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Monthly Archives: February 2021
This Is Not Your Typical Coming-of-Age Book
In exploring This Is Not the Jess Show by Anna Carey, I’m going to do something I normally don’t do. I’m going to start with a very brief summary. I’m playing with the structure of the blog a bit, and I really think this post lends itself to lists. So you’ll see a lot of them this week.
Summary:
It’s 1998, and Jess is a junior in high school. She’s dealing with normal high school things:
- A crush on her best friend, Tyler
- An unwanted date to the Spring Formal
- Trying to get out of the house even though she’s grounded
Posted in Coming of Age
Tagged as: Coming of Age, Identity, The is not the Jess Show, YA Lit, YA Literature, young adult lit, young adult literature
A slice of Manderly
There’s nothing I enjoy more on a long weekend than digging into a book. So when Saturday morning dawned, I wandered into the family room with a copy of Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier, grabbed my favorite wool throw, and cuddled up on the sofa to read.
As I read the famous first sentence, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” I found I was in a place both familiar and completely foreign. I had never read Rebecca, but it had been on my tbr for a long, long time. And one can’t study literature without knowing that first line. It’s as known as the opening lines to Pride and Prejudice or A Tale of Two Cities. And so my journey to Manderly began.
Posted in Slice of Life
Because Girls Aren’t Funny
I get a lot of book suggestions from podcasts. If a book comes up more than once on a podcast or is mentioned on a few different podcasts, it immediately becomes something I check out (if it sounds like a book for me).
So when listening to Novel Pairings and Sara mentioned the book Unscripted by Nicole Kronzer at least twice, I knew I needed to get this book for my classroom library. Unscripted intrigued me because it was about improv–a topic I know I have no books about in my class library. The front cover boldly states, “Some jokes cross the line.” I knew going in this was going to be about a girl heading into a male-dominated world. I didn’t quite expect the toxic masculinity to cross into abuse. I definitely could have used those trigger warnings before I started reading the book.
Posted in Coming of Age, Empathy
Tagged as: relationships, toxic masculinity, Unscripted, YA, YA Lit, young adult lit, young adult literature
Chipping Away–A reading slice of life
My home office is on the second floor of my house. There are two unused bedrooms and a full bath upstairs. In a word, it is the perfect retreat for work and writing. It’s not a great space for reading, but it does hold many of my books.
The north wall of the office contains four ladder style bookshelves–two sets next to the closet door, two sets next to the window, and a sofa table/bookshelf combo in the middle. The bookshelves are overflowing with books. And definitely don’t contain all of the books I have–not even close.
Posted in Slice of Life
Tagged as: reading slice, reading slice of life, Slice, Slice of Life, tbr, YA
Ben vs. Charlie
In my last post, I talked about Spy School, and I’m still wondering why there’s a definite gender slant towards this series. And that has led me to another question, what about Stuart Gibbs’ other books?
Last year, Stuart Gibs published Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation. I read and LOVED this book, and I’m really excited that the next Charlie Thorne book is coming out in March. Charlie is smart. She’s strong. She’s bold. She’s fierce. She’s not letting anyone push her around. She’s a girl who is not just smart, smart, but she’s also math smart. In a word, this is Spy School if Ben were a girl.
Posted in Guys Read
Tagged as: Charlie Thorne, Female Protagonists, Spy School, YA, YA Lit, young adult lit, young adult literature