Rachel Reads & Reviews

Sharing books for everyone

  • Thoughts on Joan Didion

    I’m going to keep this short since this is probably an unpopular opinion, but I’m not sure what makes Didion so incredible. I just read Slouching Towards Bethlehem and Let Me Tell You What I Mean, and they were fine. They were essays/news articles about interesting people Didion interviewed or simply her reminscing over her life.

    I found it very hippie-ish which makes sense as was written in the late 60s and 70s so readers get a look into the drugs, feminism and other cultural changes coming about in the time through Didion’s eyes. So I guess it does confirm my idea that hippies do sound like that, contemplating life and philosphy and their inner self.

    So why did Didion sprang up as the voice of the 60s, surely she wasn’t the only reporter back then. Why did her voice amplify above the others? I can’t find that spark, so comment below on why or how Didion became so impactful!

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  • Author Highlight: Isabel Allende

    So I’ve finally read one of the greatest writers of our time, and I have to join the thousands that agree. My mom gifted me with her first, The House of Spirits, and latest books, Violeta respectively and they were beautiful.

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  • Can you name this forgotten book series?

    This has been driving me crazy.

    But it’s an elementary school series, think fifth grade, and it features a group of real life kids. Usually different in each book. And their adventures in whatever place the story is set. Like a haunted tour of San Francisco. The Iditorod Trail in Alaska. Disneyland and so forth. Usually adventure-mysteries. Never featured kids on the covers, just the location.

    So if you remember it, comment below!

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  • The Mortal Instruments Series Lookback

    Originally I was going to write one huge post after I finished all of Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunter universe books, but as it has been almost four years and I still have two books to go, I figured I should start writing now as I’m forgotting some of my original thoughts after four years. These things are entertaining but they are looong.

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  • Girls on Film Review

    Alicia Malone loves classic films and this memoir/film guide (more memoir than film guide though) shines a light on that abudently. As she says, people like to think of their lives as movies. In her case, her life has been influenced by the movies so much she is beginning to wonder if movies imitate life or if it’s the other way around.

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  • A Reason for Hope Review

    I have to tell a sort of funny story but when I skimmed the summary, I really skimmed. I thought this was a true, nonfictional story about a rape sruvivor, Tessa, her lawyer, Will and his comfort dog, Hope as they fight to put her rapist in jail. While falling in love by the way. Which writing it out now, sounds fictional but that’s why I thought it was a memoir. It was so romantic and heartwarming, it’s just the thing that people release memoirs about.

    Anyway, I didn’t realize it was fictional until the end of the book when I got to the book discussion questions. I mean I thought it was an odd choice to have the book be in third person, but hey, it was their memoir. I was wrong.

    As it is, it’s a good realistic fiction novel. It actually reminded me of Law and Order: SVU beginning when Tessa meets the charming (sociopathic) Nick Payne online and goes on a date with him. Two glasses of wine later, she wakes up in bed, sore and naked with a bad case of amnesia. While he is smarmy smirking at her about their “great” time last night, she gets up and confusedly leaves. Did they do it? Why can’t she remember. . .

    But her best friend quickly clears up her denial. Nick Payne may be charming and respectable but he drugged and raped her. So she files charges.
    Will is the quintessential good guy lawyer, even training and adopting a comfort dog, Hope, that comforts victims as they face assailiants in courts. He’s immediately intrigued by Tessa’s case and they get to work.

    The novel does a good job in portraying the confusion, denial, anger, trauma that comes from experiencing such a horrendous crime, and the pervasive shaming and trial that follows when the top pick for Town Council is accused of being a rapist. Tessa joins a support group whose chats, and diverse experiences help her and each other with processing what they’ve been through and healing. I also enjoy the realism in how the trial seems to stacked against her and even though justice is served, it is not to the full extent it could have been.

    Will was nice, shining as a good decent man for the novel. In fact, he was so good, I was suspicious about the lack of flaws but its wish fufillment. Though I feel like the romance could have taken out entirely. It was one-sided on Will’s part though he rues the inappropriateness as she’s his client, though Tessa apparently returns them three years later. Tessa’s POV was far more interesting and concerned with recovering form what happened and recieving justice and normalcy.

    I was a bit disappointed by the lack of Hope. She was there, and she was adorable, but she wasn’t as vital as the book summary and the cover implies.

    A nice realistic fiction for the summer.

