Kristen Barenthaler
Bio
Curious adventurer. Crazed reader. Librarian. Archery instructor. True crime addict.
Instagram: @kristenbarenthaler
Facebook: @kbarenthaler
Stories (370)
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I Don't Remember the Name, But the Cover was Purple...
Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a childhood friend, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. 'Dear Ijeawele' is Adichie's letter of response. Here are fifteen suggestions for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. From encouraging her to choose a helicopter, and not only a doll, as a toy if she so desires; having open conversations with her about clothes, makeup, and sexuality; debunking the myth that women are somehow biologically arranged to be in the kitchen making dinner, and that men can "allow" women to have full careers, Dear Ijeawele goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century. It can start a conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.
By Kristen Barenthaler9 months ago in BookClub
I Don't Remember the Name, But the Cover was Yellow/Orange...
A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin Six factions struggle for control of a divided land and the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms, preparing to stake their claims through tempest, turmoil, and war....Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, victory may go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel--and the coldest hearts. For when kings clash, the whole land trembles.
By Kristen Barenthaler9 months ago in BookClub
I Don't Remember the Name, But the Cover was Blue...
Sea Glass Summer by Dorothy Cannell Recovering from a painful divorce, Sarah Draycott has moved to picturesque village of Sea Glass on the Maine coast to make a fresh start. As she finds herself increasingly caught up in the lives of the Sea Glass residents, Sarah finds her broken heart beginning to heal.
By Kristen Barenthaler9 months ago in BookClub
If You Like "Twilight", Try These Titles
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice We are in a small room with the vampire, face to face, as he speaks--as he pours out the hypnotic, shocking, moving, and erotically charged confessions of his first two hundred years as one of the living dead. The time is now. We are in a small room with the vampire, face to face, as he speaks--as he pours out the hypnotic, shocking, moving, and erotically charged confessions of his first two hundred years as one of the living dead. . . He speaks quietly, plainly, even gently ... carrying us back to the night when he departed human existence as heir--young, romantic, cultivated--to a great Louisiana plantation, and was inducted by the radiant and sinister Lestat into the other, the "endless," life ... learning first to sustain himself on the blood of cocks and rats caught in the raffish streets of New Orleans, then on the blood of human beings ... to the years when, moving away from his final human ties under the tutelage of the hated yet necessary Lestat, he gradually embraces the habits, hungers, feelings of vampirism: the detachment, the hardened will, the "superior" sensual pleasures. He carries us back to the crucial moment in a dark New Orleans street when he finds the exquisite lost young child Claudia, wanting not to hurt but to comfort her, struggling against the last residue of human feeling within him.
By Kristen Barenthaler9 months ago in BookClub
If You Like "Harry Potter", Try These Titles
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke Twelve-year-old Meggie learns that her father, who repairs and binds books for a living, can "read" fictional characters to life when one of those characters abducts them and tries to force him into service.
By Kristen Barenthaler9 months ago in BookClub
If You Like "Ender's Game", Try These Titles
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline Ready Player One takes place in the not-so-distant future--the world has turned into a very bleak place, but luckily there is OASIS, a virtual reality world that is a vast online utopia. People can plug into OASIS to play, go to school, earn money, and even meet other people (or at least they can meet their avatars), and for protagonist Wade Watts it certainly beats passing the time in his grim, poverty-stricken real life. Along with millions of other world-wide citizens, Wade dreams of finding three keys left behind by James Halliday, the now-deceased creator of OASIS and the richest man to have ever lived. The keys are rumored to be hidden inside OASIS, and whoever finds them will inherit Halliday's fortune. But Halliday has not made it easy. And there are real dangers in this virtual world. Stuffed to the gills with action, puzzles, nerdy romance, and 80s nostalgia, this high energy cyber-quest will make geeks everywhere feel like they were separated at birth from author Ernest Cline.
By Kristen Barenthaler9 months ago in BookClub
If You Like "The Hunger Games", Try These Titles
Matched by Ally Condie All her life, Cassia has never had a choice. The Society dictates everything: when and how to play, where to work, where to live, what to eat and wear, when to die, and most importantly to Cassia as she turns 17, whom to marry. When she is Matched with her best friend Xander, things couldn't be more perfect. But why did her neighbor Ky's face show up on her match disk as well?
By Kristen Barenthaler9 months ago in BookClub
If You Like "Once Upon a Time", Try These Titles
Briar Rose by Jane Yolen Ever since she was a child, Rebecca has been enchanted by her grandmother Gemma's stories about Briar Rose. But a promise Rebecca makes to her dying grandmother will lead her on a remarkable journey to uncover the truth of Gemma's astonishing claim: I am Briar Rose. A journey that will lead her to unspeakable brutality and horror. But also to redemption and hope.
By Kristen Barenthaler9 months ago in BookClub
If You Like "The Fault in Our Stars", Try These Titles
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.
By Kristen Barenthaler9 months ago in BookClub
If You Like "The Girl on the Train", Try These Titles
The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn It isn't paranoia if it's really happening ... Anna Fox lives alone -- a recluse in her New York City home, drinking too much wine, watching old movies ... and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move next door: a father, a mother, their teenaged son. The perfect family. But when Anna sees something she shouldn't, her world begins to crumble -- and its shocking secrets are laid bare. What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this gripping Hitchcockian thriller, no one and nothing are what they seem.
By Kristen Barenthaler9 months ago in BookClub
If You Like "Downton Abbey", Try These Titles
Below Stairs by Margaret Powell A kitchen-maid's through-the-key hole memoir of life in the great houses of England--now a bestseller in the UK. At fifteen, she arrived at the servants' entrance to begin her life as a kitchen maid in 1920s England. The lowest of the low, her world was one of stoves to be blacked, vegetables to be scrubbed, mistresses to be appeased, and even bootlaces to be ironed. Work started at 5:30am and went on until after dark. In this captivating memoir, Margaret tells her tales of service with wit, warmth, and a sharp eye. From the gentleman with a penchant for stroking housemaids' curlers, to raucous tea dances with errand boys, to the heartbreaking story of Agnes the pregnant under-parlourmaid, fired for being seduced by her mistress's nephew, Below Stairs brilliantly evokes the longvanished world of masters and servants portrayed in Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs. Rocketing back on to the UK bestseller lists almost fifty years after its initial publication, this is the remarkable true story of an indomitable woman, who, though her position was lowly, never stopped aiming high.
By Kristen Barenthaler9 months ago in BookClub
