Cometary Tales Blog,On Books Books Make the Best Gifts

Books Make the Best Gifts

A group of authors affiliated with the San Francisco chapter of the Women’s National Book Association got together earlier this month to celebrate our pandemic-time publications. Oh, my goodness, what a variety! What awesome works.

Are you shopping for friends and family who aren’t as committed to science fiction and fantasy as you are? Need some hot tips for books that will surprise and delight them with your confidence in stepping out from your own genre?

Here’s your directory, so you can jump to satisfy your target gift recipients’ desires. Each cover photo links to the relevant Amazon page. If you prefer to buy elsewhere, head for the author’s website.

Historical Fiction

Thrillers and Mysteries

Short Stories and Contemporary Fiction

Memoir

Poetry

Books for Children and Parents

Nonfiction and Self-Improvement

And we’re off!

Historical Fiction

COver for Betrayal on the Bayou, showing a broad pool with tall bayou trees leaning over the water and casting reflections.

Hungry for a story with deep African American and French connections? Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte’s Betrayal on the Bayou plunges the reader into 1854 Louisiana, where a young Parisian widower “sets off a twenty-eight-year chain of events that reveal the brutal truths of inequality, colorism, and betrayal.” Sheryl’s blog is here. You’ll find she also teaches writing.

Book cover for What Disappears, with the Eiffel Tower rising above a cityscape.

Russian history? The delights of Paris? Ballet? Does your gift recipient love any of these? Meet up with long-separated twins at the Ballet Russe, and hold your breath as to what will happen next, in Barbara Quick’s What Disappears. Visit Barbara at her website.

Thrillers and Mysteries

Cover for What Jonah Knew, with silhouettes of a small boy and a young man superimposed on one another.

How about a deep, soul-searching, thriller….head for Barbara Graham’s What Jonah Knew, on the surface a story about mothers and sons, but one that delves into “metaphysical questions about life and death—and what happens in between.” Follow Barbara on her website.

Cover for Detours, with a young woman gazing from the cover, pale, wide-eyed and serious.

From mothers and sons to a mothers and daughters, come to Sheri McGuinn’s newest book, Peg’s Story: Detours, which answers questions raised by the first book in this series, Running Away. Discover links between the stories as you follow Peg’s escape to a new life—only to see her mistakes spiral “into a life-changing series of events.” Catch up on Sheri’s website.

Contemporary Fiction

Cover for What Is Possible from Here, with title words on a cardlike field, with clusters of pink flowers behind and around the edges.

Do you want to share stories of real people finding their way through ordinary life? Stories set all over the country? Try Cynthia Gregory’s What is Possible From Here, a collection exploring “the nature of friendship and love, and the myriad ways we endeavor to make meaning in an unpredictable world.” You can also find her nonfiction book, Journaling as a Sacred Practice, through Cynthia’s website. If you’d like a hardcover copy of her collection, you can find it online at Barnes & Noble.

Cover for Begin Again, with a wide landscape of golden hills rising to rough brown hills and a deep blue-clouded sky, with a rainbow falling to earth.

Looking for grounded contemporary women’s fiction? Consider Kimberly Dredger’s Begin Again. This novel takes you on a young widow’s journey, “as she struggles to re-enter life, enduring more loss and sadness on her way to ultimate empowerment.” To expand your collection, you might also pick up Kimberly’s anthology of essays, stories, and poetry, starting on her author page.

Memoir

Cover for Dancing on the Wine-Dark Sea with a woman in a long dress twirling as she wades ankle-deep at the edge of the sea, with a sunset glowing in the sky and on the water.

How about a fabulous feminist travel memoir? Diane LeBow’s Dancing on the Wine-Dark Sea: Memoir of a Trailblazing Woman’s Travels, Adventures, and Romance takes you “dining with Corsican rebels and meeting a black stallion in a blizzard on the Mongolian steppes to assisting exiled Afghan women and savoring a love affair with an elegant French Baron.” Catch up with Diane on her website.

Full disclosure: I WON a copy of this book in the event giveaway, after listening to Diane give us more details about her story. Can’t wait until it arrives, so I can follow the whole adventure.

Cover of Loving Before Loving, with an old black-and-white photograph of a couple smiling together--a white woman with close-cropped hair, and a black man with a short hair and a short-trimmed moustache.

For a blend of social justice history and memoir, look for Joan Lester’s Loving Before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White, which takes the reader back in time. You’ll find a deeply personal story exploring racism, sexism, and marriage, through the lives of one couple: a memoir of love and life in the midst of the civil rights and women’s rights movements. Get to know Joan through her website.

Cover for The Red Sandals, with a graphic of a plant bowing down against a red background, with a black and white photo of a small Chinese girl in a white dress with white ribbons in her hair, her hands clasped together.

