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@midtownmoodreader

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🍎 High school English teacher
♥️ Mom to Tucker (🐶) and Marlo (👶🏻)
📚 Soft spots for literary fiction, YA, and poetry
📍 Harrisburg, PA

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It may not be my best work, but here’s my entry for @uvahoogirl’s Imagination Library fundraiser! In the spirit of Dolly, we’ve got butterflies, books about kindness, and books that support children’s literacy. 📚

Today is the last day of the fundraiser, and for every book stack that encompasses Dolly in some way, Erica will donate $3 to the Imagination Library. I can’t think of a better way to honor her legacy. 🦋 taken in BOOKSTA by @midtownmoodreader

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2 days ago

“Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.” —Isaac Asimov

ICYMI, October 4-10 is Banned Books Week! I currently have two banned books on my mind: THE ROUND HOUSE by Louise Erdrich (the book I’m currently reading) and SPEAK by Laurie Halse Anderson (the book I’m prepping to teach).

Have you read either of these? Which banned books are up next on your TBR? They really do make a phenomenal reading list! taken in BOOKSTA by @midtownmoodreader

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4 days ago

Book Review: GIRL’S GIRL by Sonia Feldman

Thank you @outofprint and @thedialpress for the giveaway win!

This was my last summer read (alas, I suspended my holds on my unread Annabel Monaghan romances until next summer). I was eager to get to it since @booksandbrioche_ has been talking it up for months!

While I didn’t love it quite as much, I still think this is an impressive debut and recommend it if you want to feel something (specifically nostalgia). While Mina’s experiences are different than my own, Feldman manages to capture something essential about girlhood and the friendships you have when you’re fifteen. There was a line that struck me: “It’s unusual in life to live in walking distance of anyone you love.” Especially in this past year postpartum, I’ve often thought about how much I miss the days when my village wasn’t so far flung.

The writing, tone, and atmosphere of this book are all strengths, but my favorite thing was the experience of reading it, if that makes sense—the way it prompted me to reminisce on days when a fair was an Occasion and we had to coordinate rides to and from, when we would do our makeup for the sake of a photoshoot, when an evening or a weekend would loom ahead with no definitive plans but so much possibility.

I also loved the mother-daughter dynamic, which rang true. It was interesting to read this at a time when I’m solidly in between them—I was in Mina’s shoes seventeen years ago, and I’ll be in her mother’s in fourteen. I can only hope to be as steady as her mother (and to have a daughter as honest 😅).

Even though the dog days of summer are behind us, it’s still a perfect time of year for this one! taken in BOOKSTA by @midtownmoodreader

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7 days ago

Mentally, I’m here. I love raising a reader. 💜

For my other Bookstagram parents: what books are/were your kids’ favorites? Marlo discovers new favorites every month, but she’s currently on a LITTLE BLUE TRUCK kick! by @midtownmoodreader

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13 days ago

Happy Monday, friends 🫶 I’m dreaming of being back on my couch with any one of these books. What are you reading this week? taken in BOOKSTA by @midtownmoodreader

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20 days ago

✨ TBR Confessions / Backlist Books ✨

Thank you to @annieinthepages and @booksandbrioche_ for tagging me in this challenge! Here are five backlist books I keep meaning to read. I can’t believe I still haven’t read HOMEGOING. 🫣

What book(s) would you prioritize? taken in BOOKSTA by @midtownmoodreader

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22 days ago

Book Review: THE RENOVATION by Kenan Orhan

This is the first book from this year’s Booker Prize longlist that I’ve read, and I can see why it made the list! Orhan does so much here—this book would stand up to multiple rereads, and readers would find something new to appreciate each time. I need to get my hands on a physical copy, especially since I can see this appearing in my top ten favorites of the year. 👀

Going into it, I knew that the book would center on a woman whose home renovation unexpectedly resulted in her bathroom becoming a portal to a prison cell in Turkey. What I didn’t know was that much of the storyline would also focus on her father’s mental decline and the political situation in Turkey that led to her family’s exile in Italy.

In this way, Orhan prompted me to consider the ways in which dementia, caregiving, and exile are each akin to their own form of prison. As the story progresses, the main character, Dilara, finds herself spending more and more time in her bathroom prison cell. At first, her father’s lapses in memory make Turkey feel present to her, but as he withdraws further into himself, she relies on the other inmates and the magic of the cell itself to conjure up the country she lost, especially when faced with evidence of her own misremembering.

THE RENOVATION reminded me of EXIT WEST (perhaps my all-time favorite Booker nominee) in the way it uses magical realism to explore memory and displacement. How Dilara’s bathroom transformed into an extension of Silivri Prison is never explained, but I didn’t feel like it needed to be. It simply is, and Orhan uses his narrative prowess to instead explore the ramifications of this blip in the universe that connects her new home to the prison they fled to escape. I found the ending to be both surprising and inevitable, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

Have you read this one yet? I highly recommend it. I found myself marking more passages in this book than in any other book I’ve read this year—swipe through to see some standout quotes! taken in BOOKSTA by @midtownmoodreader

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25 days ago

Book Review: WAYFARERS by Jeff Zentner and Brittany Cavallaro

I read SUNRISE NIGHTS by Zentner and Cavallaro last summer and loved it, so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on WAYFARERS! With lines like “I was tired of a freedom that gave no breath to love,” this one is just as good.

The book centers on Knox and Sylvie, teenagers who have more in common than it initially appears. Knox has lived a nomadic lifestyle, but since turning eighteen, he has decided to leave his “family” and their shared bus behind in order to put down roots. Meanwhile, Sylvie has uprooted herself from a life of privilege in order to spend the summer between high school and college traveling the country in a converted Sprinter van. After an encounter at a campsite results in Knox breaking his arm, Sylvie offers to drive him back to the hometown he hasn’t seen in over a decade.

