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Book Review – The Other Side of Perfect
The Other Side of Perfect, by Melanie Florence and Richard Scrimger, is a suspenseful middle grade book about a rich girl in the popular crowd, Autumn, who finds a boy from her class, Cody, under a bush after he ran away from his abusive father. Despite his wish that parents don’t get involved, she and (eventually) her parents make sure he is taken care of. Meanwhile, Autumn is having second thoughts about the”in crowd”, while Cody learns how to make art.
Book Review – The Age of Magical Overthinking
One of The New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - One of The Guardian's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
Joan Didion delivers a searing portrait of a marriage and a life - in good times and bad - that will speak to anyone who has ever loved and lost a husband or wife or child. In a work of electric honesty and passion, Didion explores how we all, somehow, will ourselves to survive. "An utterly shattering portrait of loss and grief." -The New York Times Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana Roo, fall ill with septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later, the Dunnes were sitting down to dinner after visiting their daughter in the hospital when John suffered a fatal heart attack. In that one moment, their partnership of forty years came to an end. This powerful narrative is Didion's "attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness...about marriage and children and memory...about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself." "Didion has transformed grief into literature." --The Guardian
One of The New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - One of The Guardian's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
Joan Didion delivers a searing portrait of a marriage and a life - in good times and bad - that will speak to anyone who has ever loved and lost a husband or wife or child. In a work of electric honesty and passion, Didion explores how we all, somehow, will ourselves to survive. "An utterly shattering portrait of loss and grief." -The New York Times Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana Roo, fall ill with septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later, the Dunnes were sitting down to dinner after visiting their daughter in the hospital when John suffered a fatal heart attack. In that one moment, their partnership of forty years came to an end. This powerful narrative is Didion's "attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness...about marriage and children and memory...about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself." "Didion has transformed grief into literature." --The Guardian
One of The New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - One of The Guardian's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
Joan Didion delivers a searing portrait of a marriage and a life - in good times and bad - that will speak to anyone who has ever loved and lost a husband or wife or child. In a work of electric honesty and passion, Didion explores how we all, somehow, will ourselves to survive. "An utterly shattering portrait of loss and grief." -The New York Times Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana Roo, fall ill with septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later, the Dunnes were sitting down to dinner after visiting their daughter in the hospital when John suffered a fatal heart attack. In that one moment, their partnership of forty years came to an end. This powerful narrative is Didion's "attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness...about marriage and children and memory...about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself." "Didion has transformed grief into literature." --The Guardian
The Age of Magical Overthinking, by Amanda Montell, is a wonderful book even if you don’t normally read psychology books. She writes about cognitive distortions and fallacies that help explain how the world around us, and our own reactions, works. Montell has a great sense of humor throughout this book, and I found it to be a very enjoyable read. (Coming out April 9, 2024)
Grace Under Pressure: My 27-Year Journey of Injustice, Resilience, and Purpose by Jimmie C. Gardner
I read this book in two sittings, which is very unusual for me. Jimmie was falsely convicted for sexual assaults and given a life sentence. His trust in the justice system was misplaced; he ended up being in prison for 27 years for a crime he didn’t commit, due to racism and false evidence. The whole time, he maintained that he was innocent, but found it hard to find a lawyer that actually listened to him. This book is thrilling and sad all at once. (Out May 7, 2004)
Correction: Parole, Prison, and the Possibility of Change by Ben Austen
Correction is a sorely needed look at the current criminal justice system and how the idea of reform has gone by the wayside, in favor of mere retribution. Millions of Americans are currently in prison or under parole requirements. But who gets to make parole in the first place? This book details the lives of men trying to get parole, and the many obstacles in their way from the parole board. How much punishment is enough?
Middle Grade Kids Stand Up for Themselves
These two upcoming novels for Middle Grade readers are amazing examples of how kids can fight for justice!
I simply love In the Night Garden by Carin Berger.Book Review: The Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate
This book is, quite simply, encompassing and amazing. I can’t think of any topic remotely related to health that did not make it into this book. I have loved all of Mate’s books so far, and this one I am finishing in record time, even though it’s a long one at 500 pages. I can’t wait to see where his thinking will go next. He goes through the most current research on stress and trauma to show that there are many sources of illness besides the most obvious looking ones.
Book Review: Where You See Yourself by Claire Forrest
Where You See Yourself is an upcoming YA book that is so amazing that I read the whole thing in a day (very rare for me). It has a lot in common with other teen books: girl crushes on boy, wonders if she should just go for it, and deals with difficult administration at school. There’s the prom, college admissions madness, and stepping into adulthood. The catch is, she is disabled and that creates a whole new element of difficulty to all of these experiences.
Book Review: Pomegranate by Helen Elaine Lee
Pomegranate is the story of a woman’s journey once she is released from prison, which is affected by her Blackness and her Queerness. Ranita, a former addict, tries to work recovery principles in her life while moving on from her prison sentence. But in one way, she cannot move on – she has a lover who is still behind bars whom she writes to. Will she ever contact her lover again?
Botticelli’s Secret
Less artistic analysis, more the colorful history of a provenance, “Botticelli’s Secret” offers short, vivid biographies of Dante and Botticelli before embarking on a tour of the turbulent fate of the latter’s Divine Comedy sketches, a tour which also functions as an examination of the fluctuating artistic tastes of recent centuries. Most interesting for its demonstration of the link between Botticelli’s modern vogue and his appeal to both sides of the Victorian “Medieval vs.
Get Ready for Author Alley 2022!
It’s that time of year again! The time of year when Ohio authors flock to the alley at Loganberry Books! That’s right, Author Alley is back!
Book Review: What’s Coming to Me
Summer will be here soon enough (even if it was below freezing last night), so I have been reading some books that are coming out this summer. What’s Coming to Me is my favorite so far.
Booth by Karen Joy Fowler
Great fiction is one of the ways I learn history, so Booth by Karen Joy Fowler is a wonderful treat. John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln, but that’s not the center of this book. The center is his family, and Fowler imagines who they were and brings them to life,so that we get to see what happens to a family when a son, or a brother, commits a horrible act of violence.
Book Review – A Thousand Ways to Pay Attention by Rebecca Schiller
In this engaging memoir, Rebecca traces her juggling of many troublesome symptoms with the intricacies of setting up a small homestead, while bringing in an expansive knowledge of the history
episode Link: Book Review: Soberful by Veronica Valli
I hope that everybody is having a nice, healthy new year so far. I would like to sing the praises of a book that just came out – Soberful, by Veronica Valli.
Book Review: Anybody Here Seen Frenchie?
Anybody Here Seen Frenchie is a wonderful, wholesome, emotion laden story for middle grade readers about a boisterous girl named Aurora and her best friend, a non-verbal child named Frenchie.
