Saffron: I'll die. Mal: Well, as a courtesy, you might start getting busy on that, 'cause all this chatter ain't doin' me any kindness.

'Trash'


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."


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.


javachik - Mar 09, 2014 3:48:59 pm PDT #22153 of 28348
Our wings are not tired.

I always liked Booker T Washington but recently some Tweeps I follow have had a passionate debate about the Washington vs. WEB DuBois that has me reconsidering some of his approaches. It would be interesting to read both and use them for compare/contrast exercises.


Kat - Mar 09, 2014 4:25:21 pm PDT #22154 of 28348
"I keep to a strict diet of ill-advised enthusiasm and heartfelt regret." Leigh Bardugo

I saw an excellent DuBois documentary (I think this one : [link] that was eye opening. I feel pretty firmly that I am a WEB DuBois kinda person (not me personally as I am in no way part of the talented 10th). I teach the Atlanta Compromise in relation to Invisible Man which always forces a reconsidering of Washington.


Ginger - Mar 09, 2014 4:43:27 pm PDT #22155 of 28348
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda

I think Washington's approach has been unfairly simplified. Look at the difference between DuBois, born free in Massachusetts and educated at Fisk and Harvard with the support of his community, and Washington, born a slave in the South and working to uplift the poorest blacks in the South. Washington made himself the face of the nonthreatening Negro, while secretly funding challenges to Jim Crow laws. His goal was also equality, but he was a pragmatist.


lisah - Mar 09, 2014 4:58:16 pm PDT #22156 of 28348
Punishingly Intricate

The audiobook for Candy Freak is good fun.

I went to grad school with the author. We were friends but, really, he was kind of a dick. I haven't read the book, though. I wonder if he read the audiobook?

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

Yes! I love that book! Another great one about Mormons is Jon Krakaur's Under the Banner of Heaven. We read it for book club in March of last year, our crime-themed year, and it came up in basically all of our discussions for the rest of the year.