Category: Book Review

Book Review: Reprise – World War Z

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 4 Comments

Disclaimer: I’ve reviewed this book before, 3 years ago maybe, you can read that here if you like.

I’m teaching Creative Writing this year and I allowed my students to pick the genres we discuss and write in. It’s been a mixed bag. LOL.

One of their choices was Sci Fi scary. You know aliens attacking, etc. But you can only read so many of those examples before, yawn. So I wove in a few other things. A short where the main character is a sentient ship in outer space. The first chapter of The Martian by Andy Weir. And then I talked a little about World War Z because of its unusual style, a pastiche of a sociological study.

This made me want to read it again and see if it was really as great as I remembered. And damn if it wasn’t still amazing. I stayed up half the night reading, again.

It is a fascinating read.

Book Review: The Brave Learner

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Another mom at coop was trying to get a group together to read The Brave Learner by Julie Bogart and discuss it. Why not?

Basic Summary (Courtesy of Amazon):

Parents who are deeply invested in their children’s education can be hard on themselves and their kids. When exhausted parents are living the day-to-day grind, it can seem impossible to muster enough energy to make learning fun or interesting. How do parents nurture a love of learning amid childhood chaos, parental self-doubt, the flu, and state academic standards?

In this book, Julie Bogart distills decades of experience–homeschooling her five now grown children, developing curricula, and training homeschooling families around the world–to show parents how to make education an exciting, even enchanting, experience for their kids, whether they’re in elementary or high school.

Enchantment is about ease, not striving. Bogart shows parents how to make room for surprise, mystery, risk, and adventure in their family’s routine, so they can create an environment that naturally moves learning forward. If a child wants to pick up a new hobby or explore a subject area that the parent knows little about, it’s easy to simply say “no” to end the discussion and the parental discomfort, while dousing their child’s curious spark. Bogart gently invites parents to model brave learning for their kids so they, too, can approach life with curiosity, joy, and the courage to take learning risks.

 

My thoughts:

Yeah. This was a good read. Lots of magical pixie dust. Lots of one size fits all answers.

Lots of things I have already tried with my child and had them not work. Which according to Julie means I didn’t do it right. If I tried her methods and they didn’t have the results she described then my tone was wrong, or my facial expression, or the way I presented it was wrong, or secretly I wanted it to not work and my child picked up on that.

That’s a lot of pressure to put on one human. Seems it might be more kind to admit that not every solution works for every child. If you are setting yourself up as the know all and you have to insist the other person is wrong when your solution doesn’t work, then I have to wonder just how much you really know. And are you really invested in helping parents or shaming them?

Wow, I had no idea all that was in the back of my mind when I sat down to review this book. I started out thinking I liked the book in general but clearly her approach of “dictates from on high” really rubbed me the wrong way.

Which brings me to the conclusion I have now come to after 5 years of homeschooling MY child. Every child is different. In fact, they are different on different days of the week, seasons of the year, and times of their life. No packaged approach will ever fit. I think I might just be done reading how wonderfully someone else’s approach to home schooling their children went because in the end, they didn’t home school my child.

Book Review: Two Can Keep a Secret

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I waited an eon for the latest from Karen McManus.

Basic Summary (Courtesy of Amazon):

Echo Ridge is small-town America. Ellery’s never been there, but she’s heard all about it. Her aunt went missing there at age seventeen. And only five years ago, a homecoming queen put the town on the map when she was killed. Now Ellery has to move there to live with a grandmother she barely knows.

The town is picture-perfect, but it’s hiding secrets. And before school even begins for Ellery, someone has declared open season on homecoming, promising to make it as dangerous as it was five years ago. Then, almost as if to prove it, another girl goes missing.

Ellery knows all about secrets. Her mother has them; her grandmother does too. And the longer she’s in Echo Ridge, the clearer it becomes that everyone there is hiding something. The thing is, secrets are dangerous–and most people aren’t good at keeping them. Which is why in Echo Ridge, it’s safest to keep your secrets to yourself.

