Just a girl and her books
ALL THE LIVING AND THE DEAD | Hayley Campbell 08.16.2022 | St. Martin’s Press Rating: 4/5 stars We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what … Continue reading Book Review: All the Living and the Dead
NONFICTION MINI REVIEWS THE BURNING by Tim Madigan: On the morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob numbering in the thousands marched across the railroad tracks dividing black from white Tulsa, Oklahoma, and obliterated a black community then celebrated as one of America’s most prosperous. 34 square blocks of Tulsa’s Greenwood community, known then … Continue reading Nonfiction Mini Review: The Burning & Last Call
HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD | Robert Kolker 04.07.2020 | Doubleday Books Rating: 5/5 stars The Galvin’s, a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, became science’s great hope in the quest to understand the disease. On the outside Don and Mimi Galvin appear to be living the American dream. Residing in … Continue reading Book Review: Hidden Valley Road
HOLIDAY MINI REVIEWS PT. 1 THE LIGHTS by Carrie Pack: Molly Monroe and her family have gone out to enjoy the town’s Festival of Lights along with her girlfriend Chelsea. As the lights go on, the town’s children start to act strangely, especially Molly’s brother, Roger. When the Monroe’s next door neighbors are killed in … Continue reading Holiday Mini Reviews Pt. 1: The Lights & ‘Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas
ON WRITING | Stephen King 06.02.2020 (first published 2000) | Scribner Rating: 5/5 stars ON WRITING is a blend of a memoir and lessons on honing the craft of literature and writing through the mind of Stephen King. This is a must read for anyone who has enjoyed a King book or simply wants a … Continue reading Book Review: On Writing
JUST MERCY | Bryan Stevenson 08.18.2015 | Spiegel & Grau Rating: 5/5 stars Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal … Continue reading Book Review: Just Mercy
STIFF | Mary Roach 04.17.2003 | W. W. Norton Company Rating: 4/5 stars Have you ever wondered what happens to our bodies if they’re donated to science? For years, the scientific field has been using cadavers, sometimes with or without approval, to make advances in many fields. This means those bodies are being used to … Continue reading Book Review: Stiff
THE GREAT PRETENDER | Susannah Cahalan 11.05.2019 | Grand Central Publishing Rating: 4/5 stars Have you ever heard of David Rosenhan’s experiment where he and seven other people went undercover in mental hospitals in order to record what really happened in these places? The premise was that the pseudo-patients, or sane people, could essentially lie … Continue reading Book Review: The Great Pretender
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON | David Grann 04.18.2017 | Vintage Rating: 4/5 stars The Osage Nation in Oklahoma struck it rich in the 1920s when oil was discovered beneath their land. The people of this nation were each given a portion of the wealth and soon the land was filled with chauffeured automobiles, mansions, … Continue reading Book Review: Killers of the Flower Moon
What Jess Reads 