The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
As always, I’m three years late to the party with this one. Mostly, I loved it. I’m on book #7 for the year, but this is the first I’m reviewing after dropping out early last year when becoming a foster parent ate my life, and I’m still getting in the swing of how to structure reviews so for this one I’m going to just do liked and disliked lists. Liked: I’m a sucker for a book with a large cast of characters who all feel […]
Jesus Was An Episcopalian (And You Can Be One Too!) by Rev. Chris Yaw
There’s a lot to unpack here and most of it really isn’t about this book. I was raised Lutheran and turned out queer, which took me down Agnostic Avenue. I was also born and raised with an unfortunate penchant for self-loathing and perfectionism and never lost a deep-down belief in some kind of God. Enter a great big beautiful holy corrupt institutional enabler: the Catholic Church. And that’s how I became a queer adult convert to Catholicism. I felt something in the church I’d never […]
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by JK Rowling
How the hell am I supposed to review Harry freaking Potter? Just the fifth best-selling book in any language of all time, nbd. I’m sure I have some original thoughts on it. I read this 12ish years ago but I was a different human then. I’ve started and finished a bachelor’s degree, gotten married, had a child, gained an astronomical amount of context, perspective, and life experience since then. I’ve also had a memory-wiping coma. One of my few resolutions this year was to reread […]
Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey
I thought this was going to be a depressing read that I trudged through because it was short and I sometimes feel obligated to bear witness to others’ pain. That was not at all the case. This book is gorgeous. It’s poetic and absolutely beautiful. There’s a recurring metaphor for suicidal thoughts that it just incredible. It’s funny and sad and really, really, really beautiful. It wasn’t that I didn’t think someone with a debilitating illness (in Lyndsey’s case, she has an extreme sensitivity to […]
How We Learn by Benedict Carey
Well, I just loved this book. The title and subtitle pretty much tell you what it’s about, but I do want to take a minute to impress upon you guys the one thing I didn’t realize until I read it: this book is for practically everyone. As a homeschool mom, I thought this might be a dry but useful book that would help me grow as an educator, but oh no. Are you a student of anything? Any age, any topic? Are you educating anyone […]
