Courtney Milan Challenge (4/7 books in series read; 70% of challenge completed)

1. The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister #2) - 5 stars

Regency Box Set

2. His Jilted Bride (Banks Brothers Brides #3)  by Rose Gordon - currently reading

Non-Fiction Challenge (22/50, 44% of challenge completed)

3. Flash Boys by Michael Lewis - 5 stars

4. Missoula by Jon Krakaur - 5 stars

5. High Tech Trash by Elizabeth Grossman - 2 stars

6. Bad Money by Kevin Phillips - DNF

7. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis - 5 stars

Partial Reads

7. Easter 1916 - Read chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 (55% completed)

8. At the Duke's Wedding (Anthology) by Various Authors (50% completed)

9. Summer Rain (Anthology) by Various Authors - DNF

LGBTQ+ Cultural and Heritage Month (US observation)

10. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel - 3 stars

11. Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel - 0 stars

*Loving Day - June 12th

12. Let It Shine by Alyssa Cole - 4 stars

TBR Pile Read Down

13. The Bride Wore Blue (Brides of Bath #1) by Cheryl Bolen - DNF

14. If the Shoe Kills (Tourist Trap Mystery #3) by Lynn Cahoon - 4 stars

15. That Scandalous Summer (Rules of the Reckless #1) by Meredith Duran - 1 star

16. Summer of Dreams (From this Moment On novella) by Elizabeth Camden - 2 stars

17. That Summer in Cornwall by Ciji Ware - DNF

18. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene (Summer Bingo) - 0 stars

19. The Giver (The Giver Quartet #1) by Lois Lowry (Summer Bingo) - 4 stars

20. Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson (Summer Bingo) - 4 stars

21. Side Effects by Amy Goldman Koss - 4 stars

22. Dressed to Kill (Tourist Trap Mystery #4) by Lynn Cahoon - 4 stars

23. Superman/Wonder Woman, Volume 1: Power Couple by Charles Soule and Tony S. Daniel - 4 stars 

Events

COYER Summer Vacation Challenge started June 18th.

Moonlight Reader's Summer Bingo Challenge

DoD Summer Reading Program started June 20th.

Reading Challenge: 88 out of 150 books (58% completed)

Stats

# non-fiction books: 4

# fiction books: 11

# DNF: 4

average total rating: 3.7

average non-fiction rating: 4.25 stars

average fiction rating: 3.2

Wrap Up

Getting better at hitting the DNF button. For the most part, those extra books for the bingo came in handy for bumping up the rating and giving me some enjoyable reading hours. Thanks Moonlight Reader for making me broaden my reading horizons :) !

Romance genre (save for Milan and Cole) didn't show me any love this month. I'm so tired of inaccurate historical details and NA characters in ball gowns. And as usual, contemporary romance failed me, with half of my DNFs coming from that genre.

Thankfully, I have cozy mysteries to keep turning pages. And the Apple settlement credit to my NOOK account helped keep me in cozy mysteries into the autumn months. YA and MG books helped to turn pages too. I found the other three books in The Giver Quartet on Overdrive, so I will probably work through the series next year. Not sure if I am up to seeing the movie though.

Non-fiction this month was great, just falling further behind on my goal of 50 non-fiction books for the year. I will be working through Lewis' and Krakaur's backlists next year. Biggest accomplishment this month is getting to the halfway mark on the historical account of the Easter Uprising of 1916 after not touching the book since the end of March.

The month of July includes one of my favorite holidays (Happy Independence Day to my American BL friends! Happy Getting Rid of Those Pesky Colonists Day to my British BL friends!) and two family trips (one to LEGOLAND, one to Brighton), so I am very excited to get some reading done while sunning myself on a beach or near a pool (June was straight up soggy as hell).

Happy Reading!

I heard about this book from different Book Riot contributors. When it (and the follow up) went on sale, I picked both up. This is my first graphic novel-style memoir, but I like the subgenre. However, the story of Bechdel and her dad was uneven, so I waffled between 2.5 - 3 stars, finally rounding up.

The art is fine - blues, whites, and blacks are the only colors and the drawings are streamlined. The font is the same throughout the book, and was readable (I read it via the NOOK app on my phone). But the art really isn't the focus of the book - the relationship between her dad and Alison was.

I really enjoyed the story when Alison focused on her growing up years and her college years. They were the most natural voiced part of the story. Unfortunately, Bechdel decided to add heaping mounds of how Proust, Fitzgerald, Joyce, and other (this reader's opinion) insufferable writers described or fit in with her family's dynamics. The belly buttoning gazing went on for pages. I can't stand literature analysis and breaking down every sentence, metaphor, or simile to find the symbolism of it all - this is why I majored in History and not Literature. The story also jumps around time-wise; we get scenes from her childhood in the 70s, flash forward to her dad's death, go back in time to her college years, back to childhood, etc.

I had two issues with the story: 1) the use of slurs and 2) the possible bi-erasure. With the first issue, Bechdel uses the words "pansy" and "sissy" in describing her father, even when she may have had inklings that she was queer herself. I felt she could have used other words to describe the very real situation/topic (gender norms, gender fluidity, and self-expression) that I felt was important to the story and to the larger picture of queerness identity. The second issue was Bechdel trying to pigeonhole her father as gay to connect herself and him, rather than entertaining the idea her father was bisexual. That rankled a lot more than the first issue. It seemed her gayness was somewhat validated/justified if he was squarely gay. I really enjoyed learning about her queer journey (not just lesbianism, but gender self-expression as a more butch/less feminate), and to see/read her label her father in very strict terms was a bit jarring.

I think Bechdel has an unique voice and style and I am glad I have the follow up book ready to go; but a lot less trying to tie herself/family/life to the cannons of literature would have made this book more enjoyable for me.

3 stars. Summer Bingo square "Graphic Novel or Comic".