My thoughts:

I have the stomach flu. Full on puking my guts up in a way I never did even with alcohol poisoning. And this book kept my attention from start to finish.

The characters are fun. The bevy of secrets delightful. The mysteries intense.

I didn’t know who done it. I knew the extra twist at the end, that one was obvious to me all the book. But I had no clue who done it. And no one was hiding information. There was no secret ooh she found, he found…and we aren’t telling so we can surprise you.  The author played it straight. Devious, but straight.

It’s as good as her first one. Maybe better, because it didn’t feel cribbed from Breakfast Club.

Book Review: A Death at the Yoga Cafe

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I was being rushed out of the library by the kiddo as his arms were full of graphic novels and he wanted to go home, when I spied A Death at the Yoga Cafe by Michelle Kelly on an end cap for cozies. Yoga and murder? Right on.

Basic Summary (Courtesy of Goodreads):

Keeley Carpenter has found her center. After returning to Belfrey, the traditional English village she called home ten years ago, she’s opened her dream yoga café, which doubles as both a yoga studio and a delicious vegetarian café. Even better, Keeley is dating handsome Detective Ben Taylor, and things are beginning to look serious.

Too bad things never seem to run smoothly for long. Eager to get involved with the local community, Keeley sets up a booth at the annual Belfrey Arts Festival, along with her nemesis, fellow small business owner Raquel. Preparing herself to play nice, she’s shocked when Raquel’s boyfriend, Town Mayor Gerald, is found dead after a public spat. Despite Ben’s strict warnings to stay out of it, Keeley isn’t going to let an innocent woman take the blame for the murder—even if it is glamorous, spoiled Raquel.

Now Keeley must balance a precarious murder investigation with the demands of her growing business and now-strained relationship. But when the killer takes a personal interest in Keeley, can she find the culprit before she gets bent out of shape?

My thoughts:

The book was definitely missing that joie de vivre that English slang brings to Brit based books. Everyone talks like an American. LOL. Supposedly the author is English. I don’t know what to make of that.

I didn’t connect particularly with the main character. She was tepid tea.

And the detection was of the “suspect everyone until a surprise twist reveals who done it” style. I don’t thrill to that.

But the book was solidly okay.

Book Review: Death Over Easy

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I’ve reviewed Maddie Day before. I still love her Country Store Mystery series. In the latest installment Robbie is up to her ears in murder suspects, some of whom are staying at her freshly opened B&B.

Basic Summary (Courtesy of Amazon):

June’s annual Brown County Bluegrass Festival at the Bill Monroe Music Park in neighboring Beanblossom is always a hit for Robbie’s country store and café, Pans ‘N Pancakes. This year, Robbie is even more excited, because she’s launching a new bed and breakfast above her shop. A few festival musicians will be among Robbie’s first guests, along with her father, Roberto, and his wife, Maria. But the celebration is cut short when a performer is found choked to death by a banjo string. Now all the banjo players are featured in a different kind of lineup. To clear their names, Robbie must pair up with an unexpected partner to pick at the clues and find the plucky killer before he can conduct an encore performance . . .

 

My thoughts:

I like Robbie. She is such a fun, yet capable woman. She doesn’t bumble all over place. She handles her shit, effectively.

And she takes responsibility when she screws up. Asking for help. Researching solutions. I might want to be friends with her. Maybe. People die around her a lot. LOL

She tries to stay out of crime but people tell her things. I can relate to that. People tell me things, too. Luckily I have managed to avoid any murders.

The entire series has been a solid cozy read. (this is book four maybe?)

Book Review: Lies My Teacher Told Me

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The hubs and I had dropped the kiddo at his D&D game and snuck out(approved by the host) to get a little alone time. We hiked for a while, having all those conversations that build up between dates because you can’t get through three sentences at home without the kiddo interrupting…and then we went to the library. I’ll be honest all our dates end the evening at the library. The ability to search shelves without the kiddo tugging at your arm saying he wants to go now, his stack of books is heavy, etc…oh mama. Anyway, I came across a copy of Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen. I had heard really good things about it.

