Reviews (295)

• 10% Happier

  ⭐ 5/5

  This book was far, far better than I expected. Actually, I’m not sure what I expected: the title, 10% Happier, suggested to me something akin to Gretchen Rubin’s somewhat inane Happiness Project, which I didn’t care for. Turns out, the original title for 10% Happier was “The Voice in My Head is an Asshole,” which is both far more amusing and a better description of the actual content of the book. Still, though, it doesn’t convey the fact that the book is really a memoir of Dan Harris’s life in broadcast news, of trying to replace the high of war correspondence with cocaine, and of attempting to be happier through meditation. The happier through meditation thing is tough for Harris, though, because he finds it easy to jump to conclusions about soft-spoken hippies named Spring who exhort everyone to love all living beings.
  
  I’ve already bought into meditation, hippies named Spring or no, but I haven’t really been able to incorporate it into my life as much as I’d like. I started practicing through yoga, and enjoyed the peace of mind I got at the end of every yoga class. Incorporating this into life, though, was hard. I was lucky enough to go to graduate school in department that had a number of people examining meditation from a cognitive neuroscience point of view, so I also didn’t need to be convinced of the science. That didn’t mean I had started a serious meditation practice, but at the very least it had wormed its way onto the long list of things I knew I should be doing.
  
  Harris’s description of the sheer difficulty involved in meditation is spot on. When left to its own devices, my brain seems to bounce between random thoughts (I wonder what the demographics of Antananarivo are like), productive-sounding distraction (it would be a wonderful idea to learn all of the most important viticultural areas in Germany right now, let’s do that, maybe Austria too!!!) and unfounded worry (I can’t believe I still haven’t responded to that email, I’m a terrible person and I’m going to ruin my career and my life, and I won’t even be able to afford to live in the Bay Area anymore so I’m going to have to move to somewhere terrible like Kentucky or New Mexico or at the very least Southern California and I’ll never have a job again and probably In-n-Out wouldn’t even take me as a line cook because they’re all religious and stuff).
  
  I recommend this book for anyone who’s interested in self-improvement, but who doesn’t want to hear woo-woo crap about cosmic synchronicity. Although I listened to the well-produced audiobook, I’m planning on buying myself a physical copy to use as reference!

• 1984

  ⭐ 4/5

  Half a century after it was written, and more than twenty years after the events were supposed to take place, George Orwell’s 1984 remains a gripping look at the world that still might be. It’s hard to see this dystopia as pure speculation, especially when news stations today act as propaganda, and citizens are under constant surveillance. While slogans such as “War is Peace” seem perfectly oxymoronic, we can easily see connections with current events.
  
  I would encourage everyone to read this novel with a critical eye to our own society. We are the only people who can stop a dystopia from coming to fruition.

• A Canticle for Leibowitz (St. Leibowitz, #1)

  ⭐ 5/5

  Freaking awesome!
  
  This is the kind of book I imagined I would be getting when I read [b:Foundation|29579|Foundation (Foundation, #1)|Isaac Asimov|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320416085s/29579.jpg|1783981]. I had heard a ton of great things about Foundation, and expected a thought-provoking book about a fallen civilization. Unfortunately, Foundation was poorly written, with wooden dialogue and a contrived plot.
  
  Canticle, on the other hand, is well written, and subtle. It doesn’t offer easy answers, and instead brings up difficult questions about accessibility of knowledge and the cyclical nature of history. Definitely worth a read, particularly for anyone with an interest in Catholicism.

• A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

  ⭐ 5/5

  A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a difficult book. By difficult I don’t mean it’s Joycean, although it is non-linear and fairly experimental; rather, it’s hard to read because the characters have to deal with a relentless barrage of suffering. The things that make it a darkly enchanting book to read are also those that make it difficult to review. It jumps back and forth in time, meaning that some pieces of the story don’t get resolved until much later. It centers around a group of characters, all of which the reader comes to know well, but none of which can be called a protagonist. Mostly, though, it’s a slice of life, and a sad one: this slice is a burnt piece of toast with no butter to spread on it, shared by too many people who have been hungry for too long.
  
  I don’t know why, but I can only speak in metaphors today, so here’s one more. To me, the book felt like a figure skater’s spin. It starts slowly, with a wind up that’s full of the anticipation of motion, then slowly begins to be build speed. Once the skater starts to pull her arms in, the spin goes faster and faster. It sometimes appears to stop, but a position change adds more energy. Faster and faster, pulling more and more, until it ends with a brief flourish. It’s a common misconception that skaters don’t get dizzy when they spin, but they do. They can’t spot, like ballerina dancers: on a low-friction surface, they simply go too fast to do anything other than give into the spin. They get dizzy, but they just get used to it.
  
  Am I selling the book well? I hope so. It’s worth reading, both for the beautiful writing, and also because getting dizzy provides a wonderful reminder of how good it feels to be still.

• A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5)

  ⭐ 3/5

  (I’ll hide any spoilers for A Dance With Dragons behind spoiler tags, but I’ll be spoiling the previous four books with impunity. You’ve been warned.)
  
  Reading A Dance With Dragons made me feel a little bad for George R.R. Martin. Not that bad, mind you: he’s a best selling author whose epic fantasy series is so ground-breaking that it’s constantly compared to Lord of the Rings. Still, I’m someone who writes somewhat compulsively (I was about to say “for fun” but then I realized that it’s not particularly fun, I just can’t stop myself from doing it), and one thing was clear to me when I trudged through the first half of A Dance With Dragons: it must have been a bitch to write.
  
  Note that I don’t mean that in the way that most things are a bitch to write, but in that soul-crushing, maddening way where nothing seems to be cooperating, and the page taunts you, and the process is complete anguish. It doesn’t really satisfy the reader, and I think that’s because it wasn’t that satisfying for Martin himself. I could be wrong, but given the storied history of this particular volume I’m guessing I’m right in saying that Martin is as frustrated with the last two books as we are.
  
  A Dance With Dragons is set in parallel with A Feast for Crows. Ish. When we left our friends and frenemies in Westeros at the end of the last book, not much had happened, but we were satisfied in knowing that the next book would finally shed light on what was happening with the best characters in the series. Tyrion! Jon Snow! Daenerys! All killer, no filler! How could a book that focused on the most interesting characters doing some really badass things possibly go wrong?
  
  Answer: by making us forget why these characters were interesting and badass in the first place. Do you want to see how awesome it is when Tyrion and Daenerys get together and plot to overthrow King Tommen? Tough, because you’re going to have to endure Tyrion on a boat and Daenerys ruling Meereen. With lots of trivial details, even though we really could not care less. Do you want to know how Lord Snow will deal with this whole game of thrones shit while he’s the commander of the wall? Also tough, because he doesn’t do much either.
  
  On the plus side, the book starts picking up about halfway through. On the downside, we see the return of Asha and Victarion, whose chapters leave this reader with a lot of head scratching and “who are they talking about again?” moments. Reading this, I felt like I couldn’t catch a break. And I started really noticing how overblown the whole thing is. There used to be just two major belief systems, the old gods and The Seven. Now we also have The Lord of Light, The Many Faced God, The Drowned God, and whatever they believe across the narrow sea. I can barely even keep track of how many people have claimed the throne of Westeros. The whole thing is starting to become exhausting.
  
  There were some positives: Bran got interesting. We saw the resolution of Arya’s storyline, which got super badass but still felt done too quickly. And there were the shocking moments: (major spoilers here!!) Quentyn getting scorched by dragons, Jon Snow possibly dying (I don’t buy it, and my money’s on him banging Dany and becoming king), Brienne returning to betray Jamie (tear), and Cersei being paraded naked though the streets of Kings Landing, shaved, with everyone talking about her saggy tits and stretch marks. And dude, she deserved it.
  
  Still, the whole book felt like a lot of waiting.
  
  Seven years ago, my dad and I flew to London on my best international flight ever (Virgin Atlantic, Business Class, not paid for by us). The first part of the flight was awesome: champagne, hot towels, and the knowledge that we we’re headed to a particularly incredible city. The end was also awesome: more free drinks, and views of London, and the feeling of being in said incredible city. But the middle part was a lot of waiting. Sure, yes, there were free drinks throughout, and I managed to watch some movies, but there was a lot of anticipation knowing that something was about to happen, in quite a few more hours, but we still had a lot of time to go. Reading A Song of Ice and Fire recently feels a lot like that, and I hope the ending actually feels like touching down in London, instead of Houston or Miami or Los Angeles or any number of cities that I’d prefer not to visit. Only time will tell.

• A Disorder Peculiar to the Country

  ⭐ 3/5

  I am surprised to read all the negative reviews of this book, and therefore feel that I should offer my opinion. When I picked up this book, I thought it would be much more comedic, and I was happy to find that it really had something to say. As others have said, the protagonists aren’t likable. They are selfish and manipulative, and their relationship only gets more hilariously depressing throughout the course of the novel. 9/11 plays an interesting stylistic role in the novel: the two protagonists take this world event, and center it around themselves.
  
  I found this book to offer an interesting, although bleak, point of view on marriage in American culture, and would recommend it to anyone who isn’t afraid of poking fun at the ridiculous things we do in the name of personal gain.

• A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4)

  ⭐ 3/5

  3.5 stars, and I’m rounding down because I find the Ironborn so ridiculously boring that I started groaning every time I read the name Greyjoy. I mean, really, do all of these characters really need their own POV chapters? I’d rather find out about whatever it is they’re doing by means of straight exposition.
  
  (Seriously, if you haven’t read the first three, stop now. Spoilers, I can’t help it, because if I talk about people you will know they’re not dead as of the beginning of book 4, and that’s something you don’t want to know),
  
  There’s some good stuff in here though: I always enjoy chapters from Sansa’s point of view, and the Sansa/Brienne of Tarth plot is pretty interesting. Jon Snow isn’t really around, but we do get some cool stuff about Samwell, and Arya has gotten a lot more engaging now that she’s not mumbling about every single person she’s going to kill eventually. Shit’s going down in Dorne and it seems pretty cool, but since it’s cool it’s confined to only a few chapters (seriously, GRRM, why? Who cares about Krakens and kingsmoots when the people in Dorne are plotting to overthrow the King and install Myrcella as queen??). Braavos seems like a cool place, too: it kind of reminds me of San Francisco.
  
  The problem with the book is that it’s almost a thousand pages long and not that much happens. It’s somewhat maddening because the stage is clearly being set for something, we just never really get to it. It’s a little bit like watching a making-of featurette for an upcoming movie that you really, really want to see. And it’s cool to see all the characters and hear them talk about stuff, but it’s not particularly satisfying. I mean, the featurette mostly just reminds you that what you really want to see is the actual movie. In real life, you can skip the making of and just watch the damn thing, but A Feast for Crows isn’t exactly skippable. However, I’m still glad I slogged through the book. Now, bring on the dragons.

• A Garden of Marvels: How We Discovered that Flowers Have Sex, Leaves Eat Air, and Other Secrets of Plants

  ⭐ 4/5

  Ruth Kassinger’s lovely book about the plants in our lives starts with a murder: she describes, in heartbreaking detail, the death of a kumquat tree that she had lovingly cared for. From the beginning, I knew I had found a kindred spirit in Kassinger. I love plants: one of my favorite activities is photographing flowers at the botanic gardens, and I dream about someday having a garden full of food that I can take from the ground to my dinner table. Unfortunately, I’m most adept at killing plants, partly because I’m absent-minded, partly because I just have no idea what I’m doing. Actually, if you will excuse me for a moment, I have to tend to my aloe, it’s not doing so well.
  
  A Garden of Marvels is a meandering book that’s one part science history, one part memoir, one part [a:Mary Roach|7956|Mary Roach|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1363641585p2/7956.jpg]esque contemporary science writing. The structure is part of its charm, although I did find that it was best read in small doses. In the end, I found myself deeply invested in the fate of Kassinger’s hybrid citrus tree.
  
  This was a perfect read for spring, and I recommend it to anyone interested in plants!

• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

  ⭐ 2/5

  Please understand that, in this context, “heartbreaking” means “self-consciously maudlin” and “staggering genius” means “derivative drivel.” It really is work, though.
  
  Have you forgotten why you don’t spend time around twenty-two year olds? Do you want to relive your youthful naivety by reading prose that is probably supposed to be self-consciously ironic but comes across as a little too earnest (“All we really want is for no one to have a boring life, to be impressive, so we can be impressed”)? Do you enjoy associating with people who claim they grew up poor because they weren’t the richest kids in their very wealthy suburb, who feel comfortable expressing highly racist opinions because they agree with the importance for appearing to care about diversity, at least on a conceptual level? Do you believe that dealing with a real tragedy somehow gives people free rein to be complete douchebags? Well, then, this is the book for you!
  
  I get that the nostalgic elements of this book have something to do with zines and the Real World, but there’s an incommensurability about Gen-X angst that I can’t work through, that makes me want to run into Winona Ryder somewhere (The Gap, probably?) and tell her that I sat through all of Reality Bites twice and I still have no idea what she was talking about. Perhaps there has simply been a paradigm shift, in which case I’m glad, although I have the lingering suspicious that my generation is similarly obnoxious in a novel way, in which case mea culpa.

• A History of the World in 6 Glasses

  ⭐ 3/5

  This book should really be called “A History of the Western World in 6 Glasses,” as it doesn’t consider the drinks of South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, and much of Asia. Indeed, tea is considered only through the lens of the British empire, even though the formal Japanese tea service is arguably more interesting than a British tea party. Even as a Western history, it kind of fails, as there’s a large gap between wine production in the Roman empire and the distillation of rum in Barbados. This can only be viewed as a surface history of the world, but as far as surface stories go, it’s pretty interesting.
  
  Throughout the book, Standage tells the history of six beverages (beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola) as they appeared in the historical record. This is actually not so great, as the book ends up talking about beer without ever mentioning Germany, and wine without ever mentioning France or California. Instead of bringing it all back together in the epilogue, he just rambles on about bottled water and (randomly) colonizing Mars.
  
  The book also contains a shockingly uncritical depiction of the Coca-Cola company, which creatives a “beverage” that can best be described as a noxious substance that no one should be consuming, especially not on a regular basis. Unfortunately, the health effects of soda are not discussed.
  
  I’d recommend A History of the World in 6 Glasses only to those interested in culinary history and esoterica. History buffs and general readers should skip this one.

• A Man Without a Country

  ⭐ 5/5

  I short book that can be read it a sitting, A Man Without a Country is a touch irreverent, a bit indulgent, and as funny as we’ve come to expect from the writer of Cat’s Cradle and Breakfast of Champions. In his last book, Vonnegut shares a collection of experiences that is sure to give readers insight into the life of the man who was one of the great writers of the 20th century.

• A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3)

  ⭐ 5/5

  Absolutely the best of the series so far! A fun read, and one that had me shocked and surprised from the beginning.

• A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

  ⭐ 4/5

  Having recently conquered Infinite Jest, I’m finding it elucidating to read David Foster Wallace’s nonfiction, which I believe benefits from being relatively more explicit, and also from having fewer Quebecois separatist assassins in wheelchairs. I’m keeping this running commentary to review the entire book, starting with the outside. The cover is super nineties in that incredibly busy way that only nineties graphic designers loved. They pretty much started out with a excreta-inspired monochromatic palette, then added text the same way a teenage girl would: by cutting it out and laying it around in a mostly haphazard fashion. The result reminds me of the cover of the Barenaked Ladies album “Stunt” and is something of which Jony Ive would likely not approve.
  
  On DFW on Youth Tennis: A nice introduction to DFW’s style (if you have not yet been introduced to his style), and also his history with tennis. I mostly find tennis to be boring, although it seems that it would be fun to actually play, plus the outfits are cute. As a kid, I was a competitive figure skater, so I resonated with being obsessed with something only to kind of peak early, but to ultimately be okay with it because intellectual pursuits are far more stimulating. Also, there’s a fair bit of math talk in this section, which is exciting, especially compared with the dull tennis stuff.
  
  On DFW on Television: It’s always interesting to read an essay about “today’s culture” written over twenty years ago. Apparently, in 1990’s, the “cool” thing to do was to bad-mouth the mostly inane television shows while still watching 6 (6!!!) freaking hours of television per day. Obviously, the television landscape has changed, as I don’t know anyone who even still has cable (at least, not anyone in their twenties. People’s parents still have cable, and also probably people who live in the suburbs, which makes sense because when the options are to stay in and watch Kim Kardashian presents the Las Vegas edition of America’s Next Top Slut, or to go out and have a nice meal at the Olive Garden, well, actually the only solution is to gouge out one’s eyes and curse oneself for one’s irrational desire to live in a single family home with over 1000 square feet on a cul-de-sac. Culs-de-sac are overrated, people).
  
  Which is to say that talking about television as if it’s somehow a universally important influence in American culture feels very, very dated. Interestingly, DFW pokes fun at the idea that literature shouldn’t date itself, because things that seem frivolously new now become ingrained in the culture in future generations. I guess what he assumed was that the graph of the importance of television would begin as an exponential function and then asymptote somewhere between the points on the y-axis that denote “quite important” and “extremely important.” Really, though, it’s a negative parabolic function that has already peaked and is now rapidly returning to the point on the y-axis that denotes “not so important,” kind of like atomic bomb terror and those pet rock things.
  
  There are also some amusingly dated statements about what it will be like when we have digital, networked computers. DFW did not anticipate that we would all be spending our time watching and creating amateur videos starring our cats, for which I can’t begrudge him. DFW says some smart, thought-provoking stuff about “cool” irony and the danger of so much TV, so I’m not dinging any points because he wasn’t particularly prescient. Anyway, this section reads like a time capsule.
  
  On DFW on the Illinois State Fair: I live in Illinois, but it’s really better to say that I live in Chicago. I don’t really know anything about the rest of the state beyond a few of the northern suburbs and this one southern suburb where I saw Radiohead once. Actually, I only recognize the names of towns like Decatur from the Sufjan Stevens album. I’m sure lifelong Illinoisians (that’s not a word….hmm…Illini? I think that’s a football team. Wikipedia tells me Illinoisans, so I’m going with that). Anyway, I’m sure lifelong Illinoisans are not particularly happy that my vote counts just as much as theirs.
  
  The Illinois State Fair sounds approximately as expected: the overweight masses in t-shirts with inane sayings (think “I used to be schizophrenic but we’re okay now,” which was on constant rotation at Spencer’s Gifts and which betrays a complete lack of understanding of the nature of mental illness in general, and schizophrenia in particular) take time off from their busy Kmart shopping schedules to watch car races while eating 100% soybean-fried corn dogs. The purpose of this article is probably to give city dwellers such as myself some colorful anecdotes to recount over some micro greens and lobster foam, so that we can feel superior (for the same reason, we’ll also complain that foam has become a fallback dish for lazy chefs, and we’d rather see it off the menu, hopefully replaced by some house-cured charcuterie). I can only assume that this article is what Fox News anchors are talking about when they talk about elitism.
  
  On DFW on Literary Criticism: As an undergraduate English major I was always partial to New Criticism, because I could close-read the text without bringing in materials beyond the text. This freed up a fair amount of time for beer pong. My problem with post-structuralists is that you can never win an argument against them, because they can always argue back that the concept of winning is really just an arbitrary social construct. Anyway, if you’ve ever spent a balmy August day trying to figure out how to apply Foucault’s idea of a historico-critical ontology of the self to The Rape of the Lock, then you’ll likely find this short section amusing.
  
  On DFW on David Lynch: As a first-year undergraduate, I took a survey course on film in which we screened Eraserhead. I had no idea what to expect, but I certainly did not expect what I got, which was honestly a little terrifying. While I biked back to my dorm room, all I could think about was that creepy baby. Lynch freaks me out a little less now, but only because his films are generally brilliant even if they have creepy babies in them. You know, except for the ones that suck, but I haven’t seen those (except Dune, which I’m going to forget happened).
  
  DFW seems to really like Lynch, whereas I just generally like him but still blame him for terrifying me with that baby. There’s a lot of stuff in this section to auteurs and hollywood and filmmaking, which is interesting if you’re into that kind of thing. He also manages to badmouth Patricia Arquette and Balthazar Getty, which I found amusing. I’m not sure if I like Lynch more or less after reading this section, but I definitely have the itch to watch Lost Highway.
  
  On DFW on Tennis (again): I can’t comment on this essay because, after Infinite Jest and the first essay on tennis, I’ve definitely reached my quota on how much I can think about tennis this year. This essay is fine.
  
  On DFW on Cruises: A couple of years ago, I went on a cruise to the Bahamas with two of my friends after we finished our masters degrees. The cruise ship looked like this:
  
  
  
  We ended up having a fun time, but here are three reasons why I would never, ever step foot on a cruise ship ever again.
  
  1) The food. Which was pretty bad. I guess if you were one of those aforementioned suburbanites who occasionally dines at The Olive Garden, the “asian inspired” tuna tartare wouldn’t seem quite so boring and obvious. However, if you’re consulting the Michelin Guide to plan your dinners, you’re going to think the food is pretty freaking mediocre (although you would have kind of figured that out beforehand, like I did, because they use the word “gourmet” constantly on their promotional materials, which usually means anything but).
  
  2) The nightlife. I was imagining an all night party. To some extent, there was an all night party, except the party goers were pustule-ridden teenagers and their corpulent middle-aged parents (alright, I’m being an asshole and leaving out some information, so I’ll just be honest and say that some of the teenagers were corpulent too). Next time I want an all night party, I’m just going to Vegas, where the people are pretty and the restaurants are pretty decent (if you can sift through the subpar celebrity chef endorsed crap).
  
  3) Cruising as a “culture-lite” experience. To me, the whole point of traveling is experiencing a culture that’s different than your own, so I find it infuriating that one could go to a foreign country and never actually meet a foreigner. Thinking about the best experiences of my travels, I go back to the young Parisian girl who offered everyone cigarettes (which she rolled and consumed right at the bar), the sharply dressed Japanese business woman who spoke no English but was able to help me order lunch from a vending machine, and the Costa Rican driver who told me in Spanish that tomatoes are a lot like butterflies: they start off looking the same and transform into many different varieties (at least, that’s what I think he said, if my rusty Spanish it to be trusted). Sadly, I can’t tell you a thing about the Bahamas or the Bahamian people, except that they seem to sell a lot of alcoholic beverages served in coconuts.
  
  Either I’m more of a snob than DFW or I’m doing it wrong, because he describes his cruising experience as upscale. I lean towards the latter, because no island native offered me any weed (however, this may be explained by the fact that my cruise did not take me near Jamaica). Anyway, DFW captures a lot of the “bovineness” of the tourists and the ridiculousness of the forced pleasurable activities and comments on the absurdity in a way that only he could. This essay is the best of the bunch.
  
  I’m being longwinded, so I’ll wrap this up by saying I quite liked the collection of essays. I liked it more than I liked Infinite Jest.

• A Swiftly Tilting Planet (Time, #3)

  ⭐ 4/5

  As a third grader, I picked up this fabulous series and read it from start to finish, then read it again and again. While my feelings towards all the books changed as I got older and began to understand them on a deeper level, I believe that this book evolved the most over time. While Meg sits in her childhood bedroom, she follows Charles Wallace on an epic journey through time on a night-long quest to save the world.
  
  This book is deeply layered, and was able to stand up to guilty pleasure late night re-reads even after I reached adulthood. I would recommend it to anyone who loves fantasy, especially if you’ve read any of the rest of the series.

• A Tale of Two Cities

  ⭐ 4/5

  Off with your head
  Dance ‘til you’re dead
  Heads will roll
  Heads will roll
  Heads will roll
  On the floor
  
  Here’s what I knew about A Tale of Two Cities before I read it:
  
  -It starts with “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
  -Charles Dickens wrote it
  -The two cities are Paris and London
  -It involves something about the French Revolution
  
  A Tale of Two Cities is a weird book; I’m taken to understand that it’s kind of a departure from the type of stuff Dickens typically wrote. I liked it, but I’m not exactly sure how much I liked it. It’s about the reign of terror, so you probably won’t be surprised to hear that it’s not particularly uplifting. There’s a lot of ominous knitting, though, so that’s cool.
  
  I’m not sure what to think about the ending. It felt a little too…convenient I guess. I don’t really get Carton’s motivation for sacrificing himself for Darnay. Actually, I don’t much get anyone’s motivations for anything, and I think that’s what prevents me from thinking this book is truly brilliant.

• A Thousand Splendid Suns

  ⭐ 5/5

  Towards the end of Hosseini’s first book, The Kite Runner, Amir is driven through Kabul after spending many years in California. In a particularly poignant scene, Amir expresses shock at how Kabul has changed. In reply, the driver “pointed to an old man dressed in ragged clothes trudging down a dirt path, a large burlap pack filled with scrub grass tied to his back. ‘That’s the real Afghanistan, Agha sahib. That’s the Afghanistan I know. You? You’ve always been a tourist here, you just didn’t know it.’” After reading The Kite Runner, I wanted to know more about the Afghanistan that was left behind, and the people who stayed.
  
  A Thousand Splendid Suns tells that story, through the eyes of two women in Afghanistan. These are average women: not particularly rich, nor particularly poor. As women, they’re stuck: forced to stand by as they lose their rights, their agency, their opportunities. It’s a heartbreaking look at what life would be like if I had simply been born in another place.
  
  I recommend this one, not because it’s a fun book, but because it’s devastating. Hosseini doesn’t make a difficult life hopeless, though. I’m reminded of the line from The Great Gatsby, “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
  ”Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” As I look around my (relatively palatial) one bedroom apartment, and think about my education, and my independence, and the fact that I’ve never been hungry, I feel truly grateful for my advantages. I hope that, someday, women in Afghanistan will be able to feel the same.

• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

  ⭐ 5/5

  This was one of my grandmother’s favorite books. My mother got around to reading it a few years ago, and loved it; she has been encouraging me to read it ever since.

• A Visit from the Goon Squad

  ⭐ 2/5

  Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote “I hold that a wise man will write nothing but that which is known only to himself and that he will not produce his truth until it is imperatively demanded by the exigencies of the conversation which has arrived at that point. So is the shrine and pedestal ready, so he produces his statue and fills the eye.”
  
  With her “book” A Visit From the Goon Squad (in reality, a disjointed collection of short stories), Egan does exactly the opposite: she figures out what is is imperatively demanded by the exigencies of society, then fakes relevancy. The result: a shallow book “about” music and life and technology, that isn’t actually about anything.
  
  Throughout the “book,” Egan throws out references. She references San Francisco punk rock bands, and Facebook, and drug culture, and academia. It becomes clear to the reader, however, that she cares very little about music. Indeed, one detects palpable schadenfreude in Egan’s writing, because it’s clear that she wants these cool musicians to get what’s coming to them.
  
  Thinking about it, the issue with A Visit form the Goon Squad is “coolness.” Egan desperately wants to be cool. She talks about foreign locations and drugs and music because it’s “cool.” She creates “cool” characters. She even does a chapter in PowerPoint. Egan isn’t in the music business, and she has said “any expertise I might seem to possess is purely the product of research.” (AudioGo Interview) Clearly, she didn’t do her research well enough: everyone knows that trying hard to be cool makes you completely uncool. Although, I guess she fooled the Pulitzer committee.

• A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

  ⭐ 3/5

  3.5 Stars.
  
  I grew up in a small mountain town, which probably explains why I’ve been running away from wilderness for much of my adult life. I sometimes dreamed that I had to walk 5,000 feet down, on a stretch of highway, in order to get to civilization. These were literal dreams (actually, literal nightmares). I enjoy short walks in the woods, but I find being stuck in them to be fairly suffocating.
  
  After reading this, as well as [b:Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail|12262741|Wild From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail|Cheryl Strayed|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1354159655s/12262741.jpg|17237712], I think I understand why people would hike for hundreds of miles through mountainous terrain with a pack on their back and only noodles for food. The toughness seems like a great way to become mindful of existence, to enjoy the feeling of being. They do it for the same reason that I contort myself into yoga poses on a regular basis: to get themselves out of their head, to enjoy life. And I get it.
  
  But I’m sure as hell not going to do it.

• A Walk to Remember

  ⭐ 2/5

  A Walk to Remember details the story of Jamie Sullivan, a preacher’s daughter who seems to know everything, and Landon Carter, the boy who would never be tempted by Jamie in real life. The plot is predictable enough, even if you haven’t seen the movie. I won’t spoil the ending here, but it leaves quite a lot to be desired.
  
  I wanted to like this book, since so many people I knew enjoyed it, but I ended up hating it. The material was far too idyllic in some parts, and overly sanguine in others. I could see how Nicholas Sparks fans could like it, but it didn’t have enough heart or plot to keep me interested.

• A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy

  ⭐ 4/5

  Wow. Tia’s story had me tearing up at the brutality of biblical patriarchy, and inspired by her strength. This is a timely cautionary tale of the theocracy that our elected officials are currently putting into place. It’s not the pastoral idyll the trad wife influencers are selling. Patriarchy, by definition, does not serve women.
  
  I’m sure a ton of people will balk and say what Tia experienced wasn’t “true” Christianity, and that “real” Christians don’t believe in the brutality she suffered. I’m happy not to be a Christian, which means I don’t have to adjudicate or make any apologies for any of that particular mythology’s various sects. A life free from religion is pretty great. I hope it remains legal.

• A Wind in the Door (Time, #2)

  ⭐ 4/5

  Fantastic creatures, exciting adventures and biological science combine to make A Wind in the Door a great read, even after childhood. While not as good as the fantastic “A Wrinkle in Time,” this book kept me on the edge of my seat as a child, and still held up when I read it later as an adult.

• A Wrinkle in Time (Time, #1)

  ⭐ 5/5

  When I picked this book up in third grade, I wasn’t quite sure about it. It was a fantasy book, after all, and at that point in time I was much more interested in the baby-sitter’s club. But this book pulled me in, and even though it was a bit of an ambitious read for an eight year old, I finished it rather quickly.
  
  I’ve re-read this book quite often, even as an adult, and it impresses me every time. This book really piqued my interest in science as a child, but it goes far deeper than that. Although I’m not religious like L’Engle, the idea that love for family members and friends should be completely unconditional, and that it transcends all evil, is a value no one could argue with.

• Abundance

  ⭐ 4/5

  My weird obsession with Marie Antoinette started (as all weird obsessions do) in college. I can’t place it perfectly, but I’m pretty sure it was sometime after the Belle and Sebastian days and somewhat before I started watching French New Wave films. However, I’m definitely sure it was well before I read metaphysical poetry almost exclusively. Whenever it was, I got really into Marie Antoinette: I read biographies, watched the film over and over again, and even had an ill-fated desire to decorate my apartment like Versailles (note: this doesn’t work so well when you’ve got an entry-level job. Trust me.).
  
  Anyway, I bought this during the Marie Antoinette phase and just never got around to reading it, which is too bad because it ended up being a well-written and well-researced work of historical fiction that I wish I would have read sooner. Yeah, you know how it ends (and, if you’re anything like me, you know the whole plot), but Sena Jeter Naslund does a good job of making you not care. The novel is narrated in the first person perspective, and a few times Toinette herself makes unknowing comments that allude to her eventual demise (note: this is what is meant by the word irony, or dramatic irony if you want to get pedantic. Just wanted to clarify, in case you still thought that irony means pretending you don’t like *Nsync. Because you know you do.).
  
  The only somewhat awkward thing about this novel is that it has a few too many parallels with the Sofia Coppola film. They both came out at about the same time, so it’s hard for me to call shenanigans, but I’m still going to call it. But really, who cares. This was pure fun (except for the decapitation bit), and I would recommend it if you’re into this sort of thing.

• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

  ⭐ 5/5

  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass is a completely amazing, as much as it is ridiculously nonsensical. One of the things missing from the current generation is a sense of imagination: even kids movies involving fish or cars that can talk seem a bit dull and remarkably adult. The same is not true for Alice. Lewis Carroll weaves fabulously wordplay into a hugely imaginative plot that you will have to read to understand.

• All Fours

  ⭐ 2/5

  This book is insufferable.
  
  All Fours is competently written but lacks substance. Its entire schtick is that it’s edgy. I probably would have pretended to like it when I was 25 and trying too hard.
  
  Sometimes conventional and ordinary people cultivate friendships with quirky, artsy people to make themselves feel interesting. All Fours is the book version of that, an ogling caricature of a manic-pixie dream friend that exists to be viewed (and lightly judged) from the perspective of someone who is deeply boring.
  
  All Fours is ultimately a book about a privileged middle-aged white woman who says outrageous things and who sees working class people as less-than (when she deigns to see them at all). If I wanted that kind of story, I’d be better served by watching Real Housewives on Bravo. At least those shows are edited to be entertaining.

• All the Colors of the Dark

  ⭐ 3/5

  I shouldn’t have believed the hype.
  
  A good mystery will keep me turning the pages late into the night, but this wasn’t a good mystery. I’m willing to overlook pacing issues when the writing is excellent, but this was a bunch of purple prose. Multifaceted characters will cover up a multitude of sins, but these characters were roughly-cut gemstones with little color and poor clarity.
  
  The worst thing about All the Colors of the Dark: all the action takes place off-page! The author will spend page after page (or should I say chapter after chapter, since the chapters were obnoxiously short) writing descriptions full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Exit, pursued by a bear. Then, in the next chapter, the main character is in the middle of serving a prison sentence for committing bear-related crimes.
  
  Whitaker writes as if it’s clever to leave out plot-critical scenes and force the reader to say “hey, did I miss something?” There will be no further explanation. There is only exasperation.
  
  Realistically, this should garner a two-star rating, but I can see glimmers of brilliance here and there. Still, I can’t recommend this book—unless you’re interested in mentally polishing a raw mess into a diamond.

• All the Light We Cannot See

  ⭐ 3/5

  I’ve read quite a few literary historical novels that use non-linear converging storylines to explore big themes; All the Light We Cannot See is one such novel. It’s good, too. The descriptions may tend towards the flowery, but the writing never gets overly precious. The characters are well drawn and the pacing is quite excellent. There are even a few moments of profundity. Exhibit A:
  
  “To men like that, time was a surfeit, a barrel they watched slowly drain. When really, he thinks, it’s a glowing puddle you carry in your hands; you should spend all your energy protecting it. Fighting for it. Working so hard not to spill one single drop.”
  
  Anyway, All the Light We Cannot See strikes me as a particularly well-crafted novel, and that’s definitely a good thing. So you might be surprised to hear that I feel just a soupçon let down by this book. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with it: like I said, it’s extraordinarily well-written. However, as I look a bit deeper I’m not sure that there’s anything particularly right about it either. This felt so much like an exercise in writing within a particular structure, which made the characters come across as if they existed to fit the structure. They walk around in it, they speak, they act, but I can’t help but feel that everything is very convenient. The threads exist to weave themselves together. Doerr writes himself a perfect little nail, so that he can use exactly the hammer that he prefers.
  
  My problem with this is that life doesn’t usually get wrapped up into neat little presents with lovely little bows, especially during wartime. I can’t help but compare this to both [b:The Orphan Master’s Son|11529868|The Orphan Master’s Son|Adam Johnson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327878601s/11529868.jpg|16467838] and [b:A Constellation of Vital Phenomena|18428067|A Constellation of Vital Phenomena|Anthony Marra|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1408313066s/18428067.jpg|19926928], both of which share a similarly disjointed narrative structure. The difference is that these books are disjointed because the characters lives are jarring, because the situations are completely shattered to begin with. I never felt that Marie-Laure’s life was particularly shattered, nor Werner’s. The narrative structure felt forced. The writing process made itself apparent throughout the novel, and not in a good way.
  
  I’m not surprised that a lot of people enjoyed this book; I enjoyed it too. I thought it was a great exercise in a particular literary style. I don’t think it’s great literature, though. I’d consider this a typical young adult story adorned with literary trappings. This is the opposite of the case of The Emperor’s New Clothes: the brocade is lovely, but the emperor is nowhere to be seen.

• All the Missing Girls

  ⭐ 3/5

  This book had me excited almost up until the end, but then it had to go and tie everything together a little too conveniently. So that’s kind of frustrating.
  
  I haven’t had my coffee yet, and I haven’t meticulously outlined this review like I normally do (well, meticulous might not be the best word, but at the very least I haven’t randomly jotted down notes in my writing app). Which is kind of a disservice to the book, because I’m pretty sure Megan Miranda outlined everything. She’d have to, just to keep the timeline straight.
  
  Oh, are we talking about the gimmick? Yeah, so this book has a gimmick: it’s written backwards. Actually, I don’t have any evidence for it having been written backwards, because no one really runs these things past me first, but it’s meant to be read backwards. It’s somewhat Memento-esque, which may or may not work outside of the premise, but it definitely works within the premise and that’s the important thing. I’m totally fine with gimmicks, by the way. I mean, no one criticizes Shakespeare because his ideas about eternal love might not resonate as deeply outside of the sonnet format.
  
  Maybe something about the tone/setting/characters/content? Yeah, okay. What All the Missing Girls does quite well is capture that creepy small town vibe. I’m from a small town, and it’s lovely (well, except for the meth, bigotry, and ignorance, but hey, at least Jesus seems to like it, or at least that’s what people there tell me). And super creepy. Because everyone knows all the gossip, all the secrets. Plus, small towns are insular. No man is an island, but small towns like to think they’re entire of themselves. I’ll talk forever about drug overdoses, jail sentences, and affairs, but those conversations don’t happen with outsiders. There’s a fellow feeling that fancy pants suburbanites, with their good schools and their opportunities and their TGIChiliBees, just don’t understand.
  
  I don’t know, though. Within the category of books where a current disappearance leads to deep psychological impact due its similarities with an older disappearance case, I much prefer [b:In the Woods|237209|In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1)|Tana French|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348442606s/237209.jpg|3088141]. Also, can we just stop it with using the word girl to refer to grown ass women? I get that it’s book marketing shorthand for a particular category of female-populated thriller, but it’s infantilizing.

• Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris

  ⭐ 3/5

  Although I’ve been to Paris, studied the French language and read more books on the French Revolution than a sane person should, I’ve always felt that I don’t know much about French culture. Almost French has changed that for me.
  
  After living in France for six years, Sarah Turnbull is an insider; and she takes readers inside French locations that tourists only dream of seeing. But at the same time, Turnbull remains unrelentingly Anglo-Saxon. Because of this, she is able to point out eccentricities of French life that native Parisians take for granted.
  
  Overall, Almost French is a well written and engrossing read that exposes the life of a woman who is no longer living in Australia, but who is also not completely French.

• American Catch: The Fight for Our Local Seafood

  ⭐ 4/5

  The huge salmon filet that I bought and cooked for my family a few nights ago was both incredibly delicious and simple. I seasoned it with some kosher salt, freshly ground pepper, and Californian extra virgin olive oil. I then broiled it for a just a few minutes, until the skin started crackling, then topped it with more olive oil and fresh dill. Of course, it would have been a sin to cook it all the way through: I like my salmon fairly rare in the center. And there’s the rub: I only feel comfortable cooking salmon this way when I can find wild Alaskan salmon that has been processed in the US. Sadly, this high quality fish (which is critically important if we want to improve the health of the millions of Americans who are overweight or obese) can be difficult to find in American grocery stores. I’m lucky to have a wonderful grocer down the street, that sources many different types of wild Alaskan salmon. Sadly, a large number of stores only stock imported farmed salmon, which obtains its pink hue from artificial food coloring.
  
  American Catch deals with the shocking fact that the United States exports most of its high quality wild fish to more discerning countries (mostly in Southeast Asia). Most of the seafood that Americans eat is imported from questionable farmed sources in Asia. Yes, this is complete madness that’s bad for health, and bad for taste. Farmed tilapia is increasingly popular throughout the US: it’s main appeal is that it doesn’t really taste like fish. In reality, it doesn’t really taste like anything. It’s the boneless, skinless chicken breast of seafood, and it’s not even particularly healthy. The omega-3 rich wild salmon we catch in droves in Alaska is, apparently, “too fishy” for the American palate.
  
  This is a book that makes me increasingly angry with the American proclivity to value price and quantity over quality. Even though I live in a city that borders the ocean, with many people who are obsessed with good food, I don’t frequent a good fishmonger. I have to carefully examine my fish purchases, because many grocery stores stock fish that’s not sustainable. I’d love to catch some San Francisco Bay oysters, but we kind of ended up screwing up their entire ecosystem. Oops. This is doubly bad because bivalves filter the water, making it clean and safe.
  
  I recommend American Catch to anyone who eats seafood; it’s shocking how screwed up the seafood system is in the US.

• American Rust

  ⭐ 5/5

  What happens to small Pennsylvania steel town after the steel mill shuts down? How do the people who once had a good life, with security and benefits, cope? American Rust deals with this: the American Dream, and its failure. What’s interesting is that the characters in this book don’t pine for the life that left them behind. Instead, they become resigned, they hope for nothing more. Take this quote, for example.
  
  “He had slept through life, let the currents take him. He had let the currents take him faster and faster and he had not noticed.”
  
  The main conflict in American Rust comes from a murder; that alone is enough to suck you in and keep you turning the pages. There’s more to it then that, though. Through a grisly (but somehow unsurprising) event in a small town, author Philipp Meyer explores blue collar America, and the (limited) ways out. There’s football, and there’s college, but neither are guarantees. Take, for example, Lee, a character who leaves for Yale. At one point in the book, she feels “an incredible isolation, a suspicion she’d always had, she didn’t belong anywhere, she was going to outlive everyone she knew. She was going to be alone, the same as her mother. ”
  
  Which resonated with me, because I get it. I don’t belong, either, in my small town, filled with the people who have settled for life the way it has been handed to them. But I also find it hard to fit in with the people who have hometowns worth going back to, populated with pleasant, educated people who are just like them. I can try to be one of them, and most of the time I fake it pretty well. But I have to try too hard. Eventually, people see right through me, down to the rural little girl who didn’t dream much bigger than living closer to the ocean.
  
  The most liked quote from this book on Goodreads is the following “You ought to be able to grow up in a place and not have to get the hell out of it when you turn eighteen.” Anyone who finds themselves nodding their head in agreement will connect deeply with this book. And anyone who doesn’t should also read it, just to see how lucky they are.

• Americanah

  ⭐ 4/5

  Race in America is woven into the fabric of the country: it’s difficult to imagine our lives without it. Of course, some claim that they don’t notice race, or that racism doesn’t exist (they would be wrong on both counts). However, most people hold race as this rarefied, natural thing, as if Africans from Lagos to Addis Ababa spend a ton of time thinking about themselves as black (with the underlying expectation that they compare themselves to those who are White).
  
  Americanah is interesting, in that it examines race in America from the point of view of a woman who moved from Nigeria to the US and became black. To wit:
  
  “The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it’s a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America.”
  
  Americanah chronicles the story of Ifemelu, a middle class Niegerian woman, from her childhood in Lagos to college in Philadelphia, her post-college life in Baltimore, New Haven, and Princeton, and her ultimate decision to move back to Lagos. It has the feel of a sweeping epic, but sometimes the narrative falls flat. Adichie sometimes writes sections from the point of view of Ifemelu’s lover, Obinze, but these never feel like quite enough. The story also drags a bit after the return to Nigeria: I kept finding myself asking “Is this book over yet?” which is never a good sign.
  
  Perhaps most stylistically interesting is Adichie’s decision to include Ifemelu’s blog posts on race in American (from the point of view of a non-American Black). I can’t decide whether the included blog posts are a clever device for adding relevant short essays that fall outside the narrative scope of the novel, or a lazy method to weave in issues that aren’t full realized in the narrative structure. Overall, I think it mostly works, and I’m curious to see whether other authors pick up the idea of metablogging in the future.
  
  Despite its shortcomings, Americanah just seems to work. Adichie manages to write with a somewhat florid style that never seems obnoxious or precious, which I enjoyed. I also learned quite a bit about Nigeria, which was a bonus. I recommend this to anyone who’s interested in race and the immigrant experience, and I’m looking forward to reading more of Adichie’s work.

• And Then There Were None

  ⭐ 3/5

  Ten strangers, mysteriously called to an island, each with a secret they thought would stay buried. They watch, horrified, as their fellow “soldiers” (insert a different, incredibly racist word here if you have a previous edition) get picked off one by one.
  
  And Then There Were None is an incredibly fun lithe mystery. There’s not much more to say about it, except that it felt familiar yet I still found myself surprised by the resolution. This is the first Agatha Christie book I’ve read (I know, shameful!), and I’ll definitely be reading more. It’s fun to have a light read that I can finish in a sitting or two.

• Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon, #1)

  ⭐ 3/5

  Over the years, Dan Brown has become one of my favorite guilty pleasure authors, and Angels and Demons represents his best work. The novel introduces Robert Langdon (of DaVinci Code fame), who must race through Rome attempting to save the most elite catholic cardinals from almost certain death.
  
  The book is immediately gripping, and Brown showcases his talent for carrying the suspense to the very end. More interesting than the exotic locale is the way Brown depicts the church. Angels and Demons may not be brilliantly spun prose, but it really is the best of its genre, and well worth a read.

• Anna Karenina

  ⭐ 5/5

  This is definitely my favorite book, and I can’t imagine anything surpassing it.
  
  I should really write a review of it sometime.

• Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside

  ⭐ 3/5

  I do research on the mind, which is deeply connected with the brain. However, my experience with the brain is not like Katrina Firlik’s experience with the brain. The brains I’ve gotten to play with have been cadaver brains, which greatly differ in texture from their living counterparts. I find it interesting to see what “lights up” during particular cognitive activities, but I’m far less interested in individual idiosyncrasies than consistences across individuals.
  
  This book provided a fascinating glimpse into what other people think about when they think about the brain. Firlik describes interesting cases in detail. She explains what it’s like to become a neurosurgeon, from medical school to the internship, residency, and beyond. She talks about how she deals with emotional and risky cases, how she balances life, and how her cases cause her to introspect on her own life. Overall, it’s a very human look into a profession where people are more likely to be called “cocky” than “sympathetic.”
  
  The only major problem I had with the book was the last chapter. In this final chapter, Firlik speculates on how neurosurgery will change in the future. She claims that people will be able to do things like remove their spatial abilities to become memory savants. In saying this, she makes untenable assumptions: that the mind is a zero-sum machine, and that it’s somehow wonderful to be a memory savant. Of course, we know that having a perfect memory can be completely debilitating (see [b:The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book about a Vast Memory|428157|The Mind of a Mnemonist A Little Book about a Vast Memory|Alexander R. Luria|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174668950s/428157.jpg|911343] for more on this). Thus, while she seems to be a remarkable surgeon, she’s not a research scientist, and her pure research claims should be taken with a grain of salt.

• Arcadia

  ⭐ 4/5

  This book probably deserves three and a half stars, but it did prompt me to listen to a soundtrack of hippie music as I read. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, The Grateful Dead’s American Beauty. For that, it gets bumped up to four stars.
  
  Arcadia chronicles the life of Bit, “the littlest bit of a hippie,” from his birth in Arcadia, the commune where he lives until he turns 14, to his middle age. Bit has always been small (maybe because he’s commune was fed a vegan diet, and the poor thing had to grow up on soy egg replicas), and his smallness allows him to observe the world without notice. Like Bit, Lauren Groff allows her readers to glimpse his strange world, without enough agency to actually effect change. As you may expect, the commune cannot survive forever; indeed, Groff foreshadows its demise from the first chapter of the book.
  
  Groff takes the views of her hippie characters seriously, but she does not venerate their “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together” lifestyle. It’s easy to see the folly of the radical right: those who live in fear of knowledge, who believe that the only way to peace is through gun ownership. I find it more difficult to envision the extremes of my heathen, organic, liberal existence. Reading Arcadia felt a bit like holding up a fun-house mirror to my life. Certainly, if a situation arose in which an interlocutor expressed an admiration for Ayn Rand (which happens to Bit, in the latter half of the book), I would promptly extricate myself from the situation (likely, not gracefully). Perhaps there is a version of me that would run off to join a subsistence farming co-op (or, at the very least, a locavore co-op in the upper Haight). Arcadia makes me wonder whether I could give up everything to live off the earth, and If I even think that’s a bad thing.

• Beautiful Lies (Ridley Jones, #1)

  ⭐ 3/5

  Although I’ve had this book on my shelf for years, I never felt motivated to read it. Once my bookshelf became too full for new books, I gave it a shot, with the intention to donate it after reading.
  
  Ridley is the type of character that infuriates me (should have known, considering the review from Cosmopolitan plastered on the cover). She seems to see herself as an independent, feminist woman, but she doesn’t act like one. Instead, she relies on men to take care of her, and narrates poor decisions that put her life in jeopardy with a glib “haha silly little me” attitude.
  
  Besides my annoyance with the main character, the pacing was pretty good, and the story was interesting enough to keep me reading. However, it’s not a story that will stick with me long after the book has gone off the greener pastures.
  
  I see books like this as palette cleansers: nice breaks between meatier courses, but certainly not good enough to make you feel sated in isolation.

• Beautiful Ruins

  ⭐ 4/5

  Surprisingly great. I’ll be thinking about this one for awhile.

• Beautiful Ugly

  ⭐ 3/5

  Beautiful Ugly is an atmospheric and entertaining popcorn thriller that doesn’t overstay its welcome. It requires a healthy suspension of disbelief, especially when it comes to how humans behave in both normal and abnormal situations. However, despite its (many) flaws it’s fun in a schlocky “I’m going to roll my eyes now but I’m also going to keep turning the pages” sort of way.
  
  The writing is mostly not good, occasionally stumbling into serviceable. It won’t impress a discerning reader, nor does it care to be impressive. The twists kept coming in a way that felt like a parody of one of Steve Jobs’ keynote speeches, where there’s always “one more thing” behind the curtain.
  
  I enjoyed turning off my brain and reading this in two sittings on a rainy holiday.

• Bel Canto

  ⭐ 5/5

  Bel Canto is a strange little novel: a page turner in which not much really happens, a melodrama that’s psychological and character driven. In short, an unnamed Southern American country holds a birthday party for a Japanese businessman, complete with an American opera singer. Terrorists take over the party and hold everyone hostage. The novel deals with the hostage situation.
  
  But, even with this sketchy outline of the plot of the novel, it won’t be what you would expect. I was incredibly surprised by this book: by the details that Patchett included, and, even more, by the ones she didn’t. It’s hard for me to even explain what the book is about, since it’s more about the experience itself than about any of the plot points that make it up. I guess it’s a bit like the opera in that way.

• Beowulf

  ⭐ 5/5

  The first lecture of my English 101 class was a life-changing experience for me. My professor started out by reading to us from the original Old English text of Beowulf. The round, warm, Germanic sounds of the language resonated throughout the hall, and although I couldn’t understand the words, I felt something of the work that I’d never felt before.
  
  I’ve read numerous translations of Beowulf, but this is the first translation that truly captured the feeling of those Old English words. I won’t go into the plot of the story, because I’ll assume most of us have read the book before. All I need to say is that, if you haven’t read this translation, it’s worth reading. And, if you’re like me, it will make you fall in love with Beowulf all over again.

• Bergdorf Blondes

  ⭐ 2/5

  While admittedly shallow, predictable and completely devoid of any literary merit, [b:Bergdorf Blondes|381704|Bergdorf Blondes|Plum Sykes|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174332033s/381704.jpg|98] is a fun and fast read. The narrator is one of the New York “it” girls, who spends most of her time going to parties, meeting up with guys, and getting highlights.
  
  Plum Sykes’ ability to poke fun at high society, while still making your wish you were in on the action, makes this a great beach read.

• Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

  ⭐ 4/5

  In my recent review of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I mentioned that I don’t have much of a rebellious streak. This comment made perfect sense to me: my clothing choices tend towards business casual (if I could wear a suit everyday, I would), my favorite activities are cooking and reading (somewhat domestic choices), and my drug of choice is fine wine. So imagine my surprise when I took Gretchen Rubin’s quiz on the Four Tendencies and found out that I, apparently, am a rebel.
  
  Rubin’s latest book, Better than Before, addresses habit formation. I’ve read a few books on habits, because (like most people) there are some good habits I’d like to acquire and some bad habits I’d like to let go of. Now, I’ve read a lot of advice about habits, and I theoretically know how they should be formed: schedule your habits in your calendar, make a public declaration to provide more accountability, find a way to track your progress, blah, blah, blah. Easier said than done, right? But I could never understand why it was so easy for me to get into the habit of meditating everyday, and so easy for me to make most of our meals from scratch, but so hard to get around to clipping the cats’ claws twice a month (even though I scheduled it in my phone and told my boyfriend that I would do it). Meditating and cooking are difficult and time consuming, but clipping cat claws takes just minutes. Why did I feel so much resentment whenever I saw the reminder on my phone?
  
  What makes Better than Before different from other books about habits is that it explores the individual differences relevant to habit formation. Rubin’s great insight is that our lives consist of many expectations about our behavior. Some of these expectations are internally motivated, some are pushed on us by external sources. Different people react to different sorts of expectations differently. My knee-jerk reaction to my inner expectations about the internal shoulds (e.g., “I should really practice the trumpet” or “I should write as soon as I get home from work”) is my life is to resist them. I resist external shoulds too, which seemed normal: does anyone really like paying bills or finishing up those TPS reports?
  
  Apparently, resistance to expectations makes me a rebel, which was a little mind-blowing. Suddenly, I started to mentally reframe some of my non-rebellious behaviors. I usually wear business casual clothing, even on weekends, which is certainly not the norm in casual Northern California and sometimes gets me called out as “not being a team player.” I cook most of our meals, but I find it almost impossible to follow a recipe to the letter: I can’t help changing it to suit my tastes, and most of the time I don’t use a recipe at all. My reading obsession is partially an explicit rejection of more popular leisure activities: I’m not about to watch the reality television programming that everyone else seems to watch, nor am I going to look at internet memes (I’m not even sure how people find internet memes) or engage in the gender-norm-affirming activities found on Pinterest. Wine is compelling partially because it’s so notoriously difficult to master. Come to think of it, I also find it fun to order my Scotch neat (rocks on the side) and enjoy it with a cigar.
  
  According to this book, I’ve been going about habit formation all wrong. If I tell myself I should do something, odds are that I won’t. But, if I accept something as an important part of my identity (e.g., “I’m a meditator, it keeps me from going crazy”) or as a profound pleasure (e.g., “I love the entire process of cooking, as well as the end result”) or as an affirmation of my values (e.g., “I’d rather read than passively get sucked in the materialistic and shallow activities that are pushed on us by consumer culture”), then I can do whatever I feel like. Game changer!
  
  I’m still not 100% sure how to translate this into clipping the cats’ claws, but the book gave me enough self-awareness to realize that the calendar reminder wasn’t doing me any favors. Perhaps I’ll invest in a really nice clipper that I enjoy using (this strategy worked when I bought a fancy feather duster, which I now occasionally use to dust, which is a 100% improvement over never dusting), perhaps I’ll remind myself that I pride myself on being a responsible pet owner. Regardless, I’ve taken away a number of strategies from this book, and would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in self-improvement.

• Bird by Bird

  ⭐ 4/5

  As writers go, I tend to be fairly lazy. On an intellectual level, I’m fully aware that writing mostly involves sitting down and actually writing. I get that the best way to work through writer’s block is to just write anyway, and I also get that none of my pieces are going to come bursting like Athena from the head of Zeus, divine and fully formed. Most of the time, I manage to break through the lazy and actually get stuff done. Still, I’m constantly searching for that one weird trick that will minimize my efforts while simultaneously providing me with David Foster Wallace level output and Dan Brown level money.
  
  Naturally, I began my love affair with books about writing back in high school, when my oeuvre mostly consisted of Alanis Morissette level poetry. Reading books about writing, and writers, makes me feel particularly productive without actually producing anything. I like to remind myself that Stephen King once said “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” (Note, Stephen King also wrote a book about writing, which I’ve read and reread in myriad moments of weakness and insecurity, then cursed at when I realized I once again had to get back to writing). Plus, it’s nice to remember that Hemingway was often miserable and Fitzgerald was an alcoholic with a crazy wife. I’m an envious person, and I find schadenfreude restorative.
  
  And yes, I fully understand that all those sections on plot and character development and living a writerly life are not particularly relevant when you mainly write academic nonfiction. I’m an intelligent person, and I’ve worked with some very smart graduate advisors who have made similar points before exasperatedly encouraging me to get back down to the lab and keep going. But still, I found Bird by Bird to be a useful meditation on writing. If only Anne Lamott had shared her real secrets, instead of adding another voice to the choir of people imploring me to just get back to work already.

• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

  ⭐ 3/5

  Blink is an interesting and thought-provoking book. It examines the ways in which we make decisions quickly, often without even knowing that we are making them. My favorite section of the book was the chapter which recounts a recent war game. In this game, the computer aided US team could not work as well as a former general who was able to make decisions quickly and correctly. If stories like this appeal to you, the book is definitely worth reading.
  
  That said, Blink has a number of problems. While the stories provided are interesting, Gladwell doesn’t really build them into a well formed point. As others have said, the stories outweigh the conclusions. Another problem is that the book purports to be scientific, while is it really a series of loosely related observations. It’s a neat book, but those looking for a scientific treatment of quick-thinking should definitely turn elsewhere.

• Bookends

  ⭐ 2/5

  I’ve read a few Jane Green books, and I can definitely say this is the best of them. It’s your typical chick-lit plot: girl is just like us, girl mets boy, girl fulfills dream. That said, it’s an engaging book that is well worth reading.

• Brave New World

  ⭐ 3/5

  The future is bleak, but, on the plus side, there are free drugs and casual sex for everyone.
  
  This is an interesting book, but not as effective as [b:1984|5470|1984|George Orwell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1328718447s/5470.jpg|153313]. It just didn’t feel real to me. As terrifying as it would be to live in a world without Shakespeare, the constant references to “Our Ford” felt laughable. I think I’ll read [b:We|76171|We |Yevgeny Zamyatin|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1321919581s/76171.jpg|2144026] at some point, as I except that one to be better. The idea of Brave New World is certainly interesting, I’m just not that happy about the execution here.

• Breaking Dawn (Twilight, #4)

  ⭐ 1/5

  I seriously thought about giving this two stars just because it’s so comically bad, but I just can’t do that. So, instead, here are some things I learned from this book.
  
  -When you decide to impulse marry your high school sweetheart because that’s the only way you can convince him to bang you, don’t worry about telling your mother (who is vehemently opposed to young marriage), because she’ll just change her mind and get super into decorating when that’s convenient for the plot.
  
  -Corollary: do not wait at all to make sure this decision is correct, because women are only of any worth if they’re youthful, and anything past the teenage years is just too old.
  
  -When your husband has such rough sex with you that he destroys the headboard and leaves you completely bruised, this is very romantic. You’re the one that should feel guilty for smelling good and stuff.
  
  -If you’re the leader of a pack of supernatural creatures actively involved in protecting the person you love most from an imminent attack (which obvs won’t actually happen, conveniently, because Meyer doesn’t know how to write herself out of the plots she puts her characters into and just goes “deus ex machina” on all that), the best thing to do is drive to the nearest city and hang out in the park looking for strangers to fall in love with.
  
  -Even though your “father-in-law” is a doctor with literally centuries of experience and a bunch of medical equipment in his house he will never think to perform a cesarean section on the demon baby that’s destroying your body from the inside.
  
  -Male vampires spend their copious amounts of free time being doctors, fighting, watching football, and being intellectual. Female vampires mostly just shop and take on nurturing roles. This is the way it has to be, because Meyer wouldn’t want to call into question the believability of her supernatural universe by defying traditional gender norms.
  
  -Pedophilia is perfectly acceptable and natural if you just call it “imprinting” and pretend that it’s not really about wanting someone “that way.”
  
  -If you’re an author that creates a weird fictional world so that you can write yourself into the story, make everyone fall in love with you, make yourself super hot, give yourself more powers than everyone else, and live happily ever after, the public won’t see through the charade and you’ll somehow sell far more copies of your shitty book than Proust ever sold of In Search of Lost Time. This is because the world is an unfair place filled with philistines.
  
  -Corollary: It’s only a happy ending if you count your enduring an abusive relationship with your husband while your best friend bangs your daughter for all eternity as a happily ever after. Which Meyer does. Literally, the last chapter of this book is titled “The Happily Ever After.” You can’t make this shit up.

• Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting

  ⭐ 4/5

  Through the magic of being French, you will have children that sleep through the night at 6 weeks and request gourmet food before they start kindergarden. They will behave themselves on outings and never, ever throw tantrums. They will play quietly on their own while you drink a glass of Bordeaux.
  
  This book is not really about France, nor is it really about French parenting. In reality, this book addresses the crisis facing American parents. In case you aren’t aware, Americans live in a kindergarchy. Children are shuttled to daily activities and sports practices by overworked parents. Mothers cook special meals for their children, who tend to prefer nuggets and fries over anything else. Parents help their children with homework, or hire tutors. They are worried about college when they put their kids in pre-school. In short, American parents surrender their own lives to become slaves to their progeny.
  
  Unsurprisingly, the American way of parenting has produced a bunch of entitled young adults who act quite a bit like children. It has also produced plenty of unhappy parents. Druckerman, a former New Yorker living in Paris, had internalized the American framework. She was surprised to see that French parents were not much like American parents. For one, they had lives separate from soccer practice. But they seemed to differ in a more philosophical way: they spoke of parenting as “education” and they were happy to be called “strict” — although they allowed for a fair amount of liberty as well.
  
  Central to French parenting is the idea of the “cadre” or frame. French parents create a strict frame for their children: eating is allowed four times per day, children must always say the magic words (please, thank you, hello, and good-bye), etc. However, within the frame, children can make their own choices. French parents don’t shower their children with praise or shield them from the more difficult aspects of life. They let children have time alone, giving them far more independence that the typical American child.
  
  The parenting tips that Druckerman gleans from the French seem to be common sense. Listen to your child, and try to understand his daily rhythm. When he cries, pause before picking him up to see if he can resolve the issue himself. Say no like you mean it. Teach your child to take into account the needs of others (including his parents). Be authoritative, not authoritarian.
  
  However, as basic as these ideas are, they’ve become lost to generations of parents who are more likely to listen to “experts” than their own mothers, who feel the need to choose a branded “parenting style,” who try to be prefect. Druckerman reminds the readers that there is no such thing as the perfect parent. I think many people need the reminder.
  
  I found this book enjoyable and interesting. I have no children, but more and more of my friends have begun to start families. I’m finally starting to understand the pressures that American society puts on parents, and I’ve also begun to question the so-called “soccer mom” values. This would be a wonderful gift to slip into a baby-shower basket, if only to remind new mothers that they can trust their instincts, and take time for themselves.
  
  My only issue with the book is that Druckerman describes the world of urban, middle to upper-middle class French parents, and compares them to middle to upper-middle class American parents. The Park Slope parents she describes are likely not too similar to rural or working class families, which she doesn’t discuss. She also tends to equate “parenting” with “being a mother.” I understand the majority of parenting often falls to mothers, but I’d be interested to understand more of the French father’s point of view (or to hear about parents who are not married or heterosexual). However, overall this book was thoughtful and well written, and I truly enjoyed it.

• Call of the Mild: Learning to Hunt My Own Dinner

  ⭐ 4/5

  Hunting gets a bad rap. At least in the U.S., liberals (full disclosure: I’m very liberal) seem to think of hunters as NRA-obsessed redneck whack jobs who think the world would be safer if everyone shot everyone else. I’ll get my politics out of the way upfront: I believe in extraordinarily tight gun control, including extensive background checks and limits as to which types of guns can be purchased. I think buying a gun for “self-defense” is bullshit, and I’m disgusted by the fact that I live in a country where people are free to murder children on the street in broad daylight, without any fear of retribution. Actually, I think hunting is the only valid reason to purchase a gun.
  
  However, in Call of the Mild, Lily Raff McCaulous dispels the “hunters as gun-crazed rednecks” stereotype. A liberal herself, she notes that only a small percentage of gun owners actually hunt, and that these hunters seem to care more about the environment than urban, vegan Prius owners. Raff McCaulou took up hunting, not because her parents hunted, but because she wanted to feel more connected to the source of her food.
  
  I found this to be a thought-provoking memoir, especially since it presents a balanced viewpoint of what it means to hunt. Raff McCaulou notes the hypocrisy of animal-loving vegetarians who despise hunting on principle, as hunting is usually necessary for population control. She writes “Before I began to hunt, I thought of animals as individuals, with families and emotions and a whole slew of anthropomorphic traits. This strikes me as the environmentalist, vegetarian, animal lover’s approach: Any death of any individual being is painful and bad. The trouble is, I now think of animals as members of a population and as individuals. It makes for a lot of hand-wringing. But maybe it’s a necessary paradox; it’s what makes me a responsible hunter.” She also notes that, in one survey, 60% of self-identified vegetarians ate meat within the last 24 hours. Not that she’s trying to skewer vegetarians. Instead, she calls into question the idea that the best thing for animals is for people to blindly adopt a vegetarian diet. Like most difficult issues, it’s much more complicated than that.
  
  This isn’t a well-known book, which is a shame. I heartily recommend it, especially for foodies who dig the farm to table concept.

• Capital in the Twenty First Century

  ⭐ 4/5

  This is going to be a beast to review because, while I’ve got a good head for numbers, I’m most certainly not an econometrician and I don’t know how well I can explain the capital/income ratio that underlies the main arguments of the book. Luckily, author Thomas Piketty is French, and peppers his book with lots of information about capital in literature, with a particular focus on the work of Austen and Blazac. According to Piketty, the reason that Austen found it perfectly reasonable to talk specifically about Mr. Darcy’s £10,000 a year is that, up until the 20th century, inflation wasn’t really a thing and income from rents was pretty stable. At that time, wealth was extremely concentrated, with a small group holding a vast majority of capital. Disturbingly, extant economic forces seem to be returning us to this type of model. If this doesn’t disturb you, it should (unless you’re the holder of vast amounts of capital, in which case, carry on).
  
  The crux of Piketty’s argument is that current market forces are pushing the global economy towards divergence, meaning that wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated. To make this argument, Piketty spends quite a bit of time talking about the capital/income ration. Piketty explores the idea that, when income from capital outpaces income from wages, holders of capital can increase their wealth far faster than wage earners can accumulate their own wealth. Piketty doesn’t solely look at capital as the major problem; indeed, he examines the case of super-managers earning incomes of well over $1,000,000 per year. The argument is well researched, supported by a ton of statistical data, and Piketty is quick to admit to the limitations of his work. He doesn’t believe in the invisible hand of the market as some magical being bringing prosperity to everyone by helping the rich get richer (I like to imagine the invisible hand of the market as Ronald Reagan riding a magical unicorn that shits golden eagles). What he does believe is that there needs to be more transparency in banking and a global tax on capital. Which is a lovely idea, although probably also a non-starter.
  
  One major point that I found interesting was the extent to which World War II temporarily changed economic reality. According to Piketty, World War II effectively wiped the economic slate clean, making inherited wealth much less important than it had been at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. This meant that the Baby Boomer generation lived in a far more meritocratic and egalitarian society. That simple fact has helped me gain some peace with the fact that previous generations seem to be blind to the issues of skyrocketing rents and crippling student loan debt. So when I see something like this:
  
  
  
  I remember I’m living in a world more like this one:
  
  
  
  And that doesn’t make me feel better, really, but millennials with poor economic outlooks can at least take some solace in the universally acknowledged fact that a super-manager in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Possibly.

• Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

  ⭐ 5/5

  Facebook, et al, have made remarkably quick work of tearing asunder the fabric of society, replacing culture with outrage and cat videos.
  
  At the helm is Mark Zuckerberg, a weak little man who right-place right-timed himself into the oligarchy. He can’t take criticism and desperately wants everyone to like him. He claims no interest in politics, and might try to be president someday.
  
  The excellent 2011 film The Social Network may have done us a disservice in portraying Zuckerberg as a charming man capable of delivering Sorkin dialogue. The real Zuckerberg portrayed in this book by former Facebook employee Sarah Wynn-Williams does come across as awkward and careless, a nod to the Great Gatsby reference from which this book borrows its title:
  
  “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
  
  Social media certainly has made a mess of society, and now we’re stuck with the cleanup while the tech bros are busy taking selfies with the world leaders their platforms have colluded to elect.
  
  Technology companies are wielding the power of sovereign nations. They experiment with users moods and beliefs, purporting to provide connection while making us hate each other. If you use Facebook, you accept that they’re eroding your privacy. The company is actively surveilling on every user and selling their behavioral data to the highest bidder.
  
  Democratically elected officials should not be kowtowing to tech companies, full stop. Facebook, et al, are undermining democracy. Spreading misinformation to get idiots elected at the highest levels of government is practically part of the Terms of Service Agreement at this point.
  
  Everyone should get off Facebook. It doesn’t matter if you forget the birthday of your cousin’s friend’s ex boyfriend you met at a bbq that one time. You don’t need to like that AI generated image of African children making a working helicopter out of water bottles. None of that matters. Your life experiences deserve more than being farmed for content to make money for billionaires.
  
  Meta has already amplified the impact of this book by blocking the author from promoting it due to the terms of her non-disparagement agreement. They don’t deny the claims made in the book, they simply say these claims are “out-of-date and previously reported.” Sarah Wynn-Williams couldn’t buy better publicity.
  
  I’ll leave you with this list of insane examples of Zuckerberg things (culled from the book):
  
  - Zuckerberg thinks that Andrew Jackson was the best president of the United States (above Lincoln and Roosevelt)
  - He asked for his team to set up “either a riot or a peace rally” in Indonesia
  - At the UN, he ad-libbed on non-existent upcoming humanitarian policy
  - He casually mentioned he might not attend the birth of his child (not due to pre-existing plans, just preemptively assuming something might come up)
  - Zuck plays Settlers of Catan on his private jet, and his employees let him win
  - Mark Zuckerberg knowingly committed perjury about China policy at a congressional hearing

• Catch-22

  ⭐ 5/5

  I was under the impression that Catch-22, as a serious classic about World War II, was a difficult read. Obviously, I was aware that it was a comedic masterpiece, but I didn’t know how to reconcile that fact with the perceived seriousness of it all. So I kept putting it off. I shouldn’t have.
  
  This book is funny. Like, laugh out loud funny. Laugh out loud funny, and not in the internet way but in the literal way, and when I say literal I also mean that in the literal way and not the figurative way.
  
  In fact, the only parts of the book that aren’t funny are the parts that are deeply serious, and these parts hit me even harder than similar parts of other war novels because it became quite obvious that, at least for a moment, the book was no longer funny.
  
  Catch-22 is composed of a series of non-linear, layered vignettes. Each builds upon previous episodes, meaning that the book gets funnier the deeper in you get. Fans of Arrested Development might feel some serious structural déjà vu.
  
  It’s hard for me to understand why people don’t like Catch-22. Here are a few possibilities:
  
  -The book is quintessentially American. If you prefer that subtle, sarcastic British humor, you’ll probably be disappointed. Catch-22 can only be described as subtle slapstick, which is quite different.
  
  -The scenarios involved are absurd. Imagine you’re at an improv show. Two actors are trying to make their way out of the arctic. The first actor attempts to call his mother from a satellite phone, only to find that his mother has turned into a banana. The second actor has just been struck by an acute phobia of the color white. In this scene, they attempt to distract themselves from the cold by trying to remember the 10 Commandments. Would you enjoy watching this show? If not, you may not enjoy Catch-22.
  
  -This is clever comedy and, as such, will most likely be enjoyed by clever people. It should probably be given a pass by those whose IQ falls less than one standard deviation above the mean. If you are put off by such terms as “standard deviation,” I’m sure CBS is currently airing a rerun of Two and a Half Men that’s better suited to your comedic needs.

• Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers & Reflections

  ⭐ 4/5

  Note to self: this looks like a fun one to bring on your next flight!

• Confessions of a Public Speaker

  ⭐ 3/5

  I find myself doing a lot of public speaking these days: presentations on my research, guest lectures in undergraduate courses, leading course sections, that sort of thing. I’m also one of those crazy people who actually enjoys public speaking: the bigger the audience, the better. Lecturing doesn’t leave me terrified or drained, not even a little bit. Put me in front of a crowd and I’ll feel energized, excited. It’s probably my favorite thing about graduate school.
  
  Am I turning this review into a “me me me” kind of thing? Perhaps, but public speaking can be pretty me-tastic so I don’t mind too much. I do think that part of the reason why I love performing so much is because I’ve been doing it since before I could remember. I started out ice skating, and performed at shows, competitions, and evil USFSA moves in the field tests for over a decade. I cheered in front of my entire high school at pep rallies, in front of pretty much the entire town at football games (it was a small town, so football was all we had going on), in front of televised national audiences at competitions. In college, the NCAA basketball games I cheered at weekly were usually televised. I’m convinced that performance is something of a learned skill (although, note that I actively chose activities that involved performance, so there’s probably also a third variable at play here). I mean, once you fall on your ass on ESPN doing a stunt that didn’t work out the way you expected it to, lecturing in front of a couple hundred undergrads who are probably too hungover or too busy playing candy crush to listen to you is totally cake.
  
  Anyway, I expected this book to be a compendium of tips for public speaking, and it wasn’t, not really. Instead, it was one part memoir, one part non-narrative tips, which ended up a bit awkward. I would have liked the appendices at the end to be in narrative form, like the rest of the book, because the illustrative stories do lend a sense of concreteness to Berkun’s advice.
  
  Berkun’s major point about public speaking is a good one: you need to organize your thoughts, and you need to practice (especially when it comes to the transitions between points). There’s no use giving a talk that’s not well thought-out: your audience is not going to learn something if you’re only presenting them with a half-baked idea. Academics don’t really have a problem with the thinking (when it comes to thinking, we’re pros), but I’m as guilty as anyone of not thinking about how my argument can be summarized in talk form. I’ve definitely over-planned and given talks that had way too much information, because I didn’t want to be accused of simplifying or leaving things out. And I’ve also seriously messed up transitions. I put those in my notes now, so that I can see them in presenter view. It works for me.
  
  Another good piece of advice: talks are about the audience, not the speaker. Sometimes, speakers (especially less experienced speakers) want to make sure they come off as smart, so they give these sesquipedalian talks that only serve to obfuscate their topic. Here’s the thing: the audience doesn’t care if you’re smart. The audience wants to feel like they’re smart. It’s more effective to give your points simply and clearly. Be to the point. Once you start throwing in huge words and double negatives, you’ve lost the audience.
  
  The biggest takeaway is that, regardless of what happens, you really can’t screw your talk up too badly. Even though everyone (or, at least, the attentive subset of everyone) is looking at you, they’re not paying as much attention to you as you are. Think back to all the talks you’ve been to, and I bet you won’t be able to remember that many mishaps. A typo on a slide might become a thorn in a speaker’s side, but the audience probably won’t remember it the next day.
  
  Here’s an anecdote from me, and then I’ll quit talking (I promise!). Back in high school, we had these pep rallies where the entire school would gather (separated by class level, naturally. Us ‘04 kids wouldn’t be caught dead talking to those ‘05 losers or smug ‘03 bitches), watch the cheerleaders perform, and generally get stoked for whatever “big game” was upon us. At one of these rallies (I think sophomore year) I somehow landed flat on my ass doing a high kick. And everyone noticed. Seriously, that whole week I got stopped in the hall and asked if I was “that girl that fell.” I was mortified. Remember, in high school the stakes are high, and mortification is frequent (if the embarrassing stories from Seventeen magazine can be taken as a source, young women can’t even purchase tampons without extreme mortification). Luckily, this incident didn’t stop me from making varsity the next year, or from getting into college, or from earning a masters degree. The only lasting impact is that I now have a good story to tell at cocktail parties. And we all need good stories to tell at cocktail parties, right? So the next time you have to give a big speech, just remind yourself that, worse case scenario, you’ll be laughing about this over manhattans in the very near future.

• Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat

  ⭐ 4/5

  As I type this review, I’m sipping a glass of lightly-oaked Oregon Pinot Noir and noshing on some balls of fresh mozzarella, which I quickly marinated in olive oil (along with sea salt and red pepper flakes) while I finished the last chapter of Consider the Fork. The wine wasn’t really prepared to preserve the grape harvest (it’s a fine wine, after all), and the mozzarella wasn’t made out of the desire to preserve fresh milk that would otherwise spoil. No, I simply picked these items because I like them, which is a pretty wonderful thing to be able to do when you really think about it.
  
  Consider the Fork is a history of cooking, as seen through the tools we use to cook our food. I’m a romanticizer of cooking tools: when I moved from Chicago to San Francisco, I refused to put my favorite cast iron skillet in a box and pack it away. I needed it on my person, a comforting reminder of the joyous nights I’ve spent in the kitchen pan-roasting chicken thighs, or making cornbread, or rendering the fat from some duck legs, which I finished in the oven with a little bit of red wine while I used the reserved duck fat to flavor the potatoes. But these tools are more than beloved possessions, and Bee Wilson uses them to tell a story about how we cook. Any foodie can wax poetic about their perfectly-sharped chef’s knives, but it takes a great writer to bring interest to egg beaters and vegetable peelers. Luckily, Wilson is up to the job.
  
  Most interesting, to me, was the final chapter, in which Wilson considers [b:Modernist Cuisine|8885824|Modernist Cuisine The Art and Science of Cooking|Nathan Myhrvold|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328774509s/8885824.jpg|13761755] and the newfound obsession with the perfect kitchen. Now, I like to use soy lecithin to whip up some salt foam to float on top of margaritas as much as the next girl, but I’m generally somewhat wary of molecular gastronomy. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t mind rendering my own fresh lard, or mixing up mayo from scratch, using a balloon whisk while I slowly add olive oil one drop at a time. Wilson writes about new technologies with the same degree of mesmerized skepticism: she lauds sous vide even as she notes that Adrià’s staff enjoys traditional family meals before service.
  
  A word about the “perfect” kitchen: I have been relatively vocal in my disdain for those who obsessively create a showplace kitchen, only to most rely on ready meals and takeout. A Viking range and All-Clad pans are certainly nice to have, but they don’t make anyone a great cook. I’m perfectly capable of turning out some great food in a tiny galley kitchen with minimal counter space, and I’m not the only one. While I do think that everyone who wants to cook needs to have a perfectly-sharp chef’s knife and a cast-iron skillet, I think a great cook can do will with the most minimal of kitchens; after all, the quality of the ingredients matters above all else. We should never let lack of money or lack of counter space stand in the way of our culinary dreams, nor should we use the lack of a perfect kitchen as an excuse not to cook.
  
  For dinner, I’m going to be making roasted smoked duck sausage and asparagus, which I’ll serve alongside last night’s leftover mashed potatoes. Thanks to this book, I’ll be able to think about the juxtaposition of the older method of preserving meat and the new role played by refrigeration. I’ll think about the utensils we use to cook the meal, and the cultural conventions behind them. Any book that helps me think about the tools involved in dinner in a new way certainly deserves a recommendation, and I think this will be especially interesting to cooks and foodies.

• Count My Lies

  ⭐ 3/5

  3.5 ⭐️ BOTM pick for March 2025
  
  Count My Lies was a fun thriller, with somewhat of a slow start. I needed to get more than halfway through for it to pick up, but once it got going it didn’t stop.
  
  Entertaining. It isn’t particularly literary, nor does it purport to be. I could see this being adapted into a miniseries, and I would watch it.

• Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse, #1)

  ⭐ 3/5

  Most of the time I talk about books in a somewhat snobbish way, so it may surprise people to know that I do enjoy a bit of camp from time to time. Of course, in order for camp to be done well, it needs to be both completely unapologetic about being campy, while not being too serious about the whole thing. A wink needs to be implied, but not completely spelled out. <a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I16_8l0yS-g”>The plane scene from Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus is a fairly good example of this.
  
  I always kind of liked True Blood: it’s amusingly, knowingly tawdry. Dead Until Dark, the first in the series on which True Blood was based, is similarly fun. The fact that there are vampires involved should temper my amusement somewhat, but I’m surprisingly okay with it. I’m still trying to work out why that is.
  
  I do think that the book benefited significantly from me having seen the television show. Showtime typically puts out well done stuff, and True Blood combines excellent cinematography and good acting with the ridiculously campy storyline, to great effect. So, if you’re on the fence about reading this, just watch the tv show instead.

• Death by Food Pyramid: How Shoddy Science, Sketchy Politics and Shady Special Interests Have Ruined Our Health

  ⭐ 5/5

  This is an interesting look at why we’re told to eat the way we do (more grains!! more vegetable oil! meat’s bad and butter’s bad but go ahead and eat all the cheese you want! pizza’s a vegetable! etc.). Author Denise Minger goes beyond politics and really digs into the current state of nutrition science. As a scientist myself, I appreciate the careful way in which she talks about empirical work: she hedges appropriately, doesn’t pull quotes completely out of context, and (most importantly) focuses more on what the data say than what the researchers say about the data.
  
  Minger started thinking critically about health and nutrition when she started to become ill as a result of her raw vegan diet. Her blog, RawFoodSOS, cuts through the propaganda to explain why raw veganism isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. If you want a bit of a teaser before you read the book, I highly recommend her debunking of the China Study, as well as the first and second responses by the China Study’s author, as well as Minger’s response to his responses. Spoiler alert: they both agree that we should be eating whole, unprocessed foods, and mostly disagree on the healthfulness of animal protein.
  
  So, what should we eat? Minger encourages her readers to think about individual variation: what works for one person may not work for another, largely due to differences at the genetic or metabolic level. Beyond that, she recommends avoiding refined grains, refined sugars, and refined omega-6 rich vegetable oils. These recommendations aren’t surprising: nobody’s recommending that anyone eat white flour and white sugar with wild abandon. And, while a few people still think of vegetable oils and margarine as healthful, the science on PUFAs and omega-6 clearly shows that these purportedly “heart healthy oils” aren’t all they’re cracked up to be (praise the lard).
  
  Because Death by Food Pyramid is not a book a la [b:Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health|11505008|Wheat Belly Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health|William Davis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1317793840s/11505008.jpg|16440712], which says “just stop eating this one thing and everything in your life will be perfect,”* it probably won’t become a best-seller, but it’s great reading for anyone interested in health and nutrition.
  
  I think a great summary for the goal of the book is this statement, taken from Denise Minger’s (fantastic) blog:
  
  

  “More than ever, I want to help demolish the tribalism existing within the nutrition world—to encourage us to learn from each other globally, instead of listening only to the voices tumbling around whatever dietary echo chamber we’ve locked ourselves into. I think that’s the only way to advance our collective knowledge. Among the rivaling diet communities, we seem to get stuck in a scarcity mentality where the success of The Other is seen as a threat to our own. But that shouldn’t have to be the case. We should approach dietary anomalies with curiosity and intrigue, rather than the knee-jerk reaction to defend our own kind.”

  
  
  Which is a great sentiment: instead of fighting about stupid things like whether or not it makes sense to put butter in coffee (I’m a fan of butter in pretty much anything), we should focusing on what we can learn from each other. And yeah, in no way will I allow anyone to take away my pastured pork (don’t even try: I do crossfit, and I’m pretty serious about pork, and I will make a strong defense of my fridge if it comes down to that), but I do think we can learn some things from each other (like, maybe the paleo among us can understand why using traditional fermentation methods to cook grains and legumes can mitigate some of the issues we have in digesting them, even if they don’t decide to go this route themselves). Anyway, I could of course talk about this kind of stuff forever, but I’m just gonna take a shot of fermented cod liver oil, finish up my creamed up but not buttered coffee, and get on with my day.
  
  *In actuality, I think that [b:Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health|11505008|Wheat Belly Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health|William Davis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1317793840s/11505008.jpg|16440712] has a lot of great things to say, and wouldn’t be a bad place for most people to start. But it’s not a particularly in-depth look at nutrition science. I’d recommend [b:Real Food: What to Eat and Why|75186|Real Food What to Eat and Why|Nina Planck|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1399482504s/75186.jpg|574182] as the single best, most accessible book for those who are newer to healthy eating.

• Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster

  ⭐ 4/5

  So I had a 250 word anecdote about my own bespoke figure skating competition dresses all drafted for this review, before I remembered that Deluxe is not about the romance of luxury items. Instead, it examines how the world of haute couture has largely died, shifting from a niche market for elites to a homogenized market catering to a cadre of middle-class suburbanites who can’t tell the difference between coated canvas and crocodile. Author Dana Thomas thinks this is a bad thing.
  
  I don’t know that I’m completely in agreement, but, as someone who finds fashion interesting both from a sociological and aesthetic perspective, I agree that the upper portion of industry faces some serious issues. Of major concern is the fact that luxury brands increasingly rely on selling perfume and handbags to aspirational middle class customers (it’s worth noting that I’m an aspirational middle class customer; most of my designer stuff has been gifted, thrifted, or bought on consignment). Anyway, this means the couture houses are taking huge economic risks, as dips in the economy usually see the middle class cutting back on luxury goods. This business model doesn’t exactly seem sustainable.
  
  Beyond that, globalization has had a huge impact on luxury manufacturing. Although there are still luxury ateliers in Western Europe, they cater to an increasingly niche market. Like everyone else, luxury brands have largely outsourced their production to Asia. Donald Trump has promised to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US; realistically, that will not work in the garment industry. The prices we pay for clothing now have been artificially deflated by the extraordinarily low salaries (and poor working conditions) for overseas workers. Like it or not, clothing Made in the USA would be out of reach for most Americans. Plus, we don’t have the technology, nor do we have the infrastructure. As always, these issues are far more complicated than they’re made out to be.
  
  Interestingly, this book was published in 2007, and read somewhat like an elegy for a bygone way of life. Conspicuous consumption may have been de rigueur in the early 2000s, but these days minimalism is chic and logos are gauche. Things sure have changed since the day I bought my Louis Vuitton Speedy 25.

• Divergent (Divergent, #1)

  ⭐ 2/5

  Ah, young adult. I am not someone who routinely reads books written for children, although I won’t rule them out either. I guess that makes me Y-curious. Sometimes, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quality of young adult novels (The Fault in Our Stars still has me tearing up), but mostly reading YA reminds me why I usually swing the other way. Enter Divergent. It sounded interesting, it’s rated highly, I figured why not? Answer: because it’s an awful, awful book. It’s the worst thing I’ve read since Twilight. But I soldiered on, because Divergent is bad in a so bad it’s good kind of way. It was worth it, because I got to laugh out loud at quotes like this “Something about him makes me feel like I am about to fall. Or turn to liquid. Or burst into flames.” Or this “I am selfish. I am brave.”
  
  Tris is born into a dystopian version of Chicago in which the city’s citizens are divided into factions that are so functionally useless that even a subpar political science student who happened to to high on acid would be like “Dude, that would never work.” Scratch that: even the house Republicans would think that this is a terrible idea, and their idea of good government is shutting it down and giving everyone a gun.
  
  Right, so in this world you can only be one type of person: smart, brave, selfless, friendly, or honest. In other words, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, and three different types of Hufflepuff. Apparently, these qualities are mutually exclusive, so you can only pick one. Being a multifaceted person (aka Divergent) is deemed incredibly dangerous, probably because writing psychologically real characters is, like, totally hard.
  
  Anyway, the plot of Divergent revolves around all the 16 year olds deciding what type of person they’re going to be (because it makes sense to let children whose frontal lobes aren’t even fully developed make important decisions that will impact them for the rest of their lives). Then there’s a bizarre initiation ceremony that mostly seems to involve kids beating each other up and paintball. Throughout the ephebic shenanigans, we find out that Tris is good at things, even though she’s skinny and female. Shocking, no?
  
  What’s going on in the world? How did Lake Michigan turn into a marsh? Who has survived whatever apocalypse happened outside of Chicago? Who knows. Instead, we focus on the important things, like tattoos and stuff. The world building is secondary, and filled with all sorts of inconsistencies. For instance, they have the technology to induce crazy hallucinations and output brain activity to a monitor in real time, and without any sort of measuring device (if you know anything about how the brain works, feel free to laugh out loud at the implausibility), but they’re somehow unable to bring the CTA trains to a full stop at the stations. Say what?
  
  Side note: as a Chicagoan, I must say that it’s unlikely that the CTA buses would still be running after some sort of cataclysmic, world-changing event. I mean, they don’t even come as often as they’re supposed to after 10pm. Sometimes they do that thing where no buses come for 20 minutes, then two come in a row, which never makes any sense to me. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve waited much longer than necessary for a bus from the Target on Peterson back to the red line, I’d definitely have enough money to take a cab instead. More unlikely is the idea that the city of Chicago would ever be run by a faction of incorruptible, selfless people. Cute.
  
  Back to the review: this book definitely deserves only one star, based on sheer implausibility. But I am fickle, and I like to be entertained, even at the expense of a book that takes itself far too seriously. For that it gets an additional star. Now, if you excuse me, I have to get back to my gothic horror novel filled with mysterious women bathed in moonlight, because that book makes a lot more sense.

• Doctor Zhivago

  ⭐ 0/5

  This is just not happening right now. I’ll start it back up when I feel like it. It’s just a little too much to feel guilt about not finishing a book that I’m not particularly enjoying, and I’m done. I’m moving on to something that’s the right book for right now.

• Don Quixote

  ⭐ 5/5

  Can we construct our own reality? And, if we can, how should we? Does life present one transcendent truth, or is truth relative to each individual’s perceptions? These are the questions central to Don Quixote, a secular bible of self-invention.
  
  There are many things to say about this book, but I can’t write them all down here. It wouldn’t do much good, either, because everyone seems to get something different out of reading the Quixote. If you haven’t read it, try it out and let it tell you what it wants to say to you. It is by no means a quick read, but it is worth it.
  
  The Grossman edition is fantastic, although the introduction by Bloom is so curmudgeony that it should be skipped, or at least read with a large glass of wine.

• East of Eden

  ⭐ 5/5

  Wow.
  
  After finishing this book, all I can do is keep repeating the word “wow.” I say the word, I think for awhile, I glace back at the book, and say “wow” again. I can’t help it; it’s just that kind of book.
  
  It’s hard to explain what this book is about. Steinbeck is a much better writer than I am, so I’ll use his words in my review: “I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one… . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil… . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?”
  
  As I read this book, I couldn’t help feeling the strangest sense of deja vu. I’ve thought many things, privately, that I filed away in my brain and thought I’d never think again. These were secret thoughts, that I thought were mine alone, and the reason I kept them secret was because I was too afraid to share them. Afraid, because I thought them, and after thinking them I immediately wished that I hadn’t. But these thoughts did not belong to me: Steinbeck thought them first, and he was not afraid, and he wrote them down.
  
  Now, I feel less afraid. Now, I feel more human.

• Eat, Pray, Love

  ⭐ 2/5

  I wanted to like this. Really. I didn’t expect it to be particularly good, but I love yoga almost as much as I love travelling, and I mostly travel so that I eat as many foreign delicacies as possible, so it sounded up my alley.
  
  People have complained that Gilbert is spoiled and self-centered, which is certainly true. This isn’t a deal breaker for me, though. After all, Proust wrote thousands of semi-autobiographical pages whilst hanging out in his bedroom, and I’m happy enough to read that. I don’t expect writers to be people I’d like to be friends with: most of the time, the crazy and unstable ones are the most interesting.
  
  My issue with Gilbert is that she’s not particularly insightful. Reading Eat, Pray, Love was an experience akin to eavesdropping on someone else’s conversation while riding the subway: “Oh my God, and like, in Italy, the food was sooooooo good. I had, like, such good pizza. And yoga, is like, so enlightening, and like so spiritual. And I totally always knew I’d go back to Indonesia. It was so life-changing and stuff.”

• Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, #3)

  ⭐ 1/5

  This is a book about a teenage girl that constantly has to deal with supernatural creatures:
  
  
  
  She spends a lot of time hanging out with a werewolf:
  
  
  
  She’s also desperate to bang her hot vampire boyfriend:
  
  
  
  Unfortunately, the only humor here comes from Bella’s extreme stupidity and the beautiful blandness of all her (tame) vampire friends. Anyway, this read like yet another fan-fiction version of a story that doesn’t exist, but not in a meta-fictional, Borges sort of way.

• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

  ⭐ 3/5

  There’s a short scene in [b:The Lord of the Rings|33|The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3)|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1411114164s/33.jpg|3462456] in which Bilbo says “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” This pretty much describes the way I feel most of the time. I don’t think I’m alone, either: it seems that most people have far too much to do, and not enough time in which to do it.
  
  Essentialism is a short book (I read most of it on a flight from Omaha to Salt Lake City) with a fairly simple message: we should be doing less, not more. We should say no more often, so that we can say yes to the things that matter. These are all certainly true, and they’re also things I’ve been working on since my early twenties, when I realized that the busy game was a stupid game to play.
  
  You probably know the busy game. It’s not such a fun game. You pretty much get a group of people together. Then one person says that they stayed up all night sending emails. After this, the next person says that they actually woke up at 5:30 so that they could get to the office by 6:30. The next person tries to one-up the previous person in whatever way they can muster, sometimes by doing all this while training for a marathon, sometimes by writing a novel, sometimes by just not sleeping. Here’s what I think about this game:
  
  
  
  I know I’ve found my people when I talk to the ones who play a different game. The lazy game. This is the game where you work smarter, not harder. These are the people who automate their busywork so that they can spend less time working. They figure out which “priorities” aren’t actually important, and ignore them with impunity. They’re not the ones playing the busy game, because they’re spending more time talking about the books they’re reading and the hikes they’ve been taking and the actual life they’ve been living.
  
  Anyway, Essentialism succeeds in that it points out that we should really be focusing on the things that are actually essential. However, it fails in providing concrete recommendations for how to do this. It’s an enlightening manifesto, but I frequently got frustrated when the recommendations were to “simply” say you’re not going to do things your manager asks you to do. It seems to me that this obsession with busyness comes from societal norms and expectations, and those are hard to just reject. I think this is an interesting book, but it’s really more about philosophy and less about strategies you can use to put it into action. For that, I’d recommend books about mindfulness meditation.

• Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace

  ⭐ 4/5

  As it turns out, David Foster Wallace was a pretty relatable guy. That sentence should strike me as jointly self-aggrandizing and portentous, but I’d rather believe that D.T. Max vividly captured Wallace’s personal and intellectual essence in his biography of the late writer. Of course, having never met David Foster Wallace, I have no basis for substantiating this claim, but it seems to have a feeling of truthiness to it, so I’ll let it slide.
  
  Digression: I have always wished to engage in an exchange with a grammar Hitler Youth* about my use of the word portentous. In this fictional conversation, the so-called grammarian tells me that I mistyped pretentious. I duly reply by providing a definition of the word portentous (of or like a portent, where portent indicates a sign or warning that something, especially something momentous or calamitous, is likely to happen, at least in current usage). I explicate further that said grammarian was pretentious in his assumption that I, in my Flaubertesque obsession with finding le mot juste, somehow misspoke. This exchange, disappointingly enough, has yet to occur.
  
  Anyway, this is an excellent introduction to the life of David Foster Wallace, especially in that Max manages to take his mental illness seriously without painting a portrait of Wallace qua depressed person. I recommend it to readers of Infinite Jest, in particular, both because Infinite Jest is opaque enough that the examples for the book serve as a nice aide memoire for forgotten passages, and because the writing of Infinite Jest comprises a large portion of the book. I also recommend this book to people who would like to have read Infinite Jest, but who are not willing to put in the effort involved in actually reading it. You know who you are, you flaneur-wannabes in black-framed glasses and bespoke skinny jeans. I’m only trying to help you pretend to be less of a philistine.**
  
  *Most self-styled grammar nazis imagine themselves as high-ranking officials, fleeing Nuremberg for lives of exile in Argentina. In reality, their syntactical stylings place them firmly in the realm of drunk, racist great uncles who embarrass their family members at holiday dinners. In this metaphor, my background as a pragmatics expert allows me to represent America, democracy, and freedom.
  
  **Please don’t try that shit on me, though, because I’ll see right through it. Your target should be the manic pixie dream girl in the corner, the one in the ironic t-shirt who desperately wants to discuss the solo careers of the members of The XX. I am, however, happy to mine my knowledge of quirky independent comedies to help you facilitate a meet cute.

• Eye of the Needle

  ⭐ 4/5

  I found out about the US Army’s Deception Unit, not from high school history (during which I mostly learned that America is awesome) but from an episode of the podcast 99 Percent Invisible, which (broadly) focuses on design. The idea was that German intelligence could be tricked into thinking that the Allies were mounting a huge army to storm Pas-de-Calais, so that they would be surprised by Normandy. They used inflatable tanks and the kind of buildings you’d see on a movie set. They hired artists and writers to make it all seem real and, amazingly, it actually worked.
  
  Turns out, that trickery is the plot of Ken Follett’s “Eye of the Needle,” which is a ridiculously riveting spy thriller. The main character is Faber, a German spy who gets his nickname “The Needle” due to his favored weapon: a thin knife called a stiletto. We’re put in the awkward position of caring about him enough to want him to be happy, even though we also don’t want him to provide intelligence to Hitler about the deception unit, because that could lose the war. We also don’t want him to kill our other (well-drawn) characters.
  
  Of course, you know how this story ends. I even learned this one in high school history: the side America was on won, because America is awesome. But, somehow, Follett manages to ratchet up the suspense and keep the reader worrying that Germany will win. Very impressive.
  
  Follett is now more popular for The Pillars of the Earth and related novels, which focus on cathedral building during the middle ages and other themes not involving spies. Having read The Eye of the Needle, I’m pushing The Pillars of the Earth further up my list. Follett is a master of characterization: he’s able to give you a sense of who a character is in just a few paragraphs. Also, he writes surprisingly good sex scenes. I don’t know how many sex scenes there would be in a book about cathedrals, but I hope there are a few.

• Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)

  ⭐ 3/5

  Although I found Frank Mackey to be a fair compelling character in The Likeness, I have to say that this is not my favorite of Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad novels. As in the others, the writing is beautiful, the mystery is compelling, so I’m surprised that this one kind of fizzled. The Likeness may not have been the most believable book ever, but boy was it fun. Coming off the heels of The Likeness made the paucity of fun in Faithful Place pretty striking.
  
  Most of the problems I have with the book come from the focus on family dynamics, rather than the mystery itself. The problem is that, while Frank Mackey is an interesting and well-sculpted character, his family comes across as a fairly flat rendering of a lower-class catholic family. I’m cool with one-dimensional characters as long as the mystery is fun, and I’m cool with family dramas if the characters are fleshed out. But I felt that French kind of pulled herself in both directions without choosing one, and the book is worse for it.
  
  Faithful Place was still an enjoyable mystery, and I’ll definitely be reading the rest of the books in the series. I just didn’t love this one quite like I loved the rest.

• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

  ⭐ 3/5

  I just sent the following text message to a dear bookish friend of mine, explaining why I wasn’t completely enamored with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:
  
  “But really, Hunter S. Thompson talking about being super high is fun for like, the first two mentions of reptiles everywhere but then it’s like, dude, maybe lay off the mescaline and get a plot or something.”
  
  And, basically, the sums it up, but perhaps here I should expand on that a bit. Fear and Loathing is supposed to be a subversive book about all manner of hallucinogenic drugs, pills, weed, alcohol, and general debauchery. It’s the kind of book that teenagers who wouldn’t dare to actually take LSD might dare to claim as their favorite book, in a vain attempt to convince the kids that are actually into LSD that they are, in fact, cool.
  
  There’s not much of a plot here, and the drug use is reminiscent of anything one might see at any unremarkable summer music festival. The main difference is that the pseudo-Thompson character is supposed to be working in Vegas whilst on all these drugs, which seems like a somewhat bad idea. I mean, mescaline and writing serious journalistic pieces don’t seem like they’d mix particularly well. Then again, hallucinogens would explain some of the more bizarre Fox News interviewing techniques.
  
  Anyway, I’m sure that high school students who want to be cool will continue to read this and then brag about having read this, and no one will really care. But it’s all good, because eventually these high schoolers will turn into college students who might be able to participate in actual Vegas trips, where they will discover that what actually happens in Vegas is a lot more interesting and unpredictable than this quasi-counterculture pseudo-intellectual bullshit.

• Feed

  ⭐ 2/5

  I read this one to see if my students might like it. The internet is, overall, a pretty stimulating place, and generally it fits in your pocket. Many adults that I know have a difficult relationship with technology: it’s useful, but hugely distracting and often a source of intense stress. High school students feel similarly, and many of them confide that they wish they were more capable of unplugging. Frustratingly, with so many pushes for technology in education, students are completely inundated by technology both at home and school. It’s difficult for teachers to watch students become addicted to technology, especially since we often (unnecessarily) force them use these same technologies in class, despite the lack of any real, pedagogical value.
  
  Anyway, Feed takes this uneasy dependence we have on technology quite a few steps further. In the future world of Feed, everyone’s brain is implanted with a device that has them constantly connected. They chat with each other inside their heads and generally surf an in-brain internet whilst constantly being bombarded with advertising. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t go well. It’s an interesting idea, but with extraordinarily poor execution. Since I started teaching and reading relatively more young adult books (a genre I generally dislike), I’ve been somewhat shocked that such bad writing gets published without significant editing. Exhibit A:
  
  “Everyone is supersmart now. You can look things up automatic, like science and history, like if you want to know which battles of the Civil War George Washington fought in and shit.”
  
  As you can see, the writing is terrible, and it only gets worse from here. Still, the ideas could definitely start a dialogue between teens and their peers, parents, or mentors. This is a 2.5 star read for me, but I might keep a copy around just for discussion purposes.

• Foundation

  ⭐ 3/5

  I really wanted to love this book. It’s a classic, after all, and it has an interesting premise. In a parallel to the fall of the Roman Empire, the Galactic Empire is doomed to fall. It cannot be stopped, but, if the correct steps are taken, the resulting dark ages can be limited to a period of “only” 1000 years. These are predictions from psychohistory, which uses statistical analysis to predict the future.
  
  The scientist in me wants to stop here and point out that the quality of an inferential statistical analysis will only be as good as the data. Garbage in = garbage out. Asimov doesn’t explain where these data come from; he only points to complicated mathematics. But I digress.
  
  The premise is interesting, but the execution is poor. Over the course of the book, we’re introduced to a large number of characters, most of whom are unlikeable and one-dimensional. Worse, the writing can only be described as lazy. This is a particularly egregious crime for Asimov, who was famously well-read, and should have known better.
  
  Foundation was enjoyable, don’t get me wrong. However, I must call it what it is: good genre fiction, but nothing that can stand on it’s own based on literary merit.

• Gardens of the Moon (The Malazan Book of the Fallen, #1)

  ⭐ 5/5

  I don’t know why everyone talks about this book being so difficult to read.
  
