Maybe I‘m just being impatient, I‘m only a few chapters in, but so far every POV character is awful and I can‘t figure out why I would spend time with any of them. Maybe it gets better, but my patience for a character to learn lessons like “the poors are people too”, “slavery is wrong”, and “maybe I shouldn‘t do so much murder” is limited.

Look Coraline, I like your hair and I recognize that you are a fictional character, but if you hurt Daisy Wooton, I will find a way to make you RUE THE DAY.

There are echos of other McGuire books here, with twins and silence, but that‘s no reason not to read it and hope that, someday, you too can have a cat/mountain lion like Tranquillity. (image from nps)

I have a complicated relationship with running. I was out running one morning and was attacked. Grabbed from behind. I‘m so angry. I feel like I‘ll never feel “safe” running again. I think I would have liked this book if I‘d read it a month ago. But I just kept being jealous of Peter, that he could go outside without someone hurting him. That he never had to think about safety in the same way (as far as I know). But that‘s not his fault.

I listened to the audio book and the author did a great job of vocalizing different types of internet speak. Lots of readers could have made internet speak sound stupid, especially with the light tone of the book. But that would have gone against the books point. There are topics Here I‘d like more detail on and points I would argue against, but this is a thoughtful book and a fun read.

This isn‘t a horrible book, although it is very YA. But, as someone who knows nothing about making clothes, I would have liked a graphic novel or some format that let us see some of the tailors creations.

“While mom works, Grandpa takes care of me. And I take care of him. This is Cap‘n Bill. He was a stray I found on the beach and brought home. Bill mostly takes care of himself...like any cat.”

Lushly colored, beautifully Art Deco, with a Maine Coonish cat, and a girl trying to care for her sick grandfather, this is lovely. The story is pretty standard, a girl finds herself in a magical land. But it has interesting, well developed layers and details.

I‘m not sure about this yet. To get all the characters together, lots of things happened in quick succession, in the way that made the main character seem over the top. But using ghosts to explore the loneliness of moving to a new city is an interesting idea.

Oh, ouch. This book does a great job of presenting imperfect, believable people who hurt each other while trying to grow up the way they think they should. Here‘s to finding your people, However long it takes.

Gruesome and readable. Makes you glad you aren‘t a roach or mouse. The author leans kind of heavily into an argument about the lack a free will at one point, but given that the entire book is about how parasites can change the behavior of those they prey on, it feels earned.

“At the risk of starting this book out on a negative note, I must say that nature is a terrible place.”

It‘s new. A side by side comparison between the original mini series or the ongoing series that followed it doesn‘t feel fair. So far, I like the amount of time we‘re spending with Rose. I wish I had a better sense of who Ellie is and I miss Molly so, so much.

I had problems with this book. It felt like it was aimed at educated kids who couldn‘t get white collar jobs and were hesitant to perform other types of labor, like cooking. The ending redeemed it. But it‘s a tricky game, balancing drudge work, poverty, slavery, Art, aesthetics, and classism.

You know, for a media tie in, this isn‘t half bad. And the research seems pretty solid. Or least, the author(s) know that the Fox sisters were a thing. Now I have to figure out if ancient women using oxen bladders as Spanxs, as mentioned in the book, is also really a thing.

When teenage Busy got pregnant, her horrible boyfriend‘s mother tried to bully her into not having an abortion. When Busy‘s, very catholic, mom found out she had some words for this woman “MY DAUGHTER DID THIS? WHAT ABOUT YOUR SON?!...QUITE FRANKLY, I DON‘T THINK INTIMIDATING A SCARED 15 YEAR OLD BY TELLING SHE‘S GOING TO HELL IS VERY CHRISTIAN...DON‘T YOU EVER SPEAK TO HER THAT WAY AGAIN”. I‘m a little in love with Busy‘s mom.

A well written history that draws not only on ancient texts and modern theories but also on the author‘s experience trying to do things like hear what other people are saying on the battle field or hold up a spear for a couple minutes.

