Kaylee: Is that him? Mal: That's the buffet table. Kaylee: Well how can we be sure, unless we question it?

'Shindig'


Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.

There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."


Consuela - Mar 09, 2014 1:31:41 pm PDT #22143 of 28348
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix

Kat, have you tried Amy John McPhee?


Kat - Mar 09, 2014 1:32:10 pm PDT #22144 of 28348
"I keep to a strict diet of ill-advised enthusiasm and heartfelt regret." Leigh Bardugo

I loved the parts of The Worst Hard Time but not all of it. Definitely incredible and useful especially if you are teaching Grapes of Wrath.

I have the Poisoner's Handbook in my TBR. But I'm partway through 2 other books I need to finish first.


Kat - Mar 09, 2014 1:37:28 pm PDT #22145 of 28348
"I keep to a strict diet of ill-advised enthusiasm and heartfelt regret." Leigh Bardugo

consuela, I read Oranges and Assembling California. I liked both well enough, but not to teach.

I love all the recs, though.

Some of the books on the purchase list are there at requests from other teachers.

We have a fair amount of nonfiction (some Krakauer, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Outliers, some Oliver Sachs, Nickel and Dimed, Freakonomics, The Working Poor, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Breaking Through, Stiff, Botany of Desire, Omnivore's Dilemma, In Cold Blood) I'm trying to supplement with other stuff I want to teach or others do.


Kat - Mar 09, 2014 1:37:29 pm PDT #22146 of 28348
"I keep to a strict diet of ill-advised enthusiasm and heartfelt regret." Leigh Bardugo

consuela, I read Oranges and Assembling California. I liked both well enough, but not to teach.

I love all the recs, though.

Some of the books on the purchase list are there at requests from other teachers.

We have a fair amount of nonfiction (some Krakauer, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Outliers, some Oliver Sachs, Nickel and Dimed, Freakonomics, The Working Poor, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Breaking Through, Stiff, Botany of Desire, Omnivore's Dilemma, In Cold Blood) I'm trying to supplement with other stuff I want to teach or others do.


Ginger - Mar 09, 2014 1:42:03 pm PDT #22147 of 28348
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda

Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants is a recent one. It had good parts, but it was too much author, not enough rat science.

The Ghost Map, about tracing the origin of a cholera outbreak in London, might appeal to students. Unfortunately, at the end the author has an attack of faux sociology and wants to come up with some sort of cosmic theory about cities and human interactions.

I too keep meaning to read The Worst Hard Time. We lived in the heart of Dust Bowl territory for a year, and the Ken Burns special was full of places I knew.


Amy - Mar 09, 2014 1:48:29 pm PDT #22148 of 28348
Because books.

Oh, The Ghost Map! That was another one I wanted to read.

The special for The Worst Hard Time was just mesmerizing.


Ginger - Mar 09, 2014 1:50:27 pm PDT #22149 of 28348
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda

I love Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and Custer Died for Your Sins.

For biology, there's also Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex.

Has anyone read Mikal Gilmore's brilliant Shot through the Heart?

"I have a story to tell. It is a story of murder told from inside the house where murder is born. It is the house where I grew up, a house that, in some ways, I have never been able to leave."


Jesse - Mar 09, 2014 2:12:31 pm PDT #22150 of 28348
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.

The Poisoner's Handbook also has going for it educational resources from the American Experience film.


hippocampus - Mar 09, 2014 2:26:03 pm PDT #22151 of 28348
not your mom's socks.

A million seconds on the Ghost Map. I love that book.

And Consuela is me. John McPhee's Annals of the Former World is the book I do not lend out. I just pet it now and then and tell everyone about it.


Jessica - Mar 09, 2014 2:48:55 pm PDT #22152 of 28348
And then Ortus came and said "It's Ortin' time" and they all Orted off into the sunset

I loved Poisoner's Handbook. And everything Mary Roach has ever written.

Great Plague is a great book, but probably way too long for high school students unless you were doing a whole course just on the Spanish Flu.

In the Land of Invisible Women was not the best writing ever, but the story was good enough to carry it through. And it's a quick read.