  Sure, Infinite Jest is challenging, with the massive amounts of footnotes and obscure references and esoteric vocabulary; I finished that book feeling like I’ve got all the eloquence of Ron Burgundy. Reading Ulysses sometimes feels like tossing the pieces to every puzzle you own together in a trash bag, mixing them around, getting really drunk, then trying to put all the puzzles together on your living room floor. I’m convinced that Proust may have been in cahoots with a time traveler who slipped him an early version of a computer whose only working function was string concatenation.
  
  Gardens of the Moon is more like watching The Usual Suspects, or Reservoir Dogs, or Twin Peaks: at the beginning, you have no idea what’s going on, but if you just go with it the story will build itself around you and you’ll feel smart because you figured it out.
  
  To be fair, that kind of storytelling just doesn’t appeal to everyone. Taking as evidence the inordinate amount of times I’ve been asked by a friend in a movie theater “what’s happening?” even though we’re both watching the movie for the first time and I also have no idea what’s happening which is why I’ve decided to just keep watching, so please stop bothering me, some people have an easier time with uncertainty than others. If you’re cool with Naomi Watts being both Betty and Diane simultaneously, you might like Gardens of the Moon. If you think Bladerunner is better with the voiceover, then maybe this book isn’t for you.
  
  Actually, I was surprised to experience a cozy sense of nostalgia in being left in the dark. When I was little, a day off of school meant watching Days of Our Lives with my mom. I would watch the characters do all these things, with no information about their motivation and backstory. I would have to build my understanding by piecing together their actions. And, when I figured it out, it felt good. But I haven’t had that experience in a long time. In the days of Netflix and Hulu and HBO Go, my default mode is to start from the very beginning, and shows rarely ask me to puzzle things out.
  
  To come back to Gardens of the Moon, I think what appealed to me about this book was that alienation felt like a novel experience. And, I don’t know why, but I liked it. So bring on the next nine books.

• Girl, Interrupted

  ⭐ 3/5

  This could have been more interesting than it was. If you’re expecting a story about what it feels like to deal with madness, or how one copes with that, you’ll have to go elsewhere. This book explores madness in a surface manner: it talks about the trappings of madness, and details some vignettes about life in a mental institute. Don’t expect anything more than that.

• Goddess of the Night

  ⭐ 1/5

  Apparently today is the day wherein I go back in time and review books of my youth. One of my friends was obsessed with this series in high school, and forced me to read this drivel. I mostly remembered that this book made me want to have my own magical powers, so that I could transfigure the book into a sharp object and gouge out my eyes in some sort of tragic, Oedipal act. Because even at 15, I was already a snobby asshole who had read the entire [b:Oedipus Cycle|1540|The Oedipus Cycle Oedipus Rex / Oedipus at Colonus / Antigone|Sophocles|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328876438s/1540.jpg|5672] and knew that most paranormal young adult fiction was worthless.

• Gone Girl

  ⭐ 4/5

  So here’s some advice: try not to marry someone if you don’t know what they’re capable of. That’s not a spoiler. That’s not even bad advice.
  
  This book ended up surprising me. I don’t think I can say too much without giving something away. I can say that the review I had been crafting in my mind halfway through reading this book did not end up being a good review for the book I actually read. Take from that what you will.
  
  I will definitely keep my eye on Flynn, and I may pick up one of her previous books next time I head home to visit my folks in California. Definitely a better-than-average beach read.
  
  WARNING: There are spoilers in the comments.

• Good Dirt

  ⭐ 4/5

  Good Dirt is both an examination of a family heeling from trauma and an exploration of heirlooms as totems for family history. It’s ambitious, and author Charmaine Wilkerson manages to pull it off.
  
  As someone who grew up in the art world, I thought I was fairly knowledgeable. Turns out, I had no idea about the ceramic artwork made by enslaved Americans. These are functional pieces that are also quietly subversive. The history is fascinating, and I’m glad that Wilkerson’s book brings attention to this area of Black art history.

• Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

  ⭐ 5/5

  Unicorns. Consciousness. Paperclips.
  
  It’s hard for me to describe Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, except to say that it’s a rare cerebral page-turner. Murakami is incomparable, and this is certainly the mostly tightly structured and creative of his books that I have read so far.

• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2)

  ⭐ 5/5

  My 2014 reread of Harry Potter continues with the second book in the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Again, I don’t think it will be particularly effective for me to actually attempt to review the book, both because almost everyone has read it, and I’m far too biased anyway. So, as with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, I’ll just type until I feel done typing, and the consider that my review.
  
  The Chamber of Secrets has never been my favorite Harry Potter book: in fact, it became my least favorite when there were only two books in the series, and remained in last place throughout. It’s not that it’s not good, though. As an unabashed fan of Potter, I’m still of the opinion that a “bad” Harry Potter book is still pretty great. Still, CoS has quite a few things that annoy me: Dobby, Hermione’s longish absence, Harry’s exasperating ennui about not being enough of a Gryffindor, and spiders. I hate spiders.
  
  Surprisingly, I didn’t get too annoyed by those things this time around. Maybe I’m becoming too nostalgic for my own good, or Dobby is less obnoxious than I thought he was. Regardless, I enjoyed this reread more than expected. I’m also happy that I’ve finished rereading the more juvenile first two books, and I’m now ready for the (much meatier) Prisoner of Azkaban.

• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7)

  ⭐ 5/5

  Harry Potter, in what is supposed to be his final year at Hogwarts, has only almost certain death to look forward to. The magical world has become unsafe, invaded by death eaters, the loyal servants of he-who-must-not-be-named. Somehow, 17 year old Harry and his friends, Hermione and Ron, must stop Voldemort from taking over their world.
  
  To destroy Voldemort, Harry must first find and destroy the horcruxes, but he doesn’t know where to start on this seemingly impossible task. Ron and Hermione follow him through difficult terrain, biding their time in secret until they can confront Voldemort at last.
  
  J.K. Rowling, the master story-teller of our time, weaves a narrative that is exciting and fast paced, making Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows impossible to put down. All those who have shared in Harry’s previous triumphs and tribulations need to read this book, for the closure of seeing how the story will end, and who will survive…

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, # 1)

  ⭐ 5/5

  In 2014, I’m rereading Harry Potter, again, for the umpteenth time, and writing about my experiences.
  
  What can you say about a book that you’ve read over and over again, countless times, for more than a decade?
  
  I can’t review the content of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, anymore than I can review my mother’s face or the back of my hand. Some things are just too personal to write about critically. So, I’ll do the only thing I can do: I’ll write a story.
  
  My paternal grandmother passed away when I was in eighth grade. When my family found out, we took the first plane from Los Angeles to Houston, to get her affairs in order. For my parents, I’m sure this was an eventful and stressful time; I, on the other hand, was completely bored. I was away from the skating rink, which meant that I suddenly had more free time than usual. I didn’t have any homework to do, couldn’t call my friends long-distance, couldn’t even practice the trumpet. After a few too many games of solitaire on my Uncle’s (fancy) laptop, I asked my mom for something to do.
  
  She handed me a book I’d never heard of before: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. She had heard good things about it, and there was even a sequel! Now, I was 13 going on 30, and I regularly turned up my nose at young adult novels. At this point, I was more interested in Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and Michael Crichton: I didn’t have time for that kid stuff. But I didn’t have any other reading material, so I reluctantly picked up Harry Potter.
  
  To say I was blown away would be an understatement. The best word to use is transported: for the first time in a long time I felt as if I were actually in another world. I worried when Harry put on the sorting cap, and wished he would end up in Gryffindor. I rooted for him during the quidditch matches, and gasped when he found the three-headed dog. I was honestly shocked when Snape turned out to be a good guy. This was supposed to be a children’s story, right? How did that plot point get past me?
  
  When we arrived in Washington D.C. for my grandmother’s burial at Arlington, I asked my mom to buy the second book. Instead, she started reading the first book aloud to my younger brother, who was nine at the time. I expected to be annoyed, but it turns out I was just excited: excited to be at Hogwarts again, to hear the story, to experience the magic. And so, my Harry Potter obsession began, and it defined most of my adolescence. Which is why I can’t review this book, because it is who I am, in some ineffable way. All I can do is thank J.K. Rowling. For everything.

• Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal

  ⭐ 4/5

  I don’t really use Twitter. This isn’t out of ignorance or confusion: I’ve been pretty well informed about Twitter since the beginning, given the amount of press it got in places like Lifehacker, and I’ve definitely signed up for the service more than twice. The issue for me has always been that it’s fundamental purpose has never seemed clearly defined: is it for personal status updates to let friends and family know what you’re doing? Should you use it as a promotional tool to direct people from Twitter to your website? Does it work best as a news service? Of course, the answer to all of these things is yes, which has left me feeling that Twitter was a little too scattershot for my tastes.
  
  Hatching Twitter, a narrative non-fiction account of the creation of the service that reminded me, more than once, of [b:The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal|6326920|The Accidental Billionaires The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal|Ben Mezrich|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320527444s/6326920.jpg|6512514], reveals that no one at Twitter could really agree on what it was for, either. Jack Dorsey always saw it as a status update system, a way of letting people know what you’re doing. Evan Williams, on the other hand, thought of it as microblogging. Twitter seemed to grow autonomously, creating it’s own conventions with @ messages and hashtags, well beyond the concept the founders set out for the site. The book is an interesting look at how technologies sometimes seem to control and change themselves.
  
  This is also the story of personal in-fighting between the myriad founders, CEO’s, and board members of Twitter. It’s all super interesting, although I get the feeling that the story was quite a bit more nuance than Bilton makes it out to be. What does seem clear is that Twitter suffered from executives with unclear and undefined roles, who had major issues trying to monetize the service. It’s all outlined in a page-turnery way, which is fun.
  
  Who knows, maybe I’ll attempt to tweet about this book review. Maybe it will be the first in a long line of tweets. Or maybe not. As Bilton points out, more than once, the people behind Twitter desperately wanted to feel connected to others, and shouting into what feels like a cavernous abyss probably won’t help there, even if your words echo back to you.

• Head in the Cloud: Why Knowing Things Still Matters When Facts Are So Easy to Look Up

  ⭐ 2/5

  I enjoy feeling superior to others.
  
  Even as a kid, basking in my own precocity was a favored activity. When I got too old to be considered a prodigy, I coped by developing an encyclopedic knowledge of classic rock acts (discographies, influences, associated acts, etc.; bet you didn’t know that Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck each had a short stint as the lead guitarist for The Yardbirds). I’ve got degrees like crazy, and of course I graduated Phi Beta Kappa. I’ve felt insecure about a lot of things, but never intellectual prowess.
  
  William Poundstone starts Head in the Cloud: Why Knowing Things Still Matters When Facts Are So Easy to Look Up with a list of facts (mostly trivial) that millennials purportedly don’t know. I knew most of these facts, probably because I spend much of my time reading books (or getting high and looking stuff up on Wikipedia). Superiority points maintained.
  
  Here’s the thing, though: Poundstone seems to just think of random facts, and quizzes people on how well they know them doing online surveys. He doesn’t have any a priori reason to select any of these facts, nor does he submit his data to appropriate quantitative analysis to see whether his results are meaningful. In some sections, he seems profoundly confused himself. He maligns research in university settings for relying too much on a single, self-selected, demographic (college students), then talks about how great it is to rely on a single, self-selected, demographic of users of online survey websites.
  
  Case in point: there’s a bizarre anecdote in the beginning of the book about how Apple never announces the iPhone’s technical specifications, and that the Random Access Memory on the iPhone ranks in the “tens of gigabytes” range. Of course, Apple does announce specs: my iPhone 6s Plus boasts 2GB of RAM (a far cry from tens of gigabytes). Poundstone asks his online survey crew to estimate how much memory the average iPhone has, but says “I didn’t specify what type of memory (the results make it all too clear that this wouldn’t have mattered much).” But it does matter: as a person interested in tech, I know that many people confuse storage space with memory, and I also know that most of my computers have had orders of magnitude more hard drive storage space than RAM. It’s a huge difference, and without being specific his results are completely meaningless. Ironically, the whole section reads like it was written by someone who was so sure of his incorrect knowledge that he didn’t bother to verify by actually looking it up.
  
  Unfortunately, as the book continues, it becomes all too clear that Poundstone suffers from exactly the same thing he rails against: despite being less-than-knowledgeable about behavioral research methods, he’s overly-confident in his ability to utilize them. He doesn’t seem to even understand the problem with using ad-hoc multiple-comparisons and statistical chance to highlight data that he cherrypicks to support conclusions he had already drawn in the absence of data. His list of sources is also shockingly small, with few studies lending supporting evidence to his idle musings. This book certainly presents a powerful argument that knowledge is important: without an understanding of survey design and statistical analysis, I might not have recognized that this book is complete bullshit.

• Heart of Darkness

  ⭐ 5/5

  I was assigned this book more than once in high school, and more than once in college. I never read it. Sorry English teachers/professors. I’m not sure why I didn’t read it, as I love Apocalypse Now. I just didn’t.
  
  Right now, I’m kicking myself, because I read it in one sitting, and it was awesome. Evocative and meandering, it truly paints a portrait of a journey.

• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

  ⭐ 4/5

  I wanted so badly to love this. And I liked it, but I did not love it. This book was supposed to be the answer I needed to the question I keep asking myself: “WTF, America?” Because I’m still having trouble following the plot to the season, and possibly series, finale of my once-fine nation. And, while Hillbilly Elegy is a solid memoir, it’s not the book I wanted it to be.
  
  NPR kept touting Hillbilly Elegy as an excellent explanatory book, bound to give readers insight into what happened in November. They oversold it. At its heart, Hillbilly Elegy is a memoir of a working class white kid. It’s an interesting memoir, which points out some pretty serious flaws in the way our country deals with the split between rural and urban, and the great class divide. The writing is competent, if a little uninspired, and Vance only interjects his political beliefs occasionally. We don’t necessarily agree politically, but he makes good points and I see where he’s coming from. We both agree that there are problems, but we have slightly different priorities when it comes to fixing them.
  
  Are people really so out of touch that it comes as a surprise that life sucks for working class white people, that class and race are dissociable variables? Given my time at an elite, private graduate school, I’m inclined to say yes. I was consistently shocked by the wealth of others, not understanding how they could find the funds to jet off to Europe while I made pots of beans to tide me over until the next paycheck. Being prohibited from having a second job just made the gap between people who could count on their trust funds and those who had student loans breathing down their neck all the more apparent. My favorite section of Hillbilly Elegy was Vance’s depiction of how isolating graduate school can be, and how difficult it is to navigate an institution that feels fundamentally foreign. He had never met an Ivy League graduate before he went to law school, and I had never met one until I got to grad school. When I told my high school Spanish teacher I wanted to go to Stanford, she told me not to bother applying. She told me Stanford wasn’t for people like me.
  
  Pet peeve: I wish people would stop using the phrase “California Elites.” We’ve got about 40 million people here, and we’re not all elites. Our poverty rate is 23.5%, according to a cursory glance at Wikipedia, which also relates that this is the highest in the country. I’ve walked the halls of a failing high school, watched kids die of opiate overdoses, come to view jail as something of a revolving door for people from my hometown. People escape towns with limited opportunity in California, just like they do in Appalachia. And, once we get into those rarefied circles (the ones where we know we don’t belong), we just want to pass. I get an advantage being from California, at least amongst people who aren’t actually from here. I describe a cute little mountain town, and people don’t immediately think meth. But that just puts more pressure on me to keep up the charade that my town was happy and suburban and filled with opportunities like everyone else’s. It’s exhausting.
  
  Anyway, if you really are one of the so-called “coastal elites,” then maybe you should read this book. Maybe you should be aware that access to opportunities isn’t equal. Maybe you should know that some people come from less wealthy communities, and the advice we get (Go to state schools! Focus on sports so you can get a scholarship! Join the military to pay for college!) kind of varies from actual, good advice (take advantage of the generous scholarships given by elite universities, prioritize your classes and study for the SAT, and don’t join the military because the on-campus recruiter sold it as your only option). And maybe, just maybe, you’ll walk away understanding what millions of Americans are up against, and that will inspire you to try to make things change.
  

• Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

  ⭐ 1/5

  This may have been the worst work of purported nonfiction I have ever read. I actually described this book to a colleague by comparing it to a conversation between a group of smart people who each just took a large bump of cocaine. It’s impassioned, but rambling, filled with speculation but lacking any coherent argument. In short, it’s a mess.
  
  Generally, I dislike appeals to authority, but I feel I should preface this by saying that I am an expert in cognitive science, and I’ve been working with data for well over a decade. Unfortunately, the way cognitive science research is presented in this book is not grounded within the scope of the empirical findings. Indeed, I often found myself scratching my head trying to figure out how Harari got from, say, Gazzaniga’s research on split-brain patients to the idea that we’re all going to be ruled by computer-algorithm overlords and rich cyborgs.
  
  The main problem is that Harari writes as if his ideas are grounded in reality, when, in truth, they’re pure fiction. If you’re interested in speculative futurism, go watch Star Trek or read The Expanse. And, if you’re looking for a discussion of the future grounded in current scientific research, do yourself a favor and give this incoherent piece of drivel a hard pass.

• I Am Charlotte Simmons

  ⭐ 2/5

  I Am Charlotte Simmons was published in 2004, which was the year in which I matriculated at my alma mater. I guess that makes Charlotte and I the same age (except that Charlotte is, obviously, a shadowy, fictional stereotype of someone my age and, thus, not real). Charlotte Simmons is a sheltered, smart girl from a small town in the mountains of North Carolina, who ends up at a top university and is shocked by what she sees there. I was also a sheltered smart girl from a small town in the mountains (of Southern California. In case you were unaware, California is also overrun with idiotic Republican whack job Jesus freaks, at least once you get away from the coast and into the shit-hole provincial towns. They’re probably spouting nonsense about the glories of gun-ownership via semi-literate Facebook posts as we speak).
  
  All this is to say that Charlotte and I are both girls from small towns who got into prestigious universities, only to find that they didn’t fit the Elysian vision of intellectual nirvana we had created for ourselves when we imagined what college would be like. The main difference between us is that, while I was disappointed, I didn’t find this particularly surprising.
  
  But wait, you may say, it’s unfair for you, as a reader, to hate on a book because it doesn’t mirror your own experiences! And this is true, to a point, except that Wolfe wrote a book rife with inaccuracies about what life was like for college students in 2004. This paragraph serves as a running inventory of specific things Tom Wolfe got wrong: Charlotte’s roommate brings a fax machine with her, and sets it up in her dorm room (??). Wolfe describes cell phones as if they’re super fancy gadgets possessed only by the elite. A fraternity brother asks to borrow porn videos from the other brothers, instead of searching for porn on the internet like a normal human being. Wolfe forgets that we’re a bit too young for Animal House and Swingers to be the defining films our youth (although he is correct in assuming that we all watched Old School). I’m pretty sure we’re not the first generation to forgo last names when introducing ourselves. Rap and reggae were not the only genres people listened to (I mean, isn’t Belle and Sebastain one of the prototypical college bands? Also, reggae has always been pretty niche). Britney Spears peaked when Oops…I did it Again came out in 2000. The Stairmaster may have been big in 80’s, but young women have been partial to the elliptical since at least the early 2000’s. No cool girl would willingly call herself a “douche” (or a trekkie, for that matter).
  
  To be fair, Wolfe got a few things right. Often, my classmates would proffer answers in class that were so idiotic, I couldn’t help but wonder how they had gotten into the university in the first place. Athletes really are treated like gods, even at schools with fairly middling athletic programs. Also, we played a ton of drinking games.
  
  Nevertheless, the millennial cultural narrative doesn’t align with Wolfe’s story of an edenic fall into a tawdry, quasi-intellectual underbelly populated by hormone-crazed sex drones. In reality, we went to college, like our parents before us, we studied, we graduated, we attempted to obtain gainful employment. Things would be a lot easier if previous generations hadn’t managed to screw up both the economy and the environment, but that’s a different story. With Charlotte Simmons, it seems to me that Tom is not so much a prescient social commentator as he is a self-indulgent writer who cried wolf.
  
  The main problem with I Am Charlotte Simmons is that that Wolfe fails to satirize the (very real) issues of entitlement and lack of racial and economic diversity on prestigious college campuses. Instead, he adds his voice to the cyclical, and ultimately untenable, diatribe against “kids these days,” forgetting that we’ve been there before, and the overhyped prognostications about the end of polite society have consistently proved to be, shockingly, anticlimactic.
  
  Two stars: one, because the writing is remarkable (this is Tom Wolfe, after all. Dude knows how to write). Two, because there’s a great description of the horror that is the fast-casual dining experience.

• I Am Legend

  ⭐ 4/5

  This little novella is freaking awesome. It’s a story about vampires (real vampires, the scary kind. Not the kind that sparkle and bang teenagers.), but it’s much more than a story about vampires. Indeed, it’s an honest look at loneliness, drive, alcoholism, and what it actually feels like to be the last person alive on Earth.

• I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

  ⭐ 4/5

  “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” - Walt Whitman
  
  I’m a priori inclined to like bacteria. My favorite is Oenococcus Oeni, even though that’s not the only bacteria that causes the poorly-named malolactic fermentation during winemaking (malolactic conversion is better jargon, but I digress). No one really extols the virtues of super young red wine (I mean, besides those marketing masters in Beaujolais, but I’m firmly of the opinion that, if the terroir’s worth tastin’, skip the carbonic maceration). Straight out of the fermentation tank, red wine tastes like tart apples, which is not generally what you want. Introduce a little Oenococcus Oeni, and the apple taste softens up into butter. And I don’t trust people who don’t like butter.
  
  Northern California is apparently swarming with hippies, such as myself, who imagine that we’re all interconnected cosmic beings embracing within a universal stew (or maybe cheese plate, we do a lot of wine and cheese up here, and I’ve been driving through redwoods for a few hours so it’s a little hard for me to come up with a fitting metaphor). I Contain Multitudes is not only poetically written, but it deepens the feeling that we’re all in this together. It’s kind of like that episode of The Magic School Bus where the gang shrinks to the size of a blood cell and floats around the human body, but for educated grown ups who also listen to NPR.

  
  I recommend I Contain Multitudes, especially for people who want a more nuanced explanation of the hygiene hypothesis, fecal transplants, probiotics, and other bacteria-related stuff being reported in the news these days. Also recommended for stoners who want to think about the fact that we live in cities, but we also contain cities of bacteria, and the bacteria are floating in our bodies, and we’re all fucking floating in space.

• If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

  ⭐ 5/5

  Sometimes, when I get distracted from what I’m reading (which is more often than I’d like to admit), I sample the first chapters of other books. Some are so sublime that I jump in, feet first, and barely come up for air until I’ve finished the whole book ([b:Middlemarch|19089|Middlemarch|George Eliot|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1386924110s/19089.jpg|1461747]). Other first chapters I return to time and time again, without really feeling the need to read the rest of the book ([b:Moby-Dick; or, The Whale|153747|Moby-Dick; or, The Whale|Herman Melville|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327940656s/153747.jpg|2409320], which I did finish eventually). Most often, I sample a first chapter and file it away, so that I can pick up the book again when I’m in the apposite mood.
  
  If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler is a collection of beginnings, with a parallel story that explains the beginnings in a way that makes more sense than you might imagine. Yes, this is meta-fiction, and I think that someone who doesn’t really enjoy that might be disappointed. But if postmodernism is your thing, you’ll probably enjoy this one. Perhaps unsurprisingly, mine edition became heavily annotated.
  
  Of course, beginnings are only fun for so long. After reading just the first chapters of a bunch of different books, I start to feel a little dirty, like I’ve done something I’m not proud of. The same thing happened here: I’m glad to be back to reading novels that start, then have a middle, then end. That’s really the way it’s meant to be.

• In a Dark, Dark Wood

  ⭐ 4/5

  Kati recommended this one to me awhile back; I believe I told her I was in need of a book that would allow me to turn off my mind without reminding me that most light reads are written for people far less intelligent than I. I’m probably paraphrasing here, but I imagine my comments were similarly snobbish and out of touch with reality. Anyway, I promptly ordered the book from a seller on Amazon, felt satisfied by the whole ordeal, and put it in a basket to read later. I guess later is now.
  
  In a Dark, Dark Wood is about a bachelorette party gone wrong. This is quite wonderful, as I too feel a general sense of malaise surrounding bachelorette parties. More specifically, I disdain the current cultural milieu, in which I’m expected to spend hundreds of dollars (and my precious days off) to travel somewhere middling, only to be told that I must wear black and that I must order rounds of shots and dance to insipid pop songs whilst surrounded by strobe lights, when I’d really rather stay in with a book and go to bed early. Also, there are rarely strippers. You’d think that, after going to all that trouble, someone would at least pay a hot man to pretend to be a firefighter and then take off his spandex uniform while we all drink Manhattans and watch.
  
  (Dear married friends: it was, of course, an absolute honor to attend your wedding festivities, and I’m so happy that I was able to celebrate the commitment you made to each other! Your marriage is an inspiration to me, unless it ended in divorce, in which case I never liked that asshole anyway.)
  
  In a Dark, Dark Wood takes the unease that some many of us feel about the three-ring circus the wedding industry has become and examines just how far this can go. The world is wonderfully atmospheric, and populated with psychologically interesting characters. The result is a smart thriller that actually kept me guessing until the big reveal.

• In the Lake of the Woods

  ⭐ 5/5

  “The secrets would remain secret - the things he’d seen, the things he’d done. He would repair what he could, he would endure, he would go from year to year without letting on that there were tricks.” - Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods
  
  “There’s no one thing that’s true. It’s all true.” - Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
  
  In the Lake of the Woods is a mystery without a resolution. That’s not a spoiler: O’Brien makes this aspect of the book clear from the beginning. There are the references to magic tricks, to things no one knows. Kathy Wade vanished, and it’s up to the audience to figure out the trick.
  
  That sounds frustratingly post-modern, but it isn’t. In the Lake of the Woods is a tightly constructed thriller. It’s deeply disturbing, but also strangely satisfying. It feels as if there’s a climax, a denouement, but I’d be hard pressed to tell you what they were. Instead, I’ll try to figure out how O’Brien pulled these sleight of hand tricks over on a scrupulous reader such as myself. The magician, of course, never tells.

• In the Shadow of the Empress: The Defiant Lives of Maria Theresa, Mother of Marie Antoinette, and Her Daughters

  ⭐ 3/5

  This was a well written, and exceptionally fun, historical account of Maria Theresa and three of her daughters.
  
  I wanted to give it four stars, but I can’t. That’s because Nancy Goldstone asserts that two of Marie Antoinette’s children were sired by Count Axel von Fersen as historical fact. However, this is speculation, and feels academically dishonest.
  
  Now I’m not a (an?) historian, but I’ve never seen definitive evidence that Louis Charles and Sophie were fathered by Fersen. As far as I can tell, the only “source” for this assertion is a poorly-received work of popular history by Evelyn Farr. Even Marie Antoinette’s affair with Fersen is speculative. Given his status at court and the surviving correspondence between him and the Queen, it does seem likely that they were involved romantically, but the evidence isn’t definitive.
  
  Anyway, as a casual reader I don’t mind Goldstone editorializing in the footnotes. But I find baseless claims to be intellectually unethical. And I think it’s particularly important to combat misinformation during these obnoxiously interesting times in which we live.
  
  To end on a high note, Maria Carolina is one of the most interesting historical figures I never learned about in school.

• Inferno (Robert Langdon, #4)

  ⭐ 3/5

  You know how, occasionally, at a barbecue or other similar social gathering, someone will maliciously bring a bag of Cheetos Puffs? And you know that eating them is a terrible, terrible idea: I mean, the tasty facade is mostly just cheesy, and below that they’re pretty much made up of nonsense. But this strange force grips you and compels you towards the puffs. The first one goes down easy, so you grab another, and then another, and then another. You want to stop, but you keep saying to yourself “just one more.”
  
  What happens is, by the end of the night, you’ve finished the bag. Of course, you feel completely ashamed of yourself, but also strangely satisfied. After all, everyone needs a little cheese covered nonsense in their lives, at least from time to time.
  
  Reading a Dan Brown novel is pretty much exactly like that. Minus the orange fingers.

• Infinite Jest

  ⭐ 4/5

  Um yeah so hmm.
  
  Alright, so every. single. person. that I’m friends with on Goodreads who has read Infinite Jest has reviewed this book with some substance in hand, and now that I’ve finished it literally less than a minute ago I can kind of see why, so excuse me while I take a few sips of my hard apple cider.
  
  Okay.
  
  Infinite Jest is the name of a film that is so entertaining that it causes viewers to go into a stupor that leads to their eventual death. If you think that sounds interesting and you want to read the book to find out more about the film, well, don’t bother. Infinite Jest, the film, is a MacGuffin, so you won’t really get any explanation. Extrapolate that, and you can get a clearer image of what constitutes Infinite Jest, the book.
  
  True story: I am as into film as I am into books. I hope this doesn’t freak the literati out, because I’m not interested in getting my intelligentsia card revoked. I said film, not movies, so it’s not like I’m saying that the latest version of some cut-heavy superhero piece of bullshit is on par with War & Peace, or whatever. What I’m saying is that Rashomon, the film, is at least as culturally important as Rashomon, the short story. If you feel like debating that fact, I urge you to get off the internet and watch the film. It’s less than two hours long. This review can wait.
  
  Anyway, this is the first of just many digressions in this substance-mediated non-linear review, so don’t expect me to link Kurosawa with Infinite Jest, per se. The important thing here is that I feel incapable of reviewing Infinite Jest without comparing it to a few films (hopefully ones that you’ve heard of, and if you haven’t, you should seriously considering adding them to your Netflix queue or whatever).
  
  Mostly, Infinite Jest reminded me of a Buñuel film. Not just any Buñuel film, I mean it’s not like it’s some strange, 1000 page long version of Un Chien Andalou. I’m specifically talking about any of the films from his second French period, but maybe we’ll just make it easier by using Belle de Jour as an example. This easily applies to Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie, if you’re more into that.
  
  
  
  I say Infinite Jest is like a Buñuel film because it’s a picture of society that might make members of said society uncomfortable. But there are also strange, dreamlike sequences that don’t really make sense, except that they kind of do. Also, terrorists. But really awkward terrorists that don’t seem to connect with the rest of the story.
  
  Seriously, I wish I was even half as stylish as Catherine Deneuve.
  
  But actually, the more affecting parts of Infinite Jest revolve around mental illness (mostly, addiction, but I was more impressed by the sections that were about depression). And those sections reminded me of a much more recent film, Melancholia by Lars von Trier:
  
  
  
  Which is about the end of the world, but is mostly about depression, which is paradoxically useful when there really isn’t any hope anymore. And yeah, the Hamlet link between Melancholia and Infinite Jest is something I actively wanted to reference, if you were wondering.
  
  Okay, so those are the good things about Infinite Jest. But, actually, I’m not that smitten with Infinite Jest, in the way that other people seem to be. Mostly, because there are some things that are super freaking annoying about Infinite Jest. First and foremost, David Foster Wallace sets Infinite Jest in a future world that I think is supposed to be zany and amusing and comedically realistic, somewhat like the future of Sleeper:
  
  
  
  But, to this reader, who’s reading this 17 years after it was written, the IJ future doesn’t seem topical or universal or even remotely realistic. Actually, it’s comedic in a campy and ridiculous way. Kind of like the 1993 Stallone vehicle, Demotion Man:
  
  
  
  Which is to say that my major issue with Infinite Jest is that it’s a book that didn’t know what it wanted to be when it grew up. Is it an honest, realistic look at addiction and depression? Is it a zany story about kids in a tennis academy in the future (also, seriously, I can’t think of anything that is less interesting or less-take-seriouslyable than a tennis academy). Is it a surrealistic political thriller involving wheelchair assassins from Quebec? Obviously, DFW couldn’t decide, so he just did all of those things. The result isn’t as “awful” as Harold Bloom claims, but it is incredibly uneven and, frankly, self-indulgent.
  
  (Is it fair for me to call something self-indulgent when I’m writing a rambling review on the internet in which hard apple cider is as important as the work itself? I don’t know, but I do think that next time I’m going to go back to my beloved Ace Joker Cider instead of this Stella Artois stuff. It’s just way too sweet.).
  
  Anyway, the irony of the book is that many of things that DFW tried to do have been done before in the visual medium, but better. I don’t know what director to compare David Foster Wallace to. I think that if Dan Brown:Michael Bay::David Foster Wallace:Federico Fellini. Fellini has gotten a lot of awards and critical acclaim, and it’s not undeserved. But his films don’t resonate with me in the way that, say, the films of Ingmar Bergman or Woody Allen or even Wes Anderson do. Fellini always seemed too stylized, too cool, and that took away from the honesty of his films, even though parts of, say, 8 1/2 are certainly emotionally resonant. So it’s not really my thing, but it’s also pretty good, and I’m glad that I gave it a shot.

• Intern: A Doctor's Initiation

  ⭐ 4/5

  I didn’t expect to relate to Dr. Sandeep Jauhar: he’s a physician, while I’m an (arguably) failed academic who never considered a career in medicine because it didn’t intellectually engaging. Turns out, I’m kind of an asshole, but so is Dr. Jauhar, who got his PhD in Physics from UC Berkeley before becoming a failed academic himself, packing up, and matriculating at Washington University in Saint Louis’ Medical School. His issue with medicine is the same thing that kept me from really thinking about it: he worried about a cookbook career, in which would never really have to do much more than recall some memorized diagnoses. Some reviewers scoff at his existential ennui; I love him all the more for it.
  
  This is probably the appropriate time for me to talk about my unmitigated obsession with medical television shows. I watch them, and then I complain about them because they’re so ludicrous. I mean, have you seen the story arc on Grey’s Anatomy where they do cutting edge research without training or control groups or informed consent. I mean, really! And then they bang in the on call room. I don’t know that much about the lives of doctors, but I can recognize that Grey’s Anatomy is probably not an accurate portrayal.
  
  Anyway, Jauhur doesn’t bang anyone in the on call room, nor does he attempt to glamorize his chosen career in any real way. Instead, he deals with the reality of medicine: its structural issues (which are myriad), its occasional futility, and the joy found in its practice despite its flaws. Jauhar published some of the same ideas in the New York Times during his internship and residency, which is a ballsy and incredibly stupid thing to do. He got a Cardiology fellowship anyway, though, and has continued his advocacy for change in the American health care system.
  
  I’m looking forward to reading Jauhur’s more recent book, Doctored, which considers the issues with health care in more detail. If it’s anything like the detailed discussion of the issues with informed consent in Intern, it’s sure to bring a nuanced argument to the table.

• Into the Wild

  ⭐ 4/5

  This book left me feeling conflicted. It’s well written and thought-provoking: Krakauer’s fondness for the wild shines through each chapter. However, I haven’t encountered a more unlikable protagonist than the doomed hiker, Chris McCandless, since I read [b:On the Road|70401|On the Road|Jack Kerouac|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1355224265s/70401.jpg|1701188]. There’s a parallel between the two books, with naive voyages across the country for some sort of unclear, grand purpose. McCandless reads as the type of person who cares more about long-dead authors than his own, loving parents. Krakauer repeatedly describes him as wildly intelligent, but the snatches of journal entires included in the book reveal a man who was rambling, incoherent, and unstable.
  
  Towards the end of the book, Krakauer imbues in McCandless an individualistic false heroism: he seems to believe that McCandless could make the world a better place just by making himself a “better” (or, at the least, self-sufficient) person. However, giving away all your money is easy when you’ve always had enough, just like it’s easy to be brave when you consider yourself to be invincible. Krakauer is open about the fact that he identifies with McCandless, and this seems to have lead to a lack of objectivity in understanding just how reckless and naive McCandless was. At the end of the day, he wasn’t a hero as much as a risk-taking young man who bit off way more than he could chew.

• Invisible Monsters

  ⭐ 5/5

  In Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk (the master of shock-value fiction) weaves a story that is both quasi-ridiculous and hugely enjoyable. Shannon, the former supermodel who has had half her face blown off, is the perfect narrator, describing the absurdest events as if they happened every day.
  
  Palahniuk gives the reader just enough information along the way to make you read as quickly as you can, begging for more and hoping the story will never end. On more than one occasion, I said “Oh my God!” out loud as I read a shocking paragraph.
  
  As always, Palahniuk’s novel puts a new spin on our notions of beauty, family, and prescription medication. If you’re only going to read one Palahniuk novel (although I don’t know why you would deny yourself like that), this is the one to read.

• It

  ⭐ 5/5

  “We all float down here.” - Pennywise
  
  “Alright, already, we’ll all float on, alright
  Don’t worry even if things end up a bit too heavy
  We’ll all float on, alright.” - Modest Mouse
  
  The threshold between childhood and adulthood feels murky while you’re crossing it. As an adult, it’s hard to remember the last time you turned off the lights downstairs, then ran up the stairs as fast as you could to keep the darkness from chasing you. But there was a last time, wasn’t there?
  
  IT is not a story about an evil clown. While it is a masterwork of eldritch horror, the genre is simply a means to an end. No, IT is at once a Bildungsroman that captures the transition away from childhood, and an examination of the effect of childhood trauma. IT is an ouroboros of a story, which is why it’s going to take me awhile to wrap my head around it.
  
  One idea from IT that fascinates me is how adults forget the things that seemed important to them as children. I’ve experienced the existential crisis of looking through old yearbooks and not recognizing the people I posed with in candid shots. Classmates signed the pages with references to inside jokes that I don’t remember. Facing the fallibility of remembrance is terrifying. That’s part of what makes IT universally scary.

• Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible & Why We Don't Know About Them

  ⭐ 5/5

  So when I bought this book on a whim who knows how long ago, I expected it to be a collection of interesting contradictions in Biblical statements. I thought that Ehrman might do something like contrast 1 Corinthians 14:33 (“For God is not a God of disorder but of peace”) with Matthew 10:34 (“I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword”). Then we’d all get a good laugh out of the ridiculous of it all.
  
  Jesus, Interrupted is not a book about these surface level contradictions. In fact, it was far more compelling than I expected, because Ehrman actually focused on what certain contradictions can teach us about the early Christian church and the historical context. The result was seriously mind-blowing, because the book lead me to doubt whether the bible actually teaches some seemingly foundational ideas, like whether Jesus saw himself as the Messiah or whether the church has any real reason to accept the idea of a holy trinity.
  
  This feels like the correct time for an obligatory disclosure: I am an atheist/humanist who was raised Catholic, so I have no strong ties to metaphysical biblical teachings and I’ve never given serious thought to the idea that the bible could be the inerrant word of God. I sometimes wish that I could be a secular Catholic, because some of the traditions are super fun, but apparently that’s not allowed. Whatev. However, considering that I like literature, I have to admit that the bible is a pretty important historical document (I mean, try to read [b:Moby-Dick; or, The Whale|153747|Moby-Dick; or, The Whale|Herman Melville|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327940656s/153747.jpg|2409320] without biblical background knowledge. I dare you.). Anyway, I thought that I had a fairly decent understanding of the bible, given that I’ve read large swaths of it in a few different contexts. But, as it turns out, I really had no idea.
  
  The cool thing about Jesus, Interrupted is that it’s epistemologically interesting. Ehrman first explains how contradictions in the bible can be found: by reading “horizontally,” which pretty much means reading the same stories as they appear in different gospels, back to back. What happens is that you start to see some weird stuff, like Mathew claiming that Jesus cried out on the cross “My god, my god, why you have forsaken me?” while Luke claims he said “Father into your hands I commit my spirit.” And, if you think about it, the two different gospels are actually pretty irreconcilable, in terms of the type of Jesus that they depict. So a careful reader might think, yo, what’s up with that? If these two gospel writers were both there, and both knew Jesus intimately, then why would they report the event in such completely different ways.
  
  Well, that brings us to the fact that the apostles didn’t actually write the gospels (something that I knew, but that doesn’t seem to be widespread knowledge). And the writers of the bible had different viewpoints. The ways that they switch up the stories can tell us about the viewpoints, but only if we look closely. Through a close reading, with careful attention paid to the contradictions, scholars can get a sense of who the gospel writers were, and why they created the type of christianity that they did. The whole story is completely fascinating.
  
  I recommend this book for everyone, both people of faith and nonbelievers. While it’s true that Erhman is now an agnostic, the contradictions in the bible didn’t cause him to lose his faith, a fact that he repeatedly points out throughout the book (he lost faith because he couldn’t reconcile the amount of suffering in the world with the teachings of Christianity, which he details in [b:God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question-Why We Suffer|1976714|God’s Problem How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question-Why We Suffer|Bart D. Ehrman|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348084856s/1976714.jpg|1980049], which I now want to read). So believers shouldn’t be scared to understand what the bible truly says, although I expect that some (particularly evangelicals) may not be comfortable with this information. Strangely, I feel better about the bible after reading this: it’s clearly the product of humans, but much of the dogma isn’t as clear-cut as I thought it was. I’ll definitely be reading more of Erhman’s books in the future.

• Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine

  ⭐ 4/5

  The Napa Valley is one of the most important wine regions in the world, and it’s true that the wine is bottled poetry. But back before it had enough street cred that convinced suckers like me to spend $40 for a few measly 2-ounce pours, it had to convince the French that California could make more than cloying sweet wines and jugs of wine made with the vile but prolific Alicante Bouschet grape (side note: I’ve only grape as a low percentage blender in Ridge wines, but I really want to try it in larger amounts as it seems like a weird grape, and I like weird).
  
  Taber doesn’t shy away from talking about the more technical aspects of wine-making, which makes me happy: I geek out a lot about malolactic fermentation, and I find taking into account degrees of Brix unrelenting fascinating. If you don’t know what those words mean, then stuff is going to go over your head. So here’s a tasting primer, materials for which you can get at Trader Joe’s for approximately $40.
  
  Malolactic fermentation: grab an apple, some butter, a baguette, a bottle of Jadot Macon Villages Chardonnay (a French unbaked Chardonnay; you can go to a proper wine shop and get Chablis if you’re a baller) and a bottle of Smoking Loon Chardonnay (heavily oaked from California; ballers will want to buy Rombauer, which is a lovely vineyard to visit, especially in fall). Malolactic fermentation changes the flavor and mouthfeel of the wine tremendously. Thus, even philistines should have no trouble learning how to taste for it! During malolactic fermentation, the malic acid, which tastes like apples, converts to lactic acid, which is present in dairy. So, have a bite of the apple, cleanse your palette with the bread, and then taste the Macon Villages for apples. Cool. Now take a tiny little bit of butter and eat it. Yum, butter. Once again, cleanse your palette with bread and then taste the Smoking Loon for butter. You’ll notice that the Smoking Loon feels heavier in your mouth (more like whole milk than skim milk), which is a side effect of ML.
  
  Brix: Grape juice turns boozy when the sugars in the juice are converted into alcohol during primary fermentation. This means that the amount of sugar in the juice is going to constrain the amount of alcohol in the wine: when all the sugar converts to alcohol, creating a dry wine, that’s pretty much as alcoholic as it’s gonna get (unless you fortify it with more booze, like the lovely people in Porto). A winemaker is going to make some important decisions based on the sugar level in the wine, so it’s important to be able to measure it. Degrees of Brix is the measure they use. As the grapes ripen on the vine, they get more sugary, so picking later means more sugar, while picking early means less. But measurement doesn’t stop at harvest: winemakers also measure the sugars to see how the conversion of sugar to alcohol is doing. Sometimes it gets stuck on the way to dryness, sometimes the goal is not to let all the sugars convert to begin with. Measuring lets the winemaker know what’s what.
  
  To understand this while drinking a bunch of wine, go to the Riesling section of where you buy wine. Find a bottle that says “dry Riesling” and a bottle that says “sweet Riesling.” Try to stick to Rieslings from the same geographic area, so that the critical difference is the sweetness. Look for Pacific Rim or Chateau Ste. Michelle: both produce sweet and dry Rieslings, plus they’re widely available, inexpensive, and they don’t suck. Check the label: the alcohol percentage should be higher on the dry Riesling than the sweet Riesling. Drink ‘em, noting the difference. The dry Riesling will still be fruity, so don’t confuse that with sugar. Think of the difference between fresh fruit and jam, which I find to be a useful guide for dissociating the sweet and fruit.
  
  Also, buy some Chinese food; Riesling is very food friendly, and sweet Riesling with spicy Chinese is a classic pairing.
  
  Anyway, The Judgement of Paris isn’t going to be too new for oenophiles, but it’s pretty cool to get biographies of the major players, and information about their winemaking. Those who aren’t wine geeks might not find it as enjoyable as I did: it’s very wine-focused, even when Taber ostensibly discusses culture. Of course, for me the wine-focus is half the fun.
  
  Now, if you excuse me, I have some Alicante Bouschet to track down.

• Juniper (Doran, #2)

  ⭐ 5/5

  I loved this book even more than I loved [b:Wise Child|540489|Wise Child (Doran, #1)|Monica Furlong|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1308963110s/540489.jpg|871078]. It made me want to learn about herbs. It made me want to learn how to use a spinning wheel. You know what? I did learn a bit about herbs, mostly how to cook with them. And I still think it would be badass if I owned a spinning wheel.

• Jurassic Park / Congo

  ⭐ 4/5

  Jurassic Park has always been a favorite movie of mine, and the book is just as good as the film. The story centers on a theme-park where people can see real dinosaurs, created from DNA found in ancient amber. But the dinosaurs aren’t content to be an attraction, and what happens when they escape is completely terrifying.
  
  This is Michael Crichton at his best. The book isn’t preachy or annoying, and it reads fast. What’s more, the plot, while far-fetched, seems like something that could happen. That’s more than I can say for later books like Prey, which seem more delusional than probable.

• Lady Windermere’s Fan

  ⭐ 4/5

  Very diverting!

• Language Myths

  ⭐ 3/5

  We all have some “common sense” thoughts about language, such as believing that some languages are harder than others, or that it’s best for society if we keep people from “speaking incorrectly.” Language Myths examines these erroneous assumptions in a series of articles revolving around one myth.
  
  This book is a great introduction to linguistics, and may well lead readers to explore interesting concepts in more depth. Because I come from a cognitive background, I enjoyed the points of view offered, and would recommend this book to anyone interesting in language and linguistics.

• Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

  ⭐ 5/5

  Almost a hundred years after the fact, I think it’s safe to say that prohibition was a pretty bad idea. Some good things came from it: women’s suffrage was tangled up in the issue, and we also got some damn good cocktails out of the deal. I mean, they had to cover up that bathtub gin somehow, and, well into college, I continued that fair tradition with off-brand gin of approximately the same quality. But, generally, prohibition didn’t go well.
  
  Mostly, prohibition shows off the worst that the good ole’ U S of A has to offer. There’s the obvious paternalistic religious wackjobs, the “seriously, I can’t believe they even got away with being this racist” white dudes (Germans, Irish, and Catholics need not apply, of course), and the gangsters that are still the subject of countless films (Al Capone, anyone?). But, beneath the mythology, there was some deeply interesting and messed stuff going on. One thing I wasn’t aware of was the blatant disregard for redistricting, meaning that white protestants living in, say. Iowa districts had relatively more representation than the largely immigrant populations of the largest cities.
  
  Last Call covers everything: Frances Willard, the WCTU, the ASL, rum runners (did you know that prohibition helped to turn the Bahamas into a modern country? If you’ve ever been to awesome resorts and beaches in Nassau, you can thank prohibition; if you took a booze-cruise to get there, you can thank it doubly), “medicinal” alcohol hawkers, grape sellers, and loads more. Once you get past the boring political stuff (which takes up the first part of the book), it’s hard to put down.
  
  The cool thing about reading about prohibition is that it is actually pretty timely. Right now, marijuana legalization is gaining popularity amongst the country, with two states legalizing it for recreational purposes and (hopefully) more on the way. It’s been an interesting change in rhetoric from “the war on drugs” (remember D.A.R.E.? Remember how ineffective that was?) to a realization that marijuana is actually medically useful (not to mention non-addictive, not harmful to health, possibly able to regulate blood sugar, and generally awesome). And yeah, while there are still wackjobs that will tell you that getting high will turn us all into crazy stoners, it’s hard to argue with the millions of dollars in tax revenue Colorado pulled in during January 2014.
  
  So yeah, I recommend this, not only to those who want to understand what was happening in the U.S.A. in the 1920’s, but also those who want to understand what’s going on right now.

• Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

  ⭐ 4/5

  Lean In is feminism lite, but mostly in a good way. I don’t know that I’m the ideal audience for this book: it seems to me that it’s directed towards women who want the same opportunities as men, but don’t want to be labeled with the dreaded f-word. I’m proud to be a feminist, because it means I can drink scotch and make Star Wars references while wearing 4 inch heels and not feel any gender conflict. However, I think popular books like Lean In are important in that they get people who might be reluctant to talk about feminist issues to talk about feminist issues.
  
  The Good:</> Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has a bad-ass resume and a commitment to using actual data to support her arguments about women in the workplace. Data! These data are pretty disheartening: although more bachelors degrees are awarded to women than men, few women obtain leadership positions. People (including women) are more likely to rate career-driven women as “not team players” and “probably difficult to get along with.” I got pretty angry when I read that women start turning down career opportunities so that they can prioritize family long before they even think about having kids. Then, when they finally do have babies, they don’t go back to work because they don’t find their own sloppy seconds fulfilling.
  
  I see a lot of the issues Sandberg addresses fairly often. I’m a women in science, and I attend research talks every week. I make it a point to get there early, sit at the conference table, and ask questions. Others sit at the periphery and elect to be neither seen nor heard. Those Milford Academy-esque wallflowers tend to be women. I’m sure they have things to say; the problem is that they don’t speak up. Sadly, it seems to be the same pretty much everywhere. Sandberg encourages women to sit at the table, and I wholeheartedly agree.
  
  Sandberg also does a great job addressing the myth that women can “have it all.” Newsflash: no one has it all, not even Mick Jagger. Life is full of trade-off’s, which means that every time we decide to do x, we’ve also elected not to do an infinite number of y’s. You can’t always get what you want and all that, and anyone who seems to have it all probably doesn’t.
  
  The Bad: The differing expectations for men and women are both endemic and systemic: they’re more than the sum of our individual decisions. I’m sure that Sandberg’s goal is to empower women to succeed, but it feels disingenuous to me to place a burden on individuals to solve societal issues.
  
  Sandberg also (probably inadvertently) reenforces some of the gender stereotypes that have been holding women back in the first place. She mentions that women should allow their husbands to do the housework, even if they’re not “doing it right.” But, you know what, I’m terrible at housework, and I know plenty of men who can out-clean me. Similarly, Sandberg talks about cooking and food shopping being “mundane.” I’m sure some people find these tasks to be boring, but not me. I love going to the grocery store the way other people love going to the mall, and making dinner is usually the highlight of my day. Being a feminist means that I get to enjoy cooking because it’s freaking awesome, and not because I have a vagina.
  
  Speaking of husbands, the whole thing comes across as heteronormative and marriage/family centric. I guess that’s the demographic Sandberg is writing for, but it’s a good thing to be aware of.
  
  Of course, it’s also worth noting that “leaning into your career” is a pretty freaking privileged thing to be able to do. Hell, having a career that you find fulfilling also requires a fair amount of privilege. I’m not going to hate on Sandberg because she went to Harvard (I’m not one to talk), but it’s something to think about.
  
  The Ugly? I don’t accept the pervasive idea that our careers define us. My culture places far too much value on doing, and too little value on being. But we don’t just become who we are by adding activities to our lives; it’s just as correct to say that we become who we are by subtracting the activities that don’t add value. Subtraction takes reflection and insight: we don’t get there by constantly checking our email. At the risk of sounding like a hippie yogi shouting “down with the hegemony!” I think things would be much better if we all got out of our offices more often. Truly, there would be less pressure to “lean in” if we all gave ourselves permission to lean out once in awhile.

