I Have Some Questions For You

I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai (2023) 435 pages

Bodie Kane is a film professor and podcaster who goes back to the boarding school where she attended high school to teach a couple of two-week long mini courses. Being on campus pulls her 25 years back into the past: she had roomed one semester with Thalia Keith, who was murdered during their senior year. Omar, a Black coach who ran the athletic programs had been found guilty of the murder and had been in prison for a couple of decades now. Bodie is now re-hashing her time at high school, including many instances of sexual harassment by male students towards female students, and of possible grooming of Thalia, by one teacher in particular, and she now thinks Omar is innocent.

She gives her podcasting class an assignment to investigate and report on a number of possible topics, including the murder of Thalia, and two students are looking into it. Most adults on campus, in addition to Bodie's former classmates, are displeased when word gets outs that Bodie is encouraging the re-examination of the murder. 

Numerous instances where women have been killed by their partners are interspersed throughout, which help inform Bodie's reconsideration of Thalia's murder. The modern MeToo movement and racism both loom large. Bodie is obsessed and goes through her own list of suspects one by one, trying to look for reasons and opportunity for each person to have murdered Thalia. In a sleep-deprived moment, she even adds herself to the list.

Bodie's character, and the other characters she describes in the course of the story, seem so well fleshed out in this riveting novel.

Lost in the Moment and Found

 Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire, 161 pages.

Things started going wrong for Antsy after her father died. But they went much more wrong after her mother remarried soon after his death. Her new step-father scares her. She can't quite pin down why, but she knows she doesn't like him, and she really doesn't like being alone with him. Soon something happens that makes Antsy decide she can't stay, so she runs away and ends up in The Shop Where Lost Things Go. The shop is completely magical, and full of magical doors that connect it to a seemingly infinite number of worlds that she can explore and bring things back from. But everything has a price, even if you don't know you are paying it. 

This book is pretty heavy. It's a very personal narrative for the author, and I think you can really feel that throughout. Like many of the standalone books in this series, this one is a tragedy. It is also very, very good. I feel like I have to go and reread Where the Drowned Girls Go now that I know Antsy, and that certainly isn't a hard sell for me. Another excellent addition, I can't wait to see what McGuire does next. 

P.S. It's sort of a pain to track down the song from the epigraph (which the title of the book is taken from) but I would say it's very worthwhile. I ended up buying the song on Bandcamp and I think I've listened to it at least a dozen times since I finished this book.

Lost in the Moment and Found

Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire, 146 pages

In the eighth Wayward Children book, we get the story of Antsy, a young girl whose home environment has been increasingly uncomfortable since her father died and a new stepfather came into the equation. When Antsy hits her tipping point and the alarm bells start ringing, she runs away from home and ends up in an eclectic store that she soon learns is a nexus of worlds, the place where lost thing go, with Doors leading in and out of strange and sometimes wonderful lands.

We met Antsy in the previous book in the series, Where the Drowned Girls Go, as Cora's roommate, but what's wonderful is that you don't have to have read that one to enjoy this one, or vice versa. (The back-and-forth between the continuing story and books that focus on specific characters is fantastic, and makes it approachable from many angles.) Antsy's story is uncomfortable and scary and unsettling, a story of childhood and innocence lost, and it's delicately and perfectly told.

How to Build a Fire

How to Build a Fire and other handy things your grandfather knew by Erin Bried  266 pp.

This is the companion book to How to Sew a Button and other nifty things your grandmother knew. This one is geared more toward men with tips about how to choose a suit, tie a necktie, grow a beard, or shave included along with non-gender related things about how to buy a car, barbeque, change your oil, train your dog, change a diaper, make a speech and more. This book isn't quite as entertaining as How to Sew... but the bios of the "grandfathers" who were consulted for the book are fascinating. The men include nine World War II veterans who worked in a variety of professions, and one immigrant from Colombia who came to the U.S. for a better life for his family. There is useful information in this book but I don't know that I will purchase copies for my sons because I didn't find the information as useful as the previous book which I did give them.