Melissa's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 26 Apr 2025 08:20:22 -0700 60 Melissa's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Slow Dance: A Novel 220531016
They were just friends. Best friends. Allies. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. They were both going to get out of north Omaha—Shiloh would go to college and become an actress, and Cary would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship would never change.

Well, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy. And yet, somehow, everything changed.

Now Shiloh’s thirty-three, and it’s been fourteen years since she talked to Cary. She’s been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she’s back living in the same house she grew up in. Her life is nothing like she planned.

When she’s invited to an old friend’s wedding, all Shiloh can think about is whether Cary will be there—and whether she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything?

The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.

Slow Dance is the story of two kids who fell in love before they knew enough about love to recognize it. Two friends who lost everything. Two adults who just feel lost.

It’s the story of Shiloh and Cary, who everyone thought would end up together, trying to find their way back to the start.]]> 400 Rainbow Rowell 006338020X Melissa 0 to-read 4.00 2024 Slow Dance: A Novel
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Every Day Is a Gift: A Memoir 55898097
In Every Day Is a Gift , Tammy Duckworth takes readers through the amazing—and amazingly true—stories from her incomparable life. In November of 2004, an Iraqi RPG blew through the cockpit of Tammy Duckworth's U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. The explosion, which destroyed her legs and mangled her right arm, was a turning point in her life. But as Duckworth shows in Every Day Is a Gift , that moment was just one in a lifetime of extraordinary turns.

The biracial daughter of an American father and a Thai-Chinese mother, Duckworth faced discrimination, poverty, and the horrors of war—all before the age of 16. As a child, she dodged bullets as her family fled war-torn Phnom Penh. As a teenager, she sold roses by the side of the road to save her family from hunger and homelessness in Hawaii. Through these experiences, she developed a fierce resilience that would prove invaluable in the years to come.

Duckworth joined the Army, becoming one of a handful of female helicopter pilots at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. She served eight months in Iraq before an insurgent's RPG shot down her helicopter, an attack that took her legs—and nearly took her life. She then spent thirteen months recovering at Walter Reed, learning to walk again on prosthetic legs and planning her return to the cockpit. But Duckworth found a new mission after meeting her state's senators, Barack Obama and Dick Durbin. After winning two terms as a U.S. Representative, she won election to the U.S. Senate in 2016. And she and her husband Bryan fulfilled another dream when she gave birth to two daughters, becoming the first sitting senator to give birth.

From childhood to motherhood and beyond, Every Day Is a Gift is the remarkable story of one of America's most dedicated public servants.]]> 288 Tammy Duckworth 1538718502 Melissa 0 currently-reading 4.53 2021 Every Day Is a Gift: A Memoir
author: Tammy Duckworth
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Spirituality Beyond Science and Religion]]> 15887256 172 William F. Pillow Jr. 1475928203 Melissa 3
While this was a rather rough read, and I certainly didn't like the author's hateful stance on Islam, I don't feel the need to just bash on this book. An uncle asked me to read it. I can see why a book like this has a lot of value for people, my uncle included.

I was a religious studies major in college, so this book is.... not for me, to put it mildly. But I'm glad this book exists for the people who love it or need it.

Pillow died in February 2022, and after reading this book, I am certain that as he died, Betty's soul was the first one to lovingly greet him in Heaven. RIP William Pillow.

Three stars.]]> 3.50 2012 Spirituality Beyond Science and Religion
author: William F. Pillow Jr.
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/09
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: 2025-reads, contemporary, self-help, religion, science, nonfiction
review:
Published in 2012, the nonfiction book "Spirituality Beyond Science and Religion," by William Pillow, is like reading the author's scattered journal notes on the subject of "spirituality," a topic of research inspired by Pillows's sudden urgency to discover if there really is "life after death," which was prompted by the death of his beloved wife, Betty, after Pillow had led a long and successful career in industries that had nothing to do with questions of spirituality or religion.

While this was a rather rough read, and I certainly didn't like the author's hateful stance on Islam, I don't feel the need to just bash on this book. An uncle asked me to read it. I can see why a book like this has a lot of value for people, my uncle included.

I was a religious studies major in college, so this book is.... not for me, to put it mildly. But I'm glad this book exists for the people who love it or need it.

Pillow died in February 2022, and after reading this book, I am certain that as he died, Betty's soul was the first one to lovingly greet him in Heaven. RIP William Pillow.

Three stars.
]]> All Fours 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 Melissa 3
Coming in at #1 on the New York Times' list of the 10 Best Books of 2024 is Miranda July's novel, "All Fours."

I hit so many successive DNF points trying to struggle-bus my way through this, it amazes me that I made it all the way to page 254 (of 322 pages total) before the text became so repulsive and awful that I could not continue at all.

(For those who have read the book, this is the scene in which the protagonist and her husband, Harris, are cutting the hair from around their dog's anus together, and the mounds of "impacted shit" are described in detail.)

The unnamed protagonist has a lot of unnamed, unaddressed problems in this text. Primary among them are limerence (which is blamed on perimenopause), all of the emotional immaturity and shame that leads to limerence, a deeply ingrained Madonna/Whore complex that destroys any enjoyment she might have during sex with her husband, and the profound entitlement of someone who is emotionally two years old.

I am not the audience for this novel. I personally give this book negative stars.

This was solely a market research read. For that reason, I give it three stars, recognizing that I am not the audience for this.

I honestly hated "All Fours." The page I DNF'd on made me feel physically sick to my stomach. Reading this book is hell.

]]> 3.53 2024 All Fours
author: Miranda July
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: 2025-reads, books-i-really-dislike, contemporary, dnf, fiction, literary-fiction, no-thanks, one-star-read, stereotypical-first-world-problems, unlikeable-protagonists, why-do-i-hate-myself, women, women-s-fiction-chick-lit, wtf
review:
Oof. This one was not for me.

Coming in at #1 on the New York Times' list of the 10 Best Books of 2024 is Miranda July's novel, "All Fours."

I hit so many successive DNF points trying to struggle-bus my way through this, it amazes me that I made it all the way to page 254 (of 322 pages total) before the text became so repulsive and awful that I could not continue at all.

(For those who have read the book, this is the scene in which the protagonist and her husband, Harris, are cutting the hair from around their dog's anus together, and the mounds of "impacted shit" are described in detail.)

The unnamed protagonist has a lot of unnamed, unaddressed problems in this text. Primary among them are limerence (which is blamed on perimenopause), all of the emotional immaturity and shame that leads to limerence, a deeply ingrained Madonna/Whore complex that destroys any enjoyment she might have during sex with her husband, and the profound entitlement of someone who is emotionally two years old.

I am not the audience for this novel. I personally give this book negative stars.

This was solely a market research read. For that reason, I give it three stars, recognizing that I am not the audience for this.

I honestly hated "All Fours." The page I DNF'd on made me feel physically sick to my stomach. Reading this book is hell.


]]> <![CDATA[How Proust Can Change Your Life]]> 23420 In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden, no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work—his fiction, letter, and conversations—and distills from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.

Here, tendered in prose almost as luminous as it’s subject’s, is advice on cultivating friendships, suffering successfully, recognizing love and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on the first date. And here, too, is a generously perceptive literary biography that suggests that the master is as relevant today as he was in fin de siècle Paris. At once slyly ironic and genuinely wise, How Proust Can Change Your Life is an unqualified delight.]]> 208 Alain de Botton 0679779159 Melissa 0 to-read 3.78 1998 How Proust Can Change Your Life
author: Alain de Botton
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Wedding People 198902277 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250899576.

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]> 384 Alison Espach Melissa 3
I read this as a market research read.

For my own personal taste, I would have DNF'd.

]]> 4.11 2024 The Wedding People
author: Alison Espach
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: 2025-reads, contemporary, fiction, no-thanks, women
review:
Oof. Nope. Not for me.

I read this as a market research read.

For my own personal taste, I would have DNF'd.


]]> Poverty, by America 61358638 Reimagining the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it.

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?

In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.

Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.]]> 304 Matthew Desmond 0593239911 Melissa 5
I enjoyed "Poverty, by America" (first published in March 2023) even more than "Evicted."

I was finally able to buy a copy of "Poverty, by America" in November 2024, just a few days before Thanksgiving. With the second term of Donald Trump on the horizon, it became increasingly harder to finish it, and I had to put the book down after sixty pages, and take a long break.

I picked it up again in February 2025, and finished it before Matthew Desmond appeared on The Daily Show on March 3, 2025. I thought Desmond did a great job articulating some of the main ideas in this book during his interview with Jon Stewart.

Desmond has spoken elsewhere on "Poverty, by America," like Amanpour and Company and Democracy Now!, but it's especially nice to see him interviewed on The Daily Show.

Vast swaths of America now view the poor as parasites, not as a vital resource and a treasure of our country. Instead of viewing our fellow citizens as important and worthy of investment, we view them as garbage and want them to die. It's a sickening mindset to have.

I'm not sure how to change that mindset, but it's running rampant in the U.S. right now.

Anyway, this book is superb. Five stars.

Highly recommended!
]]> 4.27 2023 Poverty, by America
author: Matthew Desmond
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: 2025-reads, books-that-make-life-worth-living, classism, contemporary, history, nonfiction
review:
Excellent book!

I enjoyed "Poverty, by America" (first published in March 2023) even more than "Evicted."

I was finally able to buy a copy of "Poverty, by America" in November 2024, just a few days before Thanksgiving. With the second term of Donald Trump on the horizon, it became increasingly harder to finish it, and I had to put the book down after sixty pages, and take a long break.

I picked it up again in February 2025, and finished it before Matthew Desmond appeared on The Daily Show on March 3, 2025. I thought Desmond did a great job articulating some of the main ideas in this book during his interview with Jon Stewart.

Desmond has spoken elsewhere on "Poverty, by America," like Amanpour and Company and Democracy Now!, but it's especially nice to see him interviewed on The Daily Show.

