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This is an invaluable resource for people who want to be more thoughtful about the way they approach conversations about race in the United States. Honestly, it would do everyone a bit of good to read this, even if they feel like they are already well-educated in social and racial justice matters.
Oluo addresses all manner of commonly-discussed-but-often-misunderstood things like affirmative action, the school-to-prison pipeline, the Black Lives Matter movement, tone policing, and more in this book, all while being simultaneously extremely accessible and at times humorous and soberly serious. She speaks of her own lived experiences and attempts to speak to an audience that may come to this book defensive and uncomfortable. The end goal of course is to cause folks to stop and reflect on their own behaviors and adjust where they can to be better allies to people of color and oppressed minorities in their own lives, even if the road to self discovery can be upsetting and difficult. This book is well worth it and I encourage people to pick it up. It is absolutely eye-opening and educational.
I listened to this in audiobook format which was a great choice, as all the readers are Irish, and I'm really fond of audiobooks read by people who have lovely accents. Each POV got its own narrator, which also distinguished when the POV changed each time.
The story is overall one of those that relied intensely on withholding major plot items deliberately to create suspense. The story begins at the end, and slowly over the course of the novel, the pieces fall into place and you learn what actually happened and why. I do wonder how interesting this story would have been had it been told in order – surely beginning with Alice's attack and unraveling why it happened was a better choice than ending a novel with it. So for the choices the author made, the out-of-order nature of the story was probably necessary for it to work overall.
This book also suffers a little bit from unlikeable characters – there are two that I was genuinely fond of, and neither of them had a particularly good story arc for themselves, but were rather side characters that were unfortunately caught in the web of Oliver's story.
Overall I think I enjoyed it as much for the narrators on the audiobook as I did for the story itself, which was perfectly fine as suspense thrillers go, but not overwhelmingly good or unpredictable. I did find that I figured out some of the “twists” before they came, but it was overall still enjoyable. I'm not sure I would recommend it to anyone, though.
Honestly, I would give it a 3.5, but you know how GoodReads is about half stars.
This book is a well-crafted novel in terms of characters and story; even knowing how things went in WWII, you still felt the suspense of the sorties and the life-and-death stakes that these characters dealt with. However, the author allowed these characters - Katya particularly - a little too much freedom to say and do things that would definitely have gotten them booted from the army or shot for insubordination. Once, MAYBE twice, might have worked in the right context, but this protagonist's sharp tongue became a little unbelievable over the course of the novel.
I also felt that the story would have been just as powerful entirely without the romantic subplot with Vanya. While he was an interesting character, their pairing felt very rushed and unnecessary, and it would have been fine enough for Katya to spend all of her worries about her loved ones on her mother, who was a far more powerful character connection for her from the beginning.
Overall, I did enjoy this novel, and I really am glad to see someone has taken the time to write about the Night Witches, because they are a fascinating part of WWII history.
This book takes an incredibly hard topic and treats it with a lyrical, almost fable-like style that makes it stand out from its neighbors in the realm of fictionalized Holocaust stories. I have read a lot in this area, as a Historian of the Holocaust, and honestly speaking there is a lot out there to pick through. It is a very thoroughly written about era. But what Affinity Konar has done here is refreshing in style and treatment without shying away from the horrors committed by Josef Mengele, and I think the heart of it is the way she has handled the bond between siblings and family, both blood family and chosen family.
Overall, I thought this book was well done. I'm a fan of Follett's thanks to the Pillars of the Earth and its sequels, and this does not disappoint. He's careful about historical facts and makes great effort in ensuring that actual historical figures fit naturally into his story without altering significant events.
I was particularly interested in the stories of Maude Fitzherbert and Ethel Williams. Their tales take all kinds of twists and turns and it is truly satisfying, particularly in Ethel's case, to see where they wind up.
The one gripe I have is that Ken Follett needs to get to Scarleteen and read up on virgins and hymens, because every time someone lost their virginity in this book the description of what was happening was based on horribly outdated notions of female genitalia. Someone needs a primer.
