Eduardo Santiago
“This man was willing to lose his life to preserve white supremacy,” she writes in a chapter dealing with health care (specifically the ACA), and this sums up the book better than anything I could say. Hernández will have you thinking more deeply about U.S. systems of cruelty--both internal and external (think CIA and dictatorships and overthrows)--than you want to. But you should. Colorism, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, white privilege, the propaganda machine and how it gets stupid people to vote against their own interests. Cuban hypocrites moving here then voting for the orange cockroach, hoping to pull the drawbridge up after them. She effectively interweaves policy coverage with her own and her family’s lived experiences, really driving home the impact of continuous incremental oppression of those who have so little choice.
One disappointment: she never mentions statutory citizenship, the kind granted to subjects born in some U.S. colonies. An understandable oversight, given the number of other second- and third-class citizenships she covers, but it makes me wonder how many other ways there are to define--and limit--citizenship. Given what we know about humans, probably too many to mention.
Recommended reading for everyone.
Too intense and unusual for me to have much to say. Plus, I’m not the target audience; I often felt uncomfortable as a voyeur, and often felt lost with some cultural references. That said, I agree with S.’s assessment of this as a broad must-read for people trying to be decent. Just pick your timing carefully: there’s trauma, abuse, self-destructive behavior, deep levels of pain.
Has Mary Roach always been this cheeky? It's been a lot of years since _Stiff_ and _Bonk_ but I think yes, that's her voice. This time I found it a little overpowering.
Fascinating material, fun, funny, informative, but a little more scattershot than I'd expected from a supposedly linear adventure. Her research was impressively thorough, her presentation accessible.
It became obvious by page 3 that this was going to be a feel-good kind of book—no surprise if you’ve read The Music of Bees (and if you haven’t, please do yourself a favor and read that first. It’s not strictly necessary, but your love for and understanding of the main character will be stronger). What wasn’t obvious was how emotionally twisty it would be. Manipulative either way but I’m not complaining: I really needed this right now (2026) and would bet that maybe you do too. It’s a reassuring hug in dark times: good kind flawed heroes, including a deliciously relatable neurodivergent one; tough moral dilemmas; vile odious monsters who end up falling into vats of slow-acting poison-acid. (Sigh, not really, but let me remember it that way please?) Toxic masculinity defeated by more powerful quietness. Cooperation, community, growth. I closed the book and felt briefly at peace.
Garvin’s writing is—forgive me—mellifluous. Gentle, pensive, with awareness of all senses, scent and sounds and delicate touches. I swooned when reading “The grass susurrated against her pant leg”: a word I’ve always loved, fairly common in Spanish but so rare in English. And speaking of Spanish, the occasional idioms were perfectly apt; it’s clear she had it proofread by a native speaker. Those little details matter, and this novel is rich with details. And with love.
One weird aside: a (female) friend approached me yesterday and, seeing me read it, asked: “I got the sense this was a women’s book, is it?” I was taken aback, not really understanding the question. Still not really sure I get it. I don’t remember any parts of the book where a reader’s genitalia would affect their interpretation or enjoyment ... but then again by definition I wouldn’t. Do I have any friends willing to break the sistah code and illuminate me? If not, no sweat: my enjoyment and appreciation remain high.
Humbling and thought-provoking. Not really a cookbook--you and I are unlikely to prepare any of the dishes listed--but Swentzell and her community did, and subsisted on them, and share what they learned. We take so much for granted, not realizing that nearly all the foods in our kitchen would never have been together until just a few hundred years ago. The essays are powerful, and reading the recipes, with their limited ingredients and intense preparation, is a reminder of how fortunate we are.
Poorly promoted: it's much, much more than "book about a fire in some library you don't care about" and I wish it billed itself thus. This is a book for bibliophiles everywhere. It's educational, inspiring, warm, and fun, broadly covering subjects library- and book-related; how our modern concept of library has evolved and continues to. And yes, there's some coverage of the 1986 Los Angeles library fire, bits and pieces tossed in periodically, but it feels like a halfhearted attempt to center around a unifying theme.
May not be suitable for younger (under forty) readers: a good part of the fun involves the chapter headings, which are three or four Courier-typed card catalog book listings related to the chapter content. I enjoyed reading those, keeping them in mind as the chapter progressed, and flipping back to review what I'd missed. (Yes, flipping back. This was a hardcover, borrowed from our local library. That, too, was part of the fun). I could almost hear the drawers sliding open, almost feel the rough uneven edges of the cards.
Recommended for anyone who has ever felt awe when stepping into a library.
