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- Fairy tales and retold fables
- A Confusion of Princes
- The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict
- The Fault in Our Stars
- The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
- How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming
- The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
- Books I’ve devoured
- For the love of books
02Sep2012
A Confusion of Princes
I'm an ardent fan of Garth Nix. His trilogy, Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen rank in my top 100 Best Books of All Time. No, it's not an official, written-down-on-paper sort of list. I wish it was. That's actually a good idea. But it would take too long and require lots of effort, so how about I just do this review instead? In particular, I love the audiobook versions of this trilogy, read
Keep readingLeave a Comment17Aug2012
The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict
I have reviewed every single book in Trenton Lee Stewart's series, The Mysterious Benedict Society. That seems like overkill, really, but in this case, I don't care. Often I won't bother to review later books in a series if I loved or hated them equal to the original. What seems to happen with Stewart's books is that I love them just so much that I can't help but want to make people read the
Keep readingView Comments (6)19Jul2012
The Fault in Our Stars
I'll admit that I'm a John Green junkie. I loved Paper Towns and An Abundance of Katherines, which were both deliciously angsty and witty. I love me some wit. Green moved off my radar for a couple of years for no particular reason other than life happening. Then a friend mentioned his Crash Course videos on YouTube, which I watched and loved. They're like 10 minute biology or world history co
Keep readingView Comments (1)21Feb2012
Books I’ve devoured
I spent most of the last few months of 2011 in a book funk, which carried over into 2012 for the month of January. I just couldn't seem to find anything to catch my interest for longer than a few minutes at a time. Ideally, a book should be so good that I can't fall asleep at night or I sneak it into my lap while helping my kids practice the piano. During a period I've decided to call The Gr
Keep readingView Comments (16)18Nov2011
Parenting at its worst
There's nothing quite like reading a book with some truly horrific family situations to make you feel like a stellar parent. I don't often read books like this to build up my motherhood self-esteem, since mostly it just makes me sad, but when books are recommended highly enough by people I trust, I do it anyway. Jeannette Walls' book, The Glass Castle, is a memoir of her highly unconventional
Keep readingView Comments (9)08Oct2011
Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler’s Shadow
Every so often I read a book that hits me so hard I know that I will never see the world the same way again. All good literature changes me to some degree, but then there are those special books whose imprint is so strong that I know I will still be thinking about it years from now. Susan Campbell Bartoletti's award-winning Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler's Shadow is one of those. It wa
Keep readingView Comments (3)06Oct2011
Non-depressing Depression Era stories
I don't like reading depressing stories, and I don't like writing about them either. Which is why I still haven't reviewed Per Petterson's doom-and-gloom Out Stealing Horses even though it's been months and months since I read it. But I just recently finished three books that all take place during the Great Depression but were fortunately not depressing or difficult to get through. They eac
Keep readingLeave a Comment30Aug2011
Caught up in four sentences or less
Oh my, what a summer I've had. Between preparing for a cross-country move, driving about two thousand miles for a wedding and a vacation, moving 1700 miles away to the East Coast, frantically unpacking and getting ready for school to start, writing reviews of books has been so low on my list it nearly fell off. But I'm back! I'm ready to get caught up and dive into reviews! Instead of decl
Keep readingView Comments (4)27Aug2011
Leviathan and Behemoth
I miss my old book group. They were great at introducing me to new things that I never would have tried otherwise. When I moved, we were getting ready to read Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld. He's the same guy that wrote The Uglies series, which people are always surprised to hear that I haven't read yet so I guess I'd better get on that. Having not read any of his other work, I don't know
Keep readingLeave a Comment06Apr2011
The Search for WondLa
Tony DiTerlizzi first became a household name in the kidlit world with his team project with Holly Black, a little series you might have heard of called The Spiderwick Chronicles. If you ever read it or get a chance to flip through the pages, you'll see the amazing eye candy of his illustrations. My daughter picked up a copy of his latest book, The Search for WondLa, written and illustrated by
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