Reviews and Comments

nerd teacher [books]

whatanerd@bookwyrm.social

Joined 3 years, 10 months ago

Exhausted anarchist and school abolitionist who can be found at nerdteacher.com where I muse about school and education-related things, and all my links are here. My non-book posts are mostly at @whatanerd@treehouse.systems, occasionally I hide on @whatanerd@eldritch.cafe, or you can email me at n@nerdteacher.com. [they/them]

I was a secondary literature and humanities teacher who has swapped to being a tutor, so it's best to expect a ridiculously huge range of books.

And yes, I do spend a lot of time making sure book entries are as complete as I can make them. Please send help.

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She Is a Haunting (2023, Bloomsbury) 3 stars

Jade Nguyen has always lied to fit in. She's straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough …

Really Great Until It's Not

4 stars

I really love what this book is trying to do, and I really enjoyed so much of the story up to the very end of it because... it was just meh?

Not sure what the editing process was for this book or what conversations took place during it, but it feels very much like Alma was going to play a much stronger role than she did. There was so much choreography in the beginning about Alma being the colonialist monster, trying to revitalise and support colonialism within Vietnam, and trying to exploit Vietnamese people, and trying to rewrite that colonial history to support European histories...

... and then that ball was just kind of dropped for the focus on the house being parasitic. Sometimes the 'Alma' ball was picked back up, but I don't think it was used very well. And I have to wonder if parts of that were …

commented on Amulet. by Kazu Kibuishi

Amulet. (2008, Graphix) No rating

Emily's and Narvin's mother is kidnapped and dragged into a strange and magical world where, …

My student's pretty quick at reading this. For her English level (she's more in the "intermediate" level with regards to school-based fluency tests but still struggles with using the language as she would normally use it), this is really good.

There've been a lot of new words for her (words like ravine, creek, cavern), but the images also really help her to get an understanding of what they mean.

It's also age-appropriate for a 12-year old, especially one who likes magic-based fantasy. This has been one of the biggest difficulties that I've had in finding books for students, honestly. Most suggestions for 'new readers in English' are for really young kids, and a lot of younger teenagers just don't want to read stories intended for kids between the ages of 6-8 (and, if we're honest, a lot of books 'made for' young children are also things young children tend to …

The better angels of our nature (2011) No rating

From Goodreads: Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of …

I don't actually remember what percent we're at, but I do remember that the book finishes at 68%. So we have to be halfway through this mess.

Things I need to remember:

  1. This book has aged miserably, especially with regards to Israel-Palestine (and I need to find a fake speech he wrote to point that out).
  2. He doesn't know the difference between fiction and reality.
  3. PREDICT THE PAST?
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (Paperback, 2016, Ballantine Books) 3 stars

Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is …

Incredibly Enjoyable, Even If Problematic

3 stars

This book is really well-written, and the structure employed in it really has the feel of both talking to a grandparent (whether or not they're actually your own) and/or the local town gossip. I love this about this book because it makes it just so easy to read through.

I also love that one of the core elements of the story (one that, if people know about Fried Green Tomatoes, is the most well-known) is just kind of... tossed out there a couple times and in ways that make a person go "Wait, did she just say what I think she said?"

But I do find it incredibly difficult to recommend. Part of it is because I know people can find its use of racist and ableist slurs frustrating and bothersome (which I also can completely understand). While it's understandable that sometimes the perspectives match with the characterisation, there are …

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (Paperback, 2016, Ballantine Books) 3 stars

Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is …

Incredibly Enjoyable, Even If Problematic

4 stars

This book is really well-written, and the structure employed in it really has the feel of both talking to a grandparent (whether or not they're actually your own) and/or the local town gossip. I love this about this book because it makes it just so easy to read through.

I also love that one of the core elements of the story (one that, if people know about Fried Green Tomatoes, is the most well-known) is just kind of... tossed out there a couple times and in ways that make a person go "Wait, did she just say what I think she said?"