Vast swaths of America now view the poor as parasites, not as a vital resource and a treasure of our country. Instead of viewing our fellow citizens as important and worthy of investment, we view them as garbage and want them to die. It's a sickening mindset to have.

I'm not sure how to change that mindset, but it's running rampant in the U.S. right now.

Anyway, this book is superb. Five stars.

Highly recommended!

]]> The Nanny Diaries (Nanny, #1) 228333 306 Emma McLaughlin 0312291639 Melissa 4
"The Nanny Diaries" still holds up. I'd recommend this book over the memoir.

Four stars.
]]> 3.47 2002 The Nanny Diaries (Nanny, #1)
author: Emma McLaughlin
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: 2024-reads, chick-lit, contemporary, fiction, women, women-s-fiction-chick-lit
review:
I was prompted to reread this 2002 bestseller over Labor Day weekend in 2024, after the memoir "Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant" was published.

"The Nanny Diaries" still holds up. I'd recommend this book over the memoir.

Four stars.

]]> <![CDATA[Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant]]> 200100950

When Stephanie Kiser moves to New York City after college to pursue a career in writing, she quickly learns that her entry-level salary won't cover the high cost of living―never mind her crushing student loan debt. But there is one in-demand job that pays more than enough to allow Stephanie to stay in the city: nannying for the 1%. Desperate to escape the poverty of her own childhood, Stephanie falls into a job that hijacks her life for the next seven years: a glorified personal assistant to toddlers on Manhattan's Upper East Side.


At first, nannying seems like the perfect solution―the high pay covers Stephanie's bills, and she's surprised by how attached she becomes to the kids she cares for, even as she gasps over Prada baby onesies and preschools that cost more than her college tuition. But the grueling twelve-hour days leave her little time to see her friends, date, or pursue any creative projects that might lead to a more prestigious career. The allure of the seemingly-glamorous job begins to dull as Stephanie comes to understand more about what really happens behind the closed doors of million-dollar Park Avenue apartments―and that money doesn't guarantee happiness. Soon she will have to decide whether to stay with the children she's grown to love, or if there's something better out there just beyond her reach.


Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant is alternately poignant and funny, a portrait of a generation of Americans struggling to find work they love balanced against the headwinds of global uncertainty and an economy stacked against anyone trying to work their way up from the bottom. It's a provocative story of class, caregiving, friendship, and family―and a juicy, voyeuristic peek behind the curtain of obscene wealth and the privilege and opportunity that comes with it. In this unputdownable memoir, Stephanie chronicles her journey from newbie nanny to beloved caregiver—and the painful decision to eventually say goodbye to the children she has grown to love.]]> 336 Stephanie Kiser 1728298164 Melissa 3
First published on August 6, 2024, this memoir read like a knockoff version of the 2002 novel, "The Nanny Diaries." But the memoir (oddly? eerily?) never mentions that book.

I thought "Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant" was fine. Not a great book, but definitely not the worst.

Three stars. ]]> 3.62 2024 Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant
author: Stephanie Kiser
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: 2024-reads, memoir, contemporary
review:
Pretty sure I read this over Labor Day weekend, 2024.

First published on August 6, 2024, this memoir read like a knockoff version of the 2002 novel, "The Nanny Diaries." But the memoir (oddly? eerily?) never mentions that book.

I thought "Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant" was fine. Not a great book, but definitely not the worst.

Three stars.
]]> <![CDATA[The Spice Must Flow: The Story of Dune, from Cult Novels to Visionary Sci-Fi Movies]]> 144409208 Ěý
Using original, deep-access reporting, extensive research, and insightful commentary, The Spice Must Flow brings the true popularity of Dune out into the light for the very first time. With original interviews with the beloved actors and directors behind the films—including Timothée Chalamet, Kyle Maclachlan, Denis Villeneuve, Patrick Stewart, Rebecca Ferguson, Alec Newman, and many more� The Spice Must Flow also examines the far-reaching influence of Dune on art, music, politics, and, most notably, its status as the first ecological science-fiction story specifically concerned with climate change.
Ěý
Britt skillfully and entertainingly guides readers through the history of how the Dune universe has unfolded, including the novel’s unlikely evolution from a failed piece of journalism about Oregon sand dunes into an epic science-fiction story, the way Herbert’s work inspired George Lucas, untold stories from the 1984 David Lynch film, the knife-edge balance between blockbuster hit and indie film Timothée Chalamet brings to the 2021 movie, and the exciting future of the franchise. Through a blend of narrative, oral history elements, and fascinating trivia, The Spice Must Flow is the new essential guide to the behind-the-scenes story of Dune .

The fiction of Dune is deadly serious, but the real-life story of how it came into existence is full of wonder, surprises, and spice.]]> 288 Ryan Britt Melissa 4
4.5 out of 5 stars

]]> 3.77 2023 The Spice Must Flow: The Story of Dune, from Cult Novels to Visionary Sci-Fi Movies
author: Ryan Britt
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: 2025-reads, contemporary, nonfiction
review:
Yay! This was fun. :)

4.5 out of 5 stars


]]> <![CDATA[The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming]]> 41552709
This is only a preview of the changes to come. And they are coming fast. Without a revolution in how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth could become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century.

In his travelogue of our near future, David Wallace-Wells brings into stark relief the climate troubles that await--food shortages, refugee emergencies, and other crises that will reshape the globe. But the world will be remade by warming in more profound ways as well, transforming our politics, our culture, our relationship to technology, and our sense of history. It will be all-encompassing, shaping and distorting nearly every aspect of human life as it is lived today.

Like An Inconvenient Truth and Silent Spring before it, The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on the devastation we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation.]]> 310 David Wallace-Wells 0525576703 Melissa 0 to-read 4.00 2019 The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
author: David Wallace-Wells
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Musashi 102030 970 Eiji Yoshikawa 4770019572 Melissa 0 to-read 4.47 1935 Musashi
author: Eiji Yoshikawa
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.47
book published: 1935
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Mother Mary Comes to Me 224004055 A raw and deeply moving memoir from the legendary author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness that traces the complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, a fierce and formidable force who shaped Arundhati’s life both as a woman and a writer.

Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, is a soaring account, both intimate and inspirational, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as “my shelter and my storm.�

“Heart-smashed� by her mother Mary’s death in September 2022 yet puzzled and “more than a little ashamed� by the intensity of her response, Roy began to write, to make sense of her feelings about the mother she ran from at age eighteen, “not because I didn’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her.� And so begins this astonishing, sometimes disturbing, and surprisingly funny memoir of the author’s journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to the writing of her prizewinning novels and essays, through today.

With the scale, sweep, and depth of her novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the passion, political clarity, and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace—a memoir like no other.]]> 352 Arundhati Roy 1668094711 Melissa 0 to-read 4.75 2025 Mother Mary Comes to Me
author: Arundhati Roy
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.75
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Stray 49881487 From the bestselling author of Sweetbitter, a memoir of growing up in a family shattered by lies and addiction, and of one woman's attempts to find a life beyond the limits of her past. Stray is a moving, sometimes devastating, brilliantly written and ultimately inspiring exploration of the landscapes of damage and survival.

After selling her first novel--a dream she'd worked long and hard for--Stephanie Danler knew she should be happy. Instead, she found herself driven to face the difficult past she'd left behind a decade ago: a mother disabled by years of alcoholism, further handicapped by a tragic brain aneurysm; a father who abandoned the family when she was three, now a meth addict in and out of recovery. After years in New York City she's pulled home to Southern California by forces she doesn't totally understand, haunted by questions of legacy and trauma. Here, she works toward answers, uncovering hard truths about her parents and herself as she explores whether it's possible to change the course of her history.

Lucid and honest, heart-breaking and full of hope, Stray, is an examination of what we inherit and what we don't have to, of what we have to face in ourselves to move forward, and what it's like to let go of one's parents in order to find a peace--and family--of one's own.]]> 240 Stephanie Danler 1101875968 Melissa 0 currently-reading 3.84 2020 Stray
author: Stephanie Danler
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Crown 219300931 A suspenseful, lyrical debut novel tracking three days leading up to the eviction of a pregnant single mother and her nine-year-old twins from a trailer park in the American Southwest.

Jude Woods is on the brink of eviction. Pregnant, jobless, and mother to Evan and Virginia, she has three days to box up her family’s life and find a safe place to live. In the Woods� quiet trailer park, neighbors keep to themselves, but it’s no secret Jude and her twins are in jeopardy—the eviction notice slapped on their front door like a white shout.

When Jude’s contractions flare just as their power is shut off, she rushes to the hospital instructing Evan and Virginia to hide in their car in the surrounding fields. If the children are discovered outside alone, they will be taken from her. Jude labors through the night in a crowded emergency room while the twins, desperate in the heat of the cramped car and spurred by their wild imaginations, strike out along the dangerous riverbank in search of a new home for their growing family. As night hurtles toward the morning lockout, both mother and children reckon with what it means to live and dream in a modern America insistent on slamming doors.

Poetic and distinct, the voices of the three Woods open to a chorus of waitresses and oil men, veterans and graffiti artists as Crown trawls the laundromats, public bus systems, and waiting rooms of blue-collar America. In this mesmerizing, singular debut, the tenacious spirit of a young family and their community comes to profound and moving life.


