theresidentbookworm's reviews
3256 reviews

My favorite old Hollywood actresses are Marliyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor. Out of the three, however, I think I would've gotten along best with Elizabeth Taylor. She had that same compelling Marilyn Monroe did, but she was more down to earth. Well, not down to earth, but she certainly didn't live in the clouds like Monroe did. I found Taylor's life fascinating. She was definitely a woman with passion, and she knew what she wanted. She tried not to regret too much, which I can appreciate. Favorite Taylor quote: “I don't entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have been. But I'm me. God knows, I'm me.”

J. Randy Taraborrelli did an excellent job with this biography. It was well reasrched and well structured, and all his information seemed fairly accurate. Mostly, he kept it interesting. The great thing about writing about Elizabeth Taylor is that there's not much need for embellishments. After all, the woman was married six times. She was gorgeous practically her whole life, but she was also smart. (In addition, we have Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton to thank for the first real "it" couple. Take that Bragelina!) I've come to enjoy and trust Taraborrelli's work, and this is no different.

Definitely recommended if you're interested in Elizabeth Taylor or even old Hollywood.

Now here's a quality Marilyn Monroe biography! *cheers* I just read Goddess by Anthony Summers, and I forgot what a quality biography looked like. J. Randy Taraborrelli, unlike Summers, doesn't focus on the sex, scandals, and conspiracies surrounding Marilyn Monroe. Instead, he focused on the person, the girl who'd never had a stable family, who just wanted someone to love her. Here is Monroe at her best and worst, smartest and dumbest, and everything else in between.

Taraborrelli, whose writing and research are always impeccable, packs a real punch with this biography. He carefully unfolds all of Monroe's family drama and her relationships without sensationalizing anything. It's easy to read and follow, and more importantly enjoyable. It shows Monroe as a normal person. I especially like the perspective offered on her relationship with DiMaggio. I've always held the opinion she truly did love him, but the relationship just couldn't work. They just wanted different things. Nothing wrong with that, of course. DiMaggio was someone she could count on or call when things got tough. And of course, the fact he had roses delivered to her grave once a week just like she had wanted is so freaking romantic! *swoons*

Ultimately, this biography is eye-opening and kind of sad. Marilyn Monroe died too young, and it's a shame we never got to see more for her. It's a shame she couldn't see more for herself. May her soul rest peacefully in heaven. I'd totally recommend this as the ultimate Monroe biography!

This was surprisingly informative for being a Magic Tree House Research Guide. It was the base of my Ancient Egypt obsession, providing me with what I needed to learn more. It's not really about mummies and pyramids than it is about the ancient Egyptian culture and lifestyle. It provided kids with an excellent look into a time period somewhat forgotten in history. And while there aren't really any specific time periods mentioned, that didn't detract from the quality of the book. Most of the times given for events that happened in ancient Egypt are vague estimates anyhow. This also has pictures and other tidbits to keep children introduced, though I can't figure out for the life of me why they don't these thinks in color. Stupid publishers!

Picked up in the Lincoln Memorial bookstore, I was surprisingly disappointed in this book. I mean, some of the lists were funny and interesting, but it was more of probability factors than anything else. This was so cut and dry that I couldn't even get through all of it. There has to be some motive to read presidential history: it should either be interesting, informative, or both. This completely missed the mark.

This is not my usual read, but I read it for two reasons. First, it was on sale on iBook. Second, Thomas wrote an excellent review of it, and he has never lead me astray as far as recommendations go. This was not just a psychology book. That word is too narrow. It is self-help and history and just a wealth of information on introverts and extroverts. Some stuff I did skim over (like the brain-wave stuff), but Cain clearly did her research, and it shows. She took us everywhere from church to Harvard Business School to back to our childhoods. I am looking to go into education so I found what she had to say about working in groups during school particularly interesting because I myself have never liked group work. Though sometimes the excessive details are too much (there are studies that could've been cut just to make it flow better), Cain makes an excellent logical argument for introverts all over the world. We salute you!

When I was fourteen, I attended the Christian In Training (also known as CIT) camp at Bair Lake Bible Camp in Jones, MI. CIT consists mainly of classes that focus on prayer, the Bible, and service but can also expand to issues that affect young people and more specific such as womanhood. It was here that I heard Paula Hendricks, the author of this book, speak. I remember being both angry and baffled at what she had to say. Feminism is not a popular topic at Bair Lake period, and my buttons were being pressed. At fourteen, I was such a different person. I didn't understand what Paula was saying.

Now, at seventeen, I stumbled upon Paula's book in the camp's shop known as the Bair's Cove. I decided that enough time had passed and that I wanted to hear what she wanted to say one more time. Oh, what a difference time makes. Some of Paula's book felt redundant to me, but much of it sang. This is not the book of a woman who is saying feminism is evil. This is a book of a woman who was trapped in her need for love and looked for it in earthly men when the best One was waiting to gain her attention. What a hard journey Paula had to experience, and what a familiar one too. Don't we all look for comfort and love in the wrong places when God is waiting in the wings?