Basic Summary (Courtesy of Amazon):

Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important—and successful—history books of our time. Having sold nearly two million copies, the book also won an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship and was heralded on the front page of the New York Times.

For this new edition, Loewen has added a new preface that shows how inadequate history courses in high school help produce adult Americans who think Donald Trump can solve their problems, and calls out academic historians for abandoning the concept of truth in a misguided effort to be “objective.”

What started out as a survey of the twelve leading American history textbooks has ended up being what the San Francisco Chronicle calls “an extremely convincing plea for truth in education.” In Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen brings history alive in all its complexity and ambiguity. Beginning with pre-Columbian history and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, the My Lai massacre, 9/11, and the Iraq War, Loewen offers an eye-opening critique of existing textbooks, and a wonderful retelling of American history as it should—and could—be taught to American students.

My thoughts:

I expected more or less or something different anyway from this book. I guess I hoped for more discussion of the lies and what is really true. I like that kind of thing. While there is a good measure of that, it felt like more than half of every chapter was reviews of textbooks. Textbooks that were heinously boring when I didn’t actually read it in high school. And now I have to read excerpts of it while this guy explains why they’re boring and bad.

Maybe the problem is I already teach all the sides of every story in my history classes and encourage a healthy debate, so he was preaching to the choir?

It’s a good read if you don’t mind skimming a bit.

Book Review: Word by Word

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I get it, I have an odd reading penchant. Word by Word, the Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper is an excellent example of my need to know something about everything. Oooh a book on lexicography, I know jack all about lexicography, I should read that.

Basic Summary(Courtesy of Amazon):

Many of us take dictionaries for granted, and few may realize that the process of writing dictionaries is, in fact, as lively and dynamic as language itself. With sharp wit and irreverence, Kory Stamper cracks open the complex, obsessive world of lexicography, from the agonizing decisions about what to define and how to do it, to the knotty questions of usage in an ever-changing language. She explains why small words are the most difficult to define, how it can take nine months to define a single word, and how our biases about language and pronunciation can have tremendous social influence. And along the way, she reveals little-known surprises—for example, the fact that “OMG” was first used in a letter to Winston Churchill in 1917.

Word by Word brings to life the hallowed halls (and highly idiosyncratic cubicles) of Merriam-Webster, a startlingly rich world inhabited by quirky and erudite individuals who quietly shape the way we communicate. Certain to be a delight for all lovers of words, Stamper’s debut will make you laugh as much as it makes you appreciate the wonderful complexities and eccentricities of the English language.

My thoughts:

It’s been a while since I read a book that had me laughing so hard I cried, gasping for breath. I’m being totally serious here. This book was hysterical.

It’s a lot of detail about words and how they come to be defined. Some of that is more interesting than other parts, but you can skim pretty easy over the too much sections and still laugh your a** off in the funny parts, which are numerous.

This is a great book if you like to learn about new things in a way that won’t make you want to gouge your own eyes out.

Side note to help the lexicographers out: Dictionaries to do not make words, they are not the arbiters of how words should be used, they record how a word is already used in written context. As Stamper points out, removing or adding a word does not actually change society. If it did, don’t you think they would have removed the word murder years ago?

Book Review: Murder on Millionaire’s Row

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I thought I was grabbing another cozy. One set in Gilded Age New York, but a cozy none the less and I expected it to suck. I don’t know why I expected it to suck but I did. I was wrong. On all accounts about Murder on Millionaire’s Row by Erin Lindsey.

Basic Summary (Courtesy of Goodreads):

Rose Gallagher might dream of bigger things, but she’s content enough with her life as a housemaid. After all, it’s not every girl from Five Points who gets to spend her days in a posh Fifth Avenue brownstone, even if only to sweep its floors. But all that changes on the day her boss, Mr. Thomas Wiltshire, disappears. Rose is certain Mr. Wiltshire is in trouble, but the police treat his disappearance as nothing more than the whims of a rich young man behaving badly. Meanwhile, the friend who reported him missing is suspiciously unhelpful. With nowhere left to turn, Rose takes it upon herself to find her handsome young employer.