]]> 288 Evanthia Bromiley 0802164625 Melissa 0 to-read 3.80 Crown
author: Evanthia Bromiley
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.80
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wool - Holston (Wool, #1) 12287209
Or you'll get what you wish for.]]> 56 Hugh Howey Melissa 5 4.14 2012 Wool - Holston (Wool, #1)
author: Hugh Howey
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2013/12/01
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves:
review:
Totally great read! I loved the world of the silo, and I loved Juliette! This is an excellent book! :D
]]> The Broken Circle 467917 CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
In Farmington, New Mexico, a town that borders a Navajo reservation, the tensions between whites and Native Americans reached an all-time high in 1974, when three white teenagers brutally tortured three helpless victims to death. Their punishment by the court was light, but in this extraordinary true-crime story, the curses of the Navajo on the boys may have wrought justice where the laws of the white man would not....]]> 339 Rodney Barker 0804111472 Melissa 5
The three Navajo men were tortured and killed by three young white teenage boys who attended the local high school. None of the boys served any time in prison. When their lack of punishment was announced, the outrage was immediate -- and highly disturbing to the white population.

This is a great book. An incredibly important book.

I wish the author had used the real names of the three killers. I don't know why the murderers are all given pseudonyms in this book. To protect their families? I have no idea. The choice didn't make any sense to me, and was honestly upsetting, given what these three people did.

I intended to finish reading this, but the content is so heavy and morally repulsive that completing the book is just not right for me at this time.

DNF on page 140 (of 354 total pages).

For me personally, this is a four-star read, because I dock the book an entire star for inexplicably changing the names of the killers. I think a book like this should use the real names of the murderers.

But this is definitely a five-star read, so I'm rating it five.

Recommended.
]]> 3.86 1992 The Broken Circle
author: Rodney Barker
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: 2024-reads, history, horrifying-acts-of-violence, indigenous, nonfiction, racism, real-life-monsters
review:
First published in 1992, "The Broken Circle: A True Story of Murder and Magic in Indian Country," by Rodney Barker, is a nonfiction account of the horrific torture and murder of three Native American men in Farmington, New Mexico, in 1974. The event is still known as "the Chokecherry Massacre."

The three Navajo men were tortured and killed by three young white teenage boys who attended the local high school. None of the boys served any time in prison. When their lack of punishment was announced, the outrage was immediate -- and highly disturbing to the white population.

This is a great book. An incredibly important book.

I wish the author had used the real names of the three killers. I don't know why the murderers are all given pseudonyms in this book. To protect their families? I have no idea. The choice didn't make any sense to me, and was honestly upsetting, given what these three people did.

I intended to finish reading this, but the content is so heavy and morally repulsive that completing the book is just not right for me at this time.

DNF on page 140 (of 354 total pages).

For me personally, this is a four-star read, because I dock the book an entire star for inexplicably changing the names of the killers. I think a book like this should use the real names of the murderers.

But this is definitely a five-star read, so I'm rating it five.

Recommended.

]]> <![CDATA[Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping]]> 55155120 A groundbreaking resource for fiction writers, teachers, and students, this manifesto and practical guide challenges current models of craft and the writing workshop by showing how they fail marginalized writers, and how cultural expectations inform storytelling.

The traditional writing workshop was established with white male writers in mind; what we call craft is informed by their cultural values. In this bold and original examination of elements of writing—including plot, character, conflict, structure, and believability—and aspects of workshop—including the silenced writer and the imagined reader—Matthew Salesses asks questions to invigorate these familiar concepts. He upends Western notions of how a story must progress. How can we rethink craft, and the teaching of it, to better reach writers with diverse backgrounds? How can we invite diverse storytelling traditions into literary spaces?

Drawing from examples including One Thousand and One Nights, Curious George, Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, and the Asian American classic No-No Boy, Salesses asks us to reimagine craft and the workshop. In the pages of exercises included here, teachers will find suggestions for building syllabi, grading, and introducing new methods to the classroom; students will find revision and editing guidance, as well as a new lens for reading their work. Salesses shows that we need to interrogate the lack of diversity at the core of published fiction: how we teach and write it. After all, as he reminds us, "When we write fiction, we write the world."]]> 256 Matthew Salesses 1948226804 Melissa 3
I admit that I didn't quite know what this book was when I picked it up. I thought the book would be more of a toolkit about how power works in publishing, building upon voices like Myriam Gurba's and the authors who rallied around her. I started off reading the book very carefully, and then realized within twenty pages or so that this book simply wasn't for me.

As to the "rethinking" part of the title, most of the book is full of standard writing advice that I have read before, especially the second half of the book.

"Craft in the Real World" has a large fan base among literary writers and teachers. I'm glad that this book exists for those who love it, and are using it for the important anti-racism work in MFA programs and writing workshops.

Three stars.





]]> 4.45 2021 Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping
author: Matthew Salesses
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: 2024-reads, contemporary, literary-prose, nonfiction, racism, writing
review:
Published in 2021, "Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping," by Matthew Salesses, is a tool for examining racism within modern American MFA programs.

I admit that I didn't quite know what this book was when I picked it up. I thought the book would be more of a toolkit about how power works in publishing, building upon voices like Myriam Gurba's and the authors who rallied around her. I started off reading the book very carefully, and then realized within twenty pages or so that this book simply wasn't for me.

As to the "rethinking" part of the title, most of the book is full of standard writing advice that I have read before, especially the second half of the book.

"Craft in the Real World" has a large fan base among literary writers and teachers. I'm glad that this book exists for those who love it, and are using it for the important anti-racism work in MFA programs and writing workshops.

Three stars.






]]> American Wife 2807199
A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice learned the virtues of politeness early on from her stolid parents and small Wisconsin hometown. But a tragic accident when she was seventeen shattered her identity and made her understand the fragility of life and the tenuousness of luck. So more than a decade later, when she met boisterous, charismatic Charlie Blackwell, she hardly gave him a second look: She was serious and thoughtful, and he would rather crack a joke than offer a real insight; he was the wealthy son of a bastion family of the Republican party, and she was a school librarian and registered Democrat. Comfortable in her quiet and unassuming life, she felt inured to his charms. And then, much to her surprise, Alice fell for Charlie.

As Alice learns to make her way amid the clannish energy and smug confidence of the Blackwell family, navigating the strange rituals of their country club and summer estate, she remains uneasy with her newfound good fortune. And when Charlie eventually becomes President, Alice is thrust into a position she did not seek–one of power and influence, privilege and responsibility. As Charlie’s tumultuous and controversial second term in the White House wears on, Alice must face contradictions years in the making: How can she both love and fundamentally disagree with her husband? How complicit has she been in the trajectory of her own life? What should she do when her private beliefs run against her public persona?

In Alice Blackwell, New York Times bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld has created her most dynamic and complex heroine yet. American Wife is a gorgeously written novel that weaves class, wealth, race, and the exigencies of fate into a brilliant tapestry–a novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare.

BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Curtis Sittenfeld's Sisterland.]]> 555 Curtis Sittenfeld 1400064759 Melissa 3
Since I am no fan of George W. Bush or his wife, I actively avoided this novel until 2024, when my book club chose "American Wife" for our October read.

In the novel, the fictional version of Laura Bush is named Alice Lindgren, and she and Charlie Blackwell (George W.) grow up and live in Wisconsin, not Texas.

The first 35 pages of this 555-page tome were incredibly boring to me. It took a lot of willpower not to DNF.

By page 56, I felt like the plot had finally turned on, and I sped through reading most of the book. Sittenfeld is an incredible writer. Her formidable skills are definitely on display here.

But I agree with other reviewers who state that by page 433, when 'Part IV: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue' begins, the pacing and enjoyable qualities of this novel grind to a halt.

Part IV is the most overtly political section of the novel, when the book focuses more on glossing over the backlash against George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq. There is no mention of the really ugly stuff. No Abu Ghraib. No Guantanamo. No CIA black sites. No Patriot Act. Sittenfeld clearly wanted her reader to humanize Charlie Blackwell, and continue to like him, I guess. But her deliberate choice to avoid so much of the evil of the Bush presidency had the opposite effect, in my case: I swung back into my entrenched hatred of George W., and the idea of reading 'fiction' suddenly vanished.

Although the middle sections of the book do an excellent job of exposing the casual racism and (to a lesser extent) the entrenched classism that Alice Lindgren is exposed to, and Charlie Blackwell and his family definitely come across as well-to-do racists, that material ends up falling flat. In Part IV, the novel never mentions Hurricane Katrina, or the 20,000 votes for Al Gore from African Americans that were thrown out in Florida in 2000 in order for Jeb Bush to hand the election win over to his brother, via the Supreme Court. (There is no Jeb Bush pulling election strings in this novel.)

Instead of furthering any examination of race, class, or any of the book's other themes around the brutality of George W. Bush's presidency, the novel takes the reader into the wish-fulfillment revisionist history that seems deliberately intended to redeem the legacy of Laura Bush. Sittenfeld has Alice expose to the reader that she never voted for her own husband to be president. Alice also publicly meets with a character based on Cindy Sheehan (in the novel, this is an African American man named Edgar Franklin), and tells him: "I think you're right. [The Iraq War wasn't a cause worth dying for.] It's time for us to end the war and bring home the troops." (page 534)

Even in the alternate version of Laura Bush presented in this novel, I did not find it believable that Alice would do this.

This scene of Alice's open defiance against her husband was obviously meant to be the women's-fiction-version of the wish-fulfillment revisionist history of "Inglourious Basterds" (the 2009 Quentin Tarantino film), but I found Alice's behavior so unbelievable as to be anticlimactic. As journalist Christopher Hitchens said of the experience of watching "Inglourious Basterds," I felt the same way reading the entirety of Part IV in "American Wife": it is like "sitting in the dark having a great pot of warm piss emptied very slowly over your head."

I knew almost nothing about Laura Bush before reading this novel. I had to look up whether or not Laura Bush had ever had an abortion, since Alice's abortion plays such an important role in the book. (Laura Bush never had an abortion.)

Reading "American Wife" in October 2024, with the Republicans currently running Donald Trump for U.S. President against Kamala Harris, took me on an interesting and often super disturbing journey down the memory lane of Republican politics.

I think the Republican Party is completely morally bankrupt, soulless, and vicious, and the party's abhorrent behavior was no less on display from 2000 to 2008, when George W. Bush was its leader.

