Amanda
Extremely readable, even In These Times where I'm finding focusing on a book more difficult than before. Loved Emira and her friends and all the various tensions between them, loved the alternating POVs between Emira and Alix. I find it fascinating that this is a Reese Witherspoon book club pick when Alix is essentially a character Reese Witherspoon has played a couple of times before, just taller and a little younger than current-day Reese. There's so many currents and tensions playing themselves out in this - race, class (oh my god, I really want to read an essay about class in this novel), gender, age - it's incredible. Also, Kelley is such good satire of that exact type of dude. His last text to Emira made me both cackle because it was so perfect and want to throw my phone because of course. Perfect.
Rating is probably more like a 3.5, but rounding up. Reasons for the deduction: I feel like the book didn't quite stick the landing with the big live TV interview and I found the reveal at the very end (the flashback to Alix in high school and the locker cleanout) kind of pointless? Also, at one point, the narrative seems to suggest that Alix is overweight/out of shape at 5'10", 141 pounds (yeah, it uses exact numbers), and like. That's borderline underweight, and I know Alix is insecure about absolutely everything but maybe let's not endorse that viewpoint. There's also a scene earlier than that about how her friends tell her she's overweight, but if these are the numbers, again this isn't a great thing to throw in there.
So damn delightful and exactly what I needed right now! Not wholly a romance - I mean, it definitely ticks the boxes of the genre, but it's almost as much about Emily rebuilding the relationship with her sister and niece, making friends, and restarting her life after a bad breakup as it is about the romance with Simon. That's not to say I didn't like the romance, because I absolutely did (though I read a tweet from the author comparing Simon and Mitch's energy to that of Chris and Brad from the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen videos, and that was a little bit distracting, because it changed my mental image of Simon to Chris Morocco, which isn't all that far off from the character description, but the pirate outfit in Faire was ... yeah, a lot.) I really liked this world, though it was a little bit white and straight for my tastes, but a nice, low-conflict, low-drama romance was perfect in these “challenging times,” as every email I've gotten from a company phrases it. Very excited to read the next book in this series!
Fun and a pretty quick read - though probably not all that interesting unless you like crosswords, obviously. Luckily, I do, and I enjoyed the author's journey through the history of puzzles. I would've liked a little less focus on the New York Times crossword puzzle; while it's still clearly the most prominent, I think there's a lot more interesting (and certainly more inclusive) work being done in the indie-puzzle world. There are brief mentions of that, and a good section dealing with several of the more recent racial/gender controversies in the NYT puzzle, but I would've loved longer interviews with people like Ben Tausig or the editors of the Inkubator. Overall, though, I really did enjoy this and the epilogue about a crossword cruise is hilarious!
Fun and engaging writing and a fascinating journey through the world of fine dining (with some detours into reality TV and cooking for oil rig cleanup crews). I wish it were a little longer, especially given Kwame's recent success with his second restaurant, but I guess there's always room for a second memoir.
Interesting but a little disjointed - it's a lot of snapshots of restaurants/chefs at various points in the last 15-20 years of the American food scene, some of which get more than one chapter and some of which we never return to. The short chapters on Tom Colicchio, Ree Drummond, and Guy Fieri are more like essays and were some of the standouts to me, especially the Guy Fieri one. The rest was interesting, but seemed to lack additional context to bring it all together - what changed in American culture, and how did the food and restaurants highlighted here reflect that? Was a switch flipped in 2004 and all of a sudden everyone wanted artisanal chicken nuggets? There's not much of that macro analysis here, but the micro deep dives into the stories of these chefs over time are interesting, especially the ones like Andre Prince Jeffries. The writing is fun and engaging but I wanted more from the book than it ended up being.
It was fine, I guess? Not bad, but Hannah's reasons for the relationship at first were so poorly explained I had to restart the book from the beginning because I could not remember them. Also, I am extremely over descriptions of what the male lead's genitals are doing at any point that's not a sex scene, and even more over personifying said genitalia. I like the writing, and I'll read the next one in this series for sure, though.
Really liked the style of the book - it's told mostly via diary/journal entries (in the guise of it being a school project) with other things like letters/transcripts/texts throughout as well. Alaine has such a clear, fun voice and I loved how it really came through in the writing. Three stars because there was just too much plot and everything was really overstuffed - between her mother's Alzheimer's and the embezzlement at the nonprofit and the romance with the other intern and the family curse and voudou, it was just a lot, even for a 400+ page book, and I think a couple of the subplots could have been dropped or reduced to focus more on Alaine and her experience in Haiti, which was the part I was most interested in (and I think the strongest part of the book).
