What's in a Genre?

I am trying to span all the genres in my recent readings. Not really but it feels like that. I just read what can only be called chick lit, followed by middle grade fiction, and am now halfway through a book that is labeled Religion/Christian Life/Spiritual Growth, although I think the author may protest.

First Frost

Novel by Sarah Addison Allen

I picked this book completely by the author. I didn't even glance at what it was about. Sarah Addison Allen is almost a Maeve Binchy, though not quite as classy or maybe just not as British Isles, so it's an easy choice for me. I really enjoyed her first book, Garden Spells, but not as much her second book, Lost Lake (which I think I wrote about here but can't find) so I was excited to find that this is a sequel to Garden Spells. It's the sweet story of four generations of Southern women with a variety of mystical gifts, mostly connected to cooking and their mysterious garden. As is often true, the sequel is a bit of a let down when you find the characters changed too much or not enough, or the glamour or surprise of the first book is missing. But for the most part, this is another sweet study of human nature with some interesting bits of magic and a little suspense thrown in. Again, a lot like my friend Maeve.

The Honest Truth
Middle Grade Fiction by Dan Gemeinhart

This is exciting to me because the author is a local school librarian! Teachers can write books, and even get published! Yay! It's so encouraging. It took me a few pages to get into the book and I think that's a result of switching genres as rapidly as I have been. I have readers' whiplash. But once I got into it, I whipped right through this story of a young cancer patient who runs away to climb a mountain on his own. I liked all the characters, especially his chance encounters along the way. I LOVED that this is very real story that shows how full of hurt kids' lives can be and the realities our children face today, but without anything that I couldn't recommend to my own daughter or students. No swearing, sex, or scary stuff. Just real hardship and real hope. I also like that it's set in Wenatchee. It got me thinking about the settings of my two manuscripts.


Searching for Sunday

Religious Memoir by Rachel Held Evans

I'm not actually done with this book but since it's non-fiction and therefore won't devastate me with a terrible ending, I think it's fair to say I will keep liking it.  There was more of the genre-confusion at the beginning and again it took me a while to get into it, but now that I am, I'm really interested. This more than the others on this page makes me want to talk to other people about it (in person, I mean, not just in my head here). I've said before that I don't read many self help books or religious books because they make me feel more guilty than helped. That is so not the case here. That's why I said I think Rachel would question the genre label on this book, and why I re-assigned it in my sub-title. I think this is more a memoir, a kind of story that Rachel is telling about how she came to question the church and question God and BE OK WITH THE QUESTIONS. She also wrote her story in Faith Unraveled, but this time there is more a bent on why other young Christians are leaving church, and why some are coming back but in a different way. At a time when church is coming to mean many different things, I'm finding a lot of "me toos" in the book. And I think that's what it's meant to be about. Having a conversation about how we understand God today and being able to find someone to say "me too" with.

Mother's Day Twofer

I, like most modern moms, have a choice to make every day. After my MUSTS are done-- going to work, taking care of my family, keeping the laundry and dishes from piling up and flowing out the windows--I have a choice. I am very blessed to have this choice, considering so many moms or dads or grandmas don't have any free time at all. But every day I choose what to do with my approximate hour and a half of time to myself. 

My choices generally include: 

1) Writing. I love to write. This blog, my novel, diaries of my kids' antics, funny facebook posts; most are not a chore for me . 

2) Exercise. A chore, definitely a chore. I know some people who love to exercise and I know they are not crazy, but the day I say I love to exercise, you might want to check which vitamins I've been taking and which country they were made in. 

3) Spending time with friends. This is a rare choice since my friends are all as busy with above mentioned things as I am, so this takes months of planning and happens maybe once a month. 

4) Spending time with my husband. See #3. Ok, this happens more often than once a month, because we live in the same house, but since we're tired, it usually includes #5

5) Watch TV. This happens often. We binge-watch Netflix series. Right now we're on Season 7 of Friends. I miss those guys. 

And we come to number 6, the big winner, which usually happens above all else: reading. It's just the best. I love my friends and my husband (many of whom are reading this, I hope) but, sorry guys, my book is more available than you are. And the people in my book understand when I fall asleep on them in the middle of a sentence. So yes, most of what I've been doing these days is reading. These books, as a matter of fact. 

The Museum of Extraordinary Things

Novel by Alice Hoffman

If you don't recognize this book, try looking at the second image. It seems that it's the more common book cover based on a Google search. I'm not sure which I prefer, just like I'm not sure what I think of this book. I wish someone would tell me what to think. It's by the author of The Dovekeepers, which is why I read it (I actually think I gave it to my mom and she gave it back to me and then I may have accidentally turned it in to the library. Sorry, Mom.)

I loved the history in The Dovekeepers and I love in this one the historical look at New York in the Industrial Age, but I don't love any of the characters until near the end. It's a boy meets girl story set against a background of a human wonders museum/freak show, a factory fire and the ensuing 

political and social fall out, the development of old New York, and the coming of age of a lonely girl and an Orthodox Jewish boy. It has all the elements that made Dovekeepers so great, except the female relationships, but is a little slower moving and somehow, even though you don't know the end like you do with the historical Masada in Dovekeepers, it's less climactic. I don't know. Read it and tell me what you think.

Chesnut Street

Short Stories by Maeve Binchy

 

I know what I think of Dame Maeve, though. I adore her. Here is a girl that I would get out of my pj's to spend time with, and that's high praise. I don't think I've read everything by Maeve but only because she's written so very much. When I saw this on the new books list of the library mail service, I was surprised and pleased, because I thought Maeve was dead. Turns out she is, and I am so sad, but I am so glad that her husband scraped the bottoms of her desk drawers for these short stories and collected them into a book for us, her grieving readers. 

I just get so much comfort from her writing. It's earthy and real, with twists you come to expect and characters you come to love. Even though the short stories don't always have happy endings, they leave you thinking the world is an ok place to be. I need that kind of story when so many of my students' lives are terrible and the news is terrible and apparently most of our favorite foods are terrible. This is about people, with faults, who eventually make good or bad decisions but they turn out more or less okay, told with a sense of humor. It's my go-to, feel good, kind of book. 

Please tell me, what do you read when you need to feel good? Because Dame Maeve is gone and I can re-read her forever but I may need a new go-to now and then. Thanks!