Category: 4 Star Books
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Oreo by Fran Ross
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Book Title: Oreo Author: Fran Ross Year Published: Originally 1974, reprinted in 2015 Publisher: New Directions Pagecount: 240 Rating: 4/5 It’s witty, dirty, socially smart and a little bit visionary, but no one’s heard of it. At least until now… Oreo didn’t get a lot of attention when it was first published in 1974 by…
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Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Book Title: Go Set a Watchman Author: Harper Lee Year Published: 2015 (written in the 1950s) Publisher: HarperCollins Rating: 4/5 Go Set a Watchman is Harper Lee’s recently published first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird. Tonja Carter, Lee’s lawyer, found the manuscript in a safe-deposit box in Lee’s hometown. Since Harper Lee is now…
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A Brother’s Price by Wen Spencer
Wen Spencer’s A Brother’s Price is the story of a boy named Jerin who falls in love with a girl named Ren. It’s set in a vaguely Victorian/Wild-West/Steampunk alternate history where the ratio of boys to girls is 10:1 (because of some hand-wavey genetic quirk, more girls are born than boys). It’s an interesting world…
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Tomboy by Liz Prince
Reviewer’s Note: I sometimes read modern books. This one was published in 2014! Tomboy is a graphic novel memoir by Liz Prince. In it, she talks about her experiences growing up as a girl who doesn’t fit the standards for behavior and appearance that society expects girls to meet. She writes about hating to wear…
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Atlas Shrugged – Review, Summary, and Quotations Guide
So, a little over two months ago, I started reading Atlas Shrugged. It’s a book my Dad has been suggesting I read for almost ten years, and since I’m currently unemployed and don’t have any more college reading to do, I figured I’d buckle down and git ‘er done. What I found is that Atlas…
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The Martian by Andy Weir
The Martian by Andy Weir is one of those rare cases of indie success that’s turned into mainstream success. Weir wrote the book for fans of his personal website, and thought his book would appeal mostly to hardcore science nerds. When a reader suggested he put it up as an ebook on Amazon, it climbed…
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The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
H.G. Wells is my favorite author, but when I tried to read this in high school I had to put it down after a few chapters. The first bit of it is extremely slow and if you’re not reading it closely it comes off as very racist. I must have been really tired the first…
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Wraeththu: The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit
Wraeththu was one of my favorite books in high school so I decided to revisit it for nostalgia’s sake, and to examine what it is about the book that attracts me so much. After reading it again and reading others’ reviews of it, I realize it’s a little problematic and the plot is sketchy, but I…
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Drift by Jim Miller
Jim Miller’s “Drift” is a collection of short vignettes about San Diego through the eyes of many different people. It is a sampling of different backgrounds and ideologies and how these flavor the way each individual sees the world. Every chapter switches point-of-view, which adds richness to the story. The impression that you walk away…