theresidentbookworm's reviews
3256 reviews

Ah, Max, the unsung hero of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Max is seriously amazing if you think about it. He's a good dog, obviously good with people, and yet he loves his owner, this extremely grouchy Grinch. He stays by his side and takes care of him as well as a dog can. Max is where the Grinch's heart actually is. Recommended!

Hmm... yet another read for freshman English. Surprisingly, this was the book I enjoyed the most but predicted I'd like the least. Just wait until my English class hears about this... *winks*

Of course, just because I liked it doesn't mean it was perfect. On the contrary, this book is flawed. Holden jumps from thought to thought quickly, barely leaving you time to catch. He goes off on tangents and swears entirely too much for my tastes. He is immature, sort of selfish, and completely sure he knows everything. In other words, he is your typical teenage boy. It's good to know teenage boys haven't changed that much throughout the years. There are many things I don't like about Holden and this book. It jumps around too much, and it feels like there are entirely too many characters. The characters I managed to fall in love with weren't around enough,and the characters I hated were there entirely too often.

The Catcher in the Rye's greatest strength as a novel isn't the plotline or the dialogue or even the characters. It's the writing itself. J.D. did an incredible thing in writing this book. He managed to write in the voice of a teenager, managed to get into the mind of the teenager. He wrote in a voice that hadn't been heard yet. Salinger brought something new to the table and raised the bar for books written for young people. Most of all, he managed to get parents' attention, and you know any book parents fight over having in schools must be good. What I loved, however, was that Holden's voice was honest. Sure, the guy was a pathological liar, but at least he told you that.

I'd recommend this definitely! It's a classic worth reading! And really, how often do I saw that?

Okay, I think it is definitely necessary for American Girl to make an Addy movie. In fact, I think it is long overdue. If you don't think that is a good idea, simply read Changes for Addy, the final installment of her story. What is more heartbreaking than Addy searching the city for her relatives? What is sadder than Addy's family reunited but not quite whole? And what, tell me, is more powerful than Addy reading the Emancipation Proclamation at her church and really believing in it? Please, make an Addy movie!

Five of My Thoughts on Changes for Julie

1. Why is this teacher so mean? Shouldn't she be more aware of the disabilities of one of her students? Shouldn't she at least look at the note?

2. Julie, clearly your school has bigger problems than useless dentition. I feel for you though because we also had to write lines in my high school. In fact, we had to copy sections from the student handbook.

3. Joy is probably one of American Girl's best characters. I'd really like to see more stories with Joy in them.

4. Student elections clearly haven't changed since the 70s.

5. Recommended!

Before the days of Netflix, (before my mom could watch the entire series of Gilmore Girls in a week) I had Gilmore Girls on DVD. I was in middle school, I think, and I remember watching each season slowly because I had to wait for my parents to go to Costco and get the next season. Since then, I think I have watched Gilmore Girls at least twenty times. I love this TV show. It sunk into my skin somehow. I stole their jokes, their pop culture references, Rory's reading list... I'm not sure if I am actually Rory or if I just tried really hard to be Rory.

Obviously, I couldn't go wrong with a book of essays about Gilmore Girls. I had recently read Girl on Fire, a collection of essays about the Hunger Games, and I was in the mood for more analysis. The caliber of analysis here wasn't as good as the previous collection, but I did enjoy it nonetheless. I had never thought about Gilmore Girls that hard. I especially liked the essays that defended Emily and showed how Lorelai defied the archetype of the typical feminist.

Recommended for Gilmore Girls fans!

As far as American Girl books go, this is a gem. Mysteries are not high on my list of preferred genres, but this one had me captivated. I appreciate American Girl writing longer and more substantial books, and I actually learned a lot from this addition to Samantha's story. I didn't know much about the history of elevators or why there are sometimes not a thirteenth floor in hotels. Samantha will always be my favorite American Girl, and I'm still mourning her retirement. Recommended!

Yet another Salvation Army find... You gotta love the deal! *smiles* Anyway, I read this Sunday night instead of doing my homework, and while I was glad for the distraction, this was nothing special. Frankly, I've read enough novels with a Jessie Lou lately. In fact, this sister dynamic in this reminds me somewhat of the one in Durable Goods. Of course, there's also the popular boy who you can't even figure out why Jessie Lou likes and the annoying little kid who was thrown in for no random reason. The highlight of this book for me was the grandpa. He was hilarious, and I could appreciative his humor since I don't have a grandpa of my own. Ultimately, this was an okay to spend an hour or so, but it's nothing spectacular, and nothing I would recommend.

