The House of the Spirits was Isabel Allende’s first novel, but it contains a lot of the elements that made me love her other books: strong women, political turmoil and wonderful, subtle magic. “At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her notebooks so that one day I could use them.” The story of three generations of women: Clara […]
Sickened by Julie Gregory
Man, this was a hard book to read. But it was well-written and told an important story, and I’m glad I did read it. Gregory’s account of how she overcame her horrifying, abusive upbringing was inspiring and informative, as well as disturbing. *Review is kind of spoiler-y* “I am going to shrink and shrink until I am a dry fall leaf, complete with a translucent spine and brittle veins, blowing away in a stiff wind, up, up, up into a crisp blue sky.” Munchhausen’s, for […]
The Excursion Train by Edward Marston
Sometimes, you go to a library book sale and grab something for $1 that turns out the be awesome, like The Mexican Mafia by Tony Rafael that I found at last year’s sale, or the big pile of Isabel Allende books I hauled home. Other times, you spend $1 on a book like The Excursion Train, which despite its semi-decent Goodreads reviews was one of the dullest, most poorly written books I have read all year. Set in England in the 1800s, The Excursion Train is about a […]
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
I read The Outsiders in high school. We didn’t have it as assigned reading for class, but I distinctly remember sitting in my eight grade Spanish class, ignoring my teacher while reading it under my desk (I did quite a bit of that). I remember thinking it was good, and getting sad at the sad bits, but that’s about it. After it was mentioned in great detail in Fangirl, then I saw it at a book sale for $1, I thought it might be worth a reread. […]