Carla

Over halfway done, and there's not enough information about the Tony and Susan Alamo cult, and too much explicit child abuse, and too much information about the author's eleven-year-old's erections. I wish that were hyperbole. Literal and repeated descriptions of his tucking it in and its popping out as he discovers girls on the compound...this is not what I signed up for.

Looks down on cryptozoology in the introduction as “not real”—then what's the point of his book? Second DNF of his work.

Autobiographies are risky. People fib about themselves, either on purpose or unconsciously. They go in tangents in or to brag or hide.

Hall spends a great deal of this book telling us how amazing her birth family is—they stomped all over Europe and she pretended to be an oracle on the moors of Scotland while other kids were in school—when they actually weren't—they were judgmental and verbally abusive. I didn't want to spend that much time reading about the Marvelous Mighty Halls, or about how Sands Hall is an Educated Talented Writer. I wanted to read about Scientology's effect upon a person. I got very little of that in a quite long book. 

Side note: I now know all about Sands' time on Guiding Light, but it's not in the IMDb. Odd.

I ordered this book via Amazon's iPhone app at work, because I needed to research a client's problem. Conduct disorder is such a serious diagnosis, I expected to receive a serious work tome. I received a book smaller than some graphic novels–74 pages! I returned it promptly in disgust.

Surprisingly tedious for such an interesting subject. Doesn't seem to have a thesis; just goes from murder trial to murder trial in excessive detail.

I love FLDS memoirs, and I am fascinated by the LeBaron family. But this extremely drawn-book is weighed down by minute details of cleaning out second-hand appliances for resale, for example. Plus, the author narrates the book, and she has a very young voice, and it was disconcerting to feel as if a child was telling me this story of crime and abuse (and selling used appliances). I just had to stop.

Lacking...

Good start, and an excellent wide range of offenders chosen, but this book lacks two things. With some tight editing, and more in-depth information, it could be splendid.

I was quite excited to spend my monthly Audible credit on this book; what a fascinating idea! I, unfortunately, have returned it to Audible. Each house is well-chosen: the Lemp mansion, for example, as a haunted touchstone in American history and culture...and then debunked as an actual, or at least a full as-known haunting by the author. Chapter after chapter. I hung on until the author stated repeatedly that Spiritualism didn't last, it was dead, it was no longer a thriving practice in the United States. Then I stopped reading. Why? I had reached poor scholarship and research. There is an entire town of Spiritualists who live and work as such, in plain sight, and have done so for years: Lily Dale. Both a documentary and a book are available about Lily Dale, New York, and both are easy to find:[bc:Lily Dale : The True Story of the Town that Talks to the Dead 227324 Lily Dale The True Story of the Town that Talks to the Dead Christine Wicker https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1441110606s/227324.jpg 220195]Lily Dale: The Town That Talks to the Dead and HBO Documentaries: No One Dies in Lily Dale

Have to DNF shelve this for right now. Put off by the cutesy Karen Kilgariff intro

(“OMG I didn't want to meet him but then I did but I thought I would hate him but OMG we totes love each other now true crime besties forever he totes listens to my podcast and you should too”)

but I forged ahead. How Jensen became interested in true crime had my attention and was truly unusual (and might be considered parental enmeshment?)...but then he goes into meeting Michelle McNamara...

And I was right back into the tone of the intro. What is it about a certain small corner of the informal true crime community (i.e., those that come at it from a paraprofessional angle) that becomes a such co-self-congratulating echo chamber?
If you are really into the work for seeking truth and helping victims, then why do you spend so much time squeeing about knowing each other and knowing other people? I stopped when he admitted that he and McNamara had a squeal fest (only a gentle paraphrasing on my part) upon getting the chance to speak to prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi in the phone. That has nothing to do with the murder victims not seeking justice.
If my murdered best friend were the subject at hand, and her case's prosecutor were the celebrity they were squealing about, I would be horrified.
I may return to this book. But right now I am really turned off, and there is so much more I want to read. And I will be reading it in print. Jensen's narration sounds in part like he has a cold. I'm going to be returning it to Audible. What a disappointment.

