Duck Days

Finished October 31 

Duck Days by Sara Leach, illustrations by Rebecca Bender

This book continues the story of Lauren, now in third grade and learning how to cope with visiting a friend's house where there might be different routines and foods. Lauren is on the autism spectrum and has various tools she uses to cope when she is feeling stressed in situations. Some of them we learned about in previous books she featured in, some are new here. 

She uses four square breathing to calm herself and her father talks to her about going with the flow. When she is faced with a challenging situation at school, she gets taught a new tool by one of her classmates, which is being like a duck and allowing comments by others to flow off her back. 

Lauren learns about what it means to be brave, and how she can have more than one friend. I like to see how Lauren grows from book to book and becomes more confident in her abilities and tackles new challenges with the help of her family, friends, and teachers. As always with this series, the illustrations show both the events of the story as well as Lauren's feelings. The facial expressions really work well to show how she feels in different situations here.

Murder on Bamboo Lane

Finished August 31
Murder on Bamboo Lane by Naomi Hirahara

This book is part of a series featuring police officer Ellie Rush. Ellie's mother is Japanese American and her family was interned during World War II. Ellie's father is white, and her paternal grandmother taught Spanish for years. So Ellie majored in Spanish in college at Pan Pacific West College, and then decided to join the police, following in the footsteps of her mother's sister, Cheryl Toma, who is now one of the senior offices in the LAPD. Ellie is a bicycle officer. A lot of her friends are still in college, including her ex-boyfriend Benjamin Choi, who is Korean American. Ellie's best friend Nay is Cambodian. One of Ellie's jobs is working as a community liaison, and one of her contacts complains about a missing person flyer that has been littering the neighbourhood. Ellie recognizes the missing girl as some she shared a class with at university, and become curious.
When the girl's body is discovered soon after, Ellie becomes involved in the case, and her aunt seems to be encouraging her to stay involved. As Ellie tries to juggle her work, with the relationships there that she is trying to develop to further her career, and her personal life, with some interesting family dynamics and an ex-boyfriend she still cares for, along with an interest in another police officer, she finds herself unsure of which steps are the right ones for her to move forward on.
Ellie mostly bicycles or uses transit, but she does have a car she inherited from her grandfather, a 1969 Buick Skylark that is long past its prime, and which has been dubbed the Green Mile. She lives alone with her dog Shippo in a small apartment in Highland Park. Ellie's younger brother Noah is close to her, but has his own issues.  There is a lot going on here, and I liked the depth of the character development for Ellie. I also liked the variety of ethnicities in the characters.

The Night Stages

Finished May 17
The Night Stages by Jane Urquhart

Tamara is a woman at a point of crisis in her life. It is the early sixties and she has been in a relationship with a man who can't commit to her in the way she wants. She runs from the situation, driving across Ireland to the Dublin airport and taking a flight to New York. When the plane lands for refueling at Gander, Newfoundland, the airport there fogs in, and she is grounded for hours. She notices a large mural in the airport, and moves back and forth between reflecting on her life and studying the mural.
Tamara is from a well-off family, Her father is involved in construction, providing concrete and other resources for building projects. Tamara has rebelled against her family, first as a tomboy running a bit wild, then becoming a pilot for the Air Transport Auxiliary during World War II, then leaving her husband for a man from a lower class and running off to Ireland with him. Her most recent relationship is with another Irishman, Niall, a meteorologist who has his own issues. Niall is haunted by guilt over his actions that contributed to his younger brother Kieran leaving. Kieran hasn't been heard from in years, and Niall has taken every opportunity he could to search for his brother. We hear Niall's story as he tells it to Tamara.
A second narrator in the novel is Kieran himself, telling the story of his own childhood, his breakdown after his mother's death, his subsequent life living in a small village, gaining a basic education, working as a labourer and getting involved in bicycling. Kieran lived with the family housekeeper Gerry-Annie beginning shortly after his mother's death, and became enamored of a bike left behind by someone leaving the area. The bike, christened the Purple Hornet by Kieran, leads to his future in ways he never envisioned.
The third narrator is Kenneth Lochhead, the painter of the mural at Gander. Lochhead is a real historical figure and Urquhart acknowledges this while creating his story. The story of the mural is an interesting one. Done in egg tempura, it took something like 5000 eggs to create and incorporated figures from Lochhead's past.
The Irish portions of the story are from County Kerry, and bring the country to life vividly.
This story makes beautiful use of language and reveals the unpredictable nature of love.

