Valerie Loveland

This book was hard to read at times because it was so intense, but I'm glad I read it.

So cute and fun.

It was too serious for me.

I really loved a lot of the ideas in the book but didn't like the execution. The repetition got annoying after awhile. I loved the invented gods and would have liked a book more focused on that. I am a fan of Leyner, but liked other books much more.

This book was super helpful to me. I would have never borrowed it from the library because the title was very off-putting, but it had so many great reviews.

The book is basically about the best way to study and learn, and common mistakes students make while trying to learn. I personally was making quite a few of the mistakes in the book.

I was spending so much time studying and didn't feel like I was learning the material, and couldn't figure out why. I have already started implementing the strategies in my current class and it is helping me retain the material.

I got this book by asking Horse Less Press for their weirdest book. This book did not let me down!

It is really fun. I loved seeing the recurring characters (Sara, dog, author), places (beaches), and events (fires). The poems are prose poems, mostly. I really enjoyed it.

Weird and hybrid forms are two things I really like in poetry and this book has both. When I talked to Coach Press at a book fair, I wanted a book that was strange, but not so out there that it was hard to read or understand. They recommended this. I liked it a lot.

I like self improvement, I like nerdy things. I like the positive tone of the book. There were a lot of funny parts in the book but there were some sexist things that grated on me.

(I would have never read this if I saw the cover.)

Fantastic book of poems. The language is so concentrated. The images kept surprising me over and over with how wonderful they were.

I already liked this museum, but didn't know anything about the founder of the collection. The story was really interesting and the writing style of the author was entertaining and compelling. I was not expecting this book to be about medical history, and I wouldn't have read it if I had known, but the author made it so interesting I am glad I gave it a chance.

Super fun Xmas issue. I keep being surprised about how much I like the series.

Love this series.

This poetry collection was fantastic. Her poems were very dense with gorgeous images and language. The subjects were interesting, the titles were good. This book deserves more exposure!

Took me a long time to finish this book because it was so long and dense. The world was extensive, well-written, and well-imagined. I was surprised by the ending.

I liked the variety of ideas for meditation in the book and how the exercises were practical instead of mystical.

Fantastic collection of poems. Wish I had more time to be more specific in my review.

I liked how it “humanized” statistics. I appreciate that he was trying to be funny/entertaining but his sense of humor did not mesh with mine (fat jokes).

I am a huge fan of Cate Marvin. Really liked this book but liked some of her previous books better. However, this book contains some of my very favorite poems that Marvin has written.

My favorite in the book, An Etiquette of Eyes, I have an audio recording of and listened to it over and over. I like the interesting line breaks:

An Etiquette of Eyes

Loved this series. I listened to audio files of these poems a lot, and I was attracted to the poetry processes or exercises that CA Conrad gave himself to write the poems. I also enjoyed the poems themselves–they are often funny, and some of the most creative.

Lynda Barry's style is always charming. I really liked reading about her creative process and how she became an artist.

I've been meaning to read this book because I heard so much about it, and I was not disappointed. I liked the prose poems instead of the poems with line breaks because they felt more sturdy and substantial. The titles in the book were complex and enjoyable, and they usually related to the poems.

I know people don't like when poets are compared to other poets, but there were a bunch of times I felt like the poems had some similarities to early Maura Stanton. She is one of my very favorites, and I consider the comparison a compliment.

I got this from the library but I am going to want to read it a bunch of times, so I am going to buy it. I also want to read the memoir that the book is based on (Alone by Richard E. Byrd).

My favorites in the book:

Book About a Candle Burning in a Shed

Sexting

The Landscape of Invention/Fire

My Love is a Dead Arctic Explorer

I always like CA Conrad's books. He includes the poetry exercises that he made up to write each of the poems, which are almost as fun as the poems themselves. It is not my favorite of his, but it was still a great read.

Here is the title poem from the book

I liked all the letters and articles written by and about the two of them, but I wish I knew more about the specifics of the case. I couldn't exactly tell how they were the ones arrested for the crimes in the first place, and the nature of the crimes. I wish I also knew more specifics about Sacco & Vanzelli before they were arrested.

I enjoyed the format of the book, but I wanted more chapters/vignettes. Too many parts of the story were missing.

I wish I had time to write a HUGE review because this book is one of my new favorites. I zipped through it quickly because I was enjoying it so much

The whole book is prose poems, which really suits Murphy's style. The language was often surprising and inventive. I loved how surreal it was. The poem titles were different types of numbers: squares, biblical numbers, sexy numbers. I love the idea, but I am not sure how exactly the numbers always relate to the poems. It also made it a little hard for me to remember the titles of my favorites because they are numbers.

A character, Him, shows up in the poems over and over, and I would kind of dread when he was going to show up because I was never sure what he would do.

I was pretty disappointed to see that she doesn't have a bunch of reviews! She deserves it.

My favorites from the book:

8
67 (at the bottom of the page)
(middle poem on the page)

19