Recently Read

Last Letter from Your Lover, by Jojo Moyes. I will read anything by Jojo Moyes. She's a wonderful writer, and she loves a happy ending. This story weaves together two couples, a generation apart, with their affairs and their relationships and their drama. I love the older story with its romance documented in letters, with a bit of amnesia mixed in to increase the tension. It might not be as great as Me Before You, but then that's a pretty high bar, isn't it?

Monster, by Walter Dean Myers.  This Young Adult book ended up on my nightstand after I received it as a part of a gift basket from our local library. (We won a raffle during last summer's reading contest.) Otherwise, I'm sure I never would've booked it up. But it's a fast and worthy read. It's written in screenplay format from the perspective of the main character, a 16-year-old who is in prison and on trial for allegedly participating in a robbery that ended in murder. Did he do it? You, the reader, will get to determine what you think after reading his words. It's thought-provoking, and I could see how it would generate some interesting discussion.

We Should All Be Feminists, by Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie. A short, smart essay about modern feminism and what it means to be a feminist today, with all the baggage and misconceptions that term still holds. It's only 60ish pages, so there's no excuse for everyone not to give it a read. Or if you're really lazy, listen to her TED Talk, which is essentially a verbal delivery of this book. She is wonderfully relatable and not at all preachy or condescending in addressing this topic, and she talks about the treatment of boys as much as women in assessing the gender divide.