Archive for the ‘nonfiction’ Category
Wisdom of Our Fathers
This book was so wonderful to read that I was finally inspired to write another review for this blog. It is filled, cover to cover, with wonderful stories that people sent in about their fathers. Don’t worry, they are not all sappy and overwrought; I laughed over more than made me cry. It definitely made [...]
October 17, 2008
Posted in: nonfiction 
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Chinese Cinderella
Fabulous book. Enough said. Yeah, like I could ever leave a book review at that. So, let me jabber on about it for a bit. I have a tendency to feel a bit ho-hum about memoirs. They are generally very interesting, but I usually can’t get over the poor writing. I feel like I’ve gotten [...]
January 23, 2008
Posted in: memoir, nonfiction No Comments
Reluctant Saint: The Life of Francis of Assisi
What a wonderfully well written and well researched biography! Not only has Donald Spoto sifted through fact and fiction to get at the heart of this 13th Century saint, he includes just enough background information about society, politics, and church history to give context to Francis’s choices and actions. Best of all Spoto does all [...]
December 14, 2007
Posted in: biography, nonfiction No Comments
The Freedom Writers Diary
Okay, forget the movie and go out and buy the book. I picked up this book years ago when it first came out. I was a new teacher at my first conference. Erin Gruwell was the keynote speaker before the technical aspect of the conference kicked in. She was certainly inspiring, but I never got [...]
September 18, 2007
Posted in: diary, nonfiction One Comment
Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution
I couldn’t put this one down. Like most autobiographies, the prose lacks sophistication, but you hardly notice that here–the story itself is just too powerful, so far outside of our own experiences. Here are a few examples, just to peak your interest: “I worried about An Yi’s mother, too. Teacher Wei’s situation was very bad. [...]
July 25, 2007
Posted in: memoir, nonfiction No Comments
Heavy Words Lightly Thrown
I wasn’t as thrilled with this one as I expected to be. I supposed I expected it to be a bit more definitive as to the true inspiration behind each nursery rhyme, or at least funny. Instead, Roberts goal tends more towards giving several different possible inspirations, or attributed inspirations, without really getting to a [...]
July 20, 2007
Posted in: literary criticism, nonfiction No Comments
Night by Elie Wiesel
The New York Times calls it “a slim volume of terrifying power” and I have to agree. I couldn’t stand to leave a bookmark in it for more than two days–I just had to get it over with. At the same time I felt a need to grieve, like I should read it once a [...]
July 1, 2007
Posted in: history, memoir, nonfiction 2 Comments
Farewell to Manzanar
I’ve been meaning to read this book for ages, especially since it fits in so well with a collaborative aproach to teaching American Literature and U.S. History. This year, I finally just decided to teach it, keeping a chapter or two ahead of my students. The style of the book is fairly straitforward, which always [...]
May 10, 2007
Posted in: nonfiction No Comments
