Rebecca Reads

My sister and I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows at the same time this summer. We both enjoyed it, although we both found some aspects of it a bit disappointing. We both answered the same questions for this review. It turns out we thought [...]

Remember how just the other day I said I give books more of the benefit of the doubt lately?
The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean is a fine example of that. A year ago, I may have dismissed it entirely because it seems so superficial to me. (Actually, I probably would have dismissed it as [...]

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood creates a powerful futuristic dystopia in which a quasi-religious political organization has taken control of the United States, creating a men-centered universe determine to procreate, even if via “handmaids.”
In the attitude of George Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Lois Lowry’s The Giver, and I’m sure many others, Atwood’s [...]

I am not very familiar with the political situation before, during, and after World War II. But after reading the best speeches of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, I am impressed that his powerful, confident speeches were a deciding factor in the perseverance of the United Kingdom through the trying times of World War II. [...]

In The Complete Maus, Art Spiegelman tells not just his mother’s and father’s story but the story of all Jews in World War II Poland. The Complete Maus is the story of the Holocaust.
In a break-through way, he tells this story in the form of a graphic novel. I was amazed not just with how [...]