Not a secret: I’m a Harry Potter fan. I read the new stuff as it comes out, including the Fantastic Beasts series, which, if you don’t know, is a five-book series of screen plays set in the Harry Potter world but seventy years before the stories we are familiar with. Which makes Dumbledore really old.…
I am a geek, pretty thoroughly. I like much of the geek canon, from LOTR to Star Wars, though I am more of an academic than a gamer. I’m not a gamer at all. But I have a lifelong love of learning which extends into most subjects, though my interest in some of them is…
Well, I assigned The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live by William Hirsch AIA (I think that has something to do with architecture) to my Pandemic Book Club, as the alternative book for February. (The main book—which I’ll review soon—is about stress and health.) I thought that since…
It is only February, but the first book that put me behind schedule to read 102 books this year was Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. It’s a classic. I had always intended on reading it. And when Lyddie referenced it over and over in my middle grades Language Arts class, I decided to embrace the…
I just lurve this book. Not a line Stephen King would condone, but I’m stickin’ to my guns. (Another phrase he would edit out because it’s cliché.) Then again, this is a blog, where I embrace the conversational and modern tone. On Writing has been on my Favorites list since my first days with this…
The books we’ve been reading for middle school literature lately (I teach a co-op class) have been so short that the students have actually asked for more reading suggestions. Not all of the students, but still. After Animal Farm and then War Horse, we landed on another super-short novel (which we’re not going to call…
This is an old review, which has been sitting at the bottom of my next-up feed for a long time. I don’t really know how it got there or why I kept it there, but it was probably read during a dry period, perhaps when I was sick or on vacation. At any rate, a…
THE GOOD PLACE (series, 2016-2020) When I mentioned to some friends that I was watching this show, I was surprised when they said, “Ehn. It was good, and then it wasn’t. You’ll see.” I was so enjoying it. Quirky. Funny. Full of interesting characters. And just an interesting (if slightly heretical) idea: a young woman…
Okay, whatever you do, do not read this book and then watch the book trailer. It will make you so very sad that since its crazy popularity in 2014 and its release to be adapted, there has not been a movie made. The book trailer is so good. It doesn’t help that I love that…
This book was not what I expected, though if I had seen the movie that came out several years ago, I wouldn’t have been surprised. To be frank, War Horse sounds like a book I would not enjoy, but it was on the required reading list for the middle schoolers I teach this year, so…
Let’s just establish, right away, that though I gave Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky only three stars out of five (I think, generously), I will still be recommending it. Sometimes books are important for a reason, but maybe they’re not the world’s best book. They fill a void. And until that niche…
I have read Life of Pi a couple of times and I like it. I have reasons, and I’ll give them to you in a sec. I also always leave it a little disappointed. I think my main beef with this book is that Yann Martel tried too hard to sell us his perceived moral.…
Lyddie was another in a line of middle grades historical fiction that I have read as the Middle School Language Arts teacher at the homeschool co-op I am a part of. I’ve been more impressed by the selections for this year (part of a writing curriculum based on Modern History as opposed to last year’s…
The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, is one of the best modern books written in the English language and I don’t know how anyone can argue otherwise. Okay, maybe I can, but this is the third time I’ve read this book and it still amazes me. The writing amazes me. The structure amazes me.…
Note: This book review is for a Christian book. I expect to review a Christian book about once a month, this year. You have been warned. When I was a teenager, I found my way to Max Lucado. A pastor and Christian writer, I read everything of his. Why? Because he’s an image-painter, a word-player,…
I enjoyed Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide by Jim Cobb WAY too much. Part of me was curious when I put this on the year’s reading list, and part of me was being funny. Guess there really is a latent Prepper inside of me, or maybe just a Boy Scout. I love being prepared! Or maybe…
Oh how I do love thematic reading. Christmastime, love to read something Christmassy. Halloween. Valentines. Even Thanksgiving. In the spring I always think Anne of Green Gables, and in the fall, Harry Potter. I have been getting in the habit of yanking at least one book from my holiday lists as I arch ‘round the…
Well! There are gushing reviews of Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and there are scathing reviews of Outlander. No one expects it to be literary fiction—it’s popular fiction—though many claim it is great historical fiction (though it incorporates time travel), but the real discrepancy revolves around “rape culture.” I would say one out of ten, maybe…
BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY (2001) Kicked off the Christmas season with my teen daughter’s first viewing of Bridget Jones’ Diary. It’s possible it’ll be her last, but maybe—while she’s still under my roof anyways—she’ll join me come Christmastime and I won’t have to watch “all by myself.” I believe she said it was “cute.” It is…
Is there something that you want to read this year? With all this pandemic nonsense (it’s not actually nonsense, I’m just over it in like August and am referring breezily to something that has been very real and terrible for me lately), I am—like many people—really staring off at the horizon of 2021. Of course,…
