Category: 4 Star Books
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A Gift of Magic by Lois Duncan
Rating: 4/5, good Have you ever had a book mirror your life so much it’s spooky? A Gift of Magic is a children’s paranormal book. It was first published in 1971 and I read it in 2000 when I was about ten years old. It got re-released in 2012 and after looking up the synopsis…
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I Rise: The Transformation of Toni Newman
Rating: 4/5, good I picked up this book because I saw Toni Newman on a Zoom call with Charlie Jane Anders and a lot of other trans and nonbinary authors. There were so many cool authors and good books to pick from it was a little overwhelming (the call included Alok Vaid-Menon, Meredith Talusan, Vivek…
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The Light in Front of Me by Aria Howell
Rating: 4/5, good Full disclosure: This is my partner’s book and I edited it. The Light in Front of Me by Aria Howell is an LGBT high fantasy book. It’s about Valerie, the princess of a kingdom called Rayleth, who is engaged to marry Eliot, the prince of Va’cerio. Valerie and Eliot have been good…
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The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Rating: 4/5, good Diverse Reading Challenge #4 This book was originally published in 1984 and it’s been a standard in classrooms. I’ve definitely seen it around, though I was never assigned it. We did read Sandra Cisneros’s story “Eleven” in class in 7th grade, and I loved that story. I think The House on Mango…
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Rosewater by Tade Thompson
Rosewater by Tade Thompson Rating: 4/5 This was assigned for my local scifi group. I didn’t finish it in time to make it to the discussion, but I really enjoyed the book. It’s a scifi set in about 2050 in Nigeria after aliens have started to invade Earth. The main character, Kaaro, is one of…
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Autonomous by Annalee Newitz
Rating: 4/5, good I was really excited to read this book. I’ve seen Annalee Newitz speak a bit in SF and I was a big fan of i09 while that was still running so I was really curious what they would write. They have a lot of experience in tech journalism and it comes to…
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Quiet by Susan Cain
This isn’t so much a book for introverts to learn how to fit into society as an argument as to why society should change to accept introverts.
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Tybalt Perdition by John Cordial
Rating: 4/5, good This is the story of a water fairy born from a shipwreck who helps a fox god escape the wrath of a wolf god. Caldyr, the fairy, has a take-no-prisoners personality with extremely strong water magic to back it up. Reynardine, the fox god, is a flirty, selfish trickster god. The…
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Your and My Secret by Ai Morinaga
Rating: 4/5, good I’ve only read volume 1 so far, but this manga is really cute! It’s a bit old (2003), but I think it’s still worth a look. I picked this up at the swap meet at Fanime. It’s about a teenage boy and a teenage girl, Akira Uehara and Nanako Momoi, who switch…