Great Reads – Positively Beautiful by Wendy Mills

It has been a very long time since a book has sent me this kind of emotional journey. Sure, I laugh out loud at the antics of Stephanie Plum and I get misty eyed when hearts get broken during a good read, but Wendy Mills took me way beyond. I was actually sobbing at one point. The dust jacket says,

“Summoning courage she never knew she had. Erin embarks on a journey from the depths of frustration and despair to the heights of freedom and acceptance in a thought-provoking story about life, death, and difficult choices along the way.”

The reader must also summon some courage. This story is, in a word, ok, two words -- gut wrenching. Positively Beautiful carefully crafts Erin's story and where it could easily become maudlin, Erin and her mother dig deep and find strength in the their love for one another. It's lovely and heartbreaking. Make sure you have you the tissue nearby.

Great Reads - Inherit Midnight by Kate Kae Myers

This may be my absolute favorite of my winter reads, but I certainly didn’t think that at the beginning of this adventure, and I do mean adventure. Above all, Inherit Midnight is an adventure story. The story follows 17-year old Avery, the black sheep of an obscenely wealthy family who was raised by her grandmother, the family matriarch. Avery's grandmother decides that instead leaving her heirs to squabble over her will, she’s going to give it all away before she goes. She creates a worldwide scavenger hunt through the family’s history. The competition includes three cousins that have never had much use for Avery, and vice versa; her half-brother, whom she doesn’t really know; and two uncles, who will stop at nothing including sabotaging their own children. After each event, an heir is eliminated. Last heir standing gets it all. One word of caution – don’t give up on this story. I thought it started rather slowly and almost walked away not once, but twice. Sticking around was definitely worth it.

I'm Reading - Renée Watson's This Side of Home

This Side of Home is a story of growth and change. Nikki and Maya are identical twins each of which has always functioned as one-half of a whole unit. They are now high school seniors. Looking forward to moving away from home and going to college, together. But a lot can change in a year. As the sisters’ paths diverge, they learn that they are whole individuals and that their familial bond is not lessened by that fact. Just the opposite, Watson has set the story in neighborhood undergoing gentrification, so their family relationships are the most stable thing about the story. Everything else is shifting around them, their friends, their community, their futures.  

I’m Reading - Cindy L. Rodriquez's When Reason Breaks

Two girls—one seemingly with everything going for her; the other, not—both find solace and meaning in the poems of Emily Dickinson. One point of commonality for them is the English teacher that introduces them to the poet. There are others that the reader will discover as the story unfolds. Rodriquez seamlessly weaves through the school year telling their parallel stories until they become one in the surprising conclusion. You’ve heard the old saying, never judge a book by its cover, neither girl is what they seem to be and while Rodriquez hints at the plot twist that leads to the story’s conclusion, you still don’t see it coming. I was as surprised as the English teacher.

The Winter of YA Literature

Winter 2014 was a brutal one here in Chicago and so I retreated to the land of “beach books.” Just about everything I read that winter took place on the beach and in the summer. Winter 2015, I escaped into the world of YA books.

I’d been turning my nose up at the genre thinking of the books that were available to me at that age and inwardly groaning. While talking to my mother on the phone one night, I mentioned that I felt like I had gone straight from Winnie-the-Pooh to and John Steinbeck. At which point she informed me that (1) it was Winnie-the-Pooh to Jack London and (2) I was only in the second grade. Her point being that today’s world of YA didn’t exist when I was a middle grade/YA reader. So I decided to give them a shot. And did I find some winners!

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing of some of my favorites.

Can a national chain really meet the needs of an individual community?

This is a question that I think about more and more as I watch the unfolding "bookstore wars." I always resisted the labeling of Border's as the big, bad chain store. Nobody ever seems to mention that they started out as an independent bookseller. As a point of fact, they were my independent bookseller. I spent a lot of time (and money) in their State Street storefront during my years in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Right up until the bitter end, going into a Border's was a little bit like going home.

So were they a big, bad chain store? Maybe. Or maybe not, as they no more.

I'm Reading - Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Reading Lolita in Tehran is one of those books that whenever I see it I think, "Wow, I bet that's really interesting. I'm going to read that one of these days." Well, these days are here. And it is interesting, but even more impactful than that, I'm finding it more than a little bit scary. It's an insider's look at the evolution of a culture once known for the progressive roles that women played to their subjugation to a totalitarian regime.

So how does half the population lose their civil rights...their humanity...themselves? Slowly, innocently. "Mr. Bahri could not understand why we were making such a fuss over a piece of cloth,"¹ in reference to one man's bafflement over Prof. Nafisi's refusal to wear a veil while teaching. Not long before she was expelled from the university, Nafisi reflects, "for a few months I had seen it coming, but I think it was that day, after I left Mr. Bahri and his friend, that it first hit me how irrelevant I had become."² Nafisi goes on the relate that "Because of women's overwhelming objection to the laws, the government enforced the new rule first in the workplaces and later in shops, which were forbidden from transacting with unveiled women."³

"The problem for me was that I had lost all concept of terms such as home, service and country."⁴ Being a very active member of the Daughters of the American Revolution whose motto is "God, Home and Country," this is the sentence that made me afraid, for me, my fellow Daughters and for my country. I cannot conceive of losing the meaning of these words.

Could it happen here? Have you been to the airport lately? How many times have you been searched, felt violated, and been told "well if you have nothing to hide, what's the big deal?" Are you afraid yet? ... You should be. I no longer fly. My excuse is that I'm under doctor's orders. The reality is that I find airport operations offensive, stressful, even degrading. So why do I use an excuse? I've found that it upsets people when I tell them I won't condone the behavior of those who infringe on my constitutional rights. It's not a little thing and it's not ok. Am I caving to the pressure? By hiding behind medical advice, have I now become a part of the problem? Will we be able to show the same courage to stand for what is right that our forefathers did during the American Revolution?


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¹Nafisi, Azar, Readling Lolita in Tehran, (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 164.
²Ibid, p. 165.
³Ibid, p. 167.
⁴Ibid, p. 169.