Laura Bush has never come out against her husband or his policies. Though there are currently a lot of Republicans (and former Republicans) who have. This also goes for former U.S. President Donald Trump, for that matter.

I think this novel would've been better served if Sittenfeld had been brave enough to envision a likeable librarian named Alice who could still endorse torture, unjust war, racist responses to hurricanes, stealing elections, and the other shit that George W. Bush and Donald Trump stand for. Like, you can be BOTH, you know: you can be likeable and charming and possessed of talking a good talk, and still justify the evil deeds of the Republican Party. Plenty of people do it, all day every day. I would say Laura Bush is among them.

I would have rather seen that complexity on display than the Laura Bush redemption narrative that Curtis Sittenfeld penned.

So much of this novel was excellent, and read like the kind of complicated romance novel that literary fiction excels at. It's a real shame that I ended up just hating this book. "American Wife" is a fantasy barf-fest for a pre-Black-Lives-Matter USA. Also, a pre-"Evicted" USA, because you better believe that I kept thinking of Matthew Desmond's investigative work in Milwaukee every time the Blackwells were in residence or visiting there.

Sittenfeld wrote this book when she wrote it, and she could not see the future, of course.

I'll give her this: she did an excellent job making me see why anyone would marry George W. There is such a massive dose of wish fulfillment in Charlie Blackwell's initial characterization that he reads like a fantasy lover straight out of chick lit.

Human beings can make any sacrifice necessary to hold on to a relationship, romantic or otherwise. Sittenfeld doesn't take away Alice's soul for the price of her marriage. But in real life, that is definitely what it would take for me to believe in her union. I don't think she could have stayed married to a man that she secretly didn't even vote for, or a man that she would publicly defy the way that Alice does in this novel.

I'm sad that I spent so much time reading this book. It left such a bad taste in my mouth that I'm sure I'll have forgotten most of it within a few months.

Three stars.
]]> 3.77 2008 American Wife
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/25
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: 2024-reads, contemporary, fiction, historical-fiction, literary-fiction, politics, romance, women, women-history
review:
First published in September 2008, during the Republican National Convention, "American Wife," the third novel by Curtis Sittenfeld, is a fictionalized version of the life of then-current First Lady Laura Bush.

Since I am no fan of George W. Bush or his wife, I actively avoided this novel until 2024, when my book club chose "American Wife" for our October read.

In the novel, the fictional version of Laura Bush is named Alice Lindgren, and she and Charlie Blackwell (George W.) grow up and live in Wisconsin, not Texas.

The first 35 pages of this 555-page tome were incredibly boring to me. It took a lot of willpower not to DNF.

By page 56, I felt like the plot had finally turned on, and I sped through reading most of the book. Sittenfeld is an incredible writer. Her formidable skills are definitely on display here.

But I agree with other reviewers who state that by page 433, when 'Part IV: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue' begins, the pacing and enjoyable qualities of this novel grind to a halt.

Part IV is the most overtly political section of the novel, when the book focuses more on glossing over the backlash against George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq. There is no mention of the really ugly stuff. No Abu Ghraib. No Guantanamo. No CIA black sites. No Patriot Act. Sittenfeld clearly wanted her reader to humanize Charlie Blackwell, and continue to like him, I guess. But her deliberate choice to avoid so much of the evil of the Bush presidency had the opposite effect, in my case: I swung back into my entrenched hatred of George W., and the idea of reading 'fiction' suddenly vanished.

Although the middle sections of the book do an excellent job of exposing the casual racism and (to a lesser extent) the entrenched classism that Alice Lindgren is exposed to, and Charlie Blackwell and his family definitely come across as well-to-do racists, that material ends up falling flat. In Part IV, the novel never mentions Hurricane Katrina, or the 20,000 votes for Al Gore from African Americans that were thrown out in Florida in 2000 in order for Jeb Bush to hand the election win over to his brother, via the Supreme Court. (There is no Jeb Bush pulling election strings in this novel.)

Instead of furthering any examination of race, class, or any of the book's other themes around the brutality of George W. Bush's presidency, the novel takes the reader into the wish-fulfillment revisionist history that seems deliberately intended to redeem the legacy of Laura Bush. Sittenfeld has Alice expose to the reader that she never voted for her own husband to be president. Alice also publicly meets with a character based on Cindy Sheehan (in the novel, this is an African American man named Edgar Franklin), and tells him: "I think you're right. [The Iraq War wasn't a cause worth dying for.] It's time for us to end the war and bring home the troops." (page 534)

Even in the alternate version of Laura Bush presented in this novel, I did not find it believable that Alice would do this.

This scene of Alice's open defiance against her husband was obviously meant to be the women's-fiction-version of the wish-fulfillment revisionist history of "Inglourious Basterds" (the 2009 Quentin Tarantino film), but I found Alice's behavior so unbelievable as to be anticlimactic. As journalist Christopher Hitchens said of the experience of watching "Inglourious Basterds," I felt the same way reading the entirety of Part IV in "American Wife": it is like "sitting in the dark having a great pot of warm piss emptied very slowly over your head."

I knew almost nothing about Laura Bush before reading this novel. I had to look up whether or not Laura Bush had ever had an abortion, since Alice's abortion plays such an important role in the book. (Laura Bush never had an abortion.)

Reading "American Wife" in October 2024, with the Republicans currently running Donald Trump for U.S. President against Kamala Harris, took me on an interesting and often super disturbing journey down the memory lane of Republican politics.

I think the Republican Party is completely morally bankrupt, soulless, and vicious, and the party's abhorrent behavior was no less on display from 2000 to 2008, when George W. Bush was its leader.

Laura Bush has never come out against her husband or his policies. Though there are currently a lot of Republicans (and former Republicans) who have. This also goes for former U.S. President Donald Trump, for that matter.

I think this novel would've been better served if Sittenfeld had been brave enough to envision a likeable librarian named Alice who could still endorse torture, unjust war, racist responses to hurricanes, stealing elections, and the other shit that George W. Bush and Donald Trump stand for. Like, you can be BOTH, you know: you can be likeable and charming and possessed of talking a good talk, and still justify the evil deeds of the Republican Party. Plenty of people do it, all day every day. I would say Laura Bush is among them.

I would have rather seen that complexity on display than the Laura Bush redemption narrative that Curtis Sittenfeld penned.

So much of this novel was excellent, and read like the kind of complicated romance novel that literary fiction excels at. It's a real shame that I ended up just hating this book. "American Wife" is a fantasy barf-fest for a pre-Black-Lives-Matter USA. Also, a pre-"Evicted" USA, because you better believe that I kept thinking of Matthew Desmond's investigative work in Milwaukee every time the Blackwells were in residence or visiting there.

Sittenfeld wrote this book when she wrote it, and she could not see the future, of course.

I'll give her this: she did an excellent job making me see why anyone would marry George W. There is such a massive dose of wish fulfillment in Charlie Blackwell's initial characterization that he reads like a fantasy lover straight out of chick lit.

Human beings can make any sacrifice necessary to hold on to a relationship, romantic or otherwise. Sittenfeld doesn't take away Alice's soul for the price of her marriage. But in real life, that is definitely what it would take for me to believe in her union. I don't think she could have stayed married to a man that she secretly didn't even vote for, or a man that she would publicly defy the way that Alice does in this novel.

I'm sad that I spent so much time reading this book. It left such a bad taste in my mouth that I'm sure I'll have forgotten most of it within a few months.

Three stars.

]]> <![CDATA[Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder]]> 39899253 Scattered Minds explodes the myth of attention deficit disorder as genetically based � and offers real hope and advice for children and adults who live with the condition.

Gabor Maté is a revered physician who specializes in neurology, psychiatry and psychology � and himself has ADD. With wisdom gained through years of medical practice and research, Scattered Minds is a must-read for parents � and for anyone interested how experiences in infancy shape the biology and psychology of the human brain.

Scattered Minds:
- Demonstrates that ADD is not an inherited illness, but a reversible impairment and developmental delay
- Explains that in ADD, circuits in the brain whose job is emotional self-regulation and attention control fail to develop in infancy � and why
- Shows how â€distractibilityâ€� is the psychological product of life experience
- Allows parents to understand what makes their ADD children tick, and adults with ADD to gain insights into their emotions and behaviours
- Expresses optimism about neurological development even in adulthood
- Presents a programme of how to promote this development in both children and adults]]> 368 Gabor Maté 1785042211 Melissa 5
I tore through this book. I think I finished it in May 2024. I thought it was an excellent read.

Highly recommended.

Five stars.

]]> 4.28 1999 Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder
author: Gabor Maté
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/25
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: 2024-reads, contemporary, disability-stories, nonfiction, self-help
review:
Originally published in March 1999, "Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder," by Gabor Maté, is a fascinating look at the social and emotional origins of ADHD.

I tore through this book. I think I finished it in May 2024. I thought it was an excellent read.

Highly recommended.

Five stars.


]]> <![CDATA[The Co-Parenting Handbook: Raising Well-Adjusted and Resilient Kids from Little Ones to Young Adults through Divorce or Separation]]> 33275801
“The Co-Parents' Handbook is an extremely valuable resource for parents and families in transition. This splendidly practical manual will help people navigate changes in family structure so they can be the parents their children deserve.�
-Diane Diel, JD, Family Lawyer, and Past President of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals and State Bar of Wisconsin

“This book contains the absolute essence of practical, healthy co-parenting for two homes. Sound guidance, clear protocols, and compassionate insights- a much needed resource! A "must read" not only for co-parents, but also for anyone interested in how to support changing families.�
-Anne Lucas, MA, LMHC, Psychotherapist, Mediator, Divorce Coach, and adjunct faculty at Saybrook University; Past President of King County Collaborative Law

“The most progressive, practical, and hopeful book for families in transition!�
-Felicia Malsby Soleil, JD, Family Law Attorney, Mediator and Founder/past President of Collaborative Professionals of Washington]]> 288 Karen Bonnell 1632171465 Melissa 3
It took me two months to finish this book, even though it isn't that long, and I had a high desire to read it. I found the book incredibly triggering to read, since my life experience and my lived reality are erased from the pages.

