9. Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren

listened on Libby, borrowed from library

2018
432 pgs.
Chick-Lit Romance
Finished 1/29/2022
Goodreads rating: 4.33
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary San Francisco, Berkeley, and Healdsburg, California

My comments: The setting was awesome, I knew everything they were talking about and could see it in my mind's eye.  Christina Lauren's storytelling gets better and better.  Not just the plot, but the way she weaves words together seems unusual for this sort of "chick-lit romance."  Bringing two time periods, 12 to 15 years apart, together, was done smoothly and deftly.  In the "then," two young people care intensely about each other, not pushing each other physically, but being able to talk about most everything without embarrassment.  And two 29-year olds in the "now," trying to make their way towards each other knowing that the caring is still as strong as it ever was.  This is a wonderful story, a true love story, as unbelievable as that might be!

Goodreads synopsis:  The story of the heart can never be unwritten.

Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.

But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother...only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.

Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.

67. The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner

listened on Libby - borrowed from the library

narrated by Alana Kerr Collins

Unabridged audio (10:39)
2021
384 pgs.
Adult Historical Fiction
Finished 6/24/2021
Goodreads rating: 4.29 - 18,653 ratings
My rating: 4.5
Setting: 1906 San Francisco, CA, a tiny town south of SF near San Jose, and Tucson, Arizona

First line/s: "Thank you again for coming.  Could you please state your full name, age, birth date, and the city where you were born, for the record, please?"

My comments:  The story is an unfolding mystery including elements that I love, including mail-order-brides.  It's about how women bod and take care of one another.  Beautifully read, though the Irish accent was very slight.

Goodreads synopsis:  April 18, 1906: A massive earthquake rocks San Francisco just before daybreak, igniting a devouring inferno. Lives are lost, lives are shattered, but some rise from the ashes forever changed.
        Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin's silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin's odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn't right.
        Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. Sophie discovers hidden ties to two other women. The first, pretty and pregnant, is standing on her doorstep. The second is hundreds of miles away in the American Southwest, grieving the loss of everything she once loved.
        The fates of these three women intertwine on the eve of the devastating earthquake, thrusting them onto a perilous journey that will test their resiliency and resolve and, ultimately, their belief that love can overcome fear.
        From the acclaimed author of The Last Year of the War and As Bright as Heaven comes a gripping novel about the bonds of friendship and mother love, and the power of female solidarity.

84. A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen

listened to audio borrowed from Bosler Library
narrated by Emily Woo Zeller
Unabridged audio (11:39)
2020 Mira Books
400 pgs.
Adult Dystopia
Finished 5/25/2020
Goodreads rating: 3.59 - 953 ratings
My rating: 2.5
Setting: San Francisco in the (near?) future

First line/s:  "People were too scared for music tonight.  Not that MoJo cared."

My comments:  Well, this book was certainly apropos.  It was all about pandemic, quarantine, deaths, and all the crazy stuff that could possibly happen around it, which was a bit tough to read right in the middle of our current COVID-19 pandemic. I can't say I like this book and I'm not sure why.  The four main characters were interesting, but I couldn't relate at all.  And the seven-year-old daughter, Sunny, was totally unbelievable for me.  A seven-year-old girl, no matter how smart of savvy, would ever be able to make her way from San francisco to Seattle during absolute craziness safely and/or well.  The adults sure couldn't!  No, I can't say that I would recommend this book at all. 
     There was a quote I liked: "Memories are made to fade.  They're built with an expiration date."

Goodreads synopsis:  How do you start over after the end of the world?
          Six years after a global pandemic wiped out most of the planet’s population, the survivors are rebuilding the country, split between self-governing cities, hippie communes and wasteland gangs.
          In postapocalyptic San Francisco, former pop star Moira has created a new identity to finally escape her past—until her domineering father launches a sweeping public search to track her down. Desperate for a fresh start herself, jaded event planner Krista navigates the world on behalf of those too traumatized to go outside, determined to help everyone move on—even if they don’t want to. Rob survived the catastrophe with his daughter, Sunny, but lost his wife. When strict government rules threaten to separate parent and child, Rob needs to prove himself worthy in the city’s eyes by connecting with people again.
          Krista, Moira, Rob and Sunny are brought together by circumstance, and their lives begin to twine together. But when reports of another outbreak throw the fragile society into panic, the friends are forced to finally face everything that came before—and everything they still stand to lose.
          Because sometimes having one person is enough to keep the world going. 

