Classics, Nonfiction, and Children's Literature
We Two: Victoria and Albert, Rulers, Partners, and Rivals by Gillian Gill is a non-fiction biography of the monarch and her husband. I read it to get a sense of what made the Victorian Era a distinct era. I found the biography quite fascinating, even if the relationship between Queen Victoria and her husband Prince
Geographically, anthropologically, archaeologically, historically, politically, and above all religiously, the city of Jerusalem is a fascinating city. In Jerusalem: The Eternal City, David Galbraith, D. Kelly Ogden, and Andrew Skinner provide an overview of the city, focusing on the many different aspects of Jerusalem’s past, its present, and the potential for the future, specifically from
I don’t normally read memoirs, but I’m finding that I really love to read political or journalistic memoirs when they are in graphic novel form. They are a fast read, and I learn so much about a different country’s political situation in a new perspective. I love that I can see the country via a
I was once on this site accused of being a book banner because I disliked a book and I was not nice in the comments on this site. When I started a discussion post about it last year, you were all quick to give your opinions on what it means to be a book
Because I’ve recently enjoyed reading poetry and because it’s poetry month, for my project book this month, I sought insights about poetry. How to Read a Poem (And Fall in Love with Poetry) by Edward Hirsch had been a national bestseller, and I loved the idea of being “tutored” in reading poetry. I can always
I wanted to read more about genetics, so I picked up The X in Sex: How the X Chromosome Controls Our Lives by David Bainbridge (Harvard University Press, 2003), which focuses on the genetics of the sex chromosomes. It was a very engaging and easy to understand book, and it has left me even more interested in
As a devoted reader of original classics, I’m not keen on the idea of “rewriting” them or retelling them. Why wouldn’t I read the original? Nonetheless, I decided to give Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species: A Graphic Adaptation by Michael Keller and illustrated by Nicole Rager Fuller (Rodale Books, 2009) a try, and I
Back in February, I chose James Watson’s DNA as a science project book. At more than 400 pages, it intimidated me, because I’m not normally a reader of science books. I was hoping it was a good balance of technical and “pop” science. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the best book on the subject, and much of
When my son was a young infant in the middle of 2008, and I purchased Professor Seth Lerer’s Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History and spent months reading and rereading chapters, hoping to gain a better understanding of where children’s literature fits in the world history. Although I’ve since finished the book, I still plan on
In his narrative of life in slavery and what led him to escape, Frederick Douglass captured the chief dilemmas that slaves dealt with, including slavery of the mind. Douglass’s slavery in Baltimore and surrounding areas was horrendous, and yet it was, as he admitted, quite tame compared to those experiences that slaves on plantations in
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,
I guess my good streak of wonderful reads had to end. I did not love reading Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples, although I don’t know whose fault that is: Churchill’s or the abridger’s. I do know I’m glad I didn’t attempt the 2000+ page version; 470 pages of Churchill’s assessment of military strategies and
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