Transitive Verve

"When the rhetoric is so inflammatory, so enraged, it is not surprising that some people would work together to take matters into their own misguided hands." An Absolutely Remarkable Thing came out in 2018, but DAMN if it isn't the most current, relevant thing I have ever read.  April May notices a giant statue or sculpture of some sort of robot while on the way home at 3am from her soul-sucking start-up job. It seemingly showed up out of nowhere, and it's kind of cool, so she orders her friend Andy to show up with his camera, and they make a YouTube video about it. In it, she "interviews" the robot, naming it Carl. When she wakes up the next morning, she discovers that their video of Carl has gone completely viral... because apparently, over 60 other Carls had shown up out of nowhere all around the world. Suddenly, April is thrust into the limelight as the Carl representative, and as the situation gets more bizarre, April finds herself at the center of, we...

  Clap When You Land  is Elizabeth Acevedo's third-ever novel, but her second one written in verse. It is the story of two sisters separated by life, borders, and secrets, who are finally brought together when their father dies in a tragic plane crash. The inspiration for this novel was American Airlines flight 587, which crashed after departing New York for the Dominican Republican in November 2001. About 90% of its passengers were Dominican or of Dominican descent, Acevedo shares in her Author's Note. News coverage died down as soon as suspicions of terrorism were disproven, but Acevedo didn't stop researching about the passengers and their stories. Yahaira Rios lives in New York with her mother who manages a spa, and her father who disappears to the DR for a few months out of the year. She is a chess champion--or rather, was , until she one day learned something she wasn't supposed to know, and then stopped speaking to him. Camino Rios lives in the Dominican Republic...