Shaina Reads

Disclaimer: I received Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science—and the World from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review... and then reviewed it almost two months late. Oops. Regardless, thanks to Crown Publishing/Broadway Books for offering me the chance to read it! The other day I was strolling through a local indie bookshop and noticed that Headstrong by Rachel Swaby had finally hit the shelves. I swelled...

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This is Tory, the prettiest pup around. Last week, my boyfriend and I had the good fortune of spending nearly a week in Chicago. Not only did we watch two lovely friends get married, but we also got to spend multiple days with a few of our best friends from college. My boyfriend has an aunt, uncle and cousins in Evanston (northern suburb...

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I'm back, y'all, and just in time for Thrifty Thursdays, a weekly book meme started by Sal over at Motion Sick Lit. Thrifty Thursdays is designed to get book bloggers hunting for new and/or interesting reads on the cheap. Patronizing—in the good sense, not the bad—your favorite independent bookseller is especially encouraged! Sal's rules for the feature are as follows: 1. Each week’s link-up will be...

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You know how I've been learning a statistical programming language? (If not, now you do!) In a fit of nerdiness, I decided yesterday to take a crack at visualizing some of my Goodreads data from the last three and a half years of my reading life, and... I found something horrifying. OK. This needs to get fixed pronto. pic.twitter.com/GcU5IzJrQw — Shaina (@shainareads) May...

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To carry on with the theme of reviewing books utterly oozing with bleak atmosphere, it's time we discussed All the Birds, Singing. By "discuss," I really mean "chatter to myself," since this one was published in April of last year and I imagine most of you got to it in a more timely fashion. "Another sheep, mangled and bled out, her innards not yet...

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Happy Sunday! Today I've got something decidedly unbookish for you to close out the weekend. The past two days have been blissfully chilled-out, which is exactly what I needed after playing host to family last weekend and working a ten-hour Sunday the weekend before. Oh, and two bouts of illness. (OK, whining quota met.) I read, I played video games, I coded, and,...

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The first thing you need to know about The Shore is that the setting is one of the most important characters in the story. This is no small feat, as throughout its 300+ pages, we meet more than two dozen others, nearly all of them loosely connected to one of two families that have called this collection of islands off the coast of Virginia...

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It's Thursday, y'all, and that means it's time for Thrifty Thursdays, a weekly book meme started by Sal over at Motion Sick Lit. He's pretty nifty; you should definitely check out his blog if you haven't already. Thrifty Thursdays is designed to get book bloggers hunting for new and/or interesting reads on the cheap. Patronizing—in the good sense, not the bad—your favorite independent bookseller is...

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Happy Wednesday, book buds! It's been a quiet week around here, thanks to a visit from my boyfriend's mom as well as my second debilitating cold in less than a month. I didn't even know it was possible to get sick this frequently, but worry not; I'm very much on the mend! Today I've got a round-up of mini-reviews of books I read...

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Happy Thursday, y'all! Today's my Friday because I worked more than 10 hours last Sunday (the life of a developmental researcher) AND my boyfriend's mom comes into town tonight. It's party time.* Speaking of Thursday, I want to share my first ever foray into Thrifty Thursdays, a weekly book meme started by Sal over at Motion Sick Lit. (He's pretty cool—check him out!)...

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Kelly Jensen posted a fantastic piece over at Book Riot yesterday that discussed why some well-intentioned initiatives to get kids reading are almost completely useless for children in poverty. One of her major arguments was that giving children free access to e-books might sound nice on paper, but it's essentially meaningless for that one-third of the population living at or below the poverty...

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This cover, ugh. So beautiful. All right, enough's enough. I've been hinting about how much I loved (and cried over) Tell the Wolves I'm Home for weeks now. Maybe I should actually review this book already. Carol Rifka Brunt's debut introduces us to fourteen-year-old June Elbus, a lone wolf of a teenager growing up in the early '80s in upstate New York. She...

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As the title of this post makes painfully clear, it's been a while since I've posted anything about the 2015 TBR Pile Challenge, hosted by Adam over at Roof Beam Reader. It's not that I haven't been reading; on the contrary, I have been doing a ton of reading but not nearly as much reviewing. And this is how we've come to the...

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