#book 48

[itspronouncedtessa]

2025 Reading Journal

June 15

Book 48

Jacqueline Harpman

I Who Have Never Known Men

[theredandwhitequeen]

Book 48 of the 50 book challenge. Nick and Charlie by Alice Oseman. This is 2 years after first getting together for Nick and Charlie, Nick is graduating 6th form and going to University in the fall. They have a fight and this is how they come back from it. It’s pretty good.

[adreamthatsworthkeeping]

Oh my god what did she do?????

[theredandwhitequeen]

Book 48 of the 50 book challenge. Of monkey bridges and banh mi sandwiches by Oanh Ngo Usadi. A memoir of growing up in South Vietnam before the war ended and after, the author and her family escaped in 1984 by boat and became refugees first in Malaysia, then the phillipines and finally Texas. I really enjoyed reading her story.

[curligurl0896]

So it's occured to me that a testament to how cruel Cassie's "nonviolent" solution in book 22 was is the fact that David begs Rachel to kill him in book 48. I say this because I feel like David is someone who very much values his own skin-- we see in book 21 that he was willing to surrender to Visser Three the moment he realized that he was in a situation where he very well might die. And while that alone doesn't necessarily make someone a bad person (not everyone has nerves of steel like the Animorphs do), it does mean that David is selfish enough to value his own life over the greater good. He'd probably choose infestation in a heartbeat if it meant that he won't have to die, and especially if it meant he could get back all the creature comforts he lost when his house was destroyed. Yet there he is in book 48, begging Rachel to kill him-- and he does this entirely with the sole intention of self preservation, as he did before. What I'm trying to say here is, life as a rat must have been so genuinely fucking miserable for David in order for him to think that death was the better option.

[theredandwhitequeen]

Book 48 of the 50 book challenge. In the Absence of Sun by Helie Lee. This is the true story of the author’s family members escape from North Korea in 1997 in the middle of the famine. It’s hard to read, because the feelings are so raw, but it’s amazing story of how the author helped her Grandmother rescue her oldest son and his family and bring the to South Korea.

[theredandwhitequeen]

Book 48 of the 50 book challenge. The Day the World Came to Gander. 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim Defede. The book was written in 2002, and has different stories than Come From Away, except for Hannah, the woman, whose son was a firefighter that died in the towers, plus the man who escaped as a child from Poland after the Nazi’s came to power. The book had a story of a family, who had just adopted a daughter in Kazakhstan a few days earlier, flew to Moscow, then Germany, then were flying home to Texas when diverted to Gander. They eventually with an other couple, drove from Gander to the Canadian border, had a friend rent them a car and drove back to Texas. One woman on a flight was a US Army brigadier general who was the director of intelligence for the us military command for Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The stories were interesting and sad, but you learn about the people of Gander and the Plane people.

If you’ve seen Come From Away, listened to the soundtrack, or your interested in books about 9/11 you should read it.

[theredandwhitequeen]

Book 48 of the 50 book challenge. Upstairs at the White House by J.B. West and Mary Lynn Kotz. This was such a good book, he starts as an assistant Usher in the White House in 1941 until 1969 when he retired as Chief Usher. He lived through the Roosevelt administration, The Truman administration, Eisenhower administration, Kennedy and Johnson administrations plus the first month or so of the Nixon administration. It gives such an interesting perspective to what it was like to live in the White House. If you are interested in us history or White House history this is a good book to read.