An incredibly charming and cozy romance novel about an artist who creates custom stationery and journals and a Wall Street mathematician. I love that every character is in transition, what happens when everyone gets into your late twenties - do you make a change in your career, is your relationship working, and so on. This is where Meg is when the book opens and Reid comes in to ask her about the hidden message in his never-used wedding program.

Loved it. I snort-laughed in public often. This collection doesn‘t have as much range as Shrill, which drew from all parts of Lindy‘s life, and has more focus on cultural commentary - good commentary - but it‘s less personal in tone. Her excellent Goop Health piece is included here.

(Also whee, Shrill S2 is back in January!)
(Also also, I love the cover design)

A beautifully-translated novel comprised of linked vignettes (best descriptor I have since the narrative is only vaguely linear with many narrators/points-of-view), the first by an Omani woman to be translated to English and the first Arabic-language winner of the International Man Booker. There are a LOT of characters and the narrative shifts back and forth in time, but they‘re all so interesting, especially the sisters Mayya, Asma, and Khawla.

Fun and compulsively readable, much darker than I was expecting (for some reason I was expecting funnier, idk). It ended differently than I expected so definitely looking forward to more books in this series.

The audiobook narrator was excellent.

I particularly enjoy Mark Morris‘s acerbic tone - he likes what he likes, he has opinions about art and the art form, and he doesn‘t care if you like him or not for these opinions. I also liked how honest he was in this memoir regarding the ups and downs of a career in the performing arts - read this for both the history of MMDG as a modern dance company and also for the work it takes to start and maintain a dance company.

3.5 rolled up to 4 since I did like the writing and overall book as a whole. But where The Handmaid‘s Tale had bared teeth and outrage The Testaments doesn‘t really give us new ground. We get a lot of pedantic nuts-and-bolts about how Gilead came about and more detail about day-to-day women‘s lives. Dirty secrets, double-dealing as expected. But it is readable and I did enjoy it. (And mild spoiler, there is an epilogue from the Gilead symposium).

A so-so rolled up to 🤘🏻- I did snort-laugh many times. If you like Ali Wong‘s stand-up, this continues a lot of jokes and themes from her specials (she does a lot of raunch humor about body fluids and sex but also does a lot of jokes about the grossness of pregnancy/motherhood that kind of gets swept under the rug). The format of letters to her daughters is a little odd since they‘re quite small now but it does make some of the pieces endearing.

A goofy send-up of both the Regency and paranormal romance genres. McGovern takes a lot of potshots at genres tropes, to the point that the book is perhaps overstuffed to the detriment of the plot. It has a lot of the same energy and humor that Nimona brought to the table, tho this is not a YA graphic novel (some swearing and one nekkid succubus) - the creator also originated the “My Life as a Background Slytherin” webcomic.

Cute. Five stars for the cute cat pictures, four stars for humor, three stars for the actual poems (they‘re fine).

This is not an easy book to read - it‘s a collection of letters between a couple that expected almost daily that he would be executed by the Nazis and contain minute details of Helmuth‘s defense and Freya‘s visits to various officials to try and get Helmuth released, so they do get a bit repetitive when read all at once. But their discussions of faith, love, reminiscences about their children, heart-felt farewells in each letter are truly moving.

A good collection of long-form essays (nothing wrong with a short hot-take, but a well-researched and laid out essay is becoming rare), all dealing with the ways in which feminism and femininity are packaged and served to us. Our yoga pants, our television shows, the internet, our relationships, our celebrities. Outstanding essays include “We Are Old Virginia” and “The Cult of the Difficult Woman.”

A good collection of long-form essays (nothing wrong with a short hot-take, but a well-researched and laid out essay is becoming rare), all dealing with the ways in which feminism and femininity are packaged and served to us. Our yoga pants, our television shows, the internet, our relationships, our celebrities. Outstanding essays include “We Are Old Virginia” and “The Cult of the Difficult Woman.”