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  • Book Highlight: Suite Scarlett

    This was the first book I read in the middle school library, and I have lked it ever since. It’s not too groundbreaking, it has the rather generic coming of age story of a teenage girl. Only hers is that she and the rest of their family are trying to save their dying hotel. It was glitz and glamour back in its heyday of the 1920s, but nowadays, the art deco style is its only appeal. The guests are few in between and they are desperately trying to appeal to the nostalgia crowd.

    So Scarlett’s summers seems to be pretty down in the dumps. While her friends are vacationing, she’s cleaning the Empire suite (each member of the family takes charge of a suite as a sort-of 15 year birthday present. Scarlett would have preferred an actual present than more work and responsibilty) and acting as a companion to the eccentric Ms. Amberson. An old-age actor who still lives like her life is a Hollywood filled drama.

    Which soon brings drama to Scarlett’s life when she falls in love for the first time with a burgeoning actor, Eric.

    But it’s not all Shakespeare in the park. There’s family drama too as she attempts to help her struggling actor brother, Spencer get his big break in ann alley-way Hamlet production. His last attempt at a success or else he’ll have to change careers according to their parents. There’s her older sister, Lola whom Scarlett loves but is distant as Lola drifts away from the family, hand in hand with her rich boyfriend, Chip. And there’s babysitting her little sister. A defiant little girl recovering from lekumia who makes it well-known she’d rather have the other two siblings rather than Scarlett.

    So yeah, lots of things happening in the book which is what makes it entertaining. I love the family dynamics here as it acknowledges they all have their favorite siblings and that favoritism can lead to personal conflicts with the other ones. Ms. Amberson is absolute hoot especially as she still gets into her grudge with her ex-friend that took Amberson’s audition spot to stardom. And the romance is sweet too I guess. I don’t really remember much of it.

    But it just goes to show, even though it’s the same ocming of age story, it’s how you style the dressing that makes it interesting.

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  • Book Highlight: Unbecoming

    This heartwarming YA novel explores three generations of women, and the secrets that burden them and twist their relationship with their daughters over the years.

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  • Stephanie Plum #6-10 ReRead

    Finally, I got around to reading #6-10 in the Stephanie Plum series, and wow, thngs happen.

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  • Book Highlight: The Lucky Ones

    This informative, passionate memoir follows Jenny Brown, founder and owner of Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary as she delves into her journey into animal rights, particularly farm animals and veganism.

    Beginning at age 10 when she was diagnosed with cancer, she had to have her leg amputated. Her mother sought to ease the pain a little by giving in and getting her a pet kitten whm she named Boogie. Not only did the animal ease the pain, physically and emotionally, it was the first brush with another being that caused Jenny to look outside herself. She began to think about animals, their intelligence/emotion and what we humans do to them. She resolved that she would take the best care of her kitten, and would go on to devote a career advocating for animal welfare.

    She admits that it wasn’t a smooth transition. When she was a teenager, she had worked at McDonalds, the dissociation between the chickens we eat and the living, breathing chickens still strong.

    But Brown has a way of digesting the information to informatively explain why it became important to her to go vegan as well as pointing the propoganda and brainwashing the corporate meat industries that encourage the rapid consumption of meats. Which is their point but it gets hard to swallow when she details what goes on in the factories and how they treat the animals.

    She pulls no punches, which is her goal as she describes the hell that these animals are forced into, and the fates that her rescued animals have almost escaped. It is horrible, and she brings up good points, one that struck me was:

    Some people feel sympathy for my animals as they are so intelligent, how could we let them be killed? I ask, even if the animal was dumb, does that give us the right to abuse and kill it as if it was a worthless life?

    As for Brown, I enjoy her voice. She admits that she can be overpassionate and emotional, part of her journey is learning to rein in that anger and sadness of fighting what seems like an endless battle. AS well as trying not to be like the aggressive PETA protester she is inside because she knows her argument will not be seen as strong. But that passion comes from a sincere place, plus she is humorous as she relates her fangirl moment of getting an email from Paul McCartney as well as the occasional embarassing moments like her prosthetic leg flying off during cheerleading. Plus she goes into detail of her work as a documentarian and the process in creating a educational farm sanctuary, showing all her hard work and the bounds of research she put into it.

    Additionally, she offers recipes, books, documentaries and websites for those interested in learning more about animal rights and veganism that I am planning to add to my TBR pile. Plus it really has made me consider trying out the vegan diet. Which I said the last time I read this, but this time I mean it.

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