I did not understand my reaction to this book - I loved it at first and/but grew to almost hate it. I was intrigued by the time and setting at the start of the book, but I guess steadily lost interest as the Netanyahus themselves entered the story and things went off the rails (and got more slapstick). There's a lot of fun and humor early on with etymology and language.

I loved this book! The color palette is intriguing, the illustration style is unique and evocative, and the subject matter was both familiar (Italy/Germany/Austria during WW2) and from a totally new (to me) wartime perspective - that of a Thai family.
I hope this picture gives a sense of the formats used in this book - so cool!

When I saw the plot summary of this book, I was surprised that more people hadn't been revisiting it during covid19. it was interesting to see all the places where the fictional version was spot on, and where there were differences.

But to me, that was by far the most interesting part of the book. It was short enough that I felt compelled to finish it, and I was curious about what would happen, but with hindsight I would have given up on it.

This book is THE BEST!!! I highly recommend it if you have lost your mom, know someone who has, or if you will someday lose your mom. It is both funny and heartbreaking, highly specific and also universal.

Astonishing. This is probably the best book I‘ve read this year. The portrayal of grad school in sciences alone is outstanding- the best I‘ve come across - and all the relationships- platonic or romantic or sexual - are incredible. Descriptions of many dimensions of race. Abuse. Geography. Hierarchy. Birds! Death. I‘ve lost the ability to form sentences, so just try it out (although it did take me a bit to get into this amazing debut!).

Powerful, necessary, and highly recommended. I had to take the collection in small doses as most of the stories were brutal.

Not for me!

Loved this book & loved it even more after listening to the book club discussion episode of the (always great) The Librarian Is In podcast. It definitely has spoilers, so finish the book first! 😊😍

I highly recommend this book to everyone. Even in just the Foreword, Barres‘ blistering ferocity AND humor comes through clearly.
Barres‘ life is fascinating and I wish it, and the first section of the book, had been longer. The Science section was fairly dry, even as a reader with a minor in neuroscience - I‘d recommend that readers feel free to skip that section, and focus on the first (Life) and third (advocacy) sections.

I was surprised to find parts of this book too extreme for comfort for me - but I don‘t need to made comfortable in all of my reading! The essay that actually hit home for me the hardest was on cynicism.

Heartbreaking, beautiful, powerful, and as @LauraBeth said, unsettling. A magnificent book.

I found this fascinating! I liked McCreesh‘s previous book about moving to and living in Yellowknife but was even more intrigued at the end when she mentioned having a baby. Her trek north of 60 deg latitude was intriguing enough, but the work and toddler added was so interesting. The art was so pretty too.

Beautiful & felt perfect to me. I thought the words were lovely to read myself and to read out loud - I got a little choked up at times! I was pleasantly surprised that my 1 and 3 year olds stayed engaged throughout , too.

A super fun book and the first I‘ve read by Orlean. The mix of history (of LA, libraries in general, and plenty more), true crime, memoir, and many other topics, notably homelessness, made for an interesting romp, but at times I wished the editor had had a heavier hand. Someone states that library users are 80% male - is that true?! Continued below

I had a hard time with this book and would have left it unfinished we‘re it not for the excellent and compelling goodreads reviews. I‘m glad I came back to it, but for me the book stayed a bit “other” throughout, which is a central part of the story/memoir. It‘s really good but not really for me, but I would recommend it to lots of others.

Beautiful but devastating, this book defies rating for me. This was not the right time for me to read this, but I can‘t deny that the artwork is fantastic and the author‘s note at the end was hopeful to me. I really enjoyed the pictured moment of levity in his childhood!

This book was completely lovely. My favorite parts were Sarton‘s meditations on solitude, nature, and the ranges in her moods. I‘m glad I savored it over the course of a few months. I would recommend the book both to those experiencing solitude and those completely deprived of it (by young children, for example!).
Thanks to Gretchen Rubin‘s Happier podcast for introducing me to the author!

Quite a delight, and for better or worse I found that its charm outweighed depressing aspects of the story.

At times, this collection is less “formal” than some of Le Guin‘s other work, both in subject matter and format (blog posts). However, much of it is on topics just as serious and well thought out as her other work, and feels current and important. I enjoyed reading this in conjunction with May Sarton‘s writing - two brilliant and well-spoken older women, huzzah!

This was a thoughtful book focused on women in an unfamiliar (to me) community- so I don‘t know why I didn‘t like it more! None of the threads of plot, nor the characters, particularly interested me or received enough focus in my opinion.

This book is brutal and depressing in a way that defies rating for me. I didn't like reading it at all, but it was well done. I've certainly read other books about child abuse and sex work, and I'm not sure why this was more off-putting than those. The artwork was particularly effective.
#GraphicNovels #DrawnandQuarterly

I loved a lot in this book - storylines, characters, relationships, and geography (so much Door County!). This quote was a favorite.

This book is amazing and terrifying. It served as one of the best civics lessons I've had about what parts of the government do, and I wish I had been taught this information earlier. That makes the current administration the perfect foil for the book, which would be a great writing device if only it were not our reality.

As a graphic novel, I felt the images were not always clearly assembled and it was sometimes hard to keep track of what was happening. However, as a representation of Syrian refugees, this seemed like a good representation of the tragedy and chaos of the region.

I liked this even more than Boxers, although of course they are interdependent. The lead-in to the main character's conversion to Christianity was hilarious (the raccoon! and its end!), while the ending was devastating, and the book covered so many emotions in between. I loved seeing the paired story. Wonderful, if quite sad.

