Tag: Malinda Lo

Online Reading Challenge – May Wrap-Up

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Hello Fellow Challenge Readers!

How did your reading go this month? Did you read something set in the 1950s & 1960s that you enjoyed? Share in the comments!

I had already read our main title Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo last year for book club, so I decided to read Lavender House by Lev A.C. Rosen, the first book in the Evander Mills series. Lavender House has similar themes to Last Night at the Telegraph Club, hence my picking this title. Lavender House is the first in a new queer historical series that begins in the early 1950s in California. Let’s get into this book!

It’s California in 1952 and the family that lives at Lavender House has been rocked by tragedy. The matriarch Irene Lamontaine has been found dead in her scent library. Her recipes for her signature soaps are a well held family secret, but as readers learn, those are not the only secrets hidden at Lavender House. Lavender House is unique – none of the staff or family hide who they are. They are free to love who they want and be themselves behind the gates and on the grounds. In order to keep their lives secret though, outsiders must be kept at a distance. Irene’s widow is worried that there may be a murderer on the loose at Lavender House, so she seeks someone to help.

She hires Evander Mills, also known as Andy, to find the killer. Andy has recently been fired from the San Francisco police after he was caught in a raid at a gay bar. Not having any work lined up, Andy accepts and is thrust into the secretive world of Lavender House as he looks for reasons why someone would have killed Irene. What he finds is a complicated mess of family history, old money, jealousy, and lies. As much as the family works to keep their lives insulated and safe, everyone at Lavender House has secrets that could have lead to death. A queer family that lives honestly and openly behind the walls and on the estate of Lavender House is shocking to Andy, but he quickly realizes that they aren’t as honest and open amongst each other as they pretend to be. It’s dangerous to be queer outside of Lavender House. Those at Lavender House may think they live in a utopia, but keeping the real world out forever isn’t feasible.

This title is narrated by one of my favorite audiobook narrators, Vikas Adam, so I was excited to get started. As I mentioned earlier, Lavender House shares similar themes with Last Night at the Telegraph Club. Both titles are character-driven, feature queer characters, are historical, and take place in California in the 1950s. How queer people were treated in the 1950s features prominently as well. Lavender House has older main characters and is a historical mystery, while Last Night at the Telegraph Club is considered a young adult historical novel with romance.

I enjoyed the mystery in this book. While I didn’t have the killer figured out immediately, I did quickly figure it out as I was reading. There is a large cast of characters in this book, but the author doesn’t overwhelm you with details about each at the start. You learn about the characters as Andy’s investigation progresses. All in all, I enjoyed this title set in the 1950s and am excited to see where the next books take me!

I hope you all enjoyed reading, watching, or listening to something set in the 1950s or 1960s this month. Next month, we are traveling to the 1970s.

Evander Mills series

  1. Lavender House (2022)
  2. The Bell in the Fog (2023)
  3. Rough Pages (2024)

Online Reading Challenge – May

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Welcome Readers!

This month the Online Reading Challenge travels back in time to the 1950s & 1960s. Our Main title for May is Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo. Here’s a quick summary from the publisher:

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the feeling took root—that desire to look, to move closer, to touch. Whenever it started growing, it definitely bloomed the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. Suddenly everything seemed possible.

But America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day. – Dutton Books for Young Readers

Looking for some other books set in the 1950s or 1960s? Try any of the following.

As always, check each of our locations for displays with lots more titles to choose from!

A Scatter of Light by Malinda Lo

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“But here’s the important thing when it comes to art. This is what I’ve learned: The art is greater than you and your feelings. You have to serve it. It is not you…Whatever you’re creating may come from within you and your life, but then…it walks away and affects other people you don’t know and have never met. That’s the beauty of it.”
― Malinda Lo, A Scatter of Light

Discovering who you are can be a messy process. Malinda Lo tackles self-identity in A Scatter of Light. Set against the backdrop of the first major Supreme Court decisions legalizing gay marriage, Lo has created another queer coming-of age story that is bittersweet, romantic, and full of love and loss.