• Life After Life

  ⭐ 2/5

  One way to completely lower the stakes in a novel is to have your protagonist die, over and over again, with absolutely no consequences. I hadn’t realized this before I picked up the incredibly over-hyped novel, Life After Life, but it hit me a few chapters in. Ursula is born, and dies, and is born again, and you, dear reader, begin to care less and less. There’s no use in becoming invested in one eventuality, when you know that everything is really just a hypothetical.
  
  Maybe a different author could have done this idea justice, but maybe not: I think the premise is fundamentally flawed. I did find myself riveted by scenes of the Blitz during WWII, but I was always frustrated when these scenes ended in death, one way or another. I didn’t feel like investing in any of the characters, because I knew that they would evaporate sooner or later, replaced by another almost-but-not-quite-identical version of themselves.
  
  People have mentioned that, if nothing else, Atkinson’s writing style is okay. Honestly, though, it just didn’t work for me, especially (I don’t know how much of this can be considered a spoiler, because nothing in the book really happened in the book) towards the end, when it devolved into a meandering solipsistic mess. There was no true ending, just a bunch of might have beens and a bunch of snow. Anyway, the writing here is only sometimes technically proficient. I think it could have used an edit, but then again there’s no use gilding a pile of shit, and that’s what this was.
  
  If you like the premise, do yourself a favor and just (re)watch Groundhog Day. At least that has the benefit of Bill Murray.

• Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

  ⭐ 3/5

  Ah, literary conjecture: mostly fanciful, ultimately untenable. Here’s the thing: theories are not interesting qua theories, as their utility lies in making specific, testable predictions. A theory that cannot be falsified is not a good theory (which is why research psychologists are much less interested in what Freud has to say than English professors are).
  
  Anyway, this short introduction is helpful if you want to drop phrases like “intertextuality and discoures on gendering” at a cocktail party. Fair warning: you’ll sound like a pedantic asshat.

• Little Women (Little Women, #1)

  ⭐ 4/5

  It’s my general conviction that every young woman (and most grown-up women) who fancies herself an outcast from the popular set and dreams of someday writing the great American novel identifies with Jo March. Sure, she takes wine “only medicinally,” which is a sentiment I cannot abide. Plus, she considers herself “old” at 30, and she’s surprisingly uncritical of the patriarchal society that she ineffectually rebels against. However, Jo March, temperance aside, remains the best reason to read Little Women.
  
  If the 1994 film is to be believed, the moral of the story is to write from the heart, because writing for money won’t get you anywhere. Given that Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women to make a quick buck, this sentiment feels amusingly ironic. Like Jane Austen, Alcott recognized that financial security frees women from debasing themselves by thinking too much of money. Mrs. March pays lip service to the idea that it is better to be poor and happy than rich and unhappy; however, Alcott’s message is not that mo’ money means mo’ problems. Certainly, the best thing to be is rich and happy, like dear Teddy Laurence.
  
  Reading this as an adult for the first time is an entirely different experience, I assume, from reading it as a child. Expect to be preached to, but in the most heartwarming way possible. Expect many mentions of “that heavenly friend,” especially during the first half of the book. Expect to be bored with vacuous, sanctimonious Beth (seriously, Beth talks about how “dumb” and unambitious she is throughout the entire book, and everyone else talks about how marvelous she is. 21st century mind cannot compute these data). My advice: read it with a glass of (non-medicinal) wine and the happy knowledge that times, undeniably, have changed.

• Lonesome Dove (Lonesome Dove, #1)

  ⭐ 5/5

  If you’ve ever wondered what book qualifies as the American [b:War and Peace|656|War and Peace|Leo Tolstoy|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1366570580s/656.jpg|4912783], well, Lonesome Dove is certainly a contender. I’m not just saying that because both books are quite long, or because they’re both historical fiction*. Lonesome Dove deals with fundamental American mythology: cowboys and Indians, civilization and the frontier, good and evil. Not that I used the word “and” instead of saying “vs,” because McMurtry is one hell of a storyteller, and he wrote a nuanced book that’s not as black and white as your typical western.
  
  Lonesome Dove became a favorite almost the minute I started reading it, and it’s hard for me to articulate what’s so ephemerally affecting about my favorite books. So, since I can already tell that this review is going to be rambling, I’m going to take a moment to pontificate about the sinusoidal cultural impact of the western. My dad, a baby boomer, grew up watching westerns on weekend television and playing cowboys and indians. As a kid, I never really got the appeal. I was lucky enough to grow up with the new golden age of Disney and great shows on Nickelodeon, but kids’ media didn’t really deal with Western themes. We had Back to the Future III, Maverick, and Wild Wild West, but these films weren’t particularly good and didn’t take the idea of the West seriously. It wasn’t until I watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance with my dad that I realized that Westerns actually rock.
  
  The West of Lonesome Dove is soul stirring. Endless prairie as far as the eye can see, wild horses, Indians (both hostile and not), bears, rivers, and rattlesnakes. It’s populated by people that you won’t be able to forget: rakish Augustus, stolid Call, blunt Clara, quiet Newt. Some characters, like Jake Spoon, straddle the line between good and evil. Others, like Blue Duck and Elmira, are just purely evil. As you can tell from the cast of characters (this list isn’t exhaustive), the story is sweeping. Luckily, McMurtry (like Tolstoy) does a great job of giving you a sense of who these characters are, so you won’t have trouble keeping track of them.
  
  I can’t describe this book except to say that you should absolutely read it. Even if you don’t like Westerns. Trust me.
  
  *I hesitate to really say that War and Peace is historical fiction, because Tolstoy definitely thought he was writing a strange hybrid book that contained fictional and veridical sections. He didn’t even call it a novel, but I’m going to call it that, since it’s the word that, while not perfect, is the most appropriate.

• Looking for Alaska

  ⭐ 4/5

  It’s easy to lament society’s increased obsession with mediocre dystopian love stories, such as [b:Divergent|13335037|Divergent (Divergent, #1)|Veronica Roth|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1328559506s/13335037.jpg|13155899] and whatever else kids (and people who are far too old to be kids) are reading these days. Sometimes, serious readers want to throw up their hands and completely lose faith in humanity. But do not go gentle into that good night, for John Green is writing meaningful books for kids (and people who are far too old to be kids), and in that there is hope.
  
  What’s wonderful about Green is that he captures what it feels like to be a teenager, when everything feels, overwhelmingly, as if it’s happening right now, and the stakes feel so much higher than they have any right to. The beauty of being a teenager is that everything is either brand new or far off in the future, and that makes it easy to be hyper-present by default. The sadness, of course, is that teenagers aren’t as grown up as they want to be, a fact that no amount of dark eyeliner, body piercings, and shouting matches can change.
  
  Looking for Alaska is set at a boarding high school in Alabama, and deals with many of the activities that teenagers have been known to engage in from time to time. There’s smoking, underage drinking, prank-playing, and sex, which may make some puritanical parents keep their kids from reading it (probably in favor of emotionally abuse sparkly vampire fiction, because that doesn’t do anything crazy like question patriarchy). John Green takes his characters seriously, but doesn’t act as if they’re just younger adults. One particularly effective aspect of his writing is that his characters are at once precocious and sophomoric; this adult reader both remembered feeling the way they felt, and realized that they had such strong feelings and impulses because they haven’t really developed into full-fledged people yet.
  
  I loved [b:The Fault in Our Stars|11870085|The Fault in Our Stars|John Green|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1360206420s/11870085.jpg|16827462], and I think I’ll continue to pick up Green’s books when I’m in the mood for a quick but emotionally-weighty read. While sparkly vampires will likely only appeal to the Abercrombie-aged crowd (do kids still wear that, or is there some new aspirational brand that kids are into these days? Would my point be better made if I mentioned Snapchat? Also, can someone please explain what Snapchat is?), stories that deal with what it means to be human are truly appropriate for all ages.
  
  (Kids, if you’re reading this, do yourself a favor and listen to this over and over and over again until you’re sick of it, which you never ever will be because no one gets sick of The Velvet Underground. Note: The Velvet Underground was brilliant, but Nico annoyed the shit out of everyone, so remember not to say too many nice things about Nico. Then, pick up Trout Mask Replica, on vinyl if you can. Warning: your parents might wonder if you’re on drugs, but it’s worth it. You can thank me later.)

• Love Story (Love Story series Book 1)

  ⭐ 2/5

  Ugh, this book. Oliver Barrett is an entitled dudebro who hates his father for reasons that include paying for his entire Harvard education and giving him every opportunity in life. He meets Jenny, who is supposed to come across as clever and poor, but who mostly just swears like a booth full of CBOE traders after a few too many 4:00pm cocktails at Ceres. Anyway, there’s a large section full of whining, followed by a trite cancer plot obviously constructed to tug at the heartstrings of readers in a charmless, commercial sort of way. Unsurprisingly, it was a big success.
  
  Related, I found it pretty screwy that when Jenny’s doctor finds out she has freaking cancer, he just calls up her husband, tells him, and then conspires with him not to tell her. I guess having knowledge of her own condition would just worry her poor little female soul. I mean, what the heck is up with that? Boy, am I glad that HIPAA now exists and women are (mostly) considered people.
  
  The book itself is mostly flat and reads like a novelization, likely because it was written as a novelization of the screenplay. Oh yeah, did you know there was a movie? The movie was supposed to be pretty good, but, unfortunately, it’s just as trite and commercial as the book. I guess an entitled dudebro is going to be an entitled dudebro regardless of how good the cinematography is (note, the cinematography is super nice). I mean, it makes the plot of The Notebook feel like a super-layered Altman film by comparison.
  
  When deciding which sucked more, book or movie, well, the book was definitely worse. Besides the aforementioned cinematography, the movie had one hell of a score (no score was included with the book), and Ali MacGraw wore some nice outfits that I would like to duplicate (notably, a long-sleeved red silk dress that cinched at the waist, that I would love to find at a vintage shop so I could wear it to a holiday party, but I’d probably add studded black heels and a black motorcycle jacket to make it look more modern because that’s what I do). Also, I was able to make some progress on the socks that I’m knitting whilst watching the movie, whereas the book came with no opportunity to knit socks.
  
  Did you know the entitled dudebro is based on Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones? Which I find amusing, partially because impending doomsday via climate change is at least more upbeat, partially because I wish I had one of those mind eraser things that Tommy Lee Jones’ character uses in Men in Black, to rid my mind of this drivel.

• Lucky

  ⭐ 4/5

  This book seemed to come to me when I was at the right place at the right time. I was in my first year at college, and the prevalence of rape on campus was absolutely terrifying. After hearing about another date-rape situation in the dorms, I decided to pick up Lucky.
  
  Lucky details something that most of us have heard of, worried about, and never want to go though. Although the subject material is dark, I did enjoy reading it. The book gives a detailed view into what it’s like to survive rape, and with this information I feel that we can get one step closer to stopping it.

• Madame Bovary

  ⭐ 5/5

  Oh, Emma Bovary, you kill me! On the one hand, I think of you as a sophisticate stuck out in the country. In my mind, you’re somewhat like Belle from the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast, nose in a book, singing “There must be more than this provincial life!” Comme ça:
  
  
  
  But life is not a Disney novel, and Emma Bovary is a much darker character than that. She’s a woman with unrealistic expectations, who desires a life that no one could give her. She wants the kind of passion that only exists in romance novels, which means that she fails to see the love that she has right in front of her. She buys everything on credit, with little thought given to how she’ll pay it back (and whether she really needs new silk drapes in the first place). And, in her many affairs, she makes insane, outlandish demands. She kind of comes across as that crazy lady in the attic, minus the attic.
  
  In the words of Thom Yorke, Emma, You do it to yourself, you do/ And that’s what really hurts/ Is that you do it to yourself/ Just you and no one else.
  
  Amazingly, though, Madame Bovary doesn’t exactly come across as a cautionary tale. In this respect, it reminded me quite a bit of [b:The House of Mirth|17728|The House of Mirth|Edith Wharton|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1328729186s/17728.jpg|1652564]. Both Emma Bovary and Lily Bart aspire to a life that, frankly, they can’t afford. But they also suffer from a complete lack of agency and some pretty intense psychological demons that, given that they’re of “the weaker sex,” no one would take seriously. I wonder what they would be like today: maybe they’d have kick-ass corporate jobs, and they’d be able to buy their Louboutins in cash. However, it’s just as likely that they’d be crippled by an expectation that they should be able to “have it all” and struggling with an overwhelming amount of credit card debit.
  
  Even though this novel was published in 1856, it’s pretty timely. When I think about all those women who obsess about [b:Pride and Prejudice|1885|Pride and Prejudice|Jane Austen|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320399351s/1885.jpg|3060926] and aspire to land their own Mr. Darcy, I want to hand them this. Not as a cautionary tale, exactly. Just as a counterpoint.

• Margo's Got Money Troubles

  ⭐ 4/5

  What a romp! This book felt relatable right from the title. Money troubles, in this economy? Yep, that sounds right.
  
  Once I started the book, I began regaling my coworkers with synopses. A young woman hooks up with her super creeper married professor and gets pregnant. She has the baby, and it’s expensive, so she starts an Only Fans account. Her dad is a former professional wrestler, and he mentors her in creating a persona.
  
  The book was completely wacky, and I loved every moment. Rufi Thrope is a gifted writer who wields a simile better than my teenage nephew wields his impromptu architectural skills whilst playing Fortnite (yes, that reference is plot-relevant).
  
  Good to know that, as a wrestling persona, I’m probably a heel, not a face. I suspected as much, but I haven’t watched wrestling since the WWF days, so I wasn’t aware of the nomenclature.

• Martyr!

  ⭐ 5/5

  This feels like a spiritual successor to Wise Blood in the best possible way. It’s a character study in a series of vignettes that waste no time getting under your skin. It treats religion, and religious trauma, with a sense of morbid curiosity.
  
  Martyr! manages to tackle big concepts, like what it means to live and die as a human being, but it does so by examining seemingly mundane, workaday moments.
  
  To wit, Kaveh Akbar describes the blue of a character’s eyes as “the kind of blue many blond people’s eyes are. So common you forget how pretty they are. Like pigeons.”
  
  This was a gorgeous book. All the stars. I’d say I’d die for it but that’s a little on the nose.

• Memoirs of a Geisha

  ⭐ 5/5

  So I must have read this sometime right before the movie came out, because I definitely have the version of the book with the film cover (judge not lest ye be judged, people, I was young and spent a little too much time at the Borders in Goleta, which is sadly no more). Anyway, IMDB puts the movie release at Christmas 2005, which sounds about right.
  
  Anyway, I brought this book home on a break from college, and completely devoured it. Seriously, I could not put it down. I hadn’t really been exposed to, well, anything about Japan except the local sushi restaurant, and Memoirs of a Geisha actually started impressionable young me on a love-affair with Japan. Maybe it’s not the best book (it’s not, really), but it was exactly what I needed at the time.
  
  Fun story: when I moved out of my parents’ place to go to college, my brother took over my room. But, it wasn’t big enough, so my parents actually knocked out the wall between the rooms to make his new room bigger. Which really should have annoyed me, but I was too busy reading this to be bothered. Really.

• Middlemarch

  ⭐ 5/5

  Wow.
  
  Alright, so I knew Middlemarch would be great. After all, Harold Bloom cites it (along with [b:Bleak House|31242|Bleak House|Charles Dickens|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1280113147s/31242.jpg|2960365]) as “the canonical novel” and Virginia Woolf called it “magnificent.” However, I did not expect to finish this 853 page behemoth in seven days, and I certainly did not expect the writing to be quite so lovely. I was expecting writing similar to Austen or the Bronte sisters; what I got was Tolstoy in English, with just a dash of Proust.
  
  It’s hard to write this review without comparing Eliot to Tolstoy: a fair comparison, as they were contemporaries, and realist authors. [b:War and Peace|656|War and Peace|Leo Tolstoy|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1222897284s/656.jpg|4912783] and [b:Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life|19089|Middlemarch A Study of Provincial Life|George Eliot|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309202283s/19089.jpg|1461747] were published around the same time, and both explore the early 19th century through the eyes of late 19th century writers. Many people at least give lip service to the fact that they should probably get around to reading War and Peace, although I don’t often hear the same said about Middlemarch. That’s too bad, as us anglophones have the marvelous opportunity of reading such a book in our native tongue.
  
  Middlemarch is surprisingly modern: one of the main characters, Dorothea, exhibits character growth by slowly becoming less morally righteous. At one point, I found myself wishing that Dorothea would stop being so upright and just get laid by someone attractive for a change. The interesting thing is that this moral fall is a good thing. George Eliot was no Edith Warton, and Dorothea ends up much better off that Lily Bart. Eliot explains that her characters “were the mixed result of a young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often that the aspect of error, and great fait the aspect of illusion.” You can bet she included all her references to [b:The Pilgrim’s Progress|29797|The Pilgrim’s Progress|John Bunyan|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328865403s/29797.jpg|1960084] with a wink.

• Moby Dick

  ⭐ 4/5

  When I was in third grade, I was supposed to go on a whale-watching field trip with my entire class. We had recently completed a cetology unit, in which we learned some things that Herman Melville didn’t know about whales, like that they aren’t actually fish. The whale-watching field trip turned out to be a disaster.
  
  See, we needed to drive down with our parents and meet up at some pier somewhere in L.A. county (at this point in my childhood, my knowledge of southland freeways was a little nebulous, but if I recall correctly, I think this all happened in Santa Monica). My parents wanted to meet up with the parents of this kid who used to be my friend but I guess he and I had some sort of falling out, because at this point we were not friends. Anyway, the parents spent way too long lingering over their lunch, which I do recall being excellent (the restaurant had both shark and swordfish specials, and I got the shark, which was not shark fin by the way, don’t be alarmed). As you may imagine, fine dining didn’t necessarily mesh well the field trip schedule, and you may have already guessed the outcome.
  
  We missed the boat.
  
  My parents, who did somewhat understand the pedagogical value of being stuck on a boat with hundreds of screaming 8-year-olds, but who also had a strong desire to not be stuck on a boat with hundreds of screaming 8-year-olds, were visibly delighted. They gleefully bought us tickets for the next boat. I was forced to hang out with the other kid (who, remember, I was no longer friends with) and my brother, who was 4 at the time, and a few other stragglers.
  
  We didn’t see any freaking whales (although there were some dolphins jumping around, so we did see some cetaceans, but that doesn’t count). I found out later that all the other kids saw whales.
  
  Following this tragic event, my family forced me to go to the marina and hang out with them and the other kid and the other kid’s parents on their yacht, which at the time I didn’t think was cool at all. Naturally, I refused to hang out with anyone and instead went belowdecks. There, I put my worn-out Rolling Stones Greatest Hits cassette tape into my walkman, and listened to “Get Off of My Cloud” over and over as I wallowed in my self-pity and prepubescent despair.
  
  Which is to say that, starting with childhood, I’ve had a complicated relationship with whales. This complicated relationship continues with Moby Dick.
  
  Here’s the thing: everything you’ve heard about Moby Dick is true. It’s as poetic as it is long-winded, as hilarious as it is a serious meditation on desire and madness, as riveting as it is mind-numbingly boring. I’m having trouble coming up with a coherent explanation for how I feel about Moby Dick, because I feel a lot of things. It’s not often that I want to highlight every passage and throw my kindle across the El at the same time. I’m glad I read this, and I’m also glad it’s over. I’m going to go read something not about whales now.

• Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist

  ⭐ 4/5

  I’m the type of obnoxious music snob who listens to albums from beginning to end. I will loudly proclaim that this is the correct way to listen to music, and everyone else is doing it wrong.
  
  According to Spotify, I’m the one who’s doing it wrong. My search page suggests I listen to #recession pop and #pink pilates princess, whatever that means. Spotify wants to serve me six daily mixes, a Sabrina Carpenter Mix, a bunch of genre mixes, Netflix most played, The 2000s Indie Scene, This is Billie Eilish, Dive Bar Anthems, and Cruel Summer Radio.
  
  They don’t suggest many albums to me, even though my Wrapped in 2023 conceded that my listening character is “hypnotist” which apparently means “You like to play albums all the way through, from the opening track to the final note.”
  
  How did we get to this point? Why is the largest streaming service treating music like an all-you-can-eat buffet of playlist-friendly singles instead of the carefully crafted tasting menus artists intend albums to be?
  
  Part of the answer is music piracy. The Napster, et al, days were lots of fun from a listener perspective. Back then, I stuffed my iPod full of music that wasn’t playing on the radio and couldn’t be purchased from the Best Buy off the Tippecanoe exit in San Bernardino. Armed with Limewire and a Netscape tab open to Pitchfork, I discovered LCD Soundsystem, Belle and Sebastian, and Neutral Milk Hotel. I quickly became insufferable, and it didn’t cost me a dime!
  
  Obviously the music industry was less enthused, because I used to spend my entire allowance on CDs from that Best Buy. The major record labels (Universal, Sony, and Warner, who control ~85% of the market share) got together to figure out this existential crisis. How could they cater to listeners who wanted everything for free while continuing to maximize their profits and fuck over recording artists?
  
  The answer was becoming strange bedfellows with a bunch of Swedish tech bros who saw a business opportunity in using streaming music to sell ads. Through backroom deals, the major labels quickly negotiated better terms for themselves than indies, invested as stakeholders, and got plum advertising deals to push their artists on the app. Nobody really cared about the music in this endeavor, nor did they advocate for musicians.
  
  Yes, they’re collecting a creepy amount of data on your listening habits. They tell advertisers they can exploit your moods to make you more susceptible to ads. And they’re getting rich whilst only giving a pittance in royalties to musicians.
  
  Part of the brilliance of Spotify was in creating playlists for passive listeners. These playlists are seeded with Spotify commissioned chill vibe songs that earn low royalties. According to Pelly, “In the streaming era, the industry had identified a new type of target customer: the lean-back listener, who was less concerned with seeking out artists and albums, and was happy to simply double click on a playlist for focusing, working out, or winding down.” One Spotify employee claimed that the competition for the platform is silence (and people are afraid of silence).
  
  This book is well researched, but eventually it starts to feel like too much outrage over the fact that major labels suck (we already knew this) combined with “the youths aren’t listening to music right.” In reality, people can listen however they want to whatever they want, and it doesn’t impact me in the slightest. I can joke that the best way to listen is straight through an album, but if people get value from chill vibes playlists, who am I to judge?
  
  What’s the solution to the Spotify payola, data collection, and monetization issues? I don’t know, and neither does anyone else, mostly because the music industry has always been an exploitative place that constantly figures out new ways to fuck over artists. I like to pretend I’m doing my part by purchasing vinyl records, but that’s me justifying an expensive hobby. Anyway, if anyone’s looking for me I’ll be sitting in a corner playing In the Aeroplane Over the Sea on my acoustic guitar and taking a break from streaming music. Is there a personalized Spotify playlist for that yet?

• Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

  ⭐ 3/5

  A fun little book, which contains a ton of stuff that I like. San Francisco. Bookstores. Typography. Data visualization. In the beginning, it promises a lot, but doesn’t live up to that. Still, it’s worth reading.
  
  The thing that kind of annoyed me about the books it that it reads a bit like a love letter to Google. I had to check Robin Sloan’s author profile, to see if he works there. He doesn’t. However, this book could be read as a super creative Google job application. Stranger things have happened.

• My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs

  ⭐ 4/5

  In one episode of the T.V. show Friends, Ross, the “dorky” paleontologist, meets up with an old buddy from high school (played by special guest star Brad Pitt). “Can you believe how into dinosaurs we were back then?” remarks Pitt’s character. Then, without skipping a beat, he asks Ross “So what do you do now?”
  
  Why do we find this funny? When did we relegate these fascinating creatures to children’s books and television shows? Why is it that delight in dinosaurs is viewed as a phase that kids inevitably go through, until they graduate into more “grown-up” interests, such as Shakespeare and spreadsheets? In his new book, My Beloved Brontosaurus, Brian Switek argues that dinosaurs aren’t just “kid stuff.” With joy, verve, and a hint of nostalgia, Switek relates the advances that have been made in the field since your third grade science curriculum.
  
  The word “dinosaur” typically calls to mind images of stolid stegosauruses and terrifying tyrannosauruses, but in reality dinosaurs are all around us. Indeed, I’ve got a flock of them living on my roof. No, I’m not some urban mad-geneticist; I’m actually talking about pigeons. Pigeons, like all birds, are dinosaurs (technically, the extinct ones are best referred to as “non-avian dinosaurs”). This affords some cool opportunities to confuse your friends: I can reasonably say that my parents stopped letting their cat go outside, because he kept attacking the dinosaurs and then dragging them back indoors. That’s pretty awesome.
  
  My Beloved Brontosaurus is a must read for anyone who loves dinosaurs. Even if you geeked out on them throughout elementary school, you’ll probably learn something new. Indeed, there’s even a chapter about dino sex. It’s called “Big Bang Theory,” which is so clever that I don’t think I need to right the rest of this review.
  
  Also, this is a remarkably well-designed book. Definitely worth buying the hardcover.

• My Sister’s Keeper

  ⭐ 2/5

  Well, that was even worse than I expected. I thought it would be a maudlin, guilty pleasure, but there was no pleasure at all (unless you count the occasional exasperated laughs that came out when the writing got particularly ridiculous). Picoult is so incapable of conveying anything through her writing that the only way the publisher could think to differentiate between the different narrators was to typeset their sections in different fonts. No joke.
  
  If there’s any point to this drivel, it’s not the highfalutin moral one that I believe Picoult intends (I use the word “highfalutin” because I want to stick with simple words that Picoult would understand, though that’s likely unnecessary as textual evidence suggests that Picoult isn’t a big reader). Indeed, the only thing I got out of it was the recognition that life is way to short for this shit.

• Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1)

  ⭐ 1/5

  I cringe when I hear someone say that a book is a classic of science fiction. What they mean is that the book has been well liked by a narrow subset of readers, without any real value to elevate it out of a genre and into the realm of literature. Neuromancer is supposed to be both revolutionary and incredibly well written, but it doesn’t live up to the hype. Instead, it rehashes a simplistic yet still absurd noir plot with two-dimensional characters and a style so unnecessarily befuddling that it renders the book almost unreadable.
  
  This purported “classic” of science fiction consists mostly of nonsensical techno-drivel punctuated by unexpected graphic sex. For example “Case flipped to cyberspace and sent a command pulsing down the crimson thread that pierced the library ice.” It’s hard to tell what’s going on here, because the technology that Gibson created don’t consist of anything more than of a sloppy vomit of invented jargon. I can’t tell how prescient the technology was, because it’s hard to make any sense of it at all.
  
  And the plot. It starts out promising: a hacker who got banned from cyberspace after screwing over an employer gets one last chance to work, but the job is shrouded in mystery. It stays interesting for about two chapters, and then becomes completely absurd. At one point, the whole crew randomly ends up in space, and we meat a brand new hackneyed Rastafarian character who actually says, and I quote, “You ver’ pale, mon…maybe you wan’ eat somethin’.” Which just made me think of this:
  
  
  
  The only consentual mass hallucination going on here is that of the mainstream science fiction apologists, who put forward books like Neuromancer, Foundation, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as if they could stand up to the likes of Anna Karenina, Ulysses, or even Pride and Prejudice. They can’t. I don’t mean to imply that I’m turned off of the genre forever, but I’m done expecting these “classics” to hold their own as literature. Suits me well enough, anyway: I’ve always found Science Fiction to be at its best when it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

• Never a City So Real: A Walk in Chicago (Crown Journeys)

  ⭐ 3/5

  I liked the idea of this book: exploring the hidden parts of Chicago through the stories of its residents. As a Chicagoan, I’m aware that my Chicago is white, middle class, and fairly geographically constrained. Chicago is a segregated place: to see this, one only needs to watch the demographics change while riding the red line south of Roosevelt. Kotlowitz writes “the truth is that the city’s imaginary borders can be as impenetrable as the Berlin Wall had been.”
  
  Unfortunately, Never a City So Real falls flat. There’s no connecting thread between the stories, no narrative structure, no argument made by the author. He didn’t even seem to pick his interviewees in a meaningful way. The people he profiles are his friends and family members: it’s a sample of convenience, and it shows. The whole thing feels haphazard.
  
  The strangest inclusion is the section on Wicker Park, which was the only neighborhood I had heard of when I moved here from California in 2009. It’s a nice place to pick up some vintage clothes and used books, or wash down an ice cold PBR. However, Kotlowitz speaks of the neighborhood as if it’s still full of artists, muggers, and prostitutes. I can see how thrifted suits, beards, and neon mini-skirts might be confusing to someone unfamiliar with hipsters, but I can’t give Kotlowitz a pass on this one. I hate gentrification as much as the next person (I’m the type of urban nimby who would be livid if a Lululemon went up in my neighborhood), but to pretend that it wasn’t happening in Wicker Park when this book was written in 2004 is asinine.
  
  I’d recommend this only to interested Chicagoans; anyone else can probably skip it.

• Neverwhere

  ⭐ 4/5

  So Gaiman’s writing sometimes grates on me. He overuses adverbs, the pacing is uneven, and his characters, while not completely flat, exist somewhere between two and three dimensions.
  
  However, Gaiman excels at inventing creative worlds, and Neverwhere is a prime example. Here, he manages to invent a London underworld, filled with the people and places who fell through the cracks of London Above. It’s a fun romp, by no means brilliant, but a hell of a way to kill a couple of evenings.

• New Moon (The Twilight Saga, #2)

  ⭐ 1/5

  I’m impressed that this is actually worse than the first one. Did not think that was possible.

• Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty

  ⭐ 4/5

  Here are some things I knew about the Romanovs before reading Nicholas and Alexandra:
  
  -Their rule ended because of the Russian Revolution, which did not go particularly well for them (or for anyone, really).
  
  -Alexis was a hemophiliac.
  
  -Rasputin was somehow involved, and he was also a bearded super-creeper.
  
  -The 1997 animated film is, sadly, not an accurate portrayal of the fate of Anastasia Romanova.
  
  Which is to say that I learned quite a lot from this book.
  
  My history classes had an overly-simplistic narrative about European revolutions. The story always went that the monarchs were fools who cared more about jewelry than their own people, and deserved to be deposed. The people were always doing the right thing, and we didn’t learn much about the bloody executions and power struggles that took place away from the royal palaces. The end result was always that revolution paved the way for democracy (yay, democracy!!! Democracy is always right all the time always!!!), or that revolutions temporarily created communist states (boo, communism, communists are always evil and starving and bad), but that eventually these communist states would realize that democracy is like totally the best thing EVAH, so no worries.
  
  Nicholas and Alexandra, of course, provides a more nuanced story of the Russian Revolution. At the center stands Nicholas, a family man who cared deeply about Russia yet never questioned his hereditary right to autocracy. Next time him is Alexandra, a devout mother caring for a chronically-ill son. Alexandra seemed to have a fairly thorny personality, but Massie convincingly argues that Alexandra was also emotionally manipulated by Rasputin. Massie speculates that things would have turned out different for Russia if little Alexis hadn’t been born with hemophilia. If Alexis were well, then Rasputin couldn’t have come to power, Alexandra would not have been convinced by Rasputin to fight for complete autocracy, and Nicholas might have allowed Russia to become a constitutional monarchy. It’s an interesting bit of speculative history, which I could easily see being true.
  
  It’s obvious that the imperial family had no business running Russia, which had more than its fair share of problems. However, it’s also obvious that the Romanovs didn’t deserve to be brutally executed. Nicholas and Alexandra presents a balanced portrait of the last Russian monarchs, and I recommend the book for anyone interested in Russia.

• Night Shift

  ⭐ 4/5

  This collection is hit or miss, but when it hits it hits hard.
  
  Bangers include:
  
  - Gray Matter
  - The Ledge
  - I Know What You Need
  - Sometimes They Come Back
  - I Am the Doorway
  - Trucks
  - Quitters, Inc.
  
  I’ve been a fan of King for a long time, and I’ve always considered him to be a character-and-concept author who lets plot come along for the ride. That’s not a knock at King—I read him for the characters and concepts. The character moments do shine here, particularly in I Know What You Need and Gray Matter (my highlight of the collection). And the concepts are, as always, top notch.
  
  What impressed me most about this collection of short stories is that King is a master at creating tension and amplifying the stakes. The absurdly campy story Trucks had no right to be as tense as it was. And I have to admit that I kept putting down my book during The Ledge, because my entire body started tensing up.
  
  I am now vaguely afraid of truck stops and pigeons. Thanks, Steve.

• Night

  ⭐ 5/5

  Terrifying, heartbreaking, and hauntingly beautiful, this is a classic that everyone should read.
  
  As a schoolgirl, I had the opportunity to hear an elderly Auschwitz survivor tell her story. Both parents and children were invited, and the audience was packed. At this point, I had read [b:The Diary of a Young Girl|48855|The Diary of a Young Girl|Anne Frank|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1358276407s/48855.jpg|3532896] and [b:Number the Stars|47281|Number the Stars|Lois Lowry|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320431796s/47281.jpg|2677305], and I considered myself vaguely “interested in” the Holocaust. However, I was still a child, and the horror of what had happened did not become real to me until I heard this woman’s voice, saw her tattoo, and noticed that my mother cried, silently, as we heard about the starvation, the labor, the cold.
  
  When we left to go home, my mother remarked that my children would not be able to hear about life in a concentration camp from a survivor. Soon, there would be none left.
  
  It heartens me to know that, when I do have children, I will be able to read this book to them. They will need to know what happened, they will need to know the terrible things that people have done to each other, can do to each other. Thank you, Elie Wiesel, for writing this book, so that the world will never forget.

• Northanger Abbey

  ⭐ 4/5

  Oh Jane Austen, you never cease to be charming, do you? In Northanger Abbey, the brilliant Miss Austen manages to lampoon Gothic novels and produce her typical story of upper-crust society shenanigans, which ends up being ridiculously enjoyable.
  
  Her heroine, Catherine Morland, is a teenage girl who has had her (rather subpar) brain ruined by the voracious reading of novels, a la [b:Don Quixote|3836|Don Quixote (Don Quijote de la Mancha)|Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1364958765s/3836.jpg|121842]. And yes, dear Catherine really is stupid, as she fails to pick up on any of the social subtleties present in her particular milieu. This idiocy comes to a head when she leaves Bath for Northanger Abbey, where she manages to come up with all manner of unlikely explanations for perfectly ordinary behaviors. Hilarity ensues.
  
  
  *replace Karen with Catherine and you have a good image of what I looked like whilst reading this novel.
  
  4 stars, because, while Austen manages to be quite as funny as always, she’s not particularly scathing. Which is too bad, because I like scathing (there’s a reason why [b:Persuasion|2156|Persuasion|Jane Austen|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1385172413s/2156.jpg|2534720] is my favorite of Austen’s novels, and not only because I’m also 27 and, thus, probably a washed up old maid). And the ending kind of hit me in the face, as if Austen was like “Ok, gotta finish this real quick so I can go to the ball!”

• Notes from a Small Island

  ⭐ 3/5

  Sometimes, I think it would be nice to be British. After all, they have health care and sensible gun laws, and they sound cool when they say the word “schedule.” It would have been particularly useful to be British whilst reading Notes from a Small Island, as the book is clearly intended for a British audience. This might be a much more interesting read for a Brit, or Anglophile, but as I’m just an armchair traveler who had never really heard the names “Mark” and “Spencer” spoken within the same sentence, I found the references fairly opaque.

• NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

  ⭐ 4/5

  “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
  They may not mean to, but they do.
  They fill you with the faults they had
  And add some extra, just for you.”
  
  -Philip Larkin, from This Be The Verse
  
  A few years back, I caught an informercial for a product called “Your Baby Can Read.” Supposedly, the program can teach babies to read before they’re even able to talk, despite the fact that scientific evidence strongly suggests that babies can’t learn language from television. The product seems to have been pulled by the producer, but that hasn’t stopped me from using the hilarious infomercial when teaching psychology. It’s just another example of the flawed idea that children need to be doing everything faster and earlier, with no regard to whether reading Harry Potter is developmentally appropriate at age two.
  
  I was not an early reader. I wasn’t a particularly late reader either, but I certainly wasn’t reading before kindergarten, or even much in kindergarten. My parents read to me, and sometimes I memorized books so that I could parrot them back to my parents, but that was pretty much it. Around first grade I had some sort of a-ha moment, and, after that, I read voraciously. Still do. This was a pretty normal developmental trajectory. Now, with increased pressure on parents to put their kids on the Harvard track by preschool, my reading would probably be a huge cause for concern.
  
  Developmental Psychology is one of the most relevant classes that most people skip in college. College students spent so much of of their time trying to figure out how to not accidentally create a human fetus that they seem to forget that this might be something they’ll want to do on purpose later in life. One great opportunity offered by Developmental Psychology classes is understanding exactly what your own parents did wrong while raising you; this is not because it comes in handy during Thanksgiving arguments, but because it helps to humanize your parents. They were just doing the best they could, but they didn’t know what they were doing. No one does.
  
  More importantly, though, Developmental Psychology clarifies some of the bizarre processes by which children learn and grow. It can help future parents realize that it’s better to provide clear rules instead of trying to be your kid’s friend, although it’s best to keep these rules reasonable and open to negotiation. It can help people understand what so-called normal development really looks like, so that they’ll be able to tell when there’s actually a problem. Hopefully, it can help quell the crazy over-scheduling of kids, which I have to believe wouldn’t be happening if parents understood how important sleep actually is.
  
  Anyway, this book is not as good as a Developmental Psychology class, and there were a few points where I didn’t feel like they explained the research literature as well as I would have liked, but it’s still a good resource for anyone who has to deal with kids. Of course, my boyfriend was very happy to hear that I was only reading this for teaching purposes. Not surprising, really. Parenting sounds terrifying.

• Old Man's War (Old Man's War, #1)

  ⭐ 4/5

  John Scalzi is one of few writers with the ability to craft novels far more interesting than the back of the book synopsis would suggest. This is kind of a blessing and a curse. After finishing Lock In, which I liked much more than expected, I knew I want to read more by Scalzi. I also heard great things about Old Man’s War, but I kept putting it off. I mean, who wants to read a book about old people at war?
  
  Turns out I do. I really do. This was the old people at war book I never knew was missing from my life.
  
  I’m much too verbose to write my own back of the book synopsis, and I also have an annoying penchant for just writing about myself and how clever I am when I try to summarize. So I won’t try to write a better summary. I will say that this Scalzi’s world-building is impressive, and he’s quickly becoming my go-to recommendation for fantasy fans who want to dabble in science fiction.

• On Immunity: An Inoculation

  ⭐ 5/5

  I’m going to have a difficult time explaining what “On Immunity” is about. This is a nonfiction book about vaccination, but, while it’s well-researched, it isn’t popular science. It’s a book about a new mother’s desire to protect her son, but it isn’t a memoir. I’ve found Eula Biss’s layered, lyrical style difficult to pin down in the past, and this book hasn’t made it any easier.
  
  As a writer, I find Biss’s style inspiring. I’m impressed by how seamlessly she blends personal narrative with academic conjecture, and how consistently she maintains her tone while jumping between these extremes. I do plan on blatantly stealing some of her stylistic techniques, which is pretty high praise.
  
  On the downside, Biss’s meandering style sometimes feels sluggish and disjointed. Biss’s does not commit herself to a particular structure, which allows her to jump back and forth in time while switching between different vignettes and topics. While this affords great creative freedom, I wish Biss had used a minimalist narrative structure to anchor the book (as she does in The Pain Scale). At the least, I feel she could have done a better job differentiating each section, as some come across as rehashes of others.
  
  Despite its flaws (and the despite the fact that I still don’t know what the book is about, even though I thought the process of writing this review would clarify that for me), “On Immunity” was certainly one of my favorite reads of 2016 and deserving of five stars.

• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

  ⭐ 2/5

  When people find out I have degrees in psychology, they tend to make a few assumptions. First, they ask me if I’m “psychoanalyzing” them, which I’m not; not only because psychoanalysis is pseudoscience (only English majors love Freud, for reasons I’m sure Freud would trace back to genitals, their own or someone else’s), but also because I’m generally more interested in my own cleverness than other people’s problems. Second, they figure I’ve been trained as a clinician, as if I have a secret life as a therapist that no one knows about (I don’t). Finally, they ask me about books they’ve read that they’re sure I’ve read. Usually, they’re just interested in self-help drivel, but sometimes they want to talk about this book.
  
  Which is interesting, because this is not a book about psychology, in the same way that Animal Farm is not a book about agriculture. This is a novel by Ken Kesey, who went to graduate school for creative writing and also did a lot of drugs. He spent a fair amount of time hanging out on a bus with Neal Cassady, The Grateful Dead, and the rest of the Merry Pranksters, dosing the communal Kool-Aid bowl with LSD. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is not supposed to be a realistic book about mental institutions (thank goodness, because the treatment people are getting in this book is completely unethical).
  
  So what’s it about? The man, man. The man is always trying to put you down, tell you how to be. And you just listen to the man, man, because the man just has you in his grip. And you’ve got to question this stuff. Throw off the shackles of the society into which you’ve been inculcated and expand your mind, man.
  
  (Note: Kesey seems to think you should really only question the things about the world that make it less fun and stuff. Minorities are for stereotyping, and women are for reminding you how emasculated you’ve become and/or fucking you. When I say “you” I’m assuming you are a white, heterosexual male, because you don’t even have to take drugs to realize that no one else really matters. Never mind the fact that the book is ostensibly written by a Native American, because that dude has no real voice and whatever, he’s half-white so it’s okay if we half care about him.)
  
  Of course, the sexism is problematic: we’re not supposed to mind that the “hero” has raped a woman, and we’re supposed to cheer when the powerful women get put in their place. But my major issue with the book is the portrayal of mental health treatment as being mostly useless. Yes, things were not so great in the 50’s, yes, shock therapy was terrifying and, yes, lobotomies were horrendous. However, mental illness isn’t something you can just rebel your way out of: that’s a bit like praying away cancer. Mental illness is already under-diagnosed, and this is another cultural artifact that suggests that people should be wary of treatment.
  
  Anyway, I thought this book was vaguely interesting but mostly juvenile and lacking in nuance. I’m finding myself having a hard time reading topical books from mid-century US writers, which is perhaps another indication that my generation inhabits a completely different world. And, not to seem like an ingrate, but I just can’t relate. I don’t have a strong rebellious streak, and I don’t possess an irrational fear of communists, and even though I know that big brother really could pay attention to anything I do, I also realize my group texts about where we should go for a beer after work are probably not getting much airtime at the NSA. Maybe this is the way my kids will feel when they go back and read books about student loan debt, denial of climate change, and inane iPhone apps. I hope so.
  
  Then again, maybe this book truly has little substance, and maybe it will recede into the bowels of history. Maybe we should think of this book as evidence that drugs can make you paranoid enough to solipsistically conclude that everything is just a big conspiracy theory and you’re the only one who can figure out the charade. That, my friends, is actually an empirical question. Please, someone, pass the Kool-Aid.

• One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding

  ⭐ 3/5

  I’m currently experiencing the twenty-something wedding deluge: it seems like getting married is all anyone does nowadays. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to details, reassuring friends that no one will really notice if they decide to save money by forgoing the aisle runner, while gently suggesting that they focus more of the budget on booze. Of course, I’ve also spent a lot of money on showers, parties, dresses, and cookware that, as an obsessive cook, I have a hard time packing up and sending to the bridge and groom.
  
  At some point, I had a wedding-gift related breakdown. My kitchen was filled with cheap mis-matched pots and completely devoid of serve ware. I desperately wanted a Le Creuset dutch oven, and a Kitchenaid standing mixer, and some All Clad sauté pans; however, I had taken for granted the fact that unmarried women don’t deserve nice things. As I once again forked over my credit card to buy a kitchen item that I had long coveted for an acquaintance whose idea of cooking was tossing some jarred sauce over pasta, I started to get fed up. Screw it, I decided. I was an educated woman with my own damn apartment and I didn’t need to live like an ascetic until the day came that I could ask my family and friends to buy me the escargot plates I so desired. I indulged myself with a cherry red Kitchenaid mixer.
  
  In One Perfect Day, Rebecca Mead points out that marriage no longer marks a transition from the parental home to a new life in a new family unit. People get married later, usually long after they get the keys to their first apartment. Indeed, many couples cohabitate, and have already acquired a perfectly serviceable set of flatware. Yet, somehow, the wedding industry convinces the affianced that the wedding represents their one chance to finally get overpriced knife blocks and unnecessary creme brûlée pans. Thus, what began as a way to help clueless youngsters begin a modest life in a new home has turned into an all-out gift grab. Awesome.
  
  Mead blames the industry, not the bridezillas themselves. She talks about the fantasy of the handmade wedding dress, then describes the reality of the Chinese factories were these dresses are mass-produced. She describes videographers who sell the idea that watching you wedding video will make your marriage stronger (I cringe at the idea of seeing myself on film, and I can’t imagine that anyone would want a video of their wedding, let alone ever watch it. Better to spend the money to buy a top-notch photographer, the one wedding professional whose services are actually worth the cost. But I digress). Not that there are great ways to opt-out, as elopement has also become part of the wedding industrial complex.
  
  This isn’t a particularly weighty account of the issue, which is why I’m only giving the book three stars, but it is an interesting read. I do recommend it for anyone who, like me, finds themselves inundated with wedding invitations. Just try not to bring up these topics at the wedding receptions. Instead, try to focus on the real meaning of the ceremony: people watching and free booze (and really, there better be free booze).

• Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3)

  ⭐ 3/5

  Questions I asked while reading this book: who is this character again? Does this name belong to a human or a dragon or a gryphon? What signet does this rider have? What is their military rank? What relationship does this person or creature have to the core crew? Are any of the people in this scene banging each other?
  
  Most damningly, I found myself asking “why do I care about this again?”
  
  I wanted to love Onyx Storm, but the shine is starting to wear off. Fourth Wing was one of the most fun community reading experiences I’ve had recently—I found it fast-paced and enjoyable. Iron Flame was released about a month after I finished Fourth Wing, which likely made to appraise it more fondly than I should have, because it had pacing issues.
  
  The day after Onyx Storm released, I took the legendary Coast Starlight from the Bay Area to Oregon. I was stressed out. Work stress, money stress, dealing with the stress of people I care about. Pretty much all the stress. I really needed a break from life.
  
  Onyx Storm should have been the perfect escape for me. A fantasy world to get lost in! Unfortunately, I couldn’t get into it. Instead, I ended up listening to Evermore and staring out the window in the observation car.
  
  Three weeks later, I was nearing the end of the first quarter of the book and somewhat, kinda, starting to get into it. For the record, I’m a fast reader. The nonfiction history book I had been reading was more compelling than Onyx Storm. This was surprising because history has always been my worst subject and the latter has dragons. It was at this point I began suspecting that I would give Onyx Storm three stars (with an extra half star on StoryGraph, because I can).
  
  For me, three stars is a good rating. Not exceptional, but certainly not bad. Just a book, fulfilling its bookly duties. A book that leaves me completely whelmed. Onyx Storm was a fun and entertaining read, it just wasn’t wildly entertaining like Fourth Wing. There was something going on with the plot, but I didn’t care much about it.
  
  Here’s what I liked:
  
  - At this point, I’m more interested in the fantasy than the romance. The book does lean into the fantasy side, which I appreciated.
  - The dragons continue to be the best part of the series.
  - There’s a lot about propaganda, misinformation, and rewriting history that I enjoyed. All the political factions are self-interested and morally gray.
  - Once it got past the 50% mark, it picked up!
  
  What didn’t quite work for me:
  
  - Pacing: it took about so many pages for the book to pick up.
  - Once again, there’s a lot of info dumping. It reminds me of the “it’s magic school so we’re going to give you info dumping in a classroom” that plagued the Harry Potter series.
  - On the flip side, Yarros doesn’t do a great job of quickly differentiating the characters (and their dragons, and their signets, or whether they’re flyers, and who they’re banging). I’m sure a lot of people have been obsessively rereading these books, but for me Iron Flame was almost 200 books ago and I would have appreciated better recapping. Yarros should take a page out of Sanderson—he’s great at getting everyone caught up again quickly.
  
  Also, for the love of Malek or Dunne or whomever, if you’re going to add a map to a fantasy novel you need to include all the places relevant to the story on the map. Please and thank you.
  
  I’ll continue to read the Empyrean series, but at this point I’m holding my enthusiasm until it wraps up.

• Orbital

  ⭐ 2/5

  Orbital is set in space. Space is a dangerous place where exciting things happen. Unfortunately, none of those exciting things happen in this book.
  
  This won the Booker. Over James. Insanity.

• Outlander (Outlander, #1)

  ⭐ 3/5

  I’m somewhat disturbed by the fact that Outlander has a higher average rating than Middlemarch, Ulysses, and Anna Karenina. This book is fun, as you might expect from a time-travel romance novel, but it’s not particularly good. Scratch that: it’s actually kind of bad.
  
  Okay, you know those truth or dare games you played in middle/high school? You know how you totally wished that that one guy you knew would convince his awesome hot friend (you know, the one whose name you scribbled all over your notebooks, surrounded by hearts) to date you ON A DARE. And at first, it would totally not be all about feelings or anything, because it’s A DARE, so you could both be really blasé about the whole thing. But, eventually, you’d actually find out that you’re really in love with each other, and it wouldn’t feel like a dare anymore at all, and everything would work out perfectly, and you’d get to wear a really awesome dress to prom. Well, you know how this actually works out: eventually, you find out that your life is not like the 1999 film She’s All That (related disappointing revelation: you find out that you’re just as attractive without your glasses as you are with them. Turns out, taking off your glasses DOES NOT automatically make you a super model, no matter what your favorite Disney Channel Original Movie has lead you to believe).
  
  Anyway, Outlander is a lot like that. But with Highlanders.

• Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion

  ⭐ 4/5

  Take a look at the clothes you’re wearing. Somebody made them, using an old-fashioned sewing machine, likely in a factory in China, or India, or Mexico. You can probably find some back-stitching where a tread broke, or a spot were the stitches shift a tiny bit to the left.
  
  If you’re like me (and like most Americans), you probably forget that clothes take material, time, and labor to make. It’s so easy to buy a shirt at H&M for five dollars, only to throw it away after a few wears. We can easily buy a dress for the price of a sandwich. The end result: a closet full of cheap clothes, and nothing to wear. I’m as guilty of this as anyone. The clothes in my closet have seen more of the world than I have. Beyond some vintage pieces and designer jeans, most of the clothes I own that were made in the U.S.A. were made by me.
  
  This book is a quick read, and it has inspired me to make more of an effort to buy local, even if it means paying a bit more. I also busted out my old sewing machine, with the hope of making some clothes that are higher quality and more sustainable than the ones that can be bought in the store. Recommended, especially for anyone who has ever wondered how clothes ever got to be so cheap.

• Pachinko

  ⭐ 3/5

  This is a hard book to rate, because there were things I truly enjoyed about it. The Japanese colonized Korea back in the day, if you didn’t know, and the history is pretty fascinating. Plus, Min Jin Lee is a capable writer, the kind that leads book-clubbers to proudly proclaim (while guzzling Pinot Grigio, no doubt) that they actually finished the book.
  