106. Summer Frost by Blake Crouch

listened on Audible
narrated  by Rosa Salazar
Unabridged audio (2:19)
2019, Amazon Original Stories
75 pgs.
Adult SciFi
Finished 10/27/2019
Goodreads rating: 4.10 - 4795 ratings
My rating:  1
Setting: Dystopian San Francisco

First line/s:  "I watched her steal the Maserati twenty minutes ago in broad daylight from the Fairmont Hotel."

My comments:   This was a short story from a collection of six, and I didn't really like it.  Maybe because it was so short it didn't flesh out the plot enough, so I didn't follow some of it.  Oh well, this is an author I really enjoy and this won't put me off for another.  Maybe I'll try listening again when I'm in a different mood?

Goodreads synopsis:  A video game developer becomes obsessed with a willful character in her new project, in a mind-bending exploration of what it means to be human by the New York Times bestselling author of Recursion.
          Maxine was made to do one thing: die. Except the minor non-player character in the world Riley is building makes her own impossible decision—veering wildly off course and exploring the boundaries of the map. When the curious Riley extracts her code for closer examination, an emotional relationship develops between them. Soon Riley has all new plans for her spontaneous AI, including bringing Max into the real world. But what if Max has real-world plans of her own?
          Blake Crouch’s Summer Frost is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

83. The Bride Test by Helen Hoang

listened to audio - borrowed from library
read by Emily Woo Zeller
Unabridged audio (10 hrs.)
2019 Berkley
296 pgs.
Adult Romance
Finished  9/1/2019
Goodreads rating: 3.98 - 27,773 ratings
My rating:  5
Setting: contemporary Vietnam, then San Jose/Palo Alto area of California

First line/s:  "Khai was supposed to be crying.  He knew he was supposed to be crying.  Everyone else was."

My comments:  This one kept me giggling and rolling my eyes.  It was ultra cute and sweet and the perfect thing to read on a long, lazy, overcast three-day-weekend Sunday.  I've got to rate it a five just for being a delightful read.  Nothing ethereal or deep, just a little bit of innocesnce, adult autism, and a young adult from a different country and culture coming to the US and knowing very little about its culture other than what they've seen in a Disney movie or two.

Goodreads synopsis:  Khai Diep has no feelings. Well, he feels irritation when people move his things or contentment when ledgers balance down to the penny, but not big, important emotions—like grief. And love. He thinks he’s defective. His family knows better—that his autism means he just processes emotions differently. When he steadfastly avoids relationships, his mother takes matters into her own hands and returns to Vietnam to find him the perfect bride.
          As a mixed-race girl living in the slums of Ho Chi Minh City, Esme Tran has always felt out of place. When the opportunity arises to come to America and meet a potential husband, she can’t turn it down, thinking this could be the break her family needs. Seducing Khai, however, doesn’t go as planned. Esme’s lessons in love seem to be working…but only on herself. She’s hopelessly smitten with a man who’s convinced he can never return her affection.
          With Esme’s time in the United States dwindling, Khai is forced to understand he’s been wrong all along. And there’s more than one way to love.

67. The Anatomical Shape of a Heart by Jenn Bennett

read on my iPhone (eBook)
2015, Feiwel & Friends
304 pgs.
YA Romance
Finished 7/21/2019
Goodreads rating:  3.93 - 13,480 ratings
My rating:5
Setting:  Contemporary San Francisco

First line/s:  "The last train wasn't coming."

My comments:  Ignore the reviews that put this book in the "so-so" category.  Those reviewers have read huge amount of ya literature and are probably quite a distance away from being young adults themselves.  This is a modern romance that includes a little bit of everything and treats teenage sex with healthy respect.  I've gotten to know San Francisco a bit in the last ten years, and it was really fun to follow Bex and Jack around the city.  Both are artists who come from very different families and income brackets, and both are suffering from a backload of family "stuff."  Who isn't, so almost any ya can relate!  The two themes that I truly appreciated in this book were those of honesty and schizophrenia.  Both were handled really well, though so were single parenting, being gay, and sexuality.  Really good book.

