READ THIS! {Updates & Reviews}

Wow, what a week we've had in the Northeast - and it's only Wednesday! After Nemo dropped almost 30 inches on our area, knocked power out for my entire town, and canceled school for 3 days (yes, 3!) - it has certainly been a crazy few days. While I would have preferred to be in school, I was able to get a lot done these past few days, including catching up so much tv (Grey's, Glee, and Girls - the 3 G's!), baking up a storm, and putting the finishing touches on a major project I'm working on for my Curriculum Design class. I got a lot done, but I am excited to return to class tomorrow, and get back to teaching my students.

As I'm getting back to my routine at school, I want to share with you the updates and reviews for this month's READ THIS! pick, Eloisa James' Paris in Love.

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This is not your typical memoir, and I am excited for the end of the month and to share my thoughts on this month's book pick with you then. In the meantime, here are a few of the critics' takes on this memoir...

Maria Rodale, for the Huffington Post, writes, " The book is told and organized based on a series of Facebook posts and tweets, a format that starts off feeling unusual, but by the end, feels perfect; each bit is like a little poem or dessert unto itself, and kids and one very fat dog play starring roles. It's as much a documentary about how an 11-year-old girl and 15-year-old boy adapt to a new language and a new culture. [...] This is, after all, a romance -- for a city, a life, a family and love itself." 

Jonathan Yardley, for the Washington Post, writes, "It is a book that strives mightily to be charming and from time to time succeeds, but what James and her family did while in Paris is not always as interesting to readers as it clearly was to them. Given the immense size of her ferociously loyal readership, though, this seems unlikely to keep “Paris in Love” off the bestseller lists."

Deirdre Donahue, for USA Today, writes, "Yet Paris in Love offers an original perspective on the famous city and its citizens, in part because of its structure. Most memoirs are written in a straightforward, A to Z, soup-to-nuts, beginning to end linear manner. Not Paris in Love, which grew out of James' Facebook and Twitter jottings. [...] Written like a spool of lovely prose haiku, Paris in Love gives the reader the sense of being immersed along with James in Paris for the year rather than reading her memories. As if in real time, you see the rain, taste the food, observe the people." 
 
Have you started reading this memoir yet? I finished it last week, and I can't wait to share my thoughts with you later this month! I hope you'll join me in reading this book!

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