gerikatz

Such a lovely, honest story.

I've never been to Oklahoma and I didn't even know OKC had an NBA team, so I was skeptical about the book that so many people had gushed about. But Anderson's artful weaving of sports and history proved a dramatic, exciting and heartbreaking storytelling device. Brought me to tears more than once.

I knew a little bit about the smog of 1952 (probably due to “The Crown”) and a lot about Reg Christie (thanks to true crime podcast Murder Mile) but found every bit of this book enthralling. Even the bits about parliamentary debates between Norman Dodds and Tories who tried to cover up the smog deaths. I loved the stories about individual families and victims of the smog, which humanized the catastrophe in a way that statistics can't. Ultimately, for me, the Reg Christie storyline served as macabre entertainment between more interesting sections about the smog.

One of the most stunning pieces of narrative nonfiction I've ever read.

I am so conflicted about this book. I wanted to love it. It was absorbing and compelling but I wanted it to be over with about 100 pages left to go.

I've loved all the recipes I've tried from this book, and appreciate the small number of portions. Sometimes a recipe is actually enough for 4, which is great for my family.

I've worked in and around politics for almost 20 years, and Ady Barkan is one of the most inspiring activists I've ever met. I had the great honor of meeting him in the summer of 2018 at a panel about Medicare for All hosted by Congressman Keith Ellison. Ady was still able to speak loudly and clearly, and made the case that universal healthcare is a necessity and our current broken system is an injustice. This man, ten years younger than I am, with a young family, was giving precious moments of his remaining years to the movement so that all Americans can survive and thrive, regardless of their net worth, religion, skin color or gender. He continues to amaze me every day. His memoir is beautifully written, includes behind the scenes details about grassroots victories (and defeats) and makes me grateful for the voice Ady has given to the progressive movement of the late 20-teens.

A quick and entertaining read, I plowed through it in a day mostly to get to the end so I could read something else. Fine for a vacation or a long flight.

One of the best, most moving pieces of YA fiction I've read.

Masterful, honest, grueling storytelling.

I read this for my son's 5th grade book club. I didn't expect much from a YA novel about refugees, but it was a gorgeous book about courage and love in the face of cruelty and fear. It was beautifully written and the characters were lovingly crafted. Please give this book to kids in your life, especially kids who live a comfortable life with few worries. We need our future leaders to have more empathy than our current ones.

Outstanding journalism, storytelling and history.

A fascinating book, start to finish. The detailed examination of the infiltration tactics of the KGB was especially interesting in light of the 2016 Russian misinformation campaign and the resulting Russian asset (allegedly) in the White House.

What a wild ride. This excellent piece of investigative journalism reads like a spy thriller.

In this era where corporate greed and hubris run roughshod over real people's lives, it's immensely satisfying to read a story where this behavior results in harsh punishment and complete humiliation. It's refreshing to see disregard for patient safety in favor of profits be treated with the harshness deserved when human lives are at risk. As a bonus it's nice to see horrible people like Kissinger and Mattis tainted by their association with this fraud.

I might have to subscribe to the WSJ to read their coverage of the upcoming criminal case against Holmes and Theranos.

While the subject matter is a complex combination of chemistry, engineering, and business practices, it's written accessibly enough for a history major with no scientific or business training to understand and appreciate. But I can imagine a reader with any background in those subjects would find the book even more gripping than I did.

A gorgeous depiction of the intergenerational trauma wrought by colonialism, slavery and war.

I was a serious Little House fan as a kid, rereading the books regularly, and I've read other bios of Wilder, but I learned things I never knew and made connections to American history that fill in the blanks left by Wilder's fictionalization of her life.

Rose and Laura's anti-New Deal fanaticism was especially fascinating and outrageously hypocritical. A family whose livelihood came from free land stolen from indigenous people by the US government has a lot of nerve to criticize desperate people seeking relief during the depression. The connection of the Dust Bowl back to the destructive farming practices of homesteaders ads another layer of hypocrisy on to their obsessive opposition to collective social solutions to public crises.

Also, Rose was quite a piece of work, more than other bios have ever let on.

Beautifully written and meticulously researched, this examination of the systematic murder of dozens of Osage in the 1920s is chilling. Rarely do we have the opportunity to see the American genocide against indigenous people so closely with personal detail about the victims and the generational trauma that follows their descendants to this day. The history of the birth of the modern FBI and the investigation and judicial proceedings against the murderers was fascinating.

I wish this book had been around when I was in my early 20s and thought I knew everything but I was actually an idiot about most of these topics. An approachable intro to social and racial justice, written with humor and love for the reader. I found the switching back and forth from fluffy (detailed direction on moisturizing your skin, for example) to heavy (white supremacy, misogyny) very jarring though. It felt like two different books merged together. Both would be good on their own, but the combination didn't flow too well. I adore Luvvie and I hope there are more books to come from her. She is a bright light in the darkness.

I wanted to rate this a four because I deeply appreciated the research the author did to portray the medical and social history surrounding the plague in such detail, but oy. The “surprise” reveal, the twist, the other twist and the sudden geographic relocation at the end was a bit much. Had the soap opera stuff been eliminated in favor of an examination of faith during and after a time of great hardship, I would have liked it more.

Fun little exploration into everyday urban wilderness. The chapter on Ginko trees explained so much about the forest lining the streets of my neighborhood.

I read this because my ten year old was reading it. He got bored after 20 pages. So did I, but finished it anyway. Maybe I would have enjoyed this as a kid, but I doubt it. I guess if you like cat drama, you'll enjoy this book.

My only criticisms are of 1) the love story with the museum librarian within the first 50 pages and 2) the big paternity reveal after a car crash. Both would have been perfect for a daytime soap-opera but were beneath the rest of this beautifully researched and written novel.

Entertaining enough to read in a weekend. It's labeled a thriller, but I didn't find it terribly thrilling. Triggering for anyone who has lived through domestic abuse, emotional, sexual or physical.

This book was so well-written and crafted, which I appreciated, and I really wanted to like it. But it just felt like page after page of suffering and depression. The story just went from misery to different misery and didn't feel like there was any resolution at the end. I didn't care about most of the characters and actively disliked the others. I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did.

This was not a great masterpiece of literature, but a compelling and at times exciting story of women of the French resistance. If you power through the first 150-200 pages, the second half is worth it.
(I would give the second half of the book a 4, but the first half a 3. If I could give it a 3.5 I would, but I had to round down due to the silly romance novel aspects of the first half.)