I don't know exactly what I was expecting when I started this book, but I got a whole lot more than I could have bargained for. Trevor Noah's book is at once educational, insightful, heartfelt, and hilarious. He is a master at starting with a funny personal anecdote and using it to tell you about important realities of life during and after apartheid in South Africa and the hard realities of being poor and black. But at its core, this book is a love letter to his mother. She is a headstrong, independent, and fiercely devoted mother, and the foundation of this book is the love that Trevor feels for her. It shows in every page.
Do yourself a favor and listen to this in audiobook format. Trevor reads it himself, and as he is a South African polyglot, it adds a lot of depth to the text. He peppers the book with phrases in Zulu, Xossa, and Afrikaans. It's worth the listen.
Despite what King claims in the afterword to be a lot of trimming, this book is still overlong. The characters are really well developed, which is typical for King (though Chester's Mill is FULL UP on terrible men) - and once the book gets to its climax everything is really riveting. But it took a loooong time to get there.
Raul Esparza does a great job reading the audiobook, too. He gives it a real relaxed storyteller vibe, and he does a lot accents for Mainers. Not sure how accurate they are, but he's definitely consistent.
I listened to this entire series as audiobooks on my commutes. This was the final installment in the Lakeside courtyard stuff (Anne Bishop is evidently not done in Thaisia, though). Overall I enjoyed the series best when it got all political and addressed the humans and the terra indigene trying to duke it out for land. This last book felt like a pretty strong narrowing of scope.
Cyrus Montgomery was an awful villain. I mean he was an awful PERSON, first and foremost, but when the series has spent 4 previous books establishing the dangers posed by the terra indigene, a whole book of someone as arrogant and stupid as he was going around completely oblivious to the truth of every idiot scheme he comes up with is REALLY frustrating. At least he got his inevitable comeuppance.
Overall I enjoyed this series a lot but I think the writing has its weaknesses. Dialogue is not Bishop's strong suit; a lot of characters speak really stiffly and the things they say often flow really unnaturally and feel excessively expository. In book 5 of a series like this one it really isn't necessary for every character to call each other by full names and titles. “Steve Ferryman, the mayor of Ferryman's Landing, will be arriving later today to discuss the cassandra sangue, or blood prophets, living in his settlement...” it just feels really clunky. It didn't ruin the story for me or anything but it is definitely a weak point in the series for me.
Really, though, I was here for Meg and Simon all along. I'd happily read another 5 books about the two of them.
I reread this a few weeks ago (initially read it when it came out) and it was perfectly fine as a disaster/thriller is concerned, it just wasn't mindblowing. My main takeaway was, “I like that the people in this reacted disappointingly (realistically) to global restrictions,” but overall as I finished up my reread it was pretty clear to me why I barely remembered it from my first readthrough. You would think a story with crazed animal attacks would stand out more.
This book is amazing. Steve Oney clearly looked at each and every piece of material available regarding this case, interviewed descendants of anyone he could get a hold of, and left no stone unturned. This book has a notes section the size of a novel on its own. He explores every side avenue, every political angle, every possible layer of this case. It's been a long time since I've been this enthralled by a historical work - and I'm a historian. Get this book and give it your time. You will not be disappointed.
A short and though-provoking essay on America's stance on guns and gun violence. I liked it a lot - King is moderate on the issue, wanting not a ban on firearms (he owns a few himself), but reforms in gun laws. This is not a new stance, nor is his point one we've never heard before.
The heart of the essay is the way he directly addresses the false and sadly widespread claims that pop culture is what makes people go and shoot people. Starting with a book he wrote early in his career, Rage, and eventually touching upon the top books, films, and games sold/seen in 2012, he refutes the idea that an overly violent media culture is a problem. In fact, he points out how little gun violence is found in the top 10 books and movies of the last year.
Lastly, he addresses the President's recent calls for gun reform and which ones he thinks will succeed and which will not. He is hopeful and optimistic that our leaders will be able to find a way to address our ever-rising gun violence statistics. Here's hoping he's right.
The part of the book in which the author recounts the events of her childhood and the terror she and her family lived through at the hands of others is great. However, after the recounting is over, the book becomes incredibly preachy - something that may appeal to others, but I did not pick this book up expecting a sermon to take up the last 20%. It is not something I enjoyed. I ended up skipping the last few chapters.