An excellent book I cannot stop thinking about. Kakutani's explanation of postmodernism and application to current events, and description of its movement from the left to the right, is just fascinating (and terrifying). At times, the book reads like the polemics it derides, which is interesting as well.

Just as great as everyone says, albeit violent and with troubled (but I imagine accurate) gender dynamics. An exceptional window in a different time, place, and worldview. Starting the “next” one now!

I LOVED THIS BOOK!

Which is all the more amazing because this was one of my mom's favorite & treasured childhood books, and she always wanted my sister and me to read it when we were kids. We never did (until now). It became family shorthand for lovingly attempting & failing to force something on someone.

Did you have a family book like this? Did you end up reading it?

I don‘t think I got this book, but I really liked he narrative turn it seemed to take in the last third. A quick read worth picking up.

While this is impossible to actually know, this book feels like such a portal into Hanawalt's humor, personality, and interests - at least what's on display from her other works (books as well as BoJack Hoseman) and her podcast Baby Geniuses. So it was interesting to read a book that felt so familiar, and yet is entirely different from her other work due to the Western genre.

Great author reading last night in San Francisco!

A heartrending account of a relationship cut short by cancer. The intimate ephemera of postcards and photos intermingled with drawings was a bittersweet way to convey the potential and loss in their time together.
When the title alone makes me well up, I know I‘m in for something...

I loved this book. For me, it was just the right mix of fun, gross, creepy, sinister, and light-hearted! My favorite part was the intense focus on female friendship. Also the very ending was surprisingly touching.

I didn't really like this book and I'm really glad I read it. It was not what I expected, which forced me to confront what I HAD expected, and why. The writing itself is an entire additional sphere to appreciate.

The part I found most enlightening was the afterword. I saw an interview in the LA Times where the author said "I can't wait for the new editions. The new editions of the book is just my text, no foreword or afterword."

I have pretty mixed feelings on this collection. It is heartfelt and genuine - but also not really for me, in spite of elements that really hit home (particularly feelings about the Midwest while leaving it). I don't love Porcellino's artistic style but I do like his meditations on aspects of life.

While I haven't been a big fan of O'Neill's novels, I'm generally impressed by his short stories. My favorites tended toward what might be seen as showing off, especially in the first story, Pardon Edward Snowden. My least favorite featured bro-ish characters, and most of the collection does have a decidedly male slant.

I'm impressed that the author was able to put together what felt like a tricky story, explaining a lot of history, biology, psychology, and criminal processing. Some aspects may be beyond my understanding, namely the all-consuming nature of fly tying for artistic (?) purposes. While that may be a lack of imagination on my part, even as a scientist, I didn't always find the argument of keeping so many birds in a museum to be so compelling!

A beautiful collection, appropriate both for children and adults. While I liked individual poems a lot, I found the overall structure and arc to be the most powerful and satisfying aspect of the book.
So glad to have heard about this book from @thereadingwomen podcast!

Moments of this book were beautiful or highly insightful, and all the writing slipped along smoothly. The discussion of wealth was particularly interesting, and I loved the very ending - but there was something that kept the bulk of the story and characters at arm's length from me.
Having said that, I guess I liked this a lot more than many Littens!

I haven‘t read many rom coms (if that‘s what this is?) and I thought it was pretty fun, plus there‘s a twist near the end that I didn‘t see coming at all!

An interesting and beautiful portrayal of a conflict I had little knowledge of. The child's perspective was effective in conveying a mix of banality, sudden fear, and creeping dread, while also showing small pleasures. I loved the illustration style.

I‘ve enjoyed multiple books by Percy and the premise of this one sounded fun, but I thought this book was pretty bad. The plot is scattered and doesn‘t make good use of the ideas haphazardly laid out. It‘s gratuitously gory and gruesome. There are multiple female characters, which is great, but the book‘s treatment of them makes it hard to tell if it‘s misogyny or misanthropy at work.

Funny book pair but maybe horror is hygge for some??

I thought this book was pretty poorly written and I disagreed with a fair amount of it. I also can't stop thinking about it.

(Continued below)

“Revert back” drives me crazy, but do you think it‘s just becoming standard usage?

I‘m glad I stuck with this, as I found everything from the birth story onward excellent. Some descriptions gave me insight into experiences very different from my own, while others were strikingly familiar. However, the beginning of the book, focusing on pregnancy, did not resonate with me.

I loved the first half - thought provoking, measured yet passionate, and brilliantly cutting. I was less interested in the more fantastical and less political (to me anyway) second half.

This was a fun biography; my favorite part was when his lectures were (finally) illustrated. In my opinion it too too long to get to the science. I don‘t think Feynman‘s flirtations/womanizing age well, but the portrait of his first wife was lovely, and he seemed to hold scientists in high regard without consideration of gender. The illustrations were a bit bland and hard to follow at times; many people weren‘t distinctive!

I found the three storylines a bit challenging to follow and never really got the hang of them. The modern-day story also felt a bit out of place until it was hammered home without much nuance. I wasn‘t wild about the drawing style but the coloring was unique, beautiful, and well-suited to the settings. And the feel and desperation of arctic exploration definitely came through.
Kind of between so-so & a pick for me...

I found this book fascinating, frustrating, beautiful, and unbelievable. The author shows so many facets of living with a chronic illness while owning her own unreliability and lack of clarity. While I was tempted at times to put the book down, I always found the writing too captivating to abandon.

It took me a while to get into this book, but I'm glad I did. There's so much here in terms of gender, literature, and relationships. I feel inarticulate trying to express it!

Groff's writing is so beautiful and unique!