The Mother Tongue

Bill Bryson Hardcover, $14.99 1990 William Morrow 245 pages Bill Bryson is a journalist and, apparently, amateur comedian.  His own website describes him as “one of the most beloved authors of our time.”  Really?  Have YOU ever heard of him?  Even if you have, it’s pretty unlikely that you love him.  My personal feelings about [...]

Everlasting

Angie Frazier Hardcover, $17.99 Scholastic Press June 2010 336 pages I’ve officially embarked upon my Summer of YA Fiction.  Everlasting started out with a lot of promise but then became so, so strange. First–the good part.  1853: Camille sets sail with her father on his ship, her last trip with him before her impending marriage.  [...]

Picture the Dead

Adele Griffin Illustrated by Lisa Brown Hardcover, $17.99 Sourcebooks May 2010 272 pages I’ve been holding on to my copy of this book for a long time, assuming I wouldn’t like it because it’s full of illustrations.  I don’t want to say that I was wrong, cause you know, I’m never wrong, but I loved [...]

Let the Great World Spin

Colum McCann Paperback, $15 Random House June 2009 400 pages This National Book Award finalist was my first ever Book Club read!  I’ve resisted joining a club for years because I had had enough of being told what to read in school (and of then being forced to discuss it).  Granted, I was exposed to [...]

Fever Crumb

Philip Reeve Hardcover, $17.99 Scholastic Press April 2010 336 pages From Philip Reeve, the author of Here Lies Arthur, is another book that I expect to see atop the bestseller lists.  This book is a member of the newest YA lit trend, post-apocalyptic society (move over, vampires!).  The story follows a young girl named, sadly [...]

iPad, Do You?

Did you notice that Apple’s iPad finally went on sale last week?  If not, you might consider downloading the Crawl-Out-From-Under-That-Rock app.  Anyway, here’s my little review of the iPad and its place in the whole e-reading universe. First off, it’s been pointed out to me that you can do things with the iPad other than [...]

Alice I Have Been

Melanie Benjamin Hardcover, $25 Delacorte Press January 2010 368 pages This is really a lovely and original novel, a fictional retrospective based upon the real life of Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the actual little girl who inspired Alice In Wonderland.  Like all children, even Alice had to grow up.  This book is the result of the [...]

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

E. L. Konigsburg Paperback, $9.99 Atheneum 1964 176 pages This is another one of those classic kids’ books that I somehow managed to miss in elementary school.  Everyone speaks very sentimentally about it, so when I chanced upon it at the library I decided to give it a whirl.  The biggest selling point for me [...]

The Hunger Games

Suzanne Collins Hardcover, $17.99 Scholastic September 2008 384 pages Oh.  My.  God.  Everyone had been telling me to read this book forever, which I hate.  (It kept me off Harry Potter for years, and I think we can now all admit that I was wrong about that one.)  So after Piper told me how great [...]

An Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore Paperback, $23.95 St. Martin’s Press June 2006 328 pages I’m going to try something a little different for this review.  This book is so important, so full of potential to affect real change, that nothing I say in response can possibly compare.  Therefore, I will let the book speak for itself: “In Antarctica, [...]