Transitive Verve

“I never loved reading until I feared I would lose it. One does not love breathing.”   News of Harper Lee's passing broke today, and I want to take this time to pay my respects to her and to one of my favorite, most cherished books of all time. I first read this book as a high school student, and while I enjoyed it then, I couldn't have realized at the time the tremendous impact it would have on me until well over a decade later, when I became a teacher myself and taught it to my own students. What can I say about this book that hasn't already been said? It is a life-changing novel about racism, justice (or lack thereof), empathy, and kindness. It's also a novel about growing up. It's a novel about a certain type of loss of innocence, one that involves learning hard truths about the people around us, but that also asks us not to harden our hearts. "If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all ...

I found out today that Jonathan Crombie, who played Gilbert Blythe in the three tv movie adaptations of Anne of Green Gables , passed away a few days ago . I never saw him in anything else (though I hear he was a wonderful, talented actor and a kind, warm person), but I'm feeling sadness all the same, because he wasn't just an actor playing a role - he was the physical embodiment of a most beloved character and one half of possibly my favorite romantic pairing in all of literature. When I was young, my parents went through spurts when they decided that we shouldn't have cable, but when we did, I would sometimes catch this movie about this red-headed girl who cracked a slate over a boy's head when he called her "Carrots." And then she would keep getting in trouble in funny ways, like when she tried to dye her hair black, but then it turned green, or when she accidentally got her best friend drunk. I got so swept up in the story, and I would keep tuning int...

This is my new book blog! How exciting! And what better way to kick off something new than to... dig up old stuff :) Because I want them tagged here, I'm going to link to my book-related reviews and things from my personal blog in this post, just so they can show up in my archives somehow. Because Blogger only lets me have 200 characters' worth of tags at a time, here is part 1 of 2 of my bookish archives, starting with my book reviews: Me effusing about Pride and Prejudice  for its 200th anniversary Thoughts on Vampire Academy  by Richelle Mead Thoughts on Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl  and Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Things I actually enjoyed about the Twilight  series And then a link list of Twilight  snark that I also enjoy :) Thoughts on the mangas based on Gail Carriger's first 3 Parasol Protectorate  books, and the first 4 books of JR Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood  books Thoughts on Gail Carriger's short st...