5 Stars. Oh my goodness! This is so stinking cute and smart! I was never a big mystery reader as a kid. I could never guess “whodunnit” and that irritated me. Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys were practically nonstarters for me. I wish Goldie Vance had been around back in the day because she would have turned me into a mystery reader for sure! […]
Oh my goodness. I inhaled this book in just a few hours and it left me with so much joy for George, I was almost in tears. George is afraid to tell anyone that she’s really a girl. What will they think? But as she slowly starts to share her secret, she finds so much love and acceptance. The road isn’t perfectly smooth—that would […]
I’m 42 as I write this so it’s been 30 – 35 years since I read any of Beverly Cleary’s books. I always enjoyed them as a child, and can clearly picture exactly where they were on my local library’s shelves. I called it a good library day when I found a new one. Who am I kidding? Every library visit was a good library day, but…
I literally just finished this graphic novel and I’m about to flip back to page one and read it again. That isn’t to say it was perfect–it wasn’t–but I know that in my hurry to read it, I missed a lot of important details. Now that I know Anna Kharkova’s story, I can take my time and chew it over. I’m struggling with where to…
I usually rate books five stars if they rock my world or if I simply can’t bring myself to put them down. That’s not the case here. My rating reflects the subject matter. How frustrating it must be to have a sharp intellect but to be written off as “less than” because…
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this is one of those rare books–a second that is actually better than the first. In my humble opinion anyway. I read all 391 pages in two sittings, really in one day. I picked it up, got sucked into Katniss’s world, and never looked away. We got to see a little more of Gale in this story […]
5 Stars. I read this back in college and loved it so much that I still have my copy from that class. I decided to re-read it when my husband and I visited the coast of Maine last month. I might love it even more now. The narrator, who remains unnamed, is accepted in this tightly-knit community, but she’s still enough of an […]
Caitrin is on the run from a bad situation at home. With only the clothes on her back, a few coins, and her box of scribing tools, she just wants to get away. Her money runs out late one evening in the middle of nowhere. She finds her way to a village called Whistling Tor. Continue Reading…
Torey Hayden is what I can only call a special ed teacher. At some less-politically-correct point in her career, she agreed to teach the “garbage class” (her words, not mine) that consisted of the abused, unteachable, unreachable kids. The class of eight students, a teacher’s aide who lacked even a high school diploma, a high Continue Reading…
Charles Vess’s fantasy artwork has been collected in a beautiful volume. I love just about every piece of art in this book. The few that I don’t like are probably the few that are science fiction. I am not at all knowledgeable about art so I can’t write in any kind of meaningful way about Continue Reading…
Yunior has cheated one too many times. The smartass Dominican narrator of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is just not in a good place. In a series of short stories set around different events in his life, he reflects on how he has arrived at this point. This is so hard for me Continue Reading…