to be read list – INGRID E FABER

Goodreads Monday is a great way to talk about a book from your TBR list. Originally started by Lauren’s Page Turners, most people do these weekly, (such as Confessions of a YA Reader who partakes in several fun blog themes) I prefer to do mine monthly and this month I chose something a little different from my norm.

Gis Jen’s “The Resisters” is a science fiction dystopian novel that weaves in baseball as a part of its theme. I’ve only recently heard about this book

while driving and listening to NPR’s Fresh Air on the radio. Maureen Corrigan gave a compelling review and synopsis of Jen’s book and I decided I’d like to give it a try. You can read her review here if you’d like, otherwise, here’s the blurb from the Goodreads website:

The Resisters by Gish Jen

An audacious marvel of a novel about baseball and a future America, from the always inventive and exciting author of The Love Wife and Who’s Irish

The time: a not-so-distant future. The place: AutoAmerica. The land: half under water. The Internet—the new face of government—is “Aunt Nettie”: a mix of artificial intelligence, surveillance technology, and pesky maxims. The people have been divided, and no one is happy. The angel-fair “Netted” still have jobs and literally occupy the high ground, while the mostly coppertoned “Surplus” live on swampland if they’re lucky, on the water if they’re not.
The story: To a Surplus couple—he was a professor, she’s still a lawyer—is born a Blasian girl with a golden arm. At two, Gwen is hurling her stuffed animals from the crib; by ten she can hit whatever target she likes with a baseball; her teens find her playing happily in an underground Surplus league. When AutoAmerica re-enters the Olympics—with a special eye on beating ChinRussia—Gwen attracts interest. Soon she’s at Net U, falling in love with her coach and considering “crossing over,” even as her mother is challenging the AutoAmerican Way with lawsuits that will prove very dangerous.
An astonishing story of an America that seems only too possible, and of a family struggling to maintain its humanity in circumstances that threaten their every value—even their very existence.

“My Jasper June” caught my attention with its summer magic theme which of course was my favorite time of the year when I was younger. Also, the theme of dealing with loss is one I am keen on reading especially from a middle-grade book.

Here is it’s Goodreads blurb:

My Jasper June by Laurel Snyder

The school year is over, and it is summer in Atlanta. The sky is blue, the sun is blazing, and the days brim with possibility. But Leah feels. . . lost. She has been this way since one terrible afternoon a year ago, when everything changed. Since that day, her parents have become distant, her friends have fallen away, and Leah’s been adrift and alone.

Then she meets Jasper, a girl unlike anyone she has ever known. There’s something mysterious about Jasper, almost magical. And Jasper, Leah discovers, is also lost.

Together, the two girls carve out a place for themselves, a hideaway in the overgrown spaces of Atlanta, away from their parents and their hardships, somewhere only they can find.

But as the days of this magical June start to draw to a close, and the darker realities of their lives intrude once more, Leah and Jasper have to decide how real their friendship is, and whether it can be enough to save them both.

Tag: to be read list

GoodReads Monday: “The Resisters”

Goodreads Monday: My Jasper June