The author lives in a world in which severe child abuse and complete parental abandonment do not exist, and are not situations that need to be mentioned or accounted for in any way. The author truly believes that all parents "love" their children, and that mentally ill parents (narcissists, sociopaths, etc.) will "come around" and learn how to communicate better if the other parent simply practices accepting them as they are.

The author truly believes that there are not parents out there who literally tell their children that they hate them, beat them until they require hospital treatment, and abandon them at various ages.

I could go on, but... blech, no. It's painful and it's a waste of my time.

I think this book is ideal for people who were themselves raised by "good enough" parents (as the book describes the term) and had healthy communication in their partnerships before their children were born. If you and your co-parent are "good enough" parents already, before separation: then this book is for you.

Earlier this year, without my consent, a judge appointed me to be a parental supervisor for an 8-year-old child who has been in a high-conflict custody battle ever since her parents separated, which happened when she was four months old. For eight years, these parents have launched pure hatred at each other, every single day. Their contempt and violence toward each other have led to police involvement, restraining orders, constant terror, and court orders that are consistently disregarded and violated at every turn.

Both parents have been court-ordered to take co-parenting classes and get counseling for themselves. Both parents adamantly refuse. They are incredibly abusive, treat their child as weaponized property, struggle with substance abuse and undiagnosed, severe mental illness, cannot hold down a job or pay their own rent, both require family members to house them and provide for their basic needs.

Upon finishing this book, I know that neither one of them could ever read "The Co-Parenting Handbook." Not only because they already think they know everything there is to know about parenting, and each one thinks they are the most amazing parent ever (and proudly proclaim themselves to be so), but everything about this book would be massively enraging to them, because each page assumes that *all* parents *already know* how to put their child first in their life: to prioritize their child's needs over their own. And I'm sorry, but no. That is not accurate. Reproduction does not cure mental illness. Reproduction does not cure a person's emotional immaturity or suddenly make them able to have empathy for another person, including their own children.

I know this author is a good person. And I know this book is a good book for the right audience.

But that audience does not include me, or anyone who grew up in the type of chaotic, abusive, completely dysfunctional home I grew up in, with bouts of homelessness and severe mental illness, sexual violence and addictions.

"The Co-Parenting Handbook" does not exist in a world in which both parents of a child might be actively damaging their child, a world in which both parents are completely incapable of learning, growing, and "doing better" due to untreated mental illness.

This is a book for best-case-scenario separations, in which the worst thing a one-home family is dealing with might be a secret affair that broke up a marriage. Would that we could all live in that kind of simplicity.

Three stars.
]]> 4.39 2014 The Co-Parenting Handbook: Raising Well-Adjusted and Resilient Kids from Little Ones to Young Adults through Divorce or Separation
author: Karen Bonnell
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/24
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: 2024-reads, contemporary, family, nonfiction, parenting, self-help
review:
First published in 2014, with a second edition in 2017, "The Co-Parenting Handbook: Raising Well-Adjusted and Resilient Kids from Little Ones to Young Adults through Divorce or Separation," by Karen Bonnell, is a useful resource for anyone looking for a guide to co-parenting.

It took me two months to finish this book, even though it isn't that long, and I had a high desire to read it. I found the book incredibly triggering to read, since my life experience and my lived reality are erased from the pages.

The author lives in a world in which severe child abuse and complete parental abandonment do not exist, and are not situations that need to be mentioned or accounted for in any way. The author truly believes that all parents "love" their children, and that mentally ill parents (narcissists, sociopaths, etc.) will "come around" and learn how to communicate better if the other parent simply practices accepting them as they are.

The author truly believes that there are not parents out there who literally tell their children that they hate them, beat them until they require hospital treatment, and abandon them at various ages.

I could go on, but... blech, no. It's painful and it's a waste of my time.

I think this book is ideal for people who were themselves raised by "good enough" parents (as the book describes the term) and had healthy communication in their partnerships before their children were born. If you and your co-parent are "good enough" parents already, before separation: then this book is for you.

Earlier this year, without my consent, a judge appointed me to be a parental supervisor for an 8-year-old child who has been in a high-conflict custody battle ever since her parents separated, which happened when she was four months old. For eight years, these parents have launched pure hatred at each other, every single day. Their contempt and violence toward each other have led to police involvement, restraining orders, constant terror, and court orders that are consistently disregarded and violated at every turn.

Both parents have been court-ordered to take co-parenting classes and get counseling for themselves. Both parents adamantly refuse. They are incredibly abusive, treat their child as weaponized property, struggle with substance abuse and undiagnosed, severe mental illness, cannot hold down a job or pay their own rent, both require family members to house them and provide for their basic needs.

Upon finishing this book, I know that neither one of them could ever read "The Co-Parenting Handbook." Not only because they already think they know everything there is to know about parenting, and each one thinks they are the most amazing parent ever (and proudly proclaim themselves to be so), but everything about this book would be massively enraging to them, because each page assumes that *all* parents *already know* how to put their child first in their life: to prioritize their child's needs over their own. And I'm sorry, but no. That is not accurate. Reproduction does not cure mental illness. Reproduction does not cure a person's emotional immaturity or suddenly make them able to have empathy for another person, including their own children.

I know this author is a good person. And I know this book is a good book for the right audience.

But that audience does not include me, or anyone who grew up in the type of chaotic, abusive, completely dysfunctional home I grew up in, with bouts of homelessness and severe mental illness, sexual violence and addictions.

"The Co-Parenting Handbook" does not exist in a world in which both parents of a child might be actively damaging their child, a world in which both parents are completely incapable of learning, growing, and "doing better" due to untreated mental illness.

This is a book for best-case-scenario separations, in which the worst thing a one-home family is dealing with might be a secret affair that broke up a marriage. Would that we could all live in that kind of simplicity.

Three stars.

]]> Demon Copperhead 62086891 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780571376483

Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking 'like a little blue prizefighter.' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.

In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn't an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents, and friends. 'Family' could mean love, or reluctant foster care. For Demon, born on the wrong side of luck, the affection and safety he craves is as remote as the ocean he dreams of seeing one day. The wonder is in how far he's willing to travel to try and get there.

Suffused with truth, anger and compassion, Demon Copperhead is an epic tale of love, loss and everything in between.]]> 546 Barbara Kingsolver Melissa 0 to-read 4.45 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Eleven Houses 207298129 The Mist meets Twilight in this epic romantic tale of a mysterious island and the houses that have stood for centuries to guard against the dreaded nightmare of beings waiting to strike from the ocean’s depths.

On a forgotten part of Nova Scotia, there lies an island.
On that island are Eleven Houses.
In those houses sit eleven ancient families.
And they are waiting�

Mabel is one of the last surviving members of House Beuvry, one of the eleven houses on the haunted island of Weymouth. Her days, like all the other teens on the island, are spent readying her house for The Storm: a once-a-decade event that pummels the island with hurricane-level wind, water, and waves. But that’s not all the Storm brings with it—because Weymouth Island is a gate between the world of the living and the dead.

When Miles Cabot arrives on Weymouth Island after the death of his mother, he realizes quickly it isn’t like other places—and Mabel Beuvry isn’t like other teenagers. There’s an intense chemistry between Miles and Mabel that both feel, yet neither understand—nor the deadly consequences that will come with it.

With the suspicious death of an island elder, a strained dynamic with her younger sister Hali, and the greatest Storm in years edging ever closer, Mabel’s life is becoming as chaotic as the weather. One thing becomes clear: if the fortified houses of Weymouth Island can’t stand against the dead, then she—and everyone she loves—will pay the price.

Fares Well the House That’s Ready.]]> 416 Colleen Oakes 166595258X Melissa 0 to-read 3.72 2024 Eleven Houses
author: Colleen Oakes
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Teachers: A Year Inside America's Most Vulnerable, Important Profession]]> 61356231 The hit national bestseller - a New York Times Spring Nonfiction Pick, USA Today "Hottest New Book Release," Next Big Idea Club 2023 Must Read, and Kirkus “Most Buzzworthy Book Right Now"

A riveting, must-read, year-in-the-life account of three teachers, combined with reporting that reveals what's really going on behind school doors, by New York Times bestselling author and education expert Alexandra Robbins

Alexandra Robbins goes behind the scenes to tell the true, sometimes shocking, always inspirational stories of three teachers as they navigate a year in the classroom. She follows Penny, a southern middle school math teacher who grappled with a toxic staff clique at the big school in a small town; Miguel, a special ed teacher in the western United States who fought for his students both as an educator and as an activist; and Rebecca, an East Coast elementary school teacher who struggled to schedule and define a life outside of school.

Interspersed among the teachers' stories--a seeming scandal, a fourth-grade whodunit, and teacher confessions--are hard-hitting essays featuring cutting-edge reporting on the biggest issues facing teachers today, such as school violence; outrageous parent behavior; inadequate support, staffing, and resources coupled with unrealistic mounting demands; the "myth" of teacher burnout; the COVID-19 pandemic; and ways all of us can help the professionals who are central both to the lives of our children and the heart of our communities.]]> 372 Alexandra Robbins 1101986751 Melissa 3
I have my own firsthand experience of teaching in a public school, and I would honestly NEVER put this book into a school teacher's hands, because I find all of the human-interest-story sections so triggering. Robbins follows the lives of three school teachers over the course of one school year (none of whom quit the profession, despite undergoing horrific amounts of abuse, which is described in detail). I could not force myself to read any of that material carefully, or for more than a minute or two at a time, and the only way I could finish this book was to start skipping all of those sections entirely. (And I think those sections make up a majority of this book.)

