Carla

I would read her grocery list, to be honest. This speech and this essay are brilliant.

Meeting her was one of the best days of my life, and the best day of my childhood. She treated me like I was the only person in the room, holding my hand in both of hers.

Dawson's narration felt as if something were being laboriously explained to me, rather than if I were joining with her to learn something and immerse in a subject we both enjoy.

Also, it was difficult to join with Dr. Heinrich's story. He wasn't very likable, to my mind. He seemed to see anyone else in his field as a personal foil. “Oh ho, you are testifying for the defense and I the prosecution? We are now adversaries in life forever!” “You are focusing on similar ideas? Well, of course you are wrong!” It was exhausting to get past in order to learn about the history of forensics.

Life-changing. I don't write this lightly.

The concept is eerie and original. But I wish I had known that it involved a character created by Neil Gaiman, so I could have chosen not to read it. The reader is not notified until the acknowledgements at the end.

The editing and translation are both a little choppy in places.

Disjointed and hard to follow at times. Felt like reading an unpolished draft.

Edited to add: this book left me uncomfortable and deeply disappointed. As an autistic woman, I had been really looking forward to reading this. I feel like cringing when I think about it, and not in a shared-understanding way, but rather in a feeling of wishing I hadn't read it. I hate writing reviews like this, but it's the truth. Lowered from 2.75 to 1.75 after sitting with it.

Example: there was an entire chapter explaining how to fold a sheet (involving a ruler) and how to make hospital corners.

Removed a star because I listened to a sample of the author's next book at the end of this audiobook, and the music used sounded almost exactly like the piano tune that is central to the Hell House LLC movie series.

This is so much more than the true crime book it appears to be. It's a psychological and historical study of a series of murders in context of a certain church, the history of a geographical area, belief in NDEs, and the intersection of racism and apocalyptic prepping...and how this all led to Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell's beliefs in dark souls and the need for particular people to die in order for God's will to be done. To say that two delusional people found each other and murdered their children and one of their spouses is way too simplistic. This is a fascinating work that explores personal and collective fear, power, and psychology.

Deeply uneven. One essay was actually offensive in its attempt to be...funny? clever? and one took the Savior approach to disability on film, so outraged on our behalf that the author got flustered and contradicted his own argument that disabled people shouldn't play disabled characters, because if we do, we're being exploited. The other essay touching on disability in horror also “helped” too much and also missed the mark, misunderstanding the “pretty girl” story in Season 1.

Some, however, were actually about the intersection of philosophy and horror, and greatly appreciated.

We Americans need these essays right now more than ever.

Someone involved with this book adores the color pea green. Several patterns are made with yarns in this shade, no matter how it looks (pea green and chocolate brown for a striped scarf is a choice) and even the end papers are this color. This really takes away from the patterns. And the patterns are uneven–for every interesting cable or lace pattern, there's one with flouncy potato chip ruffles or fun fur.

This is surprisingly part of The Dark Tower Universe.

Minus one star for hoping Raniere gets raped in prison. After all the sexual trafficking, to wish sexual harm on someone else was striking.

Dark, dank, and powerful. Not even for the regular horror fan.

Half a star deducted because the author did not carry the story to its conclusion before publishing, i.e., waiting for sentencing. It’s frustrating when books covering crime do so.

Uneven: I was really brought up short by the author's calling someone's mental health crisis a “crack up”, especially considering the topic at hand, and the fact that the author is a journalist, working in facts. On that note, the author referred to bipolar disorder by its older, possibly offensive name.

Fabulous audiobook narration by Claire Danes.

Her first book was a delight. This one is an alarming and disturbing trauma dump that uses the r-word. I am uncomfortable for having read it.

I highly recommend the audiobook-the narrator has an amazing singing voice!

This book spoils every movie in it, down to the very last details, without warning, so heads-up. The author literally narrates the entire movie plots in order to make his points.

Fascinating yet intellectually frustrating.

Would have liked more documents from Laura, less editorializing from and information about Rose.

This book should be used as a history and/or sociology textbook.

What I wrote on Bluesky: 

Listening to Surrender, New York by Caleb Carr, an extension of The Alienist universe, and truly enjoying it...except for the casual domestic violence. So. Much. Hitting. Perhaps it's because I am autistic, but I am not reading being struck by someone's cane as affectionate horseplay...

Impossible to follow footnotes (just unlinked asterisks at the end of the book, with no reference back to their source, and the same method was used to delineate changed names, so the whole setup was quite confusing) plus an agenda. That agenda was written, in neon letters, “the inspiration was a secret and I found it!”, which the author has to admit isn't true in either part; Nabokov had nothing to hide, and others discovered the connection first. Yet she harps what he was hiding to the very end. Authors are inspired by real life constantly; it's a normal process, and to not blatantly discuss is considerate to the parties involved. There's no conspiracy, and nothing to discover. The only person exploiting Sally Horner is this author.

Love the designs and the author, didn't like the layout of the book at all. It made it difficult to navigate.

I have never seen so many garter stitch rectangles designed in expired yarns in one place. I counted–page 46 before anyone attempted any other design. 
So many of these celebrities chose yarns that went out of production before the book was even put together that several warnings were placed throughout the book. That's production's role, to gently wrangle the knitters/”talent” toward a substitute yarn after verifying the sustainability of the product being demonstrated.