Loved learning about Dr. Harold Gillies and soldiers injured in world war 1. Dr. Gillies seemed ahead of his time both scientifically and socially. I thought the book was the perfect length and level of detail for an intro to the subject matter. It was interesting to learn that the founder of plastic surgery was unapologetic and genuine about his passion for the speciality and cared so much about his patients, both reconstructive and cosmetic.

A letdown. @scale-shark said it best “Sarah just wanted to play house with her characters”

Probably my favorite book in the series so far.

Loved the second book in the series. Hard to put down. I love the way Sarah writes about mental and physical recovery. Picking up the next book from the library today

Excited to read the rest of the series!

Read this right after Jurassic Park. My boyfriend owns the book and has tried to read it multiple times but couldn‘t get into it because it reminds him too much of his job lol

Easier read than I expected. Dava Sobel does a great job of keeping the narrative style in this fact-heavy memoir. I learned a lot reading while reading it. One of those books where I stop every other page and ask my nearest loved one “did you know??” Did you know Galileo died a year before Isaac Newton was born??

Enjoyed this one a lot. Sci-fi and romance. Characters were cool. Felt like a fan fiction, but I‘m perfectly ok with that.

Read it while at the beach and enjoyed it a lot. The character was and also wasn‘t your typical protagonist. Gooood ending

Fun beach read. Recommended to my friend who loves the teacher-student romance trope and she read it and 70% of the sequel in a day lol

Entertaining read! Read it in less than 2 days and I can‘t remember the last time I sped through a book like that. Loved the concept and thought that the way the book describes depression was interesting. Did spark some self reflection

Read it right after my friend, Caitlin #bfls
Can be summed up by a tweet I saw “in a sense, none of our dinosaurs have ever escaped because society itself is just another larger cage. Fuck yeah that sounds so smart. But yeah like 18 to 19 dinosaurs are currently loose.”

Love this copy of The DaVinci Code that I found at goodwill. Read it and then watched the movie. It mostly followed the book, but I had a great time pointing out all the tiny differences.

Fun read. Really loved the concept and thought the ending was satisfying

Read this in 5th grade and didn‘t pick up on the religious elements. Mentally putting this in a category with chronicles of narnia now.

I see how it‘s a classic, but it was a bit slow to me.

You can judge this book by its cover. I loved it so much. Written by the host of one of my favorite podcasts, Noble Blood. I‘ve had this book on pre order since May. As an aspiring physician, I loved the medical history and ethical scandal. I loved the unique combo of practicality and romanticism. Highly recommend, and I hope Dana Schwartz writes more novels in the future.

Read it over Christmas break and enjoyed it immensely. Lent it to my sister and she also loved it. It felt poetic, and the ancient characters felt very modern. A good tragic love story.

Recommended to me by a girl I met in a bar bathroom in Galway Ireland in the summer of 2018. Finally read it! Told from the points of view of a mother and her 4 daughters. Tells about how their family goes to the Congo as missionaries and what happens to them there during a period of political uncertainty. At first it was hard to put down, but I think it was about 100 pages too long toward the end.

Recommended by my roommate. She read it in middle school and remembered liking it a lot. I loved the concept of a world where the justice system is a virtual role player game. Plot wasn‘t super well developed but it was a fun read.

This is your sign not to annotate your books. I read this in 6th grade and annotated it for school. Past me absolutely terrorized present me. She simply could not shut up. Neither an unmarked page nor moment of insight.
Book was OK. Plot moves a little slow, but it was interesting. Characters felt like they had developed lives outside of the story.

Picked up this book at a used bookstore for $2. Interesting and threatening breakdown of the sources and cause of different Ebola strains. Often told from the point of view of experts who worked to contain the outbreak. Easy to read big chunks of the books at a time but difficult to learn the messy and painful details. Would recommend to anyone interested in learning more about Ebola or viruses in general.

Lived up to Ender‘s Game. Great parallel story telling

Lives up to the hype. Have officially read all of her books.

Cute little read after the Tao Te Ching. Some nice practical examples of Taoism. I read this in high school for a class but this time through I had more context for Taoism, so I think I picked up on some of the author‘s more subtle points.

Kinda cute, pretty weird. Book Peter was much less charming than the Disney movie Peter to me.

