Adrienne

The message was good, but I hated the introduction and there were parts in the middle that lacked visual interest .

Omegaverse why choose. Motorcycle club.

Decent story but there were too many alphas, it didn't feel like it allowed down enough to revel in any one alpha omega relationship and the intra pack relationships were unclear. An effort was definitely made to make the relationships clear, it just wasn't successful. Either the book should have been longer or the conflict with the rival MC Club should have been cut.

The start is slow anda little abstract, but it ends in a very satisfying tale, reminiscent of the fairytale retellings of Robin McKinley in the 90s.

Why did I read a story about any of this? "Queer poly rule unhealthily self-obsessed and destroys everything in its wake" is not that interesting to me.

A fun gay hockey romance. If was weird to be that Kip seemed to have no real conception of the closet, but I'm also ~15 years older than him. (Although you'd think a wannabe historian with an interest in marginalized identities would have some idea.)

In any case because the show follows the book Heated Rivalry so closely, I was surprised by how it differed here. The changes seem largely reasonable for an adaption of a book to a TV episode and a couple of scenes in a later episode.

I liked Scott and Kip as characters, although I'm not clear that Scott likes Kip as much as he likes having an actual human relationship, but sometimes that's enough.

Most of the sex scenes felt like they were doing story work, although a couple of the playoffs ones felt like over egging the pudding.

This is a nice enough story, but it's really memorable because of its connection to the show.

I struggled with the structure and themes of this book. Maybe I'm just reading it years too late, when the horrors of conversion practices are already clear.

I'm not sure why this was written (a) out of chronological order or (b) tied so closely to Conley's perspective at the time, without more reflection on either the lingering damage or the healing done since (whichever is more true for him).

The prose sometimes feels overwritten, pretty or lyrical or metaphorical to draw attention to itself, rather than more clearly depict what happened.

The story seems eager to exonerate the author's parents in a way that I don't think is warranted. OTOH, they're not my parents and mine have never been that horrible to me. He gets to pick his own relationship with them, going forward.

In my book club, I was asked if I would recommend this book to teenagers. I wouldn't. I didn't know what they would get out of it. Maybe if we manage to go a generation without conversation practices and this becomes a vital historical document. Right now I feel like the info is better presented elsewhere and the prose doesn't make it interesting enough on its own.

This is not cozy.

However, it is still a good book about women's relationships and discerning the next direction of one's life. There's humor, people growing in ways they didn't expect, and getting by with a little help from our friends.

I enjoyed this book and I think those who enjoyed the previous two Baldree books will enjoy it, too.

But it's absolutely not cozy.

Some of the works feel more like poetry than prayer, but overall recenters me as both queer and enough.

What I need now:

• You are queer enough
• Hope follows us
• Parking lot mantra (An actual ritual)

Some useful themes

1. Your queerness counts. Even if you can't name or map it
2. You are whole and loved
3. You can come out on your own schedule
4. We are the ones we've been waiting for
5. We don't fight to win. We fight because we love each other

This book breaks down habit change at a very granular level. If you read a lot of productivity content, it may feel repetitive. Also, Foggy has a habit of creating new technology to describe things we already have words for at of they are unique. (A Swarm of Behaviors is just a brainstorm, man.)

Things I found really insightful

1. Once you've clarified a general ambition, brainstorm many potential behaviors that could support it and select for the ones that are both impactful and things you'd actually do.
2. Cement new habits by immediately creating a positive emotion after performing them
3. Rehearse prompt › action › celebration so you can remember the prompt that should trigger the new habit
4. Help people do what they want to do. Help people feel successful
5. Approach new habit formation with a spirit of experimentation
6. Since your start your habits tiny, they can go grow either in intensity or by accumulating more signed behaviors, but keep your momentum going by always accepting the tiny version of the habit as fulfilling the habit.

