Brutally Honest by Melanie Brown

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEL B! Now let's talk about your book.

I recently got on a Spice Girls kick after listening to their albums, remembering how amazing they were, and realizing I’ve never read any of their memoirs! Mel B had me tearing up from the first page with her honesty about her marriage, insecurities, and struggle to overcome everything. She said it was hard to act like an empowered woman with this happening behind the scenes but I think sharing it now makes her more empowered and relatable than ever before.

It jumps around a lot and in some places is difficult to follow the thread. I kept having to google some of her relationships to grasp the timeline and files the stories from the book into the right place. However, she's open about ADHD and Paris Hilton was the same in her memoir, so I can appreciate the authenticity of feeling like you're getting inside the people's minds.

Selfishly, I wanted a lot more information about the Spice Girls days, but this is Mel B's book and it focuses more on her personal life and relationships, especially her abusive marriage. I just need to get my hands on Catch a Fire from 2003 which apparently covers her early fame.

Still, this was a compelling read and I can't wait to find her earlier book, along with others by Spice Girls.

Happy 5th Blog Birthday, How I Feel About Books!

I started this blog on September 8, 2014. It was a requirement for the course Literature for Children and Young Adults that I was taking as a graduate student in the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Woman's University. I loved the idea of starting a book blog, because I had previously reviewed books on my personal blog. I'd highlight books I really loved with their own post, and wrote round-ups reviewing books I had read that month.

Reviews for my coursework required a certain format and intense look at the book; once my degree was finished, I tried to keep up that dedication, but it got to be a bit much. I worked as a teen services librarian in a branch of the public library, and read and reviewed at least 4 books a month for their Teen Bookletters newsletter. Then I worked as an elementary school librarian in a public school (we're just not going to talk about that period of my life), and as a librarian in a Montessori elementary school, where I currently still am. I've also been active in the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a branch of the American Library Association (ALA).

Over time, I've started and stopped producing two different podcasts, one book related, one creativity related. I've started an Instagram outlet for the blog. I've been part of wonderful kidlit communities on Instgram, including @KidLitPicks and @KidLitExchange. I've been a member of several different book clubs. I've started (and neglected) a YouTube channel featuring book round-ups, book recommendations, and short reviews called A Book a Minute.

I've read more books than I can count (but I keep track on Goodreads, of course), and reviewed them all with at least two sentences in a personal document, whether I share them anywhere else or not. I've tried to get back to my class-style of reviews, and I've tried to just write quality, personal reviews. I'm still trying to find the balance and merit with reviews on this blog.

I do know that I like adding some personal posts, like this one, and a few I've shared about writing, and some about TV shows I've enjoyed and how they influenced my thought process. I don't have a personal blog anymore, and while I don't feel the need to share everything with the internet like I did in my 20s, I do like sharing things that aren't strict reviews. And I'm not making a living as a reviewer, and this blog is How I FEEL About Books, so I think it's ok to get a little personal, a little informal, a little off-topic now and then.

But basically, I'm just proud of keeping this thing chugging for five years. Here's hoping I can keep it going for five more!

This was my first post.

Birthday by Meredith Russo

Everyone raved about Russo’s debut novel, If I Was Your Girl, but it fell flat to me because it lacked emotion and realism. I thought Amanda had it too easy as passing, and the trans issues were glossed over. My thoughts on the lack of depth in If I Was Your Girl doesn’t make it a bad book, but I had hoped for more struggle, more reality, and more information that trans teens (or anyone, really) might need to know to understand this issue better. (You can read my full review here, so I don't hijack this review with something only semi-related.)

That being said, I definitely wanted to give Russo a second chance, so I was eager to read Birthday. And wow, did it deliver!

  

Eric and Morgan were born on the same day, and a freak September blizzard in their small Tennessee town left their families stranded in the hospital together for several days. They bonded and became close family friends, and Eric and Morgan became best friends. They celebrate their birthday together every year, and this book is told from their alternating points of view, only on their birthdays from the ages of fourteen to eighteen. Seeing just these glimpses into the lives of Eric and Morgan was enough to get a good story rounded out, with enough room to imagine what the characters are like during the rest of their lives.

Over time, Eric and Morgan's families grow apart. Morgan loses his mother to cancer and struggles with the aftermath. When Morgan quits the football team, Eric's father labels him a sissy and doesn't treat him like family anymore. When Eric joins the football team, he and Morgan start to grow apart.  There were so many layers to this story - family relationships, school struggles, self-loathing and self-acceptance, friendship, love. It wasn’t too much, and it was all well-done and balanced to create a realistic world with characters you can easily identify with and understand.

Eric and Morgan are such deep characters, and I loved getting to see inside of both of their heads and hearts. They both struggle with identity and self in such real ways, and I was so glad all of that was laid out on the page for readers. I highly recommend this book, and hope it gets as much, if not more, attention than Russo’s first book. It is well-deserved.

Happy 100th Birthday, Beverly Cleary!

Beverly Cleary's books were my favorites when I was a kid; they're still my "comfort food" of the book world. The stories of Henry Huggins, Ramona Quimby, and Otis Spofford pop into my mind more often than you think they would. I remember some of the exact phrases from the Ramona books I read and re-read as a child!

In 2012, a friend and I traveled to Portland, Oregon. While we were there, we visited Grant Park, where a lot of Beverly Cleary's books take place. Grant Park is the home of the Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden for Children, with statues of Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins, and Henry's dog Ribsy.





Check out more about Beverly Cleary's birthday from the author herself.