nomadreader

The backstory:  After reading  What Alice Forgot   for my book club this summer (I'll review it eventually, I promise!), I was excited to see the first pick since I joined the She Reads Online Book Club would be Liane Moriarty's latest novel, The Husband's Secret. The basics: The Husband's Secret  focuses on three families in Sydney, who all have a tie to a Catholic school. Tess uproots her son and moves back to Sydney to stay with her mother when her cousin/best friend and her husband reveal that they are in love. Rachel, the school secretary, still mourns the loss of her daughter, who was murdered as teenager. She's further devastated when her son tells her he, his wife and son are moving to New York for two years. Cecelia is the woman who seemingly has it all, including three daughters and a successful Tupperware party business. When she stumbles across a letter in her attic addressed to her with the instructions "to be opened by my wife only in the even...

The backstory: A Question of Honor  is the fifth historical mystery in mother and son writing team Charles Todd's Bess Crawford, a British World War I nurse, series. My reviews of the first four: A Duty to the Dead , An Impartial Witness , A Bitter Truth , and An Unmarked Grave . The basics: A Question of Honor  begins in India in 1908, when Bess was living there while her father's regiment was stationed there. The regiment faces a challenge when one of their own killed five people. He's assumed dead, but as the novel shifts back to its present tense in the fall of 1918, Bess begins to seek the truth, about his possible presence in France and about what happened ten years ago. My thoughts: I adore Bess as a character, and it was a delight to spend a little time in her childhood at the beginning of this book. I tend to shy away from mysteries in which the sleuth is not actually in law enforcement or a private investigator, but Charles Todd has done quite well giving Be...

Good morning, y'all! Please pardon my unintended absence from blogging. Perhaps next year I'll remember to plan to take the first two weeks of classes off blogging, as I can't seem to find time to sit down and write when the semester first begins. Here's what I've been up to lately: Teaching I'm teaching a new class this semester, a first-year seminar called Real Genius. I always love teaching a course for the first time, but it is so much more work. We're reading Outliers  by Malcolm Gladwell, and I'm really enjoying revisiting it. I opted not to re-read it over the summer (I read it soon after it came out in 2008) and instead read along with my students to keep it fresh. For our next unit, I'm turning control over to the students. They'll each be picking a past winner of the MacArthur "genius grant," selecting texts by and/or about their genius, and leading a class discussion. I'm utterly fascinated by the genius grants and t...

The basics: Orphan Train  is the story of two women and their unlikely friendship (if you want to run for the hills at the beginning of that description--hear me out.) Molly is almost eighteen, which means she is almost aging out of the foster care system. Desperate to have her own copy of her favorite book, she steals a copy of it from her school library. Her punishment is fifty hours of community service. Her boyfriend's mother, who works as a housekeeper for a 90-year-old-widow, arranges for Molly to help the woman, Vivian, go through the boxes in her attic. These boxes hold memories of the journeys of Vivian's life, when she was sent on the orphan train from New York City to Minnesota many years ago. My thoughts: The reality of orphan trains depresses me. While I welcomed the chance to learn more about this dark part of U.S. history, I'm grateful Kline interspersed them with Molly's modern scenes. It also helped to know Vivian somehow not only survives but thrive...

The backstory: Years ago, I used to discover new authors by browsing the new releases in the library and seeing which covers grabbed me. I had as many successes as failures, and my shift toward finding life-minded readers has certainly improved my success with books. Yet I still think fondly of those authors I discovered my old-fashioned way, and Kelly Braffet is one of those authors. I recall bringing home Last Seen Leaving  and sitting down on my the screened-in porch to read it before dinner. I was up until the wee hours of the morning finishing it, and when I returned it to the library the next day, I picked up her first novel, Josie and Jack. Imagine my delight when I saw that seven years later, there's finally  another Braffet novel to read! The basics: Save Yourself  is the story of two sets of siblings: Patrick and Mike Cusimano are still reeling from their father's arrest and conviction for killing a child while driving drunk. They live in their father's house,...

Between the more leisurely pace of summer (and my aversion to its heat) and giving up satellite, I've been watching a lot of movies (both with and without Mr. Nomadreader.) Here are my brief thoughts on some recent ones. The Cabin in the Woods When I told Mr. Nomadreader I wanted to watch The Cabin in the Woods , he was surprised and excited, as horror is not my favorite genre, and it is one of his. But the very reason I wanted to see (and ended up loving) The Cabin in the Woods  is that it's so smart. There's certainly something in it that will terrify everyone, but it's not terror for terror's sake. It works because it's brilliant and inventive. It pays homage to the genre's history, but it offers a delightfully fresh take on it. Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Source: Netflix Spring Breakers At the end of a particularly bad day, I was in the mood for an escapist movie and several glasses of wine. Spring Breakers  was the perfect antidote. The story of fo...

Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows, narrated by Catherine Byers Fallows, a linguist, begins learning Chinese in preparation for moving to China with her husband. Dreaming in Chinese  is part travel memoir and part lingual study of the language. If you already know a lot (or perhaps even a little) about the language, this book may not have even travel to keep your interest. If, however, you know little about the Chinese language, this book is fascinating. I now better understand how and why Chinese native speakers speak English. And it reaffirmed my belief that I do not have the patience or fortitude to actually learn Chinese myself. If you opt to read this one, don't listen. The narration is pretty awful: Byers is an over-anunciator, which works well in some parts, as this is a book about the nuance of language, but it's distracting at others time. Byers doesn't bring any warmth to the travel parts, nor does she bring any nuance to the epiphanies, in language and cult...