The Lady Astronaut goes to Mars. This book gives readers a chance not to loathe Parker, the sexist but skilled pilot from the . As the climate continues changing the question of who is going to benefit from the very expensive space program and who will be left behind comes up.

Nothing to see here, just Bruce Wayne, the son of two murder victims, who is so committed to the idea “no one dies” that he dresses up like a bat and regularly fails to kill the murderous Joker, casually offering to kill a man he doesn‘t know.

If you can divorce this from anything you know about Batman, you may like it. If, like me, you are a mean pendant, you might spend the book wondering at the idea of upper crust Bruce Wayne, and child-of-a-waitress, Selina Kyle, attending the same public schools and after-school program. This story circles around issues of class and homeless, but doesn‘t ring true to me.

I really enjoyed Fatima as a character. All of the characters in this story are nuanced and believable. But I especially enjoyed Fatima‘s forthright honestly and bravery.

I had to double check reviews for this book, Haddon so completely aped a type of prose where men look at woman and respond to their feelings about how those women look, that I thought this had been written in the 1920s. It was delicately done. But the structure of the story lost me. There were mirrored, parallel story elements, greek myths, magic? But at the end, I‘m not sure what point was being made. It felt like a thought experiment.

Two college students, one from Saudi Arabia and one from Japan, become roommates in America. They are charming and inclusive and kind. But it felt like there were things that were gently hinted at, that would have been better spoken aloud; like the fact that kids pulled their eyelids back to shout “China Lady” at Satoko or the fact women weren‘t ALLOWED to drive in Saudi Arabia when this was written, or have gym class.

I have mixed feelings about this book. There are things about it I really like and things that make me uncomfortable, or give me the feeling the author and I wouldn‘t really get on. But it has an expansive world with a great deal of charm. And...I just really like Sally‘s character design.

This is such a cool little nature book. It looks into the nature of the urban environment of LA not as an endless, unending tragedy but as a unique, evolving strangeness where new species are found all the time and species are constantly developing new, unexpected survival strategies.

“The real struggle on this earth is not between those who want peace and those who want war. It‘s between those who want peace and those who want justice. If justice is what you want, then you may often be right, but you will rarely be happy.”

Old Lace is a good Dino. Would bop. 10/10. Not sure about Gib. Eventually, he‘s going to eat something. But who knows what?

I wanted to like this book. I think I would have, but I have a problem with “reclaimed” words. When people can, and do, scream something at you to make you feel bad, it doesn‘t feel reclaimed. I wince internally every time someone uses certain words. So I‘m interested in books that talk about words like “bitch” or “slut”, but I‘m not comfortable with a book that uses those terms in a jokey, casual “between us us girls” way. YMMV.

Susan‘s feeling about day spas is very relatable.

I couldn‘t get past the introduction of this, I was annoyed. “We champion atheist horsemen, making heroes of those who tell us that the only mysteries worth reveling will succumb...to our inquiries.” I‘ve never heard scientists say anything like that. There was so much straw manning of science. Also, the author asks if we‘re better off now or is during Ancient Greece? Many of us couldn‘t be citizens in Ancient Greece.

I was expecting a true crime book. But instead this was a funny and engaging memoir.

Walden‘s storytelling is so elegant and dream like. The art is beautiful. I wish I could wander around in the worlds she builds. But when people ask me what her books are about I‘m always at a lose to explain.

I tried to write this review several times. Dr. Ben Barres seems like he was brave and passionate and kind. I‘m sad that he isn‘t around anymore. It was wonderful to read about his life. But I could have used more background on the science, more explanations. I know the time he had to write was limited. I‘m happy we got what we got.

I‘ve never watched Little House on the Prairie, but I picked this up on the strength of its title. Arngrim seems like an interesting person and a good friend to have. And she got to play the bad guy! Who doesn‘t love playing a good scene chewing villain?

An interesting micro-history. The swerves between extravagance and what passes for austerity when you‘re an aristocrat are cloaked in a celebrity-esque loneliness and isolation. By the end of it, all I could think was “Why is royalty still a thing?”