Tillie the Terrible Swede

Finished June 7
Tillie the Terrible Swede: How One Woman, a Sewing Needle, and a Bicycle Changed History by Sue Stauffacher, illustrated by Sarah McMenemy

This picture book is about an immigrant girl who came to the United States with a dream. When she arrived she found a job in a tailor shop and waited. One day, she saw a man ride past the shop on a bicycle and knew she wanted to ride one too. But women didn't ride bikes back then (the 1890s), it wasn't considered a ladylike thing to do. She persisted and began racing, and winning races too.
This is the story of the sudden expansion in popularity of bicycling at the time, and of women's rights, and of the history-making behaviour of Tillie. The drawing are simple, colourful and fun and fit the story well. A good one.

The Secret Race

Finished October 28
The Secret Race: inside the hidden world of the Tour de France: doping, cover-ups, and winning at all costs by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle

The world of cycling and doping has been in the news a lot lately due to American investigations, civil cases, and retired riders coming clean. This is a book covering it all. Hamilton was part of the Lance Armstrong team, one of Lance's chief rivals, and the first rider to be caught for having transfused blood not his own. He'd already moved on with his life when things started coming out in a big way, and when the authorities approached him, made the choice to be totally honest, about his own doping and what he saw around him. He gets us into the mind of the rider, and shows us how the decisions to dope get made, the pressure, the way the teams work. We see a side of Lance Armstrong we don't see in his public persona. And we begin to understand why doping is so pervasive and why no one talked about it.
With several friends and relatives into cycling, I've grown more interested in this sport and how it works. This book gives behind the scenes information and reads like a novel.

Gold

Finished August 4
Gold by Chris Cleave

I was a little reluctant to start this novel as I'm not a big sports fan, but boy am I glad I read it. The plot does revolve around 2 British women, Olympic-level cyclists, but it is about them as people. That's not to see I didn't learn a lot about competitive cycling that I didn't know (admittedly I didn't know much), because there is definitely information on that here, but it is woven seamlessly into the plot. We see the training, the structure and support behind the competitors, and the long road to success.
Kate and Zoe are the two women, and they met at the age of nineteen at a national training program in track cycling, the kind that is done in the velodrome, where they also began training with their coach Tom, and met Jack, Kate's future partner.
As the book begins, they are 24 and Zoe, Jack, and Tom are at the Athens Olympics, while Kate is back in England with baby Sophie. The book goes forward from there, with the background story brought in through the characters' looking back. The main action takes place in the lead up to the 2012 London Olympics, with both Zoe and Kate training for the events, Zoe struggling with her drive, her history, and her fame, and Kate struggling to continue to be a good mother to her fragile daughter.
For both women, this is their last chance at an Olympics. Next time, their age will mean they won't be able to vie against younger competitors. We see Zoe as she struggles with her emotions, her anger, her guilt, her strong competitive drive that has her taking crazy risks, even off the track.
Kate is a natural rider and has the drive, but has been sidetracked before by her love and concern for her family. Jack tries to be a good father, but Kate isn't always willing to step away, and Jack often feels that he is more the fun parent. Sophie has health issues, but she wants her parents to do well too, and hides the extent of her illness when she can.
This book is about drive, friendships, love, and just being human. The characters come alive for us as complex people, not just the Olympic stars we see in the news. A great read.