A little known fact about me: I was actually born in Detroit, not the area surrounding it, but in the city at Sinai Grace Hospital. It's a sad commentary on Detroit that my mom is very ashamed of this fact. She often emphasizes when she tells the story of my birth that her doctor had two offices (one in Detroit and one in Northville where we lived) and that the day I came the doctor just happened to be in Detroit. Often she tells me to lie about it and say I was born in Northville or Livonia, but I usually don't. I've grown up mostly in Oakland County, one of the richest counties in the state, and so my exposure to Detroit is much more limited than Charlie LeDuff's or even my dad.

My dad's family lived in Allen Park, a suburb of Detroit, until he was a freshman in high school. It was the 1970s, and everything in the city started to get a little rougher. My grandparents made to the move to Livonia where much of our family still lives. My dad can drive down old streets in his neighborhood and the city and tell you what used to be there: a bar he and his friends liked to go to, a store that sold nice suits, the convenience store where he'd run errands for his sisters for some pocket money... All I seem to see is dilapidated buildings and foreclosure signs. It may be because it is technically my birthplace or that it was once the hometown of my family, but I always get cagey when people start talking about Detroit. It seems like experts and reporters and filmmakers are all interested in finding the source of decay in the city and fixing it, but they can never seem to understand it because they aren't from here. It really isn't something that can be understood by an outsider.

Charlie LeDuff is from here. He sees the city with all its flaws and quirks and people who have been given up on but haven't seemed to give up just yet. He shows us the corruption and the incompetency of the city government in Detroit, but he also shows the underfunded and understaffed police force and firemen who persist in what seem to be hapless jobs for a city they still continue to love. Some may say that LeDuff's portrayal of Detroit is too dark, too grim, blind to the good in the city. There is good in Detroit. To me, there is nothing better than sitting the nosebleed seats with my dad at Comerica Park on a nice summer day watching the Tigers play and enjoying dinner at Lafayette's Coney Island afterwards. I love spending the day exploring the exhibits at the Detroit Institute of Art because something new seems to be revealed to me every time I go. Still, even though I love these things about the city, I know that LeDuff is right in his assessment of the city because whenever I drive home from these places all I can see is abandoned buildings with boarded up windows and graffiti. As he points out, it makes no sense to report on what's supposed to be normal like art when firefighters have boots with holes and your mayor is on trial.

Here's some the lessons I've learned in my Detroit experience. You never stop for a red light when driving home from a game or concert at night. You harden your heart when you see homeless people sitting on the street because if you give money to all of them you'd go home with nothing in your wallet. Sometimes you'll cave if they have a young kid with them, but you still never let them see how much money you have on you. When you volunteer to hand out food in the inner-city, you wear close-toed shoes because the lot and sidewalks are littered with empty syringes and glass. When you hand out said food, some of the recipients will scare you because they are high or drunk or a combination of both. Others will make you sad like the woman with two young kids who have no shoes and the old man with empty jaundiced eyes. That day of volunteering is so mentally taxing that you and your friends drive home in complete silence. You can never bring yourself to go back again.

My only real problem with the book is that I would've liked the narrative to be a little more tightly focused. Occasionally the cases and such got jumbled in my head. Still, LeDuff does what few have cared to do with Detroit: he humanizes it. He gives a face to the unemployed and the homeless and points out that they're really no different than anyone else these days. Most of all, LeDuff captures the spirit of both Detroit and Michigan in general. In Michigan, we have cold weather and a crappy economy and a slew of other problems, but we're still here. We're still standing. And so is Detroit. If I had to pick an unofficial state motto, it would be this: "Times are tough, but so are we."

Detroit: An American Autopsy is a read for both those from Detroit and those wondering where exactly the Motor City went wrong. It satisfies both the hunger for answers and the desire of a more nuanced representation of Detroit. I would like to see more books like this.

I absolutely love Jack Kerouac's writing. I love the flow of it all, the easiness his story telling has, the pure beauty of his sentences. For me, reading Kerouac is like revisiting an old friend who always has plenty of new stories to tell me every time we meet. During On the Road, I got to know and admire that friend for his free spirit and his prose. In The Dharma Bums, I met that friend again, but it felt off, like that friend had been through a major experience and couldn't accurately explain it to me.

Kerouac's writing is as captivating as it was in On the Road, but it gets drowned out on occasion by its heavy religious influence. I know very little about Buddhism. I'm currently taking a World Religions class that will cover this topic, but when I was reading The Dharma Bums I was completely lost. I still enjoyed going on adventures with Kerouac, but I didn't always understand why he was going on them. I honestly did not like any of the characters (mostly because the Buddhism makes no sense to me and that what seems to drive everyone), but it was certainly interesting.

Definitely not my favorite Kerouac. I'll continue to read his work though. I just won't be rereading this one ten million times like I did with On the Road.

A Review in Seven Words

Didn't care about dinos much. Still don't.