Katie

This was sweet and funny and enjoyable.

This was so true to life it was sort of cringe-inducing. You could see what was coming a mile away. Excellently executed.

This is a very fun read. There's no actual facts or research in here, but she does make some good points (and silly ones, too, like, “when women are in the news it's because they're being celebrated for being the first something, but when men are in the news it's because they committed a crime.” Or, you know, are leaders of the world making all the decisions.)

This was a sweet book full of memories of a lost friend.

Oh, how I wish I remembered the other three books in the series better. This was still wonderful, but it would have been even more fun if I could have remembered all the background details from the other books. I love the characters here, the world building is super interesting but not hard to get in to or understand, and there were some great new characters introduced that I can't wait to follow in the next books.

I have heard about this book for so many years that I finally decided to pick it up and read it. I thought it was going to be about physical illnesses being caused by mental anguish, but that really wasn't the focus. It was about trauma, which he calls our biggest public health challenge–how trauma impacts the brain, behavior, physical health, and relationships. I learned a lot from the book and certainly agree with his call for more attention to be paid to childhood trauma. Some parts of the book felt like score-settling with those in the field who don't agree with him and those parts were less interesting, though I certainly felt his frustration. The last part where he talks about novel cures for trauma was very interesting, and I'd like to know more about those, especially neurofeedback. Well, edited to add that the information at this link was enlightening. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-myths/201302/read-paying-100-neurofeedback-therapy

This was a fun and moving read. Her language is sometimes too flowery for me, but I resolved to enjoy the ride anyway, and learned a lot from her wisdom.

This was really fantastic writing. The stories were sad, funny, nostalgic, unusual, deeply human.

I picked this up because of the New Mexico setting, but I really don't like this kind of thriller. Who enjoys reading about young women being tortured, killed, and dismembered?

This was compared to Dangerous Young Woman, which is why I picked it up, but it's nothing like that. in DYW, she killed for a reason. The main character of this book is a cardboard cut out who kills for the lols. The book is silly and pointless. I thought I would keep reading to see how it ends, but realized I really didn't care.

Zadie Smith is so brilliant. Her writing is hilarious, insightful, and always page-turning. I do feel like I miss out by not knowing London and England, and, especially in this book, old England, but I could get enough to mostly feel like I knew what was going one (and who the frauds were).

I'd give the beginning of this book a 2, and the end maybe a 3.5, so this rating is a compromise. Too much personification per paragraph, too many metaphors, too much somberness. I understand it's a serious subject, but I sort of wanted it to be joyful, too. I did like some of the ideas about not letting others actions control our own, and being an upright person no matter what.

I checked this out because it's set in the mountains around Abq and I thought it would be a fun read. It was, but it was pretty clunky in places and contained a lot of unrealistic plot points.

I love Kate Atkinson, and this book just made me love her more. The stories were weird, disturbing, hilarious. It's one of those books where as soon as I finish I want to turn back to the first page and start again, because I'm sure I'd get even more out of a second reading.

Somewhat entertaining with likable characters, if you don't mind every woman under 50 being called a girl, and endless pointing out of where all the pretty “girls” are, etc.

A lot of this advice was pretty basic/obvious. A quick read.

Fantasy...so hard to get in to, so hard to leave behind. It wasn't until about the first 1/4 or maybe even 1/3 of this book was read that I felt like I had a handle on the world building and the characters (it doesn't help that two spoken-about characters have very similar names). But once it got going I really enjoyed the intrigue–maybe not so much the gore. Looking forward to the sequel that will obviously be coming!

The first and last parts of this book were pretty interesting. The history dragged a little, and the “travelog” dragged a lot. Like hearing someone tell you about their dreams? No? Try reading pages and pages about someone's trip... But the neuroscience was fascinating and so are all the ways that psychedelics are being used in therapy with both sick and well people. The book definitely changed my mind about a lot of things. :)

I really did not like this at the beginning–it felt strange and disjointed. But as I got to know the characters better I really loved it–and their experiences, and their wisdom. There's a lot to think about it this book.

These weren't all hilarious, but the ones that were made me laugh and cry.

I so wish everyone in the country would read this book. I learned so much from it, even though I thought I already knew a lot about the topic.

A fun read. Especially enjoyed the comments on “the other half.”

If I didn't already own this I would have stopped reading by about the 5th page and bought it immediately.

This was a sweet and funny book with great characters. I love Miriam Toews' writing.

This was a fun, quick read. Thanks to other Goodreaders I was prepared for the ending, so it didn't bother me the way it did some other people.