Karenschoice books

book info: on sale: now copy from: library pages: review written: 6.1.14 edition read: originally published: 2005 The acclaimed New York Times series on social class in America--and its implications for the way we live our lives We Americans have long thought of ourselves as unburdened by class distinctions. We have no hereditary aristocracy or landed gentry, and even the poorest among us feel that they can become rich through education, hard work, or sheer gumption. And yet social class remains a powerful force in American life. In Class Matters, a team of New York Times reporters explores the ways in which class--defined as a combination of income, education, wealth, and occupation--influences destiny in a society that likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity. We meet individuals in Kentucky and Chicago who have used education to lift themselves out of poverty and others in Virginia and Washington whose lack of education holds them back. We meet an upper-middle-class family ...

book info: on sale: now copy from: libary pages: 95-96 review written: 6.1.14 edition read: G.P. Putnam's Sons, NY originally published: 1986 The Enchanter is the Ur-Lolita, the precursor to Nabokov's classic novel. At once hilarious and chilling, it tells the story of an outwardly respectable man and his fatal obsession with certain pubescent girls, whose coltish grace and subconscious coquetry reveal, to his mind, a special bud on the verge of bloom. (Summary from goodreads ) My thoughts: The Enchanter is a short novel written by Vladimir Nabokov as is classified as Russian literature and as a classic. The title "The Enchanter" is a nickname that the protagonist gives himself in a certain scene with a pubescent girl. Nabokov wrote a pre-face describing this book as a precursor to Lolita . He called it "a beautiful piece of Russian prose, precise and lucid...". I have to agree with him on that part. Now, the book covers were all really...unfitting for as st...

book info: on sale: now copy from: public library pages: 390 review written: 5.1.14 edition read: paperback Vintage Books, Random House originally published: 2003 Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larsen's spell-binding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men--the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World's Fair, striving to secure America's place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling. Erik Larsen has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction. My thoughts: The Devil in the White City is written by Erik Larson--a non-fiction, historical novel spiced up with murder mystery. The title incoroporates the two halves of the book: the Devil and the White City. The Devil is infamous murderer H.H. Holmes and the White City is the Chicago Fair that America yearns for. This w...

source: unknown (if you know it, send me the citation) Hello Readers!    Time to be incredibly informal with you all. For some reason, whenever I blog, I'm just this bookish, nerdy, professional kind of girl that writes very properly and formally, double checking for grammar mistakes (which I often make without catching, so help me out). I comma splice often. Anyway.    I have done shit in 2013. Literally, my whole life was a fail. I was just flopping through like a starved fish waiting for the year to be over. Of course, not only in my real life but also in my blogging life (yeah, 'cause blogging isn't real life, I don't even know). This has been a really unproductive year. I think it's because we all died in 2012 and 2013 was a wtf year.    So I'm doing Parajunkee's New Years Meme thing where I make a new post every day for 2 weeks which I think will be record for most continuous blog posts. Let's be honest. I'm going to write like, five of them to...

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source: unknown (if you know it, message me) Also, this made me incredibly happy for some reason, so I thought I'd share it with you Hello readers!    It's been so long! I'm actually incredibly surprised that my number of followers hasn't exponentially decreased--in fact, the number hasn't budged at all! My only reasonable excuse for my absence is that this is my junior year and my ability to conform to the American school system's rigid and narrow-minded set-up has resulted in lower than wanted grades. It frustrates me that they're so low, and not in the A-B frame of mind, but the A-B-C-possibly D frame of mind. I'm usually an A-B student, and this is my first year where I'm actually struggling at borderline failing. This has resulted in stress and self-deprecation to the extent where instead of writing blog posts or reading books--two things I enjoy immensely,  I would curl up and scroll endlessly to the vast, mind-numbing expanses of Tumblr and th...

book info: on sale now copy from: brother's bookshelf pages: 544 review written: 30/9/13- edition read: Picador originally published: September 16, 2003 "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver's license...records my first name simply as Cal." So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of 1967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing ge...