Kate Malinowski

Disappointed in this one. Was hoping for something juicy and sly about topics I find fascinating, but there wasn't much subtly or nuance. I never felt convinced that June was talented or cunning enough to get out of the gate with her scheme (maybe her success despite mediocrity is the point). Not enough dialogue -missed opportunity to develop any of the other characters or cast doubt on the narrator. My reading experience was a weird combination of discomfort and boredom.

Kind of intrigued by the idea that this book is preemptively clapping back at negative reviews, especially on Goodreads. Definitely making me question my own reactions -lol.

This book has such a nostalgic feel. So many tropes from classic children's lit. Parentless boys off to seek their fortunes. A staid protagonist caught up in an adventure against his will. Unreliable traveling companions. Side quests that lead to run ins with colorful characters - the sinister traveling preacher, the has-been actor, the good humored madame, the protective black vagabond with a heart of gold, the wistful housewife.

I didn't like this one quite as much as Station Eleven or Sea of Tranquility. But there's something about Mantel's writing that keeps me effortlessly turning the pages. I wonder if I'd like this more or less if I hadn't already encountered some of the characters in the other books.

I just adored these snarky, quarrelsome, confused-but-trying, very adolescent characters. I laughed all the way through. A great coming of age story and send up of 20th century high fantasy.

The audio, read by Matthew Lloyd Davies, is excellent! For some reason my copy from the library says it's read by Wendy King - not the case.

I didn't set out to read back to back survivalist stories. No way to unsee the parallels between this and Station 11 and the ways they diverge. Gorgeous writing. Incredible story. In this one the natural world is unrelentingly harsh and the humans not much better.

There are a number of books about the science of reading out there with claims like “every parent and teacher of reading must read this book” on the cover. IMO this one provides the most useful and accessible summary of the science and its implications. There are some oversimplifications, but Willingham flags many of them and each chapter includes a list of the cited research for going deeper.

He concludes, “If an educator has a model of reading in her head...she can predict what will happen to the system as a whole when a part of it changes in some way. Having this model in memory can serve as a summary of important mental processes and their relationships, to be called on when thinking through instructional decisions and anticipating their outcomes.”

I think he has successfully provided that model of reading.

Very sweet story.

Women and weeds. Women as weeds. Poetic, subversive, tense, overwrought - a surprise page turner.

Read in one sitting. A very sweet read about the power of books to connect people. It's full of bookish cliches and the arrival of Maya was almost too much for me. Glad I got past it to enjoy the rest.

Beautifully written stories. I wish I had read instead of listened. There were many sentences and scenes I wanted to linger over. My only complaint is that as a collection, the stories are unrelentingly tragic.

I may be back to round up this star rating. It ended so much better than it started. Beautiful writing throughout.

Really enjoyed this story. I especially liked the structure of brief flashbacks and flash forwards in the first half and found that part absorbed me the most. Apart from strong nostalgia this book made me think more than feel bringing up big questions about what defines my generation and what makes a friendship or partnership good.

I think the publicity for this book is misleading. It is no more (or less) inventive, satirical or literary than any decently well-written contemporary romance. More romantic story about comedy (writing) than a romantic comedy.

That said, I enjoyed these characters and the thorough inside look into making a weekly sketch comedy show like SNL. A quick and satisfying read.

Cute. Liked the island setting and the Persuasion retelling.

This has all of the elements of a story I would really love but never really captured my attention. Possibly because there was so much going on?

Loved, loved, loved this!
Such great voice and storytelling.

Audio read by the author.

Great premise - three women come into extraordinary supernatural powers during menopause and realize they are being called upon to avenge the uninvestigated deaths of young women in their community. Fantastic characters and lots of very entertaining scenes. I can't say the reading experience was entirely pleasurable -there's a lot of upsetting reality to deal with along the way - misogyny at all levels from microaggressions to rape and murder.

Maryanne Wolf lays out a “natural history” of reading starting with the very first societies known to write things down thru modern times with heavy doses of neuroscience. Along the way, she explains how the human brain must adapt its innate structures to perform the highly complicated unnatural process of constructing meaning from text.

Parents and teachers may find the chapters about reading development in children and dyslexia of particular interest. Wolf does a great job of showing how all components of reading - decoding, vocabulary, phonemic awareness, knowledge of language and content, morphology etc develop and contribute to (or impair) fluent reading and comprehension.

Memoir interspersed with poetically worded tree facts. I loved all the parts: the stories about her struggles as a young woman scientist, her relationship with her incredibly unique lab partner Bill, the detailed descriptions of scientific work, the impressive tree facts. It didn't quite hang together for me, but I think I'll be thinking about it for a long time.


Listened to the audio read by the author.

This is a brief and thought-provoking review of research and specific programs that support the “non cognitive skills” and mindsets that promote better life and academic outcomes for children growing up in poverty or otherwise adverse environments discussed in greater detail in Tough's earlier book.

I appreciated the way counter examples and arguments and implementation pitfalls were addressed.

So many fabulous characters and scenes! Longer than I needed it to be - one scene too many for a lot of the characters, but I was very entertained.

Listened to the audio performed by Richard Armitage. His portrayal of villains Mr Murdstone and Uriah Heep was terrifying and made my skin crawl.

This is a philosophical/speculative take on reading. The author tries to answer the question “Knowing what we know about the brain and reading what might happen as reading on screens leads to reading less deeply, reading differently, reading more but thinking less as we read?”

The letters (chapters) were a little uneven, but they improved as the book went on. I recognized myself and my family in her descriptions of changing reading habits. Lots to think about.

This really is a linguistics/reading acquisition textbook. Highly detailed information with clear explanations on how to apply it in the classroom. Addresses linguistics knowledge and instructional methods for effectively teaching reading. Great resource for PLCs. Hard to read cover to cover (I haven't managed to get all the way through it yet.)

I was surprised to find myself really enjoying this weird, morbid collection of short stories and musings. I mistakenly thought it was a novel and it took me a bit to realize the stories were never going to be tied together into a narrative. The writing is excellent and the characters are complex and very human. There are some heavily recurring themes and motifs linking everything - the preservation of the human body after death, the disorienting nature of travel, mortality, strange/surprise intimacy, the difficulty of pinning down the ephemeral.

Listened to some of the audio version read by Julia Whelan, who is great.

This one didn't work for me.
Leo is such a child!