my classmates and i have recently spent a lot of time commenting on how this semester's work load is significantly less than last semester's. no one's complaining...we're just reveling in our additional free time. i had more time to read this month as a result!
(the countdown begins: i'm two papers and three projects away from graduating - woo hoo!)
orange is the new black: my year in a women's prison, by piper kerman (my sister recommended this to me a long time ago and i finally read it - SO interesting! it's a memoir by a (white, middle class, young) woman who spent a year in a minimum security women's prison. she writes about the hardest parts of being in prison and the little joys she finds there - she lifts the curtain on an experience i can't imagine and know very little about. highly compelling. i love memoirs, and this is a quick read - i'd definitely recommend it!)
matilda, by roald dahl (yes, i am in 3rd grade. actually, i re-read my copy of this from when i probably was in 3rd grade. adorable, as expected, but slower than i remembered - the tricks matilda plays are explained in excruciating detail. my sister (a 3rd grade teacher) says this is normal for kids' books. i re-read this because i saw matilda on broadway last week! when i was in london last summer everyone was raving about the show, and it just opened this spring in new york. i bought tickets early and got very affordable seats in the back (and i mean back) of the balcony for me and my friend dominique. um, it was the cutest show ever. fun songs, beautiful scenery, and the little actress who played matilda did a great job. and miss trunchbull (remember her - the mean headmistress of the school?) is played PERFECTLY by a man, which i thoroughly enjoyed. a great show!)
when she woke, by hillary jordan (this is a dystopian novel where criminals spend little time in prison (too expensive!) but have their skin dyed a certain color - it corresponds to their crime - and are set out in the world, with the idea that the rest of society will isolate them much like prison would have. woah. cool premise. the narrator has been convicted of murder, and is set out into the world dyed red. all of this i gleaned from the amazon.com blurb (and the first 30 pages of the book), but what the reviews did NOT tell me is that the book is taking a relatively political stance - her murder is that she had an abortion. in this future world, roe v. wade has been overturned and certain states have outlawed abortion. an interesting idea: not that the future gets more liberal, but that it gets more conservative - an idea that actually seems likely right about now. but the political angle of the book wasn't what i was expecting, so i let you know this in case you are interested in reading it. it was an easy and interesting read, but the premise was slightly more interesting than what the author does with plot once she's established the premise.)
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