Blue sky, green trees.

Hell of a good book. The sleeping around and divorce aspects were surprising because I had always been taught that up until the boomer generation it was deeply shameful to be divorced or to sleep around, and that there were serious social consequences for it. This book is another indication, among many, that this is simply not the case. Interesting, entertaining. Highly recommend.

I think this is a fantastic, fascinating book. I also think it is essential reading for anyone interested in Germany or the Cold War, and any topics even remotely related to either of them. Certified good read, highly recommend.

Amazing. Wonderful. Made me cry. I loved it. Highly recommend.

I wanted to like this book because I like the author, but it was a bit boring. Did not finish.

I liked it well enough, but my enthusiasm for computer history petered out and I just don't feel like continuing. Glad I read what I did, it was interesting, but I'm in the mood for a novel and so it's time to move on.

Wow, I did not see this book coming. It was our July book club selection, and while I was perfectly happy to read it I didn't have very high expectations. I figured it would be slice-of-life, heavy on descriptions and short on action, and the start of the book bore this out. However, things take an unexpected turn and the pace really picks up. Then it picks up even more, and keeps on going. I have to dock it half a star because there were still lots of overly-long descriptions, whole pages-worth of descriptions, that I had to skim/skip to keep in the flow. Otherwise a damn fine book.

I adore when authors use the first person plural voice. I also adore everything else about this book, so file this one under Highly Recommend and then go out and read it for yourself.

I don't get it, nothing happens. I thought this was supposed to be about missing persons, but it's just a lot of rambling about his genealogy and Glasgow.

Based on the description and a conversation with a friend who had already read it, I was fully prepared to hate this book but heroically muddle through for the sake of Book Club. I was pleasantly surprised to find it entertaining and fun. If someone was looking for a book to read in general, this wouldn't be my first suggestion, but if they were looking for a Berlin book then this would be in my top 3 suggestions.

The stream of consciousness style is usually a deal-breaker for me, but I stuck it out with this book and I'm glad I did. I don't know of any other books that addresses the topic of what happens to former colonists when they are violently expelled and return to the motherland. It was quite interesting, didn't pull punches, and took only one easy out. In all a good read, would recommend.

Hilarious, and it had lots of useful German vocabulary words.

Fantastic book, absolutely fascinating look at Berlin. It definitely opened my eyes a bit to how the squat situation developed here, and due to the context that the book provided it made me view the squats and squatters in Berlin slightly more favorably than before. I mean, I understand now how things developed the way they did, and that at the time it was actually even necessary in some ways. It also blew my mind to learn that there were different types of squats, it wasn't just uniform chaos, everyone sleeping on a dirty mattress on the floor and shooting up then going on the streets and stomping people. This book definitely helped fill in some of the pieces of Berlin's history that I was missing before, and it was all told in an engaging, personable way. Highly recommend.

There is a lot of filler info to round out the page count of this book. If you are interested in learning all the context of what was going on, including political, sociological, and familial histories that go back decades before the action, then you'll gobble up this book. Otherwise you'll need to skim heavily, which is what I did.

Fascinating take-down of the world of crypto. The chapters on NFTs were my favorite, they are so good that they could be stand-alone articles (maybe they were at one point?). Highly recommend.

Nothing happens in this book! Rambling descriptions that go on for literally pages that make you forget the topic of the paragraph(s). Sentences that contain parentheticals that themselves last for half a page. All this in the service of literally no plot. NO PLOT. I hated this book.

Fantastic read, absolutely knocked my socks off. The portion that is told from the point of view of Edith was really intense, it felt like I was holding my breath for the whole chapter. I love what the author did with the characters, the plot, the writing, every bit of it worked for me. Highly recommend.

This was my weekend morning book, read over cups of coffee from my spot on the couch. It was the perfect companion for that early, tender part of a Saturday or Sunday - funny and interesting and gentle. I recommend this book to everyone, whole-heartedly.

Fantastic book. I thought the parts from Doc's perspective while he was having his stroke were really well done, very intense, although sometimes hard to follow (I think that was the point, though). I also thought Anna's response was very realistic, feeling trapped in the situation and cut off and overwhelmed. She's also a bit of an odd duck herself, what with often not understanding context or appropriate responses, but I liked it, she was interesting.

Based on the hype and a glowing recommendation from a dear friend, I had high hopes for this book. Instead it fell flat for me. It seems that I was supposed to be very moved by the author's personal struggles, but they weren't talked about in enough depth, or often enough, or with too little emotion. These struggles just weren't interesting and frankly didn't feel like they belonged in what was clearly a book about David Starr Jordan. Overall, the book was flat and a little dull.

Went on a bit too much in parts of the third act, otherwise really good.

This would have been better as a short story.

Things really get bogged down in the middle third of the book, Miller is just repeating himself endlessly about getting the actors to "be real". The choice was either to fail to finish reading the book, or just skip pages until it got to the previews and opening night. I chose the later, for both closure and out of curiosity, and I'm glad I did.

I liked it but I'm glad that it's over.

It was a really good book, and I enjoyed the structure of the story with its two time periods and one extra time period nested inside one of them; it was a treat to read.

****SPOILERS******

I did feel a mix of sadness and frustration as the mom ended up living the exact life that she never wanted, just basically checking everything off the list one by one. And the frustration came in because it's not like she actively chose any of those things, she just failed to make a decision and let herself be carried along with things - which is in itself a decision process, but a piss-poor one to live your life by.

Really great mystery! I recognized one of the clues as being a clue, which made me feel smart, but I didn't guess the ending, which kept me in a state of suspense throughout. In short, a perfect combo!