A gift from some generous twinsers.

I think Gina Frangello is really a fantastic writer and she’s someone I learned about in Chicago from other Chicago writers and eventually heard read/met back in the earlier days of me living here.

Her previous novel “My Sister’s Continent” (read in 2006 on Mariko’s and my flight to Australia–you can search this page for “Frangello” ) was really dark and nasty and sadomasochistic and brutal and really, really good.

These stories are, if anything, even darker. To the point where, WOW, some of them were really tough to get through. Some I liked despite their nastiness…some were actually too cruel for me, very hard to deal with.

I would highly recommend her novel–if you can handle the darkness–but I would tread lightly around these stories. And if you’re in a bad, depressed, emotional frame of mind, good heavens, people, do NOT read them then.

Yes, that’s right, I am reading education books even outside those assigned. I’m so studious. Heh.

Inside Mrs. B.’s Classroom, by Leslie Baldacci
How good (or not) teachers are = so only a TINY PART of the problem.

Death at an Early Age, by Jonathan Kozol
So extremely horrifying and sad. I cried through some of it and had to only skim some parts.

Letters to a Young Teacher, by Jonathan Kozol
Good and not quite as terrifying as, say, Death at an Early Age. Lots of great advice.

I Won’t Learn from You, by Herbert Kohl
Not as traumatic to read as the Kozol. Some pretty interesting stuff goes on. We* are so determined to keep racism alive in this country, that is a HUGE PART of what’s holding us back, particularly in education.

White Teacher, by Vivian Gussin Paley
She’s not as strong a writer as the others, but I can certainly foresee coming across similar problems in my future classroom and her advice about not pretending to be colorblind but rather to celebrate those differences is right on the money.

*That “We” most definitely does not include my personal actions but sadly as a citizen in a Democratic country, anything our government does is something we all do.

A prequel to her Mortal Instruments series.

I really enjoyed this while I was reading it. I loved all the steampunk-y stuff hangin’ about and the creepy sisters were eeeekkkkk sooooo creepy!

BUT this seems pretty derivative of her own previous work. Love triangle, same old same old. I was hoping for something that felt a bit more fresh.

I’m sure I’ll read the next one; hopefully these characters will find their own path by then.

Novels of the Rigante: Sword in the Storm, Midnight Falcon, Stormrider, and Ravenheart.

I don’t know how I managed to not have read any David Gemmell before this, considering how much time I have spent lurking in the sci fi/fantasy aisles of every bookstore I’ve ever been to, but I picked the first of these after reading about them on Beth Schaefermann’s site. She doesn’t keep archives posted but I can tell you that the post was titled “Total Bad-Ass Warrior Who Wields Really Big Swords” and does that not tell you everything you need to know? You read these books and you feel the potential in you, the warrior you would be did you live in a medieval-esque fantasy world where you were handed a sword and maybe a legend or two about your ancestors and a story about your soul name and then sent off into the world to make your way.

I didn’t like book 2 as much as the rest (the main character takes a while to value himself), and–just as a completely random FYI–books 3 and 4 are more cohesive in time than the others. I just could not stop reading these and guess what? There’s tons of other Gemmell books/series out there!! The Drenai Saga alone has 12 books in it.

There’s just so much glorious reading ahead.

You may remember, I’m a bit of a huge Larbalestier fan. I loved her Magic or Madness trilogy and then I superextracrazytimes loved her last book Liar.

“Liar” was different than what came before it, and this book is even moreso. Far more lighthearted and silly (not in a bad way). I wondered if it was intended for younger readers than the others (I was thinking of looking up all their Lexile levels and comparing, heh) or just a different mindset.

Enjoyable, but lighter.

This book is extremely overhyped, in my opinion. The writing is decent and I can see how it would work as a good teaching tool in a middle school classroom. But I was certainly led to expect more, not only from the back cover’s claim to be “the surival story with which all others are compared.” Yeah–no.

Here’s the thing: fictional stories of survival almost never compare to the much (MUCH) crazier true survival stories out there. Maybe I’ve read too many of those to be that impressed by this. Or maybe this isn’t the survival story by which to compare all others.

I expect the Twilight crowd will eat this right up. But I was pretty disappointed, not just in the writing overall but in how much it echos that mythology. If Edward was a regular boy, he’d be Xavier; if Bella were an angel (and she is treated as if she is, in many ways, in that series), she’d be Bethany. Their dynamic as a couple is strikingly similar. She’s incredibly passive, he’s bizarrely protective/obsessed. At least the third axle doesn’t turn out to be a Jacob copy.

Some of the wing imagery is pretty cool but that’s not enough to make it worthwhile.