I wish there'd been a little more about the culture that's grown up around cancer, particularly breast cancer, in America - what there was I really enjoyed, like the chapter or so about the Komen Foundation. The science and history of treatment was the biggest part of the book, interspersed with some more memoir-style sections about the author's own cancer and treatment. I hadn't heard about this book before randomly picking it up from the new releases shelf at the library, but it was engaging and educational on a topic I didn't know much about previously.
Cute and does some really innovative things with the audio-only format that would be hard to render well in print, I think. Loved the voice acting, especially Regina Hall, who narrates Trinity's chapters, and Mindy Kaling, as the Alexa-like voice assistant Penny. (It is pretty great that the evil corporation/government entity in this book is a pretty clear Amazon analogy, considering Audible is owned by Amazon.) The book is a pretty light romantic comedy most of the way through, but it takes a hard left into more straightforward science fiction/thriller territory about 75% of the way through, with a twist that I had partially figured out but didn't entirely see coming. Content notes behind this warning: possible content warnings here are PTSD and brainwashing/gaslighting/mental manipulation - I'm happy to discuss other potential ones if anyone has questions All in all, not quite what I expected, but definitely enjoyable!
This was fascinating and I'm embarrassed by just how little of it I knew beforehand, though in my defense it's been just about 20 years since I took AP US History. Anyway. I enjoyed this and learned a lot from it, and I appreciate how straightforward and clear-eyed Loomis is about organized labor - while he's clearly on the side of workers throughout, he's also definitely willing to point out where racism or sexism or just flat-out terrible leadership undermined the movement's ability to succeed. (Especially in the early chapters, I was continually amused by the clear disdain for the AFL/Samuel Gompers.)
I especially appreciated the chapter about slave resistance and rebellion before and during the Civil War, and the last two chapters about the PATCO strike and the rise of the SEIU and public sector unions. I would've liked a little more about things like the current wave of unionization among online workers and/or attempts to unionize gig workers like Uber drivers, but those may be too recent to have made this edition.
Longer review forthcoming, but oh, the shudder of recognition that went through me at many points in this book! This is so true and so funny and so good. (Leaving my mini-review up, and adding what's below 2/3/20) CW on this book for fertility issues, difficult childbirth and maternal injury/serious illness, though nothing's super-graphic and it's definitely not gratuitous in any way. I am glad I didn't read this until after I was done having children, however, because yikes, Lucy went THROUGH IT to have Pal and the complete lack of concern shown by her doctors as she started to display textbook symptoms of pre-eclampsia was incredibly infuriating. Since that was one of my biggest fears during pregnancy, I'm just happy that I didn't read this then, because I would've been even more anxious than I already was. ANYWAY, enough about my medical paranoia. I love Lucy Knisley's art style (particular standout here: the section from her husband's perspective) and I really want to go back and read at least [b:Relish 15786110 Relish My Life in the Kitchen Lucy Knisley https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1345686126l/15786110.SX50.jpg 21505033]. I also really liked how the chapters about her experiences were interspersed with pregnancy facts/history of medicine, and I thought it was all done in a fun way (as fun as possible when you're writing about the misogynist asshole who came up with the modern concept of “natural childbirth,” at least). This was so great and I can't wait to read the next book by Lucy Knisley.
Loved this, loved Chloe and her sisters, loved just how prickly Chloe was on bad pain days - I don't have fibromyalgia, but I have endometriosis, another chronic pain condition, and when it flares, I'm not fun to be around. I really just enjoyed this book a whole lot, honestly; the MCs' problems and insecurities made a lot of sense and were worked through in a realistic way, and I also liked that there was no last-minute appearance from the evil ex (on either side, really, but I mostly meant Pippa), which can sometimes be effective but is usually not my favorite trope. I'm so happy this is going to be a series, and I would also like to respectfully request a flashback novella or something about Gigi, who is awesome and needed to be in this book even more.
I love Lindy West's voice as a writer - this was a great collection of (mostly) light, fun essays, easy to dip into when you have a few minutes. I enjoyed the pop culture focused ones in particular, especially the South Park and Adam Sandler essays. I liked the more memoir-ish focus of [b:Shrill 29340182 Shrill Notes from a Loud Woman Lindy West https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1460015959l/29340182.SY75.jpg 46238704] a little bit better, because this could sometimes feel a little disjointed or repetitive, but that's not unusual for an essay collection.
Content warnings for this book: suicide (attempted), family violence, death of a parent (off-page), generalized homophobia/transphobia. All those warnings make this sound super-dark, and it did have those moments, but this definitely wasn't just misery with no end. I liked the alternating POVs between Eric and Morgan, especially as they get older. The story wraps up a little abruptly for me, and I do wish Morgan's coming out to her dad had been shown on the page, but overall I really liked this one!
