Wish List 2020...Chapter One
/Give The Gift Of Reading In 2020…
As we collectively navigate through various stages of lockdown during what was, and is still, an unprecedented year, let books be the gift you choose to give. To others, and to yourself. Allow them to provide an escape, a perspective on the unimaginable, a lesson in how to do better, to be better, a door into a world of wonder, a glimpse at an everyday hero’s inspirational tale; and in our darkest moments, a soft place to land.
Prepare to be gutted, to be intrigued, to be captivated, to be charmed, to be haunted; to have your mind blown, your breath stolen, your heart wrenched, your awe inspired, your thoughts provoked …
Tag along with me as I gather together stories that will embrace you as much as you embrace them.
Read For…Pleasure & Escape
Ready Player Two – Ernest Cline
Are you ready? Day’s after winning OASIS founder James Halliday’s contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything. Hidden within Halliday’s vaults, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the OASIS a thousand times more wondrous and addictive than even Wade dreamed possible. With it comes a new riddle, and a new quest, a last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize. And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who’ll kill millions to get what he wants.
The City We Became – N. K. Jemisin
In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power. In the Bronx, a gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her. In Brooklyn, a politician and mother find’s she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels. And they're not the only ones, there are more stories to come.
The Invisible Life Of Addie LaRue – V.E. Schwab
France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus, begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name. All the good stuff happens in bookstores!
Hench – Natalie Zina Walschots
Anna does boring things for terrible people because even criminals need office help, and she needs a job. Working for a monster lurking beneath the surface of the world isn’t glamorous. But is it really worse than working for an oil conglomerate or an insurance company? In this economy? As a temp, she’s just a cog in the machine. But when she finally gets a promising assignment, everything goes very wrong, and an encounter with the so-called “hero” leaves her badly injured. And, to her horror, compared to the other bodies strewn about, she’s the lucky one. Then she gets laid off and as the saying goes, all hell breaks loose!
Plain Bad Heroines – Emily M. Danforth
A story within a story within a story, featuring black-and-white period-inspired illustrations, Plain Bad Heroines is a devilishly haunting, modern masterwork of metafiction that manages to combine a gothic and ghostly sensibility with a dark imagination, sharp humor and incisive social commentary. All rolled into one laugh-out-loud funny, spellbinding, and wonderfully luxuriant read taking place at a cursed boarding school for girls.
Black Sun – Rebecca Roanhorse
In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world. Meanwhile, a ship launched from a distant city is set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.
Songs For The End Of The World – Saleema Nawaz
This is the story of a handful of people who find themselves living through an unfolding catastrophe. Elliot is a first responder in New York, a man running from past failures and struggling to do the right thing. Emma is a pregnant singer preparing to headline a benefit concert for victims of the outbreak, all while questioning what kind of world her child is coming into. Owen is the author of a bestselling plague novel with eerie similarities to the real-life pandemic. As fact and fiction begin to blur, he must decide whether his lifelong instinct for self-preservation has been worth the cost. To himself and others.
Safecracker – Ryan Wick
Safecracker Michael Maven's latest job should be simple: steal a rare coin from a New York apartment. Except the coin's owner comes home with a beautiful woman, who murders him, nearly murders Maven, and takes the coin herself, and then Maven's life gets really complicated: the woman's boss, a sadistic drug lord, forces him to take on a far more dangerous job. It’s like Mission Impossible on the page! Pure escapism at its best.
Take Me Apart – Sara Sligar
When the famed photographer Miranda Brand died mysteriously at the height of her career, it sent shock waves through the art world. Decades later, old wounds are reopened when her son Theo hires the ex-journalist Kate Aitken to archive his mother’s work and personal effects. As Kate sorts through the vast maze of material and contends with the vicious rumors and shocking details of Miranda's private life, she pieces together a portrait of a vibrant artist buckling under the pressures of ambition, motherhood, and marriage. But Kate has secrets of her own, including a growing attraction to the enigmatic Theo, and when she stumbles across Miranda's diary, her curiosity spirals into a dangerous obsession.