  Actually, I thought this was a solid four-star read — until I was almost finished with it. But I have to knock off 1/2 star for not sticking the landing, and another 1/2 star for Jesus. Because, my fucking god, there are a lot of heavy-handed references to Christianity in this book. As a point of reference, the majority of Koreans have no religious affiliation (just over 25% are Christian), and Japan is remarkably secular (Christians make up only 2.3% of the population). But parts of this book felt like they’d be better suited to a megachurch in Texas.
  
  Not that there’s anything wrong with Christianity in books. One of my favorite books is an epic novel about the building of a cathedral. I once gifted a copy of Dante’s Inferno to a high school crush, in an awkward flirtation only the bookish could understand (I thought it was romantic). John Donne’s later poems definitely have a “hot for Jesus” thing going on, and I can dig it.
  
  My issue is that Min Jin Lee seems convinced that a person’s moral character is determined by whether they pray to the right imaginary friend. Characters are able to endure hardships because of god: okay, but a better writer would have written about the struggle. Half the major plot points in this book seem to involve the characters dealing with another terrible thing happening — but all the good characters get through it even stronger, because they believe in god.
  
  Maybe that sort of things resonates with Christians, I don’t really know because nothing about Christianity makes any sense. But I thought the writing was lazy when it could least afford to be, and that just doesn’t work for me. I thought this was a good poolside read, but nothing more.
  

• Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

  ⭐ 4/5

  Perfume has the potential to be awesomely bad. Consider the plot: dude has preternatural sense of smell and goes on a killing spree in an attempt to create the perfect perfume. People are onto him, and can tell that he’s evil, because he doesn’t have any body odor at all. In other words,
  
  
  
  However, it’s also on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, so I figured I’d give it a shot.
  
  Tangentially related: I don’t pay too much attention to scents, at least not most of the time. I mean, put a glass of wine in front of me and, like any good oenophile, I’ll easily be able to tell you if it’s overoaked and I’ll pick out berry or citrus or stone fruit notes, and I might even be able to guess where it’s from, but that happens when I’m actively trying. In my workaday life, scent means little to me.
  
  For a book with such a strange concept, Perfume is surprisingly gripping. Grenouille, the main character, is a particularly effective anti-hero. He’s creepily inconspicuous: he passes through his world mostly unseen, and commits his crimes with little notice. He’s not one of those anti-heroes that the reader roots for, either: as I read this book, I felt as if I were watching a snake from behind glass, feeding on some unassuming (and probably cute and cuddly) prey. The books makes you disgusted, but unable to turn away.
  
  I felt that I should dislike this book: it’s strange, it’s creepy, it’s far outside of my comfort zone. If you’ve seen American Hustle, you likely remember Jennifer Lawrence’s character saying “Well, he must like it on some level. He must want it, because he keeps coming back for it. It’s like that perfume that you love, that you can’t stop smelling even when there’s something sour in it. Can’t get enough of it.”
  
  Which, I think, is also a good way to sum up this book.

• Pledged - Secret Life Of Sororities

  ⭐ 3/5

  Spoiler alert: this book expresses mostly negative opinions about Greek life. If you’re a former sister looking for a book that’s the journalistic equivalent of Leslie Gore’s hit song “Sunshine, Lollipops & Rainbows,” maybe you should just call up your old sorority friends and talk about how awesome you guys all were together. But that sisterly Kumbaya shtick doesn’t sell books (which you might have learned in your Business 101 class, if you hadn’t skipped it to play vodka pong), so don’t expect to be praised in this one.
  
  Anyway, this book talks about sorority girls. As a feminist, I balk at the term “girl” used for grown women, even if these grown women are making incredibly childish decisions. For a year, journalist Alexandra Robbins went undercover at two different (unidentified) sororities at an (unnamed) State University. She tells the stories of four young women in sororities, each of whom had mixed experiences in the sisterhood.
  
  In college, I had limited contact with women who had pledged sororities. In my mind, they existed in a benignly inane orbit around the University, the pillar of knowledge that held my universe together (you know, because of the awesome force of knowledge gravity. Sorry, I’m bad at similes today.). The only greek letters I associate with myself are Phi Beta Kappa (nerds represent!). In general, I found that sorority members were perfectly lovely one-on-one, but weren’t great to associate with in larger numbers.
  
  My major issue with sororities was the massive, systematized cheating, which was largely ignored by the university (and the Communication Department, which was widely known to be the easy “sorority major”). Sororities held file drawers full of tests, which they passed out to their sisters (to the detriment of anyone else in the course). I was shocked by their lack of respect for higher education: I’d expect this sort of thing at a second-tier regional state school, but I went to a public ivy.
  
  There are many “scandalous” behaviors discussed in the book, but none are surprising. NEWSFLASH: college students binge drink, have sex, and smoke weed. I could tell a bunch of shocking stories about college, and I spent most of my time at the library (I won’t, though, because this is the internet). More interesting were the weird rituals associated with being greek, like “serenades” (entire fraternities court entire sororities by singing slutified versions of terrible pop songs to each other) and rush. Sorority life seems to consist of endless meetings and lots of parties with fraternities. Learning is clearly not a priority.
  
  Sororities have the air of upper-crust societies, but the women don’t seem to participate in many cultural activities. Philanthropy is supposed to be important, but “service” mostly means playing drunken volleyball games. Other activities range from the patently bourgeois (e.g., conspicuous consumption of logo-laden designer duds) to the surprisingly trashy (e.g., Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville). These ladies aren’t reading experimental fiction and hitting up student art shows. Within the post-collegiate social hierarchy, they’re the trophy wives of the parvenus of tomorrow.
  
  Young women: I urge you to get involved at your university, but don’t do it by jello wrestling your “sister” at a frat party. Instead, try to find opportunities for undergraduate research. Attend arts programs and special lectures. Take advantage of the wide range of courses offered, and try to actually study for them*. College is one of few times in life where you can focus on your own education. Don’t squander it.
  
  And really, don’t drink any blue drinks. Just trust me on that one.
  
  *Because you’ve read this far, here’s my verified, effective method to get an A in any course you take: attend class. Read the books (and any supplementary materials) as they’re assigned. Do all assigned work. Attend office hours if anything isn’t clear. There you go.

• Pnin

  ⭐ 5/5

  Pnin is an interesting little book. It’s about academia and academic politics, and it’s also about the immigrant experience, but it is not fully about either of these topics. The main character, a Russian emigre turned professor by the name of Timofey Pnin, whose error-laden English contrasts with his erudite thoughts about Russian literature.
  
  Many Americans consider the U.S. to be the best country in the entire world (and, possibly, the entire universe, provided the universe includes other intelligent lifeforms that have organized themselves into countries). Pnin, however, longs to be back in Russia, which no longer existed the way it did for him as a child. Barring that, he would rather be in France, a country he is forced to flee after the “Hitler War.” In one particularly evocative scene, Pnin imagines that his current residence is one, not in New England, but in suburban Russia. He imagines that he teaches Russian students, instead of the entitled American students he’s stuck with. In this one moment, he is truly happy.
  
  At this point, I should mention that, while Nabokov wrote a funny book, but it shouldn’t be regarded as anything less than a tragedy.
  
  Nabokov’s narrators tend to be interesting, and this narrator is no exception. He knows Pnin, but does not divulge much about himself until the last chapter. He never gives his name, although I suspect the narrator is some version of Nabokov himself.

• Pines (Wayward Pines, #1)

  ⭐ 3/5

  I’m a big fan of the creepy small town trope. You know the one, where everything seems perfect on the surface, but things aren’t exactly what they seem (<a href=“http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098936/“>related). Part of my obsession likely stems from the fact that I grew up in a small town with two major industries: tourism, and meth. My family moved up there for the clean air and beautiful mountain views, and even though we’ve all moved away I still read the local news to see if anyone I know has gotten arrested or stabbed recently.
  
  Anyway, Wayward Pines, ID, is a creepy small town that’s eerily reminiscent of Crestline, CA, except with 90% less meth and 100% more unexplained phenomena. I won’t explain what the unexplained phenomena are, because that would ruin the book. This is total brain candy, and mostly works because it keeps you wanting to know what’s happening. It’s appropriate for a beach or bathtub, which tells you a bit about how literary it is.
  
  <a href=“http://www.fox.com/wayward-pines/“>Fox is turning this book into a TV Show, which I will likely watch and then complain about, because it’s not likely to be nearly as good as Twin Peaks.

• Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now

  ⭐ 4/5

  A word of warning: if you read this book, you’re going to have to accept that media theorists do not have to present empirical evidence to argue a point. Examples here are cherry-picked from a vast landscape of television shows and websites and films, without mention of base rates, variance, statistical significance, and other figures that scientific types (such as myself) rely on to make sense of data. Of course, lack of any real evidence doesn’t stop Rushkoff from making claims about causality. If only doing science were so easy.
  
  Bottom line: there’s no science in this book, despite what goodreads might lead to you believe. Indeed, the library of congress shelved it under “technology - social aspects” and “technology - philosophy.” (If the library of congress had a heading for “curmudgeony polemics against kids these days” it might go under that too, although Rushkoff loves technology enough that no LOC librarian worth his or her salt would file this under “luddite.”)
  
  Anyway, it’s best to get over the lack of data, because Rushkoff compellingly argues that our post-narrative, post-structuralist, post-everything, post-nothing world is always going on in the present, even as none of us really live in the moment.
  
  An aside (in a post-narrative world, my writing is not required to be linear, or even informative: the most important thing is to capture attention): I’m often impressed by my own facility with pop-culture references in popular media. I don’t have cable, I spend most of my summer actively avoiding invitations to inane sequels to even more inane blockbusters, and I couldn’t pick of-the-moment pop hacks like Justin Bieber or Adele out of a lineup. But, “meta” shows like Community seem to be aimed at me, because I do know a Goodfellas reference or a parody of a narrative trope when I see one. In creating a corps of viewers who won’t bother with the history of cinema (or music, or art, or anything), who stare blankly when they hear names like “Ingmar Bergman” or “David O. Selznick” or “Laura Palmer,” popular satirical television shows have, ironically, selected for exactly the audience that won’t get the jokes.
  
  Back to the book. Rushkoff’s argument is presented in a few broad strokes, which resemble the colorful, self-contained rectangles of a Mondrian painting. He jumps all over the place, talking about investment banking, post-narrative collapse, digiphrenia (being more than one digital being at once), Facebook, conspiracy theorists, and the apocalypse. I was surprised to hear about the benefits of barter economies and alternative currencies, although I’m not sure how that fits in with anything. The book is about as rambling as this review, albeit more successful at conveying actual information.
  
  What’s the solution to present shock? Perhaps the 21st century version of Walden consists of simply unplugging the modem, switching the iPhone to “do not disturb,” cracking open a book, and listening to Highway 61 Revisited on vinyl. Maybe reconnecting with nature means strolling along Clark street without listening to music through headphones. Just typing that makes the future seem bleak, not least because I know few people would deign to exist apart from the electronic crutch of Facebook profiles and Twitter feeds. The only solution I can offer is a personal refusal to become a blankly-buzzing drone.
  
  If you’re interested in this book, you may want to check out this interview with the author on the Joe Rogan Experience, which I found rather enjoyable.

• Pride and Prejudice

  ⭐ 5/5

  I don’t know how I got through 21 years of my life without reading this book. I had always been a hopeless romantic, but I figured Pride and Prejudice would be a similar experience to my mind-numbing trek through Jane Eyre in high school English. I had wanted to read the book before the movie (starring Keira Knightely) came out, but I ended up forgetting my grand plans and leaving my book unopened on the shelf.
  
  Once I finally got into the book, I couldn’t believe that it had taken me so long to read it! I got completely caught up in the relationships, wondering how everything was going to finally work out. I finished the book hungry for more, and I now plan to get started with Emma. Jane Austen may not be a technically brilliant writer, but she sure does know how to draw out complicated relationships with humor and wit.

• Princess Nevermore (Point Fantasy)

  ⭐ 3/5

  So I’m reading [b:Neverwhere|14497|Neverwhere|Neil Gaiman|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348747943s/14497.jpg|16534], which involves an underground version of London, and I remembered that, in middle school, I had read some terrible-cum-awesome young adult novel about a princess that lives underground who falls through a wishing well and ends up above ground. And, of course, she has to go to high school, and falls in love with some generic cool high school dude, and then she has to choose between true love or her home/destiny. You know, because that storyline is not at all contrived.
  
  Anyway, I found the title by searching for “fantasy novel princess from underground world comes to high school.” Thanks, Google.

• Push Dick's Button

  ⭐ 3/5

  I’ve been skating for as long as I can remember, and, while I lost my double axel sometime in the early 2000’s (double axel, you are a demon mistress, but maybe I’ll get you back one of these days), I never lost my love for the sport. Growing up in the skating world, during the height of skating’s popularity in the U.S., I was fortunate enough to see (and, occasionally, skate with) some incredibly talented skaters. I mean, have you ever watched Michelle Kwan perform an artistic program dressed like a Disney princess? You can imagine how much 12 year old me totally geeked out about that.
  
  Anyway, Dick Button is a legend: he’s pretty much the voice of figuring skating. And, while he can be opinionated, he obviously cares deeply about skating. This book seems cobbled together, which is too bad: as others have mentioned, it could use a ghostwriter or at least a better edit. But, once you get past that, it’s pretty fun.
  
  One of the major things Dick Button has been vocal about is the need to maintain the artistry of figure skating. He talks about legendary performances, such as Katarina Witt’s long program at the 88 olympics at Calgary and Torvill and Dean’s dance to Bolero in 84; these types of performances wouldn’t fly amongst the technique-rich but artistry-poor programs we see today. And I agree that that’s a bad thing. There’s a reason why people got so up in arms about Adelina Sotnikova’s gold medal performance in 2014: while it was technically demanding, I (and others) felt it lacked in artistry. See also: Tara Lipinski.
  
  (And don’t get me started on the judging system. Ain’t nobody understand that shit, which is why you shouldn’t put a speed skater in charge of the ISU.)
  
  I’m firmly within the niche for this book and, while I found it fun, I wouldn’t recommend it for a general audience (I’m still waiting on a book that gives a cultural history of the sport, a la [b:Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet|8268599|Apollo’s Angels A History of Ballet|Jennifer Homans|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347374575s/8268599.jpg|13116700]). Still, skaters, former skaters, and skating parents will probably enjoy this romp through the skating world.
  
  If you do read this, make sure to read it with a tab open to YouTube: trust me, you’re going to want to watch some of these performances!

• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

  ⭐ 5/5

  Although the United States is the most extroverted country in the world, one third to one half of people are introverts. Introverts are often quiet people, the ones who would rather stay in on a weekend than go out to a party, the ones that need to recharge with solitude after giving presentations. Introverts are often deep thinkings and intimate friends, although our society (incorrectly) views them as passive and anti-social. In Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain explains how Western society misunderstands the quiet among us.
  
  I do not count myself as one of the quiet ones. Indeed, I’m one of the extroverts, and I’ll go so far as to say that no one has ever called me quiet. I know I’m an extrovert, because I look forward to giving presentations (the bigger the audience, the better). I get antsy when I don’t have a party to go to on Friday night, and I recharge after a long day of work by socializing. Plus, I’m going to spend a large portion of this review talking about myself.
  
  Cain’s book makes me realize that I also possess some traits that are more characteristic of introverts. I spend a fair amount of time with my nose buried in a book, and I’m hopelessly bad at multitasking. I’m not a fan of group work (unless I can be completely in control of the group), and I would certainly consider myself an intellectual. As Cain points out, no one is completely an extrovert, nor is anyone completely an introvert. Extroverts, however, flourish in American society, while introverts are often forced to pretend to be extroverts.
  
  Particularly interesting is the chapter on raising introverted children. I don’t have children, nor do I have plans to gestate a human being anytime soon, so I was surprised at how much I got from this section. After reading it, I realized how difficult school must have been for the shy ones, the ones that “never spoke up” in class. It’s clear that I got undue praised for being bossy and talkative. Who knows how many kids my teachers ignored while I blabbed on endlessly about who knows what.
  
  Throughout the book, Cain argues that introverts should be cultivated, that their unique abilities (such as the deep focus that so often eludes me) should be valued. I agree, and I think she should take her argument one step further: extroverts should try to bring out their introverted sides. Maybe, instead of telling introverts to be louder, we should all try to become more quiet.

• Rabbit, Run (Rabbit Angstrom, #1)

  ⭐ 1/5

  Most books are bad, not because they’re actively terrible, but simply because they’re not good. These types of books are easy to dislike, but difficult to despise: it’s hard to find the will to hate something that never really stirred up a strong emotion in the first place. Rabbit, Run is not this kind of bad book. No, it’s a carefully crafted, well written piece of misogynistic wish-fulfillment that’s so unlikeable and so offensive that its status as a beloved American classic is, to this reader, inexplicable.
  
  Does this review make me sound overly vitriolic? Well, consider this example: Rabbit manipulates a “fat” woman into sleeping with him by giving her enough money to pay her rent. He insists that she cannot wear her diaphragm while they have sex, and goes so far as to make her leave the door to the restroom open so that he can watch her as she pees so he can make sure that she doesn’t slip it in there. He then forcibly washes off her makeup, despite her clear protests. Somehow, in Updike’s world, she has the best orgasm she’s ever had.
  
  This is the kind of book that made me look up from my Kindle and say to reading “You know, we’ve had a long run, but this whole reading thing just isn’t working out for me. It’s not anything either of us did, it’s just the way this book has been making me feel recently. I think I’m going to have to sit on the couch, watch some tv, and think things through.”
  
  To which reading replied “I’m not ready to give up on you. We’ve had so many good times together. Remember when we sat in the park and gasped over plot twists in The Count of Monte Cristo? Remember reading Anna Karenina over and over again? Think about all the good things we have ahead of us: think about the George Eliot novels you haven’t read, not the mention the Dickens. You haven’t even finished Les Miserables yet! We promised we would do that together.”
  
  And, while reading was right, my intense dislike of Rabbit, Run caused us to go through something of a trial separation. Luckily, nothing can stop true love.
  
  Anyway, I still feel terribly conflicted, because I wanted to like Rabbit, Run. The schadenfreude-rooted story that I had been told as bookish teenager with more angst than friends, was that the basketball stars and homecoming queens would be miserable, that they would peak in high school. In some versions of the story, they ended up fat, working late shifts at sleazy bars; in other versions, they ended up working for me. Importantly, in all versions of this story, they end up miserable.
  
  Rabbit is supposed to be the miserable type: he’s supposed to realize there’s more to life than having 2.5 kids, and he’s supposed to decide that he wants more than that. Rabbit, Run is supposed to be a cautionary story that tells those high school basketball types to wake up and get out. But, you know what, that story is just an untrue as the stories I was told. Because those insufferable high school kids have turned into insufferable adults with lovely homes and nice jobs and adorable families. I wouldn’t trade my life for a second, but that doesn’t stop me from occasionally lusting after their in-home washer and dryers.
  
  And so it is, too, for Rabbit. For Rabbit, despite the running, despite understanding that there’s more out there, never really changes anything, just bounces around and gets upset that he never quite has exactly what he thinks he deserves (spoiler alert: what he thinks he deserves is a lot of kinky sex with a wide array of women, and for everyone to fawn over him because he used to be okay at basketball in high school).
  
  Rabbit, Run is surely important as a chronicle of the type of sexual and emotional abuse that women were expected to suffer with during the 1950’s and 60’s, all the while wearing a girdle and a smile and asking whether they can make their husbands a sandwich. I sighed with disgust when Rabbit shames Ruth for having given other men blow jobs, then demands that he give her one (despite her clear “no”), then shames her again for not enjoying it. I quote “Listen. Tonight you turned against me. I need to see you on your knees. I need you to” - he still can’t say it - “do it.” (emphasis mine). Followed by this thought from Rabbit “IF she didn’t want to, if it would spoil him for her, why didn’t she say No?” She did, you asshole.
  
  But, if I thought that was difficult, I cried for poor Janice when Rabbit forces himself on her right after she has his baby. He feels that he deserves sex, because he has “turned down” the perceived sexual advances of another women. Janice loudly says no, but of course that doesn’t stop Rabbit. However, when she continues to say no, he turns her over and anally rapes her. Understandably, this sends her into a breakdown.
  
  I can’t, in good faith, recommend this book except as an example of how women were treated like second class citizens in recent history. That Rabbit, Run is still given a place in the literary canon is just another example of male hegemony at work. And I’m not the type to throw around phrases like “male hegemony” lightly. I don’t expect my protagonists to be relatable and my plot lines to be filled with rainbows and unicorns; far from it. However, I also don’t expect to find that an acclaimed novel should actually come with a trigger warning. So, skip this, unless you want to feel disgusted.

• Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)

  ⭐ 5/5

  Does this book deserve five stars? Objectively, maybe not. Does it deserve to be in my “dear ones” shelf, along with the most perfect book of all time, Anna Karenina? Objectively, probably not. But it’s my rating system, and I can do whatever I want, so I’m giving this book five stars and put in on my favorites shelf because it’s so freaking awesome.
  
  This is filled with 80’s references, which didn’t feel too obscure to me (caveat: I pretty much watch an insane amount of movies, listen to an insane amount of music, and obsess about Star Wars/Star Trek/Lord of the Rings). I’m too young for this book (I was born in 1986), but I’ve seen War Games (1983) a ton of times, and I can totally rock out to some Oingo Boingo (Dead Man’s Party, from the album Dead Man’s Party, track 2, 1985). Actually, I may have taken a few breaks from reading this to bust out my copy of the Back to the Future trilogy (1985, 1989, 1990), and Star Wars (the original trilogy, 1977, 1980, 1983; I’m ignoring those new ones). Cline throws out some Firefly and Harry Potter references, maybe to benefit the younger readers (or maybe to prove that he’s a jack of all trades when it comes to pop culture).
  
  Read this book, even if you’re not a nerd who loves references. Better yet, listen to the audiobook: it’s narrated by Wil Wheaton!

• Rebecca

  ⭐ 5/5

  I just want to clarify, in case you thought Rebecca was a bestselling romance novel: it’s not. It’s a serious novel, and it’s seriously good. I find it both interesting and disconcerting that the Hitchcock film still garners respect, while the novel is marketed as a simple romance ([bc:Rebecca|636993|Rebecca|Daphne du Maurier|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348884686s/636993.jpg|46663]). Maybe the book would be more canonical if it were written by David du Maurier (conversely, maybe the film would be dismissed if it were directed by Alexa Hitchcock).
  
  Anyway, this is freaking good. It’s an interesting meditation on identity, possibly the most creative one I’ve experienced since Persona. The second Mrs. de Winter is haunted by Rebecca, the Mrs. de Winter that came before her. She desperately wants to be “a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls.” (so do I, dear, so do I). Instead, she finds herself undermined by the servants who are supposed to answer to her. She begs for maturity in a world where her husband openly admits that he’s attracted to her youth and naivety. She’s interesting, even as her true self completely disappears into the narrative (and into the shadowy recesses of Manderley).
  
  Rebecca is subversive in that the second Mrs. de Winter doesn’t just blindly submit to her role as a retroactive accessory to the murder of the first Mrs. de Winter. Instead, she she actively acquiesces. So does the reader, as they find themselves rooting for the current de Winters. I see what you did there, du Maurier. That was clever of you.
  
  While we’re at it, seriously, when your husband tells you “Yeah, I killed my former wife, but that bitch was cray,” the correct response is run away. At the very least, it might not be a terrible idea to at least take what he says with a grain of salt, instead of just saying “Yep, that sounds legit. I’m sure she needed killing.” Getting super turned on and then deciding to bang is probably the worst thing thing you can possibly do. Even if the sex is good, it’s a regrettable life decision.
  
  Are we supposed to root for the nameless second Mrs. de Winter? Should we care about the fate of Rebecca? What should we make of Beatrice, the more conventional foil for the sundry Mrs. de Winters? Is Mrs. Danvers the protagonist of this novel? Is there any protagonist at all? Who knows. One thing I liked quite a bit about this novel is that it invites an immediate re-read. I’m going to try to hold out until I can convince someone to fund a vacation to Cornwall.
  
  I’m not sure what else to say except that I totally urge you read this. I can’t say that you won’t be disappointed, but I can say that, if you dislike this book, I will seriously second-guess our friendship.

• Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)

  ⭐ 3/5

  Well, this started out strong.
  
  At the beginning of Red Rising, we follow our young protagonist, Darrow, into the mines of Mars. Something not so awesome seems to have happened in this society and, to put it mildly, the Martian Dream doesn’t seem like all it’s cracked up to be. But, in science fiction, things are never what they seem, and it’s always up to the unlikely youngster to save the world. Joseph Campbell would be proud.
  
  Unfortunately, after setting up a strong conflict, Pierce Brown abruptly shifts into a secondary plot, in which he can set up our young Darrow to be inexplicably awesome at everything. And yeah, I know, I could easily accuse Rothfuss of doing the same thing, but the difference is that the secondary plot of Red Rising, which becomes the primary plot, just isn’t that interesting. It’s a lot of ploty plot plot, with all sorts of Ploty McPlotersons doing a lot of ploty plot stuff.
  
  I’ll likely continue the series, as I really was intrigued by the main premise. However, I’m not exactly champing at the bit to start the next book.

• Room

  ⭐ 2/5

  Ugh, this book. It sounds pretty interesting, right? A mother and child are held captive in a room, which is the only place the poor child has ever known. The story is told from his perspective. But, you know what? Sometimes people with interesting ideas are terrible, terrible writers. If Stephen King had written this, it probably would have been terrifying and compelling and awesome (not that I think of King as, like, a paragon of good writing, but he’s about ten thousand times more capable than Donoghue).
  
  Here’s the thing that bothered me: the child narrator is question is not believable as a child, or as a narrator, or even really as a human. He makes errors in speech that no child would make, typically developing or otherwise, but then he is somehow capable of reading Alice and Wonderland and talking about how things are agonizing. I think Donoghue was trying to make the kid sound realistic, but she really just made him sound like a full-grown adult trying to write like a child. And there’s over three hundred pages of his narration. Seriously. That’s three hours of my life that I’ll never get back.
  
  But, if that wasn’t enough, there’s all sorts of preachiness about Jesus, and heaven and faith. Also, weird moralistic lessons about living with less, which felt out of place because we probably shouldn’t try to live as if we’ve been stuck in a shed with only the barest essentials for seven freaking years. The only positive thing I can say is that it’s slightly better than Divergent, but it’s definitely worse than anything else I’ve read this year. Now if you excuse me, I’m going to go read some Calvino in an attempt to wash the bad taste of this book out of my brain.

• Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

  ⭐ 4/5

  Go into a typical American grocery store, and you won’t find that they stock much food. The real food lines the edges: produce, meat and seafood, dairy. If you want real food that was produced locally and sustainably, with care paid to proper animal-husbandry practices, you’re probably out of luck entirely. The interior of the store is filled with food products: mostly nutrient-poor corn and soy based “foods” engineered to make you keep reaching for just one more. These products are heavily marketed towards children.
  
  Let’s take a look at the ingredient list for Cheetos, which is available online but are not able to be copied and pasted because Frito-Lay seems to want to keep this information as secret as possible. Spoiler alert: this stuff is pretty much poison. My comments on the ingredients appear as footnotes.
  
  Enriched Corn Meal [1] (Corn Meal, Ferrous Sulfate, Niacin, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, and Folic Acid), Vegetable Oil [2] (Corn, Canola, and/or Sunflower Oil), Cheese Seasoning (Whey, Cheddar Cheese [Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, Enzymes], Canola Oil [3], Maltodextrin [Made From Corn] [4], Salt, Whey Protein Concentrate, Monosodium Glutamate [5], Natural and Artificial Flavors [6], Lactic Acid, Citric Acid [7], Artificial Color [Yellow 6] [8]), and Salt.
  
  Cheetos were the first food product I could think of, but many food products have similar ingredients. Seriously, the crap that lines the grocery store shelves is mostly corn with artificial flavorings. I wouldn’t feed most of these products to anyone, but millions of people are buying them for their children. How the hell did this happen?
  
  Salt Sugar Fat attempts to provide an answer, by detailing a historical account of processed food. The first section, Sugar, explains how we’ve gone from healthy breakfast standards like eggs, bacon, and sausage, to eating bowls of glorified sugar for breakfast. It’s incredibly disturbing, especially when you hear how food companies go about creating and marketing these products. Unbelievably, many cereals make claims about their “healthy whole grains”(which aren’t even particularly healthy) even though their cereals are pretty much 50% sugar.
  
  Case in point: the insane claim that Frosted Mini Wheats “boost brain power.” Check it out. This is all based on in-house studies, and they didn’t even do a good job biasing the studies because the data don’t support the claims, but that didn’t stop the food companies from marketing sugary wheat as a health product. Seriously, you can’t make this shit up.
  
  The fat section is a bit more uneven than the sugar section. See, sugar is something that pretty clearly has no nutritional value and shouldn’t be a major part of anyone’s diet. Fat, on the other hand, is more complicated. Moss writes based on the misconception that polyunsaturated fats are healthy and that saturated fats should be avoided at all costs, which is outdated (the true story is much more nuanced than that, and really depends on whether you’re getting your saturated fat from grass fed cows or from processed foods). This grated on me. However, the kinds of fats he’s talking about are processed fats, so my nit-picking isn’t terribly relevant, because no one thinks processed cheese and trans fats are healthy.
  
  I didn’t realize how much cheese people were eating. See, Americans have decided that whole milk is, like, super bad for them; apparently, they’ve traded milk consumption for seriously excessive amounts of cheese consumption. Moss outlines how cheese turned from something to be enjoyed in moderation with a little charcuterie and wine, to an ingredient that can be used in a ton of different products (on the cheap, of course). This is mostly due to some incredibly insane government subsidies that lead to more milk being produced than the market needed, or even wanted. You’ll never look at that box of Mac and “Cheese” (really, cheese product) again.
  
  The final section, Salt, deals with the truly insane amounts of salt put into processed foods. People seem to know that salt can be damaging in large quantities, but the “solution” has been removing the salt shaker and eating bland food at home. Truth is, if you’re making food from scratch, you don’t really need to worry about the amount of salt you’re consuming. The major issue is the sodium in processed foods, which contributes to the texture and covers up off flavors, like the “warmed over flavor” that comes from oxidized food products. Without salt, processed foods taste completely disgusting, so don’t expect to see truly low-sodium versions of these foods in the future.
  
  I’m subtracting one star, because processed foods are deeply connected to science, which Moss does not write about well. As a scientist myself, it pains me to see descriptions like this one about “brain imaging, which allowed [Nestlé] to perform nifty experiments like wiring the scalps of its human test subjects to EEG machines in order to see how, say, Dreyer’s ice cream…excites the brain’s neurology” (emphasis added). Read that again, because it’s terrible. EEG measures electrical signals that indicate neuronal activity in the brain. Neurology is a brach of medicine that deals with nervous system disorders. The book includes many errors like this, although more often Moss fails to include any sort of methodological information at all. Of course, if Americans were more science literate, we wouldn’t need books like this in the first place.
  
  My criticisms aside, I would definitely recommend this book, especially for people who are newer to healthy eating.
  
  [1] Made from genetically modified corn, although they don’t have to say that on the label on the label, and grown in a monoculture that’s incredibly harmful to the environment
  
  [2] A chemically extracted, terribly unhealthy oil that’s been touted as healthier than good old-fashioned butter (if this sounds surprising to you, I highly encourage you to check out this debunking of the China Study, as well as the wonderfully accessible book Real Food, which explains the sound nutritional advice of the Weston A. Price Foundation. Besides being horrible for you, most vegetable oils are genetically modified.
  
  [3] Why Canola oil would be added to cheese, I have no idea, as cheese naturally contains a fair amount of milk fat
  
  [4] Maltodextrin is a type of sugar
  
  [5] Yep, that’s MSG
  
  [6] Both “natural” and artificial flavorings are created in labs; “natural” products aren’t particularly natural, but they’re made from things you might find in nature, ish. This Scientific American article explains it well.
  
  [7] Lactic Acid and Citric Acid both act as preservatives
  
  [8] This is manufactured from petroleum, and is a carcinogen. Yummy.

• School of Fortune

  ⭐ 2/5

  Pippa Walker is an oil-heiress whose mother is planning the wedding of the century. Unfortunately for Pippa, the wedding backfires and she is cast out of the family. Now she must complete a degree in order to receive her trust fund, but this is easier said than done.
  
  Full of zany antics and over-the-top characters, School of Fortune is a fun chick-lit read. I bought the book in the airport on the way from Los Angeles to London, and was able to stay entertained for the 12 hour flight. It may be chick-lit, but its got heart, spunk and enough insane situations to keep the pages turning until the very end.

• Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (And World Peace)

  ⭐ 4/5

  Meditation has turned into somewhat of a sexy practice these days, especially among techie types. Case in point: this book about meditation, written by the person in charge of meditation at Google. However, this is not some business book about increased productivity. Indeed, Chade-Meng Tan’s goal in life is to change the world through increased personal contentment and compassion.
  
  I started practicing meditation before I actually knew what meditation was, although I certainly wouldn’t consider myself even close to being an expert. As a kid, I had guided meditation tapes (why I had them, I have no idea), and my mom taught me how to chant ohm when we got stressed out looking for parking (can you tell I grew up in Southern California?).
  
  But, like many others, I didn’t really get into meditation until I started doing yoga. At the beginning, I wasn’t exactly putting in the best effort towards meditating during shavasana, but then I experienced something magical. During a yoga class in college, my instructor asked us to imagine a white ball of energy inside the chest. She guided us in mentally moving the ball of energy around ourselves, allowing us to focus on each part in turn. I felt surprisingly energized afterwards. I wanted to learn more about meditation.
  
  After my first real experience with meditation, I started doing it with more frequency, but relatively timidly. I practiced the breathing exercises I’d learned to help myself go to sleep. I used meditation to stop being annoyed by traffic. I practiced breathing in positive energy and letting the negativity leave my body. Many, many years later I’ve been making a point to deepen my practice, planning time for it so that I don’t stop doing it when I need it most. Unsurprisingly, I’ve been reading as much as I can about it as well.
  
  This book is filled with great information and meditation exercises, the same ones used in the Search Inside Yourself course at Google. Some of my favorites are the loving kindness meditation (trying to remember that Donald Trump is also a human that desires happiness is really quite difficult) and the empathic listening exercises. Search Inside Yourself is definitely a great toolbox for anyone interested in meditation.

• Sense and Sensibility

  ⭐ 5/5

  I always felt ashamed of not having read Sense and Sensibility: it seemed as egregious a cultural oversight as not having seen The Godfather or not having listened to The White Album. However, my shame never induced me to actually read the book. Of all of Austen’s work, Sense and Sensibility is the most straightforward marriage plot, and while I admire the charm involved I typically prefer my literature more scathing. Additionally, I can only roll my eyes when Austen’s heroines bemoan the idea of being an unmarried woman of seven and twenty, especially as I recently turned 28.
  
  Sometimes, though, we’re drawn to a particular book not by inclination, but by situation. And, while I cannot yet write coherently about the more difficult events happening around me, I can say that a regency era comedy of manners is as far away from my current situation as I’m likely to get.
  
  I have to admit that I loved Sense and Sensibility, despite my reservations. As the title suggests, it follows the story of two different sisters: Elinor, who is ruled by sense, and Marianne, who is guided by sensibility. The novel opens with their father’s death, which means that their family home will go to their half-brother and his greedy wife. In order to return to their old lifestyle, they need to marry well.
  
  I should note here that part of what makes Austen seem so relevant in the 21st century, when women have many opportunities beyond marrying well, is that she allows herself to be blunt in describing the cultural mores of the 18th century, when a fortuitous marriage was the best that could be expected.
  
  Sense and Sensibility has earned itself a place on my “read it again soon” list: it’s escapist while still being smart, and as charming as it is socially conscious.

• Sex Object: A Memoir

  ⭐ 4/5

  Here are some events, endured by yours truly, perpetrated by strangers:
  
  -Guy trying to walk me home while aggressively flirting and asking for my contact information, culminating in me walking in the complete opposite direction from my apartment so that I could go inside a coffee shop instead of leading him to my home.
  
  -Some random guy reaching up my skirt at a house party in college and grabbing me before I could get away from him (note to self: was this Donald Trump?).
  
  -Practically jogging down a steep sidewalk in San Francisco and darting into a cell phone store just to lose the guy who had been following me after I refused to date him.
  
  -Ignoring countless men who cat called from cars, from sidewalks, from the seemingly innocuous “Hey beautiful” to the much more obnoxious “Wanna fuck?”
  
  -Dealing with cat callers calling me a bitch or saying I shouldn’t walk outside looking like that (how else should I look if not like myself?) when I ignore their advances.
  
  -Having well intentioned men tell me to take these types of situations as a compliment, not understanding that I actually feared for my safety.
  
  Sex Object is not a humorous book. Jessica Valenti says as much in her introduction: many feminists use humor and inspiration to get their message across, but it’s also okay to be serious (even if people on the internet call you a man hater and say they would only screw you if you were gagged). I definitely recommend this to young women who consider this type of behavior normal, who don’t consider themselves feminists. This is not normal. And we should all be feminists.

• Sharp Objects

  ⭐ 4/5

  Gillian Flynn is tricky. She makes you think you know what’s going on, that you’ve completely figured out the ending of the book. Then she tricks you. Right when you’re thinking, “oh, I see what you did there, but you can’t fool me twice” she tricks you again. Because she’s tricky.
  
  I don’t now how effectively I can review this book, because I want to let her trick you. Sharp Objects focuses on a reporter with a dark past who travels from Chicago to her hometown in Missouri to break a story about a serial killer. It’s one of those books that you can’t put down (I’m being almost literal about that. I definitely walked from the train to my lab without putting down my kindle because I couldn’t stop reading. If my mom had seen that, she would have reminded me that crossing busy intersections while reading a book is dangerous).
  
  After reading both Sharp Objects and Flynn’s well-regarded [b:Gone Girl|8442457|Gone Girl|Gillian Flynn|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1339602131s/8442457.jpg|13306276], I’ve got to say that Flynn is a writer to keep an eye on. She may not be a particularly stylish writer, but her books are well paced and masterfully plotted. Plus, she’s not afraid to create unlikable characters, which in my mind is a great thing.

• Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

  ⭐ 4/5

  Lindy West does not speak for all women.
  
  I mean this in a refreshingly positive way. One frustrating aspect of feminist writing (or, really, much of the writing done by women who believe in equality and dare to point out that we’re not quite there yet), is that people tend to want it to speak for all women. Which is just asinine, because people, as a basic rule, only have direct experience living in one particular body, and memoir, as a form, isn’t meant to generalize broadly. So let’s just stop with the deluge of cool girls and teeny boppers saying “Like OMG, I’m totally not even fat and I like Daniel Tosh’s show so obvi I’m not a feminist, teehee.” Because that completely misses the point.
  
  Shrill is quite similar in ethos to [b:Bad Feminist|18813642|Bad Feminist|Roxane Gay|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1421292744s/18813642.jpg|26563816], in that both deal with feminism and culture and pop culture in a series of sardonic, resonant vignettes. Unlike Bad Feminist, though, Shrill is much more personal, much more raw. West invites the reader to get in her shoes and walk around awhile, and her shoes are sometimes uncomfortable. I was particularly devastated to hear the comments she got after a televised debate about rape jokes: briefly, she was fat and ugly and no dude would ever want to rape her. Which, besides the fact that potential (or realized) sexual assault is constantly at the forefront of most women’s minds regardless of their fuckability, is insane. So here’s a reminder that rape is not a compliment.
  
  I’d really like to live in a world where compassion is a default, where people actually try to take the perspective of others instead of just dismissing their experience. I think Lindy West and I are fighting on the same front. I feel that maybe someone will read West’s book and say “So what? People have said mean things to me and you don’t see me complaining about it.” Which is also not the point. The real point is to remember how much those mean things hurt you, and realize that other people have also been similarly hurt (you know, because they’re also people), and maybe that realization will stop you from saying mean things to others, or potentially call people out when they say mean things to other people. And maybe then the world would be a better place.

• Sideways

  ⭐ 3/5

  Let’s get this out of the way up front: the movie was much better than the book. Objectively, Sideways deserves only two stars, and that’s really pushing it. I mean, this is a book that contains this sentence: “Maudlin classic rock for the 70’s saccharined [sic] the emptiness with its plangent strains, further sickening me.” Seriously, come on. However, for completely subjective reasons that really have nothing to do with the book, I’m giving it three stars. I’m just that kind of reviewer.
  
  Sideways is a book about wine grown in Santa Barbara county, on the central coast of California. I spent five years of my life in Santa Barbara, attending social events that involved copious amounts of wine. But, lest you think I was swilling the finest pinot, let me disclose the fact that social events at UCSB (an acronym, I am told, for “u can study buzzed”) looked something like this:
  
  
  
  Also, again in the spirit of full disclosure, our wine looked a little something like this:
  
  
  
  Serious wine geeks will tell you that wines really deserve varietal specific stemware. As something of a connoisseur, I do recommend a red solo cup for two buck chuck. It really brings out the cloying, unbalanced sweetness of the White Zinfandel like nothing else.
  
  Alright, so reason number 1 for giving Sideways more stars than it deserves: the Santa Barbara connection. Reason number 2, perhaps unsurprisingly, is pinot noir.
  
  At this point in my adult life I’m something of a snob. Not a wine snob in particular, just a snob in general. I do like wine, though. A lot. Given that I have a lot more taste than money, I mostly explore as many different grapes and regions as possible. This means I’m happy trying out the “quality red wines” from Hungary that I can score at my local Eastern European Mexican grocer. However, if given the option, I’m gonna splurge on Pinot Noir.
  
  Side note: yeah, there are some fantastic pinots coming out of central California, no question about that. However, in terms of new world wine, I’m really partial to the Willamette Valley pinots: I seem to be able to get a more complex wine at similar price points with wines coming out of Oregon, and they also seem to have more of a sense of place than those coming out of California (I try not to use the word terroir because it’s hard to pronounce and makes me sound like an asshole). Although, when I have my hands on some serious cash money, I’m definitely getting a straight up Burgundy, because, I mean, come on.
  
  Actually, with money to burn, I’m probably going to buy a nice single-vineyard Willamette pinot for about $40, then I’m going to buy a bunch of ducks because duck pairs perfectly with pinot AND it’s my favorite thing to eat in the entire world. Then I’m gonna buy some Champagne, because hey, pinot noir is pretty common in Champagne and in this strange world where I can buy whatever I want I think it makes sense to keep everything pinot themed.
  
  So yeah, I like pinot.
  
  The third, and final, reason that I’m arbitrarily boosting the rating on this book: merlot.
  
  
  
  That’s right: thanks to Sideways, people think that if they proclaim a hatred of merlot, they can trick other people into thinking that they possess an infinite font of wine wisdom. That means that decent merlot is a seriously good value. Have fun with your Yellow Tail Pinot Noir, winetards. I’ll be sippin’ on a single vineyard Napa Merlot and eating a medium rare rib-eye with my home-prepared horseradish butter, feeling quietly smug.

• Skinny Bitch: A No-Nonsense, Tough-Love Guide for Savvy Girls Who Want to Stop Eating Crap and Start Looking Fabulous!

  ⭐ 1/5

  Flipped through this at a friend’s house back in my Santa Barbara days. The way to get skinny: become completely malnourished, eating only vegetables and large helpings of sanctimoniousness. The nutrition advice is terrible (no known society has ever thrived on a vegan diet, and of course, vegans need to take B12 supplements because they don’t get all the essential nutrients from real food). But hey, more bacon for me.
  
  

• Slimed!: An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age

  ⭐ 0/5

  I’m pretty much planning to ditch everything else I’m doing and read this as soon as it gets to my apartment!

• So You Want to Start a Brewery?: The Lagunitas Story

  ⭐ 3/5

  I live dangerously close to Lagunitas. It’s pretty easy to head up to Petaluma after work, grab a beer tasting and a huge pretzel, fill up a growler of whatever I liked the most, then bring that baby home on a short, lovely drive through vineyards. A lot of my friends live dangerously close as well, and the beer sanctuary has live music and lots of picnic tables and everyone is super friendly. An early afternoon visit can turn into a late night pretty easily there. You’ve been warned.
  
  Of course, I also live dangerously close to Fieldwork, Russian River, Racer 5, Marin Brewing, and a number of local spots I don’t want to name drop because I don’t want you creepers driving around the Bay Area trying to find me. It’s a pretty good life.
  
  This is the story of Lagunitas, and it’s pretty interesting if you enjoy geeking out about adult beverages (which I do, that’s one of my very favorite activities). Everything’s in here: creating the recipe for the IPA, moving from West Marin to Petaluma, coming up with the copy on the labels, opening the sanctuary and starting the brewery in Chicago. And, in case you were wondering, the undercover investigation shutdown is well documented, and (as you would expect) not that exciting, because the fact that people in Northern California smoke weed is not exactly brand new information.
  
  That said, this might be hard to follow for a casual reader who’s only nominally interested in craft beer. Magee assumes some level of background knowledge, and a reader who doesn’t know about the systemic issues around growth and distribution of craft beer in the US during the first waves of the scene will not understand how real the struggle was. Magee alludes to the fact that growth was a double-edged sword, but he’s humble enough to downplay it. It is important to know, though, that breweries would often grow too rapidly, but would still be unable to obtain bank funding to manage that growth, leading to a lot of closed breweries. If you’re interested in those sorts of issues, [b:The Audacity of Hops: The History of America’s Craft Beer Revolution|16115194|The Audacity of Hops The History of America’s Craft Beer Revolution|Tom Acitelli|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1352351487s/16115194.jpg|21932663] is more relevant (and, while you’re at it, read [b:Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition|7324357|Last Call The Rise and Fall of Prohibition|Daniel Okrent|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348621646s/7324357.jpg|8912086], which does a great job of explaining why Americans’ relationship with booze is so wonky to begin with, as well as how the big breweries got to be so big in the first place).

• Sputnik Sweetheart

  ⭐ 5/5

  Reading Murakami is a lot like visiting your home town after many years away. There’s a sense of uncanny familiarity to the whole thing. You navigate the streets on instinct, your eyes drawn to the buildings and businesses that weren’t there before. Part of you becomes irrationally upset that the current residents would do such a thing without consulting you. Another part of you berates yourself for engaging in nostalgia-driven solipsism.
  
  If you find yourself stopping at the liquor store to check whether they’ve started carrying Cutty Sark, or gazing at the sky to make sure there’s only one moon, then you’re in Murakami territory.
  
  Sputnik Sweetheart is a love story. Kind of. It’s also a mystery. Sort of. Murakami ticks many of the boxes he usually ticks: quotidian narrator, ordinary girl unknowingly turned extraordinary ingenue, classical music, cats. However, this particular book is different from the others, at times a little more raw, at other times a little more restrained. There’s a lyrical quality that I previously associated with his short stories, a Nabokovesque elegance that reminds me why I count Murakami among my favorite writers.
  
  This review is somewhat useless, isn’t it? But isn’t art? I haven’t really told you anything useful about the book, really, but I think I’ve told you all you need to know.

• Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

  ⭐ 3/5

  Thin. Could have been a good blog post.

• Steppenwolf

  ⭐ 4/5

  This book is weird. But I think this very useful infographic (which, might I add, I painstakingly created myself) about sums it up:
  
  
  
  I also feel a little bit nervous about giving my assessment about the overall message of the book; Herman Hesse has notoriously claimed that no one really understands this one. Curious, because the book does seem to straightforwardly deal with struggles of identity in light of both Western pessimism and Eastern philosophy. I’ve been wrong before, though.
  
  A couple years ago, Frontline aired a documentary about teens and social media entitled “Generation Like.” The doc explores the phenomenon wherein teenagers derive their identity from the things that they like. Of course, teenagers have pretty much always done that (I can picture myself at 16, maudlin and surly, with a Sex Pistols t-shirt and Crime and Punishment under my arm), but the internet seems to make it much more insidious. Self-presentation is conflated with identity, and advertisers no longer need to advertise their products, because their “brand ambassadors” do it for them. However, before we get all curmudgeony about “kids these days,” we should recognize that this phenomenon has been happening at least since 1927. This is the exact ethos that Hesse rejects through his exploration of the Steppenwolf:
  
  “The modern man…has lost the love of inanimate objects. He does not even love his most sacred object, his motorcar, but is ever hoping to exchange it as soon as he can for a later model…I was not a modern man, nor an old-fashioned one either.”
  
  Harry Haller sees himself as part wolf, not because he actually is a wolf, but because he represses those things inside him that do not fit with the image of himself that he wishes to present to the world. Anything that would mar his perfect portrait he deems to be base and animal, and he solipsistically concludes that no one else is clever enough to have a wolf-nature of their own. This ends up keeping him from fully living. It reads like a very, very awkward zen story in which the reader ultimately learns that they must accept themselves, en entier and without judgement. Admittedly, this idea might seem foreign to an individualistic Western consumer who thinks the best recourse for the alleviation of ennui is to kill one’s own wolf-nature by associating oneself with the most elite aspects of culture and buying more shit. Actually, I’m not surprised that people might have such skewed values that they relate to the frantic musings of the crazed Haller before he (possibly?) finds enlightenment.
  
  I’m still not sure how to explain the last section of the book, but it reminds me of the section of Ulysses where Leopold and Stephen get high and get some prostitutes. So I’m assuming that Harry Haller was also on whatever crazy drug Leopold and Stephen were on, although I think he had a much worse trip.

• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

  ⭐ 4/5

  In the winter of 2012, I spent five weeks in a basement medical school classroom, taking an advanced course in neuroanatomy. I didn’t know what to expect, and was surprised when we were instructed to grab gloves, a scalpel, and what could only be described as a brain in a bucket. Compared to the cadavers given to the physical therapy students who sometimes shared our lab space, we didn’t have much information about our brains. Each cadaver was housed in a stainless steel table, the top of which detailed the name, age, sex, and cause of death of the cadaver inside. Our brains, on the other hand, were completely devoid of identifiers. The best we could do to humanize our subjects was carefully examine the substantia nigra to ascertain whether the donor suffered from Parkinson’s disease.
  
  I expected this work to throw me into a state of existential ennui: after all, I was holding in my hands everything that once made someone (someone who no longer existed) human. Strangely, it wasn’t that strange. The brains quickly became objects. They could teach us, they interested us, and they made us go home smelling slightly of formaldehyde (I once found grey matter in my hair, which was enough to remind me to wear it up during lab days). Sure, we respected what they had once been, but we didn’t let that freak us out.
  
  When you think about donating your body to science, you likely imagine a similar scenario. Most anatomical donations (if you pick up this book, you’ll soon learn all sorts of euphemisms for “bodies”) are used by medical students and scientific researchers, in laboratories where they can learn about human anatomy. In her book Stiff, Mary Roach details the more unusual activities that bodies can participate in after death. She follows bodies everywhere, from decomposition labs to auto crash tests to the intestines of other humans. I’m not squeamish, but the books likely wouldn’t bother me much if I was. Like my donated brain, the cadavers take on some sort of thingness, and objecthood. Roach means no disrespect, and she mentions that cadaver researchers use this objectification strategy to get through day-to-day life with the dead.
  
  The only part of the book that bothered me was the chapter on plane crash analysis. When the black box sinks to the bottom of the ocean, the bodies can tell the story of what happened on the plane. You may not be surprised to find out that planes could be safer, but your life is not worth the extra money that would have to be spent on features like three point seat belts and airbags. As a fairly frequent flier, it made me a bit queasy.