The library audio was available - they got a second narrator to read the longer diary excerpts and shed used a Yorkshire accent, so we got to hear something approaching Anne Lister‘s own accent. It‘s a wee bit boring in places, since this is book concentrating on letters and a diary so it is hard for the biographer to “plot” the book. However, Anne is a fascinating contradiction of a woman as this is an excellent companion to the TV series.

A small but very diverse anthology centered on LGBTQ+ experiences before, during, and after the Stonewall riots of 1969. It took a bit to read because the structure of some pieces wasn‘t straightforward (there is a long, dense stream-of-consciousness piece by Jill Johnston that is a prime example). But the collection highlights how Stonewall came about, how far we‘ve come as a society in the intervening 50 years, and how far we still have to go.

Time travel across multiverse and millennia is the feature but the real point of this book is the relationship between Red and Blue, rival, skilled operatives on opposite sides of a war. Blue opens a daring, mocking correspondence in the aftermath of a bloody battle, Red counters, grudging admiration and challenge. Soon, they are confiding secrets in an ever-more dangerous exchange until they cannot extricate themselves.

Finally finished, which I had to since I‘m the book club leader tonight.

Téa Obreht‘s lovely sentences saved this “novel” - which was comprised of two drastically different, cheaply foreshadowed, novellas that converged (finally) at the end of the book. In my opinion, she should have chosen either Nora‘s story or Lurie‘s story and developed an emotionally compelling, complete story. I found neither compelling. I would like to talk to her editor.

A very thoughtful examination of why and how we listen to classical music (and what defines “classical” music) from an experienced conductor. I really loved the ideas about how to program a concert, what works, what doesn‘t, and how certain works become well-known. Would have liked a list of suggested recordings to listen to, since this would be a tough book to read if one doesn‘t have a decent background in classical music.

4.5 of 5. Gorgeous and devastating. (But could I have a few paragraph breaks please? 😂)

Eh, kind of boring. If you haven‘t read the work the party comes from you‘re a bit lost for context and if you have then you disagree with the author‘s analysis *cough*Mansfield Park*cough*

But I read it and now it can go in the library donation bin.

A comprehensive look at the rise of fentanyl, fentanyl derivatives, and the myriad designer drugs/novel psychoactive substances that have come in their wake. This is the next step in the opioid crisis, since the street heroin addicts have turned to is often cut with varying and dangerous amounts of fentanyls, often with tragic results. Westhoff met with manufacturers in China, makers of safe-testing kits in Europe, and researched the Dark Web.

After snarfing down the two novels, I picked up this novella prequel. The “oral history” format really lends itself well to what is an extended infodump of all the information it would be impossible to cram into the first book. Also, since I am an epidemiologist I was DELIGHTED with the way Scalzi played with the science of the Haden‘s outbreak.

Thus concludes my binge through the extant Lock In series. ;)

A wonderfully solid and wide-ranging anthology of fiction, poetry, memoir, and personal essay on the subject of migration, whether voluntary or involuntary. The pieces are diverse geographically and chronologically (the earliest works are from eighteenth-century writers and enslaved persons Olaudah Equiano and Phyllis Wheatley and the more recent are migrations from the Middle East and mid-2000s green card worries).

4.5 of 5 stars. Not quite as immersive as Lock In but still compulsively readable - I really liked the introduction of franchise sports as a way to drive the crime procedural plot forward. And the humor. It scratches a few of those Thursday Next itches I have. If Scalzi wanted to make this an ongoing series I would totally read it.

Took me two books to figure out that Chris, being a first-person narrator, is never referred to in any gendered way.

A compulsively readable cyberpunk FBI thriller. I loved how he pushed the tech to the edge and beyond it but also made it seem relevant (the debate about “freeing” Hadens felt very similar to debates about cochlear implants, etc). The world-building is also effortlessly diverse. Onto the next book!

Funny and fact-filled. The reading level feels very middle grade and up, so the tinier morbid humans may need a little help when reading, but a lot of the information here was new to me so even adults will get a lot out of it.

Plus the illustrations are excellent.

