Oh my god, I love Catcher in the Rye. Seriously. Love it. Every time. I tried to explain to my students the other day why I loved it. They haven’t read it, so they were confused. “Is it about baseball?”… Read more ›
Bitter is the New Black : Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass, Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office by Jen Lancaster My rating: 3 of 5 stars I checked out Jen Lancaster’s… Read more ›
The Huffington Post ran a piece yesterday about the five books every high school student should read before going to college. It was a pretty good list, and I agree that most of those books are incredibly important for teenagers,… Read more ›
When a director and screenwriter team up to adapt a book to a full-length feature film, the results are often mixed. The complexity of well-written stories often makes it difficult to do them justice in the span of a couple… Read more ›
You may not have noticed from all of the posts on this blog, but it’s Banned Books Week! You all saw my awesome bulletin board to celebrate the week. My students have all seen it, too, and they are outraged… Read more ›
I am ridiculously proud of this. Check out all of my Banned Books Week 2012 posts here! Related PostsResources for Starting Your Own Group For Girls Sandy Hook Shooting: They’re Just Babies Sexist Homework
It’s Banned Books Week! This is literally my favorite week of the year. We just finished reading Fahrenheit 451 and my students are excited to start reading some banned books of their own. (I, of course, suggested a few of my… Read more ›
I just started teaching Fahrenheit 451 with my honors English classes, and I’m so excited to be rereading talking about it. There are so many themes that are incredibly pertinent to our time. It never ceases to amaze me that this… Read more ›
Many of you know – and even if you don’t know, you probably won’t be surprised to learn – that I have been working on a book for the past year. It was an anthology of essays about how modern… Read more ›
If you are even remotely close to my age (i.e. pushing 30), you probably know a little bit about the Gilmore Girls. If you know even a little about the Gilmore Girls, you know that Rory – my teenage idol… Read more ›
I was 20 years old and in undergrad when I first picked up Stephen Chbosky’s 1999 novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The book had been making the rounds among my friends for five years before I finally got… Read more ›
I’m on the Ms. Magazine Blog today, reviewing Julia Alvarez’s A Wedding in Haiti for your reading pleasure: Feminist novelist Julia Alvarez (How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies), known for her clear, unaffected… Read more ›
Hey Chifems! Remember, we are meeting on 4/1 to talk about As Always, Julia! Hope to see you there! 1. These women are both pioneers in a feminist sense. Are they considered feminist icons? Why/not? 2. In the introduction, we… Read more ›
If you’ve been a good Chifem, you’ve been reading The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht! Hopefully you’re finished or almost there, because we are meeting on Sunday, January 22 (check the link for place and time) for an in-person discussion.… Read more ›
I fell in love with literature at a very young age. I loved books so much, I wanted to create them, because I wanted to give readers the same joy many authors had given me. Then, I grew up a… Read more ›
Chifems, don’t forget that we are meeting on January 22 at 1:00 PM at a location to be announced to discuss The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht. Lucky for us, this is also the first pick for the Huffington Post… Read more ›
Attention, Chifems! We’re starting up the book club again! I know you all are as excited as I am for this. I am really excited! Now that we have a place to house all of the Chicago Feminist events, I… Read more ›
He Said What?: Women Write About Moments When Everything Changed edited by Victoria Zackheim (Click on the image to buy the book from Powells.com or the text to buy from BarnesandNoble.com and I will receive a sliver of the profits… Read more ›
Recently, one of my former students came to me and asked for some book recommendations for over winter break because she had recently finished The Book Theif on my recommendation, and hadn’t been able to find anything that came close… Read more ›
Follow My Lead: What Training My Dogs Taught Me about Life, Love, and Happiness by Carol Quinn - Purchase Follow My Lead from Powell’s Bookstore via this link and I’ll receive some of the money from your purchase. All comission from the sale… Read more ›