Well, this one will break your heart.

I don't know how I somehow managed to make it 30 years without reading this. I can understand why my English teachers didn't touch this novel and we definitely covered great literature, but I'm glad so many English teachers do expose students to Steinbeck. Nothing quite captures the Great Depression quite like the near constant heartbreak of this short book.

I've never been a fan of punitive justice and this book only reinforces that. I won't go into it more for fear of spoilers, but this "justice" was one of the greatest miscarriages of justice that I've read in a book.

Lenny's internal conflict near the end of the book brought me to tears. He heard such horrible, degrading talk about himself all his life that it was all he could think of himself. If only people, even George, had said good things to Lenny about himself before this point. But the ending conversation between Lenny and George might be one of the most beautiful conversations in literature, mostly because of its sadness. We readers know what's coming. It's as grueling of a conversation as it was golden. I wanted that conversation to end just as much as I wanted it to never end.

Just beautiful.

There's so much to unpack in this book. I read the traditional English translation and I recommend it as very easy to follow and fitting with the time period in which the book was set and written.

This book is easily 100 pages longer than it had to be. If it were written in a more modern time characters would not speak for nearly so long at a time, talking around their point over and over again. I can see how this builds suspense and in a time when novels were the primary form of individual entertainment, I can see this style working much better than it does now. I'm not exactly a fan of it, but I don't hate it either.

I found the main character difficult to relate to or root for in any way. The only characters that I really found to be likable in any way were Sonya and Dunya.

I did enjoy the philosophizing about why we allow great people to get away with terrible things if it furthered their greatness. For a modern example, few people now seem to care that David Bowie slept with underage girls because he was a great musician and it was the 70s. While the book doesn't get into the idea of cancel culture, there is a modern tie in there that is worth discussing.

There are also many religious ideas throughout the story. I particularly enjoyed Lazarus as a character metaphor.

This wasn't my favorite four star book I've ever read. I probably enjoyed it more on the level of a three star book, but I want to acknowledge how well crafted the plot is and how all of the subplots build together.

I have some very mixed thoughts about this book.

TW: transphobia, refusal to acknowledge pronouns from intimate partners, biphobia and bi-erasure, sexual abuse

I'm not sure who this book is for. I'm not sure if it's for transgender teens to know they're not alone or if it's to educate cisgender people with little to know knowledge of the trans community. That's not a bad thing in itself. I'm just not sure if this book had a clear direction.

Beyond Magenta follows the stories of six transgender teenagers. These stories are mostly told in their own words although partners, parents, and the author will sometimes interject commentary. The author includes this commentary even when it is extremely problematic but then chooses not to comment on how it is problematic. One teenager has a partner who refuses to acknowledge their gender and uses the wrong pronouns, but it's okay because love, apparently. Another was sexually abused as a child and mentions that they enjoyed the abuse. This is the most problematic portion of the book. Nowhere does that person or the author mention that this was intense grooming and that there are a lot of issues tied up in that experience. The author also includes false information about chromosomal makeup that ignores the existence of the myriad of ways people can be intersex. This is eventually partially corrected by one of the six people featured in the book, but I don't see why this false dichotomy was ever presented. Another featured person is biphobic and each time they mention bisexuality they use the words "people who say" or "those who claim to be", implying that bisexuality is some between step for gay people who are just afraid to admit it or an identity some will claim for selfish reasons. These issues absolutely disgusted me.

This is an important book. I wish was groundbreaking to focus on transgender teenagers. I wish the author had included some content warning and discussion and that she had partnered with someone in the trans community to present these stories.

I wanted to love this book. I love that it focused on transgender teenagers and that nonbinary people were also represented. I wanted to love this entire book. But I absolutely didn't.

Full disclosure, I wasn't a fan of The Fault in Our Stars. I wasn't expecting to like this book very much.

