Pain management certainly takes a lot of time & energy. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been navigating a fractured, infected tooth, which felt like a knife in my jaw, and a subsequent root canal-turned-ugly-tooth extraction. The dentist said the poor thing was too far gone to save and had to be broken apart to be pulled out.

Ow.

Now, I’m a reasonably good tooth caretaker, so I tried to ask (mouth stuffed with cotton) what went wrong. Her official diagnosis: “Sometimes shit happens.”

I’m healing, finally eating more than mush, but while I was blotto I did a LOT of reading. (When I was too whacked to read, I binge-watched the old BBC series Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency based on Douglas Adams’s novels. That version is much cozier–well-suited for the recuperating–than the stranger, more violent, more recent BBC America series with the same name, which I’m watching now.)

So here’s a list of some of the books I plowed through, with some short reviews (click the links to get the full monty). I’m working on some longer reviews and other projects and hope to have those ready to post soon.

Ginny’s books

The Craziest Fishing Tale on the Bayou

by Gary Alipio

In a unique, hilarious, bayou-redolent voice, Hatcher tries to impress his family with his fishing prowess and his all-around grown-up-ish-ness a few days before his 13th birthday. Of course, when it comes to his list of reasons not to w…

Clockwork

by Philip Pullman

As intricately constructed as a clock, this little fairytale spins in unexpected directions. Surprisingly dark, I found it difficult to shake later–the harsh, desperate actions by uncomplicated-seeming people resonated like Jackson’s Th…

Worlds Apart

by James Riley

A satisfying conclusion to the series. The final confrontation, especially, feels really complex, surprising, and fist-pump-worthy. Take that, Nobody! The action keeps moving as all of the characters struggle to come together and reunite…

Black Light Express

by Philip Reeve

My mistake was reading this one before reading the first in the series. Impatient! I followed the story and the character arcs fine, but I didn’t have much of an emotional connection to their plight as larger forces maneuver for power. F…

Mortal Engines

by Philip Reeve

Embarrassed to admit that I’m only now getting on the Mortal Engines bandwidth (and coming from Reeve’s Not-So-Impossible Tales series!). And oh wow, how have I not read this a million times already? It blew me away. If the upcoming movi…