Rebecca Reads

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf is an historical essay, so as I began reading, I wondered how relevant it was for me. After all, I don’t feel I’ve been discriminated against because of my gender and I like where I am with my life and the options I have before me. However, [...]

My son is only 26 months old, but he’s beginning to learn at the speed of light (from my perspective). After twenty minutes of a Sesame Street “two” episode, for example, he knows he has two hands, two eyes, two feet, and that there are two apples, two spoons, and two bowls on the table. [...]

I listened to Mr. Feynman’s memoir, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman, as I drove for the last few weeks. Although some aspects of the Nobel Prize winning physicist’s life were rather interesting, overall, I am surprised I stuck with his story for so long. It was not a favorite of mine.

I do not feel like I am a creative person, at least when it comes to creating “something” from bare materials. Although as a teenager I learned how to embroider and I even had been known to sew myself a skirt, today I find myself impatient with the slow pace of those tasks. I took [...]

Bhutto’s autobiography, Daughter of Destiny (published in 1988 as Daughter of the East), tells a completely unique story. Bhutto was the first woman prime minister of a Muslim country (Pakistan), and she first went through years of struggle, including years of solitary confinement, before she could be an example of democracy.
Much of her autobiography was [...]

Rose, Where Do You Get that Red? by Kenneth Koch is written for educators, and yet it is accessible to others. Reading it as a mother shows me that reading classic poetry to my young child can be inspiring in not just their own understandings of poetry but also in their own writing. There is [...]

I can finally recommend something related to the Three Cups of Tea story.
Remember how I hated listening to the audiobook of Three Cups of Tea, which felt like a journalistic report despite being called a memoir? My mother loved Three Cups of Tea and thought it was wonderful, so I enlisted her help in writing [...]

Betty Smith expertly recreates the 1912 Brooklyn of 11-year-old Francie Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Through Betty Smith’s words, I learned of the awfulness of enduring agonizing hunger and dire poverty in the tenements of Brooklyn in a volatile time.
But Francie’s poverty is only part of Francie’s story. As Francie grows from age [...]

I disliked Three Cups of Tea; my mother loved it. Read our counterpoints.

In the best-seller Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ, Daniel Goleman explores emotions and the cause of emotions from the perspective of physiology, psychology, and human and child development. While Emotional Intelligence helped me reconsider my default reactions and emotions in various situations, I can’t really say I enjoyed listening to this [...]