Goodreads synopsis: Beatrix Adams knows exactly how she’s spending the summer before her senior year. Determined to follow in Da Vinci’s footsteps, she’s ready to tackle the one thing that will give her an advantage in a museum-sponsored scholarship contest: drawing actual cadavers. But when she tries to sneak her way into the hospital’s Willed Body program and misses the last metro train home, she meets a boy who turns her summer plans upside down.
           Jack is charming, wildly attractive, and possibly one of San Francisco’s most notorious graffiti artists. On midnight buses and city rooftops, Beatrix begins to see who Jack really is—and tries to uncover what he’s hiding that leaves him so wounded. But will these secrets come back to haunt him? Or will the skeletons in her family’s closet tear them apart?

1. When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Mendon

read on my iPhone
2017, Simon Pulse
380 pgs.
YA CRF
Finished 1/1/2018
Goodreads rating: 3.8 - 16,390 ratings
My rating: 3 (and that's generous because it was fun)
Setting: Contemporary San Francisco

First line/s: "Dimple couldn't stop smiling.  It was like two invisible puppeteers, standing stage left and stage right were yanking on strings to pull up the corners of her mouth."

My comments:  Other reviewers have called this book "cute" and "adorable."  I agree....it was a fun, easy, predictable read.  I raced through it and, for the most part, enjoyed it.  There were no surprises, lots of stereotypes, and - spoiler, spoiler! - a feel-good ending.  I was expecting something a little meatier, so in that way I was disappointed.  And there were lots of things that bugged me, the biggest being the cover.  What a ripoff!  Dimple wears big, clunky glasses all through the novel.  She only takes them off one teeny, tiny, short time.  As a (proud) glasses-wearer this really ticked me off.  It was a fun read to end/start the year, although I feel my rating is a bit generous.

Goodreads synopsis: Dimple Shah has it all figured out. With graduation behind her, she’s more than ready for a break from her family, from Mamma’s inexplicable obsession with her finding the “Ideal Indian Husband.” Ugh. Dimple knows they must respect her principles on some level, though. If they truly believed she needed a husband right now, they wouldn’t have paid for her to attend a summer program for aspiring web developers…right?
          Rishi Patel is a hopeless romantic. So when his parents tell him that his future wife will be attending the same summer program as him—wherein he’ll have to woo her—he’s totally on board. Because as silly as it sounds to most people in his life, Rishi wants to be arranged, believes in the power of tradition, stability, and being a part of something much bigger than himself.
          The Shahs and Patels didn’t mean to start turning the wheels on this “suggested arrangement” so early in their children’s lives, but when they noticed them both gravitate toward the same summer program, they figured, Why not?
          Dimple and Rishi may think they have each other figured out. But when opposites clash, love works hard to prove itself in the most unexpected ways.

PICTURE BOOK - Pop's Bridge by Eve Bunting

Illustrated by C. F. Payne

2006, Houghton Mifflin

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 4.07 - 210 ratings

My rating:  5

Endpapers:  Dark Evergreen

1^st line/s:  "My pop is building the Golden Gate Bridge.  Almost every day after school Charlie Shu and I go to Fort Point and watch."

My comments:  I am so fond of this book...I've read it many times, to myself and aloud to different groups of kids.  Last week I read it aloud to a group of nine to twelve-year-olds that were attending the "Bridges" STEM camp that I was facilitating, and it delighted me once again.  I love the Golden Gate Bridge.  I never saw it or drove over it until about 15 years ago when I went to visit a dear friend in Marin County, California.  Since that first visit there have been at least two visits a year, and we always drive at least one back-and-forth trip over "my" bridge.  My friend's mom was one of the thousands of people who walked across the span on opening day in 1937.  She's told me the story several times.  This is a wonderful book of two friends and the dads who built the Golden Gate Bridge.

Goodreads:  The Golden Gate Bridge. The impossible bridge, some call it. They say it can't be built.
          But Robert's father is building it. He's a skywalker--a brave, high-climbing ironworker. Robert is convinced his pop has the most important job on the crew . . . until a frightening event makes him see that it takes an entire team to accomplish the impossible.
          When it was completed in 1937, San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge was hailed as an international marvel. Eve Bunting's riveting story salutes the ingenuity and courage of every person who helped raise this majestic American icon.
Includes an author's note about the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. 

