I have been looking forward to reading this book for a while. It comes up now and again, especially on best books lists. It’s also titled The Book Thief, which sounds so exciting and so very bookish. Let’s establish what this book is. It is a young adult novel about Nazi Germany. That’s pretty much…
I have been looking forward to re-reading this book for years, so it was advantageous when the movie was slated for release around the same time it was coming up on my son’s fourth grade reading list. You see, it was one of my favorite books when I was a kid and I read it…
I used to have a story for why I picked The Scarlet Letter up at the point in time I read it (2017). I am still reviewing from my backlog, however (though I have also been reviewing as I read: double-timing it) so I don’t remember all of the circumstances. I remember buying The Scarlet…
Just get used to it. You’re going to get a Roald Dahl review at least once a year. I love Roald Dahl. Some of my most favorite books in the world were written by Roald Dahl. (His titles include Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Witches, The Twits, The BFG, James and the Giant Peach,…
I have been out of the country. I have been recovering from jet lag. If I had it more together, I would have scheduled some pre-written posts for you while I was gone. I did manage to get my house cleaned and the luggage packed. So that’s good. I also seldom read as much on…
It’s hard for me to believe that I didn’t do this review earlier, though we did finish reading as I was tackling a sizable backlog. Boo! This series deserves better than a months-stale review. But it is what it is, and the least the series deserves is a late review. Amazon’s blurb for the first…
Apparently Fuschia Dunlop is a thing. Well, really she’s a person, but apparently she’s someone that I–someone obsessed with food and now a food magazine reporter (Did I not write that blog yet?)–should recognize in some capacity. Well, when I found her book on the shelf in the library, it was just because I was…
As you might already know, I am currently nearing the end of my first ever writing residency. I am taking a break from writing (ha!) and thought I would check in with some other part of my brain for a minute. While I keep typing. It is my fate. I feel like I could display…
Yes, yes. I am currently at my writing residency. But I have put a LOT of words on the page today, and I always try to keep up the blog. So, this is my “break.” Fresh reviews. I have admired, sometimes at a bit of a distance, Chris Van Allsburg since I was a kid.…
When I write a novel, or basically anything, I keep the volume around me at zero. Or at least at white noise, like the dull roar in a cafe. If I’m home though, there is no music that I listen to when I write. When I get asked that question, I just answer honestly: I…
A book like this hardly needs a review, let alone an introduction. In the dream library that I made for my future grandchildren–in my head–classics like this one will always find a place. Still, there is no telling with kids, especially very young ones. With them, there is no accounting for taste, for reals. They…
I had this whole list of novels that we were going to cover in fourth grade. About halfway through the year, my husband and son were wandering a bookstore when Eamon saw the cover for a Fablehaven novel and said, “I think that one looks cool.” My husband, bless his heart, ran to the library…
This is the second book that I have read in my learning-culture-through-fiction, China kick. I am going to China in July. Perhaps I can get four more books read. I already have three waiting on the shelf and one of them is a bit enormous. There are similarities between this novel and the previous, The…
If you are looking for comparison reviews, you will not find them here. I am just going to review the books that we used for fourth grade. For most subjects, we used whatever I had decided upon when I was researching material in the spring of 2017. There were a few times we switched, midway.…
When I made the Best Books list and started on the adventure of reading to children as they grew, I did not realize that so many of the “classics” of children’s chapter books come from the 50s. Even if they weren’t written in the 50s, many of them take place in or around the 50s.…
Announcement time! My daughter and I are headed to China! As you probably know, I very rarely solicit my bloggers. Like when I publish a novel (which is rarely). And when I go on some major humanitarian adventure. This post falls into the latter category. There is a woman from our church who has been…
I may have let this book build up too much before reading it. I have been intending to read it for years. It was recommended by lots of people as well as generally the state of North Carolina. It is magic realism, which is my favorite genre. And I love the movie, am a huge…
Well, this is the first Devon-y, from-the-best-books-list book review that I have done in quite some time. (In the old days, I read mostly literary literature, with an emphasis on world and trendy.) The book wasn’t actually slated to be next, but I am going to China in July, so I have started gleaning from…
Yes, this is a writing and reading blog. I do take the liberty of reviewing other entertainment, however, when I feel it is applicable to either the writing or reading life. Sometimes something is so good, that I might be stretching it a bit, and when I saw Arrival I knew that I wanted to…
I’m going to do you a solid. You want to read The Princess Bride, but you don’t want to be as confused as I was when I started reading. And you don’t want to have to do research in order to get your bearings. So, here. The Princess Bride is, on one level, a standard…
the starving artist 