I have decided to not finish this book for many reasons, but the final straw was this thoughtful and heartfelt essay written by Dylan's English teacher, the one who received the eerie short story he wrote:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/judithkelly/opinion-i-taught-at-columbine-it-is-time-to-speak-my-truth
I read almost half of this book, trying, trying, understanding that she was a mother above all. But she minimized and deflected, and retold incidents that had several witnesses—like the time at the river with friends when Dylan accidentally got wet and tantrumed-raged-because he was embarrassed.
In this book, Dylan is this family-centered, amazingly sensitive boy who makes his bed every morning, as if good people—or people with good traits—cannot do horrible things.
And then this article. Mrs. Klebold changed many significant details about her and her husband's meeting with Dylan's teacher about the school shooting fantasy short story. In Klebold's version, they were told little, knew less, and were instructed not to worry. I can't continue listening to her read her words and tell her journey on this audiobook, because that is a significant lie. I trusted her to share her heart truthfully. She didn't do so, so I have to walk away from the dialogue and not continue reading. Which, on the 20th anniversary of Columbine, breaks my heart a little. Because I wanted to feel for her. Her true story is so painful; it doesn't need to be embellished. And if she so fears still being judged, perhaps a memoir was not for her.
And shame on the publisher: this information specifically about this meeting with the teacher is in the FBI files, testified to under oath. Klebold's manuscript should have been vetted more carefully.

I figured out the mystery long before I believe the reader should have, and the protagonist seemed to be enjoying her wallowing-in-self-destructiveness way too much for me to empathize with her.

This book is nothing like its misleading premise. It's about three women who either desperately want to get pregnant or who are unhappy moms whining because a mommy blogger influencer has gone offline. It's a miserable, sad read.

Also, it employs an odd gimmick: the author inserted the acknowledgements into the novel's action! Very jarring. You read an intro page from the stalker of the blogger, jumping right in the action (supposedly), turn the page, and the author is thanking everyone for supporting her for writing her novel and assuring readers they are going to love it, for two pages worth! Then Chapter One starts. Rather off putting start to what turns out to be a misleading and depressing book about fertility, not at all a thriller.

I wanted to finish this novel. The narrator, Amy Landon, has a soothing voice, and understood Beth's emotional remove from others and what that might sound like. The author, Walter Tevis, has given us other important American stories turned into landmark films such as The Hustler, The Color of Money, and The Man Who Fell to Earth. 

But.

I truly believe you need to understand chess to follow this novel's progression. Many of Beth's plays, and tournaments' rules and activities, are given without any explanation, which is frustrating. Plus, there is so much alcohol abuse, without it pressing forward the story. Both Beth and her mother drink beer like mother, often in physically impossible quantities and in a method of communication with each other and with other people. I am not sensitive to alcohol abuse or alcoholism per se, but even I became very uncomfortable with the frequency of it. I became so hyperaware of it that it took me out of the book.

Review: Ghostland: No Man's Land   I was quite excited to spend my monthly Audible credit on this book; what a fascinating idea–reframing American history by examining our relationship with our landmark haunted locales.
 
I, unfortunately, have returned it to Audible.
 
Each house is well-chosen: the Lemp mansion, for example, as a haunted touchstone in American history and culture...
and then debunked as an actual, or at least a full as-known haunting by the author. Chapter after chapter.
 
I hung on through the underlayer of smugness until the author stated repeatedly that Spiritualism didn't last, it was dead, it was no longer a thriving practice in the United States. Then I stopped reading. Why? I had reached the intolerable level of poor scholarship and research. There is an entire town of Spiritualists who live and work as such, in plain sight, and have done so for years: Lily Dale. Both a documentary and a book are available about Lily Dale, New York, and both are easy to find:
 
Lily Dale: The Town That Talks to the Dead * Christine Wicker
 
HBO Documentaries: No One Dies in Lily Dale
 
Side note: The author was also treated well by the Lemp Mansion's hosts, taken on their Haunted Tour, and given the choice room–one that is on the tour because it is reported to exhibit so much phenomena. His entire account of his Lemp tour and stay was mocking, in my opinion, disdainful of staff, location's history, and even his fellow tour group members! I feel as if I have been subjected to a history book written by a hipster: “Look, we're supposed to be enjoying this. OMG, all these people are really enjoying this! I cannot wait ‘til I return to my cocktail and typewriter.” Combined with the shoddy research, and some debunking claims without citations, this book is disappointedly unprofessional.
 