22. The Dark Room by Jonathan Moore

listened on Audible
2017 Houghton Mifflin
294 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery - Police Procedural
Finished 4/11/17
Goodreads rating:  3.83 - 339 ratings
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary San Francisco

First line/s:  "It was after midnight, and Cain and his new partner, Grassley, watched as the excavator's blade went into the hole, emerging seconds later with another load of earth to add to the pile growing next to the grave."

My comments:  This had everything I love in a mystery.  Best of all, it's all show and no tell.  A setting - San Francisco - that I know, with lots of great description that emphasizes the map in my head.  Deeply interesting characters that are real and not superficial or just words on a page.  A small part of the story is about the protagonist and what's going on in his life, which is slowly unfurled and also tinged, just a bit, with mystery.  And a super suspenseful, intricate plot that keeps you wondering and thinking until the very end, then wraps everything up without any questions left in your mind.  Whew!  What a ride.  Masterfully read by David Colacci, I'm so sad that it had to come to an end.

Goodreads synopsis:  Gavin Cain, an SFPD homicide inspector, is in the middle of an exhumation when his phone rings. San Francisco’s mayor is being blackmailed and has ordered Cain back to the city; a helicopter is on its way. The casket, and Cain’s cold-case investigation, must wait. At City Hall, the mayor shows Cain four photographs he’s received: the first, an unforgettable blonde; the second, pills and handcuffs on a nightstand; the third, the woman drinking from a flask; and last, the woman naked, unconscious, and shackled to a bed. The accompanying letter is straightforward: worse revelations are on the way unless the mayor takes his own life first. 
          An intricately plotted, deeply affecting thriller that keeps readers guessing until the final pages, The Dark Room tracks Cain as he hunts for the blackmailer, pitching him into the web of destruction and devotion the mayor casts in his shadow. 

53. The Circle - Dave Eggers

Audio read by Dion Graham

11 unabridged cds; 14 hours

2013 Random House Audio

491 pgs.

Adult CRF (I guess....)

Finished 11/25/2013

Goodreads Rating:  3.59

My Rating: It was okay (2) 

TPPL

Setting: Just outside San Francisco

1^st sentence/s:  "My God, Mae thought.  It's heaven.  The campus was vast and rambling, wild with Pacific color, and yet the smallest detail had been carefully considered, shaped by the most eloquent hands." 

Beginning Quote:  "There wasn't any limit, no boundary at all, to the future.  And it would be so a man wouldn't have room to store his happiness." -- John Steinbeck

My comments:  Well.  I'm not really sure what I thought of this book.  At times I was incredibly bored.  At other times I was incredibly pissed. Good books get strong reactions, but what is a good book?  Good plot?  Strong reaction to the plot?  Good characterization?  Beautiful words?  I think every reader has his/her own trigger, and this book helped me think about mine.  Story...a bit tedious, ending rushed.  Writing...okay, I guess. Strong characterization...lacking.  But does it make me think? You betcha!  I'll probably remember it for a long while.  But I can't say, for me, that it was a great book....  (Mae Holland is one of the most unlikeable protagonists I've "met" in a long time....)

Goodreads Review:  When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in America—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

52. Japantown - Barry Lancet

# 1 Jim Brodie/San Francisco Antique Art Dealer/ Investigator

2013 Simon & Schuster

Written for adults

Abandoned - stopped on pg. 146 (401) pages total

Contemporary murder mystery

Goodreads Rating: 3.89 (76 ratings)

My Rating: (2) it was okay

TPPL

Setting: Contemporary San Francisco; Tokyo, Japan; and an outlying small Japanese town

1^st sentence/s:  "Two shades of read darkened the Japantown concourse by the time I arrived.  One belonged to a little girl's scarlet party dress.  The other was liquid and far too human.  City officials would evince a third shade once reports of the carnage hit the airwaves."

My comments:  Well, another big decision to abandon a book.  I don't know what's going on with me - are my tastes changing?  Perhaps it's my interest level....I can't tell.  I greatly enjoyed the beginning of this book, but now it's dragging.  I don't even care why everything is happening.  I'm getting confused about all the people - lots and lots of Japanese names and aliases, waaaaay to hard to remember who's who.  Lots of random killing by people who apparently love to kill and have been trained to do it well for centuries. I have been to Japantown and am getting quite familiar with San Francisco, so I was looking forward to this murder mystery.  Nope.  Gonna go on.  Sorry, Mr. Lancet.