“Free Will” is in the zeitgeist, so let’s talk a little along those lines. There are people who somehow believe that each of us has full control of our decisions at all times; that someone who grows up neglected, without secure attachment, surrounded by poverty and daily violence and gang pressure, can tug on magic bootstraps and get a 9-to-5 at MegaCorp. Those people tend to be privileged and, to put it bluntly, very stupid. (It’s not their fault—they’re a product of their own environment and upbringing—but dammit they are still so infuriating). Can these people stick to their beliefs after reading this book? De León’s crushing answer, in his epilogue, is yes. And that just crushed me. How must he feel?
This is a hard book to recommend: there’s violence, misery, brutality. Recognition that some people live very hard lives and make tough choices under impossible circumstances. It’s uncomfortable for us affluent northerners to see the scope of suffering just a few miles south of us, suffering enabled (and encouraged) by systems that we live in and support. Hard to recommend, but I do so unreservedly.
One note: de León is an anthropologist, not a journalist. He does not embed himself clinically-dispassionately. He is careful not to participate in “criminal” activities (quotes reflect the absurdity of criminalizing migration) but he is very much present in the narrative, often in ways I found disturbing. I choose to reserve judgment: surviving for years among scary-dangerous people, and living to produce a powerful book, takes courage and personality beyond anything I can imagine.
Trippy! I never knew where he would go next, and every zig and zag was intense. Friend J recently expressed a penchant for “books that make me feel, or make me think”; This one is very much both. Powers is a True Believer, almost but not quite Leary level, but he’s very much self-aware: just when I was getting ready to ditch the book he comes out with Sometimes, I play back an interview I did, and creeping into my voice is the breathless panting of a zealot.. He does that a lot, going into what feels like manifesto mode and then swerving into ... well, different tacks.
The one central thread is healing. Psychedelics have an immense power to heal trauma, and apparently Black Americans experience quite a bit of generational and personal and daily trauma [citation buffer overflow]. Powers explores what that healing could look like, and wow does he go in depth, with angles and consequences I’d never considered, all with love and rage and wonder. He kept me on my toes, feeling and thinking. His alternate-self exploration, where he acknowledges a different-timeline version of himself who grew up stuck in the Projects, hit home hard. There but for incredible good fortune and privilege, etc etc.
Not a book for everyone. If you haven't personally experienced the healing, you may find it baffling or even unnerving. If you're already a (lower-case) true believer, and want to learn more about antiracist healing possibilities, and are willing to be challenged, pick this up.
Much broader in scope than I had expected, and effectively so. Cooper spends 290 of the 350 pages laying the groundwork before getting to The Incident: growing up gay and Black in 1970s USA; discovering a passion for birding; sharing said passion; and then selected vignettes from his journey through life. These include travels, personal discovery, family dynamics, work life. All of it suffused with inescapable double-whammy systemic oppression. He's mature and insightful, a talented writer, and his technique works: when we finally get to The Incident, the reader is well prepared to understand it in greater context.
A little TMI in some aspects: in addition to birds, Cooper is seriously into comics, and he makes darn sure that the reader learns all about his (admittedly impressive) work at Marvel and elsewhere. As someone not quite as drawn by the genre, I'll admit to skimming a little. And there's my personal gripe about memoirs: how do you write fairly about those in your life, when they don't have an equal platform to explain themselves? Cooper comes off as fairminded, but I always just tense up when writers reveal private facts about private people. And, well, the birds. There's a lot of bird talk, and how wonderful birding is for every aspect of your life, and I'll confess to skimming some of that too. I get the sense that many of those parts were written to appeal to already-birders, not as an invitation. (Now I'm curious: has anyone been converted to birdaholism by reading this book?)
Another one where I'm not the target audience, but this time I knew that coming in: this was a deliberate outside-my-orbit read, my aim being to gain insight and understanding. Sadly, this was too far out of my orbit, with a barrage of cultural references and idioms that flew completely over my head. There's really good maerial here, and I'm glad to have read it, but I really can't recommend to anyone except an urban under-thirty Black woman. (And to those, with a caveat: Oriowo seems a bit unaware of her own privilege, so maybe you want to already be educated and fairly well off and with a supportive friend-and-family network before you dive into this).
Not what I was hoping for. This might be a good intro for someone just beginning to wonder about consciousness, but even so it has huge gaps, e.g., the word "emergence" doesn't even appear until the last twenty pages and then only dismissively--"no one has yet specified how or why that might actually happen, making emergence sound less like a scientific explanation than an abracadabra"--which kind of misses the point: nobody understands emergent phenomena. It's still an accepted and fascinating field of study. Pollan also spends waaaaaay too much time on LLMs (seriously) and, IMO, not enough on plants.
Unrated, because I'm not the target audience, but please don't think of that as an antirecommendation. If you're a Michael Pollan fan, you're going to read this no matter what I say. For everyone else, I would recommend Lights On (audiobook only) as a broad overview of the field. For anyone really into consciousness studies, you already have your own favorite reading list.
