Ms. Angell's Reading Recommendations
I have been an avid reader since childhood; I often say, living through Michigan winters as an only child in the 1970s meant I had a lot of time to spend by myself. But I was never alone, because I had my books to keep me company. As a child, the Trixie Belden books were my favorite; I loved the mysteries and that they were a series of books, so there were plenty of them to read.
In high school, I started to read romance novels, like those written by Danielle Steele.
The funny thing is that today I don't really read mysteries, I don't like series of books, and I never read romance novels. My taste in books has greatly changed!
Today, I prefer historical fiction, literary fiction, non-fiction (autobiographical) and sometimes a young adult book really grabs my attention.
What books do I recommend?
Here are some of the books that I have liked reading. There are both fiction and non-fiction.
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Seventeen-year-old Camila "Furia" Hassan navigates a world of lies in Rosario, Argentina. At home she plays the respectful and innocent daughter who is dedicated to learning English and attending medical school. Obedient to her abusive father, loyal to her rising-soccer-star brother and dedicated to her overwhelmed mother, Camila does not show her true colors. The headstrong Latina has dreams of her own: To earn a scholarship to a university and play soccer in the United States, to stick up for women's rights in her beloved hometown, and to pursue her own relationship with Rosario's local soccer hero and international heartthrob Diego "El Titan" Ferrari. Through Camila's first-person narrative, readers learn about her conflicting feelings as a daughter, athlete, and friend, while she struggles to define her priorities. With a mix of Spanish words, vivid dialogue, and rich description, Mendez paints a realistic image of a young woman battling to become herself against the odds. (From School Library Journal)
This is the best Young Adult novel that I have read recently. I really liked the main character, Camila, and how she deals with the struggles and conflicts in her life. The story has a big focus on soccer, and even though I am not a fan of soccer, I really enjoyed reading the book.
Eleanor is the new girl in town, and with her chaotic family life, her mismatched clothes and unruly red hair, she couldn't stick out more if she tried.
Park is the boy at the back of the bus. Black T-shirts, headphones, head in a book - he thinks he's made himself invisible. But not to Eleanor... never to Eleanor.
Slowly, steadily, through late-night conversations and an ever-growing stack of mix tapes, Eleanor and Park fall for each other. They fall in love the way you do the first time, when you're young, and you feel as if you have nothing and everything to lose. (From Goodreads.com)
Eleanor and Park is one of my favorite Young Adult novels. Perhaps I like it so much because it's set in the 80s when I was in high school or maybe it's because of the references to songs and the music that brings them together. It's a great story and I'd love to hear what you think the "3 words" are at the end of the story!
Marisa Silver takes Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” photograph as inspiration for a breathtaking reinvention—a story of two women, one famous and one forgotten, and of the remarkable legacy of their chance encounter.
In 1936, a young mother resting by the side of a road in Central California is spontaneously photographed by a woman documenting the migrant laborers who have taken to America’s farms in search of work. Little personal information is exchanged, and neither woman has any way of knowing that they have produced what will become the most iconic image of the Great Depression.
Three vibrant characters anchor the narrative of Mary Coin. Mary, the migrant mother herself, who emerges as a woman with deep reserves of courage and nerve, with private passions and carefully-guarded secrets. Vera Dare, the photographer wrestling with creative ambition who makes the choice to leave her children in order to pursue her work. And Walker Dodge, a present-day professor of cultural history, who discovers a family mystery embedded in the picture. (From Goodreads.com)
What I love about the premise of Mary Coin is that the author chose to create a story based on such a well known photograph. She weaves together three characters' stories wonderfully and it was a page-turner until the end.
The host of The Daily Show, Trevor Noah, tells the story of growing up half black, half white in South Africa under and after apartheid in this young readers' adaptation of his bestselling adult memoir Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood.
Trevor Noah shares his story of growing up in South Africa, with a black South African mother and a white European father at a time when it was against the law for a mixed-race child like him to exist. But he did exist--and from the beginning, the often-misbehaved Trevor used his smarts and humor to navigate a harsh life under a racist government. (From Goodreads.com)
There are two versions of Noah's autobiography; this is the YA version. Both this and the original are great! I appreciated learning about South Africa, Noah's experiences growing up there and his wonderful narrative voice. He made me laugh out loud with some of the tales he told!
