Calendar Girls: September 2018

Hey all, Dani here.

Welcome back to another month of Calendar Girls. As always I’ll start this post by saying that Calendar Girls is a monthly blog event that was started by Flavia and Melanie, but is now being hosted by Katie and Adrienne. They are all wonderful ladies, and you should check out their lovely blogs. Oh, and if you go to either Katie or Adrienne‘s Calendar Girls post each month, they will have links to all the other wonderful book bloggers participating in this event. It’s a great way to find new bookish friends, and also possibly add some more books to your TBR.

First, more about the Calendar Girls. It is designed to ignite bookish discussions among readers, and was inspired by the 1961 Neil Sedaka song, Calendar Girl.

Just like the song, each month has a different theme. Each blogger picks their favorite book from the theme, and on the first Monday of the month reveals their pick in a Calendar Girls post. Make sure to post back to the hostess’s post, and both Katie and Adrienne will make a master list for the month. The master lists allow everyone to see the other Calendar Girls’ picks and to pop on over to their blogs. Thus, we all get to chat about books and even make some new friends!

The September theme is…

Back to School
Best Novel Set in a School

Can I just say that I actually miss going back to school around this time of year? I pretty much finished up my schooling at the end of 2011–at least until I can find some way to get my finances in order so I can go back for my doctorate. So I’ve been out of the world of academia for quite a few years now and I just really miss it. I was so much more productive with writing back then.

An obvious choice for this month’s theme would be Harry Potter, so I guess that series will be my first honorable mention. And I suppose I should also say that a part of me wanted to name the Animorphs series, because so much of it does revolve around their school.

Oh, and right now I’m just going to go ahead and toss a couple manga options into the mix. Because they are both series that I really enjoy, and the school portion of the story is actually rather important for both of them. The manga honorable mentions for this theme are My Hero Academia and Blue Exorcist. They are both great series and I definitely recommend them. One follows a school that trains professional superheroes, and the other is a school for exorcists.

Now we come down to the part we’ve all been waiting for…the novel I have selected as my pick for “Best Novel Set in a School.” This was actually a difficult choice for me. There are so many great books out there with schools in them, but I wanted to pick something where the school setting was a huge part of the story.

I spent a good fifteen minutes or so scanning all the books on the shelves of my home library, trying to narrow down my options so I could figure out which novel to select. I was tempted to choose Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead, or The Magicians by Lev Grossman. But ultimately, I decided on something else.

Though many of these have interesting school settings, or have a spotlight on learning or being at school, over all there was one book that I read last year that felt so much like being in school for me, so it has to be my choice for this month’s theme.

That book is Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia.

Eliza is the creator of a massively popular web comic, but nobody at school knows. That is, until the number one fanfiction writer of her comic transfers to her school and they become friends because of their shared fondness for the web comic. Of course the fanfiction writer has no idea that Eliza is the creator.

To me, this book just reminded me so much of being a student in school. Yes, I love academia, and I pretty much always enjoyed my classes. But in many ways I didn’t exactly feel like I fit in or that I belonged. Yes, I had some friends from band, and most of my friends were geeks too. But I didn’t start being an open and proud geek until just a few years ago, when I decided to just be myself and not care if people found me odd. So I relate to Eliza on a number of levels.

Plus, when I was in high school, not only did I spend a lot of time reading, but I also spent a lot of time writing stories and posting my chapters up on fictionpress. So this book is near and dear to my heart, and I feel like sometimes escaping into a fantasy world is all you can do to endure the social aspect of school.

You can find my review of this book here, and I definitely recommend it if you haven’t read it already.

Whew, okay. Now I just have to wait until the October theme is announced…and then I can once again stare at all the books in my library and try to figure out which ones are just honorable mentions, and which one will be my pick for the month. Oh, and wait for the Calendar Girls Twitter chat and all the other fun social media interactions.

That is all for today. Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll be back soon with more bookish content (specifically my August Wrap-Up and September TBR tomorrow).