Goodreads:  FIVE BODIES. ONE CLUE. NOT A TRACE OF THE KILLER.  San Francisco antiques dealer Jim Brodie recently inherited a stake in his father's Tokyo-based private investigation firm, which means the single father of six-year-old Jenny is living a busy intercontinental life, traveling to Japan to acquire art and artifacts for his store and consulting on Brodie Security's caseload at home and abroad. 

37. Maya's Notebook - Isabel Allende

translated from Spanish by Anne McLean

read by Maria Cabezas

12 unabridged cds (14.5 hrs.)

2013, Harper Audio

387 pgs.

Adult CRF

Finished 9/5/2013

Goodreads Rating: 3.83

My Rating: Loved it (4) 

TPPL Audio Book

Setting: Contemporary Chile and, for the most part, Berkley, CA, 

1^st sentence/s: "A week ago my grandmother gave me a dry-eyed hug at the San Francisco Airport and told me again that if I valued my life at all I should not get in touch with anyone I knew until we could be sure my enemies were no longer looking for me."

Introductory words/a poem by Mary Oliver from The Summer Day:  

"Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

My Goodreads Review: While I found the story quite unbelievable, I found the writing (or the translation of the original Spanish), the voice of the audio reader, and the voice of the protagonist completely mesmerizing.  The first person account switches back and forth between the present on a remote Chilean island and the past couple of years in San Francisco, an Oregon rehab facility and the darkest of dark bowels of Las Vegas.  Some of that part was quite upsetting to listen to.  But darkness and ubelievability did not deter me from enjoying the beautiful words and storytelling of Isabel Allende. This is the first of her books I've ever read, and I'm not sure why that is!

Goodreads Summary: Isabel Allende’s latest novel, set in the present day (a new departure for the author), tells the story of a 19-year-old American girl who finds refuge on a remote island off the coast of Chile after falling into a life of drugs, crime, and prostitution. There, in the company of a torture survivor, a lame dog, and other unforgettable characters, Maya Vidal writes her story, which includes pursuit by a gang of assassins, the police, the FBI, and Interpol. In the process, she unveils a terrible family secret, comes to understand the meaning of love and loyalty, and initiates the greatest adventure of her life: the journey into her own soul.

MOVIE - Blue Jasmine

PG-13 (1:38)

Limited release 7/26/13

El Con, after school on Friday, 8-16-13

RT Critic:  89 Audience: 86

Cag:  4.5 Liked it a lot-especially the incredible acting of Cate Blanchette

Directed by Woody Allen

Sony Pictures Classic

Cate Blanchette, Alec Baldwin, Sally Hawkins

Fandango summary:  After her marriage to a wealthy businessman (Alec Baldwin) collapses, New York socialite Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) flees to San Francisco and the modest apartment of her sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins). Although she's in a fragile emotional state and lacks job skills, Jasmine still manages to voice her disapproval of Ginger's boyfriend, Chili (Bobby Cannavale). Jasmine begrudgingly takes a job in a dentist's office, while Ginger begins dating a man (Louis C.K.) who's a step up from Chili.

My comments:  Blue Jasmine was quite a movie.  It wasn't what I would typically expect from Woody Allen.  The first thought that I'll always have about this movie is that Kate Blanchette is an incredible actress.  The next is that it's incredibly sad.  The thrid is that I love the setting, at least half of it takes place in San Francisco.  The flashbacks take place in New York.  I actually like the way it jumps back and forth in time - it takes no time to figure out when and where you are.  The movie is crafted beautifully, the story is told beautifully, but, for me, it's a really sad movie.  It makes any kind of sorry I feel for myself to away instantly.

30. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan

2012 Farrar, Straus & Giroux

288 pgs.

Written for adults

Finished 8/12/13

Genre: Hard-to-say exactly, CRF with a tiny touch of fantasy?

Goodreads Rating: 3.78

My Rating:  Loved it (4) 

Acquired:TPPL

Setting: Contemporary San Francisco, Silicone Valley, NYC

1^st sentence/s: " Lost in the shadows of the shelves, I almost fall off the ladder."

