The Bookshelf

Hello! I'm Sloane, and I'm reviewing Top Story  by Kelly Yang. This is the fifth book in the Front Desk  series. I read the other books in the series a while ago, and then realized there was a fifth book, so I read it recently! In the first  Front Desk  book, the main character, Mia, moves from China to America, and her parents get jobs at the Calivista motel. The motel is owned by Mr. Yao, who overworks Mia's parents and treats them badly, while Mr. Yao's son, Jason, bullies Mia at school for helping at the motel. Mia and her parents help immigrants stay in the motel, which they have to keep a secret from Mr. Yao. Mia has to navigate her new life and pursue her dream of being a writer. *Spoilers for the Front Desk series (books 1-4)* In Top Story , Mia is in Chinatown during winter break with her mom and her friend Lupe, while her dad stays in Anaheim, California to run the Calivista motel. Mia is going to a journalism camp, while Lupe is going to the stat...

          “Men often think they deserve a sticker for treating women like people.” Page 29 Taylor Jenkins Reid is the master of writing riveting stories with complex characters and profound passages, this book was no exception. Daisy Jones and The Six is an enigmatic novel about a band's rise to fame during the mid sixties - late seventies. This book goes through how Daisy Jones and The Six became one of the most famous bands in the world before suddenly splitting in 1977. The story is told in a very unique way, through a “transcript of interviews” where readers get to learn first hand accounts of the band from bandmembers, friends, and family.  The book starts with someone interviewing people involved with Daisy Jones and The Six. Daisy Jones is described as a solo artist, while at the same time, a small band called the Dunne Brothers were trying to earn their big break. Over a series of events the aspiring rock artists meet and eventually form th...

In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich , Alexander Solzhenitsyn details the life of a Russian prisoner for exactly one day, but what a day it is. We “meet” Ivan Denisovich, a prisoner or a zek , in a Soviet Gulag (hard-labor camp) in the early 1950s. Ivan has served part of his ten-year sentence of exactly 3,653 days. The unnamed camp in this book is located in the steppe, a brutally barren and frozen land located in far Eastern Europe or Central Asia. Despite this book covering only one day in Ivan’s prison life, it is a day of extraordinary hardship, humiliation, competition, luck, boredom, horror, and eking by to survive. Perhaps the most important element in One Day in the Life is the psychological game that prisoners suffer day to day and minute by minute: the mind obsesses over tiny and momentous things at the same time. Every morning at about 7 am, a hammer is struck on a metal rod. That is reveille, and for the next 90 minutes zeks wait until the guards open the doors to le...

  I started reading This Golden State by Marit Weisenberg last week. It’s about a family that is constantly on the run. I haven’t finished this book yet, so I’m going to give a brief summary of the family and their current situation.  Poppy is an 18-year-old girl, whose family is always on the run. Her mom, dad, and 8-year-old sister Emma always stay hidden from society. They move across the country a lot, and never stay in one place for long. Poppy isn’t allowed to use any form of technology, drive a car, and college is definitely out of the question. For all she knows, she will just be hiding from the government for the rest of her life.  Her family is so good at hiding, they even keep secrets from one another. Poppy knows nothing about her family’s past or her parents’ identities. She knows they did something wrong; why else would they be running all the time? And apparently, her little sister Emma, has a habit of stealing things and can act older than she actually is...

Hello! I'm Sloane, and I am reviewing From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks. This is an amazing book, and it covers very important topics. The book was so exciting that I read it at any chance I could get. The beginning of the book takes place on Zoe Washington's twelfth birthday. She had just had her birthday party at bakery, and her dream is to be a baker and be on the Kids Bake Challenge show. Then, on the same day, she receives a letter from Marcus, her father who is in prison. She has never heard from him before. She decides to respond to his letter. After they send letters for a while, he tells her that he did not commit the crime that he was convicted for. Zoe has to find out whether he was wrongly accused, searching for evidence, researching, and working hard to discover the truth, all while also fixing her friendship with her friend Trevor and practicing baking for the Kids Bake Challenge . I loved reading this book. The writing flows so well and there is a ...

  Well this book definitely didn’t pass the bechdel test. *Minor spoilers but no major plot spoilers* Hello everyone, I’m back again with another review of a book I disliked. I have discovered through this blog experience that either I am an extremely critical person when it comes to books, or I just have a knack for picking horrible books that I love to hate. Now I am in no way saying that I did not enjoy reading this book. In fact, I think this was probably one of the most enjoyable books I have read recently, but it was also one of the most problematic and poorly written.  Here is a quick summary of the story: Special snowflake America Singer is a five in the oddly formatted and not very thought out caste system that exists in the selection universe. Her role in the society is, you guessed it, singing! Way to state the obvious Ms. Kiera Cass. At the beginning of this whirlwind of a story, with no actual plot, the main character is dating America's Next Top Jerk. (whoops I m...

Thich Nhat Hanh was a Buddhist monk in Vietnam whose writings had a profound impact around the world. My parents recommended that I read Nhat Hanh’s The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation because it could help me learn how to be mindful of the outside world. As I write this blog, I can feel the irony of trying to keep my future assignments at bay. In other words, I have a hard time being in the present moment. Like most Americans (including my parents), I have been trained to focus on completing tasks quickly and without much thought. People fear deadlines and judgment from others. This seems to be the driving force of everything that people do on a daily basis. In war-torn Vietnam, Nhat Hanh started the School of Youth for Social Service and wrote this book in 1974 as a “letter” to Brother Quang (a fellow monk). The school provided humanitarian aid to the poor and the orphans trapped in the midst of war. The school’s workers were themselves kidnappe...

A Constellation of Roses has a lot of adventure, a little bit of magic, and a happy ending. The detailed artwork on the cover is what drew me to the book; pink roses peeking in from the sides, white dots of constellations scattered across a dark green cover. The plot of the book is just as beautiful and detailed as the cover, and I definitely recommend this book if you are looking for an entertaining read.  Trix Mcabe is a runaway 17-year-old girl, who has been running away from the foster care services ever since she was 10, when her mom lost custody of her. Shortly after, there is what Trix calls a Good Year, where her mom promises to stay away from drugs. But then, her mom just leaves one day without giving Trix any clue of where she could be. It’s up to Trix to make money for food and shelter, which she does by stealing.  From the very first page, we see how Trix Mccabe is no ordinary thief; she actually has a magical ability to take things that don’t belong to her without...