But I do find it incredibly difficult to recommend. Part of it is because I know people can find its use of racist and ableist slurs frustrating and bothersome (which I also can completely understand). While it's understandable that sometimes the perspectives match with the characterisation, there …

My Annihilation (Paperback, 2022, Soho Press, Inc.) 2 stars

Turn this page, and you may forfeit your entire life. A confessional diary implicates its …

Discomforting Depictions of Mental Health

2 stars

I cannot say that I enjoyed this novel, but I found the writing compelling enough to continue reading. However, the nagging feeling about how awful the representation of mental health is and its implications in acts of violence is a bit...

In a lot of ways, it is obvious that this negative perspective is the point of the perspectives these men have, but there's a lot of... I just can't square the circle, if I'm honest. I don't need an explicit statement telling me something is 'bad' or 'inappropriate', but it feels like very little was done within the narrative to speak to that fact? When it does happen, it seems to immediately flip back to stereotypical understandings and misrepresentations.

The Meiji Guillotine Murders (2024, Pushkin Vertigo) 4 stars

Tokyo, 1869. It is the dawn of the Meiji era in Japan, but the scars …

Structurally and narratively interesting.

4 stars

One of the things I most appreciated is that this story is structured in a manner as to be multiple stories that all connect, so it feels like you're reading multiple short stories that initially appear mostly disconnected until too many connections keep making you (like the audience stand-in Kawaji) think that there's something more.

Some of the cases, however, don't seem possible to solve on your own with any of the information provided. A couple of them feel like there is foreshadowing, but others feel like there's just... no way to solve it using the information provided.

The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World ... (2024, Farrar, Straus & Giroux) 1 star

A collection of David Graeber's essays in a book.

Almost Everything Can Be Found For Free

1 star

Super easy to read this book when you've read all but one essay in it multiple times already. (Or, in some cases, have come back to the essay multiple times, skimming it for the piece of information you remember existing within its text.)

This book frustrates me, much like many of the David Graeber projects that have come out since his death. There's a hollowness to it that feels like someone trying to build a person up into some kind of Anarchist God (or Anthropologist God), and it's exhausting. Certainly, there must be more people out there than this one man who often and frequently neglected whole swathes of criticism that would've fueled his analyses. I'm sure there must be more people out there than the one guy who—though his work was engaging, sometimes insightful, and interesting—frequently extrapolated his more modern examples to beyond useless because he rarely looked at …

The Stolen Year (EBook, 2022, PublicAffairs) No rating

An NPR education reporter writes about how the COVID pandemic disrupted children's lives.

So much of what she writes can be easily broken down if you know even a glimmer of US history with regards to: child labour laws, the introduction of birth certificates, and the introduction of compulsory schooling. She wants to make some kind of point without any of that contextualisation, which is ludicrous.

This woman writes as if she believes that she's the modern day Mother Jones, which is pretty funny. Also, this book is so sparse on info in a lot of places that I haven't stopped feeling like it was a "make a quick buck on the pandemic topic" book.

The Stolen Year (EBook, 2022, PublicAffairs) No rating

An NPR education reporter writes about how the COVID pandemic disrupted children's lives.

So much of what she writes can be easily broken down if you know even a glimmer of US history with regards to: child labour laws, the introduction of birth certificates, and the introduction of compulsory schooling. She wants to make some kind of point without any of that contextualisation, which is ludicrous.

The Stolen Year (EBook, 2022, PublicAffairs) No rating

An NPR education reporter writes about how the COVID pandemic disrupted children's lives.

I am really struggling with the introduction to this book. In my most charitable, all I can say is that she wrote it hastily in order for her and her publishers to meet a deadline that would best allow them to profit from pandemic books.

But there are some lines and paragraphs that really stick out like sore thumbs, like how we're fortunate that hundreds of children died because it could've been much worse. Idk, I think any children dying to a pandemic is awful. I would've also thought she'd put some numbers up next to those for how still-living children were impacted by the loss of their caregivers because they died (which maybe she'll do... at some point?).

But there's a lot of attempts to justify the existence of schools because of all the responsibilities they have (but shouldn't) without even a glimmer of asking whether that makes any …