Book #41 of 2025 was Clytemnestra, by Costanza Casati. This retelling of Clytemnestra's story is violent and harsh. What was it like to grow up Spartan? How was her relationship with her sister Helen, who would become Helen of Troy? What about her first marriage? What about her monstrous second husband, Agamemnon? If you're very into this whole story like I am, it's a must read.
Book #42 was The Wild Silence, by Raynor Winn. This is the second in a three book series; I read the first one earlier this year and I'm looking forward to reading the third.
Book #43 was Here One Moment, by Liane Moriarty. This book was so much fun, so unpredictable, and ultimately so affecting -- the ending made me cry. It's about the future, and death, and how we live our lives. We're here one moment, and maybe gone the next.
Book #44 was The Star-Apple Kingdom, by Derek Walcott. This book of poetry by Caribbean poet Walcott will need several re-readings, but even though I didn't get all the references my first time through, it was so beautifully written that I enjoyed it anyway.
Book #45 was The Life-Cycle of the Common Octopus, by Emma Knight. This is a very readable novel about Canadians studying in Scotland, how our families influence us, and the dynamics of friendship. Trigger warning for inappropriate teacher-student affair.
Book #46 was Swan Song, by Elin Hilderbrand. This was my fourth book by this author, who writes about Nantucket and badly behaved rich people.
Book #47 was Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption, by Katie J. Davis and Beth Clark. Katie moved to Uganda when she was still a teenager. This is the story of how that went. Some of our students at school have been reading it and talking about it.
Book #48 was Sunrise on the Reaping, by Suzanne Collins. I've been reading these Hunger Games books since the first one came out. I of course didn't expect this one to have a happy ending, since it's about Haymitch, and we all know from the other books how he turned out. But I wasn't expecting it to be quite as relentlessly bleak as it was. This came out in March and I had to wait for a library copy to be ready for me to download. I couldn't put it down, and zipped through it.
Book #49 was Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick. Speaking of bleak. This book came out in 2009, but the version I read had an afterword with updates going up to 2021. It's based on interviews with people who defected from North Korea, and it's very hard to read in places because their lives were just so grim.
One of the highlights of this school year was getting to read Gary D. Schmidt's book Okay for Now with a group of seventh graders. I have read this book with many seventh grade classes, but it had been a while. I decided to post this one as this year's book #50, even though I've read it many times before, because it felt so good to discuss a novel with middle schoolers again.
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