Read For…Artistry & Storytelling
These Women – Ivy Pochoda
In her masterful new novel, the author creates a kaleidoscope of loss, power, and hope featuring five very different women whose lives are steeped in danger and anguish. They’re connected by one man and his deadly obsession, though not all of them know that yet. There’s Dorian, still adrift after her daughter’s murder remains unsolved; Julianna, a young dancer who lives hard and fast; Essie, a brilliant vice cop who sees a crime pattern emerging where no one else does; Marella, a daring performance artist whose work has long pushed boundaries but now puts her in peril; and Anneke, a quiet woman who has turned a willfully blind eye to those around her for far too long. The careful existence they have built for themselves starts to crumble when two murders rock their neighborhood.
Long Bright River – Liz Moore
In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the throes of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling. Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit, and her sister, before it's too late.
Transcendent Kingdom – Yaa Gyasi
Gifty is enrolled in a neuroscience program, studying reward-seeking behaviour in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. She is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to hard science to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith, and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.
Must I Go – Yiyun Li
Lilia Liska has shrewdly outlived three husbands, raised five children, and seen the arrival of seventeen grandchildren. Now she has turned her keen attention to the diary of a long-forgotten man named Roland Bouley, with whom she once had a fleeting affair. Increasingly obsessed with Roland's intimate history, Lilia begins to annotate the diary with her own rather different version of events, revealing the surprising, long-held secrets of her past.
Luster – Raven Leilani
Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties, sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including a wife who has agreed to an open marriage, with rules. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual mores and racial politics weren't hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and falling into Eric's family life, his home. She becomes a hesitant friend to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. What could possibly go wrong?
Daisy Jones & The Six – Taylor Jenkins Reid
Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of being a singer. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it's the rock 'n' roll she loves most. By the time she's twenty, her voice is getting noticed. Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she's pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road. Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.
Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life In Lyrics – Dolly Parton
In her own inimitable words, Dolly explores the songs that have defined her journey. Illustrated throughout with previously unpublished images from Dolly Parton's personal and business archives. Mining over 60 years of song writing, Parton highlights 175 of her songs and brings readers behind the lyrics. Packed with personal stories, candid insights, and the myriad memories behind the songs.
Here For It: Or, How To Save Your Soul – R. Eric Thomas
Thomas seeks the answer ever more relevant questions: Is the future worth it? Why do we bother when everything seems to be getting worse? As the world continues to shift in unpredictable ways, Thomas finds the answers to these questions by revisioning what “normal” means and in the powerful alchemy that occurs when you at last place yourself at the center of your own story. This book will resonate deeply with anyone who has ever felt pushed to the margins, struggled with self-acceptance, or wished to shine more brightly in a dark world.
Uncomfortable Conversations With A Black Man – Emmanuel Acho
“You cannot fix a problem you do not know you have.” So begins Emmanuel Acho in his essential guide to the truths Americans need to know to address the systemic racism that has recently electrified protests in all fifty states. “There is a fix,” Acho says. “But in order to access it, we’re going to have to have some uncomfortable conversations.” Acho takes on all the questions, large and small, insensitive and taboo, many white Americans are afraid to ask―yet which all Americans need the answers to, now more than ever.
Read For…All The Feels...laughter, tears…
Wow, No Thank You – Samantha Irby
Irby is forty and increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin despite what Inspirational Instagram Infographics have promised her. She has left her job as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic, has published successful books and has been friend zoned by Hollywood. Moving into a house with a garden that requires repairs and know-how with her wife in a Blue town in the middle of a Red state where she now hosts book clubs and makes mason jar salads. She goes on bad dates with new friends and spends weeks in Los Angeles taking meetings with "tv executives slash amateur astrologers".The essays in this collection draw on the raw, hilarious particulars of Irby's new life, this is Irby at her most unflinching, riotous, and relatable.
Such A Fun Age – Kiley Reid
A page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both. Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So, she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right. Brillant in both writing and the timing of release.
Squeeze Me – Carl Hiaasen
It's the height of the Palm Beach charity ball season: for every disease or cause, there's a reason for the local luminaries to eat, minimally, drink, maximally, and be seen. But when a prominent high-society dowager suddenly vanishes during a swank gala, and is later found dead in a concrete grave, panic and chaos erupt. A hilarious new novel of social and political intrigue set against the glittering backdrop of a world were nothing is as it seems. Irreverent and ingenious!