I wound up loving it. The characters in this book feel real and authentic. Their arguments and obsessions and worries and quirks all feel real. Even though a couple of the characters use more elevated vocabulary than your typical teenager might use, they weren't as over the top as other John Green characters can tend to be. I was also glad to see that the main character wasn't a manic pixie dream girl, as some of Green's main characters can be described to be.

Turtles All the Way Down follows Aza, a high school junior with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and her best friend Daisy. The case of a missing local billionaire, and more specifically the hundred thousand dollar reward for information leading to his location, has intrigued Daisy and Aza agrees to help in attempting to earn that reward. After all, Aza knows the billionaire's son from when they were went to middle school summer camp. That's got to help somehow, right?

Aza's mental illness is significant in the story because it is significant in her life, but it doesn't drive the action of the story and I enjoyed that distinction. Many of us may not have OCD, but I am willing to bet many of us have invasive thoughts and it was helpful to see that they don't have to rule someone's life. The questions that came from this, such as "what am I if I'm not my thoughts" were provoking and I'll be thinking of them long after closing the cover on the book.

It was also wonderful to hear instances of topics covered in John Green's podcast, The Anthropocene Reviewed, in this book. It was that podcast that convinced me to give Green's books another chance. I'm glad I did.

Katherine Center will always be an automatic read for me. It's so nice to see protagonists in their 30s, and it's nice that this author often writes about teachers.

Happiness for Beginners follows Hellen on a journey that is supposed to reset her life and help her find happiness. Now one year after her divorce from her alcoholic ex-husband, Hellen is ready to find happiness for herself. She's tired of living alone, working and coming home, with only her crotchety rescued Dachshund for company. She's tired of being on edge all the time and feeling stuck. So, she signs up for a month-long, once in a lifetime wilderness hike. Has she ever hiked before? Nope. Is that going to stop her? Nope. She's always been a great student and a quick study, and why should this be any different?

When Hellen goes to drop her neurotic dog off to stay at her brother's house, she realizes her brother's best friend, Jake, is going on the same hiking trip and he needs a ride all the way out west, over a thousand miles. Jake is 10 years younger than Hellen and she has no patience for him. This is not the start to her life altering journey that she envisioned. But they can pretend to be strangers once the hike starts, so she agrees to take him along.

I loved going on this hike with Hellen and Jake and all the college students and wilderness-wannabes. I felt like I was going on the same journey with them, only about 40 pounds lighter since I didn't have to carry a pack of food and supplies and I could take a shower and sleep in a bed any time I wanted.

Center's books are always soft romances. They rarely go beyond kissing, so if you're looking for something clean, these are as squeaky as it gets. They're just cute, fun reads.

Indeh: A Story of the Apache Wars is a historical fiction graphic novel told from the perspective of Naiches and Goyahkla (Geronimo). Naiches is the son of the Chiricahua Apache chief, Cochise. The story focuses moreso on the emotional costs of the Apache wars than on a clear sequence of events.

Originally intended to be a movie, this graphic novel is full of the most beautiful panels of sequential art. I often felt like I was looking at the work of a portrait artist instead of reading a graphic novel. some parts of this novel would have worked out better on the big screen. There simply isn't page space to show the uniqueness of all the many characters and to make the action clear. As beautiful as this piece was, I was often confused exactly who was doing what, which made it harder to understand exactly what was happening.

I came into this story knowing nothing of the Apache Wars, which is embarrassing. I knew of Geronimo, that he was Apache, but that was about the extent of my knowledge. After reading this graphic novel, I confess that I still don't know much about the Apache wars. The story doesn't make the start of the wars incredibly clear, nor their length. But the story does make the emotional and spiritual cost of the wars absolutely clear. I do want to read further and learn more, but I'll confess it is a little frustrating to read a book only to realize I'm going to have to read another book to know more than what's included in the summary. Unfortunately this was simply too rushed for me to get much from it.

Isn't this cover gorgeous?

