My 2017 Christmas book tree!

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I made a book tree this year! I’ve wanted to do this forever, but was never able. This year however, I have a seven-month-old puppy, which I took to be a perfect excuse to not put up a traditional Christmas tree. Can you even imagine the temptation a tree full of shiny baubles would represent? I shudder.
I mean look at this little girl. She’s adorable, but there is no way a tree would survive. So, after running the idea past my family. It was decided I could do something alternative this year. We only really celebrate Santa anyhow, so it’s not like I would be impengining on anything religious. So, this year I got my book tree! 

It’s been two days since I put it up and I’m still just beyond chuffed with myself. I keep staring at it and noticing different books. “Oh look, The Bhagavad Gita ended up next to Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice for all Creation.” Or things like how I used heavy, hard backs at the bottom and paperbacks at the top. So the tree gets progressively less serious as you travel from Plato at the bottom to Birthday Fortunetelling at the top. I bet no one else has Malachi Martin’s Hostage to the Devil of How to Bang a Billionaire on their tree. It’s like an endless stream of amusements. I’ve not read them all…YET, but I sure like looking at them.

What I really want to do is list every single book used in the construction of this tree, but obviously that’s not reasonable. So instead, I’m going to post a million pictures and ask you if you see any of your favorites. If so, I want to hear about them!

So, here it is, my book tree, from every angle I can manage without destroying it. Which really just means all but from the back. Sorry, if your favorite is back there it’ll have to stay a secret. Feel free it zoom in.

An Excess Male

Book Review of An Excess Male, by Maggie Shen King

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I borrowed a copy of Maggie Shen King‘s An Excess Male from my local library.

Description from Goodreads:
Under the One Child Policy, everyone plotted to have a son. Now 40 million of them can’t find wives. China’s One Child Policy and its cultural preference for male heirs have created a society overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. By the year 2030, more than twenty-five percent of men in their late thirties will not have a family of their own.

An Excess Male is one such leftover man’s quest for love and family under a State that seeks to glorify its past mistakes and impose order through authoritarian measures, reinvigorated Communist ideals, and social engineering. Wei-guo holds fast to the belief that as long as he continues to improve himself, his small business, and in turn, his country, his chance at love will come. He finally saves up the dowry required to enter matchmaking talks at the lowest rung as a third husband—the maximum allowed by law. Only a single family—one harboring an illegal spouse—shows interest, yet with May-ling and her two husbands, Wei-guo feels seen, heard, and connected to like never before. But everyone and everything—walls, streetlights, garbage cans—are listening, and men, excess or not, are dispensable to the State. Wei-guo must reach a new understanding of patriotism and test the limits of his love and his resolve in order to save himself and this family he has come to hold dear.

Spoilery Review:
I wavered between a four and five star on this book. It isn’t easy to read at times and my first words on finishing the book were a wail of, “XXX doesn’t get his happy ending.” It’s almost worse than that honestly, because a gay man in a family is replaced by a straight man and the family is functionally improved. It is definitely only the straight characters who get their simple happy ending, and that very much bothered me. But the more I thought about it, the more I decided that I think there are more layers to it than just that.

Yes, if I took the very Scarlet O’hara-like everything will be better tomorrow passage at the end to just be a glib wrap up, then this book would fall in my estimation. Instead, however, I choose to read it to suggest that XXX is actually working with a person he could have a discreet, mutually meaningful relationship with, to bring about real social change in society that will enable him to openly rejoin his family. And this I see as a happy, if delayed ending. It’s certainly the happiest ending the book could allow in the society as presented. I think it’s important to remember that, despite involving love and family, this is not a romance novel. Tragic? Yes. But also hopeful.

A book isn’t just it’s ending, of course, and I found this one to also have a believable example of an autistic adult, poly relationships, positively represented gay men (there are mysteriously no lesbians or bisexuals, though you’d think the the latter would be ideal in such a society), beautiful writing and complex emotions. Also, I thought all the different types of love shown were wonderful. Though love was also demonstrated to be brittle and painful when not similarly reciprocated, no matter how hard the characters tried. And they REALLY tried.

All in all, An Excess Male made me think and feel and I truly enjoyed it.

Demon Ember

Book Review of Demon Ember (Resurrection Chronicles #1), by M.J. Haag & Becca Vincenza

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I won a signed copy of Demon Ember, by M.J. Hagg and Becca Vincenza, through Goodreads.

Description:
Mya’s world is falling apart. After a series of earthquakes, deadly animals with glowing red eyes begin attacking people and start the spread of a zombie-like plague. Safety is just a memory as she tries to make her way home. When a different creature attacks the people helping her reach Oklahoma City, Mya is sure she’ll never see the light of another day. Despite his eerie green eyes and very sharp teeth, the grey-skinned creature is more intelligent and humanlike than he first appears. He’s determined to keep Mya by his side and protect her from the new world’s dangers. When his path starts taking her further away from home, she must choose between safety and her family.

Review with a slight spoiler:
Basically entertaining, but not much more. So, Mya decides to cross the zombie and hellhound infested state to get home to her family (without verifying they’ll be there). Along the way she runs into Drav, a large, human-like creature who decides he’s going to protect the female at all costs (without asking if she’s interested in this). That’s the plot…all of it. The book is basically just them running from one place to another and Drove defeating anything that threatens Mya. There really isn’t a lot to it in terms of development or explanations. You are left with a lot of questions in the end (which is a cliffhanger).

Drav can conveniently learn a language by hearing a word once, so the whole communication thing is easily dismissed. And he’s sweet. I liked Drav. Once he could understand her instructions, he was scrupulously attentive to Mya’s demands not to touch her (consent, basically). I liked that. Mya wasn’t particularly adept at survival, but not too stupid to live either. So, I was fine with Mya.

My issue arrises from the fact that he decides to protect her because he’s never seen a female before. There’s nothing inherently special about Mya herself that makes him take interest in her. He’s pretty much just protecting the pussy or womb. He of course falls in love and I imagine Mya will in future books, but when you get right down to it, this isn’t about Mya as a person.

All in all, I enjoyed the book. There were some funny bits. Like the meta scene where the large, fanged, grey-skinned man with pointed ears getting his hands on a Ruby Dixon novel. I’d be more than willing to read the rest of the series.