Of the general nonfiction information that Robbins presents, I thought it was fine, but I didn't learn anything new. While I am glad that someone who hasn't spent years of her life in this profession could come to the conclusions that Robbins puts forth, this book was not a revelation to me. In the past few years, I've listened to a number of YouTube videos of school teachers explaining their horrible situations and reasons for quitting, and have found a lot of solace and comfort in those videos.

I did not find any comfort in this book, other than an understanding that Robbins truly does empathize with teachers quite a lot.

Funnily enough, I came to realize that what this book *really* needed (in order for me to enjoy it) was an analysis of why so many Americans loathe and despise teachers so much. I think a lot of good can come from what is really driving that hatred. A hatred that is not only targeted at teachers, but at the idea of education itself.

When I taught in a public school in my twenties (2006-2011), I was constantly dealing with traumatic memories from childhood and young adulthood that kept surfacing, memories of teachers being cruel, abusive, openly bullying me, and just all kinds of horrible situations that I was never able to process as a child or as a young adult. I think what made it all so jarring was the contrast of how very different my own teaching was, how very much my students loved me (rather than despising me, as I had despised my own teachers), and how much daily abuse from parents and administrators I still received on the job, regardless of my performance.

Being a pubic school teacher left me with a severe case of PTSD, and as I've gone on my own healing journey, I've come to understand that the job was simply a massively abusive situation that was constantly triggering the CPTSD I had yet to resolve. And when I reflect upon all of the angry/entitled/violent parents, horrible school administrators, and overwhelming amounts of bullshit that plague modern teaching, I suddenly realize how not-alone I am in all of this: in all of that unresolved CPTSD.

None of which is touched upon in this book. I think the ideal audience for this book is someone who is worried about the state of U.S. education, is seeking to understand why schools are struggling so much to keep teachers on staff, and has never worked full-time as a school teacher themselves.

Personally, I would rate "The Teachers" two stars, and I just wish I had DNF'd. I definitely would not recommend anyone buy this book for "a teacher friend" as any kind of act of love or appreciation for "the job they do." If anyone thinks that's a good plan, I would recommend reading this book yourself first, and then asking your friend if they would like a free copy. Because this book is kind of a lot, and I'm just unconvinced that pushing a lot of other teachers' unprocessed trauma on folx who are still working in this profession is actually a good thing.

Since I do not believe I am, in any way, the right audience for this book, I am going to rate it 3 stars. This book was just really not my thing, but I do recognize that there is probably a lot of value in these pages for the right audience.

My own emotions while reading "The Teachers" bounced between boredom and revulsion, revulsion and boredom. This book just really wasn't my jam.]]> 4.17 2023 The Teachers: A Year Inside America's Most Vulnerable, Important Profession
author: Alexandra Robbins
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/05
date added: 2024/09/06
shelves: 2023-reads, contemporary, nonfiction
review:
Published in March 2023, "The Teachers: A Year Inside America's Most Vulnerable, Important Profession," by Alexandra Robbins, is a human-interest-story nonfiction book examining the issues driving the current teacher shortage in the United States.

I have my own firsthand experience of teaching in a public school, and I would honestly NEVER put this book into a school teacher's hands, because I find all of the human-interest-story sections so triggering. Robbins follows the lives of three school teachers over the course of one school year (none of whom quit the profession, despite undergoing horrific amounts of abuse, which is described in detail). I could not force myself to read any of that material carefully, or for more than a minute or two at a time, and the only way I could finish this book was to start skipping all of those sections entirely. (And I think those sections make up a majority of this book.)

Of the general nonfiction information that Robbins presents, I thought it was fine, but I didn't learn anything new. While I am glad that someone who hasn't spent years of her life in this profession could come to the conclusions that Robbins puts forth, this book was not a revelation to me. In the past few years, I've listened to a number of YouTube videos of school teachers explaining their horrible situations and reasons for quitting, and have found a lot of solace and comfort in those videos.

I did not find any comfort in this book, other than an understanding that Robbins truly does empathize with teachers quite a lot.

Funnily enough, I came to realize that what this book *really* needed (in order for me to enjoy it) was an analysis of why so many Americans loathe and despise teachers so much. I think a lot of good can come from what is really driving that hatred. A hatred that is not only targeted at teachers, but at the idea of education itself.

When I taught in a public school in my twenties (2006-2011), I was constantly dealing with traumatic memories from childhood and young adulthood that kept surfacing, memories of teachers being cruel, abusive, openly bullying me, and just all kinds of horrible situations that I was never able to process as a child or as a young adult. I think what made it all so jarring was the contrast of how very different my own teaching was, how very much my students loved me (rather than despising me, as I had despised my own teachers), and how much daily abuse from parents and administrators I still received on the job, regardless of my performance.

Being a pubic school teacher left me with a severe case of PTSD, and as I've gone on my own healing journey, I've come to understand that the job was simply a massively abusive situation that was constantly triggering the CPTSD I had yet to resolve. And when I reflect upon all of the angry/entitled/violent parents, horrible school administrators, and overwhelming amounts of bullshit that plague modern teaching, I suddenly realize how not-alone I am in all of this: in all of that unresolved CPTSD.

None of which is touched upon in this book. I think the ideal audience for this book is someone who is worried about the state of U.S. education, is seeking to understand why schools are struggling so much to keep teachers on staff, and has never worked full-time as a school teacher themselves.

Personally, I would rate "The Teachers" two stars, and I just wish I had DNF'd. I definitely would not recommend anyone buy this book for "a teacher friend" as any kind of act of love or appreciation for "the job they do." If anyone thinks that's a good plan, I would recommend reading this book yourself first, and then asking your friend if they would like a free copy. Because this book is kind of a lot, and I'm just unconvinced that pushing a lot of other teachers' unprocessed trauma on folx who are still working in this profession is actually a good thing.

Since I do not believe I am, in any way, the right audience for this book, I am going to rate it 3 stars. This book was just really not my thing, but I do recognize that there is probably a lot of value in these pages for the right audience.

My own emotions while reading "The Teachers" bounced between boredom and revulsion, revulsion and boredom. This book just really wasn't my jam.
]]> <![CDATA[The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma]]> 18693771 A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing.

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world's foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers' capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain's natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk's own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.]]> 464 Bessel van der Kolk 0670785938 Melissa 0 currently-reading 4.36 2014 The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
author: Bessel van der Kolk
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America]]> 61685819 An acclaimed journalist tries to understand how she escaped her small-town in Arkansas while her brilliant friend could not, and, in the process, illuminates the unemployment, drug abuse, sexism and evangelicalism killing poor, rural white women all over America.

Growing up gifted and working-class poor in the foothills of the Ozarks, Monica and Darci became fast friends. The girls bonded over a shared love of reading and learning, even as they navigated the challenges of their declining town and tumultuous family lives--broken marriages, alcohol abuse, and shuttered stores and factories. They pored over the giant map in their middle school classroom, tracing their fingers over the world that awaited them, vowing to escape. In the end, Monica left Clinton for college and fulfilled her dreams, but Darci, along with many in their circle of friends, did not.

Years later, working as a journalist covering poverty, Monica discovered what she already intuitively knew about the women in Arkansas: Their life expectancy had steeply declined--the sharpest such fall in a century. She returned to Clinton to report the story, trying to understand the societal factors driving the disturbing trends in the rural south. As she reconnects with Darci, she finds that her once talented and ambitious best friend is now a statistic: a single mother of two, addicted to meth and prescription drugs, jobless and nearly homeless. Painfully aware that Darci's fate could have been hers, she retraces the moments of decision and chance in each of their lives that led such similar women toward two such different destinies.]]> 258 Monica Potts 0525519912 Melissa 3
I discovered this book after a high school friend told me about it and asked me to read it. She reached out to me because we had lived lives very similar to the author's: both of us had grown up in a slightly larger (suffocating and depressing) rural U.S. town, awash in evangelical Christianity (especially Southern Baptism), and had not only dreamed of escape, but had successfully escaped.

There were parts of "The Forgotten Girls" that I found interesting, but the vast majority of this book was extremely lacking for me. Overall, I felt dissatisfied, disappointed, or outright irritated with the book.

CanadianReader posted an excellent review of "The Forgotten Girls," which can be read here:
/review/show...

CanadianReader's follow-up comments on the review are also on point.

I read this book in June 2024, and only two months later, I had completely forgotten that I had read it. Only seeing the cover in my kindle library reminded me that it existed.

This one definitely wasn't for me.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3]]> 3.85 2023 The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America
author: Monica Potts
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/02
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: 2024-reads, addiction, contemporary, domestic-violence, family, friendship, memoir, nonfiction, religion, women
review:
First published in 2023, "The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America," is the debut work of memoir/social-science-nonfiction by Monica Potts.

I discovered this book after a high school friend told me about it and asked me to read it. She reached out to me because we had lived lives very similar to the author's: both of us had grown up in a slightly larger (suffocating and depressing) rural U.S. town, awash in evangelical Christianity (especially Southern Baptism), and had not only dreamed of escape, but had successfully escaped.

There were parts of "The Forgotten Girls" that I found interesting, but the vast majority of this book was extremely lacking for me. Overall, I felt dissatisfied, disappointed, or outright irritated with the book.

CanadianReader posted an excellent review of "The Forgotten Girls," which can be read here:
/review/show...

CanadianReader's follow-up comments on the review are also on point.

I read this book in June 2024, and only two months later, I had completely forgotten that I had read it. Only seeing the cover in my kindle library reminded me that it existed.

This one definitely wasn't for me.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3
]]> <![CDATA[You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment]]> 181549058 Cut through the busyness and anxieties of daily life to discover the simple happiness of living in the present moment, as taught by a world-renowned Zen monk

In this book, Thich Nhat Hanh—Zen monk, author, and meditation master—distills the essence of Buddhist thought and practice,Ěýemphasizing the power of mindfulness to transform our lives. But true mindfulness, Hanh explains, is not an escape. It is being in the present moment, totally alive and free.

