A Bonus Post: After you finish reading my review, I suggest heading over to Book Riot where I wrote about how this book led me down the bibliography rabbit hole and some of the other books about women and politics that I’m hoping to read.
Review: Rebecca Traister’s goal in Big Girls Don’t Cry is a big one — to tell the story of women and the 2008 presidential election, a story of the country and its culture and how the public figures in this race showed how far the country has come and how much further there still is to go when it comes to addressing sex and race in our public discourse.
Book Review
One Sentence Summary: A devout clerk for a Dutch trading company goes to find his fortune in Japan so he can marry his wealthy fiancee, but has his plans thrown off course after a random meeting with young midwife-in-training.
One Sentence Review: The first part of this book was terribly boring, but things picked up about 175 pages in.
Earlier this summer, my sister Jenny and I decided to read and review The Help by Kathryn Stockett. We both read the book over our 4th of July vacation, and had a race to see who would finish first. We have a long-standing competition about reading speed that dates back all the way to the early Harry Potter books. It’s vicious.
In this race, Jenny beat me out… but just barely. She also very responsibly answered all of the questions we came up with for our review in a timely manner… while I procrastinated and was lazy! However, finally, I bring you the latest edition of The Sisterhood of the Summer Book Reviews.
It was Sunday morning. Boyfriend was still on the road, driving back from a camping trip in California. I had almost an entire free day ahead of me. Any guesses what I decided to do?
Read, of course.
I’d been plodding along in George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones for what felt like forever. Because I had the book on my Nook, I usually “saved” reading it for when I was at the gym or otherwise not able to easily read print books. I hadn’t been to the gym in the couple weeks leading up to our move, and still hadn’t signed up for a new gym membership. Hence, A Game of Thrones sat, unread, for weeks.
Two Sentence Summary: In 1981 computers were new, exciting, and mysterious. The Soul of a New Machine is an inside look at one company’s attempt to bring a new microcomputer to the market.
One Sentence Review: While some of the explanations of computer development and software coding went over my head, The Soul of a New Machine is a curious look back at a time when computers weren’t ubiquitous.
I grabbed Howl’s Moving Castle during one of my first visits to my new local library while I was testing out the depth of their shared catalog. I love Diana Wynne Jones, so checking another book off her extensive backlist felt like a victory.
Sophie Hatter is the oldest of three sisters, and she’s convinced that, as the oldest sister, she’ll never do anything great because — as fairy tales go — the oldest sister is never the hero. Sophie has resigned herself to the fact that she’ll have an ordinary life… until she gets turned into an old woman by the Witch of the Waste. And in a tricky addendum, Sophie cannot tell anyone about the curse. Mean! Sophie sets off to meet the great and terrifying wizard Howl — who, as the title suggest, lives in a moving castle — to see if she can find a way to be changed back.
One Sentence Summary: A collection of essays from children who attended the same school as Anne Frank, the 1st Montessori School in Amsterdam.
One Sentence Review: As a stand-alone book, Storming the Tulips feels incomplete; in conjunction with other WWII stories, the essays offer a new perspective.
one of those accidents that’s not really really an accident, the casting of “good” Audrey in the part of “not-so-good” call girl Holly Golightly rerouted the course of women in the movies, giving voice to what was then a still-unspoken shift in the 1950s gender plan.”
One Sentence Review: Although I liked the part of the book about how the movie impacted culture more than the part about the making of the movie, on the whole Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. is a fun look at the making of an icon and how that icon changed culture.
One Sentence Summary: Tom Violet’s life hasn’t quite lived up to his dreams, but that could all change if he can get his act together.
Two Sentence Review: This book is awesome. Read it.
Book Review: Charlie Asher’s life is pretty darn normal. But after his wife dies during childbirth, leaving him a single dad to his daughter Sophie, Charlie’s life takes a permanent turn towards the weird. All of a sudden, he starts seeing everyday objects glowing red, strange bird-women screeching a him from the sewers, and mysterious names and numbers showing up in his planner. Charlie has a new job: working for Death.
I grabbed this book on a whim from the library because Boyfriend and I wanted an audio book for a roadtrip earlier this summer. Boyfriend likes books that are a little twisted, so I figured this might fit the bill. I think we were both pleasantly surprised at how awesome the book turned out to be, keeping us laughing almost the entire trip.
