Adrienne
I found that a number of these sermons still speak to me very deeply, especially the ones about what religion is for and who is welcome to Unitarian Universalism.
Anything addressing American politics was much less deeply convincing, especially as we know that Davies was aware of racial injustice, etc. He was working to desegregate DC businesses while he was at All Souls DC.
Anyway, this was a decent pick me up and recentering in my UU faith, but it has problems and you can't read it uncritically, which, honestly, is how we should approach all UU books.
This book challenges us to a more expansive and heartfelt practice of religion, without abandoning the strengths of liberal religion.
It was fine. One of the romantic leads was really mean, and I never felt like we got clarity on what the leads were attracted to in each other, but this was otherwise competent
A cute little paranormal cosy mystery with a queer cast and a family and community orientation.
The only thing that really detracted is that our detective jumps to conclusions instead of considering possibilities, and she overreacts when people point out that this crime may not have been committed by this bad actor.
Funny, light, puts me in mind of an inexperienced Jessica Fletcher or Father Brown
I liked the girls and I really liked Jen, here. Her desire to just have a day without shenanigans felt very relatable. Mal was very sweet to Molly and April was very believably cringe in her shipping of her actual friends.
I would have liked the book better if the themes weren't quite so blatantly stated. I know the camp motto is Friendship to the Max. Even so, Molly and the antagonist literally telling each other that, you know, you shouldn't preemptively dump your friends and also, your friends like you even if your interests don't 100% align felt like it pulled the target reader age down from 12 to 8.
I liked the art a lot. I'm not a big fan of black and white comics so when I opened the book, I was disappointed it was a 3 color style, but it turned out there was enough variety that could be brought to the art with green to keep me visually interested. I thought the drawings were clear in highlighting valuable info and all of the characters were distinct and recognizable to their original designs.
Alternating 3rd person limited hero point of view, but the heros' voices and personalities are not distinct.
Book about two fathers that drops the kids with a nanny too frequently. Book premised on meeting in a support group and no other support group characters are characters!
Sexual harassment issue that is solved by protagonist telling the harasser to cut it out, after his deflections are ignored.
On a prose level, the book is competent.
The best part of the book was its premise, fake dating. Otherwise, quite mediocre.
The cover material made me think this would be a series of spiritual biographies, and it is HALF that, but it's also a series of essays on how aspects of religious life may be affirming and healing ways to love in the modern age, most often through the lens of the author's autobiography.
For me, this created a conflicting rhythm in the book, where I greatly wished we either could dive deeper with the congressional biographical subjects or we could dive deeper into the thoughts about religious life, but I was actively annoyed by what felt very self serious and narcissistic in the author's constant return to her own experience.
This was a frustrating, interesting read.
Lovely book about two people where I understand what they find attractive in each other, their relationship encourages them to be better people, and they have consequential lives outside of each other.
also, a central theme of the book is Labor organizing and the audiobook was made with the cooperation of SAG-AFTRA, so that's very cool.
I am, of course, having that classic lesbian dilemma: do I want to be Isabel when I grow up or do I want to be with her?
Deep dive into what unites and divides UUs theologically. Has some really good questions in the gathering and concluding chapters.
A lovely little story about a two poly people falling in love, with some emotional processing! Nice coloring.
This is a sweet story about a nonbinary, asexual person becoming more comfortable with eir identity as eir grew up. The narrative and writing were great, but the linework was in that mushy middle on detail, where it's not simple cartooning, but feels underdeveloped for realism. The coloring didn't set my hair on fire either.
This is a great story about growing up as a weird kid and coming to terms with the fact that you are different even from the rest of your weird family. It doesn't explain feelings of non-binary gender in a 101, just writes about the narrator's experience of them.
I tried with this book. The language is hyper self conscious, but sometimes it works. The world building is pleasantly built by accretion. The characters are...odd choices. Sketchy in a way that suggests the author is disguising lack of interest in people as lack of strong personality in his characters.
But I was 70 pages in and I had Daily Alice's nudity or breasts mentioned at least 7 times, and I don't want it. Let me be clear, this was not erotic, even when it came up in the context of sex. And it wasn't rape-y. It was just, for a book that invests relatively little in the physical description of characters, this thrumming repetition that said, way too clearly, a straight man wrote this.
And for a book that I was ambivalent about, for whom the chief pleasure was the language and, often, that felt quite precious and mannered, I just couldn't take the author obsessing over Daily Alice's body