Friend of mine has a three-inch tattoo on her inner wrist in honor of a friend who suicided. It's simple: the word “enough,” lower-case, clean, a permanent daily reminder that every one of us is so. (Okay, most of us.) This book is a somewhat longer, less in-your-face but equally impactful refresher.
Fierce beginning, captivating from the first page. And although the tone swings wildly, from snarky to tender to funny to somber, the writing never lets go of you. I found and made time to read and read more. Bakman has grown up since that wretched Ove book: he understands longing, grief, laughter, and the fragility of human communication. He writes elegantly, has a gift for quirky similes and turns of phrase, and uses misdirection cleverly: so many times I thought I knew where he was going, and was pleasantly surprised to be wrong. Smith's translation is delightful.
I found the book deeply comforting. Realistic about the soulcrushingness of life but more so how we uplift each other. The tension of keeping our defenses raised, the indescribable freedom of lowering them among loved ones. How our life paths are altered by the smallest things and how, together, we bring out the best in one another. And how we are already enough. Am forever indebted to A. for urging me to read this
What a ride. I don't even know how to start reviewing because my emotions were all over the place from the very first page, which was a hell of a start. I was quickly drawn in; then a little annoyed at the preachiness (but I'm in that choir so that was easy to let go of); then annoyed by all the serendipitous timing (this one eventually mogrified into amusement: the story hinges on so many improbabilities that I gave up and settled down for the ride); anger (some people need killing, and McConaghy draws some pretty despicable characters). Slight irritation at how manipulative the book got at times--okay, more at me, really, for being so easily manipulated.
But I also felt wonder and humility and hella tension and satisfaction and a big burning hope that maybe some not-yet-environmentally-aware people might read this and maybe learn a little and grow. It's an absorbing read, with beautiful prose and dialog, and I'm glad I had free time to read this over a few days. Highly recommended, but set your Suspension of Disbelief dial to eleven. And enjoy the ride.
There's a lot wrong with this book, but there's a lot right, too, and it was fun overall, so I can forgive a lot of the wrong. Now if only I could figure out what the book was about. Grit? Strength? Luck? Horrible family dynamics? Capitalism? The perils of easy fame? Storytelling? Human heart? Maybe I'll go with food: very few pages would go by without mentioning jollof rice and/or fried plantains. There's all that and much more, and it kept me on my toes.
This is billed as SF but it's really escapist fantasy. There's no science whatsoever, just elements of technobabble that could just as well (and more believably) be magic. Anyone with a fundamental tech background will be gritting teeth and muttering "No, It Does Not Work That Way" at times, particularly during the cheesy story-within-a-story. So will anyone with any knowledge of book publishing or cybernetics. The wish-fulfillment grew heavy at times. And still, I kept reading, and it was darn fun. Okorafor writes complex characters, annoying and relatable and just sympathetic enough to make me care for them. Well, except for her family, those are unredeemably awful.
Much too dry and academic, often impenetrable. Reading the same paragraph over and over again, not getting anything out of it. Which really hurts because friend C. pressed this into my hands with such high hopes that I'd enjoy it. And I'm fervently on board with the gist of it--what I could get--just not the delivery. Unrated because I'm not smart or educated enough to weigh in.
Wondrous. An improbable chain that is, I think, unique in human history. Finding a wild animal baby is rare but not noteworthy; it's what ensues that's miraculous.
Dalton treats the hare, and the entire situation, with respect. No starry-eyed romantic notions of bambi, just a pragmatic decision to try to save one life while minimizing the damage she inflicts on a wild creature. Again, not that rare, it's what rescue organizations do every day. She has the motivation to learn how to doit right, the privilege to devote time and resources to this effort. What are the odds? Slim but not none.
Where it veers into Infinite Improbability Drive territory is that Dalton can write. She chronicles the years-long experience gracefully. She sheds light on previously unknown or misunderstood hare behavior. And she describes her own transformation. Did you watch _My Octopus Teacher_? Very much like that. What an opportunity, and what incredible growth, and what a miracle that she has the talent and wisdom to share with us.
My big worry is the copycats: the imbeciles who will focus on "ooh save a baby" while missing 99.9% of the book. Dalton is intelligent and mature, so I know she must've feared that before publishing. We should all be thankful that she chose to go ahead, because this book is a gift to the soul.
Beautiful writing, ... but way, way too much of it. It grew wearisome. If the characters had been interesting, or the story, I would've devoured. A clever friend aptly suggested that it would make a good coffee table book: pick it up once in a while, read and appreciate a few lovely paragraphs, put it back down and forget it for a spell.
What I found most interesting was discussing the book with friends. It's a Rorschach test! Everyone I spoke to focused on different aspects of its many themes. For me, shallowness and classism stood out. Desai packs in a ton of cultural insight; I found it at times fascinating and at other times overwhelmingly dense.
