An author from the Dominican Republic retires from her job teaching writing in Vermont and decides to go back to her homeland and say goodbye to all of her unfinished projects by building a cemetery for them. But the stories sometimes demand to be told. A tinge of magical realism enhances this look at the history of the Dominican Republic and the people who stayed, and left.

No actual whale fall, one star! More seriously... this is a very good mood piece about an island in the UK which is five miles off of the mainland and has a dwindling population which is now around 50 people. A few ethnographers come to the island. It’s told first person through the eyes of an eighteen year old girl who has a dawning realization of they chasm between her life and the lives of more mainstream people. There is a whale, but it is beached. Very good.

This is a novel that takes place in Vermont which has an affected style (each paragraph is one or two sentences) but I pushed through it and really liked the story. It’s about a bunch of quirky individuals whose lives are intertwined sort of whether they like it or not (folks from New York, Christian beekeepers, “townies” lady who runs the post office). There is a tragedy partway through it and people react to stressors and the town changes but also stays the same.

This book started out with a few content warnings (talk of suicide, talk of sexual assault) which I figured I could handle but got two pages into it and the story opens with sort of what I can only describe as a jokey sadistic torture scene? I don’t know what this book is about and don’t care, it was clearly not for me.

A graphic novel about a 14 year old girl who doesn’t know much about her background (a white mom and a mystery dad she hasn’t met) who winds up spending the summer with her Guatemalan father helping him renovate a brownstone in a “bad” neighborhood. There are a lot of complex relationships, a few positive queer characters and some really satisfying home renovations. Ultimately a positive story which also has messages about the evils of gentrification.

The newest from Penny comes with two important caveats. First I have to say if you are stressed out by recent events and are looking for some escapist reading it is NOT THIS BOOK. It is another good story about our friends in Three Pines, but this time they have a mysterious vague and possibly deeply worrisome and catastrophic terrorist plot to contend with. And they’re not sure where to start looking, so they look a lot of places. Second, this book is clearly meant to be a partner with a second book so it’s got one of *those* sort of vague endings which might not be what you’re feeling like. There was, as is Penny’s style, a lot of interesting history to dip into. However it felt more thrillery than usual--which could be about a change in me and not a change in her--and it was a bit much for me.

This is a graphic novel by the author of The Encyclopedia of Early Earth which is one of my faves. It’s basically “What if we told the King Arthur story but mostly focused on female characters” I mean, it’s more than that, but that’s the central theme and a lot grows out of it. There’s a problem with the flow of magic in the world, and the goblins are up to no good. What to do?

This was a nice ten-year old book that segued nicely with the plague book, about what we can tell about human history from “DNA stuff.” It’s a pop science book so not too in the weeds and combines the things we know from science with anecdotes about why individual people might care, or stories about using DNA to find long-lost family, that sort of thing. The author is Australian so there’s more about Australian history than US stuff which was just fine by me.

In a future where we all have access to sentient robots but we have less access to jobs and prosperity, a woman undergoes a procedure to bring in some extra cash for her family and takes them on an extravagant “vacation” (a wild area inside the city, in a ruined world) and things go a little wrong and then go VERY wrong. A commentary on our use and abuse of technology and consumerism and how we care for one another (children in particular). Surprisingly non-didactic, well written.