Isaiah Roby's Blog: MI Book Reviews, page 113
October 15, 2018
Three Truths and a Lie
“A weekend retreat in the woods and an innocent game of three truths and a lie go horribly wrong.
Deep in the forest, four friends gather for a weekend of fun.
Truth #1: Rob is thrilled about the weekend trip. It’s the perfect time for him to break out of his shell…to be the person he really, really wants to be.
Truth #2: Liam, Rob’s boyfriend, is nothing short of perfect. He’s everything Rob could have wanted. They’re perfect together. Perfect.
Truth #3: Mia has been Liam’s best friend for y...
October 12, 2018
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
“As America descends deeper into polarization and paralysis, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has done the seemingly impossible—challenged conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to everyone on the political spectrum. Drawing on his twenty five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, he shows how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings. He shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intui...
October 10, 2018
Super Chill: A Year of Living Anxiously
“From former Buzzfeed illustrator Adam Ellis comes a collection of autobiographical comics that follows a year in the artist’s life.
Adam’s comics deal with weightier topics like seasonal affective disorder and struggles with self-esteem, while also touching on the silly and absurd—like his brief, but intense obsession with crystals. With a bright, positive outlook and a sense of humor, Super Chill tells a story that is both highly relatable and intensely personal.”
I got an ARC of this book...
October 9, 2018
The Law of Inertia
“When James’s boyfriend died by suicide, no one questioned what happened. A foster kid with a checkered past and a history of suicide attempts, Ash was just another number in a system that failed him. But to James, Ash was never just a number, and the facts around his death no longer stack up so neatly.
Now James has plenty of questions, and the one person who might have held the answers—Ash’s older brother, Elliot—has left town. And if anyone knows where he is, they aren’t talking. As James...
October 5, 2018
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
“Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now Simon is actually being blackmailed: if he doesn’t play wingman for class clown Martin, his sexual identity will become everyone’s business. Worse, the privacy of Blue, the pen name of the boy he’s been emailing, will be compromised.
With some messy dynamics emerging in his once tight-k...
Fruits Basket Another Volume 1
By Natsuki Tayaka
“Sawa Mitoma, a shy and unconfident girl, has just started high school, and it’s already not going well…until she makes friends meets the President and Vice-President of the student council. But little does she know, they’re Sohmas!? It’s Fruits Basket…again!” -book description via Goodreads
Published: June 2018
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Read: September 2018 Reviewed: October 2018
When I saw this book on my travels and realized that Natsuki Tayaka was writing a...
October 4, 2018
The Chronicles of Narnia
ok, so here goes another series long review.
The first thing I would like to point out about The Chronicles of Narnia is there are two different “correct” orders to read the series in. The way I originally read the books was the publication order (minus the last book), but that was about 15 years ago. This time I read them in chronological order of the stories. This changes the order of two of the books, but the story of the children from the other world remain in the same order.
The Magicia...
October 3, 2018
Changers Book Four: Forever
“When we left Kim Cruz in Changers Book Three, she’d just come out to her best friend, at long last revealing her truth. In Changers Book Four: Forever, Kim discovers that coming out is only the beginning of understanding who she is and where she belongs in the world. Soon enough, she changes again, into the body and social status of her dreams. What she does with her newfound power will come to haunt her.
In this, the final installment of the provocative Changers series, our hero learns what...
October 2, 2018
After the Fire
“The things I’ve seen are burned into me, like scars that refuse to fade.
Before, she lived inside the fence. Before, she was never allowed to leave the property, never allowed to talk to Outsiders, never allowed to speak her mind. Because Father John controlled everything—and Father John liked rules. Disobeying Father John came with terrible consequences.
But there are lies behind Father John’s words. Outside, there are different truths.
Then came the fire.”
I got an ARC of this book.
I ha...
September 26, 2018
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
“From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before...