My comments: One night I discovered that the yellow bars on the book spine and cover GLOW IN THE DARK!!! This was definitely a funky - and totally enjoyable - book. There were a lot of "technological" references that went right over my head, but that didn't impede the reading. I'm not even sure that Mr. Sloan didn't even just fabricate a lot of that part. A clever story, set in San Francisco, and about young computer "nerds." Fun.

Goodreads Review:  This was definitely a funky - and totally enjoyable - book. There were a lot of "technological" references that went right over my head, but that didn't impede the reading. I'm not even sure that Mr. Sloan didn't even just fabricate a lot of that part. A clever story, set in San Francisco, and about young computer "nerds." Fun.

58. The Language of Flowers - Vanessa Diffenbaugh

2011, Ballantine Books
324 pages
for adults
HC $25.00 TPPL
Goodreads: 4.04
my rating: 5 (I loved it, didn't want it to end)
Setting:  Contemporary San Francisco and a vineyard and flower farm somewhere an hour and a half north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
1st sentence/s:  "For eight years I dreamed of fire.  Trees ignited as I passed the; oceans burned.  The sugary smoke settled in my hair as I slept, the scent like a cloud left on my pillow as I rose.  Even so, the moment my mattress started to burn, I bolted awake."

I read this book for a book group and became immediately enthralled. It was a delicious read. It was about a flawed foster child trying to figure out who and what and why she was, learning to trust...and love....and be part of a family. It takes place in contemporary San Francisco when Victoria turns 18, but occasionally goes back 8-10 years to the time she lived with Elizabeth, a single, vineyard owner, who planned to adopt Victoria. You know right from the start that something went terribly wrong during that time, but we don't discover exactly what it was until nearer the end of the book. There was a lot of information about flowers and the Victorian meanings of flowers, but it was all presented in a fascinating, interesting way so that even without a particular enjoyment of flowers it held my total attention.  Victoria's plight includes self-chosen homelessness, growing plants in public parks in San Francisco, stealing (food and flowers and anything she needed), discovering her business savvy, and learning to trust herself and not always running away.

One word for Victoria:  Bravo!  Thanks goodness I have never had to feel any of the abandonement or anguish that she did.

Me, Frida - Amy Novesky

Illustrated by David Diaz
Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2010
$16.95
32 pages
Rating: 2.5
Endpapers: Purple
Read 10-10-10. Great date, huh?)

First time reading this book was disappointing. So I reread it and examined it more closely. I think I see what the author is trying to do, but this is a book for kids and it's not clear enough.

In 1930, Frida Kahlo was newly married to Diego Rivera, who was famous and well-loved. He was hired to create a mural in San Francisco, so , of course, Frida accompanies him. She's never been out of Mexico before, and the author gives the feeling she's quite young.

Frida was lonely, friendless, and bored. She watched her husband work, accompanied him around the city and to numerous parties, where he was the star and she was on the outskirts. And it sounds like she didn't enjoy San Francisco - or not being in the limelight, at all.

Aftrer awhile, Frida felt bolder and began exploring on her own. And then she began to paint her own small paintings, creating her own style. And in April of 1931 she painted one of her most famous paintings - a colorful wedding portrait of herself and her husband. (It is still at the SFMOMA.) And it sounds like she ended up liking San Francisco....

I guess what Ms. Novesky is trying to do is show Frida Kahlo's growth from a shy young bride to an outgoing , confident painter? She certainly wants to showcase San Francisco, which is her home. I've read a bit about Frida, and this doesn't follow any pre-established ideas I have about her. And what I actually took away from the story I had to think about and figure out. And I didn't really like the Frida that Ms. Novesky portrays. I don't think it'll be clear to kids. But maybe my mind is too cluttered with other facts about Frida....

This is a longish review for me. But it felt good to work through my thinking about the writing and reread the book a number of times. I hate to say something bad about a writer - and greater minds than mine have okayed and edited and produced this book, but....I really feel the story is weak.

Diaz's illustrations are colorful and set the mood. But I think there are better books about Frida Kahlo available for kids.

Amy Novesky's website.
I can't seem to find an actual website for David Diaz. I'll look further later. I love his illustrations.

18. One Crazy Summer - Rita Williams-Garcia

for: ages 9-12/middle grades
Amistad/Harper Collins, 2010
$15.99
218 pages
Rating: 3.5

It's the summer of 1968 and Delphine and her two younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, are going to spend it in Oakland California with the mother that abandoned them seven years before. We join them on their flight from New York, where they've left Pa and his mother, Big Ma, who have raised them. They have no idea what to expect. And neither do we!

