by Chelsea Handler Chelsea Handler’s tongue just might poke itself through her cheek, if the tone of this collection of anecdotes and vignettes is anything to judge by. A funny, candid, and at times tragically pathetic glimpse at single life with just a touch of neuroses, Ms. Handler’s work is incredibly readable, and compelling in [...]

Teach with Your Heart: Lessons I Learned from the Freedom Writers by Erin Gruwell Erin Gruwell, the teacher who inspired the Freedom Writers, wrote her own memoir, which was published in January, 2007. Much of it echoes what we learned about her in the movie – that she was a new teacher saddled with kids [...]

Gringos in Paradise: An American Couple Builds Their Retirement Dream House in a Seaside Village in Mexico by Barry Golson I found this book in the new fiction section at my local B&N, and brought it home even though it’s not fiction, because my parents also did the cash-out and move to Mexico thing. You [...]

by The Freedom Writers and Erin Gruwell It is rare when a book moves me to tears. It’s not that I’m not sentimental about things that have meaning to me, but that I can generally separate myself from what I’m reading enough to retain necessary distance. So when I say that The Freedom Writers Diary, [...]

by Ray Bradbury Ray Bradbury is one of the icons of Science Fiction, which shouldn’t be surprising since he’s published something like 500 works, so when I added The Martian Chronicles to my list for the decades challenge, I did it in honor of his contribution to the field, as well as because I vaguely [...]

by Nicholas Sparks Jeremy Marsh is a skeptic whose had some success with the media, and when he goes to a small town in North Carolina to debunk some graveyard ghost-lights, it’s pretty clear he intends to solve the mystery and beat a hasty retreat to his home in New York. Instead he finds himself [...]

by Ann Brashares The fourth and final installment in the stories of the Sisterhood was the least juvenile of a series that really is universal, and shouldn’t be ignored just because of it’s YA label. In this novel, the girls are separate more than not, and the Pants are shared throughout their first year of [...]

Comfort Food: A Novel (IPPY Award Winner for Best Regional Fiction, West–Pacific) by Noah Ashenhurst When I posted my list of planned reading for the 11 Decades challenge, I included Comfort Food because I liked the title, and because I like reading new authors. Imagine my surprise when the author contacted me and offered a [...]