For an unflinching look into life in Mao’s China, and the impact on one girl, pick up Jing Li’s The Red Sandals: A Memoir, in which she shares her personal story of being the unwanted girl in a poverty-stricken family, her scholastic journey within the Chinese system, her transition to America, and growth as a teacher and writer. Learn more about Jing and her story here.

Cover for Promenade of Desire, with broad color slashes in yellow and blue and red, over a partially-concealed photograph of a young woman with her arm lifted, in a seemingly-seductive pose.

Through her dramatic memoir, Promenade of Desire—A Barcelona Memoir, Isidra Mencos uses her own story of learning to free herself from repression through books and salsa dance, to create a “sensual, page-turning coming-of-age story: Isidra evolves from a repressed Catholic virgin to a seductive Mata Hari.” Learn more about Isidra and her journey at her website.

Cover for Brown Skin Girl, a graphic design with an artist's representation of a young woman in a long skirt, her long dark hair sweeping out to form a background for the books's subtitle, with shapes of flowers, leaves, and birds woven into the background.

For a heartwarming story of one person’s escape from the abuses of family and culture, follow Mytrae Melania. In her Brown Skin Girl: An Indian-American Woman’s Magical Journey from Broken to Beautiful, she shows how her journey…through many trials…brought her to “freedom, love, and the magic that finds you when you follow your heart.” Find more about her mission at her website.

Poetry

Cover for Birds of San Pancho, with a golden-breasted bird perched on a twig, with blurred greenery in the background.

Shopping for someone who loves poetry? Travel? Birds? Lucille Lang-Day’s Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place deploys Lucille’s wordsmithing to unveil her “vast curiosity, an intimate knowledge of flora and fauna, and a keen appreciation for the things of this world—travel, food, weather, the manifold creatures, love.” Follow Lucille at her website.

Cover for Deeply Notched Leaves, with a background of green leaves and one bright yellow daisy-like flower.

For “a merry-go-round of life experience in story-poems and social commentary full of spice and wisdom,” take a whirl with Dr. Jeanne Powell’s Deeply Notched Leaves. This 2021 collection will set your head spinning. Find more of Jeanne’s literary work at her website.

Books for Children and Parents

Cover for The Strider and the Regulus, a seascape with octopus/squid tentacles rising from the sea and curving through the letters of the title.

Looking for something fantastic for a young adult reader? Tricia Wagner’s The Strider and the Regulus is the opening salvo in a three-volume series. “A starry-eyed boy. A cryptic map. A mythical treasure. What perils await in the chasing of dreams?” Get to know Tricia at her website.

Cover for The Smugglers, with an old-timey suitcase covered with stickers about aliens and space and spaceships, sitting in a long metallic hallway that looks like part of a space structure.

My own 2022 release, The Smugglers, falls in this category. This LGBTQ-friendly story centers on an adolescent alien who’ll face changes in his world—and herself—as they rush to the rescue of an escaped animal. Written for children (middle grade readers and up) and their parents, the story shows us both the mother’s and the child’s point of view through this adventure.

Cover for The Peddler's Gift, wtih drawing of a man in a long coat and rond hat, with several villagers behind him.

Need a storybook for a young person…or do you just love those old traditional-style tales and beautiful illustrations of life in the Old Country? Maxine Schur’s The Peddler’s Gift, illustrated by Kimberly Bulcken Root, is a new edition of the “wistful, moving tale of a boy who steals a toy from a foolish peddler only to discover he’s not so foolish after all.” Find more of Maxine’s books, including Finley Finds His Fortune, at her website.

Cover for Treasure Hunt, with three children peering standing in a large cardboard box, with a pinwheel shape of yellow and green behind them.

Young readers (the 3-8-year-old set) on your gift list? I used to set up treasure hunts for my little brothers…so much fun. Here, Stephanie Wildman’s Treasure Hunt, with art by Estafania Razo, takes three siblings on a search for wonders In their own home. For grownup reading, find Stephanie’s website to discover her book on the perils of privilege in America.

Cover for Sun and Moon's Big Idea, with a cartoon sun and moon, smiling at each other above a cartoon city.

Another something sweet for the 8-and-unders, Karen Faciane’s The Sun and the Moon’s Big Idea, illustrated by Sierra Mon Ann Vidal, brings together the two most prominent “lights” in our sky… to celebrate “the uniquely, wonderful person you were born to be.” Keep up with Karen on her author page.

Nonfiction

Book Cover for Chakra Tonics, showing two glasses filled with a purplish mixture topped by raspberries and blueberries with sprigs of mint.

