I have been wanting to re-read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for a long time. It’s one of 
those books from my childhood that has stayed with me and that I often recommend to students in my class, based solely on my hazy memories of having loved it. So, now, 45 years after reading it for the first time, I have finally finished spending some more time with one of literature’s most beloved characters, Frances (Francie) Nolan.
Betty Smith’s most famous novel tells the story of young Francie, who comes of age in Brooklyn during the early part of the 20th century. She is the daughter of Katie and Johnny, and older sister to Neeley. Francie’s entire adolescence is captured in Smith’s un-embellished prose (not to say that the writing isn’t beautiful, because it is). The Nolans are poor and they live in a time where every penny counts. Katie is a hard-working janitress and Johnny a singing waiter, when he can get some work (and he often cannot). He’s a beautiful, dreamy man, who mostly drinks. It’s impossible not to love Johnny who believes “how wonderful [it would be if] everything you talked about could come true!” Francie idolizes her father and, in some way, resents her mother.
When the novel opens, Francie is just eleven. Francie and her brother are already industrious children. She and Neeley
collected rags, paper, metal, rubber, and other junk and hoarded it in locked cellar bins or in boxes hidden under the bed. All week Francie walked home from school slowly with her eyes in the gutter looking for tin foil from cigarette packages or chewing gum wrappers. This was melted in the lid of a jar.
I remember, as a kid, being fascinated with how the Nolans stretched every single penny. How the pennies Francie earned by bringing her junk to the junkman gave her the privilege of going into a store and “What a wonderful feeling to pick something up, hold it for a moment, feel its contour, run her hand over its surface [because] her nickel gave her this privilege.” I probably read this book for the first time in the early 1970s and I remember feeling awed by the fact that Francie had nothing. Although my parents weren’t rich, we were always warm and fed and Francie’s sort of poverty was foreign to me.
But I think what makes Francie such a remarkable and beloved character is her resilience. And her capacity for hope. Although her circumstances were often dire, she is a girl who believes in limitless possibilities and isn’t afraid to work hard to achieve them. I admire that about her. As a kid, I loved that Francie was a reader and a writer because I loved both of those things, too. When Francie read she was “at peace with the world and happy as only a little girl could be with a fine book and a little bowl of candy and all alone in the house.”
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is one of those books that captures a simpler time. It’s anecdotal in that sometimes we have little glimpses into the lives of other characters, and there are pivotal moments in Francie’s life that are beautifully rendered. It’s also a modern book, given when it was published (1943). In one instance, after Francie meets and falls in love with a young soldier, but declines to spend some private time with him, she asks her mother if she should have gone with the young man.
As a mother, I say it would have been a terrible thing for a girl to sleep with a stranger – a man she had known for less than forty-eight hours. Horrible things might have happened to you. Your whole life might have been ruined…. But as a woman…I will tell you the truth as a woman. It would have been a very beautiful thing. Because there is only once that you love that way.
Yes, the book is dated. Yes, there are moments of racism and sexism. But it is also a time capsule. It is a full-hearted look at a time and place that no longer exists and captures the life of a girl who, like a tree growing up through the cracks in cement, reaches for the light.
In the days after Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel finished their television run (2003 and 2004 respectively), I was an avid reader of the post-series comics, which was a slightly weird thing for me because I was never really a comic book reader. I wasn’t ready to let go of the characters that I loved, though, so I had a standing order at my local comic book store and I faithfully bought them. Then it all got sort of overwhelming and I stopped buying them. Until High School is Hell was released, that is.
If you are regular reader of this blog, then you know that I am a huge fan of American mystery/crime writer Thomas H. Cook. I found his book 
at age 9, that his father has shot and killed his mother, Marie, older brother, Jamie and sister, Laura. The knowledge of this horrific act tortures Stevie, mostly because he doesn’t understand why his father committed such a horrible crime. Wasn’t his family happy?
I guess I can see why The Silent Patient, Alex Michaelides’ debut novel, seemed to be on everyone’s radar over the past few months. It’s definitely one of those page-turners, the kind you stuff in your beach bag or read on the deck (which is where I read mine). But does it actually have a “twist that will make even the most seasoned suspense reader break out in a cold sweat” (Booklist)? Not so much.
At first it was just me and my Tigerbeat magazines. Posters on my bedroom wall. The usual suspects – given my age: David Cassidy. Robby Benson. Richard Gere. Around the time my son was born, I discovered Buffy the Vampire Slayer and that was a game changer. I just happened to catch the end of season three, that moment when Buffy and Angel stare at each other across the smoking ruins of Sunnydale High and I was all Who is that? This was before PVRs. I rented the previous seasons of Buffy at Blockbuster and when the new season started I was ready. Then I discovered fanfiction. Well, fandom in general. I met amazing people. I attended conventions in Las Vegas and Atlanta. For about a decade I was all-in. Then, of course, life gets busier and the shows ended and I sort of drifted away from fandom.
Flash forward a decade or so and at the encouragement of one of my friends from the Buffy fandom, I started watching Veronica Mars. Veronica Mars (2004 – 2007) is of roughly the same vintage as Buffy (1997- 2004) and in fact several Buffy actors appear on Veronica Mars including Allison Hannigan, Charisma Carpenter and Buffy creator Joss Whedon. I watched the first three seasons of Veronica Mars in about ten days. Then I rented the movie, which I watched three times. I knew season 4 was due to be released tomorrow, and my intention was to watch the series straight through again before then, but the new series dropped a week early. I am two episodes away from finishing season 4 and managed to remain spoiler free until I inadvertently saw something which literally made me feel ill. I am sick with anticipation. (I have now seen the entire eight episodes and I am shaking my fist at you Rob Thomas!)
The two Veronica Mars novels take place after the end of the movie and so while they probably aren’t necessary I loved them. Rob Thomas considers them 98% canon and as he wrote them, along with Jennifer Graham, I think they are really must-reads for any fan of the show.
Being. They’ve gathered letters from a variety of well-known (and less well-known) artists, writers, thinkers, scientists, musicians and philosophers. These letters are addressed to young readers and each letter is accompanied by bookish art. It’s a win-win book for me.
Hinde, a homeopath who, when the novel opens, lives with his wife, Belinda, and young son, Daniel, in Brighton. He has a happy life, for the most part, except for the stress brought on when his parents visit. He seems to be a bottled up sort of fellow and although he is capable of offering impartial advice to his patients, I wonder if he wouldn’t benefit from his own advice. As the novel goes on, readers will become aware of Patrick’s own emotional trauma, a condition he describes as “An inherited predisposition…something that leaves a residue which has a negative impact on the vital force.”
“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground and start over,” Mia tells Izzy in Celeste Ng’s second novel Little Fires Everywhere. 
decided to have a detoxifying sauna. After only eight minutes, she recalls in Design Your Next Chapter, she was “deathly bored with my own company.” In an effort to distract herself, she started reading a paperback someone had left behind. It was about finding personal happiness.
You, by new-to-me author Joanna Briscoe, is the elliptical story of two families, the Bannans and the Dahls, whose lives first intersect in Dartmoor, England in the 1970s.
The Ludic Reader 