Three and a half to four stars. Read for the first time in 2007, and again in February 2021. Some things Robert Jordan writes too much of: What songs are called in different places where the characters travel People using made-up swear words unbearably earnestly How Aes Sedai can’t be trusted (they never lie, but…
Category: Reviews
The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality, by Chris Mooney
Four stars, read in April 2019. The world and the United States in particular are under the tyrannical rule of a group of people who have literally created their own reality based on a shared and intentionally-propagated delusion. They didn’t like where reality was taking us, so they founded institutions to grow their own experts…
Educated, by Tara Westover
Five stars, read in April 2019. There was a lot about this that was depressingly familiar to me. I grew up in the same religion as Tara, though her family believed in it much more literally than mine did. Relatedly, her childhood was more violent than mine was; my version of the story is mostly…
Moranifesto, by Caitlin Moran
Five stars, read in April 2018. It is possible that, as an American under the age of 40, I have been so deprived of sensible and ethical political discussion that what seems like earth-shattering brilliance to me is just common sense to the rest of you. But as I read this book, Caitlin Moran officially…
Notes of a Crocodile, by Qiu Miaojin
Two stars, read in December 2017 Bewildering, to be honest. Interpersonal relationships are difficult to package in words, especially when nothing much happens, it’s all just conversations and body language and internal struggles. But this seemed deliberately opaque and kept me on the outside, unable to get a connection with any of the characters. Words…
A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman
Two stars. Read in February 2019. I don’t like Ove very much—the character or the book. Rather, I don’t understand the near-universal insistence that this type of character is loveable. Because Ove is definitely a type, and while there’s no such thing as an unloveable person, that is an entirely separate issue from our indefatigable…
American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation, by Eric Rutkow
Four stars, started in spring 2018, finished in fall. To finish the backpacking challenge I did over the summer, I had to read a book from the United States. This was the only nonfiction book I read for the challenge, because it was the only one of the books I’d been about to get into…
Wrapping Up Summer Reading (Mini Reviews)
The Door, by Magda Szabó Three and a half stars, read in August 2018. The story of a strange, dysfunctional relationship between two strange women who are both uniquely intimate with and completely closed off to each other. I found it difficult at times, how deeply (and pretty frequently) they hurt each other, but the exploration…
The White Castle, by Orhan Pamuk
Two stars, read in September 2018. I planned on two stars throughout the book and then was tempted to do more based on the last few pages—two and a half stars if not three—but for now, I can’t bring myself to rate it any higher. It’s only 145 pages but took forever to read, because…
Nine Rabbits, by Virginia Zaharieva
Four stars, read in August/September 2018. Practically incomprehensible at times, but at others, perfectly describes situations and emotions I’ve never seen articulated elsewhere. My perception of the protagonist kept changing in surprising ways, and I ended up making a lot of unexpected connections with her. I dream that I’m traveling to a seminar in Varna…
A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism, by Slavenka Drakulić
Three and a half stars, read in August 2018. Though I don’t know what the author’s intent was for her readers, I wish I’d had more background knowledge of how communism and socialism were implemented throughout Central Europe before reading this book. The format—eight fables, each told by an animal from a different country—makes for…
Beware of Pity, by Stefan Zweig
Three and a half stars, read in July and August 2018. This is one of those books in which perfect strangers sit down to tell each other their—or other people’s—life stories. Like Mr. Lockwood in Wuthering Heights, the narrator we first meet turns out to be nothing more than the impetus for one such story, that…
Mendelssohn is on the Roof, by Jiří Weil
Four and a half stars, read in July 2018. I’m tired of World War II stories, because their popularity in our culture seems saccharine, nationalistic, almost fetishistic—an excuse to pat ourselves on the back and fawn over the “glory days” of the “Greatest Generation”—while generally managing to sideline the sickeningly-relevant lessons we should be learning from…
Accident: A Day’s News, by Christa Wolf
Four stars, read in July 2018. Second stop on my literary backpacking trip through Europe: East Germany in the 1980s, the day after the Chernobyl accident. I’ve been wanting to read Christa Wolf for a while now, more especially Cassandra and Medea, but—once again—my choice was made for me by the limited collection of my local libraries. (For…
The Storm, by Margriet de Moor
Four stars, read in July 2018. I picked up this book for my first stop on the Reader’s Room Backpacking Across Europe Summer Reading Challenge, as I flew into the Amsterdam airport. I don’t tend to read disaster stories, so I probably wouldn’t have chosen this book if Utah public libraries had a better selection…
