“LaRose” begins with a tragedy. In an effort to make this tragedy right, Landreaux Irons, architect of the tragedy, offers his son LaRose to the Ravitch family. The Irons and Ravitch families have a long history as Nola Ravitch and Emmaline Irons are half-sisters. Landreaux and Peter Ravitch are hunting buddies. The rest of the novel explores what happens to all of the characters’ lives as a result of this event. I struggled with this book, which isn’t often the case. The writing was done […]
Dreamland
We’ve heard a lot about the opiate/opiod crisis. “Dreamland” takes readers on a journey of how this crisis began and what factors contributed to this health emergency. Sam Quinones takes a journalistic approach to exploring the roots of the crisis. He begins in a Mexican state, Xalisco. In there state there’s not many job opportunities outside of farming/ranching. At the same time, there’s a very competitive socio-economic culture where everyone is trying to beat the Jones’s next door. Some have immigrated to the U.S., particularly […]
The Birchbark House
I had originally read Louise Erdrich’s The Birchbark House back in June 2014 when I was looking at teaching more literature written by and about Native Americans. I decided to revisit the book because I thought it would work with a new unit I was putting together for my American Literature course. Unfortunately, I read the book too late to make into booklists for this school year. This wasn’t too much of a loss because I’m still torn about whether to actually teach it or […]
Fluent in 3 Months
Benny Lewis has a blog that he’s turned into this book. Throughout the book he relates his experience learning languages from high school until now as well as what his tips and resources are for learning and maintaining new languages. As someone who’s looking to learn more languages, but who doesn’t have time to take classes I’ve been looking for resources for how to this in a more DIY method. Like many people Mr. Lewis took language classes in high school but found he couldn’t […]
Rising Strong
Brené Brown tackles the tough topic of what to do when we are faced with one of those I’m-a-failure-at-life moments, when you feel like life has thrown you into a pretzel in a wrestling ring. Ms. Brown uses personal experiences as anecdotal evidence that she builds off of using her expertise as a social worker and her research and shares how readers can face these moments head on, process and analyze, and then become better prepared to face what life throws at us next. There’s […]
Charlotte Temple
“Charlotte Temple” was not what I was expecting. At best I was hoping for a Jane Austen-type read, seeing as how the author’s overlapped. I was also looking for early American novel to potentially teach to my students. Unfortunately, I neither enjoyed reading this book, nor will I teach it to my students. The main problem with this book is that it’s very problematic for a modern reader. I don’t see how anyone could sit down and read and enjoy this. I think this work […]
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