Mara

This is a fascinating and important story, but difficult to read. Not in terms of actual writing or length, just that the subject matter is brutal.

There were many parts of this book that had me considering tactics for playing Civilization. Some of the text gets a touch dry and it's a bit outdated (I would love to see someone write an update on the current day issues she discusses!) but there are some fascinating concepts about how prosperity and success ebb and flow in different places across time.

Engaging read on the early history of Europeans in New Mexico. Putting the frontier exploration in the context what was happening in Mexico and Spain how strongly it was influenced with all that had been happening with the Moors for decades.

Oh Ursula, forever the best.

This is an important book on a topic that most would rather ignore, it seems. Like it or not, things are not well in the architectural world. I do wish it hadn't used internet comments on blogs and articles as examples of backlash, even if those same sentiments are shared professionally it makes it easy to dismiss them as trolls.

First, the caveats: yes, this is a popular science book, written by a non-scientist for a non-scientist audience. There are plenty of conclusions that essentially boil down to emotions. It is, however, well researched, with many good sources.

Keith was a vegan for many years and there are parts that slip in to a familiar cadence of appeals to pity, only with a different point of view. This makes sense, as the book is at least partly aimed at vegans, vegetarians, and former vegan/vegetarians.

The basic takeaway of the book is that vegans do /not/ have a clear cut moral high ground, it's not as simple as “cute fuzzy animals are not food.” Not to be too simplistic, but humans are part of a larger system, we can't remove ourselves from that - all life requires death. The most compelling parts of the book are those that delve in to agricultural systems, the history of them, and how they operate today. It fits in nicely with Michael Pollan's work (Pollan is referenced on occasion, as well as Joel Salatin), with a slightly different angle, definitely more doom and gloom.

I finished the book still thinking about many topics. I wouldn't say it left me utterly changed, I knew a good amount of this already, but it brought up some difficult realities that most of us choose to ignore, and we're privileged enough to have that option for now. I recommend it, with the caveat that there are a handful of places where it made me roll my eyes.

I like Cheryl Strayed's writing and advice, but I just do not connect with the quote collection format of book. Removed from their context, most of the quotes read as cheesy, judgmental or snooty.

My rating may be higher than is reasonable for nostalgia reasons. This was quite solid in the continuum of Vampire Chronicles books. Definitely not a standalone, and full of all the usual Anne Rice camp - as delightful and ridiculous as that is.

There are passages in this book that are still very relatable and I understand why it's such a classic, but also chunks of it are pretty boring. All in all worth reading.

This is a great little offshoot story to One Hundred Years of Solitude, sometimes tribute to it and sometimes commentary on how specific works move people in unexpected ways. There is that feeling of magical realism, fully believable in a modern context.

I feel like I know a decent bit about Germany of this era - not that I have any real level of expertise, but I have studied it as just about much as any historic era and place, and there is a wealth of information and scholarship out there on the subject. This book approached Hitler's Germany from an angle I hadn't considered, and brought numerous events that in my mind had just come to be one after another into a broader context. It showed the gradual rise of the Nazi regime, the events that led to some of those “inevitable” points of interest which are most often listed. There were many more people shaping events than are usually mentioned, and a shocking amount of it comes down to casual interpersonal interactions rather than rigid formal government actions.

It's hard to compare to Devil in the White City, at least in my mind, but when thinking of Larson's work in general, this has not quite as compelling a narrative as that one does. It's thoroughly researched and the history is presented in an easily approached manner, I just never quite got as invested in the “story line” of the main characters.

The story is a little dated at this point, or rather it is “of an era” that is not quite like today but not all that far in the past yet. Some of the references and humor are a bit particular to that, but there is plenty about the premise that is still hilarious to make up for it.

I imagine a large part of why I found this book interesting was my connection to Santa Fe and their home particularly, being a current caretaker of the property. There were useful insights into its evolution and the work done on the house that will inform my work. I found Charlotte a little insufferable, at least on the page. The habit of complaining about something, then shortly thereafter complaining about the exact opposite, is a theme here - such as complaining that it's so dry and rain is needed very badly, then the next entry is whining that it's been raining all day. I just want to tell people in that habit that they don't get to have it both ways.

Weird book. It takes some time to really unfold, but much of the fun comes from that process.

Listened to this as an audiobook.

The structure of this book was a little strange, because of the journey aspect. It felt like there were lots of smaller peaks spread throughout the book, that could have almost been fully separate stories. They did in the end all build up to the climax at the end, but during the events they felt fairly self contained. This book did what the second in the series did, it ended basically in the middle of a scene. I'm glad I didn't read these as they were released, that would have driven me absolutely insane. Cliffhanger-ish chapters are maddening enough, but when going from one book to the next, I would like at last some sense of closure.

