Reviews Posted This Week

Waking Up White by Debby Irving


The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

Reading Now

The Miseducation of Cameron PostThe Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth

When Cameron Post’s parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief. Relief they’ll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl.

But that relief doesn’t last, and Cam is soon forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone (as her grandmother might say), and Cam becomes an expert at both.

Then Coley Taylor moves to town. Beautiful, pickup-driving Coley is a perfect cowgirl with the perfect boyfriend to match. She and Cam forge an unexpected and intense friendship–one that seems to leave room for something more to emerge. But just as that starts to seem like a real possibility, ultrareligious Aunt Ruth takes drastic action to “fix” her niece, bringing Cam face-to-face with the cost of denying her true self–even if she’s not exactly sure who that is.  (From Goodreads)

I had started reading this and was going to put it aside because it was slow moving but then I heard that it had been banned from a summer reading list in one school district.  Interestingly, the objection to the book was that there was profanity in it, not that it is about teenage lesbianism.  Is this progress in a warped way?

Still Listening To:

Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth-Century to Modern TimesServants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth-Century to Modern Times by Lucy Lethbridge

I’m at the part in this book where (SPOILER ALERT) women are getting uppity and don’t want to go into service for their betters anymore.  It is such a tragedy.  How will the aristocracy survive?