Biblio Reviews

Great book design can be said to achieve two things: they announce and brand themselves. Some become Jurassic Park level iconic, with the book's cover art replicated in their paperback and international editions, and even movie posters--if the book is successful enough to capture Hollywood's attention. They're the type of covers that you can't imagine being anything other than what they are, though I have liked another cover of  Educated  (2018) that I think also captures the essence of the story (not the one with a childhood photograph of Westover on a swing).  Below are a sampling of favorite book cover designs, along with my reflections of a few of them.              I hope that whoever was involved in the design of Shusterman's Arc of the Scythe  book series received an award. Everything about those book covers bring joy: the paper on which they're printed, the graphic but simple nature of the image, the typography, the co...

Should I be embarrassed to share that until I recently read Michelle Obama's memoir  Becoming (2018), I hadn't really known too much about her history? Or that I didn't fully understand others' obsession and deep admiration of her? Like many Americans, I reveled in the election of Barack Obama as 44th President of the United States, though I remained fearful and prayed for the family's safety throughout their eight years in the White House. While I admired the Obamas for what they symbolized, I wasn't obsessed with them. Other than a now defunct website dedicated to Mrs. O's fashion, I hadn't kept up with many of the articles or biographies that populated many shelves and websites since they first stepped into the national spotlight. Most of my perception of the Obamas came from reading 2/3 of Dreams from My Father  (2007) way back when and whatever had made it in the headlines during their initial presidential campaign. Having read  Becoming , I...

One of the best things to have happened with books in the last decade has been the increase in published graphic novels and their status as "real books." Once limited to the comic book genre, the publication and critical acclaim of Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese (2006) cracked the door. The popularity of Raina Telgemeier's graphic novels signaled a new wave, particularly for the middle grades. I started to really invest in these books when I tried to stock my classroom library for my middle school students. Varied in their interests, reading levels, and reading desires, I wanted to find something to appeal to every single one of them. Graphic novels were my carrot, particularly for the boys who really struggled to engage with independent reading. Of the new crop of graphic novels for younger readers, here are some of the characteristics I've noticed: They feature characters who are in middle school. They're often part of a series. They central...

I have been on a great reading streak in the past week, so much so that I find myself in a state of squee. Currently Reading: The Song of Achilles  (2012) by Madeline Miller The Sun Is Also a Star  (2016) by Nicola Yoon Recently Finished: Rebound  (2018) by Kwame Alexander Eleanor & Park  (2013)   by Rainbow Rowell The Song of Achilles  is so good that I'm getting butterflies in my stomach as I read it. I want to consume and savor its beauty. At the same time, there's also the lingering butterflies from  Eleanor & Park,  which I finished a couple of days ago. Why had it taken me so long to read it?! I read an e-reader version but then went on to buy the hard copy today so I could re-read my favorite parts easily. Taking a pause from each book to read the other has been maddening--but oh so deliciously satisfying! Reviews for all these book and others should be coming, though I've found that the more I love a book, t...

I generally try to avoid anything that is a "hit" or trending with the masses. In fact, the more something is a "hit," the less likely I am to consume it, for my tastes often seem to not be aligned with the crowd's. At CBR, Rainbow Rowell is a hit, so much so that, for many, anything she writes is an automatic "must buy." A couple of years back, I chose to find out if all the hype was warranted by reading  Attachments  (2011), her debut novel. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, though for seemingly different reasons: I loved the male protagonist whereas others loved the cleverness of the email exchanges between the two female characters. Fangirl  (2013) is another of Rowell's character-driven  YA novels that has been well-received by readers and well-reviewed by critics. As of this post, it has a slightly higher rating on Goodreads (4.12) than her very much revered  Eleanor & Park  (4.11), also published in 2013. A coming-of-age story,  Fangir...

"Huh?" was my response when the local radio update featured a clip of Jose Baez, the lawyer of former Patriots' tight end and convicted murderer Aaron Hernandez, accusing the medical examiner's office of holding Hernandez' brain hostage and requested that the family's wishes be honored by releasing the brain to Boston University for CTE analysis. Seemingly out of the loop, this is how I learned of Aaron Hernandez' death by suicide a day before. Other than being surprised by the timing of his death--days after exoneration of a double homicide--and lamenting the tragic nature of Hernandez' life and all parties involved in his drama, my response was due to learning that Boston University was in the game, as it were, for CTE research and diagnosis. "Well this is certainly elevating the school's national status," I recall thinking with pride. A week and a half later, after reading Jeanne Marie Laskas's  Concussion  (2015), I downgraded m...

Sarina Bowen's   The Understatement of the Year  (2014) was the first m/m romance I ever read. It wasn't a genre of romance that I ever really thought about, especially because I'm more into historical romances. Nonetheless, I read it after reading a CBR review of it. Reading this story of Michael Graham and John Rikker made me think of some of my former male students who came out after high school. I remember thinking how wonderful it would have been for them to have had stories like this to read because the featured characters were close to their own age and had relatable fears and experiences. Well-written with likable characters and a reasonable plot, I loved  The Understatement of the Year  and highly recommend it as a romance and not just as porn on the page, which I've found to be the case with many m/m "romances."  (Rating: 4/5) Looking at my orders history on Amazon, I followed up my purchase of  The Understatement of the Year  with...