Harmless Like You, by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
Four stars, read in May 2018. Good book, well-written, poignant, frustrating, a little heartbreaking, with a pretty satisfying conclusion. Emily Woo Zeller is an excellent narrator, but I didn’t care for P.J. Ochlan, who does irritating pseudo-falsetto for female characters’ voices. (Given that I already didn’t like Jay, the character he was narrating, I think…
Home, by Nnedi Okorafor
Three stars, read in June 2018. Good, but not as compelling as the first book was. I’d been thinking I might not read the third, but it turns out that this trilogy is more like one book split into three; since there was no conclusion here, I may end up finishing after all. Maybe. The world…
Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling, by Amy Chozick
Two stars, read in June 2018. Very mixed feelings. I’m giving it two stars for the interest factor, but writing this review made me angry enough at the book that I almost want to go down to one. Interesting though this inherently was, it became more and more frustrating as the book went on, and…
Storm Front, by Jim Butcher
First read summer 2010, read again summer 2018. Approximately four stars. Oh, Harry Dresden. I still really enjoyed this, but the way I read is so different now from eight years ago, when I first read it—fresh off the heels of N.K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, Becky Chambers, Garth Nix, Rat Queens, Saga, and all the other incredibly…
We Were Eight Years in Power, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Five stars, read in November 2017. This book covers the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency. For each year, there is an article Coates wrote for The Atlantic, preceded by an essay (“a sort of extended blog post,” I think is how he describes it) in which he looks back on his own work and assesses…
ME, by Tomoyuki Hoshino
Five stars, read in January 2018. I’ve had this post in my drafts for a few months now, because there was so much for me to work through. I did not expect the direction this book ended up taking, on more than one level. It was brilliant, disturbing, astonishingly incisive commentary on human nature and identity—and…
The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women, by Elisabeth Badinter
Three stars, read in September 2014. Now that I see how long ago I read this, I wonder if I might feel differently were I to read it again. I had left my church by then, but I don’t think I’d reached my current level of radicality—or realized that I actually don’t want to have…
Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee
Two and a half stars, read in March 2018. I found this book very stressful. Given how long and sprawling it is, following so many characters throughout four generations, it often seemed strange how long we lingered on specific, not particularly meaningful conversations before jumping through time and space to continue the story. It just…
Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear . . . and Why, by Sady Doyle
Five stars, read in January 2018. This book was like an electric jolt to me. I was genuinely frustrated every minute that I couldn’t be listening to it on Overdrive, and I wish it could’ve been twice as long. I don’t follow much pop culture, so although I’d heard of most of these stories in…
Boy, Snow, Bird, by Helen Oyeyemi
Five stars, read in February 2018. Nobody ever warned me about mirrors, so for many years I was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy. Despite one of the best first lines I’ve ever read, I’m certain I wouldn’t have finished this if I hadn’t read, and been so impressed by, What is Not…
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Americanah, read April 30 – May 1, 2014 I go back and forth between 4 and 5 stars, I think because the ending didn’t have as much of an impact as I was expecting. But then I remember how I basically devoured this book, loving every minute that I was reading, feeling completely absorbed and…
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
Four stars, read in January 2018. For most of the book I was going to give it five stars, but it seems to divide itself into two sections (before her suicide attempt and after), and I felt much more strongly about the first section. I loved it, I related closely to upsetting amounts of it, I…
Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America’s Gutsiest Troublemakers, by Nick Offerman
Four stars, read in January 2018. I am not quite juvenile enough to really hang out with Nick Offerman, and I think he would happily agree with me. But also, I would fucking love to hang out with Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally. And regardless of whether or not I could handle all the farting…
Princeless: Raven the Pirate Princess, Vol. 2: Free Women, by Jeremy Whitley
Three and a half stars, read in December 2016. Oh, man. Volume one was so incredible. I still can’t wait to read volume three, and I hope there will be more forever and ever. I don’t know why everyone had to be such a dick in this one, though. Why did Des-whatever her name is…
Thor, Vol. 2: Who Holds the Hammer?, by Jason Aaron
Two and maybe a half stars, read in 2016. I gave the first volume four stars, but this one is disappointing. She’s barely even in it, and it’s not even a full five issues like trades usually are. There are only three issues of actual current story, followed by one about Thor’s friends making her…
Meanwhile the World Goes On 