• Still Alice

  ⭐ 2/5

  I waffled between giving this a two or three star review, and, as much as I’d like to give it three stars, I just can’t do it. Still Alice sounds like an excellent book: the story of a Harvard Professor Cognitive Psychology who gets diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers. Author Lisa Genova, also a cognitive psychologist, did a considerable amount of research for the book, and I looked forward to reading a depiction of the experiential reality of Alzheimers from someone uniquely qualified to fictionalize it.
  
  Unfortunately, Genova’s academic expertise far outpaces her writing ability, which significantly reduced the impact of her overall message. Indeed, it read more like a subpar young adult novel than serious fiction for adults, which is a shame. I figured this out early on: in one of the first chapters, Genova describes Alice and her husband’s physical appearance by having them look at themselves in the mirror (note to aspiring writers: if you find it necessary to make sure the reader knows what your characters look like, emulate Tolstoy, rather than Stephenie Meyer. I can still picture Natasha, slight and ebullient, sitting restlessly on the couch of her drawing room, just as I can easily visualize the Little Princess, with her peach fuzz mustache. Yet I have no recollection of what Alice is supposed to look like, even though I just read the description two days ago, because Genova never gave me a reason to care.). The writing doesn’t get any better from there, with a random Mary Sue-ish episode in which Alice ends up at the same restaurant as Jennifer Aniston, and obnoxious PSAs about support for people with Alzheimers thrown in, seemingly independent of the plot.
  
  Actually, the whole thing read like a very special episode of a lowest-common-demoniator sitcom. Exhibit A:
  
  
  
  Definitely a fascinating subject, though. I’d like to see it explored in the future, in the hands of a more capable writer.

• Stoner

  ⭐ 5/5

  Sometimes, I think John Williams is in my head (no, not the composer conducting a tiny symphony playing the Star Wars Main Theme, although sometimes I have that in my head too. But I’m talking about the writer John Williams, the one you’ve probably never heard of). It takes an academic to know the soul-crushing, mind-numbing depression involved in living a life of the mind, or whatever you want to call it. See, those lucky people outside of academia think that we live in this lovely world that is just like college, where we have no responsibilities and can just think about interesting stuff all the time (probably while wearing silly hats). In reality, our days are filled with petty annoyances, disillusionment, and despair.
  
  (Can you tell I’m at the tail-end of my PhD and feeling like I’ll never get out of this hellhole?)
  
  Anyway, one of the disconcertingly awesome things about Stoner is having someone who has been there echo back the small triumphs and the crippling insecurities. Exhibit A:
  
  “Through it all he continued to teach and study, though he sometimes felt that he hunched his back futilely against the driving storm and cupped his hands uselessly around the dim flicker of his last poor match.” (p. 246).
  
  THAT IS MY LIFE. But why am I here?
  
  “It’s for us that the University exists, for the dispossessed of the world; not for the students, not for the selfless pursuit of knowledge, not for any of the reasons that you hear. We give out the reasons, and we let a few of the ordinary ones in, those that would do in the world; but that’s just protective coloration.” (p. 75)
  
  I really can’t say anything intelligent about the book at this point: it just affected me so deeply. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything so quietly devastating, so evocative of an experience that I wish I couldn’t relate to. Every academic should read this book.
  
  I’ll leave you with a quote from the end of the book. I’m spoiler tagging it, but there’s no information here that you wouldn’t also get from the first page: “It hardly mattered to him that the book was forgotten and that it served no use; and the question of its worth at any time seemed almost trivial. He did not have the illusion that he would find himself there, in that fading print; and yet, he knew, a small part of him that he could not deny was there, and would be there.” (p. 277)</spoiler.>

• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

  ⭐ 2/5

  Well, Dick is an appropriate name.

• Tenth of December

  ⭐ 5/5

  George Saunders is a freaking genius. This isn’t particularly surprising, given that he won the MacArthur genius award and all, but it’s worth reiterating.
  
  Here’s the thing about short stories: there’s no time for sloppy technique. Short stories are most effective when they’re written so that readers immediately latch on to some aspect of the story: the plot, the characters, the emotion, the style. In a novel, readers sometimes need to toil through the set up to get to the good part. With a short story, it all has to be the good part.
  
  That Saunders can write a technically perfect short story while still being weird and experimental is pretty cool. That he can make this all hilarious, and at the same time toy with your emotions, is almost unbelievable. I’d like to describe the stories a bit, but they’re kind of indescribable. Saunders sometimes gets compared to Vonnegut, which I can totally see, but with all due respect to Vonnegut (who I quite like), Saunders writes better short stories.
  
  The only explanation for how good this: the MacArthur Foundation is really just a front for some sort of contemporary Faustian organization on a massive scale. To which, I must say, if this is the result, keep on keeping on.

• Test Book

  ⭐ 4/5

  This is a test review.

• The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

  ⭐ 2/5

  2.5 stars, but I’m rounding down due to gratuitous violence, including a brief mention of violence towards animals. Now, I’m not opposed to violence; indeed, I can’t imagine [b:Lord of the Flies|7624|Lord of the Flies|William Golding|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327869409s/7624.jpg|2766512], or even [b:A Game of Thrones|13496|A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)|George R.R. Martin|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1369520317s/13496.jpg|1466917], without bloodshed (also, Battle Royale is one of my favorite movies, so, yeah). There’s a difference, though, between violent episodes that serve to establish the stakes within a particular fictional world, and violence that exists just to advance the plot. The former has emotional ramifications that can be cathartic for the reader, while the latter mostly signifies that a lazy writer has written themselves into a corner and doesn’t feel like rewriting themselves out of it. When deus ex machina appears over and over and over again in the form of “blowing stuff up,” that’s a sign that a writer isn’t ready for prime time.
  
  Beyond that, the plot (if you can call it that) is a strange, Swedish version of Forrest Gump, in that the protagonist accidentally finds himself in all sorts of historically important situations. Lest you forget, Forrest Gump is mostly a terrible movie, its only redeeming quality being the inexplicable likability of Tom Hanks (and, also, a fairly decent soundtrack). The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared has no likable characters at all, and you’ll have to supply your own soundtrack. I never thought that I give any sort of praise to Forrest Gump, so I’m surprised to find myself saying it’s at least got an advantage over this 400 page disaster.
  
  The moral of this story is that you shouldn’t pick up a book based only on a clever title, because a clever title can’t carry an entire novel. Also, if someone asks you to watch Forrest Gump, it’s probably a good idea to decline.

• The American Girl

  ⭐ 3/5

  I have long been of the opinion that technology should play a limited role in fiction. This is not because I’m some sort of Luddite: I’m typing this review on my iPad, whilst streaming XM radio through my phone to my Bluetooth speaker, taking occasional breaks to check Reddit. In fact, I sometimes feel like an interloper at bookstores, because I actually prefer the convenience of a Kindle to the romance of physical books (I’m taken to understand that the romance mostly involves the smell. After working in a library for four years, I’ve deconstructed this smell with some degree of accuracy: it’s two parts dirt, one part must, and zero parts appealing). At this point, my dear reader should note that book reviews are a form of nonfiction, thus I can name drop contemporary technologies with impunity.
  
  My problem with technology in fiction mostly boils down to Moore’s Law, which postulates that chip efficiency will double every couple of years. This has a few major implications, the first being that my iPhone will become woefully incapable of running any app within 24 months of purchase, and the second being that any mention of technology in a book will likely be outdated once the manuscript reaches print. I’ve oft used this argument to pontificate about the fact that Twin Peaks retains a timelessness partially due to its lack of reliance on technology, whereas episodes of CSI are immediately placed within a particular temporal space, rendering their relevance somewhat liminal.
  
  Anyway, The American Girl is a quick read that relies on technology, including (but certainly not limited to) a heavy-handed description of the uses for Snapchat. On some level, this is excellent, as the youths around me have yet to proffer a thorough explication of digital ephemerality, especially as it relates to a paradigm in which storage space is only getting cheaper (see also, Moore’s Law). However, extensive use of technology places The American Girl strictly within CSI territory: incapable of timelessness, but not a terrible use of a few idle hours, all things considered.

• The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

  ⭐ 4/5

  After finishing The Selfish Gene, I rushed out to the store to buy another of Dawkins’ books. While the size of this tome was quite intimidating, I found the premise utterly fascinating. The narrative traces humans’ evolutionary ancestry, from primates to “concestor zero,” or the beginning of life on Earth.
  
  Dawkins’ knowledge of zoology shines as he gives examples of the fascinating animals that share some of our genes. Readers will undoubtedly learn about plants and animals they had never heard of before, from Australian marsupials to the strange creatures that inhabit Madagascar. The book reads like a novel, and after finishing it I feel more connected, not just to my own species, but to all the creatures around me that share in this crazy thing called life.

• The Astronaut Wives Club

  ⭐ 2/5

  How to write a book about the space program that’s far less compelling than the one Tom Wolfe wrote on the same subject, in five easy steps.
  
  1) First, make sure to eliminate everything that’s interesting about space, and the politics involved in exploring it. The space race was an insane endeavor. Astronauts faced death when they got in those capsules; some of them actually died. Americans became obsessed with nationalist astro-gazing, but in the background buzzed the constant (and not unsubstantiated) fear that Russia would blow us the fuck up. Ignore all of that. Instead, focus on people’s hair.
  
  2) Second, write like a middling high school sophomore. It’s best if you channel said sophomore as if he had gotten spectacularly high and only then remembered he had to write something (imagine that, by this point, he’s three bowls in and not having an easy time getting his neurons to fire appropriately).
  
  3) Organization, schmorganization. Ramble about whatever comes to mind!
  
  4) Provide no information on the historical context, except to mention that, by the first Mercury launch, pink lipstick was out and red lipstick was in.
  
  5) Don’t attempt to humanize your subjects by providing well-researched biographical information. Instead, just find out what they were wearing at the time. That’s much easier.
  
  This is nonfiction for the kind of workaday philistines who get their book recommendations from People magazine. The Astronaut Wive’s Club is sure to please that demographic: it has a pretty cover, and is a great choice for the type of person who spends their evenings watching The Real Housewives of Orange County while writing inane Facebook posts in which they bemoan their perceived lack of reading time.
  
  In other words, I recommend this book only for those who have no intention of reading it.

• The Bat (Harry Hole, #1)

  ⭐ 3/5

  [a:Jo Nesbø|904719|Jo Nesbø|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1313316680p2/904719.jpg] is known for his critically acclaimed, masterfully crafted series of mystery novels centered around alcoholic detective Harry Hole. The Bat, the first of the Hole books, is not quite so well known, nor is it masterfully crafted. In translating his work into English, it seems that his publishers may have tried to sweep the first two books in the series under the rug. Clearly, Nesbø didn’t make a splash with a dazzling literary debut. The Bat feels as if it has been written by an author still in the shallow end of the pool, inching in slowly. If there’s any genius in this book, I can’t see it.
  
  I knew this all going in, of course. But I am somewhat meticulous in my reading, and I cannot abide beginning a story in the middle. So, I started here. The Bat follows Norwegian detective Harry Hole (pronounced somewhat like Holy) to Sydney, Australia, where a young Norwegian woman has been murdered. Investigations ensue, with an interesting supporting cast: an Aboriginal officer, Andrew, an ostentatious transvestite, Otto, and (naturally) a seductive Swede, Birgitta.
  
  The “fish out of water” setup didn’t work well for me: there’s something disingenuous about hearing the plight of indigenous Australians coming from a Norwegian. That’s not to say that outsiders can’t have opinions, I just never got the idea that Nesbø was particularly invested in Australia. Tellingly, the next novel, set in Thailand, was the last to be translated. My guess is that middling mystery novels written by Norwegians but set abroad are a hard sell.
  
  Anyway, this doesn’t sound like a particularly positive review, and I guess it’s not. But I do plan on reading the rest of the books in the series, and I look forward to the third, which is supposed to be exceptional.

• The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine

  ⭐ 4/5

  For a book about such a fascinating topic, this was kind of a slog to get through (admittedly, this may be because I read it in dead tree format; these days, I prefer my Kindle). However, this mystery about the most expensive bottle of wine is definitely compelling, even for people who aren’t quite as obsessed with wine as I am.
  
  Here are my major takeaways from this book:
  
  
  
  Wine is for drinking. I mean, yeah, it’s fun to collect wine as well, and I have to admit that I’ve got some bottles that I’ve got in my “cellar” (aka apartment wine fridge) that I’ve put away with the intention of not touching them for many years. But it’s fundamentally a beverage, not a status symbol. When we lose sight of this, we forget what wine really is: a bottled expression of a particular place, in a particular year, made by a particular person.
  
  
  
  If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. What strikes me is the sheer number of bottles that the counterfeiter in this book manages to pass off as the real deal. Wine tends to get expensive because bottles from the best chateaux during the best vintages are fairly rare. So, when someone tells you they got a whole case of impossible to find bottles, that should probably be a red flag.
  
  
  
  Wine’s a luxury product that is pretty much impossible to authenticate. With old bottles, storage conditions are a big unknown, and, beyond that, there’s a fair amount of bottle variation. Chateaux top off old bottles occasionally, meaning that the wine in the bottle isn’t even necessarily from the vintage on the label. Most people can’t even tell the difference between a $20 bottle and a $2000 bottle anyway, and even if they realize something is off about it they’ve already opened and consumed it. Combine that with people who have truly excessive amounts of money to wave around and you’re just asking to be taken advantage of.

• The Birth of Venus

  ⭐ 2/5

  As an avid historical fiction fan, I picked this book up hoping to learn a few things about renaissance Florence. Instead, I got a chick lit story set in an exotic locale.
  
  The book wasn’t exactly a let-down, but it was finished and quickly forgotten about. While I wouldn’t urge you to stay away from it, any one looking for a serious work of historical fiction will be sorely disappointed.

• The Body in the Library (Miss Marple, #2)

  ⭐ 3/5

  True story: I picked this up because it was in the bargain bin, and I had been meaning to read some Agatha Christie, and I worked in a library at the time. I started working at the library in 2006 and left that position in 2009, so that gives you some idea of how long this has been sitting on my bookshelf, unread.
  
  Agatha Christie sure makes murder seem quite civilized, which probably goes a long way in explaining her appeal. Unfortunately, Miss Marple’s detective work feels a bit too much like a parlor trick. Miss Marple doesn’t do much real investigation, but simply stands back, observes, and connects random aspects of the scene to people in her small village. Of course, she solves the crime anyway. It’s cute, but the whole thing smacks of disingenuousness to me.
  
  Part of this is that, admittedly, I’m not big on cozy mystery novels. I prefer my detectives to have a difficult past and an uncertain future.
  
  Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of this novel is the subplot in which we’re supposed to feel worse for the rich dude in whose library the body was found than the actual murder victim. The idea being that the body might tarnish his reputation. Um, okay?
  
  Still, this was a fun little read, and I’m starting to understand why Christie is such a best seller. She’s somewhat like the Bud Light of novelists: won’t fill you up, but never let you down. But, you know, more civilized.

• The Book Thief

  ⭐ 5/5

  A beautiful story, diminished only by the inclusion of death as narrator, which felt like a gimmick. However, I can overlock gimmicks in young adult fiction, and it seems that many people liked this particular gimmick anyway.
  
  Highly recommended, especially for younger teens.

• The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope

  ⭐ 4/5

  The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is not just a story about about an African boy who created a windmill. Of course, it is about that, but it’s also about so much more. This book had been on my radar for awhile, but I never picked it up, mostly because I didn’t see how the story could be that interesting. I was completely wrong, of course. I should have read this ages ago!
  
  Malawi is a country in eastern sub-saharan Africa, the precise location of which I shamefully had to look up (it borders Mozambique, Zambia, and Tanzania, and is home to a large lake, Lake Malawi). In The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, William Kamkwamba tells the story of his life in a rural farming community. An aspiring scientist, Kamkwamba was forced to drop out of secondary school when a famine struck Malawi (his family ate only one meal per day). He was not able to return to school, because he was unable to pay his school fees of 1200 kwacha, which is the equivalent of US $3.70 (that’s about what I pay for a latte at Starbucks). It’s an honest and interesting look at living in a developing nation, so honest that sometimes I had to set the book aside to think about things.
  
  At the time when Kamkwamba was starving, I was busy driving around an awesome car and begging my parents for my own computer (even though we already had a family iMac that I used constantly). I was never hungry; like many Americans, my family ate meat for dinner almost every night. In Malawi, meat is a special occasion food: in a particularly evocative section of the book, Kamkwamba describes the special meal of chicken and rice reserved only for Christmas dinner. I took school seriously, but I never worried that one day I would no longer be able to go. I had so many opportunities, while Kamkwamba had the deck stacked against him.
  
  There’s a little joke from The Office, where Michael Scott meets someone who was a surgeon back in India. Michael says “I wonder what I would have been back home,” his belief in his own exceptionalism so high that he takes it as a given that he would have been even better off had he had to rise out of poverty. When I consider what I would have been if chance had put me in Malawi, I don’t know that I could have made it. With limited access to education, I don’t see how I would have been able to go to college, let alone graduate school. I don’t think I would have shown the initiative to go against the grain and create something from scratch, to try to make my life better. Kamkwamba’s story inspired me, and made me realize how blessed my life has been.

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

  ⭐ 4/5

  Oh Oscar. Even though I felt that the plot was uneven (ranging from brilliant to almost-but-not-quite-brilliant) and some of the sections worked much better than others, Oscar is a character that will be with me for a long time. And not because he’s a nerd that obsesses maybe a bit too much over [b:The Lord of the Rings|33|The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3)|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347257199s/33.jpg|3462456]. No. I’ll remember Oscar because he can’t cope with the fact that life isn’t what he expected, plus he doesn’t feel like he belongs, either in the culture where he came from or the culture he came to.
  
  But it’s not just Oscar, because really the most compelling character in this thing is Yunior. I know that Yunior’s narration has been a point of contention among people who read this book, with some loving it and some thinking that it detracts. Count me among the “love it” camp. His voice is just so incredible, especially in contrast to Oscar’s actively-stitlted style. I’ll definitely be reading more about Yunior.
  
  People should read this, not least because it clarifies some of the terrible shit that was going down in the Dominican Republic (ever heard of it? It’s that country that’s connected to Haiti. You know the one, maybe.). Trujillo was a bad dude. Before I read this, what I knew what that he was a horribly violent dude that, somewhat incongruously, planted a bunch of trees. But I knew about Trujillo in the abstract: Dominican dictator, Americans pretty much let him be, he killed a lot of people, and the whole thing is pretty complicated. The story of Oscar’s family made this all feel more concrete, and my understanding is better for it. If you’re one of those people who has only thought about the Dominican in terms of the all-inclusive beach resorts, you should definitely read this book.
  
  And, okay, I was really into the fact that this is full of references. And Spanish. Throughout the novel, Diaz drops geek references and Spanish phrases with about equal frequency. I thought I had mad geek skillz, but it turns out that I ended up having to google comic book characters galore. Even though I’m a total gringa, I had no problem with the Spanish slang. I’ve seen a lot of complaints about the untranslated Spanish from those who aren’t hispanohablantes, but newsflash, we’ve got these nifty things called Spanish-English dictionaries, you can find them by using the google. Yeah, Diaz is trying to keep you at arm’s length and make you feel like you’re not part of his community, which is pretty fair since you probably aren’t (unless you happen to be Dominican). However, everything’s pretty clear from context. Tolstoy pulls this kind of shit all the time, and I don’t hear anyone complaining.
  
  As an aside, Spanish is the primary language of more than 38 million people in the United States alone. The complaints from Americans (yes, yes, I assume) about a few Spanish phrases here and there are kind of ridiculous. Perhaps my attitude stems from being born and raised in California, but I’m pretty incredulous about the fact that so many people seem to actively avoid the language that is spoken everyday by a sizable minority of their compatriots. Perhaps the xenophobes don’t realize that their ignorance is showing. My advice? Recuerda, en boca cerrada, no entran moscas.
  
  I’ll stop rambling now. Read this! You (probably) won’t be disappointed.

• The Casual Vacancy

  ⭐ 2/5

  I really wanted to like this. Not because it’s by J.K. Rowling, although I do respect her as a person, and I think that she writes well. I wanted to like it because it sounds like the kind of book I would like: set in an idyllic small town, where everything is not what it seems. I wanted to like it, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. The entire thing was insipid and uninspired.
  
  One major problem was that Rowling didn’t know what kind of book she wanted to write. It wasn’t clear whether she intended this to be scathing social commentary, or a realistic portrait of a small town. I wasn’t sure whether she wanted us to love the characters, or love to hate them. Worse, though, was the fact that this book was fairly plotless, but not particularly character-focused, and with sparkly writing. It didn’t have much to recommend it.
  
  While I hate to compare this to Harry Potter, I feel that I must. For me, the beautiful thing about Harry Potter was the J.K. Rowling created a world where the magical felt familiar. In most fantasy worlds, I always feel that I’m looking in on a world that is not comparable to my own. Harry Potter felt real and magical at the same time. Pagford, the fictional world in which The Casual Vacancy is set, feels similarly real, but I question the effectiveness of making the real world feel real. I have to live in the real world all the time, and I know what it’s like. I wish Rowling had philosophized about the real world, like [a:Leo Tolstoy|128382|Leo Tolstoy|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1342945438p2/128382.jpg], or made fun of it, like [a:Oscar Wilde|3565|Oscar Wilde|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1316521008p2/3565.jpg] and her (supposed, although I don’t see it) inspiration [a:Anthony Trollope|20524|Anthony Trollope|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1199114248p2/20524.jpg]. However, she didn’t seem to have anything interesting to say about the real world. I would have preferred a little magic.

• The Circle (The Circle, #1)

  ⭐ 4/5

  Consider this quote from a Wired Interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg:
  
  

  “The structural change comes from this point of openness. We talk about this concept of openness and transparency as the high level ideal that we’re moving towards at Facebook. The way that we get there is by empowering people to share and connect. The combination of those two things leads the world to become more open. And so as time has gone on, we’ve actually shifted a bit more of a focus not just on directly making it so people can use Facebook and share and be open on Facebook, but instead on making it so that the systems themselves have open properties.
  
  So, one analogy that we think about is a government or a nation. If you want to be free, or you want to preserve freedom for people, you both need to have laws that make it so people have freedom of speech and all the freedoms that they need. You also need to have an open governance system where people can vote and people have representation.
  
  And we think that over the long-term the way that we actually create the most openness and transparency in the world (at Facebook) is both by creating the most powerful applications ourselves and creating a platform that is fundamentally moving more in the direction of being an open platform itself, right?
  
  So we’re aiming for openness on two levels: One on the fact that there’s more sharing, and another on the fact that by having these open standards, you’re constantly moving towards a place in the industry where there will be more and more sharing, right? So people can bring their information anywhere they want. Anyone can use the platform.”

  
  
  One of the interesting aspects of The Circle is that Dave Eggers isn’t speculating about some sort of dystopian future; we’re living in it. There has been a lot of media attention paid to government spying recently (for good reason), but people seem to forget about the fact that they’ve willingly given Facebook far more information about themselves. Facebook knows which events I’ve been invited to, which parties I’ve attended, whom I’ve taken pictures with, which restaurants I’ve gone to, what books I’ve read, which news articles I’ve read, and who my family members are. Even more creepily, it can forecast information to predict who I’m likely to tag in a picture, and whose posts I’m likely to find relevant.
  
  Yeah, so the whole thing is pretty disconcerting, all things considered (the irony of the fact that I’m posting about this on a social network and allowing this social network to automatically connect with Facebook is not lost on me).
  
  Connecting with people is great, but we’ve also created this strange society in which it’s almost impossible to opt-out. Don’t go on Facebook, and you won’t get invited to karaoke. You won’t get the announcement that one of your college buddies just had a baby. There will be pictures of you posted that you will be completely unaware of, probably with comments or likes, possibly timestamped and geotagged with the exact location of your house.
  
  Here’s another quote from that Zuckerberg interview:
  
  

  “Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They’re keeping up with their friends and family, but they’re also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They’re connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It’s almost a disadvantage if you’re not on it now.”

  
  
  The Circle is about this, mostly, and it’s pretty damn fun. Small town California girl Mae Holland lands a job at The Circle, and quickly learns that just doing her job well isn’t enough. She’s expected to keep up with a deluge of “zings” about whatever inane topic is trending at the time. She has to sift through information about events to find the ones that she’s expected to attend. She has to “smile” or “frown” and comment on thousands of daily Circle-related posts just to keep her participation score up. If it sounds exhausting, that’s because it is. And the worst part is that Mae eventually convinces herself that this is all worthwhile.

• The Collector

  ⭐ 5/5

  What did I just read? A psychological horror novel that gets the reader deep into the mind of a madman? A powerful meditation on the meaning of art? A retelling of Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest?
  
  A love story?
  
  The Collector plays around with post-modern ideas in just the way I enjoy. The narrative is wonderfully non-linear; the narrators themselves are unreliable. Fowles includes just enough intellectual references to major works in the Western Cannon that the reader with limited knowledge of literature would have trouble understanding Miranda’s inner world. However, the real joy comes from the recognition that Fowles does this even as he actively subverts the western literary tradition. He’s brilliant, and he knows it, and the reader does too.
  
  I do not think that the book is a simple story about a butterfly collector who grows tired with insects and captures a woman, nor do I really think that Miranda truly represents the butterfly. No, Miranda refuses to be pinned down; she rejects confinement, she values freedom above all else. It is the reader who flits into the net, so taken in by the beautiful artifice of it all that they willingly accept the pins because the tableau presents such an aesthetically-arresting reconstruction of reality. Fowles has collected us, and, perversely, I love him all the more for it.

• The Count of Monte Cristo

  ⭐ 5/5

  Right now, I feel as if I can’t get away from this book. It’s everywhere. It’s on every single Goodreads list I look at, and for some reason people have been talking about it. I think the universe is trying to tell me that I have to read it as soon as possible. Okay, universe. You win.

• The Couple Next Door

  ⭐ 2/5

  There was a weird point in time during the late 90s when the movie studios just started producing two of the same movie. Maybe all the plots really have been used up, or maybe it’s just hard to come up with original ideas when you’re a hack screenwriter who turns out uninspired scripts to support a heavy cocaine problem. Who knows. All I know is that Deep Impact was way less exciting than Armageddon, and that Volcano was much more fun than Dante’s Peak because in Volcano you get to watch as LA is destroyed, and that Deep Blue Sea handily beats Lake Placid because Deep Blue Sea has an excellent LL Cool J theme song and Lake Placid was a complete bore. Whatever.
  
  Anyway, I feel that we now inhabit a similar cultural sphere, except now every former English teacher thinks they can earn a quick buck by writing the exact same psychological thriller. And, much like the asteroid/volcano/aquatic predator movies, they all kind of suck. And, at this point, I think I can describe a graph of the entertainment value of these books (y-axis) over time (x-axis) as a negative exponential function with a moderately high y-intercept (I’ll choose to set x=0 at approximately the time Gone Girl came out) that has now reached an asymptote near the x-axis that will continue to creep, ever so slightly, towards zero entertainment value as time approaches infinity.
  
  The TL;DR of The Couple Next Door is that it’s a thriller about rich people with a baby, which appears to be written by someone who has never met parents, or rich people, or really just people in general. If you like your heavy-handed exposition with a side of unbelievable plot and just a soupçon of psychological realism, then I guess this is the book for you! Now, if you excuse me, I’ll be busy writing a thriller about a woman who has to brave mutant sharks to force an underwater volcano to erupt in a brave attempt to cause a chain reaction that will prevent an asteroid from crashing into Earth because hand-wavy science. Which, given what passes for characterization these days, will probably be hailed as a contemporary Middlemarch.

• The Crying of Lot 49

  ⭐ 4/5

  A satirical polemic for a past I never experienced, set in a California I do not recognize. Whether that makes the Crying of Lot 49 either more or less effective as a postmodern text is unclear. However, I feel justified in rounding 3.5 stars up to 4 because I enjoy puns.

• The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1)

  ⭐ 4/5

  Now this is the kind of J.K. Rowling book I’m used to!
  
  Alright, so if you read my review of The Casual Vacancy, you know I thought it was a hot mess. I felt as if Rowling had examined all her strengths as a writer (pacing, absorbing plots, realistic yet flawed characters), and then played to none of them. Maybe she put too much pressure on herself to do something brilliant, I don’t know. It just didn’t work for me, and, given the conversation about it at my book club, most people felt the same way.
  
  The Cuckoo’s Calling, on the other hand, completely works. It would be disingenuous to say that this is not your typical mystery novel, because in many ways it exemplifies the mystery novel. It would be better to say that this is your typical mystery novel done very, very well. There are twists and turns, but it’s not full of ridiculously unbelievable cliffhangers a la [a:Dan Brown|630|Dan Brown|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1206553442p2/630.jpg]. The characters are multi-faceted, even the ones who only play bit parts. And the set-up is pretty cool: a model falls to her death, and though the police determine that she committed suicide, her brother isn’t convinced. I won’t say more, because the less you know, the better.
  
  If you were worried about reading Rowling’s adult fiction after being disappointed by [b:The Casual Vacancy|13497818|The Casual Vacancy|J.K. Rowling|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1358266832s/13497818.jpg|19926990], I urge you to give this one a shot. Meanwhile, I’ll be sitting here anxiously awaiting the next Cormoran Strike book.

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

  ⭐ 4/5

  Christopher is a teenage boy who suffers from Autism. Although he is highly functioning, especially when it comes to problems with concrete solutions (such as math and physics), he finds it hard to understand human behavior and motivations. He makes much deeper connections with animals, because he can understand what they are thinking. So when the neighbor’s poodle is killed, Christopher becomes determined to find out who did it.
  
  As Christopher searches for the answers, a powerful story about his past and the people connected to him unfolds. True to his condition, Christopher relates major personal events as if they were of little importance, and spends large amounts of time on logical reasoning and observation. Through the course of the novel, the reader begins to understand Christopher’s family in a way he simply cannot.
  
  The novel is both well researched and darkly funny. I found it to be a quick and thought-provoking read, and would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about the fascinating world of autistic individuals.

• The Deep Whatsis

  ⭐ 4/5

  Summary: corporate shills just keep getting richer. Hip people don’t have much furniture but all of it is white and expensive. Best Coast and Pretty Lights were somehow the best indie music references the writer could come up with, which is just silly because there’s an entire website called Pitchfork that exists for people who want to know what “the best new music” is so that they can namedrop in exactly these types of situations. Manic pixie dream girl. Creative types never seem to do any real creating but real creating can also be kind of bullshit and what is art anyway? Pharmaceuticals. Manic pixie dream girl climax (see what I did there?). Opaque denouement.
  
  Yeah, so I liked this more than I thought I would. I mostly just read it because I liked the cover and I wanted to read something fairly light so I figured why not read a light book with a nice cover? That, by the way, is a pretty good example of how I make decisions.
  
  So this book has an asshole protagonist who’s sadistic, satirical, and amusing. I saw a couple negative reviews of this book that said that it was not good because the protagonist isn’t relatable, which is a bullshit reason to dislike a book. When Nabokov asked his students what it meant to be a good reader, he said that “the students leaned heavily on emotional identification, action, and the social-economic or historical angle. Of course, as you have guessed, the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense–-which sense I propose to develop in myself and in others whenever I have the chance.”
  
  Right, so the character is not one you’ll identify with on an emotional level, but if you think that’s important than you’re doing reading wrong.
  
  Anyway, the hipster assholes who populate The Deep Whatsis would probably enjoy that reference, expect that Nabokov on literature is a pretty obvious one to make and probably I should have found something from one of Ingmar Bergman’s minor films, but whatever I don’t have time for that and I don’t care.
  
  3.5 stars, but I’m rounding up to 4 because I’m heavily caffeinated and I like the cover.

• The Devil's Highway: A True Story

  ⭐ 4/5

  A beautifully written book about an ugly event, the Devil’s Highway chronicles the deaths of 14 men as they attempt to cross the desert from Mexico to Arizona. That they had been attempting to cross illegally should not take away from the magnitude of this tragedy.
  
  Many people have their own view on immigration. I’m in favor of providing more routes to citizenship for Mexican immigrants, mostly to keep people (regardless of country of origin) from being exploited. It’s entirely possible for people to make it across the border, only to become slaves on Florida tomato farms (as outlined in [b:Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit|10222093|Tomatoland How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit|Barry Estabrook|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347474148s/10222093.jpg|15121820]). Citizenship means slaves wouldn’t be terrified to report their conditions to the authorities. Higher wages for undocumented workers also means that wages for Americans aren’t artificially depressed. Maybe prices for goods increase, but Americans buy too much stuff anyway. And don’t forget that Mexicans are also affected by American jobs moving to China.
  
  I get the feeling that Urrea feels similarly, although he’s not quite so outspoken about it (at least, not until the end). He presents a fair look at all involved: the would-be immigrants are portrayed sympathetically, and so are the border patrol agents. The coyotes won’t win any humanitarian awards, but Urrea remains fairly agnostic as to whether the guías who guided the Yuma 14 through the desert deserve all the blame. Urrea also realizes that the problem is systemic, and there’s not easy solution. Eso si que es, but maybe we can begin to make things better by understanding the human cost involved.

• The Devil Wears Prada (The Devil Wears Prada, #1)

  ⭐ 1/5

  This book was terrible, and I’m someone who enjoys chick lit. The Devil Wears Prada is a roman-a-clef by Lauren Weisberger, a mediocre writer who takes herself too seriously. The plot is just a series of bad decisions made by the novel’s unlikeable protagonist Andy Sachs, who thinks the best way to become a writer for the New Yorker is by becoming an assistant at a Vogue style magazine for a year. Andy spends most of the novel whining about her mundane entry-level job and stealing designer clothes from the sample room. As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that the author has a worrying lack of knowledge about fashion, publishing, and human behavior in general.
  
  Sure, it’s a quick read, but there are better things you could do with your time. Like staring at the wall, or counting the dots on the ceiling.

• The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made (A Gift for Film Buffs)

  ⭐ 4/5

  

• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death

  ⭐ 5/5

  As I turned the last page of this book, I couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty. Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a stroke that left him unable to talk or move, painstakingly dictated his memoir by blinking, over the course of months. I finished reading it in an afternoon.
  
  At the age of 44, Bauby, the former French Elle editor in chief, had a stroke that damaged his brain stem. Here’s a bit of a refresher on neuroanatomy: the brain stem is an evolutionarily ancient structure at the base of the brain, right before the brain becomes the spinal cord. Newer, cortical areas of the brain are involved in recently evolved functions, such as language and planning. Deeper structures control more basic functions, such as movement, respiration, and circulation. Strokes that damage cortical areas are no picnic, but the brain is plastic enough that skills can often be relearned. Strokes that damage the brain stem, however, are catastrophic.
  
  Following the stroke, Bauby became locked in to his own mind. His locked in syndrome meant that he was unable to move, unable to speak. He was luckier than others with the syndrome: he could blink his left eye, and he learned to move his head 90 degrees to the left.
  
  His memoir consists of a series of non-linear vignettes that deal with his life, both before and after the stroke. He speaks of the nurses, his children, travels he went on before the stroke, former lovers, old friends. During a particularly moving scene, he writes about the imaginary meals he eats (due to the stroke, he has to be fed through a feeding tube). Because he memorized each chapter before dictating it, he was forced to be concise. His brevity adds a haunting quality to the memoir.
  
  This book will be of interest to almost anyone, but especially those of us who are interested in the brain. Psychologists, neuroscientists, and neurologists in particular should read this book. It’s amazing to see what a rich inner world can be created by those who the outer world writes off as close to vegetative.

• The Elegance of the Hedgehog

  ⭐ 5/5

  The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a novel that utilizes dual narrators: a precocious girl and an autodidactic concierge who live in a Parisian apartment where things are not what they appear to be. It sounds ridiculously pretentious, and it is. I could totally see this on the reclaimed wood shelves of your local pour-over coffee shop, right between the beyond fair trade artisan roasted coffee and the moleskine notebooks (actually, cool coffee shops don’t sell books as much as they sell cold brew coffee and the regurgitated aspirations of unwashed hipsters, but you get the idea).
  
  The point is that Elegance might come off as pretentious, but that pretentiousness is part of its charm. It reminded me quite a bit of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, although it benefited from the fact that it recognized the absurdity of constantly waxing philosophical. These are the types of books that don’t get written in the U.S., possibly because the kinds of writers who are quirky and smart enough to write them are too busy trying to be cool.
  
  Anyway, this really is a charming little treatise on the living of life. I laughed, I cried, I wanted to highlight everything. I closed it and immediately decided to try to find the French copy, so that I can read it again. It’s also a quick read: I mean, I accidentally read 100 pages of it in one go, when I meant to just sample the writing style.

• The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

  ⭐ 5/5

  I never understood why intelligent, well-rounded people would want to become oncologists. On television, such doctors were the James Wilson type: damaged, overly empathetic, the kind of person who gets off on guilt. I was never particularly interested in medicine, but I always thought it would be more fun to be an obstetrician or plastic surgeon, helping perfectly healthy people fulfill their dreams of having cute babies or big boobs, and never really dealing with issues as macabre as telling someone they only had a few months live.
  
  Everyone has a personal story about the impact of cancer on their own lives, and I am no exception: when I was in college, my mother was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. The prognosis wasn’t good, although I didn’t know how bad it was at the time: my mom asked her oncologist not to reveal her staging. We were lucky, for a number of reasons. My mom had fantastic health insurance through the school where she taught, and she received treatment at a highly-ranked research hospital that just happened to be located close to my nowheresville hometown. The cancer was driven by a particular gene that had recently been discovered, and that was receiving an intense amount of research interest. If the cancer had developed a few years earlier, things might not have gone quite so well.
  
  Things really did go well, though: my mom is now in remission, although she still sees her oncologist for regular check-ups. One thing that surprised me was the deep relationship she developed with the oncologist who oversaw her treatment. He was focused on research, but not to such a myopic extent that he failed to support his patients. He was optimistic, but honest. My mom told me that he claimed to have stopped trying to estimate who would live and who would die, because his estimates failed to take into account the ephemeral human factors that cannot be measured. Although I never met this doctor, he didn’t sound like the stereotype of an oncologist I had pictured. Instead, he was a well-adjusted doctor who cared about his patients and was passionate about his job.
  
  This is all a long windup to the simple fact that I totally get it now: I understand why people would devote their life to oncology. As Mukherjee writes, the root of the word oncology can be translated as “burden,” and it would be disingenuous to say that doctors treating cancer patients do not feel this burden on their shoulders. However, cancer is also fascinating. Before reading this book, I had no idea how cancer manipulated genes, setting off cascades that ultimately lead to uninhibited growth of tissue. Cancers are wily and manipulative, taking advantage of the human body in order to proliferate. The group of diseases we call cancer are darkly human in their intelligence and sheer desire to multiply.

• The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

  ⭐ 3/5

  This book is mostly an argument of two related points. The first is that there’s no such thing as an average person, although many of the systems around us assume that there is. Indeed, the average is just a mathematical abstraction, but the cumulation of many average data points, as well as the subsequent expectation value of a human, is dramatically flawed.
  
  The second point is that, by designing for the average, we design for no one. The book does mention a number of design points (pilot cockpits are throughly discussed, and surprisingly fascinating), but the scope is broader than design. The major argument is that you’re not doing anyone any favors by reducing them to the average, but that this is done all the time by schools and businesses. Truth.
  
  I let the book wanting more: it’s short, and while it’s well written it didn’t exactly go into much depth. I’m definitely interested in reading another book on the topic, but next time I think I’ll go for something much more technical.

• The Fault in Our Stars

  ⭐ 5/5

  After reading a few longer books, I wanted to read a book that I could finish in a day, just to remind myself that I could.
  
  This was actually quite good.

• The Girl on the Train

  ⭐ 3/5

  3.5 stars: File this under neither particularly good nor bad, but worth it because it’s just a hell of a lot of fun to read. Rachel is an alcoholic divorcee whose ex-husband left her for his pregnant mistress. She’s got issues. After she gets fired from her job, she continues to take the commuter train into London every day. One day, while on the train (drunk, perhaps unable to trust her senses) she sees something. And that, well, that changes everything.
  
  What more is there to say about the book? Not too much: this falls firmly into the “intelligent brain candy but definitely not literary fiction” category. Still, if you want to spend a pretty enjoyable evening tearing through a novel trying to figure out what happened (and whether you called it I didn’t), The Girl on the Train won’t let you down.

• The God of Small Things

  ⭐ 5/5

  I finished this book over a week ago but couldn’t figure out how to write a review of it. I decided to wait: after all, the book was absolutely extraordinary, so it deserves a good review. A week past, and I began to realize that I still hadn’t come up with any review fodder, and it started to weigh down on me. After ten days, I decided to just start writing and see what happened. Mea culpa.
  
  It’s hard to write about The God of Small Things because it’s non-linear. What’s more, the most remarkable thing about it is it’s literary style, which manages to be completely different from anything else I’ve ever read (and I’ve read quite a bit). The setting is the southernmost tip of India, and Roy’s writing takes the reader there completely. It’s just so evocative: of a time, of a place, of a particular feeling. The narrative centers around a family, which has been broken apart by a terrible tragedy (I can’t tell you what this is, that’s part of the fun). Ostensibly, the main character is Rahel, one of a set of two-egg twins who returns to her childhood home and re-experiences her past in a way that’s so psychologically real that I’m tempted to call it Proustian. Don’t be fooled, though: the real protagonist is the writing itself.
  
  I can’t say anymore. Just read it, you won’t be disappointed.

• The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)

  ⭐ 4/5

  The Golden Compass was my hundredth and, unless I manage to read another book in the three and a half hours until midnight, final book of 2014. It’s been a rough year, and when I initially picked this up I was looking for brain candy to escape reality for awhile. No such luck: while The Golden Compass purports to be a book for children, Pullman doesn’t shy away from grown-up conflicts. The Golden Compass serves as a reminder, to kids and adults, that we have to take the good with the bad. We can’t escape from reality; indeed, trying to can be more dangerous than facing it head on.
  
  The Golden Compass is set in an alternate reality where religious dogma dominates politics, where scientific findings are twisted and manipulated to fit into a religious agenda. In this bleak landscape, the evil, power-hungry Mrs. Coulter haunts the dreams of children:
  
  
  
  In other words, it’s set in a world not so different from our own.
  
  I can’t do the plot justice in this review, and I don’t want to try. I will say that I tore through it, and I’m looking forward to reading The Subtle Knife. With the rest of the series to look forward to, 2015 is looking better and better.

• The Goldfinch

  ⭐ 5/5

  Wow. That was probably the quickest 771 pages I’ve ever read. Usually, after reading a novel of that size, I feel something like a hangover, as if I’ve gone overboard and need to reign myself in (usually with 200-ish page non-fiction books). I didn’t feel that way upon finishing The Goldfinch. In fact, I felt like reading it again. That, to me, is enough to place it on my dear ones shelf (along with the fact that I’ve been talking it up incessantly, and forcing myself to not read it, so that I can spend just a little bit more time with Theo).
  
  The Goldfinch is a painting by the Dutch artist, Fabritius. It looks like this:
  
  
  
  It’s a beautiful painting, although I’ve never seen it. I stared at it quite a bit while I read, loading up a tiny version of it on my iPhone, zooming in to look at the little chain that leashed the bird to its perch. However, for whatever reason, it reminded me of another painting, a somewhat more famous painting, that I find myself stopping by for a quick visit fairly often when I’m at the Art Institute of Chicago, even though I’ve seen it a gazillion times:
  
  
  
  The interesting thing about Nighthawks isn’t really what’s going on in the painting: some people at a restaurant in a banal diner on an anonymous corner in New York. No, what’s really striking are the details: they’re missing. The couple sitting at the bar each drink only an austere cup of coffee, but no food, no menus. They’re not interacting. The counter doesn’t have a cash register. The walls are bare. The street is empty; the building across the street has no identifying marks, the storefronts are empty, the lights are off, the residents seem to be gone. So really, the thing that makes you keep looking is the fact that the scene is missing all these things we’d expect to see. And, like Nighthawks, Theo, the protagonist of The Goldfinch, is almost tragically defined by the things that are taken from him.
  
  What follows is my summary of The Goldfinch (the novel). It’s vague and mostly useless, and you’d do better to just stop reading this and go read The Goldfinch for yourself.
  
  The Tragedy: It’s hard for me to say anything about this without spoiling it. Honestly, the less you know about the tragedy, the better. All I can say is that the entire scene is haunting: it kept me up for about an hour, just reading, and then another hour or so, thinking about it. It’s perfectly written, and I expect to keep coming back to the image of a beautiful woman walking up the stairs of The Met, umbrella in hand, with Rachmaninoff playing in the background (my addition, but it seems fitting).
  
  The Fallout: Las Vegas, Nevada, in all it’s glory. A diaphanous cloud of adolescent anguish, in all its desperate glory. Bad decisions, bad people, but still that sparkling veneer of glamour gives the entire location an artificial glow.
  
  The Return: But it all has to come back to New York, doesn’t it? A New York that’s haunted by the ghost of lives that could have been, filled with places that evoke memories that may or may not be wanted.
  
  The Redemption?: Well, that’s up for you to decide.

• The Golem and the Jinni (The Golem and the Jinni, #1)

  ⭐ 3/5

  3.5 stars, but I’m rounding down because this was far longer than it needed to be.
  
  I’m not even going to bother to tell you what a Golem or a Jinni is: other people have tried, and it really does make sense once you start reading. This is a story about outsiders to humanity, acting in a way that comes as unnaturally to them as it comes naturally to us. This is some nice fodder for both philosophical treatises on humanity and, by proxy, the immigrant experience. Unfortunately, the book never does this quite as effectively as, say, [b:The Unbearable Lightness of Being|9717|The Unbearable Lightness of Being|Milan Kundera|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1265401884s/9717.jpg|4489585] or [b:The Jungle|41681|The Jungle|Upton Sinclair|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1332140681s/41681.jpg|1253187].
  
  But that’s not my big issue with this: after all, most books aren’t as good as the two I just mentioned. My problem was that it seemed that Wecker didn’t know whether she wanted to write an updated fairy tale, or a sweeping epic narrative, or a quiet book about humanity, or an action-packed adventure story. So she kind of just wrote them all, and as a result things got a little muddled, to put it mildly. Thus, the pacing changed about 2/3 of the way into the book, characters I thought I knew did 180s on me, and story lines that should have stayed separate suddenly coalesced in a way that was so awkward I literally rolled my eyes while eating a grilled cheese sandwich at Panera. The exact moment this book completely lost me was when we found out that Joseph Schall, the creator of the Golem, was also the reincarnation of wizard that capture the Jinni. Come on.
  
  You’d think someone with an MFA would know better than to throw all regard to cohesive narrative structure out the window. Then again, it’s possible that the MFA just convinces writers that they’re totally allowed to break all the rules because, like, they already know them all. It’s a good thing Tolstoy never got an MFA: I’m sure it would have drastically reduced his ability to write well.
  
  Anyway, that’s not to say this book wasn’t fun: it was. It actually reminded me of the kind of mindlessly magical, adventuresome stuff that [a:Neil Gaiman|1221698|Neil Gaiman|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1234150163p2/1221698.jpg] writes, and a lot of people seem to really like that. It’s not exactly for me though.
  
  My recommendation is to read [b:The Snow Child|11250053|The Snow Child|Eowyn Ivey|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327098624s/11250053.jpg|16176521] instead: [a:Eowyn Ivey|4823432|Eowyn Ivey|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1327102553p2/4823432.jpg] managed to do the realistic modernish fairy tale without any dubious coincidences, and in less than 400 pages to boot.

• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

  ⭐ 4/5

  I can’t think of a great word to describe this book, although “charming,” “delightful” and “lovely” all come to mind. Perhaps a better endorsement is the fact that I was reminded of Nancy Mitford’s [b:The Pursuit of Love|835458|The Pursuit of Love|Nancy Mitford|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1178768641s/835458.jpg|821072], which is about as heartwarming as The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. An added bonus: both are also quick reads.
  
  This book is about the aftermath of the German occupation of Guernsey, which I found quite interesting because I didn’t realize that the German’s had occupied Guernsey. Actually, I didn’t know much of anything about Guernsey at all. There are some tough moments in the book, but overall it’s pretty lighthearted. It’s a perfect summer read: a fast reader could finish it in one day at the beach.

• The Happiness Project

  ⭐ 2/5

  The Happiness Project is a perfectly middling book about being happier through monthly projects. Each month, author Gretchen Rubin focuses on happiness by doing things like decluttering and not nagging her husband. Is this book worthy? Nope; it’s really just blog worthy. It’s not uninteresting, except that everything could be covered in about 5,000 words. Having it all unnecessarily written out into around 300 pages made it all seem annoyingly repetitive. By the sixth month of rich white people resolutions, getting through each practically-identical chapter felt like an almost Sisyphian task.
  
  (Sidenote: Rubin reprints blog comments in pretty much every chapter, with no commentary or attribution. This really irked me. If I wanted to read the internet, I wouldn’t be reading a book.)
  
  Speaking of rich white people problems: Rubin is rich and white. This mostly didn’t bother me, except for the parts where Rubin talked about “ordinary people” increasing their happiness. Being wealthy isn’t particularly ordinary, after all. And there was the money chapter, where Rubin concludes (against most empirical evidence) that money buys happiness. Great.
  
  Any book that deals with peoples’ problems is going to be highly personalized. Rubin expends a lot of effort trying to nag and yell less. I sure have a lot of flaws, but not those ones, so I had a hard time caring about how hard it was for her to hold her tongue when someone bought the wrong lightbulbs.
  
  Also, if you’re looking for a way to keep those health-related resolutions, look elsewhere. There’s only a teeny, tiny bit in here about food, which I found strange (my life mostly centers around food, so that would be a large part of any happiness project I did). At one point, Rubin talks about giving up “fake food,” but then backpedals and talks about how much she likes Diet Coke (Diet Coke features all too often in this book). At one point, Rubin recounts a meal with a friend, a salad with no dressing sprinkled with artificial sweetener, which sounds unhealthy (where’s the protein? where’s the fat?) and disgusting.
  
  Overall verdict: skip it or skim it, unless you’re really into this sort of book.

• The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves

  ⭐ 3/5

  Definitely interesting, but more of a rehash of the ideas presented in [b:Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions|1713426|Predictably Irrational The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions|Dan Ariely|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1255573980s/1713426.jpg|3074803] than a new viewpoint on dishonesty.

• The Host

  ⭐ 3/5

  Oh goodness, did I just read a book by Stephanie Meyer and actually enjoy it? How could that be? Based only on the given information I’d normally surmise that I’ve been taken over by space parasites myself, but I do have access to my own consciousness and I’m relatively certain that’s not the case. If you ever encounter me in an Olive Garden, sipping Sutter Home White Zinfandel and gushing about whatever poptard kids are listening to these days, then my body has definitely been invaded, in which case please alert the authorities. Until then, I have to be okay with the fact that my opinions are my own.
  
  The Host actually worked for me because it’s a good story: parasitic space aliens colonize Earth, taking over the bodies of human hosts. Our dear parasitic protagonist, Wanderer, takes the body of Melanie, one of the few remaining resistant humans, only to discover that this human won’t be taken over without a fight. The two turn into reluctant allies when they realize that Melanie’s emotions and experiences have colored the way that Wanderer views her kind. It’s obviously not quality literature, but I thought it was a fun way to kill some time while I was home sick with a cold.
  