Based on a retreat that Thich Nhat Hanh led for Westerners,ĚýYou Are HereĚýoffers a range of effective practices for cultivating mindfulness and staying in the present moment—including awareness of breathing and walking, deep listening, and skillful speech.ĚýThese teachings will empower you to witness the wonder of life and transform your suffering, both within and outside you, into compassion, tenderness, and peace. As Thich Nhat Hanh declares, “the energy of mindfulness is the energy of the Buddha, and it can be produced by anybody.â€� It is as simple as breathing in and breathing out.]]> 154 Thich Nhat Hanh 0834845415 Melissa 3
This book was a quick read for me; it contains all of the most important platitudes of Zen Buddhism.

Personally, I'd *much* rather read about healing childhood trauma, and stop treating maladaptive coping strategies as if they are simply a "choice" in behavior that can be easily changed by "making a different choice."

Thích Nhất Hạnh would have readers believe that maladaptive coping strategies are "a betrayal of your ancestors," and other such nonsense. Shaming language is peppered throughout this book.

I think teachers like Thích Nhất Hạnh caused me some damage as a teenager and young adult, because I picked up books like this really thinking that the beliefs I already held (concerning life, death, our daily behavior, and the importance of kindness) simply needed to be adopted by other people. Which is identical to the message in the book as well.

I am so grateful for trauma studies as an older adult. Now I can understand and appreciate why so many people are locked in the various states of suffering described in this book, and why getting out of them is nothing like what is described in this book, which treats 'being present' as being as straightforward and easy as flipping a light switch on in your house.

I now believe that being present exists on a spectrum, and (to quote Jacob Ham): I believe that 'trauma is the opposite of presence.' Being trapped in a trauma response, or solely functioning within the limbic part of your brain, is not a "choice" people make. It's a survival strategy that the brain makes without conscious input.

Those revelations are nowhere in this book.

I didn't hate "You Are Here." But I didn't enjoy reading it, either.

This one is just not for me.

Three stars.
]]> 4.41 2004 You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment
author: Thich Nhat Hanh
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/02
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: 2024-reads, religion, self-help
review:
The English translation of "You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment," by Thích Nhất Hạnh, was first published in 2009.

This book was a quick read for me; it contains all of the most important platitudes of Zen Buddhism.

Personally, I'd *much* rather read about healing childhood trauma, and stop treating maladaptive coping strategies as if they are simply a "choice" in behavior that can be easily changed by "making a different choice."

Thích Nhất Hạnh would have readers believe that maladaptive coping strategies are "a betrayal of your ancestors," and other such nonsense. Shaming language is peppered throughout this book.

I think teachers like Thích Nhất Hạnh caused me some damage as a teenager and young adult, because I picked up books like this really thinking that the beliefs I already held (concerning life, death, our daily behavior, and the importance of kindness) simply needed to be adopted by other people. Which is identical to the message in the book as well.

I am so grateful for trauma studies as an older adult. Now I can understand and appreciate why so many people are locked in the various states of suffering described in this book, and why getting out of them is nothing like what is described in this book, which treats 'being present' as being as straightforward and easy as flipping a light switch on in your house.

I now believe that being present exists on a spectrum, and (to quote Jacob Ham): I believe that 'trauma is the opposite of presence.' Being trapped in a trauma response, or solely functioning within the limbic part of your brain, is not a "choice" people make. It's a survival strategy that the brain makes without conscious input.

Those revelations are nowhere in this book.

I didn't hate "You Are Here." But I didn't enjoy reading it, either.

This one is just not for me.

Three stars.

]]> Lucy Gayheart 599782 208 Willa Cather 0679728880 Melissa 3
Cather won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1923, for a novel (about war) that was later highly criticized.

"Lucy Gayheart" was my first foray into Cather's work. Sadly, I stopped reading this around a third of the way into it.

Having picked up the book in July of 2024, I read this novel almost 100 years after it was first published. In the past few years, I have read dozens and dozens of modern bestsellers, and so "Lucy Gayheart" was magnificently hammering home the mantra of how much things can change, especially 'popular prose' and what makes a bestseller.

"Lucy Gayheart" is a literary romantic tragedy, and I don't even know how people can finish it. I thought the writing and the story was stale, bloodless, predictable... Even trying to put myself in the mindset of its time, as a reader in 1935, could not help me stay engaged. The dry, lifeless sentences felt like trying to follow spoonfuls of sand.

Cather's personal life is quite fascinating. While trying to get through this book, I found learning about her personal life entirely more interesting than reading her fiction. This novel, at least, was a complete miss for me.

Three stars overall. This 1930s bestseller was definitely not for me.]]> 3.96 1935 Lucy Gayheart
author: Willa Cather
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1935
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/02
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: 2024-reads, fiction, no-thanks, dnf, women
review:
First published in 1935, "Lucy Gayheart" was Willa Cather's eleventh published novel, and became a bestseller when it debuted.

Cather won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1923, for a novel (about war) that was later highly criticized.

"Lucy Gayheart" was my first foray into Cather's work. Sadly, I stopped reading this around a third of the way into it.

Having picked up the book in July of 2024, I read this novel almost 100 years after it was first published. In the past few years, I have read dozens and dozens of modern bestsellers, and so "Lucy Gayheart" was magnificently hammering home the mantra of how much things can change, especially 'popular prose' and what makes a bestseller.

"Lucy Gayheart" is a literary romantic tragedy, and I don't even know how people can finish it. I thought the writing and the story was stale, bloodless, predictable... Even trying to put myself in the mindset of its time, as a reader in 1935, could not help me stay engaged. The dry, lifeless sentences felt like trying to follow spoonfuls of sand.

Cather's personal life is quite fascinating. While trying to get through this book, I found learning about her personal life entirely more interesting than reading her fiction. This novel, at least, was a complete miss for me.

Three stars overall. This 1930s bestseller was definitely not for me.
]]> <![CDATA[Joyful Recollections of Trauma: A Hilariously Cathartic Memoir-in-Essays of Childhood Turmoil, Self Healing, and Finding Happiness]]> 197449225 256 Paul Scheer 0063293714 Melissa 3
I found this book in August 2024 after reading an article in the L.A. Times about 'Disney adults' and why many adults are so passionate about Disney theme parks.

Paul Scheer was quoted in the article, and the bio text stated that his memoir dealt with his childhood history of visiting Disney parks. For that reason, I purchased his book and immediately started reading it.

Unfortunately, the promised material about Scheer's childhood visiting Disney theme parks is relegated to one short chapter, and it was a letdown. I had hoped I would get something insightful, but what was in the book was a disappointing story about Scheer getting really sick right before a Disney vacation, and then a long description of him expelling body fluids all over a hotel room.

The emotional depth about Disney theme parks that had been expressed in the L.A. Times article was nowhere to be found in the memoir. I felt the same way about the rest of the book.

Before reading that L.A. Times article, I had never heard of Paul Scheer before, and I have never watched any of his work before. He does seem like a good human being, and I came away from his book believing that he is a genuinely good man.

Sadly, this memoir did not work for me, and I stopped reading at fifty percent of the ebook.

I would certainly recommend this book to fans of Paul Scheer, and to anyone who enjoys reading memoirs by comedians.

Three stars.
]]> 4.15 2024 Joyful Recollections of Trauma: A Hilariously Cathartic Memoir-in-Essays of Childhood Turmoil, Self Healing, and Finding Happiness
author: Paul Scheer
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/31
date added: 2024/08/31
shelves: 2024-reads, contemporary, humor, memoir, nonfiction
review:
Published on May 21, 2024, "Joyful Recollections of Trauma" is the memoir of American comedian and actor Paul Scheer.

I found this book in August 2024 after reading an article in the L.A. Times about 'Disney adults' and why many adults are so passionate about Disney theme parks.

Paul Scheer was quoted in the article, and the bio text stated that his memoir dealt with his childhood history of visiting Disney parks. For that reason, I purchased his book and immediately started reading it.

Unfortunately, the promised material about Scheer's childhood visiting Disney theme parks is relegated to one short chapter, and it was a letdown. I had hoped I would get something insightful, but what was in the book was a disappointing story about Scheer getting really sick right before a Disney vacation, and then a long description of him expelling body fluids all over a hotel room.

The emotional depth about Disney theme parks that had been expressed in the L.A. Times article was nowhere to be found in the memoir. I felt the same way about the rest of the book.

Before reading that L.A. Times article, I had never heard of Paul Scheer before, and I have never watched any of his work before. He does seem like a good human being, and I came away from his book believing that he is a genuinely good man.

Sadly, this memoir did not work for me, and I stopped reading at fifty percent of the ebook.

I would certainly recommend this book to fans of Paul Scheer, and to anyone who enjoys reading memoirs by comedians.

Three stars.

]]> <![CDATA[Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers]]> 106744
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL PARENTING PUBLICATIONS GOLD AWARD •Ěý“A worthy book that brings us genuinely new ideas and fresh perspectives on parenting.”—Mary Pipher, Ph.D., author of Reviving Ophelia

Children take their lead from their Being “cool� matters more than anything else. Shaping values, identity, and codes of behavior, peer groups are often far more influential than parents. But this situation is far from natural, and it can be dangerous—it undermines family cohesion, interferes with healthy development, and fosters a hostile and sexualized youth culture. Children end up becoming conformist, anxious, and alienated.

In Hold On to Your Kids, acclaimedĚýphysician and bestselling author Gabor MatĂ© joins forces with psychologist Gordon Neufeld to pinpoint the causes of this breakdown and offer practical advice on how to “reattachâ€� to your children and earn back their loyalty and love.

By helping to reawaken our instincts, Neufeld and Maté empower parents to be what nature a true source of enrichment, security, and warmth for their children.]]> 369 Gordon Neufeld 0375760288 Melissa 5
I really loved this book. I do not have children, but the information in this book is profoundly useful in *all* of my relationships. "Hold On to Your Kids" is one of the most important books I have ever read.