Am I glad I persevered? Ambivalent. The Covenant of Water was another 700-page tome with exquisite writing, but in that one I cared about the people and the story. I still rave about it. This one, I found Sonia and Sunny mostly flat, and all (ok most of) the other characters were contemptible. But hey, there are all kinds of people. Some even liked Wuthering Heights. (This one isn't as bad as that. Nothing is as bad as Wuthering Heights).
Arnold's first book was sublime. This one, not so much. I felt on edge throughout most of it--perhaps not the desired effect in a book on Zen.
It started off (forgive me) on the wrong foot, with her account of the accident. The decisions made in its aftermath were poor in every respect, not just her personal safety but that of the entire rest of the expedition. Her lack of consideration disturbed me and set the tone for my whole reading experience; her subsequent anger and resentment did not help, nor did the overall sense of tension, which felt inconsistent with her frequent assertions that she's finding inner peace. <i>Show</i> and <i>tell</i> seemed out of sync to me. Plus there's an uncomfortable amount of (nonconsensual) exposition of her personal relationships.
And yet. Her writing is vivid, evocative, and most of all meditative: it took me a long time to read this short book because I paused frequently to reread and/or reflect. She gets a lot right, and presents Zen concepts with quite a different slant than the average lecturer. Refreshing and insightful. So even though she is (IMO) too-desperately chasing some elusive nirvana, I respect her path and am fortunate to learn from her.
Recommended for students of life.
Was not expecting screwball. This often felt like a Preston Sturges movie: zany, sweet, whiplash-quick dialogue and action. That works better when the artist controls the pacing than when the reader does: in print, I kept pausing at plot holes and way too many no-it-doesn't-work-that-way moments. Maybe it'd have been more enjoyable as an audiobook, or maybe Osman is hoping to have this movieized?
Ultimately, it just didn't add up. Too contrived, too many loose ends. Some laugh-out-loud moments, and fairly fun throughout, but not enough to compensate. If you're already a fan of Osman, and need to read this, maybe try the audiobook and let it flow.
Possibly the most heartening, joyful, and meaningful book of the past many years. (Ugh. This makes the book sound like self-help or inspiration or somesuch. It's not: it's purely science, with occasional side trips into philosophy).
The book covers so many of my favorite topics, so much of what I've learned over my life about how the Universe works and how to live in it: chaos; randomness; living with uncertainty; designing for efficiency vs resiliency; cognitive biases; the nature of consciousness; heuristics and probability; eudaimonia; and, most importantly, cooperation and doing good. Klaas gets it, REALLY gets it, and he's a brilliant writer to boot. Great pacing. His examples are fascinating, relevant, sometimes chilling, always insightful. Even his chapter on free will--a subject I find inane and tedious--had fresh perspectives. He has thought about everything I think about, in much greater depth, and he describes it all so elegantly. It irks me that he talks about lower-case stoicism without understanding the slightest bit of capital-S Stoics, but nobody's perfect. He can learn.
Reading this in January 2026, as I helplessly watch the U.S. collapse, is counterintuitively an exercise in hope. It reaffirms many of my most important life choices, those related to building and strengthening community. I will be recommending this book to everyone in my circles.
One paragraph exalts the natural wonders of the North American continent, the next bemoans the corruption and venality of its inhabitants. Repeat, repeat. It was a little too choppy for my taste, impossible to get into a flow. I also felt completely unable to relate to the author: her neuroses match mine to some extent, but her life choices baffle me to the point of annoyance.
There's beautiful writing about magnificent places, many of which I've experienced, some that I haven't and appreciated learning about. Hidden amid the handwringing there's sharp writing about evils perpetrated by monsters big and small; mostly reminders, not much new to someone my age but perhaps informative to younger folks. Chopping and dicing the two together, though, did not work for me.
A disheartening indictment of white supremacy and ultimately humanity itself. There were so, so many chances for things to go better than they did: decent moral people here and there, in positions where they could do good or at least prevent greater harm, all of them replaced or killed or simply worn down by the system. Really drives home the inevitability of Might Makes Right, how subhuman bullies can destroy entire worlds in brief times. Reading this in 2025 is depressing AF. Like seeing a roadmap of the next thirty years.
Although nominally centering around Kit Carson -- a more complex and tragic figure than I had thought -- the book is much more epic in scale. Carson is a major player, but the focus is really on the white expansion into the West through bullying, force, lying stealing cheating. Sides attempts to write with objectivity, giving (what comes off as) fair voice to the many NDN tribes involved. He repeatedly stresses the role played by misunderstandings, by cultural divides that could have been bridged... had anyone in power bothered to try.
Well researched and engagingly written. Highly, highly recommended, especially to anyone in New Mexico.