Readers may find the book a bit repetitive, but most of the repetitions are expansions or variations. Also, the repetitions help clarify how all of the parts of the theory relate.

I can imagine myself reading again for a tune up in a few years

I'm aware of Dracula and the other monsters referred here by pop culture osmosis, but I haven't read the Stoker or Lovecraft books.

I was still able to enjoy this book as a series of largely disastrous space adventures, told mostly from the point of view of the ship's AI.

Demeter is a fun character, as a ship dropped into multiple impossible situations which, according to her databases, should be fictional. Her vacillation as to whether any of this death is her problem and how can she get the corporation to take her seriously feels very relatable.

Steward, the medical AI, is on some ways even more relatable to me. They're cranky and self interested and convinced of their own cleverness. I really enjoyed the interaction between the two AIs.

The world building feels a little sketchy, in a good and bad way. In a good way, it feels like we barely scratch the service on the human culture of interstellar travel and Earth-colonial relationships. That all feels sufficient to me. How and why the monsters exist and why the limits on their powers feels a bit under explained. What did Dracula want to do with a tame werewolf and why was he traveling to alpha centauri?

Overall, I had a good time reading the book.

Interesting time capsule biographies of trans/genderqueer teens at the end of the Obama era. I do think a good variety of US East Coast based teens was included, with varying degrees of familial support and school hostility.

It feels pretty surface level, though, which is probably a consequence of this being biographies from interviews, instead of the kids writing for themselves.

Not a bad introduction to trans people, rather than trans issues, but I feel like there's more interesting stuff out there

More decisions, fewer concrete steps

I read this because I really enjoyed and felt helped by How to Keep House while Drowning. That book was full of many concrete suggestions that could be implemented even before you had a mindset shift.

This book is more about how to shift your mindset around relationships,
And give yourself the mental space to make some changes. But the charges are more categorical than concrete suggestions.

This book didn't feel like it spoke as directly to me: I have a messy house, I don't currently heel like I have a troubled relationship.

There's a good amount of information, but the tone is A Lot. It felt performatively gay, casual, and juvenile.

This is very much an introductory text, and it glosses over some things that I think could have been made more clear. Kink is mentioned but not really explained. Open relationships are mentioned but not ethical non monogamy or swinging. And while the book makes clear that not all individuals affiliated with a religion are transphobic or homophobic, it's not as clear that not all religious institutions are phobic either.

I might give it to a teenager coming out or as a supplement to a sex ed course for middle schoolers, but I wouldn't give it to college students or independent adults.

This was a charming novel about mostly good hearted people who crash and burn when they didn't talk and make their lives better when they do.

It's also about our main character working through her fear of failure and feelings of paralysis when her first plan for her life didn't work out.

This book made me bust out my Christmas playlists in January, and I was happy for it.

too slow and then too fast

The book took forever to get started with real clues, and then it descended into a boring orgy of violence. Preston makes only the smallest gesture at exploring the motives of Neanderthals, instead assuming postcolonial bloody revenge as the most likely outcome.

This felt like an antebellum horror novel about a slave revolt

boring

I appreciated the last reveals of what the Dyesi were doing, and that, in some sense, only this pantheon could have those revelations in that way.

A satisfying conclusion, but it suffered a bit from not being read immediately after I read the first two. This felt more like the last third of a novel than a standalone

The dragons are not the most important part

This book was recommended as a book for people who like dragons.

I actually felt it was not satisfying as a dragon book. No dragon character is introduced until you're about a quarter thru the book, and there's very little dragon screen time.

This is a book about sisterhood, about trust, about trying to pull a life together after you've been the chosen one, about how to live in the world with the ones who colonized you.

Looking forward to the next one.

And that's what you missed on Glee...

The book had a very slow start because so much of the writing that centered on core characters was focused on consequences from the prior few books. You're about halfway through the book before Mercy and Adam start traveling to the winter lodge noted in the book description.

