4 Stars. I don’t even know how I first came across this title but I added it to a list of possible books to read for a classics challenge I’m participating in. I had to read Beowulf and The Epic of Gilgamesh in high school so I wanted to read some epics from other cultures. Somehow I found The Ramayana. Then I realized that this version […]
4 Stars. Once again, Ruta Sepetys has found a forgotten corner of history and written a gripping historical fiction novel about it. I’ve read a few books that touch on Germans at the end of WWII fleeing the vengeful Soviet army, but none of them were about Germans evacuating by boat. The history was fascinating and gut-wrenching […]
3 Stars. I needed to read a book about climate change for the Nonfiction Reading Challenge hosted by Shelleyrae at Book’d Out. I didn’t want something that was going to depress me so I decided to read a book focused on solutions rather than problems. Drawdown fit the bill but I still got a little depressed. We know what needs to be done […]
4.5 Stars. Oh my goodness. Why do we pay less attention to Anne Brontë than the other sisters? I liked this book infinitely more than Wuthering Heights! I’ll still give Jane Eyre the edge as my favorite book by a Brontë, but it’s a closer thing than I expected. Anne wrote both a captivating story and a searing indictment of “bad boys” and [..
4 Stars. I’m not a huge fan of Westerns but this book caught my eye when a friend of a friend mentioned it on Facebook. I really enjoyed it. There’s no denying the Western background but the themes of family, love, and loss are universal. I would actually recommend this for a book club. Jess’s mother died in childbirth and Jess […]
5 Stars. Fatima is totally relatable. She feels overshadowed by her smart older sister and she doesn’t always feel like she fits in at school. She’s a little nervous about sleeping in a tent, especially when she and her sister spy a “monster” outside the tent in the night. They laugh the next morning when they see what it was [….]
The Postmistress is a novel of if. “If I tell this story in exactly the right way, people will hear it and act on it,” thinks the reporter. “If I don’t make mistakes, the system will be perfect and chaos and random chance will be kept at bay,” thinks the postmistress. “If I think hard enough about my husband being safe, he will […]