I particularly enjoyed the sections when she talks about the idols we worship instead of God. She really opened my eyes to the faults I had in that area. I had never considered the fact I and people in general disobey two commandments (I am your God; you shall have no god before me; and you will not worship false idols) that some consider obsolete consistently. I also liked the section where Paula talks about how we put our perceptions of our earthly father onto our Heavenly one. I didn't even realize I was doing that.

For me, Confessions of A Boy-Crazy Girl is a three star book for two reasons. The actual topic of the book (being boy crazy) is hard for me to relate to. I also feel like some of Paula's guy troubles are either to draw out or too skimmed story wise. Otherwise, this is a very enlightening fast read that will make you stop and reevaluate your relationship with God and with men.

No matter what the situation, I never feel quite right when people my age die. You shouldn't die at seventeen or nineteen or twenty-two. Your parents should never have to bury you. What always gets me when I read about school shootings or massacres or bombings involving young people is the small description a family member or friend gives of them. If you die at 80, you have a detailed obituary with your accomplishments and the family you left behind, but what can you leave behind when you've barely started to live? "She was a kind soul." "He was studying to be a doctor." Most people who die young don't have much left to remember them by, but Marina Keegan did. She left behind an impressive body of work that became this book, and that's how we'll remember her.

Her untimely death notwithstanding, Keegan was a good writer. Heck, she might've been a great writer one day. More than that, she had potential. I felt like I was reading someone who could have been an authentic voice for my generation, a writer who knew how I felt. I read in the introduction by her professor that Marina refused to compromise on anything. She knew how she wanted to sound, and she fought to keep her voice hers and not have it become someone else's. I personally think she was correct to fight so hard. Keegan had a funny, clever voice. Her observations about life and love feel real and genuine. They feel like something a girl in her early twenties would write.

I did think the nonfiction was superior to the fiction, but I still enjoyed both. Keegan knew how to tell her stories, and simple things such as all the junk in her car became poignant and interesting in her hands. She would have made a great memoirist. The best piece by far, however, is the title essay, her Yale graduation speech, The Opposite of Loneliness. If you never read this book, you might still hear parts of this speech. It was quoted by someone at my high school graduation (which was a little funny to me since I finished this book that morning). It is hard not to feel something when you read her hopes and dreams for the future and her reassurances this is just the start.

“We're so young. We're so young. We're twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There's this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lie alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out - that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it's too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.” It is hard to read that and believe that four days later this girl was dead. It doesn't seem possible. What she said is still true though. It is still true.

I have heard people debate this book's literary merit and whether or not is any good or if we just read it because she was young and talented and died too soon but left behind a famous speech. I don't think those things matter. The people who write books shape them, no matter the circumstances. Would The Bell Jar still be an illuminating take on mental illness if Sylvia Plath was in her right mind? Would The Great Gatsby still be luxurious and full of excess if F. Scott Fitzgerald hadn't lived the life he had in the 20s? Those things did happen, and we do have those books. How much we have to look at the author is for each reader to decide, but it isn't nothing. Especially here, it isn't nothing.

Highly recommended!

I was in middle school the first time I called myself a feminist. I understood the basics of what that word meant, and I knew I believed in equality for men and women. I didn't think there was anything radical or odd about what I was saying, but middle school boys taught me otherwise. They jeered at me, called me names, told me to go make them a sandwich to make me angry. This just made me even more determined to be a feminist even when my friends tried to persuade me to let it go. I knew even then that it wasn't okay for boys to treat me badly even when everyone else thought it was just natural behavior. It wasn't and still isn't. I came home crying, and that was not okay. My friends did not understand what I meant by saying I was a feminist because they associated feminism with angry women who hated men and yelled loudly about it. It wasn't until we got to high school that many of them told me they couldn't believe they had thought how those boys treated me was okay. They understood feminism more now.

If I could, I would press a copy of We Should All Be Feminists in every young girl's hands. My own loving mother pressed it into my hands as a Valentine's Day present. How can you not love my mom? For the world's most corporate, manufactured romantic holiday, my mom bought copies of this book for me and my friends. (Mom, I love you. You rock!) Sweden has already taken the initiative and given copies to all the girls in high school there. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's adapted TED Talk addresses feminism eloquently and honestly. She said everything women have always been thinking about gender barriers and inequality. These problems do exist everywhere, no matter where you go. I attended all girls' Catholic high school that encouraged us to assume leadership roles and make a difference in the world, and yet there were girls in my government class who did not believe that a woman could be president. They did not believe that women could assume those kind of leadership positions. As Adichie points out,“If we do something over and over, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over, it becomes normal. If only boys are made class monitor, then at some point we will all think, even if unconsciously, that the class monitor has to be a boy.”