Also posted at The Dollop: American History Podcast

As a chronically ill and disabled person, and as a fan, I am so disappointed. There's just so much complaining—an entire chapter devoted to his love/hate relationship with golf, plus more wry grousing about it elsewhere, complaining about things in his movies (cool scene but they unfortunately used “Walking On Sunshine”), complaining about being sick to the nth degree, and more. There's discussing your negative feelings about your symptoms, and about the before and after of being disabled, and then there is complaining.

Five chapters in, and kinda getting the impression that Michael thinks he and his people are awesome, and everything and everyone else needs some work. I didn't want to know that.

The Wolves Just finished it. I'm in a delicious book coma, where I only have one foot in this reality, and one foot in the book's–1980's New York as AIDS was cutting a swath through a bright and beautiful population, and one where, within, the medieval lands of wolves and music and art could be with you if you wished hard enough.
Five stars. All the stars.

First, this author uses a strange (and which I consider sloppy) literary device: they changes characters without specifying them by name. A new paragraph/chapter/section will just start talking about “he” and “him” and the reader has to guess between four, then five main male characters who “he” is.
Also, once before I stopped reading, the POV radically changes and “he” starts talking to the reader. What?

Second, this novel blatantly and loudly fails the Bedchel test. Women flit in and out, never to be seen again, only known as this person's lesbian friend or that person's coworker. The one long-standing female character exists to be a wife, and never has s conversation about anything but her husband or the main focus of the novel, the wounded main-child. All the women are two-dimensional props.

Which brings me to the main reason I cannot finish this novel:
Third, I truly feel this novel fetishizes/glorifies (choose your verb) trauma, self-harm, and resulting toxic behavior and relationships. I say this as someone with CPTSD and currently in CPTSD immersion therapy, someone who is chronically ill with an autoimmune disorder and who has to use a wheelchair in public. The behaviors that draw people inexplicably to Jude—violent self-harm over years, egregious medical self-neglect, strict and seemingly random friendship rules (don't ask questions about x y z, don't take my photograph, I need to be checked on twice a day or Bad Things Might Happen)—are personality-disordered behaviors that in real life either drive people away or create horribly toxic relationships.
Granted, both Andy and Jude so far seem to understand that their relationship is both inappropriate and toxic, but Jude has this dreamy ideal vision of his rescue-victim friendship with Willem...and Willem seems to think it's completely normally to be living only half a life because the other half is being sucked up by Jude's ever-growing needs. And what bothers me is this doesn't feel like storytelling—I have read many, many well-crafted novels about horrific relationships. It feels to me as reader that the writer feels this is normal, or that this is fantasy-fulfillment to the writer. I know I am getting rather personal in this review, but this novel has upset me in a most uncomfortable way, to the point that I may need to discuss it in therapy. There is something wrong here. I wish I could flush the 33 percent I have read from my system.

Tried to be both poetic and journalistic, and could not marry the two—ended up reading like the script of an unprofessional and rushed podcast. It felt disrespectful to the victims to keep reading.

There were many factual errors in the prologue—about what a serial killer is, about the history of serial murder, about the facts concerning the Jack the Ripper case, for crying out loud. But I held on.
Then the first chapter was on pornography and sexual serial murder. Oh, no.
In it, the authors actually stated that rape and rape-murder were not as prevalent when sex workers were more prevalent and brothers and sisters slept in the same beds. Seriously. More sexy time all ‘round, and rape, and I quote, wasn't worth going to the gallows for.
That's not how that works. I went to grad school for this, and I refuse to read further in a book that has this statement in it. It insults my intelligence.

Unable to read: missing pages

Pages and sections of pages, impossible to tell how many, are missing. In the first two chapters, the missing pages are marked by one blank page. I really would like to read this book, but this Kindle edition is not readable.