To date, I have not watched even one minute of James Cameron's historic blockbuster, Titanic (1998). I may be one of the few, for even my 12-13 year-old students have seen it and have recommended it to me. While it irritates me that Kate and Leo and Cameron's Titanic are cemented in their mind as the definitive Titanic story, I can appreciate the fact that the film provides them with an anchor for visualizing and understanding the events detailed in Walter Lord's  A Night to Remember  (1955), truly " the  classic account of the final hours of the  Titanic. " I had not heard of  A Night to Remember  previously and was scheduled to teach it. Not a fan of the book's structure--the minute-by-minute account through no fewer than twenty different perspectives--my colleague sold me the book as a complex bore of a read. For that reason, she only ever taught excerpts of it. Going into the reading, I was tentative because it had been made so unappealing. Far f...

I have been rooting for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ever since I found out about her about five years ago. It was through her TEDTalk, " The Danger of a Single Story ," shared during a a professional development about what's been an ongoing conversation in my school district about school culture / cultural proficiency. That TED Talk is probably my favorite so far, if only because it applies more readily to the subject that I teach: English language arts. As such, it is a Talk that I share with every new group of students that I've taught. Though in 2008 she was the recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, Adichie wasn't as well-known as I thought she deserved to be. So, it was with joy that I read the many positive reviews of  Americanah  (2013) posted for CBR. I was like, "Yay! She's on her way!" Deservedly so, as evidenced by  We Should All Be Feminists (2014), a transcription of her 2012 TEDxEuston Talk . What Adichie calls for i...

It was sometime in the last seven to ten years that I first read Jane Austen's Persuasion  (1818). It was during the summer, I think, after I fully acknowledged and accepted the charm and greatness of her stories.You would think that as an English major I would have been familiar and enthralled with her and her work, but truth be told, I had abstained from reading many of the "classics" which tend to be very Eurocentric.  In regards to Austen, in particular, I was required to read Pride and Prejudice (1813) for the first time my freshman year in college. The professor was certainly a fan of Austen and the novel and gave away everything. My professor, however, analyzed the novel for us to the point that I didn't even have to read it to write a major essay on it. In fact, the introductory paragraph to that essay remains one of my best and favorite to date. (I don't remember the details, just that the first sentence was beautifully phrased and encapsulated Austen...

Ravished (1992) is by far my favorite Amanda Quick novel. It might very well be my favorite romance novel since it, along Miranda Lee's  A Weekend to Remember  (1996), is the one I've re-read every year, sometimes multiple times a year. Both guarantee to satisfy my romance novel cravings every.single.time. An Aside: I've read many romance novels, and to be honest, after a while, they all blend into one another: I can't differentiate the details of one from another. Which is why I am in awe of those who can recall the details, titles, and authors of various romances as exemplified by Smart Bitches, Trashy Book's HaBO feature. In any case, of the the books I've read, in addition to the two previously mentioned, the only other romance novel whose details are etched in my memory and I think of fondly is Judith McNaught's Perfect (1994), though I've not read it in quite some time. One of the reasons I was drawn by these romances is their covers. By roma...

My avoidance of Jenny Hubbard's Paper Covers Rock  (2011) stemmed from my negative associations with John Knowles' A Separate Peace  (1959) , a required read from my tenth grade honors English class in high school. I never read the book: I didn't have to because the teacher basically did all the work by summarizing it for us each day. What I do remember is that I couldn't relate and so didn't care. A few years ago I tried to re-read it and found myself as equally uninterested. Last year, while I looked for interesting titles to add to my classroom library, I came across Paper Covers Rock.  It piqued my interest but not enough to make it a must-read. And so, it sat in my classroom library for months until a student chose it for her independent reading and wrote a response that propelled me to download it immediately on my Kindle. Set in 1982 North Carolina (though I'm not fully sure why),  Paper Covers Rock  has similarities to  A Separate Peace:...

I achieved my reading goal for 2014, though I did not achieve my Cannonball Read 6 Challenge: a half cannonball to read and review 26 books. I read and reviewed only 18 titles because who knew writing 26 reviews would be such a challenge?! Despite not meeting my Cannonball Read 6 challenge goal, I am happy with the progress I made with reading in 2014. One that I am most happy with is that I read more than just romance novels, though as you'll see in the final list, romance made up quite a bit of my reading. Among my most enjoyable reads of 2014 were enlightening nonfiction titles  Secret Sex Lives: A Year on the Fringes of American Sexuality  and  Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men , along with a couple of engaging novels by British authors:  Me Before You  by Jojo Moyes and  The Rosie Project  by Graeme Simsion, both of which I didn't review. To keep the ball rolling, so t...

