Why I have this book: I borrowed it from the ebook library one night when I needed something light to listen to.
Okay, the early part of the book was funny, but it really lost steam for me as it went on. I ended up quitting on it in Part 5 of 6.
I marked it as "did not finish" on Goodreads, so I didn't even give it a rating.
Mostly clean. There were a few somewhat inappropriate comments here and there.
Why I have this book: A friend (L) recommended it, and since it was available right away to borrow on the ebook library, I did that.
I liked this book a lot. The writing was super easy to get into. It's a book that tries to shed light on race relations and discrimination from the point of view of a modern day black girl and her circle of friends and family as well as the students and teachers of her school.
It definitely made me think about how much we all misunderstand each other, how even those with the best of intentions and no intentional racism don't understand what it feels like to be black, and how maybe people of color don't realize how white people really don't understand what is meant by "white privilege." There's a lot of work to be done in this world to help us all search inside our hearts and make the changes needed to create peace and compassion.
I gave it four stars on Goodreads.
Clean. I don't recall any swear words or anything offensive, but I'd say it's geared for upper jr. high to adult readers.
Why I have this book: I bought it on Kindle because it was fairly inexpensive. It is the fifth book in a series I was reading, and I really didn't want to wait weeks to read this one or the fourth book (which I also purchased).
I liked this concluding book in the series a lot. I kind of wish there was a follow-up book or an epilogue, but sometimes a book has more meaning when the reader has to think about how they think things ended up.
This was a satisfying series, and I think it got better and better as it went along. I gave this book four stars on Goodreads.
Clean.
Why I have this book: I bought it on Kindle because the wait was too long at the ebook library. It's the fourth of five in the Tending Roses series.
I liked this book a lot. I feel like the author does a great job of helping the reader understand the thoughts and internal conflicts of her characters. It's also interesting to see the characters shift to a background role as a new protagonist takes center stage in each book of the series.
It was easy to spend hours at a time reading this one. (I had a day to myself and chose to relax and feed my soul instead of catching up on tasks.)
Clean. I don't even recall any swearing.
Why I have this book: I actually bought the print edition back when we were waiting for our daughter to come home from Korea. (We adopted the cutie.) I was reading quite a few books by the author at the time (she's a Korean-American), and this one is set in Korea, so bonus!
It's written for children... probably 3rd or 4th grade level. My daughter is in 6th grade currently and is doing at-home learning due to Covid-19. I assigned this to her to read as part of her assignments. I bought a Kindle copy and read it at the same time.
Okay, I liked it better than she did, mostly because I like reading about other cultures and thought of this book as a learning opportunity. My daughter thought it was kind of boring, and the message she mostly got from it is that boys have all the privilege. (Definitely true in 17th Century Korea when this story takes place!)
I gave it 3 stars on Goodreads mostly because I saw my daughter's point about it being a little slow and not overly exciting for her to read. As far as learning about culture, I'd give it 4 stars, but I stuck with 3 on Goodreads.
Here's what I wrote on our adoption blog when I was listing books I had read about Korea during the wait to bring our daughter home:
Seesaw Girl (Linda Sue Park) - Just realized I haven't read this one! I know my 13 year old daughter did, though, and she liked it. I'll read it today. :) Update: Read it. Cute story about a young girl in 17th century Korea. The reading level is grade 4'ish, ages 9 - 12. I'd say that's about right. I like Linda Sue Park... I think I'll look and see what else she's written.
This book is clean.
Why I have this book: I have it on my Kindle but had never read it, so I decided to listen to it on DBS+. Churchy books are sometimes easier to listen to rather than read. That way, I can do other things at the same time.
Okay, so I generally love Sheri Dew, and had I read/listened to this book several years ago, I probably would have given it four or five stars on Goodreads. She read the book on the audio version, and she always does a great job. She's a natural speaker, and I appreciate her honesty and "realness."
The problem is that so much of what she talked about (or the angle she came from) was from when Gordon B. Hinckley was the prophet. Don't get me wrong. I love President Hinckley. However, times have changed, and the Church's message on some subjects has changed. Homosexuality and the role of women and how we address those subjects has changed. So while I don't think anything she said was necessarily doctrinally wrong, the delivery was just hard to hear when the tone has changed in the years since. It's more compassionate and more accepting now, and some of the messages given in the past have been reported as sore subjects in this day and age (i.e. women and girls need to be careful not to be walking porn to some men/boys by the way we dress). Again, I don't entirely disagree with the point being made, but knowing how so many women have rejected the role of being caretakers of mens' wandering eyes and minds, I feel like the book was outdated and a little harsh to read/hear.
Anyway, I'm a little sorry to give it only three stars on Goodreads, but that's where I landed.
Clean. She talks about sexual morality quite a bit and what that looks like within and outside of marriage.
The first:
Kissing Doorknobs (Terry Spencer Hesser)
Why I have this book: It was referred to in another book I read (Is Fred in the Refrigerator?) and it was pretty inexpensive on Kindle, so I bought it.
