I know I’m always claiming I started a book for high school reading but never finished it. Thanks to untreated ADHD and an uncanny ability to predict stories, this is largely true. But I must have read some of these books in order to ace AP English, right? Unknown. What I do know is that…
I have been surprised just how many books I already owned have surprised me in the past several weeks. Yes, I meant that sentence to read that way, but now it strikes me as awkward. Ah, well. Since I started Book a Day (which would be going much better if I didn’t keep misplacing the…
I apologize if you saw this review and clicked on it because you thought, Look at that beautiful cover, and “falling cloudberries?” Poetry? Literary fiction? That sounds super intriguing. Because this is not a novel, and since no one can read the cute-yet-obnoxious font that was chosen for the subtitle, you didn’t know that the…
I just had no idea what was coming, when I picked up this book. Nothing at all. (Note: I actually read this before The Bridge of San Luis Rey, but when I took my week off, I forgot to review it.) What would you think if you were about to read The Pearl, by John…
In case you noticed, it has been over a week since my last Book a Day post. That is because I took a week off to renovate the school room. Since the school room is part of the dining room and kitchen, at the heart of our home, I thought it would be best to…
In our home school (officially Avonlea-Potter Academy), we have a library day for history, about once per week. This week, my son had little to no interest in scanning the books about the Byzantine Empire and we ended up in the graphic novel section. I have been wanting, for years, to read more graphic novels,…
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Read a pillar of great European literature in the last two days… I actually read this book the first time through in college. With my first foot in the door at my alma mater, I was enrolled in a freshman prerequisite which explored a few major, modern worldviews. This book–despite the author’s…
When I saw this movie with my kids, a few years ago, I was really expecting something like The Spiderwick Chronicles or The Chronicles of Narnia. Perhaps the absence of “Chronicles” in the title should have been a sign, but this book (and movie) are nothing like either of those books/series. Terabithia–despite its fanciful name–is not…
This book, as you can probably tell by its title, is deeply religious. (Although some people would argue with that word, religious, we’re going to stick with it.) If you have no interest in Christianity, it probably won’t interest you, however, it is a quick read that can inspire peace, devotion, and discipline, even in…
This book–which is really a play–could write the book on 1970s theater. After all, it won the Pulitzer. But more than that, it just reeks of 1970s theater coolness, and I do mean that “in a good way.” If you enjoy reading plays, especially plays from around that time period, you–well, you’ve probably already read…
I’ve been meaning to read this one for the past few months, since my daughter had to read it for school, but I have been unable to keep up with her reading (as her speed has increased and my duty as a reading mother has gotten a little out of hand). When we chatted about…
Unofficially, I have moved from reading one book a day to a book every other day. I’m just too scheduled in the evening to have time to snuggle down before bed and finish a novel each night. (And I know you’re there, too.) So the first two books took me a day each, but then…
Normally, I would have read this book as part of the trilogy that it belongs in, but since this is my book-a-day challenge and this is the only one (inexplicably) on our bookshelves, I read it. The books, Night, Dawn, and Day, can stand alone. When I was in college, Elie Wiesel was all the rage. Okay,…
Second day, second book. I read The Wave, by Todd Strasser. It is a novel, but it hits the reader more like journalism and is read largely during social studies education. Why? Because The Wave is based on the true story of a California classroom in 1969. The teacher was surprised by his class’s response…
Day one of my possibly insane goal of reading nineteen books at a rate of one a day, and I didn’t even have a full day to complete the first one! Naturally, I grabbed the thinnest book in the stack. God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian is one of the lesser-known publications of heavy-hitting author Kurt…
Every once in awhile, I get out of the habit of reading on a regular, usually daily, basis. Often this is the indirect fault of media–TV or internet–but sometimes it’s because I haven’t encountered a good book in awhile so I start dragging my feet. This time, I think it was a combination of free…
It is true. My review of Rossi Fox’s 365 Journal Writing Ideas is not without its problems. The truth is that I am working on a similar project for Owl and Zebra Press, titled The Beginner’s Journal. I’m sure that project and this particular journal will have plenty of overlap, but only because we have…
I had seen the movie. It was popular, in its time, with the kids. I wasn’t especially impressed. But I knew that didn’t mean I wouldn’t like the book. So when I found myself at a Cracker Barrell in upstate New York, facing a solo twelve-hour drive and perusing the audio book rentals, this one…
We were perusing the children’s section of a Barnes & Noble on a family trip to the mall, when we came across a few featured tables piled high with great-looking books. I did what all modern Americans do, and I pulled out my smart phone to take photos of all the books that I wanted…
I found this trilogy—at least the first two books (which was all that was available at the reading)—to be very, very confusing. Let’s get this established: I don’t confuse easily, especially when reading. The confusion with these books is three-fold, and it is reflected in the contradictory reviews. First, the plot it confusing. Second, the…
the starving artist 