American Panda
reviewdate:
Sep 6 2018
isn:
9781481499125
Tagged with college students
Rearranged Life, the
reviewdate:
Jul 12 2015
isn:
9781620078778
author gender:
book type:
medium:
author demographic:
Fangirl
Identical twin Cather (sister's name is Wren--get it?) writes popular slash fiction in the world of a Harry Potter like series where the lovers are the Harry-like character Simon Snow and his enemy, a Draco Malfoy stand-in Baz (who is also a vampire). Cath is also an introverted college freshman and virgin from Omaha at college in Lincoln. Her twin sister/best friend is blowing her off, their estranged mother is poking her head into their lives, and their dad is fragile. Plus there are some boy issues, what might be an anxiety disorder and a little schoolwork to worry about.
reviewdate:
Oct 15 2013
isn:
978-1-250-03095-5
author gender:
medium:
recommendation:
Iron Duke
This is an old favorite, that I ILL'd partially for Eric's benefit because it's about a runner. It's 1930s young adult sports fiction. Our protagonist, "The Duke," is an Iowa boy struggling to find himself at Harvard University, which is full of prep school snoots who won't give him the time of day until he accidentally becomes a sports hero. His best buddies, football star Mickey McGuire and the urbane Faugeres Smith, are more interesting than Duke. Even if Duke is a little hayseed, his story is compelling, and I like the way Tunis gives it to Harvard.
reviewdate:
Aug 23 2012
author gender:
medium:
recommendation:
Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh
Anne’s stories of making zines with women college students in Cambodia (“women college students in Cambodia” is a really big deal), are mixed in with Cambodian history and information about the current state of the country, and etiquette lessons for foreign travelers, e.g., don’t haggle.
reviewdate:
Aug 16 2011
isn:
978-1-934620-89-2
author gender:
book type:
medium:
Unlikely Disciple: a Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University, the
Don’t you hate when young (like 21), middle-class, heterosexual white guys write smart, funny, sensitive books that you can’t help but kind of love? I know I do. Kevin Roose’s story of doing a semester “abroad” from Brown at Liberty University (founded by Jerry Falwell) is a total page-turner, and like a responsible ethnographer, he does not condescend to his native population (except perhaps by occasionally referring to his underground research with evangelical Christians as ethnography).
I did want to see what Christian college was like, with as little prejudgment as possible. I knew that wouldn’t be easy--you can’t neutralize a lifetime of bias overnight--but I wanted to try my best. So my second decision was: no cheap shots. If I went to Liberty, it would be to learn with an open mind, not to mock Liberty students or the evangelical world in toto.
reviewdate:
Aug 15 2011
isn:
978-0-446-17842-6
author gender:
medium:
recommendation:
Spring Fire
Lesbian pulp always seems like a better idea than it actually is. This stuff might have been great in the 50s, but I think nowadays it's probably best read aloud or performed as camp/melodrama.
It was different when I could say it wasn't this way, that I was bisexual and all that rot. Bisexual--that's sort of like succotash, isn't it? Only this succotash hasn't got any corn in it. It's straight beans!"
I'm possibly being insensitive to the bravery of this "story once told in whispers now frankly, honestly written," (not to mention to bisexuals by including the above quote) but it just didn't grab me.
reviewdate:
Jan 8 2011
isn:
1-57344-187-2
author gender:
book type:
medium:
Beyond the Limbo Silence
Girl with "raw talent" gets rescued by black-skinned blue-eyed from "primitive" Trinidad and discovers America in 1963.
reviewdate:
Jan 23 2010
isn:
1-58005-013-1