A Certain Hunger – Chelsea G. Summers
Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy's clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one of the chefs she writes about. Dorothy loves sex as much as she loves food, and while she has struggled to find a long-term partner that can keep up with her, she makes the best of her single life, frequently traveling from Manhattan to Italy for a taste of both. But there is something within Dorothy that's different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes her uniquely, terrifyingly herself.
One To Watch – Kate Stayman-London
Bea Schumacher is a devastatingly stylish plus-size fashion blogger who has amazing friends, a devoted family, legions of followers, and a massively broken heart. Like the rest of America, Bea indulges in her weekly obsession: the hit reality show, Main Squeeze. The fantasy dates! The kiss-off rejections! But Bea is sick and tired of the lack of body diversity on the show. Since when is being a size zero a prerequisite for getting engaged on television? Just when Bea has sworn off dating altogether, she gets an intriguing call: Main Squeeze wants her to be its next star, surrounded by men vying for her affections. Bea agrees, on one condition, under no circumstances will she actually fall in love. She’s in this to supercharge her career, subvert harmful beauty standards, inspire women across America, and get a free hot air balloon ride. That’s it. Or maybe not…
Last Couple Standing – Matthew Norman
The Core Four have been friends since college: four men, four women, four couples. They got married around the same time, had kids around the same time, and now, fifteen years later, they’ve started getting divorced around the same time, too. With three of the Core Four unions crumbling to dust around them, Jessica and Mitch Butler take a long, hard look at their own marriage. Can it be saved? Or is divorce, like some fortysomething zombie virus, simply inescapable? Maybe it’s time for something radical.
Stationery Shop – Marjan Kamali
Roya, a dreamy, idealistic teenager living amid the political upheaval of 1953 Tehran, finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood stationery shop, stocked with books and pens and bottles of jewel-colored ink. Then Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer, handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry, and she loses her heart at once. Their romance blossoms and a few short months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square when violence erupts, a result of the coup d’état that forever changes their country’s future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows.
Recipe For A Perfect Wife – Karma Brown
When Alice Hale reluctantly leaves a promising career in publicity, following her husband to the New York suburbs, she is unaccustomed to filling her days alone in a big, empty house. However, she is determined to become a writer, and to work hard to build the kind of life her husband dreams of, complete with children. At first, the old house seems to resent Alice as much as she resents it, but when she finds an old cookbook buried in a box in the basement, she becomes captivated by the cookbook's previous owner: 1950s housewife Nellie Murdoch. As Alice cooks her way through the past, she begins to settle into her new surroundings, even as her friends and family grow concerned that she has embraced them too fully.
Anxious People – Fredrik Backman
Viewing an apartment normally doesn’t turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers begin slowly opening up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths. A poignant comedy about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined.
Read With…Your Teen
You Should See Me In A Crown – Leah Johnson
Liz Lighty has always believed she's too black, too poor, too awkward to shine in her small, rich, prom-obsessed midwestern town. But it's okay, Liz has a plan that will get her out of Campbell, Indiana, forever: attend the uber-elite Pennington College, play in their world-famous orchestra, and become a doctor. But when the financial aid she was counting on unexpectedly falls through, Liz's plans come crashing down . . . until she's reminded of her school's scholarship for prom king and queen. There's nothing Liz wants to do less than endure a gauntlet of social media trolls, catty competitors, and humiliating public events, but despite her devastating fear of the spotlight she's willing to do whatever it takes to get to Pennington.
Punching The Air – Ibi Zoboi & Yusef Salaam
Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. “Boys just being boys” turns out to be true only when those boys are white. Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal’s bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?
This Is All Your Fault – Aminah Mae Safi
When Rinn, Daniella, and Imogen clock into work at Wild Nights Bookstore on the first day of summer, they’re expecting the hours to drift by the way they always do. Instead, they have to deal with the news that the bookstore is closing. Before the day is out, there’ll be shaved heads, a diva author, and a very large unexpected shipment to contend with. And it will take all three of them working together if they have any chance to save Wild Nights Bookstore.