  But, lest you think that Stephanie Meyer has somehow morphed into a good writer, let me disabuse you of that silly notion. Meyer has gotten to be a little less eye-gougingly bad, but less bad is not the same as actually good. The story is good, but the writing is annoyingly juvenile (seriously, why does everything have to be a love story? Space aliens are way more interesting than awkward make-out sessions.). What bothers me is that, in the hands of a capable writer, this stuff would be pretty philosophically interesting. I mean, there are connections to be made with what it means to be human, and embodied cognition, and [a:William James|15865|William James|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1236751662p2/15865.jpg] type stuff. But I’m okay settling for amusing, which (let’s be honest) is really a lot more than I expected from the writer whose previous contribution to literature was sparkly vampires.

• The Hot Zone

  ⭐ 4/5

  I read this mostly because I wasn’t feeling well, and my less page-turny books weren’t able to hold my attention. This may or may not have been a good idea, since the book details the effects of filoviruses. They are not pleasant. They’re something you don’t want to come down with, and (luckily) you probably won’t.
  
  Although this is non-fiction, it reads like a thriller. You will be biting your nails, hoping that people you’ve come to care about don’t break with Ebola. It feels like brain candy, although it’s more like those super sour candies that make your brain hurt afterword. Definitely worth a quick read.

• The House of Mirth

  ⭐ 5/5

  Sometimes a certain book comes around at a particularly serendipitous time, and changes, inexorably, the way one thinks about the world. The House of Mirth was such a book for me, although I cannot articulate precisely why.
  
  Miss Lily Bart flits about in a social world that is at once familiar and foreign. Born into New York’s upper class, she repudiates “dinginess” and contents herself with her own loveliness and aptitude for society. However, she has lost her fortune, lost her parents, and clings to the upper crust by her thin and manicured fingers. Wharton recounts her tragic fall from belle du jour to scorned demimondaine, with the harsh reality of the situation juxtaposed with effulgent prose.
  
  What do two women in their twenties, one living in 19th century New York, one in 21st century Chicago, have in common? At first blush, not much: that luxurious world of servants, long voyages abroad, and societal scandal feels removed from modern workaday life. However, Lily’s world is not unlike our own, where the shrinking middle class means that life leaves us either disgustingly rich, or disgustingly poor. Lily had always been told that she needed a particular lifestyle, that she was born into it, that she could be nothing but rich. As I read her story, I couldn’t help thinking about friends of mine, still unemployed college graduates. They, too, had been told that they were destined for a good job and a nice home, just so long as they spent a few years getting a college degree. But that shimmery world of opportunity exists about as much for us as it did for Lily Bart, although I hope we’re a bit better equipped to deal with the letdown.
  
  But as much as Lily’s world reminds me of ours, I must recognize that women living now are far better off than the “girls” moving through turn-of-the-century society. No one balks when women deign to support themselves with a job, even in retail. Friends do not propose that our troubles would be solved if we just married rich. And a woman who vows to no longer live beyond her means, who accepts honest work so that she can pay her debts, would not be considered an inspiration, as opposed to a cautionary tale.
  
  The House of Mirth is worth reading, for the scandalous story, the sordid characters, the masterful writing. I can’t promise you’ll enjoy it as much as I did, but I bet the story will continue to resonate long after you read the last page.

• The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom

  ⭐ 4/5

  One of the (many) reasons why I stepped away from social media was the discomfort I felt when my friends and family members started sharing too much about their children.
  
  Children are great. They also can’t consent to having their lives turned into content for the amusement of their parents (not to mention the profits of wildly unethical corporations that only care about this quarter’s earnings).
  
  The transactional exchange of voyeurism for external validation from strangers is bad enough, but it gets worse when real money gets involved. The minimal regulations that allow child actors to be taken advantage of by profit-seeking parents have come under fire over the past few decades, but where is the outrage over mommy vloggers who don’t have to adhere to any standards at all?
  
  The House of My Mother is an incredibly brave memoir written by Shari Franke, a young woman who was used as fodder for a “wholesome” family YouTube channel while being abused behind the scenes.
  
  This book is important, disturbing, and a must-read for anyone who cares about the impact of technology on child development.
  
  If the exploitation of child influencers bothers you, please contact your local congresspeople and demand legislation that protects children by regulating this heinous industry. The tech companies will not police themselves, and children will continue to be traumatized by abusive families until regulations are put in place.

• The Iliad

  ⭐ 0/5

  Yeah, so I’ve read this. At least, I’m pretty sure I read most of it. I definitely didn’t skip reading this in comparative lit and watch Troy instead, which is what my roommate did. I didn’t think of that. I probably missed out on some killer keg stands.
  
  Anyway, this is staying on my to-read list until I read the Fagles translation, which is supposed to be fantastic.

• The Joy Luck Club

  ⭐ 4/5

  I had a hard time figuring out a rating for this one. I thought it was an interesting read, and I quite enjoyed the personal stories of the characters. However, I found the technical aspects to be rather lacking: the progression from chapter to chapter was somewhat random, and some of the plot lines ended somewhat abruptly, in a way that didn’t necessarily seem intentional. So there’s that.
  
  But, a few things push more towards 4 stars, as opposed to 3 stars. Most of them are subjective, but such is life. There’s the (not insignificant) fact that I just moved to San Francisco, from Chicago, which seems like a huge move until you think about the fact that I was born and raised in Southern Californian, and I’ve been inching further north since I turned 18. And the story of San Francisco is deeply intertwined with the story of immigrants from China. Diversity is one of the things that pulled me back to the Golden State, but I’ve always looked at Chinese immigration as an outsider. It was interesting to peek into a world that is right there in front of me, but that also doesn’t include me.
  
  A surprisingly interesting aspect of the book is that it’s about baby-boomers, and their relationships with their parents. The book was written in 1989, so I should have thought about this, but I didn’t, not really. And it’s interesting, because my parents are boomers, and I was born in the 80’s, but it’s hard for me to understand what life was like for them when they were around my age. I’m ever-so-slightly younger than the young protagonists in the book, but part of me gets where they’re coming from: growing up as fundamentally different from their parents (for the protagonists, this is doubly so, because they are also first generation Americans), and coming of age in a time where the world has changed. However, it’s also interesting to see how the world has changed since then as well. Amy Tan has her thirty-something protagonists living a life in which they’re clearly more successful than their parents: they drive nice cars, they have power jobs, they own expensive homes in the suburbs. This is the American dream. Most of the people I know count themselves as lucky if they have any job at all, and I don’t really know anyone who is more successful than their parents. I mean, my biggest financial goal in life is to have an in-unit washer dryer.
  
  To make a rambling review short, I’m giving this four stars because, strangely enough, it has given me some interesting insight into my parents’ generation. And I love San Francisco, even though I can’t afford to live here. And maybe, someday, I’ll have a washer dryer, but until then I’m holding out for a job that will pay me enough to at least afford laundry service. Because that’s the new American dream.

• The Kreutzer Sonata

  ⭐ 4/5

  I really used to think that Tolstoy was pretty sane, for the most part. Then I went and read this little book, and now I have to give up that idea because, seriously, this book is completely…bizarre. But mostly in a good way.
  
  I find it strange that, in Tolstoy’s Russia, your companion on the train may have just happened to have murdered his wife (that’s not a spoiler; it’s on the synopsis in the back of the book, and we find out about it right upfront). He gives all these reasons why the bitch had it coming, including some random stuff about why marriage is bad, and why it’s totally wrong to have sex for reasons other than procreation, but he also talks about how children ruin marriages (which is actually somewhat supported by empirical research, sad sad, but I digress). So I think the main point is that no one should ever bang anyone for any reason, ever, because it leads to jealousy and death.
  
  Anyway, this is a great novella, but a little bit too awkward in theme for me to give it my usual “Tolstoy deserves all the stars” rating. Definitely worth a read, though, and you can probably knock it out in a day (I didn’t, because I started reading this while I was way too busy with other stuff, and that might have impacted what I thought about this in a negative way. Oh well.).
  
  Tolstoy slyly inserts this little bit of intertextual commentary, which I found amusing “These sufferings were so intense that I remember I was tempted to go out on the track and throw myself under the train and so end it.” Well played, sir. I’ll end with that.
  
  Actually, I’ll end with the suggestion that you really do listen to the Beethoven sonata that lends its name to this novel. Classical music and Tolstoy! All you need is a fur coat, a lorgnette, and maybe a nightcap or two. Combine those with the polar vortex we’ve been having recently and you’ll be in a very 19th century Russian mood.

• The House on Mango Street

  ⭐ 2/5

  I thought this woud be different and interesting. Well, it was different. For whatever reason, the writing felt like a poor facsimile of [a:Jeanette Winterson|9399|Jeanette Winterson|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1318336723p2/9399.jpg], without any of the wit or insight.

• The Lions of Al-Rassan

  ⭐ 4/5

  The Lions of Al-Rassan invites the reader to read slowly, at least at first. We’re dropped into the story in media res, and the politics are complicated. The book is set in an analogue of Moorish Spain, complete with three warring factions who practice three different religions. Guy Gavriel Kay doesn’t rely on exposition, which makes the world feel fully-realized, if also, admittedly, somewhat confusing.
  
  Still, Kay has a gift with creating characters that seem to emerge, like Athena, from his head fully-formed. There’s a huge amount of humanity in this book. It’s a refreshing change, especially in a genre like fantasy that often treats characterization as secondary to world-building.
  
  Speaking of genre, I really hesitate to plunk this square in the fantasy genre. Sure, there are two moons, and a very minimal amount of magic, but it reads more like alternate-universe historical fiction. Readers who like the weirdness of China Mièville and the grit of George R.R. Martin will feel right at home here.
  
  I said this is a book that invites the reader to read slowly, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the pace ramped up significantly during the final third. Not that the pace was languid before, but I got that frenetic “the hand and this book have become magnets and I can’t put the damn thing down” feeling.
  
  The Lions of Al-Rassan is a different book, and sometimes a difficult book, and I don’t think I could proffer a blanket recommendation here. But if you enjoy politics, and character-driven narratives, and moral grey areas, and if you’re okay with a little bit of magical realism, I would definitely suggest giving it a shot.

• The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

  ⭐ 4/5

  There are a lot of things in the jungle that can kill you. There are the obvious things, like malaria, piranhas, and the occasional jaguar, which would be unpleasant. However, that’s not really an exhaustive list. Mosquitos transmit malaria, but also elephantiasis, which, if the Discovery Health special I saw on it is to be trusted, is not something you want. Then there are candiru, minuscule fish that can swim up the urethra and sundry orifices (allegedly), causing damage. Beyond all the tiny things that can kill you, you’ll also need to watch out for hostile Indians, who seem to be handy with posion-tipped darts. Even if you manage to escape all these hazards, you can still starve to death out there. To sum up, the jungle is a pretty dangerous place.
  
  Indeed, something in the jungle killed renowned explorer Percy Fawcett, along with his entire expedition, while they searched for the Lost City of Z. “Z” was Fawcett’s word for a fabled city in the jungle, the remnants of a rich, lost civilization. No one knows what happened to them, although Grann recounts their story with as many facts as he could dig up. It’s possible that they found Z and elected to stay there, hermits in an immense jungle. It’s also possible that they died from something as harmless as a broken arm.
  
  The crazy thing is that “Z” might be out there, somewhere. I had thought that the El Dorado types were driven by insanity, but there are grounds for reasonable scholars to believe in the city. Even now, archeologists are uncovering evidence that suggests pre-Colombian societies were far more advanced than was thought possible in the 20th century. Maybe someone will find “Z” one day. Not me, though. Because seriously, the jungle can kill you.

• The Love Hypothesis

  ⭐ 3/5

  Never in the history of actual humans have two people who are attracted to each other pretended to date for rEaSoNs, then experienced conflict around said attraction.
  
  This is not something that happens in real life. It only happens in movies and romance novels.
  
  I have no idea why I continue to read books with this fake dating trope, because it genuinely annoys me that we pretend that it happens. It annoyed me in Happy Place, it annoyed me in The Paradise Problem, and it continues to annoy me in The Love Hypothesis.
  
  As a recovering academic, I’m also aware that the bizarro depiction of academia in The Love Hypothesis is far from reality. It’s closer to reality than fake dating, though. Academic departments are toxic places with no HR departments, rife with underpaid, overworked intellectuals with substance abuse issues. Questionable decisions abound.
  
  Olive, the female main character of The Love Hypothesis, pays lip service to the fact that fake dating is something silly that happens in rom-coms. I do appreciate that Ali Hazelwood winks at the reader with self-aware, meta commentary. I get the sense that she, like me, also watched the classic trope progenitor, Drive Me Crazy (staring Melissa Joan Hart and Adrian Grenier), and remains deeply nostalgic for simpler times circa 1999. Plus, as an OG Britney Spears fan, I believe we should all admit that the Drive Me Crazy music video with the chair dance was 10/10, no notes.
  
  Apparently, the male main character was modeled after Kylo Ren, played by Adam Driver. I maintain that he is incredibly attractive, even though my husband cannot understand this obsession and looks at my easel askance whenever I draw him shirtless.
  
  Anyway, if you’re willing to spend your disbelief about realistic human behavior for approximately 400 pages while picturing shirtless Adam Driver, this is certainly one of the ways to do it.

• The Lovely Bones

  ⭐ 4/5

  I read an excerpt from The Lovely Bones in a magazine and was taken in immediately. By the time I found the book I couldn’t get my hands off it. The story chronicles the after-life of 14 year old Susie, who was brutally murdered on her way home from school. Susie stays an eternal child while she watches all the people she loved grow up and move on with their lives.
  
  Susie is a touchingly honest narrator, who explains in detail things no one should have to deal with. The heaven that Sebold creates is stunningly original, a place that you would want to visit under different circumstances. The voice of the novel, combined with the uniqueness of the plot, makes The Lovely Bones a story that shouldn’t be passed up.

• The Lowland

  ⭐ 5/5

  I don’t know exactly how this happened, but I finished The Lowland in what was almost a single sitting, just putting down the book for a few moments here and there to take care of basic needs, like eating. Let me tell you, I did not expect this to be such a quick read. I had sampled the first couple chapters, which went by slowly. Don’t let the beginning fool you: this is a gripping book, but not in the way you might think. It’s something of a quiet page turner, a story about a family that I felt I truly got to know after spending the last five hours with them.
  
  All of the press I had heard about this book talked about it as a story of a single event that changes everything between two brothers, which really doesn’t do the storyline justice. I thought it would be like a rehash of [b:The God of Small Things|9777|The God of Small Things|Arundhati Roy|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1385160508s/9777.jpg|810135], but it wasn’t. Not at all. Actually, it felt more of a book about the ties between family, and the immigrant experience. If you like sweeping, character driven books, you may want to give this one a try. If I were to compare it to anything, it would be [b:American Pastoral|11650|American Pastoral (The American Trilogy #1)|Philip Roth|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327935620s/11650.jpg|598119], although I feel that The Lowland is more successful. Lahiri’s prose has a lightness to it, a naturalness that makes it feel as if it’s just the soft waves of a stream lapping over you, conveying reality for a brief moment until they pass you by. Roth, on the other hand, always feels heavy-handed and manipulative.
  
  What can I say without betraying the secrets that lurk within the pages of this book? I’m not sure, except that I do urge you to read it. The praise that it has garnered recently is absolutely deserved.

• The Magus

  ⭐ 5/5

  The plot of The Magus is convoluted at best, but it may be more accurate to call it outlandish. On top of that, the writing is incredibly pretentious (think literary allusions, tossed among art references, scattered with untranslated French). These sound like criticisms, but they are actually reasons why I loved The Magus (after all, à chacun son goût). As you may have gathered, this will not be an easy book to review.
  
  At the risk of sounding more than a little trite, this book is like an onion (you know, because of the layers). The interesting thing is that each layer of plot is self-contained, with only a feeling of déjà vu (or occasionally jamais vu) to remind you that these layers are connected to each other at the root. And as you cut into it, things become increasingly uncomfortable. But ultimately (and here’s where the metaphor begins to fall apart), if you let them caramelize for long enough, get something delicious.
  
  Fundamentally, The Magus is a meditation on the meaning of fiction, both in content and style. Fowles writes with wink: he apes “one twist after another” writers like Alexandre Dumas, even as his high-minded characters dismiss them. Early in the novel, Conchis, the eccentric millionaire who drives the plot of the novel, claims “Words are for truth. For facts. Not fiction.” He then begets a world so fantastic that it could never happen in reality.
  
  And therein lies the paradox of fiction: we go into it knowing that stories aren’t true. When we read (or watch a movie, or see a play, etc.) we tacitly agree to be a player in a game. If the players pretend it’s real, we’ll go along with it. The interesting thing is that, even though we know it’s not real, we may experience intense emotions (catharsis, whatever you want to call it), whereas the characters are unable to feel anything.
  
  This is post-modernism at it’s best, and definitely worth a read if you’re into that sort of thing. Or even if you’re not. It’s a damn good book.

• The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute

  ⭐ 3/5

  The Making of a Chef is an interesting peek inside the Culinary Institute of America, which is the most important culinary school in the United States. Ruhlman is passionate about food, and writes about it well. Had I read this book in the 90’s, I would have given it 4 stars.
  
  Many things in the world of food, however, have changed significantly. In the 90’s, food wasn’t intellectualized beyond the small sphere of bay area hippies who championed farm-to-table operations. That’s not just speculation, since Ruhlman himself admits that only one of his fellow CIA students really thought about the food. Now, farmers markets are in cities across the country, and people are becoming increasingly concerned about organic produce, free-range meats, and sustainability. When the book was written, Top Chef (and all the cooking competition knock-offs) didn’t exist; last year, I had to wait three months to snag a reservation at Top Chef Stephanie Izard’s Girl and the Goat (worth it, by the way). But the biggest change is the food itself. When I ate at Wolfgang Puck’s Spago in the early 2000’s, I thought smoked salmon pizza was the height of culinary creativity. Thinking back on it, the pizza seems like something I might decide to make only while super high and out of prosciutto.
  
  High-end dining has changed. The French Laundry was bought by Thomas Keller in 1994, but it didn’t become the best restaurant in the world until 2003. In the late 90’s, oysters and pearls would have been an out of this world, brand new, never-before attempted experience (I’m sure they’re still out of this world, at least in Keller’s comptent hands). Today, that kind of dish might get you kicked off of Top Chef, since it’s been over copied and overdone. If I had lived in Chicago during the mid to late 90’s (as a 20-something, mind you. During the late 90’s, my 13 year old self was doing a lot of cooking, but most of it consisted of loaded tacos and chicken pot pies), I would have been doing my best to grab a reservation at Charlie Trotter’s. Most of my Chicagoan foodie friends only vaguely know who Charlie Trotter is. In a world where you can experience whatever Grant Achatz is cooking up, Trotter seems like a dinosaur (and if he’s really the asshole he’s purported to be, he probably deserves it). Nowadays, people know who great chefs like Graham Elliot and Rick Bayless are. They’d tweet about it if they saw them at Whole Foods. People really, deeply care about food.
  
  This didn’t seem to be true in the 90’s. And I’m not saying that because 90’s me was more interested in N’sync than cuisine. I’m saying it because things have changed a lot since Top Chef, and the Food Network, and blogging, and Yelp. Hell, even my mom venerates farm-to-table advocates like Alice Waters and Rick Bayless. Ruhlman’s book loses something, not by any fault of its own, but because it doesn’t anticipate the revolution that was about to take place. When Ruhlman started culinary school, El Bulli hadn’t even gotten its third star, so I don’t blame him for not being prescient enough to predict the importance of molecular gastronomy. I do wonder what a book about the CIA would be like today though (literary agents, I’m more than willing to write this, if you’ll pay for it).
  
  Nowhere is the shift from “California pizza” to “European-inspired locally sourced seasonal sharable small-plates (with organic wines and small-batch craft beer)” more apparent than at the end of the book, where Ruhlman describes his experiences working on restaurant row (in other words, at the restaurants run by the CIA). I get the distinct impression that I wouldn’t enjoy eating there. There’s some real strange “health” food cooking here, which feels particularly outdated. Apparently, the goal of St. Andrew’s Cafe, one of the restaurants at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, was to serve “healthier” foods. In the fat-phobic 90’s, this was done by piling plates full of (fat free) carbohydrates and replacing real foods, like cream, with evaporated skim milk. No, just no. It’s hard to believe that students learned to make pasta (and pizza!) as a health food. Luckily, the CIA has abandoned this bizarre practice by turning St. Andrew’s into a sustainable farm-to-table concept.
  
  I bet Ruhlman’s pleased that my friends and I can spend a Friday evening at The Purple Pig, snacking on house-cured lardo and spreading bone marrow on artisan bread. I’m sure he’s even more pleased that we can hold a long, and intellectually thrilling, conversation about our favorite ways to cure ham (I’m seriously obsessed with prosciutto di parma, but my friends swear that jambon is far superior. We’ll have to agree to disagree). But the thing Ruhlman would be most happy about is our realization that a quality stock is the most important thing you can learn how to cook (I’ve given stock out as a birthday gift. No joke). Because that’s one thing that hasn’t changed: knowing the basics will get you further than an immersion circulator ever can.

• The Man in the High Castle

  ⭐ 3/5

  Well, if the Nazis won WWII, things would have gotten pretty terrible. Luckily, this didn’t happen, which makes reading about an alternate universe in which it did more intellectually interesting than actually terrifying. Philip K. Dick’s version of a Nazi victory is certainly compelling, and it even contains a book within a book, which depicts an alternate version of an allied victory. Meta!
  
  My main problem with this book is the same problem I’ve had with other Philip K. Dick books: the concept is compelling, but the narrative feels disconnected and disjointed. I had little investment in the characters, and I spent a lot of the book wishing that Philip K. Dick would write in complete sentences. So, while I found the idea interesting, the writing style just isn’t for me.

• The Map of Knowledge: How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found: A History in Seven Cities

  ⭐ 4/5

  When I was first taught about the Renaissance, it was a simple story of lost and found. We (and by we I mean Western Civilization, the implied default) had knowledge in antiquity. The Middle Ages came, and we lost that knowledge. Then the Renaissance happened because we found it all again.
  
  Many historical accounts of the fall of Rome and the early Middle Ages focus on how (and whether) we lost our knowledge. In contrast, The Map of Knowledge chronicles the people who preserved our knowledge for long enough that it could be found again.
  
  Violet Moller tells this story through the lens of three scholars: Euclid, Ptolemy, and Galen. She explores cities that became centers of learning, many of which have been glossed over by Western historical accounts because they were part of the Islamic world.
  
  The Map of Knowledge is a quick read that will appeal to those interested in scholarship and academic cultures. My only complaint is that it was too short.

• The Marriage Plot

  ⭐ 5/5

  At this point, the desire to read Barthes is irresistible. Two days ago, I one-click purchased [b:A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments|380994|A Lover’s Discourse Fragments|Roland Barthes|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1311994658s/380994.jpg|1856185], which should be arriving on my doorstop imminently. Just yesterday, I thumbed through [b:Mythologies|51715|Mythologies|Roland Barthes|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1386925396s/51715.jpg|882883] at the bookstore, contemplating, of all things, wrestling (metaphorically, it seems, though I didn’t get far enough to figure out what the metaphor may be). I almost purchased that one too, before I realized that one Barthes book is probably enough (I don’t want to get too far down the rabbit hole of semiotics and structuralism, do I?). Thanks to Eugenides, I’m regressing into the wannabe literary critic I was as an English major in college. I can’t say I’m not enjoying it.
  
  I have a hard time understanding the mixed reviews on this one: it’s a quiet, clever book that takes its characters just seriously enough for the reader to care about them, but ultimately spends more time using them to play with narrative structure and question the marriage plot as a relevant literary device. It’s not a modern version of [b:Middlemarch|19089|Middlemarch|George Eliot|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1386924110s/19089.jpg|1461747] or [b:Pride and Prejudice|1885|Pride and Prejudice|Jane Austen|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320399351s/1885.jpg|3060926], and it’s not meant to be. Instead, I liken it to Borges’ story of the man who attempts to recreate Don Quixote, word for word, but from his own experiences. Throughout the book, the characters actively create their own 20th century marriage plot, then allow to whole thing to unfold around them.
  
  That said, if that sounds pretentious, which appears to be a common complaint (remember, it’s only pretentious if it’s pretending to be something greater than it is; Eugenides isn’t pretending, he’s actually got chops), maybe this isn’t the novel for you.

• The Master and Margarita

  ⭐ 4/5

  The Master and Margarita is an allegory about literature in Soviet Russia. Beyond that, it defies explanation. The devil visits Russia as a foreign consultant. He is accompanied by a pince-nez wearing translator and a vodka-swilling talking cat. Since the Soviet Union is an atheistic country, no one believes in the devil, which doesn’t stop him from putting on a dark magic show.
  
  Things get even stranger when Margarita shows up. I can’t really explain what happens next. I guess you could call it a love story.
  
  Embedded within the book are references to Faust, Pontius Pilate, and the absurd realities of life in soviet society. Pilate’s storyline is woven in and out of the storylines of other characters, and is a highlight of the book. I’ve seen it called magical realism, but to be honest it’s heavy on the magic and light on the realism. I would have preferred a more realistic book, but it’s clear that circumstances prevented Bulgakov from writing realistically. His magical world is richly imagined. I’d compare it to the hell created by Dante in The Inferno, if Dante had made the devil up and then refused to take him seriously.

• The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)

  ⭐ 5/5

  It’s been awhile since a book has completely transported me to another world. There’s an English major/teacher homunculus who lives in my head and always seems to interject with things like “look at all the symbolism” and “intertextuality” and “check out the narrative structure!” This is generally not that bad, but sometimes I want to turn it off. Enter fantasy novels.
  
  There are a lot of things about fantasy that people dislike. There’s usually some sort of boy genius that is good at everything but somehow still has to put up with tremendous struggles to prove himself (Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker). There tends to be lots of exposition, sometimes artfully done (as in The Name of the Wind), sometimes not (those parts in The Lord of the Rings where Tolkien describes history in minute details and I pour myself an extra-large glass of wine). There are languages and creates and magical systems to keep track of, and no one has normal names, and the page counts tend to verge on the absurd. In short, fantasy has issues and I completely understand why it’s not exactly everyone’s cup of butterbeer.
  
  This, though, is exactly the type of fantasy story that I love to read (even though it took me a couple of tries to get into it: the frame story is way less compelling that Kvothe’s own story). How can you not love a story in which the boy genius talks about music like this:
  
  “Music is a proud, temperamental mistress. Give her the time and attention she deserves, and she is yours. Slight her and there will come a day when you call and she will not answer. So I began sleeping less to give her the time she needed.”
  
  And then there’s this wonderfully meta insight about the nature of words:
  
  “Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating … but there are other ways to understanding.”
  
  Anyway, this hits all the right notes for me: interesting characters in a complex world, with such engrossing storytelling that I just couldn’t stop reading. If only I could read Proust this quickly. I wouldn’t recommend this to everyone, especially to those that need their plots tightly plotted and their world-building pushed to the background. But if you just want to curl up and listen to a great story, this book might just be for you.

• The Nest

  ⭐ 2/5

  Reading The Nest is kind of like reading Barney Stintson’s alternate universe fanfic take on Arrested Development. There are the ingrate children who get inordinately upset when their financial fortunes change, because now they might have to get real jobs (or, at the very least, deal with economic downturns like everyone else), just like the hoi polloi. No more living lives of leisure! There’s also a rich matriarch whose idea of maternal love is critical derision, and grandchildren who engage in all sorts of antics. Which is all well and good, except I get the message that we’re all supposed to take these rich asshole’s “problems” seriously. And I really do not care.
  
  Look, I get it. I understand that wealthy people suffer too, that feelings shouldn’t be minimized just because someone else has it worse. Then again, I didn’t feel any real emotion from the characters, because the only thing they really wanted was their inheritance to fix their problems. Money is nice, but, once you get beyond poverty, it doesn’t buy happiness. Also, most of us don’t have trust funds, so seriously, just grow the fuck up and get a job already. Millions of hard-working Americans can’t be wrong.
  
  To me, this book is just more evidence of a huge rift in the United States, between the haves and have nots, between the 1% and the ones who are just getting by. In the 1%er world, being comfortable is a curse, because the real goal is to be enormously wealthy. No work, just entitlement, followed by snide comments about the middle class, about Mexicans, about people who work for their money (these are straight from the book, by the way; one character does mental gymnastics to feel superior to a more successful writer because said successful writer looks Midwestern, and another character talks about how Mexicans have ruined Italian food, and, again, we’re supposed to feel empathy towards these fuckers). These are not my values, and at this point I’d rather spend time with Lucille Bluth than these assholes who act like their lives are ending because they’re getting a $50,000 windfall. So screw them. I hope they choke on their fictional silver spoons.

• The Night We Lost Him

  ⭐ 3/5

  The Night We Lost Him is a slow-burn mystery with compelling characters, hampered by poor plotting.
  
  There is surface-level intrigue here: Nora’s dad is dead, possibly murdered. Unfortunately, the reader is rarely compelled to care about this maybe murder. My reaction upon discovering the secret was an unenthused “okay, sure, I guess that makes sense.”
  
  In six months I’ll likely forget the details, if I even remember that I read this one at all. I wish Laura Dave would go all-in on literary fiction rather than shoehorning her work into a genre that’s not serving her.

• The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

  ⭐ 3/5

  Have I read this one before? Because it really feels like I’ve read this one before.
  
  I know I haven’t actually read The Paradox of Choice, forgotten it, and then picked it up again years later only to find it intensely familiar. My book-related record keeping is far too complete and obsessive for that. I chose this book because it’s a classic, one that has been oft referenced in other books that I’ve enjoyed. While I can fault the book for being somewhat repetitive, I can’t fault it for being influential. My three star rating feels disingenuous, kind of like the people who claim The Beatles are unoriginal because a ton of other bands have copied them. However, I think I’ve already established that my ratings are capricious, and violate all sorts of statistical assumptions, and are generally a bad use of a continuous, quantitative measure. I’m okay with that.
  
  If you haven’t read all those books that cite this book, the main idea is that that we have more choices than ever before, and we have a lay presumption that those choices should make us happy. Unfortunately, empirical research suggests that more choices actually make us more overwhelmed, less satisfied when we do reach a decision, and more likely to avoid making any decisions altogether. Additionally, some people (maximizers) are caught up with making only the best decisions; Schwartz postulates a causal relationship between increased choice and depression, although this hypothesis is fairly speculative. I’m apparently a maximizer, because my Netflix ritual involves scrolling through all the movies for twenty minutes looking for the best one, getting frustrated, and turning on Friends reruns again.
  
  One terrifying insight from this book is that 2004 was kind of a long time ago. I sort of knew this already, because I’ve recently had some Cabernet Sauvignon from 2004 that had developed a really lovely bouquet. The examples provided in this book range from buying a new CD player, to shopping around for long distance service, to picking out a movie from the video rental store. Schwartz mentions that real estate is usually a good investment! There’s even a hypothetical recent college grad who is fielding four different job offers (!!) and making trade-offs between a great salary with only moderate room for advancement, and a good salary with lots of room for advancement. In 2016, that kid is totally back at home living with his parents, bemoaning the fact that entry level jobs in his field require six years of experience and a masters degree, and still barely pay above minimum wage. (Note: my iPad just tried to autocorrect jobs to Jo’s. Twice. Even my iPad knows that jobs don’t really exist anymore.)
  
  Overall, this is a quick read, but much of the same material has been covered elsewhere, more recently, and with fewer antiquated references to print media and cassette tapes. A contemporary reader would likely find [b:Thinking, Fast and Slow|11468377|Thinking, Fast and Slow|Daniel Kahneman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1317793965s/11468377.jpg|16402639], [b:Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions|1713426|Predictably Irrational The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions|Dan Ariely|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1255573980s/1713426.jpg|3074803], or [b:Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics|26530355|Misbehaving The Making of Behavioral Economics|Richard H. Thaler|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1459531022s/26530355.jpg|42871209] much more interesting.

• The Perks of Being a Wallflower

  ⭐ 3/5

  I think I would have loved this had I read it as a teenager.

• The Phantom Tollbooth

  ⭐ 5/5

  When I was young, I had a children’s encyclopedia set. The math book was my favorite: it contained puzzles, interesting problems, and, most importantly, an excerpt from The Phantom Tollbooth. That was my first introduction to this wonderful book.
  
  The thing I remember most about the book is the “battle” between math and english, which really resonated for some reason. Like Lewis Carroll’s masterful “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” “The Phantom Tollbooth” is populated with memorable characters, amusing satire and a greatly imaginative plot. I would recommend it, not just to children, but to anyone who loves a good story.

• The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1)

  ⭐ 5/5

  I put off reading Pillars of the Earth for quite a long time. Now, I definitely wanted to read it, as many of my friends have recommended it to me. I bought a used copy on Amazon, then got a little put-off by the sheer size of the book. I figured I’d get a Kindle copy instead, but that just languished on my digital bookshelf, collecting pixelated dust. I don’t even remember why I bought the audiobook; seriously, at that point I was wondering if I would ever actually read this book.
  
  The problem was, mostly, the subject material. Cathedrals are beautiful, but I don’t find the church particularly compelling. I didn’t know how Ken Follet could make me interested in an epic story centered on building a cathedral.
  
  Turns out, I vastly underestimated Ken Follet. The Pillars of the Earth is a page turner of an epic novel with a ton of action and political intrigue; it reminded me of Les Miserables more than anything else, and that’s one of my favorite books. Both books are epic historical fiction, both have characters that stick with you, and both somehow maintain a message of hope despite the fact that horrible things keep happening.
  
  But the craziest thing is that I kept having to remind myself that I wasn’t reading A Song of Ice and Fire, The Lies of Locke Lamora, Mistborn, or another epic fantasy book. I mean, I know there that dragons aren’t real, and they didn’t exist in the 12th century either, but I kept expecting dragons. But whatever, it’s cool. This was definitely a five-star read for me, even with the historically-accurate lack of dragons.

• The Recognitions

  ⭐ 0/5

  I don’t have the energy to finish this one now, but I’ll pick it up again someday.

• The Remains of the Day

  ⭐ 5/5

  Review to come…

• The Rosie Effect (Don Tillman, #2)

  ⭐ 2/5

  I don’t know why I consistently pick up popular books and then get annoyed while reading them. There’s a part of me that wants escapism, but there’s another, stronger, part that rolls my eyes at the plodding plots and bare-minimum characterization that so often mar bestseller type books (including, unfortunately, this one).
  
  The first book was idiotic in a charming way. The titular project was amusing, the plot didn’t feel terribly contrived, the setting was interesting. The second book threw all of that out the window, most notably with the lack of a real plot. Rosie’s going to have a baby. Don treats it as a project and is not emotionally supportive. That’s not really a plot, because having two married people have a child doesn’t exactly involve conflict. That’s exposition. Conflict is necessary to drive a plot; without conflict, there’s nothing to build towards a climax. If you want to get away with writing a book without a plot, you better be James fucking Joyce.
  
  Anyway, this book finds our characters treading water in New York City, starting small-yet-contained fires so that they can put them out a few chapters later. The poor attempt at rising action is punctuated by bougie wish fulfillment. The characters befriend a rock star! The characters go to Momofuku Ko! The characters cook fancy dinners and eat them with expensive wine! Now, I’m an oenophile and foodie and I love good food writing, but this does not read like M.F.K. Fisher. Instead, this reads like a writer who wants his characters to seem “cool” and “hip.” Readers who are actually hip are engaging in some dramatic eye-rolling behind those thick, plastic-framed glasses.
  
  I can’t recommend this book, even if you liked the first. If you want to turn off your brain with something light and funny and charming, just turn on your tv and watch a marathon of The Big Bang Theory. Grab the Momofuku cookbook, cook yourself some noodles, pair with a nice bottle of wine (may I suggest German Riesling labelled Beerenauslese; these sweet wines are often affected by Botrytis and pair nicely with many asian cuisines, especially dishes on the spicier side). That would be a much more satisfying experience.

• The Secret History

  ⭐ 4/5

  Get ready to suspend your disbelief, because the plot of The Secret History is outlandish, to say the least. A group of Classics students gets into some trouble following an incident during some Bacchanalian activities. And I mean Bacchanalian in the most literal sense of the world, à la Sebastiano Ricci:
  
  
  
  (See, I can make cultural references too. Being set at a college, and being written by a 28 year old, The Secret History sometimes goes eye-rollingly over the top with references that are supposed to be impressive, but mostly make one feel as if one is taking part in a pseudo-intellectual circle jerk. I think this kind of stuff is only effective when Joyce does it, but à chacun son goût.)
  
  Anyway, combine a bacchanal, intensely dislikable characters, bad decisions, classical references, and lots of blow, and you’ve got The Secret History. It’s more or less [b:Crime and Punishment|7144|Crime and Punishment|Fyodor Dostoyevsky|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1382846449s/7144.jpg|3393917] with sophomoric upper-class hipsters. The major problem is that Tartt seems to write them as if they really were the cognoscenti, which prevents her from adding in any humor about how ridiculous they are.
  
  The Secret History came out in 1992, when this year’s college graduates were still gestating and [a:Bret Easton Ellis|2751|Bret Easton Ellis|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1274408405p2/2751.jpg] was still relevant; as you can imagine, it doesn’t display the maturity of [b:The Goldfinch|17333223|The Goldfinch|Donna Tartt|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1378710146s/17333223.jpg|24065147]. However, it’s a pretty fun ride, if you’re into this sort of thing.

• The Secret Life of Bees

  ⭐ 4/5

  This little slip of a book was a surprise: it was not a novel about race, like I was expecting, but a bildungsroman about a young girl from South Carolina who has a lot of issues to work though. The voice of the young narrator, Lily Owens, was both poetic and realistic, which I liked. Also, the book really is about bees, which I loved.
  
  Somehow, I don’t have much to say about this, perhaps because it’s quite an internal story, or possibly because it’s fairly simplistic. In a good way. It felt like a young adult novel more than anything else, which might be why I keep thinking “I liked this!” without really being able to say what I liked. I wish I had read it in high school, but it turned out to be a quick little read over a few lazy days. Now that I’m thinking a bit more, I do like that it dealt with some potential “very special episode” material in a personal way that didn’t feel like pandering. It also evoked a sense of place: I felt like I could feel the heat and smell the Carolina jasmine, even though I mostly read this cooped up in my apartment during the tail-end of a Chicago winter.
  
  The one thing I disliked about the book was the May character, who felt overly contrived. I always feel a bit manipulated when a writer kills off a character for no other reason than to give the illusion of emotional depth. Plus, I dislike mawkish sentimentality. It would have been better without her..
  
  Anyway, I still liked this book overall. Yeah, it felt like an Oprah book (you know, because it was), but then again, sometimes that’s what you’re in the mood for.

• The Selfish Gene

  ⭐ 5/5

  This book was recommended to me while I was working on a research project in Evolutionary Psychology at my university. Being a student in Psychology, I had background knowledge in evolution and natural selection, but this book changed the way I thought about evolutionary theory.
  
  It may not be hard science (it is, after all, popular science writing), but it will open your eyes to different ways of thinking about genes and genomes. It’s also a fun read, that can be read in a day (which is more than can be said for some dry and inexplicably long journal articles). If you are at all interested in biology, genetics, psychology, zoology or any of the life sciences, I highly recommend this book.

• The Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism

  ⭐ 5/5

  I could easily make some comment about how I’m totally not a narcissist, then prattle off a bunch of personal anecdotes, then add a one-sentence platitude about how people should definitely read this book. But that would be trite, and my sense of grandiosity goes far beyond the exoteric.
  
  In the tradition of Eula Biss’s On Immunity, Kristin Dombek proffers a lyrical examination of the etiology of narcissism. Throughout the essay, she remains present, yet detached, scientific, skeptical. The result is a philosophical work that challenges the readers to think for themselves: I found myself repeatedly stopping to work my way through the implications of Dombek’s ideas. To that end, I’ve come up with my own understanding of Dombek’s book, which was likely the point, but does not necessarily reflect the views of Dombek herself. Namely, embroiling ourselves in self-aggrandizing omphaloskepsis while deriding the narcissism of others is the new solipsism. Which is also profoundly human.
  
  Contemporary culture, particularly as it exists in hip urban locales including, but not limited to, Andersonville and Wicker Park in Chicago, Brooklyn, San Francisco’s Mission District, Portland, etc., values authenticity above all else. The operational definition of such authenticity varies, but prototypical exemplars are attending an intimate concert at a small bar years before the band is signed to a major label, crafting cocktails using classic techniques and the highest quality ingredients (usually featuring egg whites), not watching television, denouncing capitalism (“I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things like a social status”) while revering the products of capitalism qua products (“I just want four walls and Adobe slabs for my girls”), and venerating facial hair. To be real, one must create in oneself a museum, carefully curating an ever-changing collection of erudite musings and cultural artifacts and displaying those that present a cohesive retrospective of the type of person one wants to be today. All other experiences are carefully archived, hidden until they become relevant enough for one to triumphantly declare “I saw the potential in this from the beginning. I knew it all along.”
  
  In this milieu, the worst thing one can be in inauthentic, basic, fake. The essence of narcissism for the non-narcissists (and none of us are narcissists, just like we’re all great drivers with perfect political opinions) is in diagnosing a lack of self, an empty shell that exists for the pleasure of our own derision. We, the real people, could never be like them, the shells. We are better. They are not worthy.
  
  My meditation practice seems to conspire with the universe to make me a better person, despite my natural predilections toward being sardonically judgmental. The thing is, compassion is the hardest choice. It’s not easy for me to wish joy and happiness towards douche bags, or people who disagree with me politically, or people who don’t like Joy Division. Diagnosing people I dislike with a personality disorder so that I feel justified in hating them is easier than recognizing that we are all cosmic beings worthy of love and happiness. Within this philosophical paradigm, calling someone else narcissistic is in itself an act of narcissism.
  
  Anyway, this book has reminded me to actually delve into the experiential realities of others, rather than simply dismissing them. I also feel a strong desire to engage in some loving kindness meditation dedicated towards everyone I know. You’re welcome, assholes.

• The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century

  ⭐ 3/5

  This book taught me that many students of English have learned incorrect language rules from their teachers, and their writing can be improved by unlearning them. Lucky for me, I went to a failing high school where I didn’t learn shit. This must be why my prose is so sparkly.
  
  Steven Pinker possesses a great mind and admirable writing ability. Ironically, his writing is at its worst when he tries to pin down why it works. The deeper he gets into usage-based explications of linguistically-interesting constructions, the further away he gets from offering real advice to budding Hemingways. Realistically, there are two steps to improving your writing: read some fucking books, and write a lot.
  
  Improving your writing is like improving your Spanish: you’re not going to logic your way into understanding the secrets of syntax, just like you’re not going to find a satisfying logical explanation for that pesky personal “a.” Instead, you have to tune your ear to what sounds right, and what sounds off. The main problem with Pinker’s style guide is that he tries to intellectualize something that has to be learned through experience. It’s like learning Spanish by memorizing the Wikipedia page on the Spanish language. It’s not going to work.
  
  Ultimately, a writer has to get intimate with good prose, roll around in bed with it, be nakedly, uncomfortably vulnerable with it. Pinker won’t get you there. A writer should look to the great writers: Tolstoy, Joyce, Eliot, Proust. Their words make you want to grab their paragraphs, push their chapters against the wall, and ravish them.

• The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)

  ⭐ 5/5

  A beautifully written, exciting metafictional novel that is at once timeless and irrevocably evocative of Barcelona during, and after, the Spanish Civil War. Highly recommended!

• The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

  ⭐ 4/5

  The internet is a jumble of information: as I type this, I have two different email inboxes open in different tabs, another tab open to a blog post, instant messaging windows chiming, and text-messages being sent to my computer through Apple’s iMessages systems (I forgot it was called iMessages, so I also had to open google and look that up). In short, my computer screen effectively works as a purveyor of distraction; in The Shallows, Nicolas Carr argues that the internet impacts my brain outside the pleasantly-blunted edges of my MacBook Pro (and my iPhone. And iPad. And, come to think of it, my Apple TV).
  
  In making his argument, Carr first examines the history of information technology, starting with scrolls, wax-tablets, and my beloved codex. He shows that the type of “deep-reading” afforded by books is an anomaly in our history, although one with a myriad of benefits. This history covers everything from Guttenberg to artificial intelligence to Google, and is the best part of the book.
  
  Carr also examines the scientific literature on multi-tasking (something people simply cannot do well), memory, and cognitive load. He argues that the internet puts more demands on executive function, leading to poorer storage and retrieval of information. This is supposed to affect our brains through neuroplasticity (changes in brain structure due to particular inputs), although he doesn’t cite much evidence specific to internet use and reading. Carr’s understanding of the scientific literature is fairly shallow, but not necessarily incorrect. If I were to grade his work in an introductory course on cognitive psychology, I’d have to mark him down for lack of precision.
  
  One minor pet-peeve: Carr uses the term “the Net” to refer to the internet, which feels as out-of-touch as saying “the world wide web” or “the information superhighway.” I’m guessing this was an editing decision, but it still bothers me.

• The Shining

  ⭐ 5/5

  True story: I just finished reading The Shining and I’m completely freaked out right now. While writing this review, I’ve turned on The Daily Show (comedy) and started making bacon mac and cheese (comfort) in an attempt to return to the real world, where the only thing that scares me with relative frequency is the economy. I don’t know how well that will work, because I have an irrational desire to lock my bathroom door from the outside. If all else fails, at least there’s wine…unless (and it’s possible) Stephen King has also ruined that for me forever.
  
  Deep breath. There are no creepy dead ghost zombie things in my bathroom. I am a scientist and I’m like 99.9% sure of that. If that degree of certainty is good enough for the journals Science and Nature, it’s good enough for me.
  
  My history with The Shining began spring quarter, Freshman year of college. I was taking Intro to Film Studies, a course which required a weekly screening of a pedagogically relevant film. For horror, we watched The Shining. Now, Film Studies was in a large lecture hall, with a large movie screen and a state of the art sound system. I walked in expecting some campy old “scary” film. What I saw was Kurbick’s masterpiece in all it’s analog glory. Let me tell you, biking from Buchanan back to my dorm that night was pure torture. And when I arrived in the Francisco Torres lobby, this is what I saw:
  
  
  
  I lived on the 7th floor. I took the stairs.
  
  Anyway, I kind of ended up avoiding reading The Shining for a long time, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I couldn’t imagine that the book could be scarier than the movie (and it’s not, but it’s on par with the movie, which is pretty damn scary). More importantly, though, I knew that Stephen King hated the adaptation, which gave me pause. See, I thought The Shining (film) was brilliant, and I heard The Shining (book) had such contrivances as moving topiary. So, I figured that this was one of those times where a mediocre book somehow became one of the greatest films of all time.
  
  I was wrong, both about the topiary (OMG please do not let me go near any topiary right now and also I am very, very happy that it is winter and all the plants are dead and I do not want them to come to life and try and kill me), and about the book.
  
  Flash-forward to January 2014: I’m snowed in. A so-called “polar vortex” descends upon the Midwest, and for a few days it’s too dangerous to venture outside. My brilliant idea is to read The Shining, because that seems fitting. Way to make the feelings of cabin fever dissipate, Casey. Luckily, The Shining (novel), which really is fundamentally different from The Shining (film), is actually incredibly good, and I’m kicking myself for not getting to it sooner. And I’m sure I’ll stop being scared of it eventually.
  
  Unrelated: I think I’ll be using the bathroom at the Starbucks down the street until further notice. You know, just in case.

• The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't

  ⭐ 4/5

  3.5 stars, but I’m rounding up because I like stats. The first half of this book is fantastic: it outlines the issues that cause people to make terrible predictions. Across many fields, people are not so good at prediction, for a number of reasons. Silver fights the idea that having enough data means that predictions will be great. Data is noisy, and just adding more noisy data isn’t going to allow computers to magically find signal. There’s a reason why statisticians say “Garbage in, garbage out.”
  
  The second half of the book, which focuses on the so-called solution, is where everything falls apart. According to Silver, the answer is Bayes theorem. I don’t take much issue with this: Bayes theorem is elegant and useful, particularly when it comes to making inferences about the world. There’s a reason why you can’t go to a conference on cognition without hearing a talk on Bayesian learning: it’s a good idea, and it seems to work.
  
  The problem is that Silver seems to confuse Bayesian statistics with “thinking probabilistically” when the two don’t really mean the same thing. I think probabilistically when I get on a flight (or walk past the lottery ticket counter without buying one). The probability of a safe flight is close to 100%, whereas the probability of winning the lottery is close to 0%. This is not Bayesian, it’s just a simple computation of some event of interest divided by total events (e.g., safe flight / all flights (safe and…, well, not so good)).
  
  Bayes theorem is different. Most simply, it’s stated as follows: P(A|B) = [P(B|A) * P(A)] / P(B). As you may or may not be able to discern from the equation, it allows you to compute the probability of some event A occurring given that some event B has occurred, using the probability that B occurs given A, the probability of A on its own, and the probability of B. In simple terms, imagine that I’m waiting on the elevated platform for my train. When I get to the platform, I don’t have much reason to believe that my train will go express and skip my stop. However, I wait for awhile, longer than I should have to, and the train doesn’t come. I can compute the probability that the long wait signals that I’ll get skipped using Bayes theorem, and it’s possibile that my brain has been doing something Bayesian throughout my many morning commutes. Give it a little input, and Bayes will let me know if I’m better off taking a cab.
  
  Throughout The Signal and the Noise, Silver will profile someone who’s making a lot of money betting on sports, or making a lot of money playing poker. Then, he’ll say “And this is Bayesian! This proves that we should all be using Bayesian stats all the time!” He doesn’t really explain how any of these people are applying Bayesian stats, or profile anyone making good predictions using a non-Bayesian approach. I like Bayes, but Silver is going to have to do more than say “Look! Bayes!” to convince me that it’s the panacea for prediction.
  
  Silver also points out that conventional methods for hypothesis testing produces far more false-positives (usually called Type I errors) than they should. This is true, and most scientists are aware that they need to make some changes in the way they analyze data. Silver, of course, thinks that we should all be using Bayes, although he doesn’t speak about any of the other methods that can reduce Type I errors (including simple methods, like reporting the effect size). At one point, Silver equates science with Bayesian thinking, while completely missing the utility of a well-designed experiment.
  
  I do recommend Silver’s book, particularly for non-scientists who are interested in statistics. However, it’s best taken a series of interesting stories about prediction, and not as a fully developed theory for how most predictions should be developed.

• The Signature of All Things

  ⭐ 4/5

  Elizabeth Gilbert has been hiding her cards. She bluffed her way to best-seller status with the inane Eat Pray Love, but it turns out she had pocket aces the whole time. I was reluctant to read The Signature of All Things, but relented when friends as picky as myself praised the hefty novel. I found the whole thing sprawling, philosophical, and populated with the type of characters I’d like to invite over for tea and conversation.
  
  I had heard that The Signature of All Things was a book about mosses, and in many ways it is, but to call it just a book about mosses is to call Anna Karenina a book about a train. The story revolves around Alma Whittaker, although it does not start with her. It begins with Alma’s father, Henry, as a young man in Europe. I have to say that I enjoyed this bit the most: Henry’s a compelling character, and his botanical exploits take him all over the world.
  
