Someone to fall back on

Favourite of the month was Runt, both book and film.

Looking glass sound, Catriona Ward.
Four thousand weeks, Oliver Burkeman
Old school, Gordon Korman
Game changer, Rachel Reid
Head of the lower school, Dorothea Moore
Bye forever I guess, Jodi Meadows
Traces of two pasts, Kazushige Nojima
Runt, Craig Silvey
Walking to Aldabaran, Adrian Tchaikovsky
The angel of the crows, Katherine Addison
Galatea, Madeleine Miller
Illegal contact, Santino Hassell
Women and children first: the fiction of two world wars, Mary Cadogan
How to draw a secret, Cindy Chang


Looking glass sound, Catriona Ward. Wilder goes back to the Maine coast he spent his childhood at to write the story of him and his friends and a serial killer, one teenage summer. The memoir he originally started writing at college was stolen by his mysterious roommate and published as a fictional success - this is his chance to finally set the record straight. But who is telling the truth? Evocative writing, great setting and effectively creepy but I am picky about twists and in the end this piled on one too many and I lost touch with the characters.

Four thousand weeks: time management for mortals, Oliver Burkeman. Friendly pep-talk by the Guardian column writer about not maximising productivity and instead doing more with your life by embracing finitude. My sister loves this; I liked it but did feel it went on a bit.

Old school, Gordon Korman. Dexter has lived in his grandmother’s retirement community since he was six, and been cheerfully homeschooled by her and the other residents; suddenly he has to attend school. Desperate to leave, he nevertheless can’t help intervening when he sees a few things that need fixing… Rotating pov, community-building; it’s fun, not a top-tier Korman but still enjoyable.

Game changer, Amy Aislin. I see I wrote “sappy, no tension, I have concerns about food safety” but not the author, who turned out to be a bit tricky to track down as there’s also a het sports romance with a baker called The Game Changer and if you search for m/m hockey it’s all Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series. This one has a hockey player in his last year with a chance at the NHL who employs a hot personal assistant who is trying to get a fledgling cake jar business going and is desperate for cash. See previous comments plus add a bit about lack of professionalism in employer/employee relationships.

Head of the lower school, Dorothea Moore. Girl from large poor family (father presumed dead in the war, am sure you can guess at least part of the ending) wins scholarship to prestigious school, whose pupils are largely appalled at the prospect of a scholarship girl from a council school. Moore is rather fond of action so this also involves a lot of hair-raising dashes through the fens, spies, floods etc, in addition to various japes at school. Joey makes a lot of mistakes, some of which ring truer than others (she overhears a cousin disdaining her presence and makes a rapid exit from her aunt’s house, intending to walk the six miles back to school and send a postcard later, rather than stay feeling unwanted) but her heart is obviously in the right place and she is also English (Joey starts the book in Scotland but this appears to be temporary), so she wastes no time in uncovering conspiracies, learning Morse, revealing spies etc. There is a cute Belgian refugée, an evil French-Swiss chemistry professor, and a bit where one of the teachers comes back to school after an illness and Joey remarks: “she might have died of that loathly ‘flu; lots of people have,” which actually struck me more than all the declarations of national pride.

Bye forever I guess, Jodi Meadows. RL and online identities collide - 13 year old Ingrid stands up to her dominating and exploitative “friend” Rachel, and is ostracised; at least she has her online BFF and fellow MMORPG player Lauren, and, following a wrong number text, a new online acquaintance, Traveler. But maybe Traveler is closer than she thinks… This is a solid portrayal of friendships and first crushes, on and off-line, and the tensions between them, and the fandom (Ingrid and Lauren have a favourite author, and get to meet her) and gaming bits are all well done.

Traces of two pasts, Kazushige Nojima. Backstory for Tifa and Aerith. I like the Midgar slums bits for Tifa more than the Nibelheim bits (Barrett with baby Marlene!), and the Aerith half is less compelling when it tries to expand on what’s already shown in the game (Aerith’s trial in the Temple of the Ancients in the game is about 50x more powerful than anything here.

Runt, Craig Silvey. I saw the movie first and it’s one of those rare cases where both are excellent. The movie is a very faithful adaption of this story in which Annie, a farm girl in an Australian town where drought and an evil water baron have jeopardised everyone’s livelihoods, adopts Runt, a stray dog who turns out to have a startling talent for competitive agility. It’s funny and touching and satisfying; has an older lesbian get-together (Annie’s widowed gran and the retired indigenous Australian champion agility trainer).

Walking to Aldabaran, Adrian Tchaikovsky. Astronaut lost inside a wormhole maze on an alien artefact survives - somehow. Nicely compact creepiness with a Beowulf homage that reminds me once again that I have never read the original.

The angel of the crows, Katherine Addison. “Sherlock Holmes wingfic meets Jack the Ripper,” I’ve written, and unfortunately the angel bits feel as stuck on as the wings. I know Addison’s read a lot about the Ripper but most of this is retelling Sherlock Holmes classics with the supernatural shoehorned in. I liked her Watson slightly more than her Holmes, but the more that got revealed the more I found holes in the background worldbuilding.

Galatea, Madeleine Miller. Short story, really, of the “men are bad, especially in Greek myth,” genus, but I liked it and it didn’t irk me the way her The Song of Achilles did.

Illegal contact, Santino Hassell. I was looking for non hockey sports m/m and the author’s name seemed vaguely familiar, so I tried this. Then I checked afterwards and discovered where I’d seen the name was the disclosure that Santino Hassell, supposed bisexual former addict single father with cancer, was actually a Texas housewife who exploited gay teens, using their stories/texts etc in her fiction, and now I’m not even going to bother to review this.

Women and children first: the fiction of two world wars, Mary Cadogan. Opinionated but reasonably thorough, although I think Cadogan loses patience more quickly when dealing with anything outside GO (girlsown) fiction. The book I most liked the sound of from this, Munition Mary (published 1918, girl joins WWI munition factory, I suspect she probably uncovers at least one German spy and saves someone heroically)

How to draw a secret, Cindy Chang. Middle grade autobiographical graphic novel (yup, I snitch these from my kids). Cindy, a keen artist, is not allowed to tell anyone her father has moved back to Taiwan from the US; then an unexpected trip back reveals why he left, and why her family is no longer perfect. Nicely done and good at managing emotions realistically (I was also relieved the secret wasn’t child abuse).