The mammoth sex was um, quite a thing.

Listened to this as an audiobook.

As with the second book, I was a bit worried that this wouldn't hold up, because it changes the setting fairly dramatically. I didn't give it too much thought though, I was too busy being infuriated by the ending of Valley of Horses, which stopped literally mid conversation, so mostly I just needed that gratification of finishing the thought. Sometimes, I kind of want to punch Jondalar in his giant dick.

Listened to this as an audiobook.

I was a little worried that with changing so much about the setting and characters of the story (from the first book) that it wouldn't hold up, but it expanded the story in a great way. For a while I was worried this was going to go the Sword of Truth series direction - the second book of that series should really just be titled [SPOILERS] Richard and Kahlan Don't Fuck. But all is well, Valley of Horses turned into cro magnon porn! I am not sure I can really endorse that aspect as great writing or plot or anything, but I have a soft spot for the hilarity that is sex scenes in novels. Especially when they are read aloud.

Listened to this as an audiobook.

Fantastic pseudo-anthropological story. Aside from the actual story line, the descriptions of prehistoric neanderthal life and activities are fascinating. I of course didn't take it as an actual scientific account, though it does seem quite well researched, but as an excellent example of world building.

This was...weird. I enjoyed a lot of the stories. Some are very familiar, some are vaguely familiar but a little altered, and some I don't know at all. Usually the unfamiliar ones are the more batshit ones, guess it's harder to make the truly nutty ones palatable to the masses. I feel like I would have gotten more out of this if I'd been reading it with an accompanying class or set of notes on the symbolism and meanings of the stories. There are a lot of repeated themes, to the point that I'd call them tropes, and some of those left me very confused. There are also many that read like morality tales, which isn't surprising because that's actually what a lot of storytelling is intended for, but that moral is lost on me. Sometimes I think I'm getting the moral, but it seems like such a ridiculous lesson that I must be misunderstanding. Either that or times truly have changed (which is quite probable, I'm sure my modern ethical code varies greatly from that of the Grimms' time). The material is presented very raw, which is interesting in light of having read later editions with their additional polish, but still, difficult to digest.

The main chunk of this story, where Ayla and Jondalar are at odds and no one is communicating, is maddening. It's like back in book 3, the long standoff between those two where they're both thinking things that would totally resolve themselves if they'd just talk to the other one, but they continue to not do so. Ugh. At least this book wrapped up the story and all.

At this point I was really just burning through these books to finish the series. They do take a bit of a downward turn after the first few, and the first book remains the most compelling. The whole thing with adding in Ayla's accent, in the audiobook version, is rather jarring.

What a mindfuck. I wouldn't bother sitting down and reading it in the traditional sense, but if you can find a group of people willing to take some abuse, read it aloud with them, it's great entertainment. There are a lot of really terrible 60s lessons to be learned.

Most of my stars are for Paul Newman himself, he was an interesting man who led a life worth telling the story of, which made for a decent book (I listened to this as an audiobook). The author did a good job covering the bases and leading the path through that life, but I found the writing style a bit smarmy from time to time. It had that feel of someone trying to shoehorn extra large words into their writing in order to appear more intelligent. This did not help the audiobook reader any, as he mispronounced many of the smarmy words. My favorite was when he did the standard English speaker thing of saying the title of the film Das Boot as one would say ‘boot' in English - always good for a chuckle from a German speaker.

Each of the books that make up this volume stands alone just fine, they read as complete works. The part that left me a little dissatisfied was that often the characters that carried over from a prior book, who may have been main characters that whole time, in the next were snuffed out in a few words. This is probably because the books were not written (or at least not published, but I would guess also written) in the order they're presented here, which is chronological to the story. So it was probably more that one book was written, then Butler took the thread of a side character and traced it back, writing a prequel about them. So reading them in this order, you've developed an attachment to a main character from book one, and that character appears a handful of times in book two and then gets a one sentence end to their story as an aside in the epilogue. It didn't ruin the stories or anything, but it made it a little strange to jump from one book to the next. I'm not sure if I would advise someone starting this book to read them in the order they were written instead of how they are presented here, or to do as I did, it may or may not make much difference.

The four books also have fairly different themes and pacing. You're following one basic thread of happening through a long period of time, but the kinds of characters imagined and the kinds of events in each are quite different from each other. It's a nice breadth, but when reading the whole thing in one go, it can be a little jarring.

This book led to about as many chuckles as one would expect from this duo - that is to say, plenty. While the story did end up coming to one neat end, there were parts that felt a little disjointed, probably because two people wrote it. All in all, I don't think that Pratchett+Gaiman > just Pratchett or just Gaiman, but it's a fun little book.