- May 14
Six Great Historical Fiction Stories about the Civil War
The Civil War Books This painful, terrible time in our nation's history makes for some poignant, brutal, often beautiful storytelling....
- May 13
Review of The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates took his time building the story, and I felt as though he deliberately kept us in a plodding pace to emphasize the unwavering,...
- May 10
Three Books I'm Reading Now, 5/10/21 Edition
The Books I'm Reading Now I'm listening to The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates's novel about slavery, with magical realism that offers a...
- Apr 2
March Wrap-Up: My Favorite Reads of the Month
Ta-da! My very favorite books from March! Here are the books I most loved reading during the past month: a beautiful story of heartbreak...
- Mar 9
Review of The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans
There is so much to unpack here; Evans's story themes are often haunting, always powerful, and wonderfully nuanced. She thought the...
- Feb 16
Review of A Burning by Megha Majumdar
There's enough injustice and crooked dealing in this captivating book to fully enrage a reader, yet the tone of Majumdar's debut title...
- Feb 9
Three Books I'm Reading Now, 2/9/21 Edition
01 Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton Eli Bell is a young man in a tough spot. His father's gone, his mother's in jail, and his best...
- Jan 26
Review of Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Evaristo offers a set of twelve interconnected stories about Black women in contemporary Britain and their friendships, loves, struggles,...
- Jan 22
Six Great Books about the Immigrant Experience
01 Pachinko by Min Jin Lee In the early 1900s, a teenager falls for a silver-tongued stranger on the coast of Korea. But when the...
- Jan 19
Review of Before She Disappeared by Lisa Gardner
Gardner's brand-new character-driven mystery offers an imperfect, unassuming heroine obsessed with solving the cold cases of missing...
- Jan 18
Three Books I'm Reading Now, 1/18/21 Edition
01 Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo Evaristo won the Booker Prize in 2019 for this novel, which I'm listening to as an audiobook...
- Jan 5
Review of Here For It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas
Here For It is refreshing and playful yet thoughtful. I loved spending time with the uproariously funny Thomas. In Here for It: Or, How...
- Dec 19, 2020
Six Historical Fiction Books I Loved in the Past Year
01 The Huntress by Kate Quinn I'm in for World War II-set books with tough, brave female protagonists, and I loved this book. Nina...
- Dec 15, 2020
Review of I'm Still Here by Austin Channing Brown
Brown shares moments of reckoning, everyday evidence of yawning racial divides, and her insistent joy in embracing her black identity and...
- Dec 14, 2020
Three Books I'm Reading Now, 12/14/20 Edition
01 Notes on a Silencing: A Memoir by Lacy Crawford Crawford thought the trauma of her assault at St. Paul's boarding school decades...
- Nov 3, 2020
Three Books I'm Reading Now, 11/3/20 Edition
01 To Sleep in a Sea of Stars I'd like to mention up front that To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is 878 pages, so if you never hear from me...
- Sep 4, 2020
Review of Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America by Jennifer Harvey
Harvey emphasizes the urgency of the need for change and offers age-appropriate examples to help build young advocates equipped to work...
- Jul 16, 2020
Review of The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
In The Vanishing Half, Bennett explores the complicated implications of perception as reality when it comes to race.
- Jul 8, 2020
Review of So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
Oluo offers specific steps we can take toward "talk[ing] our way to understanding...and using that understanding to act."
- Jun 27, 2020
Review of White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
"A stirring call to conscience and consciousness in white brothers and sisters."
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