Told in the first person by Delphine, we see the world through her eyes. She's in charge of her sisters, and there's a definite "pecking" order. They squabble. They love each other fiercely. They communicate without words. And Delphine takes care of them unlike your usual 11 year-old might. Because she has to take care of them - their mother barely speaks to them and has them fending for themselves, for the most part. They are sent to a local day camp run by the Black Panthers. Power to the people. And so the summer unfolds.

The setting is superb - the bay area of California during the summer of 1968. The characters are, for the most part, well drawn. There's a bit of insight into the Black Panther movement and what it might have been like to be black in the 60's. Delphine talks a lot about this - with the freedom - and the inside knowledge - that non-blacks could never know. It gave me a taste. A good taste. It was a good story. A great piece of historical fiction. But I'll never understand the mother. Never. I might understand what may have made her WANT to abandon her kids. But that she did, and her reaction to them all these years later left me cold. I can't like her because I don't get her. Would I get her if I let myself? I'm not sure....

Fuse 8 does an in-depth, interesting review. And here's the KidsReads review that first told me about the book. If you want more summary information, these sites will fill the bill.

1. My Lost and Found Life - Melodie Bowsher

For: Gr. 9+
Published: 2006
312 pgs.
Rating: 4/5
Read: Over the Christmas holidays, finished yesterday on the plane home


Ashley Mitchell, a spoiled, popular high school senior gets the surprise of her life when she discoveres her mother has embezzeled money from her firm and left town, leaving Ashley completely alone, destitute, and unprepared. I very much enjoyed watching Ashley's character change and grow and rearrange itself so that she became a survivor and a much nicer person. Set in Burlingame, CA and San Francisco, Ashley sells all the contents of her house, lives in a tiny unheated camper trailer behind a gas station, and gets a job at a coffee shop in SF - all things that she would have previously sneered at/about. She lets down her snobbiness and snootiness more and more, slowly making real (vs. superficial) friends, and discovering what it really takes to survive in life.

This was a really good story, kept me entertained on long airline flights without making my eyes get heavy or my head nodding - -

56. Little Brother - Cory Doctorow

For: YA
Published: April, 2008
384 pgs.
Rating: 3.5
Finished Nov. 8, 2008

Set in San Francisco just a year or two in the future, Marcus Yallow is a 17 year-old techno-geek high school senior. One afternoon he and his three best friends skip out of school to play Harajuku Fun Madness when they hear a huge explosion. A bigger-than 9/11 terrorist attack has destroyed the Bay Bridge, killing thousands. But they are in the wrong place at the wrong time - they are picked up by an unmarked white van, hooded, bound, and taken in a boat to an old prison. There they are held separately in deplorable conditions and questioned mercillessly, without any rights at all. This is what sets up the premise of the book.

Marcus, once released, becomes w15t0n, the head of XNet. Together with one of his buddies, Jolu, and his new girlfriend, Ange, he comes up with plan after plan to try to point out to American citizens that they are now living in a police state and that many of their constitutional rights are gone - or at least being ignored. Teenages begin working together to overthrow the DHS (Department of Homeland Security), who have become a ruthless, overbearing, self-righteous group of our-way-or-the-highway clones.

CONS
-Endless technical explanations
-Paced well in places, very slow in others
-No goodness showed in any of the bad guys -- come one!
-No texting? Hard to make a book set two or three years in the future believable without texting.

PROS
-Makes you think......HARD.....
-Deals with a very important, timely subject
-Keeps you guessing
-Raises questions that need to be asked
-Marcus' reactions are very real: elation, crying, being over-the-top scared, horny - you do get to know, and understand, and root for, this young man
-Lots of references to interesting things - the beat writers, places and areas in San Francisco (yeah, City Lights Bookstore!), hippie and yippie history, Orwell's 1984

PRO AND CON, both
-The sex scenes. I really want some of my 7th and 8th graders to read this. I have two in particular in mind, but the sex scenes, which I think are important and very well written. are not appropriate at all for these two young techno-geek men who would otherwise eat up this book. No objections for the readers who can handle and understand this VERY smartly written (and really, quite small) part of the story.

And, hey, this is my ONE HUNDREDTH post!