Get our Best Book Club Books of 2025 eBook!

Reviews by Therese X. (Calera, AL)

If you'd like to be able to easily share your reviews with others, please join BookBrowse.
Order Reviews by:
Alice I Have Been
by Melanie Benjamin
Alice I Have Been (11/16/2009)
Alice Liddell Hargreaves, "the real Alice", and Lewis Carroll's model for his famous Alice in Wonderland, grew up in Oxford, England. Her father was Dean and friends with a Mr. Charles Dodgeson, resident math teacher who dabbled in early photography. Due to her beauty and free spirit, Dodgeson's early work contained many photos of Alice and occasionally her sisters. But the man who was to become Lewis Carroll felt a deep affection for young Alice which alarmed her mother and ended in estrangement. No one is certain why. In Alice I Have Been, the author presents in novel form the life of Alice, delving into the reasons behind the severance of this unusual friendship. From page one of the novel, narrated by Alice herself as she considers going to America to receive an honorary doctorate from Columbia University, the story pulls the reader through the both delightful and horrendous events of Alice’s life. The reader feels the story is truly biographical, it is written so seamlessly and emotionally charged without being saccharine or unbelievable. Going back in time with the real Alice is like going down a new rabbit hole with experiences following one upon the other until the final page of the imaginative roller coaster ride. A very enjoyable yet often poignant adventure story with a curious twist at the end.
The Music Teacher
by Barbara Hall
THE MUSIC TEACHER (10/23/2008)
My first impression of this book was that the writer/narrator was going to invite me into her world which would be filled with music, angst, characters and her own transition in life due to her protege, Hallie. It is that, and more. The enjoyment of the characters and the struggles of Pearl, the music teacher, seemed so real I thought she was telling the story to me as it happened. This was an engrossing and enjoyable read!
  • Page
  • 1
  • 2

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Based on the author’s family story, comes an extraordinary novel about a mother and her daughters’ escape from Taiwan.
  • Book Jacket
    The Lilac People
    by Milo Todd
    For fans of All the Light We Cannot See, a poignant tale of a trans man’s survival in Nazi Germany and postwar Berlin.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Serial Killer Games
    by Kate Posey

    A morbidly funny and emotionally resonant novel about the ways life—and love—can sneak up on us (no matter how much pepper spray we carry).

  • Book Jacket

    Awake in the Floating City
    by Susanna Kwan

    A debut novel about an artist and a 130-year-old woman bound by love and memory in a future, flooded San Francisco.

  • Book Jacket

    The Original Daughter
    by Jemimah Wei

    A dazzling debut by Jemimah Wei about ambition, sisterhood, and family bonds in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.

  • Book Jacket

    Ginseng Roots
    by Craig Thompson

    A new graphic memoir from the author of Blankets and Habibi about class, childhood labor, and Wisconsin’s ginseng industry.

Who Said...

Harvard is the storehouse of knowledge because the freshmen bring so much in and the graduates take so little out.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

B W M in H M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.