I really enjoyed this - it's sort of Bridget Jones-ish, but less self-destructive and more finally dealing with trauma and getting your life together? That makes it sound pretty heavy, and there are CWs for sexual assault, death of a parent, and a possibly abusive relationship, but this is the furthest thing from dark or grim. Georgina is a great narrator and a fun main character, and I liked her friends as well, though I do wish they were a bit more fleshed out. This was a lot of fun and I definitely want to read more by this author now!
(2.5, rounding up.) This was okay, I guess? It sort of felt like two books blended together - the first part in Scotland and England, and then the second half, after the MC returns to Chicago. I feel like not very much happened in the first half and then too much happened in the Chicago half, especially in the last 100 pages or so. This just never really came to life for me, and I'm not sure why. I didn't care for Logan much (and occasionally actively disliked him), for a couple of reasons: 1) “YouTube viral video star” is just about the least-enticing possible profession for a romantic lead to have, short of “ICE agent” or “billionaire,” and 2) I don't think you get to be upset with your girlfriend for your relationship starting as a vacation fling when your whole deep secret/manpain backstory is about how your father died suddenly and now you're afraid of relationships.. Also, this isn't anything to do with the writing, but if Logan is consistently described throughout the book as ginger, why in the world does the cover dude have brown hair?
I guess I just feel like all the characters were underdeveloped, really - even Cassie, the MC, I don't feel like I ever really got into her head in more than a superficial way, and the supporting cast was even more thinly written. Cassie has four friends who have about two character traits each (one of which is their hair color, and if you took a shot every time Delaney's “strawberry blonde” ponytail was mentioned, you'd probably die) and are essentially there to set up four more books in the series. Anyway. The writing was overall good, but the pacing was off and the characters were thin, so this is a lot of words to say that while this wasn't awful, I probably won't come back to this series.
Fascinating and infuriating - I can't wait to read [b:Catch and Kill 46650277 Catch and Kill Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators Ronan Farrow https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1570798239l/46650277.SY75.jpg 72177046] to see how it compares, with two publications pursuing the same story and sources at the same time. This was very well-written and easy to follow, even with two authors and the sort of strange third-person storytelling format they devised to make it clear who was doing what when. (I can't think of a better way to do this, honestly; an authorial “we” would get very confusing very quickly, so I'm not criticizing here, just noting that this took some getting used to.) I'm not sure I can say I really enjoyed this book, since it's in large part a litany of what one very powerful man got away with doing to women for decades, and the herculean efforts it took reporters at the biggest newspaper in the world to finally bring him to some semblance of justice. I'm glad I read it, though, and it's definitely worth the time. The latter part loses a bit of focus as it moves from the Weinstein investigation and fallout to the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings nearly a year later. These authors didn't break that story, so it loses some of the immediacy of the rest of the book, and it's really compressed into a couple of chapters. I understand why it's there, but the Weinstein sections are stronger by far. I did like the epilogue/final chapter, however, which brings together a lot of the women who have spoken out about harassment to discuss the fallout and what comes next.
The takedowns of various financial “experts” are fun - if you just read one chapter in this book, make it chapter three, “The Latte Is a Lie,” which is all about how cutting out your Starbucks run every day won't make you a millionaire and a lot of people are making big money by shaming regular people about things like that. The real problem is stagnant wages combined with skyrocketing costs for things like real estate, healthcare, and education, combined with a massive reduction in the societal safety net. People can't save as much because they're essentially trying to do more with less. I feel like since this book came out, a lot of what's in it has become almost common knowledge, or maybe that's just that I'm friends with a lot of frustrated millennials. Either way, this was easy to read and definitely educational, though there was a lot in here that I was already aware of. And now I still have no idea what a variable annuity is, but I know I shouldn't get one.
Read this in conjunction with [b:She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement 44767249 She Said Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement Jodi Kantor https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1573830483l/44767249.SY75.jpg 69397793], and you'll really see how much of a difference a supportive editorial structure makes when reporting a major story (I say like I have any special insight into journalism). The fact that Noah Oppenheim and Andy Lack still have their jobs after this book's publication is just staggering and an incredibly clear illustration of why the Weinstein story would never have seen the light of day at NBC. This book is almost as much about the fight to fully report the Weinstein story and the efforts to keep it hidden as it is about the story itself - it reminded me in that way of [b:Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup 37976541 Bad Blood Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup John Carreyrou https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1556268702l/37976541.SX50.jpg 59699437]. I also very much enjoyed the spy-novel aspects, the shade regarding the movie Jackie, and the Jon Lovett cameos (“I'm interesting! I've been to an escape room!”). Highly recommended.