Rainy Day Reads

This book follows Janna, an Arab-Indian American teen girl who is struggling with finding her place in the social life of high school and the mosque. She wears a hijab and that instantly makes her stick out at her high school, and when she tries to be a bit more “Western” it makes her stick out in the Muslim community. As she struggles to find a balance she must also deal with a predator who has set his sights on her, and as she slowly finds the strength to stand up to him, she finds new friends and loses some old ones along the way.   I’m a bit conflicted about this book, because while I liked the basis of the story, there was also a lot of things that I didn’t really appreciate. I listened to it on audio and I do feel like the narrator had a part in my not liking it too much. The narrator would over-enunciate everything and that would make conversations sound kind of fake and overly enthusiastic. Sometimes it would also sound really whiny, especially in Janna’s inner m...

I have a general interest in history so I thought this one sounded like fun. And it is! As the title says this book explores the lies taught in American high schools. It takes a number of high profile different topics like Columbus, racism, the government etc. and delves deeper into them, shoeing what is taught in schools and why that's not the truth. for instance Columbus is mostly revered as the discoverer of America and has his own day of celebration, but there are a lot of things he did during this "discovery" that are never taught in the schools. Like enslaving the local peoples he met, bringing plagues to the Americas and all round not being the great guy history sets him up to be. The book also looks at WHY these topics are taught like this, when for some of them at least we very well know that that is not the truth of what happened. I found this aspect really interesting too, because who controls history and why do they spin it the way they do? It's hard...