Category: read in 2021
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True Colors by Kristin Hannah
“What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. . . . In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression . . . The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we […]
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The Assignment by Liza M. Wiemer
For students, speaking out against any injustice, especially when adults are involved, can be a formidable task. But it’s crucial, life-changing, and perhaps even life saving. – Liza M. Wiemer Review: The Assignment by Liza M. Wiemer is one of the most underrated and underhyped books of 2020, or of this decade so far. It’s […]
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A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne
“Where do [writers] get [their] ideas? And the answer is that no one knows where the come from and nobody should know. They evolve in thin air, they float down from some mysterious heaven, and we reach and grab one, to grasp in our imagination, and to make it our own. One writer might overhear […]
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The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer
“The stars! All those nuclear explosions sending out light waves, a very few of whose fate is to dissipate on my retinas. I look into the voids in between, a nothingness more absolute than any vacuum on Earth. In space, without any atmosphere to cloud my view, even that void resolves into more distant pricks […]
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Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro
“Anger is a gift. Remember that.” She stood. “You gotta grasp onto it, hold it tight and use it as ammunition. You use that anger to get things done instead of just stewing in it.” – Mark Oshiro, “Anger is a Gift” Review: Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro opens with our main character […]
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The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
“There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it […]
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The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
“It’s easy to forget how wondrous humans are, how strange and lovely. Through photography and art, each of us has seen things we’ll never see – the surface of Mars, the bioluminescent fish of the deep ocean, a seventeenth-century girl with a pearl earring. Through empathy, we’ve felt things we might never have otherwise felt. […]