What must living be like for Steve Bartman? On October 14, 2003, Bartman became the most infamous Chicago Cubs fan when he deflected a foul ball in game 6 of the National Championship Series between the Cubs and the Florida Marlins. In the immediate aftermath, security escorted him inside the stadium to watch the rest of the game and later hustled him (in disguise) to a safe place. The next day, Bartman released a statement begging fans for forgiveness and pleading that threats against his loved ones be stopped. In the following weeks, Bartman headlined the news of nearly every sports-related program and planted himself firmly in Cubs lore. After all, the Cubs went on to lose the game and the series. More than a decade later--and still no World Series championship for the Cubs--Bartman has yet to be seen or heard from publicly. Bartman is simply one example of one, along with his friends and family, whose life was altered in ways unimaginable. Yes, in general, life is unpredictable...

Rabid fandom is one reason I've yet to watch  Titanic  and never got into  Friends,   Lost,  among many other highly successful films and TV shows. Instead, I tend to dedicate my viewing time to the underdogs, which is to say that a lot of the shows that I do like tend to get cancelled, i.e.  Arrested Development, Life, Chicago Code, Human Target, Men of a Certain Age.  To date,  The Good Wife  is the only one of my faves to have escaped that fate.  With that said, you can imagine how resistant I was to reading Rainbow Rowell, the darling of CBReaders. However, because my passion for reading is stronger than my passion for film/TV viewing, I broke down a couple of months ago and read her debut novel,  Attachments  (2011). In the end, the novel was a satisfying, nostalgic quick read. Much of my enjoyment came from the atypical male protagonist, Lincoln O'Neill, a diffident, non-alpha romantic lead. Set in 1999,...

One of my all-time favorite TED Talks is 2008 McArthur Fellow and writer Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie's " The Danger of a Single Story ." In her Talk, she makes a case for the importance of publishing varied and numerous stories, particularly about those who historically have been marginalized.  As she brilliantly articulates, the lack of variety and availability of some groups' stories has resulted in "single stories"--stereotypes--about them: "[ S]how a people as one thing,   as only one thing,   over and over again,   and that is what they become." Her concept of "single stories" explains why I have sometimes been...reserved in reading "ethnic" or "urban" literature. A girl gets tired of reading the same type of victimization-type of stories, you know? I find many "ethnic" or "urban" stories to be very limiting and repetitive in setting, plot, and genre. They seem to always be based on reality or...

Found in nearly every corner occupied by a sitting or lounging furniture in my apartment are small stacks of paperback historical romance novels. Though they are still prominent in my living space, they represent a seemingly long lost period for me, one in which romance novels offered escape into an idealized, long-gone era and presented a world inhabited by sophisticated and gallant heroes and unconventional heroines. So what if the heroes and heroines were bound by strict societal norms and habiliments? Their chemistry and love for each other would help them overcome! There was a time when I would and could binge-read historical romances at the expense of developing conversational skills. In every purse was a novel that served as a buffer against idle chit chat. I would spend no more than a couple of days reading them, so voracious was I in reading these historical romances. It comes as a surprise, then, that I cannot remember when my consumption of these books stopped. Maybe it was...

One of my handful of memories from middle school and early years in the U.S. comes from seventh or eighth grade. It's hard to remember which year because we shared the same classrooms and teachers during those two years. In any case, we had a guest speaker, a relatively young (and white) one, and that's about all I remember about why he was there to speak to us. My strongest memory about this speaker, though, was a question he had asked: "Raise your hand if you plan on going to college?" I remember thinking, "Well, d'uh, we're all going to college. That's the goal of going to school. What a dumb question." Reflection upon this particular moment reveals a few things: Until that moment, I didn't consider that I would have a choice in the matter. In my household, that was the expectation. A relatively new immigrant to the U.S., I was an innocent. I wasn't aware of the hostile racial history of the United States and the bitter legacy ...

In September, I will enter my third year of teaching 8th grade English after having taught the previous seven years at a high school in another district. Many factors contributed to the change in my work zip code, one of which was my desire to restart by working with an age group that still believed in possibilities and who would benefit the most from instruction to build their literacy. The biggest factor, however, was a need to leave what had become a hopeless situation. In my last few years at the high school level, I taught seniors who began to suffer from  senioritis  as early as October. While their lack of motivation was dispiriting, their lack of literacy and critical thinking skills as they neared the beginning of their independent adult lives was devastating. Being 17-19 year-olds, many had already solidified their beliefs about school, believed they had learned all they could be taught, and saw themselves as being too grown to be told what to do and how to do it. ...

In the last year, I have carpooled with a male co-worker whose candid conversations have given me interesting insights into some males' perspectives regarding relationships, among other things. This is because my co-worker fancies himself skilled in sociology--without formal training. So you can only imagine that whenever I express doubt in what he terms "schooling me," about life and people, his usual response is, "I  know  people." I must admit from observation and conversation, his conclusions are often on point. His theories and opinions about the world and people scan a variety of topics. Three that seem to have always lead to lectures during our commute include the societal emasculation of men, the loss of community, and the failures of education in the U.S.. Here is a list of some of his thoughts: Gender roles (masculine and feminine) matter. Societal problems that exist today are the result of the blurring of the lines of what men and women can and ...