The investigation takes her from the marble palaces of Fifth Avenue to the sordid streets of Five Points. When a ghostly apparition accosts her on the street, Rose begins to realize that the world around her isn’t at all as it seems―and her place in it is about to change forever.

My Thoughts:

This is a fantasy mystery with all the trimmings. And I loved it.

Rose is fun, flat out amusing. She has great adventures, thinks about things in unusual ways, and generally shows the reader a darn good time, even if it is at her own expense.

I have to admire a woman who handles herself in a time where that alone could get you in trouble and this book has more than one such woman. Nicely balanced with men who mostly appreciate them. So the historian in me is suspending her disbelief at that because it made for good reading.

I am vastly impressed by Erin Lindsey and I can’t wait for the next one.

Book Review: The Radical Element

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Still on the hunt for short stories for my creative writing kids, I have breezed through a lot of anthologies lately. The Radical Element, edited by Jessica Spotswood is the only one in the first batch of 8, I actually finished.

Basic Summary (courtesy of Amazon):

In an anthology of revolution and resistance, a sisterhood of YA writers shines a light on a century and a half of heroines on the margins and in the intersections.

To respect yourself, to love yourself, should not have to be a radical decision. And yet it remains as challenging for an American girl to make today as it was in 1927 on the steps of the Supreme Court. It’s a decision that must be faced when you’re balancing on the tightrope of neurodivergence, finding your way as a second-generation immigrant, or facing down American racism even while loving America. And it’s the only decision when you’ve weighed society’s expectations and found them wanting. In The Radical Element, twelve of the most talented writers working in young adult literature today tell the stories of girls of all colors and creeds standing up for themselves and their beliefs — whether that means secretly learning Hebrew in early Savannah, using the family magic to pass as white in 1920s Hollywood, or singing in a feminist punk band in 1980s Boston. And they’re asking you to join them.

My thoughts:

I liked this anthology tremendously.  From the very first story I knew I would be reading it from cover to cover rather than scanning for something that didn’t make me want to poke my eye out.

Again I don’t want to give away too much. But who hasn’t thought about running away with the circus?

I did use one of the shorts for my class, in our segment on comedy. I wanted to show them that comedic writing didn’t have to be just fart jokes. That you could wrap something ugly and complicated like racism in comedy and make your point.  Stacey Lee did so quite well in the Land of the Sweet, Home of the Brave.

 

Book Review: Twisted

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I am almost positive I’ve read Twisted by Jeffrey Deaver before. I love his books and do tend to read them all. But recently I picked it up again when looking for short stories for my creative writing class to dissect this year. It was fun to reread and enjoy the twist.

Basic Summary (Courtesy of Amazon):

New York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver delivers an electrifying collection of sixteen award-winning stories that will widen your eyes and stretch your imagination. Diverse and provocative, Twisted showcases Deaver’s amazing range and signature plot twists: a beautiful woman goes to extremes to rid herself of her stalker; a contemporary of William Shakespeare vows to avenge his family’s ruin; and Deaver’s most beloved character, brilliant criminalist Lincoln Rhyme, is back to solve a chilling Christmastime disappearance.

My thoughts:

I love the introduction to this book where Deaver talks about how when you write a novel, you can’t simply twist it at the end or your reader, feeling cheated, will hate you forever. But in a short story, the investment is much less, you can play with the reader without irritating them.

I don’t want to give away any of the endings. But there are one or two that are simply spectacular.  In my favorite, the twist is so artfully woven in, I immediately went back to reread it as soon as I finished it. Not a clue. Not a one. Out of nowhere, slam.

And he’s right, if I had invested 8 hours reading 400 plus pages, I would have been pissed. But 20 minutes of thinking, oh yeah I get whats going on here, only to find out I was sooo wrong, that was amusing.