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What Makes a Great Field Guide? My Favorite Nature Books!
This past weekend, I was teaching a group of kids how to use field guides to identify and learn about the things you find in nature, and in developing this lesson, I had the chance to dig into some of my favorite nature guides and nature-ish books (and ended up ordering a few I wish I had!). If you have never thought much about this before, or donāt think you will be interested, donāt worry! Below there will be traditional guidebooks, but there are also chickens, some information about Sasquatch, and some poetry as well. Overall, the field guide-type books I love tend to fall into two categories. First, I…
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Recent Book Award Winners: More Great Books for your TBR!
Hello Everyone, Award season is truly here, and much as books have their own March Madness events, the movie award season is paralleled by a whole host of book awards! These awards included the American Library Association awards, the NAACP awards, and the PEN America awards, and, as usual, I have even more exciting books to add to my TBR. Below are a few of the ones I am the most intrigued by, but you can find updated award lists for all the awards given on my Current Book Awards page. Winner of the Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang This book is a…
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It’s Tournament of Books Time: Enjoy March Madness With Books (and cute pets)!
Hello everyone, This Saturday, I have a fun event to share with you. It’s one I follow almost every year, and it is called the Tournament of Books! This fun competition highlights 16 books that came out in the previous year, and pits them against each-other in a March Madness style bracket. The books are often award winners, but often they include books that have been overlooked or seemed to “genre” to get major attention, so it is a fun mix. Most “face-offs” are a decision made by one reviewer who reads both books and decides which one they connect with most, so the decisions are specific and interesting. What…
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February Reads: For The Love of Cozy Books
I don’t think I’m saying anything groundbreaking when I say that February often just kinda sucks. It’s dark and wet and cold, but summer is just too far off to look forward to. This past month hasn’t been terrible for me, but it has felt disjointed, incredibly busy, generally tough, and I honestly did not have the time or the focus to really connect with a book. However, over the last week or so, I have felt a shift and had the most lovely series of book moments, all centered around the kind of cozy, sweet books that feel like a cup of tea and a warm blanket (there was…
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Book Bans: Why We Need to Care
Hello Everyone, Did you know that in 2022, there were over 2000 individual book bans implemented in the United States, covering over 1500 titles? Today, I am hopping on the soapbox a bit to talk about the alarming level of book banning that is currently happening right now in the United States. We should all be angered by this, and even if we don’t live in areas where this is an issue, it is still something we can help fight. Before I share some articles which do a much more comprehensive and well-researched job of talking about this than I can, I wanted to share a personal story about this,…
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Reading and Climate Activism: What Young People Are Reading Now
A month or so ago, I came across a great article written by Kelly Jenson about what young climate activists are reading (and writing!) today. In light of the fact that Greta Thunberg has a book out this week, I wanted to share these additional climate books with you. I find it really interesting to see how the current young generation’s climate activism is subtly different than even the activism I was raised with, and I am curious to pick up some of the books below, especially the fiction books, to see what they are like. As an aside, Kelly Jenson, is also a writer and the editor of three…
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Looking Forward: TV and Movie Adaptations Coming out in 2023!
One of the (few) joys of the mind-numbing array of streaming platforms is that everyone seems to be looking for the next great adaptation, and a lot of great books are being made into TV shows or movies. There have been endless adaptations over the last few years, including Ann Cleeves murder mysteries, new and glossy Agatha Christie renditions, great space operas like The Expanse and literary classics like Pachinko, Kindred or Station Eleven. I think it is fair to say that some of these are wonderful additions to their worlds, and some of them are….not. Iām not necessarily an adaptation lover in general. For me to want to watch…
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January Reads: Leadership, New (and Old) Children’s Classics, and Great Non-Fiction
Hello Everyone, It is hard to believe that the first month of 2023 has already come and gone! This month has been hectic and stressful for me on a personal level, and I am hoping that February brings a little more clarity and sense of purpose. I am struggling to focus on reading right now, and I am recognizing that the next few months will perhaps be a little less full of books than I would like. That being said, I have a lot to share with you today. One of my goals for this year is to read more books I truly love and to figure out which books…
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More Award Winning Books: Adaptations, Interesting Narrators and More.
Hello everyone, Today I wanted to share a few books that have come out in recent years and received awards. I am always surprised by the number of books that I have never heard of when I look at award lists, and while it does get a big overwhelming, it also sometimes pushes books I have wanted to read higher up my TBR. Below are some of the ones I am interested in – if you want to learn more about the prospective awards, or find some books you might want to read, you can check out my full database of Current Book Award Winners as well. A Memory Called…
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Recent(ish) Award Winners: New Awards and Weird Books
I recently updated the Current Book Award Winners page of my website, which I try to do every few months (it’s been 2 years now…), and it was fun to see what has been getting the spotlight. Some I had read, some I had heard of, but many were new to me, which was fun! The page linked above looks at your standard mainstream book awards, but it also tracks book awards for specific formats, or that give awards for regional authors, genre book or authors and protagonists who have a typically underrepresented background, and you might have fun exploring some prizes that you didn’t know about! Today, I have…
because stories are important
