Girl in the Blue Coat won the 2017 Edgar Award for Best YA Mystery and is one of the most thrilling and engaging books I have read in a while. I started this book one afternoon and tore through 200 pages in no time, and I couldn’t wait to finish the last 100 pages the next day. Set in 1943 Amsterdam, Girl in the Blue Coat tells the story of Hanneke Bakker, an 18-year-old girl who is trying her best to support her parents and […]
The bravery of teenagers puts us all to shame
The Librarian of Auschwitz is a fictionalized account of real events that occurred in the Auschwitz-Birkenau labor camp, 1944-45. The main character Dita Adler is based on a real person named Dita Polachova Kraus who was 15 years old when she and her parents were rounded up with other Jews from Prague and sent to the Nazi camps. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dita worked in what was known as the “family compound” in Block 31. Prisoners here were given “special treatment”; children were allowed to survive and […]
What if God was one of us?
Nikos Kazantzakis is probably best known for his novel Zorba the Greek, which was made into an award-winning film starring Anthony Quinn in 1964. Yet, Kazantzakis is also infamous for The Last Temptation of Christ, a novel so provocative that it was placed on the Vatican’s Codex of Forbidden Books in 1954. For this novel and for some of his other works, Kazantzakis was nearly excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox Church and was denied a Christian burial in Greece when he died in 1957, although […]
Fine YA novel about being teen, female, outsider in Saudi Arabia
Last week I came across one of those irresistible quizzes that pop up on social media. This one promised to give you something to read based on the types of TV shows you choose to watch. Naturally, I took the quiz and then I retook and retook, because I can’t stand not knowing what other books might be out there for me. Anyway, one of the recommendations was A Girl Like That by Tanaz Bhathena. The blurb sounded pretty good, and as it turns out, […]
Excellent Fantasy Series to Get Hooked On
The Black Tides of Heaven (Tensorate Series) and The Red Threads of Fortune by Jy Yang
With their Tensorate series, author Jy Yang has created a world divided between those who have and those who lack the ability to manipulate the physical world through their own formidable powers. The “haves,” known as Tensors, are able to use their mind/spirit to influence the workings of the Slack, ie, earth (gravity), water (motion), fire (temperature), metal (electricity), and forest (flesh and blood). In this world, the “haves” rule with an iron fist and little mercy, but even so, amongst these privileged individuals there […]
The pursuit of happiness
In the introduction to Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison writes about the death of her father and the inspiration for the novel. She found herself talking to him and wondering what the men he had known were really like. For the first time, with Song of Solomon, Morrison writes from her male characters’ perspective, and these male characters are focused on flight, on some journey of their own, a pursuit after something that might bring them happiness. Macon Dead is a prosperous businessman in the […]
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