Books I Read and Other Assorted Oddities

 This is another book I plan on using next year in AP language. In Cold Blood  by Truman Capote is the story of the Clutter murders in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959. Perpetrated by two men who had never met the family, Capote tracks them in the days that lead up to the murders and the months that follow. He follows investigators, family members, and many connected with the case to its ultimate end - the hanging of the two murderers. I loved this book. While this book is completely true, it reads like a mystery novel. Capote masterfully unravels the mystery and carefully reveals the secrets of the case. It was fascinating to read and is amazingly well-written. I feel like my only criticism is that it was a little unclear at first that it was non-fiction. I would have loved something at the end that described how Capote got the information he got. Did he follow the case from the start, or did he do his extensive research afterwards? Regardless, this is a beautifully written book and i...

 This was another book club choice, and as I'd read An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir already, I was eager to dive into this one. I'd heard it's drastically different than An Ember in the Ashes  and isn't even in the same genre, so I was curious to read it. All My Rage  by Sabaa Tahir follows the story of Salahudin Malik. Salahudin grew up in Juniper, California with his mother who is almost his whole world, and his father who cannot even stop drinking enough to ensure that his mother gets to dialysis. The Maliks are Pakistani, and own the Clouds' Rest Inn Motel in Juniper. The novel also follows Noor Riaz, also Pakistani, who lives with her uncle and works in his liquor store. Chachu saved Noor from the wreckage of her earthquake-destroyed village when she was six and brought her to the United States. He gave up everything to take her in, and put his entire life on pause to raise her, a fact that he is not afraid to remind Noor about. Noor and Salahudin have bee...

 As I prepare to teach AP language next year, I will probably be reading a lot more nonfiction in the coming months. This book is one of the ones that I'll be using at least portions of in my curriculum for next year. An American Childhood  by Annie Dillard follows her experiences of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s. Through a series of vignettes, Dillard explores her childhood memories discussing everything from school, playing in the snow, to boys, and into her adolescence. The memoir focuses on her various interests as a child, maturing until she was 16. This book was a hard read for me. On one hand, it is beautifully written. Dillard has an incredible style and way of capturing the essence of how children see the world and dictate time. On the other hand, some of the stories are incredibly dull. It was also not easy to identify with some of her memories and experiences, and so difficult to buy in myself. By the end, and after some good struggle with the book, I did fi...

 I think this is the book that I was the most excited to read. I got it for Christmas, but I had to reread the first two in the series. It took far longer than I wanted because, as I said in my last post, I took a slight break to read The Hawthorne Legacy  in the middle. Cytonic  picks up right at the end of Starsight , and overlaps a little to refresh the cliffhanger that Starsight  ends on. Spensa jumps through the portal into the nowhere, but instead of going home, she makes a decision that plants her in the Belt, the very edge of the Nowhere that borders the Somewhere. She is told that she must find the Path of Elders and learn about the Cytonics and the Delvers. Upon arrival, she is immediately attacked by pirates who occupy this portion of the Belt, ever looking to increase their numbers. Unable to escape, she's captured, but before they can take her prisoner, a man rides through the jungle on a dinosaur-like creature to save Spensa. He introduces himself as Ch...

 I read this for a co-worker who chooses his own book list for Battle of the Books and uses it in his classroom each year. I'd already read and loved the first one, and he brought this to me one morning (ironically while I was desperately trying to finish Skyward  again so I could read Cytonic ) and asked me to read it and write questions for the book. I finished it in one day, and that should also tell you a lot about how I felt about this book. The Hawthorne Legacy  by Jennifer Lynn Barnes picks up with Avery Grambs' story almost immediately after the conclusion of The Inheritance Games . Avery is trying to find Toby Hawthorne, the son of the billionaire that left her his entire fortune. Along with the help of the Hawthorne grandsons, she must unravel the mystery of who she really is, how she's related to this family, and where Toby might have gone. I loved this book. Just like The Inheritance Games , there is a twist around every corner. Barnes is a master of giving yo...

 This was another book club read for our team book club. I don't read much non-fiction, and I didn't know who Trevor Noah was before reading the book, but overall, I did end up enjoying this memoir. Trevor Noah, a successful South African comedian, tells the story of how in Apartheid South Africa, his birth was against the law. Noah explores his race and how that influenced his identity as well as the race of his mother, his father, and the rest of his family. He explores his relationships with his mother in particular, as she was central to his life, and ended up being shot in the head (but surviving) by his step father. Overall, this was a light-hearted take on the deep racial divides that existed in South Africa during Apartheid. I didn't know much about Apartheid going into the book, and I'm glad I was able to understand more of what South Africa was like during that time. Despite the serious topics that Noah touches on, domestic violence, abuse, race, the book does...

 I read this one for Battle of the Books for one of my coworkers. When looking at the summary, this book jumped out to me. The premise sounded very interesting and exciting, and I was not disappointed. This is probably the best book I read last year. I LOVED it. The Inheritance Games  by Jennifer Lynn Barnes describes the story of Avery Grambs, a poor high schooler just trying to make ends meet. Avery's mom died years before the story begins, and since then, she's been living with her half sister, Libby. While she loves Libby and living with her isn't bad, it is when Libby's dating Drake, so Avery moves out. At school, Avery is pulled out of class and goes to the office to be confronted by the Hawthorne grandson, Grayson. Grayson informs Avery that she has been named in his grandfather's will, the will that outlines his multi-billion dollar empire. She travels to Texas for the reading of the will to find out that the old man disinherited his entire family and left h...