This is the Award Winner. The Dorothy Canfield Fisher award is a Vermont state award that the books are picked by adults (though I am not always sure why they were the pickers as one was a professor at my college who had no English or child background that I knew of) and then voted on by the kids. Of course, the year I did this award the “cool kids” pick won. But that is the perfect lead in to this book. It is 1943. […]
My hands itched to knit as my feet itched to travel
In May 2016, a friend I met through Ravelry brought my attention to a Kickstarter for a book her friend Karie Westermann was writing called This Thing of Paper, with knitting designs inspired by Johannes Gutenberg and the printing press. Even with a planned publication date of April 2017, I knew I wanted this book. It’s a good thing I was patient because I didn’t receive it until December. Westermann divided the book into three sections, as she had layed out in her Kickstarter proposal. […]
The Book Thief: Just as good the second time around
This was a reread, so I’m going to share both my initial thoughts, and my input after another, and more recent, look. My first review (2011): I wish I could give this book 10 stars. I had actually started this book once before and couldn’t get into it for some reason. I am SO glad to have given it another chance because this definitely is now on my list of favorite books of all time. I’ve learned about the Holocaust and read literature by survivors […]
Sid is a Jerk
As a person of mixed race (White mother, Black father) who loves the blues, I thought that a book like Half-Blood Blues (featuring several mixed race characters and blues) would be right up my alley. It was not. In fact, it took me nearly a week to read the first 50 pages and I was bored to death almost the whole time. On page 54 things finally (finally!) got interesting from a story standpoint, but I still had to contend with the writing, which never […]
Never get involved in a land war in Asia
I will admit, I thought I might be out-smarting these books, with the formula all figured out, but this one, the third in the “Temeraire” series, totally took me on a ride. Delightful, surprising, and exciting. Well played, Novik. Black Powder War bothers with barely any passage of time after Throne of Jade. The company is still in China, preparing for travel back to England, when natural disaster and politics coincide and intervene, causing Laurence and Temeraire to take their scrappy crew of aviators overland […]
Please don’t make me defend a Nazi sympathizer
In Dietrich & Riefenstahl, Karin Wieland compares the lives of two famous German movie personalities. On the surface, Marlin Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl seem very similar. Born a year apart, both harbored big dreams. Both defied their parents, studied dance and worked as actors. Both took lovers and refused to live their lives the way others demanded. But when Hitler ascended to power, the two women reacted very differently. Dietrich became an American citizen and entertained Allied troops during the war, and Riefenstahl supported Hitler, […]
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