We Ride Upon Sticks

You know that feeling when you see a book and the cover just calls to you, and then you read the description and you just know it’s a book you have to read? Maybe? Well, that’s what happened here for me. And that’s really all the intro I have. We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan…

Emma

Although I was one of those awesome nerds in high school that loved Jane Austen and truly read all the books by her we were assigned, I am not sure that I have actually picked up an original from her since then. I have both read and watched many adaptations and retellings (some repeatedly…2005 Pride…

The Mountains Sing

As soon as I heard about this one, I added it to my TBR: an intergenerational saga of a family living through the incredibly turbulent recent history of Vietnam, told by an author inspired by her own family’s stories. Plus, that cover is just straight up gorgeous. The library waitlist was long (which is great…

Krik? Krak!

I’ve been meaning to read Danticat for years and @bookofcinz’s encouragement to just hurry up and do it for her #readcaribbean celebration this year was just the push I needed. I decided to go with this one because it’s the title I had heard of most frequently. Also, I have to be honest, I was…

Dominicana

I have wanted to read this for so long! There’re so many books I say that about, but this is one I knew right away I wanted to read. I think the only Dominican author I’ve read is Julia Alvarez (In the Time of the Butterflies) and while I thought it was amazing, it was…

The Nickel Boys

Knowing what this book was about, I was super nervous about reading it. I was afraid of the intensity of the content. But I still had it tentatively on my TBR, because I had read and really appreciated Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad when I read it a few years ago. (In fact, I event went…

My Plain Jane

I read the first of the novels by “The Lady Janies,” My Lady Jane, a few years ago on a snow day. It was a “retelling” of Lady Jane Grey, the queen for nine days of famous British historic lore, full of magic and shape-shifting and humor gave this tragic story a fun twist and…

Wolf Hall

This book has sat on my shelf, unread, for years. It’s curious, because it’s so lauded a historical fiction of a time period that I love reading about, so I can’t figure out why I hadn’t picked it up before. But the recent publication (and Women’s Prize short-listing) of the final book in the trilogy,…

Beloved

I am 31 years old, an avid reader, was the nerdy kid in English class who always actually read the books assigned, and yet…this is the first of Toni Morrison’s works that I’ve ever read. I’m disappointed in both myself and all the school systems I went through. But it’s never too late to correct…

The Lost Queen

I have always, always, always been obsessed with the legend of King Arthur. I have read so many retellings of the story. (Mostly fictional – I love it, but I’m not a scholar. Haha.) But seriously, I read T.H. White’s The Once and Future King so many times growing up that the spine broke and…