After reading a flurry of enjoyable romance novels, I was ready for something a little different, so I went back to my list of 50 Books Every Woman Should Read Before She Turns 40 and picked up On Beauty (2005) by Zadie Smith. This is my first time reading Zadie Smith, and I was very impressed. She wrote an engrossing book with memorable characters. She plays a lot with issues of identity, race, class, and academia, but I always felt that the characters came first. I will definitely be […]
Will East Texas ever change?
I’ll preface this review with – I am from North Texas, not East Texas. I’m from big city Texas, not small town Texas. The Texas in this book is not directly the Texas I grew up in, but it is a Texas I recognize. For such a big state, it sure can be small. Also, for reference, the hate crime dragging death of James Byrd, Jr., was only 20 years ago. Feels like it should be a lot longer, but it most definitely is not. […]
Welcome to the Neighborhood
Cardboard Kingdom is a graphic novel that follows a neighborhood of kids who transform ordinary cardboard into fantastical costumes as they explore life, family, friends and themselves. Created and drawn by Chad Sell we see a world that we probably have all lived in at one point. Who has not been “the loud girl” or known “the bully” or had that “little minion” kid sister? Or maybe you are the boy who wants to be the “Sorceress” or is the young lady who is the […]
#CBR10Bingo: Home, Something, Home (double Bingo!)
#CBR10Bingo: Home, Something, Home (this book is set at Stovner in Oslo, three stops away from where I live on the metro. It also concerns exactly the sort of pupils that I teach.) Two youths, both living in the same tower block in a suburb on the east side of Oslo, in Stovner (where the large majority of inhabitants are immigrants or the children of immigrants). They start out going to the same high school. Starting in the year 2000, the framing device consists of these […]