April was busy, with family visits at the beginning and end of the month. We’re also in the last quarter of the school year, and the kids are preparing to take year-end exams, while I’m trying to line up a teaching position for next school year. I got to see some of my former colleagues…
I loved this novel about the bonds of family and found family. It’s about a 19-year-old Vietnamese-American, Hai, who tries to jump off a bridge but is stopped by an elderly Lithuanian woman, Grazina. She needs someone to take care of her and he needs a place to stay and something to do. Hai is…
Brooks is one of my favorite authors, and this will certainly be one of my top reads of the year. It’s a memoir about love and grief, written in Brooks’ insightful prose. Though it’s very different from her novels, I enjoyed it just as much. On Memorial Day, 2019, Brooks received a call in her…
I get asked this question a lot: are your kids reading books in English class? This seems to be in response to recent articles about how kids are going to college unprepared to read entire books. While it’s true that we also teach shorter works, like news articles, essays, and poems, my students are reading…
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is to identify ten books with titles that describe us (topic submitted by Susan at blogginboutbooks.com). I love this idea and had fun putting this together. In the end, I tried to cover a variety of aspects of my life. I’ve ordered these titles…
This was a fascinating memoir and history of the paths some Polish Jews traveled to escape the Nazis during the Holocaust. In this book, Gerson researches her father’s family, as well as the father of her partner Talia. When she and Talia first met, they discovered not only a strong attraction but a shared family…
I loved this memoir by Angela Buchdahl, who is a Korean-American rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in the country. She came to the U.S. as a young girl with her Korean mother and Jewish American father. She was raised Jewish but often encountered people saying she couldn’t be Jewish, because of her race…
March was a busy month, which was nice after a long winter. I volunteered with my library’s used book sale, went to the home opener of our NWSL soccer team, went to two teacher job fairs, and celebrated Mr. CG’s birthday with friends. Spring is in full bloom, and I couldn’t be happier about the…
This was my first book by Marie Benedict, and I think anyone who’s interested in the history of ancient Egypt will enjoy this book. I appreciated Benedict’s attention to detail, and I also liked the way she paralleled the archaeology of the 1920s with ancient historical and religious practices of Egypt. Benedict’s story is about…
I love Greek mythology, and I’m a big fan of Felicia Day, so this was a no-brainer for me. Day has written a graphic novel telling the story of a little-known character in Greek mythology. Philonoe is the sister of Helen, Clytemnestra, and Timandra. In Day’s retelling, she’s born with a large birthmark on her…
I very rarely read biographies, preferring to learn about people through their own words. I wondered why Blume didn’t write her own story, but I learned that she prefers not to write nonfiction, and probably didn’t want to spend her limited writing time on a book about herself. I ended up learning a lot about…
In a lot of ways, this is the novel about Hawaii I’ve been looking for. It’s steeped in the history and culture of Native Hawaiians, but also a compelling generational family saga. The Naupaka family lives in Hilo, which is on the island of Hawai’i (also known as “The Big Island”). Laka, once Hilo’s celebrated…
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