A Girl Is A Body Of Water – Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
In her thirteenth year, Kirabo confronts a piercing question that has haunted her childhood: who is my mother? Kirabo has been raised by women in a small Ugandan village, her grandmother, her best friend, and her many aunts, but the absence of her mother follows her like a shadow. Complicating these feelings of abandonment, as Kirabo comes of age she feels the emergence of a mysterious second self, a headstrong and confusing force inside her at odds with her sweet and obedient nature.
Dear Justyce – Nic Stone
Vernell LaQuan Banks and Justyce McAllister grew up a block apart in the Southwest Atlanta neighborhood of Wynwood Heights. Years later, though, Justyce walks the illustrious halls of Yale University . . . and Quan sits behind bars at the Fulton Regional Youth Detention Center. Through a series of flashbacks, vignettes, and letters to Justyce, the protagonist of Dear Martin, Quan's story takes form. Troubles at home and misunderstandings at school give rise to police encounters and tough decisions. But then there's a dead cop and a weapon with Quan's prints on it. What leads a bright kid down a road to a murder charge? Not even Quan is sure.
The Mirror Broken Wish – Julie C. Dao
Sixteen-year-old Elva has a secret. She has visions and strange powers that she will do anything to hide. She knows the warnings about what happens to witches in their small village. She's heard the terrible things people say about the Witch of the North Woods, and the malicious hunts that follow. But when Elva accidentally witnesses a devastating vision of the future, she decides she has to do everything she can to prevent it. Tapping into her powers for the first time, Elva discovers a magical mirror and its owner-none other than the Witch of the North Woods herself. As Elva learns more about her burgeoning magic, and the lines between hero and villain start to blur, she must find a way to right past wrongs before it's too late.
One Way Or Another – Kara McDowell
The average person makes 35,000 decisions every single day. That's about 34,999 too many for Paige Collins, who lives in debilitating fear of making the wrong choice. The simple act of picking an art elective is enough to send her into a spiral of what-ifs. That's why when Paige is presented with two last-minute options for Christmas vacation, she's paralyzed by indecision. Should she go with her best friend, and longtime crush, Fitz to his family's romantic mountain cabin? Or should she accompany her mom to New York, a city Paige has spent her whole life dreaming about? Just when it seems like Paige will crack from the pressure of choosing, fate steps in the form of a slippery grocery store floor, and Paige's life splits into two very different parallel paths.
The Left-Handed Booksellers Of London – Garth Nix
In a slightly alternate London in 1983, Susan is looking for her father, a man she has never met. Crime boss Frank might be able to help her, but Susan doesn’t get time to ask Frank any questions before he is turned to dust by the prick of a silver hatpin in the hands of the outrageously attractive Merlin. Merlin is a young left-handed bookseller (one of the fighting ones), who with the right-handed booksellers (the intellectual ones), are an extended family of magical beings who police the mythic and legendary Old World when it intrudes on the modern world. in addition to running several bookshops. Will they unite for a quest?
Faith: Taking Flight – Julie Murphy
Faith Herbert is a pretty regular teen. When she’s not hanging out with her two best friends, Matt and Ches, she’s volunteering at the local animal shelter or obsessing over the long-running teen drama The Grove. So far, her senior year has been spent trying to sort out her feelings for her maybe-crush Johnny and making plans to stay close to Grandma Lou after graduation. Of course, there’s also that small matter of recently discovering she can fly….
Read With…Your Middle Schooler
Tristan Strong Punches A Hole In The Sky – Kwame Mbalia
An epic fantasy set in a richly-imagined world populated with African American folk heroes and West African gods. Seventh grader Tristan Strong feels anything but strong ever since he failed to save his best friend when they were in a bus accident together. All he has left of Eddie is the journal his friend wrote stories in. Tristan is dreading the month he's going to spend on his grandparents' farm in Alabama, where he's being sent to heal from the tragedy. But on his first night there, a tricky creature shows up in his bedroom and steals Eddie's notebook. Tristan chases after it and ends up punching a hole in the sky. Let the adventures ensue!
