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Book cover Seems an appropriate way to start off the first book review of 2019 with a book that came out in 2009.  On top of that, it's a book that I really, really enjoyed reading. This book follows the protagonist, Henry Lee both as a 13 year old in 1943, and an adult in 1986.  If you have been reading my reviews for a while, you'll note that I get picky when time starts jumping around, and I'm really happy to say that this book gets this simple detail absolutely right: Every chapter title includes the year....

Book Cover I love puns, and this is a book about the grandfather of puns... the good ole euphemism.  This book moves smoothly from subject to subject bringing up lots of history.  It is sometimes funny, but it doesn't overplay.  Overall, it's a pretty serious book about the very human desire to avoid talking directly about certain subjects. Chapter Listing Mincing Words From Bears to Bowdlerism...

Book cover I will start by noting that this book started slow for me.  It took me over two weeks to read the prologue up through the fourth chapter.  Once I passed that, I read the next 80% of the book in two days finishing on a third. Every character in this book is a Native American either from or converging on Oakland California.  There is a lot of exploration, especially among the young characters, of what it means to be Native in the city....

Subtitled, Poems after Shia LaBeouf, this is a short volume of erasure poems lifted from interviews with Shia LaBeouf.  Before this book, I had only seen erasure poetry in poster or postcard format.  Kitch, at it's best.  Also, I have very little patience for poetry.  I've read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and never completely read any of the song-poems that are scattered throughout those volumes. All of this leaves me quite surprised that I really enjoyed this book....