As I read We Should All Be Feminists, I couldn't help but think about Roxane Gay's book of essays Bad Feminist. They are somewhat similar in their content, but these two writers have different ideas and lenses through which they see the world. It is encouraging to me that we can have both Roxane Gay and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, that feminism has so many different voices and faces. We are not just one look and one view-point. A feminist can like lip-gloss and high heels or she can hate them. She can love Marvel movies or prefer romantic comedies. Or maybe she likes both. Once again, Adichie knows where it is at: “I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femaleness and my femininity. And I want to be respected in all of my femaleness because I deserve to be.”

Adichie defines feminism like this: "My own definition is a feminist is a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better. All of us, women and men, must do better.” Here's how I define it: men and women should be paid equally for doing the same work. No means no when it comes to sex, and silence doesn't equal yes. What I'm wearing does not matter. How much I have or have not had to drink doesn't matter. Girls can play with Legos and boys can play with Barbies if they chose. Girls did not have feel ashamed for being confident or assertive. Boys don't have to be overly masculine or shy away from vulnerability. I am not how I look, what I wear, or who I sleep with. I am how I act and how I think and how I treat the people around me. It's as simple and as complicate as that.

I wish I could give my past self this book. I wish I could give it to the girls I went to school with. I hope I can give it to my future nieces and nephews and children one day. I highly recommend everyone make this their nonfiction read this year. If you're more of a visual person, please watch Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TED Talk of the same title. I just want to end this review with the quote that resonated most with me.

“We teach girls shame. “Close your legs. Cover yourself.” We make them feel as though being born female they’re already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up — and this is the worst thing we do to girls — they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form.”

A childhood favorite of mine, I found this copy at a used bookstore. Though both my parents thought I was crazy, I paid the forty books for this copy just because it was old and beautiful. I love my parents, but they're not book people like me.

I love just the simplicity of Heidi. There is no huge plot twists or flashy things drawing readers in. It's just a story about a girl and her grandfather and the little home they share. It's a story about love and friendship and family. It's about taking a grumpy old man and turning his heart soft. It's about being a friend to a sick little girl even at costs to yourself. Most of all, it's a story of kindness. The world needs more stories like Heidi's.

I always recommend Heidi. Anybody, and I mean anybody, can read Heidi and understand it. The language doesn't play tricks. It means what it says, and I say it's awesome.

I was a sophomore when I read Great Expectations for my British Literature class. I read it once before, maybe in middle school, but it didn't really click with me then. It wasn't until the reread that I learned to appreciate Dickens and more importantly his characters.

Let me make this clear: I DO NOT CARE ABOUT PIP. Or Joe. Or Pip's mean-spirited sister who is karmically punished and left as an invalid. Or the convict. No, my appreciation of Great Expectations come from two minor characters: Miss Havisham and Estella. Oh, where should I start with these two women? Okay, I'll start with Miss Havisham. I don't think Dickens has ever created a creepier character. As a writer, this description of an old, jilted women who wears her old wedding dress, her wedding feast still on her table, cobwebs on the candlesticks, rotting herself as the food does, is just too delicious. Dickens was the master of character description. I hate watching adaptions of this book because I have a Miss Havisham perfectly envisioned in my mind from his words. I loved reading about her: this women who adopts a child and raises her to break hearts, who nurtures poison in her heart. Just the psychology of this women is interesting. I would have read a novel just about her, which is why I was so disappointed when (in typical Dickenesque fashion) she is punished for her wickedness. Dickens always punishes the most interesting character.

That brings me to Estella, my favorite Dickens character. Some might argue there is not a lot to Estella: she's beautiful and cruel, her purpose being to torture Pip. I would call you an idiot because there are little hints of humanity in her, hints that you might miss if you're not looking. I do like her for her cruelty though. I think she is a Natasha Romanoff before there was Marvel (minus the butt-kicking). When Estella is in a room full of men, she is the queen among pawns. She knows exactly how to push and pull on their (particularly Pip's) affections. When it comes to Pip, however, her humanity finds its way to the surface. She feel something for this strange boy even if she can't admit. She repeatedly warns him away from her, tells him not to love her, tries to save him even she knows he won't listen. Estella doesn't know how to use her heart, not yet, but she knows she doesn't want to break Pip's. Like the other wicked woman of the novel, she is punished for her cruelty, but Dickens is kinder to her. After all, she can't help what she has been made into. In the revised ending (which the publishers insisted on because the original wasn't happy enough), Estella and Pip meet again. Estella has been mistreated by Drummle. She no longer has a fence around her heart. Instead, she has learned how to use it, prompting my favorite line of the novel: “Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”

I recommend Great Expectations just for these two characters, though I suppose the other stuff is good too. Dickens is Dickens after all.