The Gilded Ones is a feminist fantasy with West African flavor and it is fierce. The writing flows effortlessly. The pacing works perfectly. The characters are well developed. Their fears and flaws and strengths fit their experiences. I loved them all.

The book begins with Deka's purity ceremony, a ritual that tests the blood of 16 year old girls to see if it is purely human, or if the girls have instead matured as alaki - demonic, golden blooded, near-immortal beings that must be slaughtered according to the death mandate.

On the day of her ceremony, Deathshrieks attack Deka's village, and in desperation she screams at them to stop attacking those she loves.

They obey.

Her eyes flash golden.

A local man stabs her with a spear and after an initial river of red, Deka's blood runs gold. And she dies. Or, almost-dies.

Over the next few days Deka will almost-die nine times; stabbing, burning, dismemberment, the villagers try it all to find Deka's true death. Then a strange woman comes to the village, finds Deka, and offers her a choice: stay in the village and die as many times as it takes to finally stay dead, or leave and fight in the Emperor's army of alaki, girls just like her. It's not really a choice at all.

This is not your typical "kid with magic goes to a magical school" story, so don't be fooled. It is raw and emotional. You'll fall in love with Deka and her friends as they learn who they are, learn what is worth fighting and dying to protect.

This is definitely a five star read.

I taught this book in Summer School English after a pandemic. I was looking for something short and high interest for students who weren't quite thrilled about spending their summer with me. I dug around the library and found just enough copies of this classic. I read it before in junior high and I remembered it well enough to think it would fit the needs of my students. After thumbing back through it I decided to have my students do a thorough examination of the ending, as there are some elements to this story that do not hold up as well in the 21st century as they did at the close of the 20th.

We're about to dig into that conversation. Are the fictional tribe of Yeehats a problematic representation of a culture that was not the author's own? What, if anything, did Jack London know of indigenous people? How would such an ending translate on film in today's culture? Should the ending be changed if this became a movie?

Then we will watch the 2020 film version staring Harrison Ford as John Thornton and discuss the ways the movie changed the ending and why. We will discuss if the new ending caries the symbolism of fire and the dreams of primordial man any further than the original ending.

I love this little book. Yes, there are elements that were racist at the time this book was written that are glaringly problematic now. Even a big black dog named "Nig" was uncomfortable to name aloud for my students. But we shouldn't shy away from literature that has uncomfortable parts. This book may only be just shy of 150 pages, but there's so much to dig into and question and research. Plus, it's a story about a dog, and who doesn't love a good dog book?

The way this book is woven together is simply masterful. There are two narratives, one of Will, a half white, half Osage boy living in Tulsa during the 1920s and another of Rowan, a half white, half black girl living in the same city during the late 2010s. When seventeen year old Rowan discovers an old skeleton on her family's property, she has no idea what secrets it will uncover and what she will learn about the history of her town and her own family.

For Will, one act of violence in a love-struck fit will set in motion an agonizing course of events. In a town segregated by Jim Crow laws, Will passes lawfully as white, but is still subject to racial slurs and bullying because of his Osage heritage. This didn't spark any empathy in Will toward the black community in his town until he learns the grizzly consequences of his drunken actions in a bar one night and befriends a little black girl who just won't stop trying to come into his father's Victrola shop.

Told in alternating chapters, Will's and Rowan's stories cover the same ground. As you read on, you'll discover names that seem to fit together across the century and details about characters will persist as stories told and memories shared across the generations. Watching these two separate narratives weave together as one was simply beautiful. That's what kept me reading when I honestly didn't want to know the end for some of the characters in Will's story.

This story covers the Tulsa Race Riot from the perspective of a mixed race character who experienced it firsthand and a mixed race character who learns of it through ties to her own land and her own racial firestorm around a hate crime she witnesses. This book is an excellent introduction to a chapter of history that was swept under the rug when I was in school and I only learned about after college. I hope my students read this book and I hope you read it too.