Goody, another book about a mysterious car. Hey, Stephen King, quit recycling!
So it isn't exactly Christine – the car itself isn't evil, per se, but it has a portal to another dimension in it or something. But it's still too close for comfort, and the dull opening doesn't help matters. I tried and tried to plod through it, and yet nothing.
I am an enormous fan of King, make no doubt about it – but this is probably the only one of his books that I ever put down before finishing it. That's different. It's a miss among a pile of hits.
Denise Davidson's France After Revolution: Urban Life, Gender, and the New Social Order discusses the way in which French society came to define itself after political and social uprisings. She examines the ability of the public to help shape the social hierarchies that define them. The book also argues against the belief that women were forced out of the public in the post-Revolutionary age.
In the first part of the book, Davidson discusses political festivals as they formed after the Napoleonic period and the Bourbon Restoration. She discusses the importance of working-class women to festivals in the Napoleonic period as well as the connection between the state and the private family, and then studies the change between the Napoleonic period and the Bourbon Restoration by showcasing the different status of women within the festivals. The changes in the social sphere of France between the two time periods involved the change in perception of women for the better because of their support of and involvement with the Church. The public, in gathering for these festivals, became part of the spectacle they themselves came to observe, and women became an integral part because of their increasingly positive social appearance based on their religious involvement.
Davidson goes on to speak about the transformation of theaters into a public platform for political opposition, particularly in rural theaters where the state's oppressive presence was less pervasive. Also interesting in this section is the dichotomy between public and private space, and the ability of a space to be both public and private, depending on one's perception. The example Davidson gave was that of a woman watching a show from a theater box – to the woman, the box is a private space, having separated her from the rest of the theater. However, to the theater at large, she is still visible, thus making the space also a public space. The box gives the woman status above the theatergoers around her and yet makes her part of the crowd at large.
The construction of social hierarchies among the classes and sexes was particularly helped, Davidson states, by the general public's associational lives – group situations that were separated by class and gender to make these divisions clearer, like clubs and charities. These associational divisions gave class and gender more divisions by which to define people. These gatherings gave the classes opportunities to observe one another and create their own social hierarchies, emphasizing Davidson's point that ordinary people had the agency to create their own social trees, despite pressures from authorities such as the Church and state.
Overall, Davidson's work is a compelling argument that social settings are just as important in defining a society as the political and institutional processes that created the environment in which the society flourished, providing a thorough look at how French society perceived itself and its surroundings during the time.
Ehrhard Bahr's Weimar on the Pacific examines the cultural impact that German expatriates had on Los Angeles in the 1930s and 40s, looking at the arts in particular to make the assertion that German fascism was “to a certain degree a counterrevolution against modernism, and since the manifestations of modernism were most conspicuous in the realms of literature, music, and the arts, these became important battlegrounds for the conflicting ideologies and their proponents.” In studying the exodus of creative minds from Germany and its surrounding nations before and during the second World War as well as the material they produced while in exile, Bahr adeptly argues that Los Angeles, in having a uniquely concentrated population of German exiles, developed its own German culture that stood apart from the culture in the European nation these people had once inhabited.
Particularly interesting to me was the chapter on Epic Theater versus Film Noir, describing the development of Hangmen Also Die by Bertold Brecht and Fritz Lang. Inspired by headlines describing the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the two men worked together to turn the story into a film, though they disregarded historical fact in order to make the story move in the way they wanted. As the movie was created, Brecht and Lang diverged greatly on how they wanted the film made and what was to be included; creative differences in which Brecht's high standards for the film were not met caused him to drift from the project. Artistic freedom and heavy editing soured Brecht to the final product, but the film continued on to be nominated for academy awards. The demand for anti-Nazi films as well as the popularity of the film noir aesthetic came together in Hangmen Also Die, and Bahr lays out the way this film was created in a fascinating light, describing not only the relationship between Brecht and Lang as it evolved during the making of the film but also their diverging opinions on where the focus of the film should lie. While Brecht had a political agenda in creating the film, Lang depended heavily on audience reaction; he was creating entertainment while Brecht wanted the film to stand also as art and statement.