Father Gregory J. Boyle is a native of Los Angeles, a Jesuit priest, and founder of Homeboy Industries, an economic development and jobs program begun in 1988 for at-risk and gang-involved youth. "A great many kids in my neighborhood don't plan their futures; they plan their funerals." G-Dog and the Homeboys presents the story of Boyle's unconventional ministry and its extraordinary successes. In this expanded, updated edition, Celeste Fremon has returned to East L.A. to report on gang members she first profiled fifteen years ago. Using their individual stories as models, she examines what policy makers should know about gang intervention now, years later. (From Amazon.com)
I read this book many years ago after reading an article about Father Greg Boyle, whom the "Homeboys" call "G-Dog." Learning about Father Boyle's drive and determination to create Homeboy Industries and make it a place for former gang members to thrive was greatly inspiring to me. But what I appreciated even more were the short narratives told from the Homeboys' perspectives, that the author intersperses throughout the book, as the book is as much about them as it is about Father Boyle.
After the successful expansion of Homeboy Industries, Boyle returns with Barking to the Choir to reveal how compassion is transforming the lives of gang members. In a nation deeply divided and plagued by poverty and violence, Barking to the Choir offers a snapshot into the challenges and joys of life on the margins. Gently and humorously, Barking to the Choir invites us to find kinship with one another and reconvinces us all of our own goodness. (From Amazon.com)
I have had the pleasure to hear Father Boyle speak and tell his stories in person. Several years ago, after his first book Tattoos on the Heart (which is also a recommendation), I had the honor of meeting him. He is a great storyteller and his message about kinship is very important.
After the sudden collapse of her family, Mim Malone is dragged from her home in northern Ohio to the "wastelands" of Mississippi, where she lives in a medicated milieu with her dad and new stepmom. Before the dust has a chance to settle, she learns her mother is sick back in Cleveland.
So she ditches her new life and hops aboard a northbound Greyhound bus to her real home and her real mother, meeting a quirky cast of fellow travelers along the way. But when her thousand-mile journey takes a few turns she could never see coming, Mim must confront her own demons, redefining her notions of love, loyalty, and what it means to be sane. (From Goodreads.com)
This YA book was a page turner for me, as I felt like I was on her journey with her. Many reluctant readers have enjoyed this book and read it much faster than they usually read, because they wanted to find out what would happen with Mim.
Danny's tall and skinny. Even though he’s not built, his arms are long enough to give his pitch a power so fierce any college scout would sign him on the spot. Ninety-five mile an hour fastball, but the boy’s not even on a team. Every time he gets up on the mound he loses it.
But at his private school, they don’t expect much else from him. Danny’ s brown. Half-Mexican brown. And growing up in San Diego that close to the border means everyone else knows exactly who he is before he even opens his mouth. Before they find out he can’t speak Spanish, and before they realize his mom has blond hair and blue eyes, they’ve got him pegged. But it works the other way too. And Danny’s convinced it’s his whiteness that sent his father back to Mexico.
That’s why he’s spending the summer with his dad’s family. Only, to find himself, he may just have to face the demons he refuses to see--the demons that are right in front of his face. And open up to a friendship he never saw coming.
Not only did I really like this YA book, but, more importantly, my students have really liked it. For several students, who told me they didn't like to read, this was the first and only book that they read all the way to the end because they couldn't put it down. (They even asked to borrow it and take it home.) This is a new copy; the first one I had was read so many times, the cover fell off.
Ex-NFL player, gentleman scholar, and Fox Sports personality Marcellus Wiley sucks you into a world of inner-city violence, Ivy League intrigue, and pro-football escapades that's one part touching, one part hilarious, and all parts impossible to put down.
Marcellus Wiley has never had a problem expressing his opinion, whether it was growing up in Compton with a football tucked under his arm, or going to college at Columbia University, where he learned to survive Advanced Calculus and self-important pseudo-intellectuals. Or making it to the NFL against all odds, where he put together a ten-year career of massive paydays, massive painkillers, and massive sacks of everyone from Steve Young to Peyton Manning.
Now, in Never Shut Up, Fox Sports' hottest rising persona doesn't hold back as he goes off on everything that's controversial with the game today, from concussions to political protests to inherent violence that's worse than the hood he grew up in. Not because he hates football, but because he wants to save it. (From Amazon.com)
Honestly, I am not a fan of football, but when I read of review of Wiley's book, I was interested and bought it. A student of mine, who was on West's football team, was a reluctant reader- but once he started reading this book, he couldn't put it down. After that I knew I had to read it. The language was written for a mature audience but the story is definitely for high school students. I loved Wiley's story and was incredibly inspired by it. I told him so when I met him the following year!
A memoir of one young man’s coming of age on a journey across America--told through the stories of the people of all ages, races, and inclinations he meets along the way.
Life is fast, and I’ve found it’s easy to confuse the miraculous for the mundane, so I’m slowing down, way down, in order to give my full presence to the extraordinary that infuses each moment and resides in every one of us.