I liked this book. It was well written. I had some problems with it, which might have to do with my many feelings about detective noir fiction. Complicated, flawed female characters are great. But I really, really just wanted the sisters to reconcile and take on the world together.

“I say La Brea‘s Asphalt Seeps because, as Herb Schaffer once pointed out, the title “The La Brea Tar Pits” translates to “The The Tar Tar Pits.”” Writes Switek. Imagine getting a chai tea at the La Brea Tar Pits. An interesting book on bones that goes to some dark places. The author is thoughtful and respectful of the people whose bodies become specimens. And it‘s funny.

“She finally found a funeral home that would help her. The one funeral home that would take people who had died of AIDS was the only Africa America owned funeral home in town. Having been the target of discrimination and hatred for so many years.:. it‘s owners understood What it was like to have someone say “you can‘t bury your loved one because: we don‘t serve your kind”.

I‘d feathered my nest with file folders, nonspecific glossy photographs of blurry people, sticky notes. A legal pad covered in vague notes with circles around randomly chosen words, arrows pointed to question marks. Detective stuff.

Imagine having a secret best friend, a magic sibling that you could communicate with without anyone knowing, a soulmate, and then becoming estranged from them not once, but twice. Loneliness and alienation are more powerful in this book then all the evil alchemists and homunculi ever.

An interesting use of the socratic method. Both characters in this dialogue on child-rearing got on my nerves. But you have to respect the glee the authority on the Victorian Era showed while discussing ass milk, no matter how much the modern woman objected.

A slow speed apocalypse caused by a meteoroid impact and subsequent global warming leads some people to desperately try to set up colonies in space, while others discount the possibility of climate change, cause its not hot right this second. It‘s set in the 1950s so the sexism, racism, and antisemetism are more overt. Otherwise, it could take place today.

When Big Barda and Mr. Miracle visit Darkseid they bring a vegetable platter, cause they‘re classy. This is an excellent, strange story with some brutal looks into mental illness, trauma and the struggle to live, having survived trauma.

One thing I like about comics is that, as hard as writers try, some moments are indescribable. Indescribable but earth shattering. Art gives us another way to access those moments.

I couldn‘t get far enough into this for it to make sense. And the protagonist‘s husband and son are awful. But ...she doesn‘t notice. If your son started calling you, and other women, hysterical, wouldn‘t you drop the hammer on him? Wouldn‘t you think “Time for a teachable moment!”? Maybe that‘s the point: don‘t get comfortable with other people losing their rights. Cause it will be you too, soon. But its tough to read.

Ever since The X-Men cartoons I‘ve found Gambit creepy. And the more authors and cover artists insisted that readers see him as “dreamy” or “romantic” the creepier I found him. Who knew that all it took for me to give the character a second chance was all of the X-men, and Deadpool, ragging on him nonstop?

According to Picard “Ruffs were often colored at the starching stage with soft vegetable dye, producing pink, yellow, or mauve tints....later restorers‘ conviction that all riffs were white and ...the neckwear of any portrait subject should be ‘cleaned‘ until it was.” HOW DID I NOT KNOW RUFFS COULD BE PASTEL?

I liked this reimagining of old fairytales so much. The sea witch, the Minotaur, and the stepmother aren‘t the monsters you expect. The heroes aren‘t what you expect. And it‘s all set in the same universe as Bardugo‘s Grisha and Dregs books, which is some Marvel Movie-verse level world building. Also, it has beautiful illustrations.

“I have been sent to bargain with you.”
“The king has nothing I want.”
“Then perhaps you might show mercy freely.”
“My father [the king] never taught me mercy.”
“And can you not learn?”

I like the artwork in this book; there is nice hair. But Nancy is unpleasant. She drops her two friends when she returns to her hometown. She hasn‘t talked to her hometown friends in years. She doesn‘t tell her friends the truth. She doesn‘t check in, her friends panic. She lets friends do chores around her without helping. Maybe the series gets better.