It’s that time of year, when people are looking for paths to self improvement, for personal well-being and creating moments of calm in this crazy world. Try out Elise Marie Collins’ Chakra Tonics, Essential Elixirs for the Mind, Body, and Spirit. Yes, finally, a “lively information packed recipe book filled with positive life lessons based on the ancient Indian spiritual system, known as the Chakras.” Catch up to Elise via her contact tree.

Book cover for Make Every Move a Meditation, with wavelike shapes in shades of red to gold rolling under words about mindfulness, mental health, and well-being.

Here’s more nonfiction for personal wellbeing: Nita Sweeney’s Make Every Move a Meditation: Mindful Movement for Mental Health, Well-Being, and Insight. Do you imagine meditation is all about sitting still or following strict formulas for movement? Nita teaches ways to understand meditation more deeply: “What if lifting weights, dancing, or walking across a room counted? What if you could make every move a meditation?” At her website, you can pick up a free handout.

You might also like to read:

On Aisle 42, Universe Components: The Atomic Marshmallow ProjectOn Aisle 42, Universe Components: The Atomic Marshmallow Project

Now that you have all of your supplies ready, it’s time to guide your group through the construction of a model atom.

Start by handing out the marshmallows and ice-cream topping pieces.  With younger participants, it can maintain focus if you mention that there are extra supplies for snacking on afterwards.

Start with the marshmallow.  Most of an atom is empty space.  And most of a marshmallow is nothing but air frothed into sugar.  So this marshmallow represents the “empty” space of an atom.  For older participants, you can encourage them to think of the sugar of the marshmallow as representing not only the energy that permeates what we call “empty” space but also the forces that hold the atom together.

For a very long time, the atom was believed to be more-or-less of uniform density, an amorphous mixture of tiny negative particles called electrons swirling around in a positively-charged “pudding.”  In 1911, Ernst Rutherford and his team completed a series of experiments that shocked the physics community by revealing that most of the mass of an atom is concentrated in a tiny, central nucleus containing all of the positive charge.  For our model, in honor of Rutherford, we’ll build a helium (He) atom, which has a nucleus containing two protons and two neutrons.  (Much of Rutherford’s research focused on the alpha particle–which happens to be exactly the same as a helium nucleus.)

Let your dark-colored candies be protons and your light-colored candies be neutrons.  (It doesn’t really matter, but textbooks often draw protons as dark dots and neutrons as white dots.)

Using the wooden skewer or toothpick, drill a small hole in the side of the marshmallow. Now use the same toothpick or skewer to push those nucleons (a word which here means “candy pieces representing protons and neutrons”) into the center of the marshmallow.

This is a good time in the activity to stop lecturing and instead gather suggestions from the participants and sketch their ideas on a board if you have one, or to gather around some sketching paper for discussion purposes.  You can expect to see pictures that look much like a planetary system, because that’s the way the atom often (still!) is drawn in textbooks.  You might have a knowledgeable participant who’ll shout out something like, “Shells!  The electrons are in shells!” or “They’re in the Cloud!”  Regardless, during the discussion, build on these volunteered suggestions to reach a description of the electrons as whirling around the nucleus in a cloud, going so fast that you can’t really tell exactly where they are, only that you know roughly how far they are from the nucleus.

At this point, we have a positively charged ion, because we haven’t added any electrons yet.  A helium atom needs two electrons, negatively-charged particles, to balance out the two positively-charged protons.  Once it was established that the positive charge is concentrated in the nucleus, where did researchers decide that the electrons belong?

Our helium atom’s two electrons do indeed share an electron “shell”, a layer of electrons a known distance from the nucleus.  So let’s put a very thin, energetic, sparkly shell around our atom.

Before setting up the shell supplies, pause to demonstrate the procedure.  If you’re working with younger students, you may need to stress that everyone will get their turn.  If the “mess” part of the activity is an issue, set up a protected area where the messy activity is OK and let the participants queue up to build their atoms in assembly-line fashion.

To create the “electron shell” skewer the marshmallow firmly on the wooden stick, then very briefly dunk it into the water, then tap off any excess water into the water container. Tapping off excess water is important, because otherwise the marshmallow can get soggy, which makes for a less-attractive candy atom.

Marshmallow on skewer dunked into clear plastic cup half-full of water.
Dunk
Wet marshmallow held by skewer on edge of plastic cup of water, drops of water dripping off.
and un-dunk.

Each group needs a container with about a cup of water in it and another container with a packet of dry gelatin mix emptied into it.  (For fun, choose a gelatin color in keeping with whatever events are ongoing, or a local sports team’s colors…anything to drive interest.)

Finally, gently swirl the damp marshmallow in the gelatin mix.

Set the decorated marshmallows aside on a sheet of waxed paper or a plate.

As time permits, participants can make other atoms…stuffing different numbers of protons or neutrons into marshmallows and adding a shell of electrons.