Rural California, 2013. Chinese-American teenager, Aria West, has big summer plans. After high school graduation, she plans on spending her summer with her two best friends in Martha’s Vineyard. After Aria becomes entangled in a scandal at a graduation party, she instead finds herself uninvited to Martha’s Vineyard and exiled to spend the summer with her grandmother, artist Joan West, in California. Aria isn’t sure what to do with herself until she meets her grandmother’s gardener, Steph Nichols. Aria quickly becomes friends with Steph and Steph’s group of friends, all of whom are queer. Aria finds herself second-guessing who she is when she develops a crush on Steph, throwing their friend group into turmoil. That summer in California points Aria down a life path that she didn’t think possible for herself. What she thought was going to be a boring and lost summer ends up becoming a summer of reflection, poetry, and self-discovery that changes her future.

Told from the viewpoint of adult Aria looking back at her eighteen-year-old self, readers relive her transition from leaving her school and childhood behind to her start towards independence. This is a  gloriously messy coming of age story all about how messy self-discovery can be. Lo wrote so beautifully that I felt my own teenage angst echoed through Aria’s actions.

A Scatter of Light is considered the companion novel to Last Night at the Telegraph Club. It’s not necessary for you to read one to understand the other, although A Scatter of Light ties up loose ends and answers questions I had after finishing Last Night at the Telegraph Club.

“…how we were only a small moment in time. In the scale of the universe, we’re just a blip.”
― Malinda Lo, A Scatter of Light

This title is also available in large print as well as an Libby eBook and Libby eAudiobook.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

- Stephanie Leave a comment

We are so excited to announce that See YA is back! See YA is our adult book club with a teen book twist. See why so many teen books are being turned into movies and are taking over the best seller lists. We meet the first Wednesday of the month at Eastern at 6:30pm. Registration is not required. Books are available on a first-come, first-serve basis at the Eastern Avenue library.  Stop by the service desk for more information.

On June 7th, we will be discussing Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo. This book is highly praised! It won the National Book Award, the Stonewall Book Award, and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature(it also was the Goodreads Choice Award for Best young Adult Fiction in 2021). This is also a Michael L. Printz honor book, a We Need Diverse Books Walter Dean Myers honor book, and a Los Angeles Times book prize finalist. This book was also a New York Times bestseller. Now that I’ve hyped up the book, let’s get into what it’s about!

Last Night at the Telegraph Club is the story of a high school girl struggling to find her own identity amidst familial and cultural pressures. Set in San Francisco’s Chinatown during the Red Scare in the 1950s, seventeen-year-old Lily Hu feels the push and pull of love and duty every single day. After discovering a book that was about two women who fell in love with each other, Lily starts to examine her feelings more and more. The more she examines, the more Lily realizes that these aren’t new feelings, but she can’t exactly pinpoint when they started. When Lily meets fellow high school student Kathleen Miller, she finds a safe space to explore this different side of her life. As soon as the two set foot in a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club, Lily knew she had an answer to her question: there were women out there who fell in love and it wasn’t weird or abnormal. Outside of the Telegraph Club however, Lily finds resistance. 1954 in America isn’t a safe space for two girls to fall in love. Lily’s family complicates matters, given that they live in Chinatown, the Red Scare is running rampant, and deportation rumors abound. Chinese Americans are subject to more scrutiny, leaving Lily to wonder where she falls and whether love or duty will win.

I don’t want to give away too much, but highly encourage you to check out this title and then come to See YA to discuss it with us on Wednesday June 7th at 6:30pm at our Eastern Avenue Branch. (If you end up liking this title, I highly suggest you also try A Scatter of Light, which is the companion novel to Last Night at the Telegraph Club.)

This title is also available as a Libby eBook, Libby eAudiobook, in large print, and as single book club books.