This isn’t really a review because this is the kind of book that’s nearly impossible to review. It was impressive, inspiring, devastating, and informative. Nadia Murad grew up in the village of Kocho in Northern Iraq, in a small community of Yazidi, an ancient religion and ethnic minority. She describes the persecution of the Yazidi…
I didn’t know if I’d like this book, but I found myself listening to it at every opportunity and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It’s the story of Vanessa, a fourteen year old in a boarding school in Maine who has a sexual relationship with her English teacher . Years later, when other victims come forward and they look to her for support, she doesn’t know how to respond. This is her story, told over 17 years.
I’m finding it much harder to describe this book than I thought I would, because the words we use for sexual abuse (like rape, and victim, and power) are so important, and that’s what makes this book so interesting and so challenging. Vanessa loves Strane and refuses to see herself as a victim — yet Strane is clearly manipulating her, and the effects on Vanessa as both a teen and an adult are absolutely devastating. As are the many ways school authorities and even Vanessa’s parents fail her.
This is a book I think most of us should read, though it’s definitely not an easy read. In 2015, Chanel Miller went to a party at Stanford. Two guys found her unconscious on the ground near a dumpster, with a guy on top of her. When they yelled the guy ran, so they tackled…
Emma O’Donovan is not a nice girl. She’s mean to her closest friends and she wants every boy to be in love with her. She lies, she steals, and she’s not exactly a virgin. As she turns 18, her life is pretty good. She’s been told since childhood that she’s the prettiest girl in their small Irish…
In the thought-provoking The Red Word, Sarah Henstra explores rape culture on college campuses, particularly in fraternity houses. Narrator Karen Huls arrives at an unnamed Ivy League college in 1995, where she becomes torn between two worlds: the feminists she lives with and the fraternity house where her boyfriend lives. The feminists hate the fraternity, which…
I finally gave in and started The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (actually I badgered my mother to finish it and lend it to me). I can’t stand when everyone’s reading a book and I don’t have an opinion about it. I don’t typically read modern-day thrillers but if everyone is reading this, there must…
The Book Stop 