It took me a bit to get into this one - I hadn‘t read the first book and Raleigh is a bit of an acquired taste. But after about 40 pages, once the three MCs are squared the plot chugs right along. Interestingly, this is a rather medium-steamy ménage romance; there are some sex scenes but not intimately described (if you‘re looking for HAWT threesomes by Chapter 2 this book is not for you).

A sweet and funny book of personal essays (and lists) about being the type of person who worries a lot and tends to give everyone the benefit of the doubt (even sketchy dudes giving you a dog and the Patriots bc your grandma was a fan). Standout pieces include “You Don‘t Know, Now You Know” (becoming a rap fan), “The Thanksgiving Dragon”, “The Three True Stories of How We Met” (awwww 💖), & “Bizzy” (y‘all, if you don‘t follow @bizzythepug on IG...

I picked this up bc I was interested in her reporting/research on religion/faith in the Midwest (I am 100% a city kid from Cedar Rapids, IA, where Lyz now lives). She does a great job in tying to get inside that mythos of “midwesterners are the salt of the earth and the real backbone of the US”, the cognitive dissonance of faith and politics, but she ties much of it to her search for a faith community that did not make her feel small/unwelcome.

I am late to the Lisa Kleypas party - when I was getting back into romance she didn‘t pop onto my radar. But I‘ve been backtracking through her backlist very slowly - and YES, Derek Craven is a LOT. I can see why Sarah MacLean cites this book as a favorite and where her Scoundrels and Bastards come from. Sara is pretty fun and it was nice to see her decide that she‘s not going to be a “good girl” and confine herself to a predefined role.

4 stars for content: arranged in an interesting format so that different filmmakers‘ quotes about different aspects of video store culture seemed to be in conversation with each other. I would have liked a few more perspectives from people other than directors/distributors like critics, actors, archivists, etc.
2 stars for the physical book: not entirely the author‘s fault bc the original publisher went belly-up before publication...

4.5 stars rounded to a full 5 because so much is packed into this little book. It didn‘t wreck me like The Underground Railroad - I was a mess by the end of that book. This one was more quietly devastating. Whitehead didn‘t pull his punches but instead slipped them around from behind. The violence doesn‘t hit you in the face, it stabs you in the back. I also thought a lot about Ava DuVernay‘s When They See Us, currently streaming on Netflix.

A book I had hanging around the house and found in Libby so I could get it read. This is fine. Some funny bits, some awkward bits. The essays tend to ramble a lot in the middle. Crosley also does the narration which is so slow it doesn‘t sound like normal speech until about 1.5x speed.

Happy belated #bookloversday from the bookshelf critters in my office!

Wow. Not a word wasted, not a word out of place. A beautiful, spare, rich memoir about being black and gay and how little space is given to those men as they grow from childhood to adulthood. Internalized self-loathing is so common among these pages that I can‘t even imagine the work Saeed must have done to be able to bare those emotions for the reader. The book is also a love letter to his late mother, those last few chapters cut me to the quick.

A well-written essay collection about living as a disabled woman of color - how these intersections affect personal relationships, self-worth, internalized ableism, seeing one‘s self (or not, as is the case) in books, film, and TV, and mental health. She writes bravely about self-destructive thoughts and the plan to end her own life in a way we don‘t often “allow” in disability lit. She credits books by Sarah Dessen/Toni Morrison in helping her.

Lovely but short even for a novella. Cat‘s first historical f/f for Avon contains the story of Molly the streetwise housemaid (we‘ve met her before) and Alice the cast-off vicar‘s daughter. While on the way to an HEA without relationship miscommunication or reluctance to acknowledge love the two ladies show a couple of awful dudes where to get off. Love the cover.

The narrator handled reading of all the email/text technical stuff well, although she was a very slow reader (sounded normal sped up to 1.5x). The portions of the book from Iris‘s blog had the best writing/character development - there are “posts” that are breathtakingly beautiful - which made the other characters extremely 2D until Jade and Smith really started “talking” to one another. Carl, the intern, was very much an over-the-top parody.