A Good Kind Of Trouble – Lisa Moore Ramee
Twelve-year-old Shayla is allergic to trouble. All she wants to do is to follow the rules. Oh, and she’d also like to make it through seventh grade with her best friendships intact, learn to run track, and have a cute boy see past her giant forehead. But in junior high, it’s like all the rules have changed. Now she’s suddenly questioning who her best friends are and some people at school are saying she’s not black enough. Wait, what? Shay’s sister, Hana, is involved in Black Lives Matter, but Shay doesn't think that's for her. After experiencing a powerful protest, though, Shay decides some rules are worth breaking.
Class Act – Jerry Craft
Eighth grader Drew Ellis is no stranger to the saying “You have to work twice as hard to be just as good.” But what if he works ten times as hard and still isn’t afforded the same opportunities that his privileged classmates take for granted? To make matters worse, Drew begins to feel as if his good friend Liam might be one of those privileged kids. He wants to pretend like everything is fine, but it's hard not to withdraw, and even their mutual friend Jordan doesn't know how to keep the group together. As the pressures mount, will Drew find a way to bridge the divide so he and his friends can truly accept each other? And most important, will he finally be able to accept himself?
List Of Things That Will Not Change – Rebecca Stead
After her parents' divorce, Bea's life became different in many ways. But she can always look back at the list she keeps in her green notebook to remember the things that will stay the same. The first and most important: Mom and Dad will always love Bea, and each other. When Dad tells Bea that he and his boyfriend, Jesse, are getting married, Bea is thrilled. Bea loves Jesse, and when he and Dad get married, she'll finally have what she's always wanted, a sister. Even though she's never met Jesse's daughter, Sonia, Bea is sure that they'll be just like sisters anywhere.
Ways To Make Sunshine – Renee Watson
Ryan Hart has a lot on her mind, school, self-image, and especially family. Her dad finally has a new job, but money is tight. That means some changes, like selling their second car and moving into a new (old) house. But Ryan is a girl who knows how to make sunshine out of setbacks. As her brother says when he raps about her, she’s got the talent that matters most: it’s a talent that can’t be seen, she’s nice, not mean!
The Problim Children – Natalie Lloyd
Filled with mystery, humor, and adventure, the first book in this new trilogy is an unforgettable tale of family and finding the courage to face any problem heart-first. When the Problim children’s ramshackle bungalow in the Swampy Woods goes kaboom, the seven siblings, each born on a different day of the week, have to move into their grandpa’s bizarre old mansion in Lost Cove. No problem! For the Problim children, every problem is a gift!
A Tale Of Witchcraft – Chris Colfer
When a mysterious new witch arrives at the academy, celebrations are cut short. As the witch begins recruiting faeries into her rival school of witchcraft, it becomes clear she has dark intentions. And soon Brystal's friend Lucy becomes embroiled in an ominous plot against mankind. Elsewhere, the fragile peace is on the brink of shattering. Outrage has spread throughout the kingdoms in opposition to the legalization of magic. And, a dangerous and centuries-old clan known as the Righteous Brotherhood has resurfaced, with one goal in mind: to exterminate all magical life forever . . . starting with Brystal.
Measuring Up – Lily LaMotte
Twelve-year-old Cici has just moved from Taiwan to Seattle, and the only thing she wants more than to fit in at her new school is to celebrate her grandmother, A-má’s, seventieth birthday together. Since she can’t go to A-má, Cici cooks up a plan to bring A-má to her by winning the grand prize in a kids’ cooking contest to pay for her plane ticket! There’s just one problem: Cici only knows how to cook Taiwanese food. Time to channel her inner Julia Child!
Ickabog – J.K. Rowling
Once upon a time there was a tiny kingdom called Cornucopia, as rich in happiness as it was in gold, and famous for its food. From the delicate cream cheeses of Kurdsburg to the Hopes-of-Heaven pastries of Chouxville, each was so delicious that people wept with joy as they ate them. But even in this happy kingdom, a monster lurks. Legend tells of a fearsome creature living far to the north in the Marshlands... the Ickabog. Some say it breathes fire, spits poison, and roars through the mist as it carries off wayward sheep and children alike. Some say it's just a myth...
