Wow, I just zoomed right through this. For a fifteen year old, Maya Van Wagenen has a very compelling voice. Frankly, this would be good even if it was written by someone older. But I can’t get over how brave this kid was to do all of this. I never could have done it when I was her age — at the peak of my miserable weirdo awkwardness. And she writes with humor and compassion that a lot of assholes older than her could do […]
Let’s stop telling girls to “be nice”; that’s what makes them into Mean Girls.
I know, it sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s true. It turns them into one of the more difficult types of bully to deal with, a silent one.
An Interesting Family Archive from an Interesting Time
I was granted an ARC of this book via NetGalley in return for a fair and honest review. This book’s expected publication date is June 29, 2014. There are lots of books out there about Nazi Germany and World War II. Literally thousands and thousands. But there are few that bring the realities of day to day life which Germans were experiencing to light for the modern reader. By choosing to share the cache of letters she found in her family home, Hedda Kalshoven brings […]
1984 IRL
While reading this book, I had to keep reminding myself that it is not, in fact, 1984. The stories Demick tells are true. North Korea is a place that actually exists. These stories happened, are happening. This is the story of North Korea as told through the lives of 6 ordinary but very different people, from the Korean War through 2010. The story is told masterfully, gliding between the details of the regime and the details of these people’s lives: there’s Mrs. Song, my personal […]
Philomena, should be called Michael
The book I read was the movie tie-in with a forward written by Judi Dench. I am actually interested in seeing the movie now that I’ve read the book just to see how they made this particular book into a movie (I assume there is a lot of Hollywood embellishments). I say this because, for a book called Philomena, it focuses about 90% of its page space to Anthony Lee/Michael Hess. Which isn’t a bad thing, but I did spend the a day or two […]
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments by David Foster Wallace
Cannonball, baby! I hate that I hit my 52 books on a book that I really really didn’t like. I know that David Foster Wallace was a genius. I really feel bad that I’ve never read anything else of his (yes, yes, I know I should Infinite Jest) but after dragging myself through the essays of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, it’s unlikely I will give him another shot. The first essay was about his tennis career; kind of math-y but fairly interesting. The second essay […]