What Am I Reading Wednesday - May 6

It's cold and rainy, so I've settled in with hot and sour soup (homemade) and barbecue (from the neighborhood gem) and my books. Of which there were many this week.


What I Just Finished Reading

This Is Not My Hat – Jon Klassen
Just as delightful as I Want My Hat Back, but with art that’s even more gorgeous. I want Klassen to cover my walls with his paintings of seaweed jungles.

I Want My Hat Back – Jon Klassen
Holy crap, that’s dark, I thought the first time I read this. But is it really? Isn’t it? Only Jon Klassen knows.

The House in the Cerulean Sea – TJ Klune
Not everything about this book clicked with me: sentences are often clunky, small children deliver chunks of Wikipedia-article dialogue, the love interest speaks almost exclusively in self-help bromides and the romance itself lacks spark. But. Even with those faults, this was still a ridiculously charming novel. The House in the Cerulean Sea is the story of a soulless office drone sent to investigate an orphanage for magical children with a stern warning from his superiors that he remain Objective and Not Get Personally Involved. What happens next will be obvious to everyone, but oh, the residents of the orphanage are uniformly delightful, and the antics of one in particular made me laugh—out loud—repeatedly. Sure, the story may beat readers over the head with its message, but it works. I definitely recommend this one.


What I Am Currently Reading

The Goblin Emperor – Katherine Addison
Still for reasons.

The Strangler Vine – M.J. Carter
Because it’s time for my yearly series reread.

The King At The Edge Of The World – Arthur Phillips
This novel tells the story of a physician to the Ottoman sultan whose rival conspires to exile him at the court of Queen Elizabeth. The story unfolds over four parts, of which I’ve read three. The first is the weakest of the bunch, but the novel grows increasingly compelling as it adds additional characters and the conspiracies that enmesh them.

おまけのこ – 畠中 恵 (Omake no Ko – Hatakenaka Megumi)
To recap: Ichitaro and a group of local children are investigating rumors of a kage onna—a human shadow that appears when there’s no human around to cast it. The adults in Ichitaro’s world think the kage onna is a childish flight of fancy, but they are concerned about the appearance of a youkai called a hienma and the theft of a mirror from a local Buddhist temple.

As the story unfolds, we learn that a tobacco wholesaler has taken a second wife (as in, to live with him and his first wife). His younger brother disapproves of second wife’s lack of pedigree, and goes around insisting that second wife must be the hienma. He also steals the temple mirror—reputed to show the true form of any nearby youkai—to try to prove it. But alas! His nastiness has driven the second wife out of his older brother's home by the time he returns with it. She's left behind her young daughter, who subsequently steals the mirror and runs away to try to reunite with mom. All this is discovered after the meddling kids, looking for one of their own who’s disappeared while investigating the kage onna—locate the missing kid, the daughter, the second wife, and the mirror, whose movements through the city enabled the appearance of the kage onna. Ichitaro ends up bedridden from all the excitement while the adults (he assumes) resolve their adult problems off screen. The end.

Next week’s chapter: Arinsukoku.


What I'm Reading Next

In addition to the Phillips, I picked up Deepa Anappara’s Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, Yasmin Khan’s The Saffron Tales, Terry Pratchett’s The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner, and Tansy Roberts’ The Mocklore Omnibus.

これで以上です。