Friday at BayCon 2013Friday at BayCon 2013

As exemplified by Thursday evening’s brief exposure to the timesense-warping effects of Triskaidekaphobicon, clearly the theory of attending BayCon is direct and clear, albeit a little boring, while the practice thereof is circuitous and exciting.  Here we will continue our study of these contrasts by once more comparing plans and realities with a half-day experience on Opening Day:

Time Frame What the Plan was What really happened
Friday afternoon Arrive early, go to opening ceremonies, then “Irreproducible Results” panel, then to a reading by Lois McMaster Bujold. Just couldn’t get out the door.  Forgot reading glasses, then key, then left door slightly ajar while trying to find my sunglasses (for driving), then became convinced (older/medical-issues) cat had sneaked out, so searched out front and called out back and looked under furniture.  Finally discovered cat hunkered down behind a chair.Arrived halfway through Irreproducible Results panel, but got a front-row seat & enjoyed panel, from nuts and bolts revelations such as that the staff of JIR are unpaid to the audience teaching JIR’s editor the song “There’s a Hole in My Bucket” and locating for him several online sources for flexible rubber with which to make graph paper.

I took a quick look at the Art Show, where they were nice enough to take care of my bag for me.  Theresa Mather‘s dragons were there.  Which one is it that I bought for Tirion?  I wondered, Should I bid on one of these dragon-butterfly prints?  I decided to come back later and sign up as a bidder.

All of the cat-oriented artwork reminded me that I was worried about my cat (not to bore anyone with a pet’s medical issues, but no-one was home to check on Manta that day), but didn’t want to miss the reading.  So stayed put for that.

Bujold read a piece she doesn’t really plan to publish at present, a work-in-progress that may or may not become part of something, but it’s a “Miles” story, so she knew it would please her fans.  The humor bits got big laughs.  And she was good about doing a little Q&A while waiting for late-comers to arrive. Turns out that one intellectual goal for “Curse of Chalion” was to work out a society in which religion had a basis in physical reality.

By then, it was after five, but decided to drive home to check on the cat –through Memorial-day weekend traffic.  The freeway was a parking lot from San Thomas Expressway to, probably, LA.  So, enjoyed elaborately costumed Fanime fans thronging streets of downtown San Jose on the unfreeway route home.  Made pretty good time, actually.  Oh, yes, and the cat was fine.  Time for a quick freezer-cleanup dinner and half an episode of “Castle” before evening sessions.

Friday evening Find out what a “boffer weapon” is and make one in the new DIY Room.  Then go upstairs and learn some Regency dancing.  Maybe get in to panel on talking to people. Boffer-making was not in the DIY room.  I had to go alllll the way to the “Ballroom” and creep past the big room where they were having the “meet the guests” reception.  Way too scary in there.   In the farthest room, kids were whapping each other with foam objects.  Aha, that’s boffing.

But no one was making weapons.Wandered about. Became “brave” and strolled nonchalantly through the reception.  Darn, there had been food.  Extroverts were  happily chatting each other up.

Wandered back to boffers room to watch the swordplay.  Maybe the “make your weapon” thing is over?  I wondered.  The program said they started at 6 and it was already nearly 8.  Suddenly, someone called out, “Who wants to make a weapon?”  Apparently, I had arrived at exactly the right time.

Two hours later, I was working on the trickiest duct-taping tasks on three swords at once, after two teen sisters frantically realized they must dash off to what they described as “Mom’s Concert” and begged for coverage while they were away.   Another hour later, and they were back in time for adding the blade tape and the final decorations.  Clever girls.

So finally 11:30 rolled around and I had myself a lovely PVC and pipe-insulation and duct-tape sword.  But not prepared to wield it yet–too exhausted.  Parked my sword in the car and wandered about a bit.  Regency dancing was already up to a lesson on the Congress of Vienna waltz, which I can’t do with my broken shoulder yet, and which they use as the final dance.

Oh, well.  Time to go home.  Big plans for tomorrow.

 

There are anime fans at BayCon, too.

There are anime fans at BayCon, too.

Machine DesignMachine Design

 

I draw for you the art of Leonardo:
 
A man whose legs are feathered airfoils
of that smooth asymmetric camber
which folds the wind under an eagle’s wings.
 
A man poised in a cage of struts and sailcloth,
curved like the feathers on the haft of an arrow,
an apparatus geared to spin, to lift him free.
 
The paintings were for money.
 
 
 
 
This poem first appeared in Hadrosaur Tales #19, 2004.  You can still find copies of the original Hadrosaur Tales online at clarkesworldbooks.  Meanwhile, Hadrosaur Productions now publishes a new magazine, Tales of the Talisman, as well as novels, short fiction collections, and audio recordings.  Look them up at www.hadrosaur.com

 

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