At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read "Walking to Listen." He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn’t know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide.In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt. But he also encountered incredible kindness from strangers. Thousands shared their stories with him, sometimes confiding their prejudices, too. Often he didn’t know how to respond. How to find unity in diversity? How to stay connected, even as fear works to tear us apart? He listened for answers to these questions, and to the existential questions every human must face, and began to find that the answer might be in listening itself. Ultimately, it’s the stories of others living all along the roads of America that carry this journey and sing out in a hopeful, heartfelt book about how a life is made, and how our nation defines itself on the most human level. (from Amazon.com)
I rarely ever read a book twice, but this one I did and loved it just as much the second time. This true story of Andrew's journey, walking across the United States and hearing people's stories along the way, is wonderfully written and very engaging. It's funny and emotional; it's also insightful and illustrates situations for the reader to ponder. I didn't want it to end, so when Andrew arrived at the beach is California, I wanted him travel north to keep the adventures going so I could continue reading his story!
The moving true story of a group of young men growing up on Chicago's West side who form the first all-Black high school rowing team in the nation, and in doing so not only transform a sport, but their lives.
Growing up on Chicago’s Westside in the 90’s, Arshay Cooper knows the harder side of life. The street corners are full of gangs, the hallways of his apartment complex are haunted by drug addicts he calls “zombies” with strung out arms, clutching at him as he passes by. His mother is a recovering addict, and his three siblings all sleep in a one room apartment, a small infantry against the war zone on the street below.
Arshay keeps to himself, preferring to write poetry about the girl he has a crush on, and spends his school days in the home-ec kitchen dreaming of becoming a chef. And then one day as he’s walking out of school he notices a boat in the school lunchroom, and a poster that reads “Join the Crew Team”.
Having no idea what the sport of crew is, Arshay decides to take a chance. This decision to join is one that will forever change his life, and those of his fellow teammates. As Arshay and his teammates begin to come together to learn how to row--many never having been in water before--the sport takes them from the mean streets of Chicago, to the hallowed halls of the Ivy League. But Arshay and his teammates face adversity at every turn, from racism, gang violence, and a sport that has never seen anyone like them before.
A Most Beautiful Thing is the inspiring true story about the most unlikely band of brothers that form a family, and forever change a sport and their lives for the better. (from Amazon.com)
Great true story of Arshay taking a chance on something unknown (joining Crew Team). Arshay is a great storyteller: he will draw you in so you will want to know what happens with him, his friends and his crew team. Arshay shows us that even when life is challenging, we need to try our best to keep moving forward.
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom.
These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.
Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.
(from Amazon.com)
I was initially hesitant to read this book because the premise of it revolves around gaming, which is not something I am interested in and do not know anything about it. But, I was wrong. Gaming plays a role in the story, like a character. It brings the people together, helps make friendships, causes conflict and is something I learned to appreciate. The writing of this story drew me in and kept me interested until the end.
Sara Foster runs away from home at sixteen, leaving behind the girl she once was, capable of trust and intimacy. Years later, in Los Angeles, she is a sought-after bartender, renowned as much for her brilliant cocktails as for the mystery that clings to her. Across the city, Emilie Dubois is in a holding pattern, yearning for the beauty and community her Creole grandparents cultivated but unable to commit. On a whim, she takes a job arranging flowers at the glamorous restaurant Yerba Buena.
The morning Emilie and Sara first meet at Yerba Buena, their connection is immediate. But soon Sara's old life catches up to her, upending everything she thought she wanted, just as Emilie has finally gained her own sense of purpose. Will their love be more powerful than their pasts?
At once exquisite and expansive, astonishing in its humanity and heart, Yerba Buena is a testament to the healing qualities of a shared meal, a perfectly crafted drink, a space we claim for ourselves. Nina LaCour’s adult debut novel is a love story for our time.
(from Amazon.com)
I really liked Nina LaCour's YA book We Are Okay, so I decided this novel and I am so glad I did. Wonderful story of love and friendship between two women who are both struggling to be their best selves. LaCour's writing is engaging and easy to follow along so I read this book in just a couple of days. There's a bit of mystery in the story as well, which held my attention because I wanted to find out what happened.
Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.
Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.
(from Amazon.com)
This novel blew me away. Had I read it prior to Covid, it would have seemed so far-fetched (hence the sci-fi/dystopian label of it.) But, when I read it in 2023, I was taken aback by so many things that reminded me of when we were initially locked down in 2020. The story and writing are captivating. It's a complex read because the author jumps around in the timeline. I found myself often paging back to earlier parts of the book to make connections. It's a book I want to read again.