Queen of Shadows seems to leave off where most fantasy stories end, so I‘m excited for the next book. I think my favorite thing about this series is that it introduces new characters that interact with the existing characters beautifully (Lysandra, Elide). I can already tell the throne of glass series will be a great re-read; I bet there‘s foreshadowing for some of these plot twists that I‘ve missed. #bfls

Lovely steampunk/mad scientist story. Very original plot line, interesting characters. Freddie is one of my favorite characters in recent memory. The villain‘s soliloquy was so long and detailed that it felt like a Bond film. The ending felt a bit rushed, but overall I would recommend.

New characters! A training montage! Spooky magical creatures! What more could you want?
Felt like a big turning point in the series with vivid scenes and serious plot development. Rowan is a badass, Manon is a bad bitch, and Sorsha has my heart. Excited for the next book!
#bfls

I read this for an online book club, but I really didn‘t like it. The story follows Toru, a college student in Tokyo, and his relationships with women and friends over the course of a few years. Dark, heavy themes. More about sex than love. Mental illness and suicide seemed romanticized. Maybe I just haven‘t lived through anything that makes this novel strike a chord, but it was not my cup of tea.

Enjoyable albeit mushy. Story about young love between 2 kids from very different families. Written in a way that makes you want to read it all at once. I liked the alternating view points a lot. Sometimes that seems over the top for romantic stories, but this was well written.

Quick read with a lot of (mostly obvious) tips about how to live a healthy life. The book is split into 3 sections: (1) things to do, (2) things to avoid, and (3)tips from a doctor. It concludes with a list of health benchmarks and tests for each age range. Prevention is the best medicine, and it‘s a good idea to be conscious of the decisions you make daily that can affect your health in the long run.

2nd book in the series. Loved it almost as much as the first. Big romantic moments and some good reveals/surprises that I should have seen coming in hindsight. #bfls

Loved it! Reading along with @scale-shark ‘s reread. Exciting story and cool characters. A real relief since I was worried I was running out of good high fantasy series. I thought it was a great first book in the series. It comes to a satisfying conclusion and sets up the plot for the rest of the series. Waiting for book 2 now. #bfls

“I collected men with interesting names.”

“There must be quite a few things a hot bath can‘t cure, but I don‘t know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.‘”

“There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.”

A good short read. Esther was a strong protagonist and I felt for her the entire time even when I couldn‘t personally relate. Uplifting conclusion, which is sometimes hard to come by in books about mental health.

This book did not do it for me. The storyline isn‘t bad. I liked some of the political maneuvering, but overall it desperately lacks humor, conversational and situational. I had a hard time caring about the characters too, but it was cool to see a bit of a matriarchy in early sci-fi. At least now I understand some South Park references to “the Spice Melange”. #bfls

A great book to read before bed. Entertaining but not so entertaining that you can‘t put it down. Some amusing interruptions for narration from the author. The protagonist was a little more naive than I expected, but all the more loveable for it. I also love that Austen wrote women characters who are users. Something about that seems ahead of its time.

“Now I must give one smirk, and then we may be rational again.”
This conversation between Catherine and Henry while they danced was my favorite Jane Austen conversation to date.

“Where the heart is really attached, I know very well how little one can be pleased with the attention of any body else. Everything is so insipid, so uninteresting, that does not relate to the beloved object!”

“It requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world.”

“Miss Morland, no one can think more highly of the understanding of women than I do. In my opinion, nature has given them so much, that they never find it necessary to use more than half.”

“If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.”

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”

My Christmas break book

Charming story, strong ending, endearing characters, and confusing magic. What more could you ask for?
The visuals were great. The style of writing was fresh. Felt like an easy read, but upon finishing, I‘m certain a re-read would reveal new details and perspective.
#bfls

enjoyed this chapter a whole lot.

“There are no longer simple tales with quests and beasts and happy endings. The quests lack clarity of goal or path. The beasts take different forms and are difficult to recognize for what they are. And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise.” #bfls

“‘I believe you have my umbrella‘ he says, almost out of breath but wearing a grin that has too much wolf in it to be properly sheepish.”

Here it is. The line that made me like Marco.

“. . . you are not destined or chosen. I wish I could tell you that you were if that would make it easier, but it is not true. You are in the right place, at the right time, and you care enough to do what needs to be done. Sometimes that is enough.”

I loved this book for blatantly ignoring fate and explicitly stating that some alternate ending could have resulted from slightly different timing of seemingly minor events.