  We get Alma’s entire life story, from her birth in Philadelphia, to her early life as a botanist in her own right and her strange fascination with the spiritualist Ambrose Pike. An important note: it’s definitely not a great idea to ask about major relationship decisions by attempting to transmit one’s thoughts silently, through physical contact. That’s what therapists like to call poor communication.. The story can’t always maintain the intensity of the wonderful first section, but it does manage to stay lushly written and beautifully detailed throughout.
  
  What I can’t understand is how such a talented writer could have written such a solipsistic travel memoir. I have to assume that it was either a money grab (who wouldn’t jump at a free, year long vacation) or that Gilbert is one of those people who just doesn’t do non-fiction well. My suggestion is to skip Eat Pray Love and grab this one instead: mosses beat whining any day.

• The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource

  ⭐ 4/5

  I appreciate an author that leans into irony. Chris Hayes is a TV newscaster, who earns a living by getting people to pay attention to him and his network (MSNBC).
  
  The Sirens’ Call is a well-researched micro-history of Attention, with the perfect amount of self-inserts from Hayes. This could so easily have gone into the typical “screen time these days, am I right?” line of journalism, but it chose a far more interesting trajectory. I tore through each chapter, because they each functioned as self-contained essays about the impacts of the attention economy.
  
  This book has a lot going on, but I’d say the main topic is the economics of attention, specifically within a system that has an unlimited amount of information. Fascinating, highly recommended.

• The Snow Child

  ⭐ 4/5

  The Snow Child is beautiful fairy tale for adults. It’s based on a Russian story: an old couple who are unable to have children of their own create a child out of snow, and she comes to life.
  
  This really wasn’t what I was expecting; in fact, it was much better than I thought it would be. Eowyn Ivey’s writing (can we just take a second to reflect on how awesome Ivey’s parents are for naming her Eowyn?) evokes the snowy appeal of the Alaskan frontier in a way that reminded me of [a:Willa Cather|881203|Willa Cather|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1287462696p2/881203.jpg]‘s Nebraska in [b:O Pioneers!|77942|O Pioneers!|Willa Cather|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347989298s/77942.jpg|467254]. The characters are so real that it didn’t need the conceit of the snow child, although the magical realism only adds to the story.
  
  I definitely recommend this. It’s a quick read, although I tried to read it in smaller doses so it would go by more slowly. And now, I can’t wait for the first snow of winter to fall.

• The Sorrows of Young Werther

  ⭐ 4/5

  I couldn’t help but imagine young Werther as a high school, tweeting about all his troubles to the ether. So, without further ado, I present to you: The Tweets of Young Werther.
  
  
  
  This is the kind of book that high school teachers should be making self-absorbed teenagers read. They can totally relate, both to the intense feelings of emotion and the complete conviction that no one in the world has ever felt the same way before. I couldn’t relate that well, because really Werther just needs to man up and bang someone else, but I still (inexplicably) liked this book. Actually, my affection is explicable: we’re talking about Goethe, after all.
  
  I should really step away from photoshop and get back to work.

• The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

  ⭐ 3/5

  I feel incredibly conflicted about this book. It’s two books, really, one of which is quite good, one of which isn’t. The good book is the one that details the story of the Hmong people. Before reading this, I was unaware of their role in the Vietnam War, as well as the fact that there are a sizable number of Hmong refugees in my home state of California. It was particularly interesting to learn about their customs. More than once in the book, Fadiman talks about sacrificing a pig as if that’s some sort of bat-shit crazy thing to do, but I think we’d be much better off if everyone treated the source of their food with that much personal reverence.
  
  Two books: one about the Hmong, which was generally excellent, and another about a little Hmong girl with epilepsy, which made me want to throw the book against the wall. Repeatedly.
  
  So the thing that really bothers me about this book is that Fadiman seems to take it for granted that doctors know best. Fadiman talks about how brilliant Lia’s pediatricians were (if I were to be objective here, based on the interviews with said pediatricians, I say they come off as middling and arrogant, but whatever). She writes about a doctor who respects his patients’ right to have a say in their treatment as if he’s an idiot, saying “Roger Fife happened to espouse a philosophy that carried more weight with the Hmong than any degree of knowledge, intelligence, or technical skill.” Her bias is obvious, but she still claims that her books is objective.
  
  Alright, so here’s the thing: it would be one thing if doctors really were these magical, ethereal beings who knew exactly the right path to take to treat all illnesses. But, as a scientist myself, I can safely say that even the most intelligent people don’t know shit about anything, especially not about the brain. Example: one particularly famous patient, H.M., had intractable epilepsy that was treated by the surgical removal of most of his hippocampus. And it totally worked: no more epilepsy! Unfortunately, the hippocampus is kind of important: to simplify, it is in charge of consolidating short-term memory into long-term memory. So H.M. ended up having anterograde amnesia, which meant that he was unable to form any new long-term memories. This was a boon for science (we researched the hell out of that guy), but not so much for H.M.
  
  Now, I’m not saying that doctors are idiots or anything, nor am I saying that Western Medicine isn’t a good thing. But it’s one thing to consult with a doctor, and another to blindly follow his or her advice, especially given the state of health care in the U.S. and the influence of pharmaceutical companies (did you see the new recommendations for statins yet? Um, yeah). Yet, this is exactly what Fadiman seems to think that the Lee family should have done: there’s evidence of this on page after page. About 70 pages in, that really began to grate on me.
  
  The issue for Lia Lee wasn’t that her parents wanted to treat her one way, and the doctors wanted to treat her another way. No no. The issue was that her parents were refugees who were not literate, did not speak English, were not offered translators, and could not truly consent to anything. Yet the doctors were completely unwilling to take the time to make sure her parents understood her course of treatment, or take her culture into account at all. At one point, one of the doctors treating Lia mistakes her for a boy, and Fadiman uses this as evidence of how well she had been treated(?!?!?!?). So this book, the second book, really is less about cultural clash, and more about the failings of a medical system that has never worked well, and that works particularly poorly for those who don’t have the ability to advocate for themselves.

• The Stand

  ⭐ 4/5

  While I had heard about the Stand from friends of mine, it wasn’t until I found out that the producers of my favorite show, Lost, love it that I started to read it. What I found was a fantastic journey through a darkly terrifying world that only Stephen King could create.
  
  At the start of the book, the world becomes infected with the Superflu, also known as Captain Trips, which kills off most of the world’s population. The survivors begin to wander, not knowing where to go, until they begin to have the same dream. Their dreams seem to lead the way to the west, where they will set up camp in Colorado. But there is another dream, that warns of someone dark rising in Las Vegas.
  
  I wish I could rate this as five stars, but there were a few fundamental issues I had with the book that keep me from doing so. The first is sheer length; my copy of the book tops out at 1141 pages. This wouldn’t be that much of a problem in itself, but I often felt there wasn’t as much action as their should be to drive the plot over that many pages. I do, however, realize that this is the uncut version, so I know that criticism doesn’t carry as much weight as it would with a trade release. Another problem was that the main conflict of the book didn’t really gear up until more than halfway through, when it probably could have started much sooner. Finally, the ending (which I won’t go into) left a bit to be desired.
  
  That said, I would urge anyone with a little time on their hands to pick up The Stand. Stephen King’s plague infected world is as scary as it is real, and its characters will stay with you long after you’ve finished the book. If you do feel like tackling this great read, it’s definitely worth the time invested.

• The Stepford Wives

  ⭐ 3/5

  I completely forgot that I read this book. Take from that what you will. From what I remember, it’s a fairly realistic account of the type of housewives that live in places such as Orange County, CA, and the Upper East Side of Manhattan. That pretty much makes it non-fiction. The ending definitely explained quite a bit about the dominant sociocultural, heteronormative paradigm under which we live.

• The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

  ⭐ 3/5

  A slim volume about the power of narratives. Gottschall presents empirical evidence about the stories that we tell ourselves, although there’s not anything new here. Unfortunately, Gottschall is better at telling stories about the results than describing the experiments in sufficient detail, although he is an English professor and this is a popular science book, so I can’t begrudge him too much.

• The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

  ⭐ 5/5

  Before reading this book, I hadn’t thought much about the renaissance. Sure, a few college French courses helped drive home the point that it literally means “rebirth,” and I kind of knew that old books were involved, but I didn’t think much about the logistics. I imagined ancient texts were found in much the same way anything else gets found, as in “Oh, by the way, I was going through storage looking for the Christmas decorations, and guess what I found: some poem by this dude Lucretius!”
  
  Imagine a world in which people stop caring about books. Personal libraries deteriorate, public libraries are destroyed. Some books survive, while others aren’t so lucky, and there is no rhyme or reason to which books stand the test of time. The worst part, though, is that people are not outraged. They take the lack of books in stride, as intellectual life has given way to “spiritual” life. After awhile, the major books (and the writers who created them) are forgotten; worst of all, no one seems to mind.
  
  It sounds like one of those post-apocalyptic novels that have become so popular recently, but this actually happened. It was not until the humanists began to recover Greek and Latin texts that ideas from antiquity were rediscovered. The way Greenblatt describes book hunting, it sounds more like the plot of an Indiana Jones film than the digging around in the basement scenario I had previously imagined. Humanists did their best to liberate books from monasteries, although, sadly, many had slowly deteriorated (or were erased and written over). Who knows how many ancient Tolstoys and Shakespeares have been lost to history.
  
  Turns out Lucretius was a pretty cool dude. An admirer of Epicurus, Lucretius wrote that the universe as we know it is made up solely of atoms and void. Gods, if they did exist, would be too busy with their divine existence to care about the obedience and suffering of humans. Thus, the purpose of life is maximize pleasure, and minimize pain. You can see why the church would not be too pleased to see this poem circulating.
  
  The Swerve is a surprisingly compelling history of Poggio Bracciolini, the 15th century papal secretary turned book hunter who discovered On the Nature of Things. The poem, at once scientific and philosophical, ancient and astonishingly modern, helped to change our conception of the human experience.

• The Things They Carried

  ⭐ 5/5

  Wow. This is one of the more powerful collections I’ve read recently, and I think I need to take some time to figure out how to sum it up.

• The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line (Veronica Mars, #1)

  ⭐ 3/5

  When the first season of Veronica Mars aired in 2004, I thought it was the single best season of television since Twin Peaks (I still do). Naturally, I was sure it would be cancelled, and we’d never get to find out who came to the door. Miraculously, it survived to air another spectacular season, followed by a third, less spectacular season. It got cancelled, I mourned for a bit, then decided that I would do my best to share the series with friends. I guess millions of other people had the same idea, because word of mouth turned into a kickstarter campaign, which turned into a movie, and now a book series.
  
  Success for Marshmallows everywhere!
  
  But you already knew all that. Anyway, The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line isn’t particularly well written, nor is it particularly poorly written. It reads like an episode of Veronica Mars, which is great, but without the visuals and acting, which is part of what made the show so wonderful in the first place. It’s also awkwardly in third person, so no voice overs (can voice overs exist in novels? I’ll go with yes). I assume that most readers will be picking up this book, not for a literary experience, but because they want to find out what happens next in the Veronica Mars canon. So the quality of the writing isn’t that important.
  
  I’m realizing it’s hard to review the book. The mystery is interesting, but it feels a lot more like a “mystery of the week” without much character development. There’s a sad lack of Logan, and Keith mostly stays in the background (which is surprising, especially since Lianne Mars plays a big role in the plot. Mac and Wallace make appearances, but we never really get in their heads.
  
  Still, though, I enjoyed it. It was a fun way to spend a few hours, and I didn’t really expect it to be particularly good. I wish it had been better, though. Maybe next time.
  
  If you want a review that’s more useful than this one, the AV Club has one.

• The Travelling Cat Chronicles

  ⭐ 4/5

  I lost two precious cats in the span of a year. It was a rough time. Also, we live in a society so it’s been a rough time for everyone in general.
  
  This book made me ugly cry. It was incredibly cozy, but I was not prepared for the emotions.
  
  Don’t be like me. Toss some Kleenex in your car, make sure you’ve got an extra jar of Carmex on hand. Then pick this book up, because these are the kind of emotions you need to feel right now.

• The Trouble With Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time

  ⭐ 4/5

  I live in a bubble in Northern California. Admittedly, it’s a nice bubble: the people around me are well-educated, well-informed, and from diverse backgrounds. The liberal values that built the San Francisco Bay Area have resulted in economic prosperity and high quality of life. This is a region where people strive to make the world a better place for future generations, where the best public university system in the world produces a qualified electorate, where it’s emphatically not okay to express Nazi viewpoints.
  
  Naturally, I’ve spent much of the last year asking myself “What the actual fuck is happening?” And, regardless of how much I read on the topic, I’m still not sure how the United States has devolved into a shit show of factory-produced panem and lowest-common-denominator circuses.
  
  The Trouble With Reality doesn’t necessarily explain what’s going on (it’s hard to explain Trump and his supports from a logical perspective, as his positions don’t depend on logic). However, writer (and NPR journalist) Brooke Gladstone aptly describes the problem. Part of the difficulty of Trump’s administration is that he manages to do ridiculous, unprecedented stuff on a daily basis. It’s sometimes hard to remember what he did just a month back, and that makes it important for journalists like Gladstone to detail his actions in longer-format work. She also makes connections to other abusers of propaganda, which I found fascinating.
  
  Unfortunately, books like these tend not be read by the uninformed masses that need them the most. Still, I think The Trouble With Reality is a powerful piece of short nonfiction, and is worth a read if you are as troubled as I am.

• The Unbearable Lightness of Being

  ⭐ 5/5

  Great writers walk a fine line between connecting to their readers by telling them things they already know, and surprising them with ideas that they haven’t thought before. Kundera is a master of making the readers thoughts feel somewhat alien, even as he makes novel thoughts feel like the reader’s own.
  
  The ideas in this book make me feel like Kundera has swan-dived into my brain and is now swimming around with my own assumptions about life. I’m sure he’ll surface again, gracefully, and when I least expect him to.

• The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1)

  ⭐ 4/5

  YES YES YES!
  
  Can’t wait to finish the rest of this series.

• The Wine Savant: A Guide to the New Wine Culture

  ⭐ 4/5

  Lots of books about wine follow the same path: they talk about terroir, then about the wine-making process. They’ll probably pontificate about oak, then explain malolactic fermentation and complain that too many budget wines are unbalanced due to residual sugar. Following a few chapters of that, they say “Cool, so you know about wine now, why don’t you go out and buy a Bordeaux first growth,” as if we all have an extra thousand bones to just drop on a single bottle.
  
  The Wine Savant is a refreshing respite to these sorts of wine books. Case in point: Steinberger starts out by telling people that it’s okay to be a little bit snobby about wine. There’s no need to take the super humble route at dinner parties, telling people “Hey, it’s just fermented wine juice” because it’s not just fermented wine juice, and we all know that. That’s not to say that you should be an asshole about things, but there’s no reason not to take ownership of your knowledge. After all, music lovers don’t dismiss fantastic performances as “just” sound waves.
  
  The short essays in here really are fabulous, especially for those of us who love wine (maybe not for those who don’t). Steinberger, like most of us, extolls the virtues of Pinot Noir and Riesling. He talks about the ascendency of Burgundy and the decline of Bordeaux. California, of course, is a complicated subject, but fabulous wineries such as the legendary Ridge get their due. There’s also talk about Globalization, Parkerization, and value.
  
  Steinberger’s book is quite opinionated, but that doesn’t mean you won’t learn a thing or two (plus, you’ll probably find plenty to disagree with, which is always fun). I’d definitely recommend this for anyone who tastes, quaffs, guzzles, or otherwise imbibes.

• The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2)

  ⭐ 5/5

  I listened to this book via Audible; it was 43 hours long. About 13 hours in, I was surprised that I had already listened for so long. I consoled myself with the 30 hours I had left, since 13 hours wasn’t even half of what I had left. It would take me forever to finish this, right? By the time I had hit 22 hours, I felt taken by surprise. I was halfway done? Really? But still, I had so many more hours of listening. 22 hours is almost an entire day, and surely that would feel like forever. At 35 five hours, I started to feel concerned. I wasn’t ready for this to be over. I didn’t know if I could handle it.
  
  About five hours from the end of the book, I started freaking out. Then, I started writing this review. I felt compelled to shout my love for the Kingkiller Chronicles from the rooftops, with an obsession I haven’t felt since I made Harry Potter fan sites on Angelfire so many years ago. I’ve fallen in love with Rothfuss’s entire world, so I consider myself intensely biased. I know the flaws are there, and I could tell you what they are, but the truth is that I don’t care. I’m enamored and I make no apologies.
  
  Now I’m done, and I don’t know what to do with my life. I kind of feel like Kvothe, whenever Deena skips town. He just wanders around, looking for her, not finding her anywhere. And now, I’m just going to wander around bookstores, not seeing the third book and being sad. And I don’t even have a lute to keep me occupied.
  
  Is it time for a re-read already?

• The Woman in White

  ⭐ 5/5

  The Woman in White is a freaking awesome mystery novel. It’s way better than any contemporary mystery novel, because not only are the characters put into hazardous situations while stuck in the middle of the country without cell phones, but they also don’t have access to any kind of phone, or the internet, so it becomes hazardous for them to even try to tell other people what the hell is going on. Suspense!
  
  Instead of recounting the plot of the novel, which would be inutile (it’s too convoluted to explain and still make it sound as interesting as it is), I’m going to compare the main characters with characters from contemporary film and television. This has the dual advantage of both showing off my pop-culture acumen, and amusing me. Any value you, dear reader, get from this review is purely incidental.
  
  Mr. Hartright (played by Indiana Jones)
  
  
  
  Besides a similarity in plot that I’m not going to give away (it should be obvious to those who have read it, but in case you forgot he just up and leaves for the freaking jungle!. Also, I hope this brief mention of plot similarities with Indiana Jones will make those who haven’t read The Woman in White more likely to do so, because Indiana Jones is a badass), they’ve also got that whole hot for teacher thing going on.
  
  Laura (played by Ashley Olsen circa New York Minute)
  
  
  
  Innocent, rich, blonde, and vapid. Most of the action of the plot goes on around her.
  
  Miss Halcombe (played by Clueless’ Amber)
  
  
  
  The smart sister, who manages to kick ass, take names, and write it all down in her diary. She’s got a banging body, but her face is awkward, so she’s pretty much stuck being a spinster.
  
  

  Tai: Do you think she’s pretty?
  Cher: No, she’s a full-on Monet.
  Tai: What’s a monet?
  Cher: It’s like a painting, see? From far away, it’s OK, but up close, it’s a big old mess. Let’s ask a guy. Christian, what do you think of Amber?
  Christian: Hagsville.
  Cher: See?

  
  
  The Mysterious Woman in White (played by Mary-Kate Olsen circa Weeds)
  
  
  
  The spitting image of Laura, but mysteriously not related, a la Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen’s “how could I possibly suspend my disbelief this much” 1995 film It Takes Two. Also, crazier that Laura, and about 1000 times more likely to walk around looking like a homeless person.
  
  Sir Percival (played by 30 Rock’s Devon Banks)
  
  
  
  Sure, he’s charming at first, but a keen woman’s intuition quickly ferrets out the fact that he’s not into Laura for love. Now, I shan’t say that the gentleman is a gold digger, but he ain’t messin’ with the broke sister, know what I’m sayin’?
  
  Mr. Fairlie (played by 30 Rock’s Prince Gerhardt)
  
  
  
  An invalid, whose nervous condition, I suspect, is psychosomatic. He provides some much needed comic relief. At one point, he admits someone into his chambers only on the condition that her shoes won’t creak. For serious.
  
  Count Fosco (played by The Little Mermaid’s Ursula)
  
  
  
  Fat, pure evil, and creepily obsessed with some rather eccentric pets. Also, surprisingly knowledgeable when it comes to music.
  
  Countess Fosco (played by Siri, the voice of the Apple iPhone):
  
  
  
  Cold, emotionless, and ready to parrot back anything her master tells her to. Still, she sometimes says some surprisingly interesting things.
  
  The way that I’ve laid this whole thing out, it does not sound like it would come together very well. Luckily, I’m not the writer of The Woman in White. Unlike me, Wilkie Collins knew how to keep his plot in check even as he threw in a ton of twists and turns and “OMG I MUST READ THE NEXT SECTION RIGHT NOW” cliffhangers. Totally satisfying. At least 800 times more satisfying than this review (which, given that it contains so many glorious images, is already pretty satisfying, all things considered).

• Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)

  ⭐ 5/5

  Freshman year of high school, honors English. I was fourteen, and all I wanted was to eventually be granted entrance into the cognoscenti. More than a signed photograph of Mark Hoppus, more than a super-low rise pair of light-wash jeans, which is to say that I wanted it more than anything. There were pretty much three routes out of my one-horse town: a football scholarship, rehab, or an imprudent amount of student loans taken out at a decent university. Being not much of a linebacker, and having no access to meth, I set my sights on the latter option.
  
  Things Fall Apart helped me realize that books would change my life. It transported me to a place that I never knew existed, and put me in the shoes of a people that never got even a perfunctory mention in my world history class. I was a pretty big fish in a claustrophobically small pond, and Things Fall Apart was one of the books that made me realize how little of the world I actually knew.
  
  I was surprised by the extent to which Achebe made me check my assumptions. I was looking for a way out, while Okonkwo desperately tried to maintain his influence in a decreasingly insular society. Okonkwo’s tribe fought to hold onto their traditions; I couldn’t wait to shed mine.
  
  Surely, the second coming was not at hand for me, but when you’re a teenager the world revolves around your slightly-tilted narcissistic axis. At the time, this book spoke directory to me, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

  ⭐ 2/5

  Have you ever been to a work party with your significant other? Generally, these events tend to have booze, which is a bonus, but with that booze comes shop talk. You might find yourself standing in a circle, surrounded by people who are eager to discuss the minutia of their workplace.
  
  So you kind of nod along and slowly drink your wine while they talk about the computer systems they use, or something that Vanessa in accounting emailed around to everyone, and as the conversation turns to systemic issues with a particular distributor you realize that you’re really going to have to go heavier on the wine because this shit is boring and, even though you can mostly follow what’s going on you just don’t care that much about all the systems and players involved.
  
  Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a lot like being trapped at that work party for hours on end, with minimal amounts of booze. There are a few characters discussed, although I hesitate to use the word character because they’re more like two-dimensional hologram approximations of humans. It’s a little bit like when you can never tell the difference between Jessica from sales and Jennifer in marketing, because both of them, separately, trapped you in generic conversations about pumpkin spice lattes and their gluten issues and how aghast they are that you’ve never seen Scandal.
  
  When you don’t care about the people, it really lowers the stakes. So what if Jessica has totally screwed up her Salesforce Pipeline? Jessica is inane and not worthy of the cognitive resources required to process the conversation everyone else is having about her.
  
  Of course, the best way to diffuse the shop talk is to get everyone drunk and then start making increasingly inappropriate “that’s what she said” jokes, hopefully culminating in a lewd and inappropriate “that’s funny, that’s what your mom said to me last night” remark. I can’t think of an appropriate fix for this book, though. Maybe the best thing to do is just compare it to Alias, as more evidence that Alias is the best spy story of all time.

• Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit

  ⭐ 4/5

  There are many good reasons to buy local, seasonal, and organically grown fruits and vegetables. Health is often mentioned, as well as the environment. Some people are just plain concerned with taste: conventional tomatoes don’t taste anything like the heirloom varieties I can get from local farms. Few people, however, cite better conditions for field workers as a reason to buy locally and organically. In Tomatoland, Barry Estabrook describes the lives of tomato field workers, who have largely been invisible to American consumers.
  
  If you pick up some Florida grown tomatoes from your local grocery store in the dead of winter, you’re likely to find that the fruit is fairly tasteless. You may not know that your tomatoes were grown in sand, doused with pesticides, picked green by workers who have been, at best, exploited, misted with chlorine, and then gassed with ethylene. You probably wouldn’t want to eat a tomato that had fallen into your swimming pool, but you’re exposing yourself to much worse when you pick up the deceptively red fruit from the grocery store.
  
  At worst, the workers who grow and pick your tomatoes are enslaved. I’m not using slavery as a metaphor (i.e., I’m not using it the way anti-choicepro-life wackjobs activists falsely refer to abortions as “genocide”). What happens in Florida is legitimate slavery: workers are bought and sold, beaten, and forced to work without pay. Because these field workers are largely uneducated and speak little English, they lack the resources to escape from slavery. Luckily, some of the large tomato companies have been charged with slavery, but slavery has by no means been wiped out.
  
  Even if workers are not forced into slavery, they often make less than minimum wage, since they’re paid by the number of tomatoes they pick. Worse, workers are sometimes directly sprayed with pesticides, which can cause illness and birth defects in pregnant women. Workers pay Manhattan prices to share dilapidated trailers with 10 other people. It’s a difficult life. These workers are not taking jobs from Americans: Americans would not work these jobs.
  
  If you care about people, buy local (organic, in season) tomatoes. Buy local because small farms are more likely to hire American citizens, and pay them fair wages. Buy organic, because organic farms don’t spray their crops and field workers with poison. Buy in season, because out of season tomatoes likely come from Florida, and taste like crap anyway. Your choice of tomato may seem like a small decision, but when more consumers begin to make informed decisions, they can help to change the lives of millions of people.

• Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet

  ⭐ 3/5

  What’s the internet? Before this book, my answer to that question was as follows: it’s a whole bunch of computers that are all connected to each other and there are also, like, servers and stuff. If pressed, I could definitely tell you that it’s probably not like that one scene from the Disney Channel original movie Pixel Perfect where the holographic girl needs a break from people, so she uploads herself to the internet. I’m 99% sure that’s not how the internet works.
  
  Given that I’ve done a lot of work in web development, and that I’m generally interested in science and technology, my understanding of the amorphous entity otherwise known as “the internet” is pretty sad.
  
  Andrew Blum was also disconcerted by his lack of understanding of the internet, which prompted him to write Tubes. The name isn’t a joke: the internet really is a lot like a bunch of connected tubes (as long as you take the word “tube” to mean something along the lines of underground fiberoptic cables that connect through massive internet exchanges that are like routers on crack). Blum is a fantastic writer, and he does a great job of making sense of the physical structure of the internet. Awesome!
  
  But, not quite as awesome as it could be. See, the physical structure of the internet is really only one level of analysis as far as the question “what is the internet?” goes. And yeah, understanding that aspect is kind of cool. However, don’t expect to understand “how does the internet work?” because that question goes far beyond Blum’s question, “what is the physical structure of the internet?”
  
  I’d definitely recommend Tubes for tech geeks like myself, but be aware that it will mostly raise more questions. How does routing technology work on a global scale? How does my information get transformed into light and then turned back into information? And just what was my computer chatting about when my dial up modem called my local AOL number? (Until I hear otherwise, I’ll assume an encrypted version of a Neruda sonnet: “I love you as one loves certain obscure things,/ secretly, between the shadow and the soul.”). This is an interesting first pass, but I wish it were a much more detailed book. Perhaps Blum will write a sequel? Until then, I’ll be sitting here, quietly contemplating the love lives of iMacs, etc.

• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

  ⭐ 4/5

  Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is kind of the anti-Moby Dick (why am I making this comparison? Because they’re both set in the ocean and I read them both recently and I’m so sleep deprived from a red-eye flight that you really shouldn’t expect this review to make sense. Really.). Moby Dick is long and awesome and full of biblical references and generally makes you believe in the ephemeral joy of humanity. Moby Dick also makes you hate fcking whales, and hate the fcking bible, and really really fcking hate fcking [a:Herman Melville|1624|Herman Melville|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1361337904p2/1624.jpg]. Dense poetic prose and all that.
  
  Verne, on the other hand, just comes up with cool ideas and fun adventures that are quick to read, even though the characters are fairly forgettable. I mean, give me like three weeks and I will not be able to tell you anything about Professor Aronnax. Actually, ask me about Professor Aronnax and I’ll probably only have the vague sense that I took some sort of biology class with him or something. Captain Nemo is cool, I guess, but I didn’t find him all that mysterious. The Captain Nemo from Star Trek is much more mysterious and awesome, so I mostly pictured him driving the ship around.
  
  Anyway, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is silly and generic in a good way. It feels simple and familiar, and sometimes you need that. It can be fun to read about awesome technology and altercations with cuttlefish, especially when you’re on BART in San Francisco and you can’t devote too much attention to a difficult book because some crazy has a leashed cat on the train.
  
  Sorry, this review makes no sense. Moral of the story: never try to write about literature after taking a cross-country red-eye flight; also, Jules Verne is awesome.

• Ulysses

  ⭐ 5/5

  Update 10/17/12: Against my better judgement, I’m adding this to my “dear ones” shelf. I’m not sure why, exactly. At it’s best, Ulysses is intellectually exhausting; at worst, it is unambiguously opaque. The thing is, I think about Ulysses often, and when I least expect to.
  
  I need to take some time before rating and reviewing this book. Reading Ulysses is an undertaking, and now that I’ve finished it I cannot articulate my reaction. Certainly, I had to push myself to finish reading this book, as the process often became infuriating. However, the lovely ephemeral moments of clarity somewhat justified Joyce’s general style of overwhelming obfuscation. At this point, I’m glad to have finished (and I want to drink a glass bottle of wine).

• Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

  ⭐ 4/5

  This really is an incredible story of life in the midst of World War II. When I think of the second world war, I mostly imagine the war in Europe. After all, most of the books, films, and related cultural narratives focus on Europe. However, the United States was only drawn into the war after an attack made by Japan, and the war didn’t actually end until Japan surrendered, so there really should be more of a focus on the Pacific theater, especially in the US.
  
  Hillenbrand’s true story of Louis Zamperini, whose Army Air Force plane was shot down during a rescue mission in the Pacific, brings much-needed attention to the other side of the war. I was shocked and saddened by the terrible conditions in Japanese prisoner of war camps, of which I knew nothing. Because Japan has been an ally of the United States for so long, much of the Japanese story (the horrors inflicted on allied soldiers captured by the Japanese, as well as the camps to which Japanese-Americans were sent to back home) as been swept under the rug. Hillenbrand writes incredibly well, and I expect that this book will appeal even to those who don’t normally read history.

• Uncorked: The Novice's Guide to Wine

  ⭐ 3/5

  A quick little introduction to wine that’s too basic for me, but I still learned a few things. Apparently those huge jugs of wine used to be straight up marketed as “burgundy” back in the day, which is kind of hilarious.
  
  There’s a super weird section in here where Paul Kreider recommends pretending like you don’t know shit about wine in order to not sound like a douchebag. He says you should say something along the lines of “I’ve heard sometimes sugar doesn’t ferment all the way and that makes wine sweeter, did that happen here?” If you know perfectly well what residual sugar is, it’s fine to ask your sommelier or friendly wine shop owner about the residual sugar in a particular wine. The way to not sound douchey is to not act like a douchebag.

• Valley of the Dolls

  ⭐ 3/5

  If I’m going to rate this book by quality of writing, I’d have to give it 2 stars. This book is full of the kind of pedestrian writing that you see in books like [b:Trading Up|178813|Trading Up|Candace Bushnell|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1351341588s/178813.jpg|2011131], which I read for about 100 pages in high school before I get fed up with the writing and passed it on to someone with more plebeian tastes. Seriously guys, it’s real bad.
  
  However, the trashiness of the plot made this book so fun to read despite the bad writing and campiness, which means I’d rate it 4 stars based on pure enjoyment. This was a perfect vacation read. I’m splitting the difference and giving it 3 stars.
  
  How shall I describe Valley of the Dolls? Imagine Mad Men, which is retro and well acted and generally excellent. Now imagine that Bravo did a contrived reality show to capitalize on the success of Mad Men, about the “Real” Housewives/Kept Women of 1950’s Manhattan/Los Angeles, and you’ll pretty much get Valley of the Dolls.

• Water for Elephants

  ⭐ 2/5

  Water for Elephants is about a guy that accidentally joins the circus and meets this woman who also works at the circus, who he wants to bang. But obstacles exist, mostly because otherwise the book would have no plot. Except for those kooky circus performers. Also, there’s an elephant.
  
  For a book with so many positive reviews, I found Water for Elephants to be shockingly bad. At first, I thought it might be a fun, quick read. After a few chapters, I realized that the writing was pedestrian, the characters boring and unbelievable. By the halfway point, I contemplated chucking this out the window, and might have if it weren’t for the inconvenience of removing the screens (also, I think throwing objects from the top floor of a tall building on a busy street in a huge city = not legal, or safe).
  
  Bad writing, I can sometimes look past. Cliched phrases, poorly-developed characters, these aren’t always deal breakers. Gratuitous violence towards animals isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I won’t discount a book because of it.
  
  But casual depictions of rape, as well as victim shaming, are absolutely not okay, even if the victim is male. Towards the middle of the book, two women force themselves on Jacob, pinning him down and removing his clothes. While he’s too drunk to consent, he does say “I mumble something, not sure what, but I don’t think it’s encouragement. I’m suddenly not feeling well.” (p. 134) The women give him a blow job without his consent. Later, his “friends” make fun of him for not being about to get an erection.
  
  Imagine a book that included the same situation, but with two men forcing themselves on a woman who is too drunk to say no. Imagine that her friends later poke fun at her for not being about to achieve orgasm. Imagine that this is completely laughed off by the author. I sense a double standard here.
  
  Anyway, my edition of Water for Elephants contains a ton of historical photographs of circuses, that appear before/after chapters that are completely unrelated. The pictures aren’t even that interesting. The actual text of the book is largely similar to the pictures: a selection poorly composed vignettes that felt haphazardly thrown together. Not worth the read.

• We Have Always Lived in the Castle

  ⭐ 5/5

  I wish that someone had put this in my hands when I was going through my adolescent [a:R.L. Stine|13730|R.L. Stine|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1194380070p2/13730.jpg] and [a:Christopher Pike|19954|Christopher Pike|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1336315535p2/19954.jpg] phase. Had that happened, I could have read this at least eight or nine times already, and that still wouldn’t be enough. This was sordid, and fun, and I don’t understand why it has been turned into a Tim Burton film yet. Note to Tim Burton: get on that!
  
  Giving up the plot would put a damper on the fun, so all I will say is that this novella involves poison (!), creepy (?) sisters, and a crazy ass Grey Gardens type situation. Also, it’s super short, so you can easily knock it out in an afternoon (which is great if you’re behind on your Goodreads challenge, as I am right now).
  
  One thing I loved was the evil small town aspect. Growing up in an always gossipy, occasionally spiteful small town totally sucks, even when you’re not enveloped by scandal. The taunts and adults-acting-like-children scenes rang surprisingly true, and part of me felt that Merricat’s plan to kill them all wasn’t a terrible idea. Although, if I had all that money laying around, I’d just decamp to a different city, but then again, I’m not agoraphobic with comorbid untreated mental disorders.
  
  Yeah, just read this already. I really do wish I would have read it sooner.

• Welcome to the Monkey House

  ⭐ 4/5

  Hilariously poignant, Welcome to the Monkey House proves that Kurt Vonnegut was a master of fiction. Each self-contained story is excellent, and I find myself picking up this book when I have a few minutes to kill. Although all the stories shine, I especially enjoyed the title story, about a drug that stops sexual desire to curb overpopulation.

• Where'd You Go, Bernadette

  ⭐ 3/5

  Where’d You Go, Bernadette is one of those books that’s not particularly bad; the issue is that it’s not particularly good either. I could never tell if it was taking itself too seriously, or not seriously enough. Did it want to be literary? Satirical? A guilty pleasure? A glimpse into the lives of upper-class parents? Who knows. It tried to do too much, and ended up not doing anything well. I can’t figure out why so many people like this book. I’m racking my brain trying to come up with anything interesting to say about it.
  
  The only real thing I got from this book was that it would be super cool to go to Antarctica. Once my net worth gets high enough, I’m totally booking a vacation.
  
  Author Maria Semple once wrote for Arrested Development, which explains why I kept thinking that some episodes from this book would have worked better on film. Find a great actress to play obnoxious helicopter parent Audrey Griffin, and her interactions with Bernadette would have been hilarious. A film version of her house being destroyed by a mudslide while a class full of kindergarteners watched would be freaking television gold. I think this sort of story is just more suited for the visual medium. It’s too zany and, frankly, too plebeian to masquerade as literature. Turn it into a movie, though, and I’ll definitely watch it. Until then, I’m going to forget this ever happened.

• Where She Went (If I Stay, #2)

  ⭐ 1/5

  Remember when Lana Del Ray came out with Video Games as a single and we all got super excited because it seemed like the harbinger of good things to come? And then she came out with an LP and we were all like, yeah, no.
  
  Also, remember when The Hangover came out, and it was a seriously excellent and hilarious movie, self-contained and in no need of a sequel? Which means, of course, an unnecessary sequel came out a few years later and it sucked and we all rolled our eyes.
  
  In the grand tradition of taking a good thing and screwing it up completely, Where She Went takes a good thing and screws it up completely.
  
  Where She Went is what happens when you take something that was polished, finished, and overall pretty good, and try to milk it for all it is worth. If I Stay was one of the rare young adult novels that didn’t suck: it was good for Young Adult Fiction (ah, that fun little qualifier), and would have been an interesting if decidedly mediocre offering had it been marketed towards adults. Though it was sometimes maudlin, at points it made me feel some actual emotion. I didn’t hate it and, coming from me, that’s not faint praise.
  
  The best thing about If I Stay was the ending, which succeeded in its ambiguity. One of my major issues with Young Adult novels is that they tell the reader what to think, and I liked that If I Stay invited the reader to think for themselves. Where She Went removes the ambiguity and throws the thoughtfulness out the window. Instead of dealing with themes of loss and grief, it turns into a celebrity-ridden wish fulfillment fantasy. Unlike the first book, which could easily be enjoyed by adults, this is firmly targeted at the tween crowd.
  
  My advice to those who liked the first book: stay away from this one. It’s really not worth your time.

• Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time

  ⭐ 4/5

  “…no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.” - David Hume
  
  What kind of person could deny that the holocaust actually happened? Who could argue against the evidence for evolution? And how do smart people believe such outlandish claims as ESP, alien abductions, and haunted houses? In his book, Michael Shermer explains the logical fallacies and cycles of belief that cause smart people to believe some really weird stuff. This book is worth reading for the in-depth discussion of logical fallacies alone; these fallacies should be taught in high school science classes. Shermer points out that part of the issue with pseudoscience is the way we approach science eduction: as a collection of facts, instead of an imperfect but self-correcting method for discovering the truth.
  
  Shermer treats believers kindly: he does not attack them as ignorant or crazy. Indeed, he claims that intelligence and belief in weird things are completely orthogonal (in other words, statistically unrelated). However, he does compare creationists with holocaust deniers (both fringe groups that use similar tactics to deny a well-established truth), and he certainly counts a belief in God, particularly a belief that God can be proven scientifically, as strange. Shermer’s discussion of [a:Ayn Rand|432|Ayn Rand|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1168729178p2/432.jpg]‘s cult of objectivism is amusingly vitriolic, and one of my favorite sections of the book.

• Wise Child (Doran, #1)

  ⭐ 5/5

  I was completely obsessed with this book when I was little. My mom read it to me, chapter by chapter, before I was really able to read chapter books. I read it tons and tons of times after that. It’s the story of a young girl living in Scotland who is forced to live with Juniper, an enigmatic single woman. The woman turns out to be a witch, who teaches Wise Child witchcraft.
  
  Fun fact: when I was little, I thought that Cornwall (where Juniper is from) was somewhere near India, mostly due to the depiction of Juniper on the cover. Apparently I was not a star geography student in elementary school.

• Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

  ⭐ 4/5

  The real horror story is how society treats vulnerable teenage girls. Thank you, Grady Hendrix, for being a dude that writes female characters well by treating them like people. I hope men pick up this book because it’s horror written by a dude, and I hope they learn something about the female experience.
  
  Witchcraft for Wayward Girls reminded me quite a bit of Bright Young Women. They’re set during similar time periods, center around young women who aren’t taken seriously, and use the horror genre as a lens to examine feminist issues. They both get my highest recommendation, which means I recommended them to my mom.
  
  In a world where the Neil Gaiman allegations are making me lose my faith in any man that loudly claims to be a feminist, reading Witchcraft for Wayward girls made me feel hope. The fight over reproductive rights matters, and there are men out there who get it.

• Within a Budding Grove (In Search of Lost Time, #2)

  ⭐ 5/5

  “On the whole I had derived very little benefit from Balbec, but this only strengthened my desire to return there.”
  
  Proust sums up the book better than I can: not much happens during Within a Budding Grove, and I can’t wait to see what doesn’t happen next. It’s difficult to talk about Proust, partly because there’s not much of a plot to In Search of Lost Time (at least, in the traditional sense), partly because Proust is much more eloquent than I am. Initially, I wanted to describe what happened in the book for this review, but then I read this:
  
  “We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.”
  
  This journey through the wilderness is difficult at times, but worth the struggle. That said, I would not recommend Proust to everyone; indeed, most people should probably stick to more exoteric literature. I’ve made the following Venn diagram to elucidate this point:
  
  
  
  In other words, this book isn’t for philistines. If that’s you, I’m sure there’s a Dan Brown novel you haven’t read yet. Or, you can continue with the charade that Jane Austen is your favorite author, and the only reason why you haven’t actually read any of her books is that you totally don’t have much time, but you’ve seen the mini-series and Mr. Darcy is, like, literally amazing. I won’t tell.
  
  However, those of us who are interested in understanding the human condition, who want to swim in a sea of words while simultaneously feeling elated by Proust’s prose style and worthless because they can’t write like that, will get quite a lot out of Proust. Another elucidating Venn diagram:
  
  
  
  “Alright,” you may say. “I understand your desire to be clever on the internet, and I see that you’re speaking about the Search in general, but, with all due respect, you haven’t addressed Within a Budding Grove specifically.”
  
  Fair enough. This second volume of In Search of Lost Time mostly finds our young narrator in the (fictional) seaside resort community of Balbec. He goes there for the air, on doctor’s orders, which I find quite unfair because I’ve never once been prescribed months of leisure time for any of my maladies. Here is some sound medical advice that I’m thinking about printing out and sticking in my purse, to use next time I get hassled about drinking straight from a bottle of wine whilst travelling on BART:
  
  “To prevent the suffocating fits which the journey might bring on, the doctor had advised me to take a stiff dose of beer or brandy at the moment of departure, so as to begin the journey in a state of what he called ‘euphoria,’ in which the nervous system is for a time less vulnerable.”
  
  From here, Proust meditates on the nature of love, which is the major theme that permeates this volume of the Search. The narrator is unsure how to deal with his waning infatuation with Gilberte, and doesn’t quite understand how to parse his obsession with the almost amorphous band of young women he meets on the beach in Balbec. Here’s a passage:
  
  “No doubt very few people understand the purely subjective nature of the phenomenon that we call love, or how it creates, so to speak, a supplementary person, distinct from the person whom the world knows by the same name, a person of whose constituent elements are derived from ourselves.”
  
  Fundamentally, though, this is a book about adolescence, and the awkwardness involved with becoming a person, and figuring out what makes your heart sing, and realizing that the adults around you aren’t as infallible as they appear:
  
  “But the characteristic feature of the ridiculous age I was going through – awkward indeed but by no means infertile – is that we do not consult our intelligence and that the most trivial attributes of other people seem to us to form an inseparable part of their personality. In a world thronged with monsters and gods, we know little peace of mind. There is hardly a single action we perform in that phase which we would not give anything, in later life, to be able to annul. Whereas what we ought to regret is that we no longer possess the spontaneity which made us perform them. In later life we look at things in a more practical way, in full conformity with the rest of society, but adolescence is the only period in which we learn anything.”
  
  Which is remarkable, not only because I think it’s interesting to explore adolescence from the point of view of someone nearer to the end of their life than the beginning, but also because I now have intellectual ammunition against those who claim that young adult literature “is like totally interesting to grownups because, like, literally, youth is such an awesome and amazing time, and like, that’s what makes YA interesting and awesome and amazing, like, oh-em-gee all the feels.” I hope you brought your bulletproof jackets, plebs, because if you ever make that claim again you’re going to get a copy of “Within a Budding Grove” launched straight into your chest.

• Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner

  ⭐ 5/5

  I never considered myself to have a particular penchant for the macabre, but this is the second book I’ve read that mainly focused on dead bodies. The first one, [b:Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers|32145|Stiff The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers|Mary Roach|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347656489s/32145.jpg|1188203], was jovial in tone: author Mary Roach purposely dehumanized human cadavers, in order to explore the wacky thing they do after they’re dead (related). Judy Melinek takes the opposite route, and talks about the work she does to give dignity and closure to real people.
  
  Melinek came to Forensic Pathology from what seems to me to be an unusual route. She initially trained as a surgeon, but found that the realities of a surgeon’s life prevented her from being able to really do her job (or live her life). She worked incredibly long shifts, and was expected to never take a sick day: indeed, she recounts performing an appendectomy with a higher fever than her patient. She eventually decided to give up surgery and begin training as a pathologist. In a morgue, there’s not real need to work 30 hour shifts or spend countless nights in an on call room: the dead, apparently, can wait.
  
  
  
  (I’m including this GIF to lighten the mood, although it’s somewhat relevant, because I know I’m talking about dead bodies here)
  
  Working Stiff recounts Melinek’s two year fellowship as a New York City medical examiner. Many of us have ideas of what it’s like to work as a medical examiner, because the medical examiner has become a token character on procedural dramas. Exhibit A:
  
  
  
  In reality, most of the work centers on accidents and unexpected natural deaths, as opposed to homicides. Apparently, homicides are generally boring: they tend to show a lot of blunt trauma, and it’s pretty clear what happened. Unexpected deaths, on the other hand, are fundamentally more interesting. In these cases, it’s the medical examiner’s job to piece together what happened from the physical evidence, and use it to give the bereaved family some closure.
  
  Probably the best section in the book is the chapter that focuses on the recovery and identification of the victims of 9/11. Melinek had only been working at her fellowship position for nine weeks on September 11, 2001. She recounts her work on identifying the victims in detail, and the scene she sets is fairly gruesome. In one case, the only thing to identify was a hand with an impeccable French manicure. This section had me crying, which is something that rarely happens.
  
  I heard about this book from the author’s interview on NPR. It’s a short snippet, but worth a listen: it prompted me to get the book immediately, and I couldn’t put it down until I finished. While the topic may be off-putting to some, I would highly recommend Working Stiff to anyone who might be interested, without reservations.

• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

  ⭐ 3/5

  So yeah, this is a best selling book about zombies. It’s fun and actually somewhat decent, but only somewhat, so I’m morally obligated to give it three stars, no more, no less. Because, even though I’ve already said that I’m absolutely fickle with stars, I still think they should mean something.
  
  Zombie apocalypse. It starts small, gets bigger, mass chaos ensues, humanity tries to figure out how to rebuild. You know the tropes: the real difficulty is in facing ourselves as the enemy and yada yada yada. The one thing that’s particularly effective is that World War Z is styled as an oral history. At first, I thought this would be annoying, but it ended up being surprisingly refreshing. The whole oral history thing allowed Max Brooks to tackle some of the political and philosophical issues implicit in said zombie apocalypse. That’s pretty cool.
  
  I still have a hard time understanding how so many people are so interested in reading over-the-top fictionalized end of the world scenarios, while over in the real world a sizable proportion of people fail to recognize that we are actively and catastrophically destroying our environment, our climate, and the planet in general. So that’s something to think about. Too bad climate change isn’t as sexy as a zombie apocalypse.

• Year of Yes

  ⭐ 4/5

  I have been unapologetically watching Grey’s Anatomy since it premiered during my freshman year in college. I loved it when it was critically acclaimed, and stuck with it even when it got a little…ridiculous. It’s now one of a handful of shows that I actually keep up with as it airs. I expected this book to be a fairly light read, because, despite all the disease and drama, I consider Grey’s Anatomy to be a fairly light show. I was incorrect.
  
  Turns out, Shonda Rhimes is an intelligent, eloquent woman with a unique voice. It also turns out that she’s written a book in which she’s allowed herself to be vulnerable, which is something I respect deeply. This books tells of her realization that she rarely says yes to anything. Indeed, she had been turning down opportunities without actually realizing it, choosing to focus mostly on work. Her Year of Yes project was a personal project to say yes to opportunities that scared her. It worked out well.
  
  I needed this book at this time, even though I don’t think that my life would be improved by saying yes more. I actually think it would be better for me to say no more, or, at the very least, to say yes to the right things. However, I found this moving and inspiring, and I’ll definitely be thinking about it for awhile.

• Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

  ⭐ 4/5

  I pre-ordered the audiobook, read by Jenna Lamia, who did an excellent job with [b:The Help|4667024|The Help|Kathryn Stockett|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1346100365s/4667024.jpg|4717423]. Can’t wait to listen to it!
  
  Edit: A fantastic novel, which is fair to Zelda without apologizing for her. Almost equally interesting is the portrait of Hemingway, who doesn’t come across well. Watching Scott sink further into alcoholism, with ever more frequent breaks from writing, was devastating.

• Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

  ⭐ 4/5

  Although Reza Aslan titled his book Zealot, it could just as easily have been called “A Tale of Two Jesuses.” The first Jesus is the one that many Americans are familiar with; I first learned about him during Catholic Catechism. He’s the literal son of God, born of a literal virgin, which is why he gets to walk around with that glowing crown of gold around his head. He’s all about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, and all that. He looks like this:
  
  
  
  Historical Jesus is pretty freaking different from Catholic Jesus. First of all, he’s never considers himself the literal son of God, nor does he even refer to himself as the Messiah. He’s not some divine being sent to earth to bring us salvation in another life. Instead, historical Jesus wanted to bring the Jewish people prosperity during his own time.
  
  Consider this “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace, but the sword” (Matthew 10:34, Luke 12:51).
  
  I definitely prefer historical Jesus to Catholic Jesus. Historical Jesus was an iconoclast who devoted his life to overturning an unjust social order during one of the most tumultuous periods in history. Historical Jesus was a complete badass. I imagine that Historical Jesus looked something like this:
  
  
  
  Zealot is a short book, but it outlined quite a bit about the historical context that totally blew my mind. For example, purification acts performed at the temple in Jerusalem were a major source of income for Rome, so when Jesus cured lepers he was actively taking away this income. Also, Jesus wasn’t the only potential messiah running around. In reality, he had a fair amount of competition.
  
  There are some places where this book gets weird, like the part where Aslan doesn’t dismiss out of hand the idea that Jesus performed miracles. Instead, he just talks about how some people said that Jesus was performing miracles, and others said that it was magic. Um, okay? David Blaine performs “magic” too, but his tricks have physical (as opposed to metaphysical) explanations, because we live in a world governed by the laws of physics. Unfortunately, magic isn’t real (there are tons of kids who didn’t get a letter from Hogwarts on their 13th birthday, who also didn’t wake up levitating on their 16th birthday, who will attest to this fact). Miracles don’t exist either, unless we’re talking about magnets. The historical record might suggest that Jesus was particularly good at sleight of hand tricks, which made it appear that he performed magicles, but that doesn’t mean he actually did. Occam’s Razor, etc. It’s kind of silly to boil that all down to a question of semantics. A true historian would be appropriately incredulous.
  
  The book is also short and ends abruptly, far before I felt like I was finished with it, almost as if
  
  Still, I do recommend this book, to religious and non-religious people alike. I came out of it with a greater appreciation for Jesus, the man. Where I stand on the position of the Jesus, the Christ, remains unchanged. I pity the fool who tries to convert me by appealing to Jesus, the ethereal archetype. I’ve now got some pretty persuasive arguments against that particular viewpoint.