Review: Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

I’ve always admired Quirk Books and am so happy that they’ve had such success with Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children and now with Hollow City. It’s a quick but interesting read and builds on the unique characters of the first book. I would recommend it for anyone that enjoyed the first book. My only other recommendation would be to read it in print. I read it in ebook version and I think the reading experience would have been preferable in print with the images.

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan 

Crazy Rich Asians was forcefully placed on my book pile with the phrase that it was “like Pride and Prejudice” which it is. . . if Pride and Prejudice was set in modern day Hong Kong. It’s an interesting mix and I laughed out loud at some points in the book. I appreciated that Kwan wasn’t afraid to include a lot of inside jokes, sections of Mandarin, etc. in order to appease a more mainstream audience. It was authentically funny and a joy to read. My only complaint? I think it wrapped up too quickly and I really wanted more from the ending. But maybe I just wanted more?

Cinderland by Amy Jo Burns

Louise DeSalvo writes of Cinderland that Burns has, “charted new territory for the memoir by substituting the “I” narrative with the choral “We” and in so doing has brilliantly demonstrated how the harm done to one of us reverberates with us all.” DeSalvo accurately pinpoints the singularity of Burns’s memoir but there is more to Cinderland than the simple change of “I” to “We.” The  memoir is riveting and powerful, delving into the steel collapse and its affects on a small town and the ultimate cost of keeping such terrible secrets.

Discussion Questions are available here: http://www.beacon.org/Cinderland-P1050.aspx (By yours truly)

Amy Jo Burns grew up in Mercury, Pennsylvania, an industrial town humbled by the steel collapse of the 1980s. Instead of the construction booms and twelve-hour shifts her parents’ generation had known, the Mercury Amy Jo knew was marred by empty houses, old strip mines, and vacant lots. It wasn’t quite a ghost town—only because many people had no choice but to stay.

The year Burns turned ten, this sleepy town suddenly woke up. Howard Lotte, its beloved piano teacher, was accused of sexually assaulting his female students. Among the countless girls questioned, only seven came forward. For telling the truth, the town ostracized these girls and accused them of trying to smear a good man’s reputation. As for the remaining girls—well, they were smarter. They lied. Burns was one of them.

But such a lie has its own consequences. Against a backdrop of fire and steel, shame and redemption, Burns tells of the boys she ran from and toward, the friends she abandoned, and the endless performances she gave to please a town that never trusted girls in the first place.

This is the story of growing up in a town that both worshipped and sacrificed its youth—a town that believed being a good girl meant being a quiet one—and the long road Burns took toward forgiving her ten-year-old self. Cinderland is an elegy to that young girl’s innocence, as well as a praise song to the curative powers of breaking a long silence.

The Bees by Laline Paull

Orwell meets entomology. How could you go wrong?

I loved this book, from its cover to its intimate bee hierarchies, and carefully hidden subtexts. You are immediately thrown into this puzzling and complex world with Flora, a lowly sanitation bee, who commits the ultimate sin against the hive by laying an egg when only the queen may lay.

All Souls: A Family Story From Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald

It seemed a crime to have worked at Beacon Press for so long and to never have read All Souls by Michael Patrick MacDonald. In poignant and honest prose MacDonald describes his childhood in South Boston, “southie” as it is affectionately known here in Boston. Although the book certainly touches on exciting topics like Whitey Bulger and the busing riots, its quiet strength is found in MacDonald’s depiction of his family life, his proud Irish neighborhood and his conflicting feelings about both. MacDonald has continued his work as a non-violence advocate in Boston and New York City.

The latest addition to the ReVisioning US History series at Beacon Press, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States is both honest and unwavering and should become an essential text in understanding US history and the origins of the United States. Dunbar-Ortiz reframes US History to dismantle foundation myths and reveals a brutal system of colonialism and a fictitious ideology meant to cover its violence. It’s not just about a faraway past, however, As Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams, adds, “Spoiler alert: the colonial era is still here, and so are the Indians.”