This one was okay. I think I would have like it more if it was more "autobiographical" than "Oh, I've had some of these experiences, but it's not autobiographical." What does that even mean? I guess I went into it thinking it was a memoir, but it's more fiction based on personal experiences.
In any case, I gave it three stars on Goodreads.
The second:
Rewind, Replay, Repeat: A Memoir of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (Jeff Bell)
Why I have this book: This was another book referred to in Is Fred in the Refrigerator?, so I put it on my wish list and bought it when I had an inkling to spend a little money on Amazon. :)
This one earned five stars on Goodreads from me. It IS a memoir and it's brutally honest and so well-written. It's really easy to feel like you're just listening to the author sharing his story with you (and I wasn't listening to an audiobook). I liked this one very much, and I'm glad I read it.
Why I have this book: I borrowed it from the ebook library on the recommendation of my reading friend, L.
Okay, so when I first started it, I just couldn't get into it. I was reading the ebook version. I put it aside for a few days, then decided to check to see if the audio version was available so I could listen while I cross stitched or cleaned the house. It was available, so I started listening to it and got totally hooked. I still had the ebook version, so when it was time for bed, I switched back and stayed up until 3:00 am to finish it.
Just like the author's other book I reviewed, I would have given this slightly less than a 5 star rating had that been on option on Goodreads, but since it's not, I gave it all 5 stars. I really, really like this author. I just put her next book on hold.
I honestly don't understand why both the ebook and audio version were available to borrow at the ebook library. The book is so good that I would have thought it would have a waiting list. I guess people just don't know about it.
Clean, although there are a few unsettling things going on in the story. I don't recall any swearing, but if there was, it was mild and rare.
Why I have this book: I borrowed it from the ebook library.
This is the third book in a series. I've enjoyed all of them so far, so I need to get the other two (?) book on hold soon.
This may have been my favorite in the series. I did notice one possible inconsistency from the second book to this one, so I actually put the previous one on hold so I can double check. I can't help myself. Haha...
Anyway, this one gave me all the feels.
Clean, although one character made a comment that confused me... was it a slang word that means a "loose woman," or was it something else? I'm not sure. A married couple has sex, but it's not graphically described.
We finally got around to unpacking all our books after moving a year ago. (We had to finish parts of the house and have a son move out in order to feel motivated enough to get things all the way done.)
Anyway... being the super organized person I am (!), I had listed every single box we moved, along with a brief description of what the box contained. And after unpacking all my boxes of books, every single box on my list was marked off, except one. Box 66, containing "books" is not accounted for.
I mean, I'm 99% sure it made it to our new house. We only moved like 5-6 houses/lots down the street. No professional movers were involved. Really, nobody was involved outside of our family. And I'm pretty sure all the boxes were moved in our own vehicles.
Either I unpacked it and forgot to mark it off before passing it on to a friend who was moving (although I feel like I was super careful in that regard), or it really did get lost. The only way I'd ever really know is if I started looking for books that I couldn't find, and even then, would I really know?
And then... even worse...
I was pulling boxes out of a closet downstairs, and the one on the bottom of the pile was stuck. Like I couldn't move it without a lot of effort BECAUSE... it was stuck to the wall. BECAUSE it had been wet and then dried. The whole bottom and up the sides had been wet at one point (there were liquid marks, plus the box was stuck to the wall as it dried). WHAT??? Why? We could see no evidence of a water leakage on the wall or the carpet. The carpet didn't even look discolored or anything. I know it wasn't wet when we put it in there, because I'm sure we would have noticed. None of the boxes above it were wet.
I freaked out some because I tend to be really suspicious of people, especially people who pee in empty water bottles and throw them on our property while doing sheetrock work for us. I still wonder if one of them peed in the room on the other side of the wall from this closet and it leaked under the wall. (The other room wasn't finished at the time... they were putting sheetrock in there, and it wasn't a job they were thrilled about.) I mean, I probably wouldn't have thought that at all if not for the pee in the bottle outside.
Anyway, I can hardly stand to think about it. In any case, the box was labeled "Books - probably donate," so it wasn't a hard to decision to just decide they were definitely going to be donated... to the trash.
Most were churchy type books, some weren't, but I honestly didn't feel like digging through it too thoroughly. I was too grossed out with the scenarios going through my mind.
Now if I can just someday forget about this disturbing situation, that would be awesome. As it is, I'm glad it's not a closet I plan to spend any time in.
And then there was yet another box of books that were labeled "Probably will donate," so I donated those to DI. I didn't take any pictures or even make any notes about what they were. A lot of them were books from our previous homeschooling days, so not a lot of sentimental attachment.
I still hope to find a resolution on Box 66... like maybe my daughter will find it among the boxes I sent her way.
(ETA: No luck with either of our daughters, so I'll never know what happened with this box.)
(ETA again: Discovered our first missing book: Holes. I know we had it, it's been on our shelves for years, and my youngest son wants to read it for a school assignment. I had no doubt it was on our shelves, but it's not. So is there a missing box of books? I guess I'll see what other books show up as missing as time goes on. Sigh. In the meantime, I bought him the Kindle version.)