I guess this counts as a book? (I would have read a printed version of this course bc it sounded interesting, so I‘m counting it! 😌)

A very good overview of utopian and dystopian literature from Sir Thomas More‘s 16th century Utopia through the 21st century‘s The Hunger Fames. Pamela Bedore is a very engaging lecturer. BUT I disliked how often “I‘m not going to spoil the ending” was uttered. It really limited the scope of some of the lectures.

A dry, satirical look at the Berlin intelligentsia and upper class of 1930 and what happens when a mediocre Jewish Everyman becomes an overnight cabaret sensation (look, it was a slow news day). Tergit skewers the capitalist drive to make as much money as possible off the hot shit for the moment - a drive that still exists in ever-increasing amounts of media tie-in rubbish and branding in the 21st century.

Middling, for me. Time Song is a book that tries to do many things - an anthropological exploration of Doggerland, a memoir of the author‘s fascination with artifacts and anthropology of older human culture, and a collection of poems (Time Songs) inspired by paleontologic and anthropologic scientific works - and doesn‘t quite grasp any of them. The drawn maps weren‘t easy to read or orient. Nice sentence-level writing, though.

Book 5 for #24in48! An enjoyable work of true crime/history read by Kate Reading. I‘d known a bit about the Affair of the Poisons (Nancy Mitford covers a bit in The Sun King but waaaay dishier) but this is a more in depth account of the Paris Chief of Police La Renier and his involvement. There are a LOT of historical figures introduced very quickly. If you‘re not familiar with 17th century French history you may want to brush up on it beforehand.

Book 4 finished for July 24in48.

This is a very intimate novel about the life of Erik Satie and his sister, brother, and two friends who new him well. The writing is beautiful, particularly in those chapters from Satie‘s perspective talking about “touch” or music, and Horrocks described the Montmartre Satie inhabited so well. The chapters from his sister Louise‘s perspective are interesting; they are the only ones told in 1st person...

This. Book. Is. Wild.

Jordy Rosenberg has given us a novel that is at once a purported seventeenth century memoir/narrative, that morphs into a rallying cry against the commoditization of bodies, of prison abolition, of anti-colonialism, of anti-racism, of trans self-determination. Surrounding this is a framing narrative in footnotes of the professor annotating this tale and his fight against a university increasingly...

#24in48

Book 2 done for July 2019 24in48 readathon!

I really loved this second book in the London Celebrities series. Lucy Parker really takes aim at the shit actresses have to deal in the acting profession. Luc and Lily are great characters. I‘ll admit to being a bit nervous about the age difference but it is handled so well. Also nice to see Lainie and Richard in a short scene (Richard gives great advice when he remembers to not be an actual git.)

Book 1 down for July 2019 24in48 Readathon!

Much parody, very satire. (Y‘all, if you don‘t understand what the @guyinmyMFA twitter account is about you wont understand this book.)

A fun yet still academic examination of Austen fan culture. I really appreciated Chapter 2 about the adaptation of Austen‘s Emma into the movie Clueless (total Betty!). Good chapters at the end about Austen and LGBTQ+ themes/ships. It‘s a little short, I would have liked a few more chapters poking into more crevices.

3.5 stars. I liked this, especially the relationship between Jo and Bethie and how women‘s roles have changed (or not changed) in the latter years of the 20th century. But it felt very draggy to me, with some parts rendered so beautifully early in the book and then others very slapdash later in the book. Could have used some balance in the narrative pacing.

Read for BN Book Club

I really enjoyed this fake relationship plot btw a good-natured, publicly-minded actress (Lainie) and a grouchy, patrician, git of an actor (Richard) who have to start appearing to be an item so ticket sales for the play they‘re in won‘t tank. So much good banter and a look inside the theatre world of West End London. I liked how Richard softens but doesn‘t entirely lose his “people are insufferable” vibe while Lainie gets a bit of an edge to her.

A moving memoir told through essays and poems about the author‘s childhood in Guatemala and migrating to the US at the age of 10. It‘s a very slice-of-life book, full of the details that a child remembers about playing with neighbors, the oddities of the neighborhood, and being raised by strong women.