Katie

This was fun to read on a trip to Cedar Mesa. It seemed a little more like it was written in the 80s than in the 00s, with its outdated machismo and rants against “political correctness.” But I did enjoy reading about their adventures and discoveries, and the little bits of history mixed in gave great context to the area.

This was pretty perfect. Some graphic novels have techniques that leave me feeling a little lost, but the one used in this one brought so much to the book. I loved the illustrations, and the story was very moving and well-told.

I mean, it's Fangirl, so it's gonna be awesome, but I think they did a great job of transferring it to this format and keeping what was most important about the book. Maybe she wasn't wearing enough sweaters, but otherwise perfect.

This was a fun read. I was glad that the main character wasn't a complete sad-sack, like so many main characters are in unrequited love situations. Plus, the whole non-romance plot of the friends moving to the country was interesting and funny. The secondary characters were a lot of fun.

I really enjoyed this, thought it talked about a lot of pain. It felt like it had the right amount of detail and if glossing over, which is often hard to get right in memoirs.

This was fun. I guess I liked it better than the first one. The characters still seem sort of thin and the plot was perhaps overly complicated, but it was still a fun read.

This book was way more fun than I thought it would be. Having sort of ODed on young, poc in publishing books, I was wary going into this, but with all the hype I thought I'd give it a try. The main character is a satisfying villain, though also a bit relatable. Some of her racism/cluelessness comes across as a little heavy handed, but as a probably clueless white person myself, I'm not the best judge of that. The story was tense and satisfying, and I had no idea how it would end but had a good laugh at the way it did.

This was great. Super interesting. You might think the thesis/idea behind the book is obvious (women athletes don't get a fair shake in a lot of ways) but the details were often things I didn't know or hadn't thought of.

You can tell this book is written by a poet, not because it's full of flowery language but because every single word counts. Often the meaning of a sentence wouldn't hit me until I was halfway through the next one and then I would go, “ooooooh.” Her writing is amazing, and I love fierce Jane and her fierce mom. I've read so many immigrant memoirs where there is a tortured relationship between the author and her mother, so this was especially refreshing because their bond is so strong.

One more side note–in a lot of memoirs the narrative jumps around in time and you end up reading about an event more than once. Unlike in many books where this happens, she acknowledges that she's introduced the event before and that she's adding more detail to it. This might be a small thing, but it makes the book feel like much more of a book rather than a collection of previously published essays.

Off to find some of her poetry!

I just felt like I have read this book so many times. Young black woman in publishing (or adjacent field) gets screwed over, trashes her life, finds some bit of redemption. I think it's an important story to be told and I'm glad these authors are getting published, but I need to take a break from this plot.

This is a 3.5 for me. I started out hating all the characters, and while I never grew to really like any of them, I at least appreciated being inside their minds a little more. This book is dark and just gets darker, leading up to a real downer of an ending, so be warned.

This was a chonker but it went pretty quickly. Lots of melodrama and interweaving plot lines. A fun read.

Really enjoyed this, despite the random time skips. It's pretty dispassionately written, sort of a catalog of events and some feelings, but I liked the characters and was invested in their lives.

This was so well written. I devoured it in a day. Every sentence, paragraph, chapter, and the whole book was well constructed and designed to keep you reading. It covers a lot of years, so there is less detail and specifics than you might want, but still a super enjoyable and interesting read.

I mean, just shoot me now. This book started off fairly light-hearted and entertainingly, but by the end it was a real doom-fest. Which is not to blame the book at all–she's just shedding light on the awfulness of our current economy and world.

I long ago banished magical realism from my reading life, but this book somehow snuck in. I chose to see it more as a giant metaphor than magical realism, which I think it really was. Great characters, very few stupid choices made just to move the plot along.

I needed an easy read after a long day (I put this in to make you laugh, Ed) and this fit the bill exactly. It was interesting and gripping enough to read in one sitting. I really liked the parallels between what was happening to the two sisters' bodies.

This was so much fun to read. I learned a lot, and was glad that someone has started making playlists for each chapter on Spotify, because I wanted to hear all the songs! I didn't always agree with Sanneh, especially his downplaying of some of the more offensive music and acts and words of musicians. I did love his enthusiasm for music, and I think it made me more enthusiastic about music I might not have listened to before reading this book

Don't expect this to be about college admissions, but do expect an honest book about raising difficult children and trying your best–and sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing.

This is probably 3.5 for me. I couldn't help feeling a little bamboozled as I read it–like, everything was carefully calibrated to appeal to my white liberal mind. Everything was a lesson in how to act around other races, other genders, other sexual identities, etc. The main character (?) had growth for sure, but it felt like lightning–one minute she was afraid and distraught, and the next she was saving the ship, with no insight really into how things changed. And then despite all the progressive ideology, the lowest-caste character died, and the second lowest-caste character almost died. Anyway, it was an entertaining story and I'm not sorry I read it.

This book definitely made me want to call my parents. :)

Eh, the table of contents could pretty much tell you all you need to know about this book if you've ever read any other self-help advice of any kind. I skimmed heavily and was still annoyed by the little “letters from readers” at the end of each chapter that made a nod to people whose experiences aren't like the authors'.

What an absolute delight and treat this book was! I love P&P and have read it tons of times, so I'm not easily won over by bad take-offs. But this was fantastic. I feel like I got to return to the beloved world of the original but also to see behind the curtain and understand a totally different version of some of the events.

This was kind of a soap opera. Everything that could go wrong did, but in the next minute a savior would appear. And then that solution would fall apart. Repeat once per chapter.

This was pretty formulaic, from the plot to the sentences. Passed the time on a 10-hour drive.