson anywhere - this is the third book of hers that I've read/listened to and I consider her an exceptional writer and storyteller. (I love the cover, too - maybe it's the color?)

Goodreads Review:  A GROWN-UP KIND OF PRETTY is a powerful saga of three generations of women, plagued by hardships and torn by a devastating secret, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of family. Fifteen-year-old Mosey Slocumb-spirited, sassy, and on the cusp of womanhood-is shaken when a small grave is unearthed in the backyard, and determined to figure out why it's there. Liza, her stroke-ravaged mother, is haunted by choices she made as a teenager. But it is Jenny, Mosey's strong and big-hearted grandmother, whose maternal love braids together the strands of the women's shared past--and who will stop at nothing to defend their future.

MOVIE - Philomena

PG-13 (1:34)

Limited release 11/22/2013

Viewed 12/10/2013 at El Con with Sheila (Happy Birthday, Laura!)

RT Critic:  92  Audience:  91

Cag: 4.5 Liked it a whole lot 

Directed by Stephen Frears

The Weinstein Company

Steve Coogan (who also wrote and produced), Judi Dench

My comments:   (Spoilers abound, including a bit of ranting.....)  This was a wonderful movie.  Acting - yup, wonderful.  Story - bittersweet, with a little more bitter than sweet.  Leftover emotions - adding fuel to the fire to my deep dislike of the Catholic church. This was the retelling of a true story - with actual pictures of those real people just before the credits. Imagine being a young girl....say fifteen or sixteen.  Getting pregnant after one (pretty wonderful) night with a handsome young man.  Abandoned by your family, thus having not a soul in the world but a few other young mothers in your confined, ultra-religious environment (with lots of nasty nuns and a handful of nicer ones)...and an hour a day with your child.  Add to that being ostracized, demeaned, and put into slave labor for four years. And then, when your child is three, having him adopted without a goodbye, with absolutely no information about where he went or what happened to him.  Not your choice.  You would have NEVER given him away......  

       So much spite, so much hate and un-Christian acts from the nuns at this establishment.  Burning of all the records so that mothers and children could never reunite.  Lying.  Withholding information.  It was one thing for this to happen in the early 1950's, totally another for it to happen in 2003.  Grrrr....

     Dench and Coogan were oh-so believable together.  This relationship, if anything like the real one between Lee and Sixsmith, was pretty special.

  

Rotten Tomatoes:  Based on the 2009 investigative book by BBC correspondent Martin Sixsmith, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, PHILOMENA focuses on the efforts of Philomena Lee (Dench), mother to a boy conceived out of wedlock - something her Irish-Catholic community didn't have the highest opinion of - and given away for adoption in the United States. In following church doctrine, she was forced to sign a contract that wouldn't allow for any sort of inquiry into the son's whereabouts. After starting a family years later in England and, for the most part, moving on with her life, Lee meets Sixsmith (Coogan), a BBC reporter with whom she decides to discover her long-lost son.