I love how Zentner and Cavallaro capture the experience of striking out on your own for the first time and figuring out who you are when everything else falls away. The fact that Knox and Sylvie each find themselves in the company of a stranger gives them additional questions to consider: What do they want to reveal about their pasts? Will they still be accepted if their secrets are laid bare?

While I marked more quotes from Knox’s chapters, I found Sylvie’s story more compelling, particularly the exploration of how guilt can complicate grief. The book’s structure, which mimics that of SUNRISE NIGHTS, also worked for me; I loved getting each character’s thoughts in verse and having those chapters interspersed with their conversations in prose.

It felt appropriate to take photos of this one with my best boy, not only because of Winslow—Sylvie’s four-legged traveling companion—but also because this book has solidified that I can trust the lives of fictional dogs in Zentner’s hands (iykyk).

And thank you to @mrd_reads for posting about the Distortly app in Canva! This cover is too beautiful to be rendered in black and white. taken in BOOKSTA by @midtownmoodreader

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a month ago

✨August Wrap-Up ✨

August was a big month: my husband and I had our first overnight getaway since we had our daughter, I returned to work after taking a year off, and our daughter started daycare. Our household has also been plagued by a multitude of illnesses thanks to said daycare (and the germy high schoolers I now encounter on a daily basis). 😅

BUT it was a great month for reading! My favorite was EXIT PARTY by Emily St. John Mandel, which hits shelves on 9/15. I absolutely plan to snag a finished copy.

I also read more physical books than audiobooks for the first time this year, and I recommend them all! I even dusted off my Kindle to read ELENA KNOWS and WAYFARERS. And if you haven’t read THE UNSELECTED JOURNALS OF EMMA M. LION yet, consider this your sign. Volume 6 was a delight.

What was your favorite read in August? by @midtownmoodreader

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a month ago

Book Review: DEFIANCE by Loubna Mrie

Last week, I finished this book on Monday night; on Tuesday morning, I was thrilled to see it listed among the six finalists for the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction. The honor is well-deserved. DEFIANCE is one of the best memoirs I’ve read in a long time.

Back when I worked in radio, I interviewed Abdalaziz “Aziz” Alhamza, the co-founder and spokesperson for Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a group of civilian journalists who worked to expose the crimes of ISIS in Raqqa, Syria. I thought I was familiar with Syria’s plight and the risks civilian journalists were taking. Mrie’s memoir made me realize how much I didn’t know.

Mrie details life in Syria during the Assad regime, the Syrian revolution, and ISIS’s rise to power. She reveals how many layers there are to this story; for example, Mrie is an Alawite, a term I hadn’t heard before. The Alawite sect was especially loyal to Assad and his family, many believing Assad (a fellow Alawite) was the only thing standing between them and religious persecution.

That Mrie is an Alawite—and that her father had government ties—makes her journey of unlearning all the more impressive. As she recounts it, she provides necessary context to understand the political landscape without ever bogging down the narrative. She also makes some creative choices that had the English teacher in me reaching for my sticky notes (that tense shift 👀). All of this is to say that, at the level of craft, this book is masterfully written.

And the story itself—Mrie’s activism has come at a staggering personal cost. I can’t imagine how difficult this book was to write. I could say more, but I really just need you to pick up this book and read it. Thank you to @jcgrenn, whose review of Anand Gopal’s DAYS OF LOVE AND RAGE (which is on my TBR) sparked a conversation that led to @loubnamrie reaching out and getting this book in my hands. Thank you to @vikingbooks for sending me a finished copy. In the past week, I’ve lost track of how many times my mind has wandered back to DEFIANCE, and I hope to see it win come October. ♥️ taken in BOOKSTA by @midtownmoodreader

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a month ago

Happy Saturday ♥️ by @midtownmoodreader

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a month ago

Book Review: THE GREAT WHEREVER by Shannon Sanders

Let’s hear it for the debuts! 👏 THE GREAT WHEREVER is one of the most original family sagas I’ve read in a while. Keylor Leigh does a fantastic job bringing the narrator’s warmth and humor to life, so I highly recommend the audiobook. I was hooked from the moment it opened with a ghost talking about underboob. 😂

Here’s the premise: the narrator is one of four multigenerational ghosts tied to a family farm in Tennessee. Each ghost had been intended to inherit a stake in the property but died before they got the chance; now, they are able to snoop on their living relatives—anyone who is named one of the farm’s current owners—from the other side.

One of these owners is 32-year-old Aubrey Lamb. She inherited a stake in the farm following the death of her father, and after her boyfriend of four years breaks up with her the night she expects to get engaged, she decides to take a trip to see the farm for the first time, meet the relatives she shares it with, and discuss what to do regarding a land sale proposal.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that Aubrey is a hot mess. She seems young for her age (speaking as a fellow 32-year-old 😅). But while hot mess characters don’t always work for me, Sanders wrote Aubrey well. I think it helped to have her actions relayed by a gossipy ghost who shared in my judgment.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t say that my favorite thing about the book is its narrative structure. Chapters weave in and out of the past as Aubrey’s relatives—living and nonliving alike—relay their family’s history, and I enjoyed the way the pieces came together as I realized how everyone was connected. Buzzy books can be hit or miss, and while this one hasn’t become a new favorite, it still falls in the former category for me.

Thank you to @librofm and @macmillan.audio for the ALC! taken in BOOKSTA by @midtownmoodreader

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a month ago