Lia
Pretty decent and accessible guide to chicken raising. Most of the info I had to crash course myself in after a chicken wandered into our yard one day and stayed. And from what I have gathered on various blogs and Youtube channels, to supplement reading this book, this book is fairly accurate to all kinds of styles of backyard chicken keeping.
One of the more original takes on zombie and xenofiction that I've read. I laughed out loud at many things and felt deep sadness at others. At times it does get preachy, as some reviews said, but that's part of the dystopian genre at this point. Genuinely loved this despite its faults. It's so rare for me to enjoy a more modern book but it gives me hope that there are still good books being written, you just have to find them in all the overhyped trash.
As someone who had a starling from 14 days old to 12 years old, I was hoping for a book about the most famous of his kind. And the title is misleading in that sense This book is not completely about Star, Mozart's starling, but also about the magnificent world of starlings, in the past and present, as the author also shares her stories of living at home with her own starling.
I recommend this to people who hate starlings because you're missing out on a gorgeous personality in these birds. But I also recommend it to people who love and possibly have loved individual starlings in their lives as well, because all the stories of Carmen made me weep with familiarity. They could have easily been about my little guy as well. This is an educational and fantastic ode to starlings everywhere.
An okay memoir that doesn't really say much. She needed a better ghost writer or whatever because it gets repetitive, the story is not outlined well, and the constant privileges checks get so annoying. Just write your story and don't stop every five sentences to annotate or paren what people might be thinking as they read! It kept the story from feeling deeper. Also I guess Sue Rider is getting a portion of the money from this. With how much the charity is mentioned throughout this it felt like an ad or sponsorship, if that is poss.
I'll be honest and say that I picked this physical copy up on a camping trip near where Lucy Ann/Joseph lived solely due to the idea that this person may have been transgender. But having read this, it feels more like the sort of “sworn virgin” type of life that many women in the wild west era of history did to keep themselves going (the references to sexual perversions and genital appearance aside). The preface and epilogue sections highlight a lot of the better parts of the narrative in a way that finally getting past both to read the actual narrative felt like a letdown. All the good parts were already discussed!
Any woman living today understands the plea at the end of the narrative and it's sad to me that we're still fighting for this. But also poor Mr. Slater, fighting to feel like a protector for someone too independent to need him. Strange that he would abandon them when they were actually about to need him most. Some mystery is to be had on both their accounts of their life together. Neither seemed to add up to the truth.
Anyway. This is an interesting, rare find of a first hand account of the times. Only available digitally as an e-book that's somehow more expensive than the physical copy. And only two places have copies of their original manuscript? They belong alongside Calamity Jane as an icon of that time.
