2019 Re(ad)treat, hour 27 and a quarter.

The birchbark house by Louise Erdrich.  I saw this title pop up a few times last year, and then I saw it a few more times recently in discussions related to the renaming of the Laura Ingalls Wilder award.

The two books really aren't comparable.  The writing is jerky; the sentences don't flow.  The characters' relationships aren't shown, only narrated about: the main character is super-sad after the death of a minor side character; only after her death do we hear how close the two were.  It makes no sense.

The book does a good job of showing daily life for a one family in the identified culture throughout the year, but the writing is nothing special.

Troublemaker, vol. 1, by Janet Evanovich and Alex Evanovich; art by Joelle Jones.  The big number 1 on this graphic novel's spine is very misleading: turns it it's volume 1 of this particular story, which happens to be series installment number 3.  Confusingly, books 1 and 2 are just novels-- no GN adaptations anywhere to be seen-- and book 3 (this) is just a GN-- no novelization floating about.  That seems poorly planned.

This doesn't make quite as much sense without information from the first two books.  The boyfriend sure is easy on the eyes, but he alone isn't reason enough to crack open volume 2.  The format makes it pretty obvious that at least two of the side/friend characters are build on the same basic framework of thin stereotypes used in the Stephanie Plum novels.

Pass.