I probably would have been better able to settle into the extended recaps (admittedly, I needed them as I haven't reread the last three or four books), but the intercut scenes from the POV of antagonists, side characters, temporary allies, etc. took a long time to coalesce into either a problem or a single narrative. The significance of the mystery being solved takes a very long time to emerge, so it seems like old grumpy magic people for a very long time. It's not even immediately lethal, so the sense of “this has stakes because someone might die” isn't there immediately either.

This felt like a transitional book, designed to maneuver Mercy (and to a lesser extent, Adam) out of magical trauma the previous books had given, more than an essential book in itself.

But the book started to catch my attention when Jessie got Adam to check the guy on the porch, and even more once they headed to Montana. (No Bran or any relatives in this book.)

Character driven

This has the shape of a thriller, a mystery, a world building exercise, and a couple of heists, but it is really in the end a story about a bunch of people working together to save the world and working out how much and in what way they'll sacrifice themselves. The romance is good, but it's not the only important relationship

Found family for the win

Lovely story about people being drawn together over the death of the guy who screwed them over.

The murder is the catalyst pulling everyone together, but the relationships are the reason to keep reading.

Non traditional werewolves and vampires

A little bit of a thriller, a little bit of political intrigue, a little bit of arranged marriage, a little bit of sciencefictiony werewolves and vampires.

This is a little bit of a lot of things I like, without being a particularly great version of any of them. Our view point character is trapped in a house without Internet access and ignorant of both vampire and werewolf culture for the majority of the book. The hero is great, it's obvious why she loves him. But his attraction to her seems 99% biological and 1% she's nice to a relative.

I didn't like the heroine all that much because she seemed depressed and (rightfully) bitter and had only one interest in life.

Relax. Just do it.

This is a permission slip to be creative, to make that creativity your whole personality, but avoid making it your whole life.

Elizabeth Gilbert's spiritual but not religious conceptualization of idea spirits and anthropomorphic relationship with writing leaves me cold, as an atheist, but her message that you should be serious about creativity as a practice, but not let it make you miserable, not depend on it as a career until after it's made you a lot of money, and without getting overly attached to any specific creative outcome or object are really healthy messages I think we can use more of.

Intriguing book about self determination

In a lot of ways, this book feels like an extended exercise on getting the whole team on the same page. All of our characters face intense dissatisfaction with their roles in life, and have reached the breaking point where they're going to do something about it.

I enjoyed discovering the world, but it felt like the discovery of the Problem and the ¿villains? antagonists took too long.

I'll definitely keep an eye out for the sequel, but the ending didn't quite land for me

Read this book because the author's TikTok started coming up in my feed.

Very hard read, child sexual assault, rape, a near miss on domestic violence, institutional abuse.

Felt a little bit like three books jammed together: a very good memoir about bring in and escaping the Children of God, a mediocre memoir about her time in the army (this one feels like it suffers from both how much she can't tell us about her deployment, which are the periods of grossest institutional failure, and perhaps not being as fully digested as her time in CoG), and a book about how the Army is structured similarly to a cult, and that one feels the least cooked through. There is a clear discussion of indoctrination during training, but as she moves to her employment, the frame of cult seems less relevant than misogyny and bureaucracy.

I listened to the audiobook and I have very mixed feelings. This was read by the author, and she's not a great audiobook narrator. The narration felt stiff and she didn't do much with dialogue at all. However, hearing her recount the story of her own assaults and thoughts of suicide did give me the sense that I more deeply understood the emotional arc of those experiences than I might have with a professional audiobook reader.

A good afternoon on a rainy day

Queer young witches (and their ghost friend) solve murders while struggling with their relationships. Mallory's fibromyalgia is quite painful but doesn't actually stop her from investigating at any point, which seems unrealistic. Theodore (the ghost friend) is a sassy gay best friend in a way which seems a bit odd compared to his original introduction.

I'll probably look out for the sequel but I can't imagine rereading this book