Book Review: The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas

I loved The Hate U Give. 5/5 stars. Pacing I was incredibly impressed with the pacing. The book was hard to put down from the beginning, largely because each chapter had a conflict that needed to be resolved, with each chapter’s conflict flowing into the overall conflicts of the book. I don’t utilize conflict that…

Book Review: Piecing Me Together, by Renée Watson

Piecing Me Together was a bit slowly paced for me, but in the end I loved the book. 5/5 stars. Spoilers to follow. Pacing For the first half of the book, we watch Jade live her life. While we’re getting used to her reality, this is interesting. However, for me, this get-to-know-Jade period lasted too…

Decluttering Books: Making a Buying Plan

In a magical world with endless public libraries in every city, we would buy only the books we want in our personal Hall of Fame. We will have previously read these books, likely more than once, and know that we love them and that owning a copy of each will make our homes more joyful…

Decluttering Books: Donations and Joy-Sparks

Kondo says we want to focus on what to keep, not what to get rid of, which is generally a solid plan. But donating books is one of my favorite things, and it’s positive enough that in the case of donation, I think focusing on what I’m letting go is great. So here’s a post…

Decluttering Books: Personalizing the KonMari Method

As with recipes, I subscribe to the “try the advice and then change it as needed” approach. With books, I depart from Kondo’s philosophy on two main points.

Learning From How Dare the Sun Rise

How Dare the Sun Rise: Memoirs of a War Child, by Sandra Uwiringiyimana and Abigail Pesta, is a memoir about Sandra Uwiringiyimana’s experience with war, genocide, refugees, immigration, discrimination, mental health issues, and healing, among other things. I won’t spoil the book for you (go read it!), but I do want to talk about how…

The Quest of Eve: A Books-to-Life Essay

At the end of 2018, I sped-read through the Book of Mormon while paying attention only to the mentions of Jesus Christ. The following is a lyrical and spiritual essay I wrote at the beginning of this experience.

The Hufflepuff Files: Of Bears and Badgers

My mom, my sister, and my youngest brother definitely have some good Hufflepuff qualities, which have inspired today’s post. Let me know in the comments what you’ve learned from people with different personalities.

How to Find Your True Hogwarts House: Part 3, Your Hogwarts Home

This post comes at you about a month late because life happened, but onward we press. Now that I’ve shown you how the Sorting system is stupid, we’ll finally discuss how fans have reformed it and how you can choose your House. Sorting Quiz Evolution As most people reading this post know, for years before…