Highly recommended.

All the stars.


]]> 4.17 2004 Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers
author: Gordon Neufeld
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/28
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: 2024-reads, books-that-make-life-worth-living, family, favorites, nonfiction, parenting, self-help
review:
The 2004 nonfiction book "Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers," by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté, is now considered a "parenting classic" online (as I type this review in 2024).

I really loved this book. I do not have children, but the information in this book is profoundly useful in *all* of my relationships. "Hold On to Your Kids" is one of the most important books I have ever read.

Highly recommended.

All the stars.



]]> <![CDATA[The Four Ds for a Meaningful Life]]> 197988091 A meaningful life � what does that phrase mean to you?

We often get caught up in the day-to-day stuff that must be done, regardless of whether we’re just starting out or we’re getting close to retirement. The years seem to speed by and we may wonder if “this� is all there is as we put off our aspirations for another day � another year � another decade.

If you’ve ever had that thought, this little book � The Four Ds for a Meaningful Life � may be the help you’ve been looking for. It contains some simple suggestions to guide you toward creating a life where you feel like you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing in ways that fulfill you.

It’s never too late to reimagine and then take those first steps toward fulfilling dreams that bring you satisfaction and joy.]]> 69 Sharon Mignerey Melissa 5
In the winter of 2010 and spring of 2011, I stopped teaching in a public school to write full-time, and I listened to a lot of Tony Robbins videos on YouTube to keep my motivation level high and provide a buffer against all of the people criticizing my choice.

Reading "The Four Ds for a Meaningful Life" in May/June of 2024 reminded me of that time in my life. There is a quality to the prose that very much took me back to those Tony Robbins videos.

I enjoyed the short passages of history and memoir that are interspersed in the book. Mignerey certainly shared things with me that I had not known before.

Five stars.]]> 5.00 The Four Ds for a Meaningful Life
author: Sharon Mignerey
name: Melissa
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/28
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: 2024-reads, nonfiction, self-help
review:
"The Four Ds for a Meaningful Life," by Sharon Mignerey, is a short, lovely self-help book for improving your life and following your dreams.

In the winter of 2010 and spring of 2011, I stopped teaching in a public school to write full-time, and I listened to a lot of Tony Robbins videos on YouTube to keep my motivation level high and provide a buffer against all of the people criticizing my choice.

Reading "The Four Ds for a Meaningful Life" in May/June of 2024 reminded me of that time in my life. There is a quality to the prose that very much took me back to those Tony Robbins videos.

I enjoyed the short passages of history and memoir that are interspersed in the book. Mignerey certainly shared things with me that I had not known before.

Five stars.
]]> <![CDATA[Win (Windsor Horne Lockwood III, #1)]]> 53916157 The new novel from Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author and creator of The Stranger on Netflix.

From a #1 New York Times bestselling author comes this thrilling story that shows what happens when a dead man's secrets fall into the hands of vigilante antihero—drawing him down a dangerous road.

Over twenty years ago, the heiress Patricia Lockwood was abducted during a robbery of her family's estate, then locked inside an isolated cabin for months. Patricia escaped, but so did her captors � and the items stolen from her family were never recovered.

Until now. On the Upper West Side, a recluse is found murdered in his penthouse apartment, alongside two objects of note: a stolen Vermeer painting and a leather suitcase bearing the initials WHL3. For the first time in years, the authorities have a lead � not only on Patricia's kidnapping, but also on another FBI cold case � with the suitcase and painting both pointing them toward one man.

Windsor Horne Lockwood III � or Win, as his few friends call him � doesn't know how his suitcase and his family's stolen painting ended up with a dead man. But his interest is piqued, especially when the FBI tells him that the man who kidnapped his cousin was also behind an act of domestic terrorism � and that the conspirators may still be at large. The two cases have baffled the FBI for decades, but Win has three things the FBI doesn't: a personal connection to the case; an ungodly fortune; and his own unique brand of justice.]]> 375 Harlan Coben 1538748215 Melissa 3
I listened to this on audiobook in June 2024 on a long car trip with my husband. We both thought it was terrible.

Occasionally, I was able to make jokes and laugh about what a ridiculous trope-fest the entire book is, unhinged from reality and free-winging through pure fantasy. All of the worst stereotypes abound in this novel, and I either have to laugh or cry at the cruelty of these stigmas. My husband could not laugh, though. The book just grated on his nerves and put him in a horrible mood.

This was a market research read. I found nothing enjoyable in "Win," and would not recommend it. I am not the audience for this book. I'd personally give this novel negative stars.

Three stars as a market research read.



]]> 3.95 2021 Win (Windsor Horne Lockwood III, #1)
author: Harlan Coben
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/28
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: 2024-reads, books-i-really-dislike, contemporary, fiction, no-thanks, one-star-read, why-do-i-hate-myself, unlikeable-protagonists, should-never-have-finished, wtf
review:
Published in March 2021, "Win," by Harlan Coben, is the first mystery/thriller I have ever read by this bestselling author.

I listened to this on audiobook in June 2024 on a long car trip with my husband. We both thought it was terrible.

Occasionally, I was able to make jokes and laugh about what a ridiculous trope-fest the entire book is, unhinged from reality and free-winging through pure fantasy. All of the worst stereotypes abound in this novel, and I either have to laugh or cry at the cruelty of these stigmas. My husband could not laugh, though. The book just grated on his nerves and put him in a horrible mood.

This was a market research read. I found nothing enjoyable in "Win," and would not recommend it. I am not the audience for this book. I'd personally give this novel negative stars.

Three stars as a market research read.




]]> Coach Life 31085643
After a few bumps in the road, including three divorces, a brush with the law and caring for her terminally ill and fractious mother, Alexis opts out of chasing the security of a conventional suburban lifestyle to live her most unconventional daydream.

She blindly purchases a sun-bleached, secondhand RV and hits the road with a tankful of optimism. But ignorance is not always bliss, especially for a single woman traveling with a persnickety cat and living out of a 10-ton motor home equipped with a panoply of mechanical mysteries.

Alexis confronts road hazards, breakdowns, potential ax murderers and the inevitable rookie mistakes that plague all first-time RVers. Fear continuously paralyzes her, but on her own, she finds a way past her fallacious foe.

If you have ever thought about trashing your day job for a daydream --or wanted to live a mid-life adventure instead of a mid-life crisis, then you're sure to enjoy this comical, poignant and encouraging memoir.]]> 126 Alexis Hartz Melissa 5
Hartz chose to live in her coach as the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, rather than a dire situation brought on by economic hardship. Some of her details about nomadic work opportunities are identical to the information found in Bruder's "Nomadland." I noted the similarities with fascination.

"Coach Life" is a much shorter book, and features more personal memoir material than nomadic lifestyle information. But for anyone interested in learning more about living full-time in a coach, I would definitely recommend Hartz's memoir. Her prose is straightforward, cheerful, and honest. I smiled a lot as I read, and even laughed aloud a few times. Hartz shares information about her life and her journey I have never read anywhere else, and I appreciate the extra knowledge a great deal.

Five stars. A great read.]]> 4.78 Coach Life
author: Alexis Hartz
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.78
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2020/02/17
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: 2020-reads, contemporary, memoir, nonfiction, self-help
review:
After reading Jessica Bruder's phenomenal 2017 nonfiction book, "Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century," in January 2020, I was delighted to read another nonfiction book about modern American nomad living (in February 2020). "Coach Life: How Wanderlust Turned a Bored Baby Boomer into a Happy Camper," by Alexis Hartz, first published in 2016, is an upbeat, energetic memoir about the author's time spent living in her recreation vehicle, or "coach," as she came to call her home on wheels.

Hartz chose to live in her coach as the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, rather than a dire situation brought on by economic hardship. Some of her details about nomadic work opportunities are identical to the information found in Bruder's "Nomadland." I noted the similarities with fascination.

"Coach Life" is a much shorter book, and features more personal memoir material than nomadic lifestyle information. But for anyone interested in learning more about living full-time in a coach, I would definitely recommend Hartz's memoir. Her prose is straightforward, cheerful, and honest. I smiled a lot as I read, and even laughed aloud a few times. Hartz shares information about her life and her journey I have never read anywhere else, and I appreciate the extra knowledge a great deal.

Five stars. A great read.
]]> Invisible Girl 50542147
In his thirties, a virgin, and living in his aunt’s spare bedroom, he has just been suspended from his job as a geography teacher after accusations of sexual misconduct, which he strongly denies. Searching for professional advice online, he is inadvertently sucked into the dark world of incel—involuntary celibate—forums, where he meets the charismatic, mysterious, and sinister Bryn.

Across the street from Owen lives the Fours family, headed by mom Cate, a physiotherapist, and dad Roan, a child psychologist. But the Fours family have a bad feeling about their neighbor Owen. He’s a bit creepy and their teenaged daughter swears he followed her home from the train station one night.

Meanwhile, young Saffyre Maddox spent three years as a patient of Roan Fours. Feeling abandoned when their therapy ends, she searches for other ways to maintain her connection with him, following him in the shadows and learning more than she wanted to know about Roan and his family. Then, on Valentine’s night, Saffyre Maddox disappears—and the last person to see her alive is Owen Pick.
]]> 404 Lisa Jewell 1982137339 Melissa 3
This was the third and final book I'll ever force myself to read by this author. "Invisible Girl" was the worst of the bunch, and trying to read this book was pure punishment.

The ending of "Invisible Girl" was so anti-climactic and ridiculous that it wasn't even laughably bad. It was just bad.

I hate the macro-level narrative messaging that Lisa Jewell puts into her books. In all three books I have read, Jewell always demonizes the female characters, ignores all reality, and advocates for the 'some people are just born bad and need to be murdered for the good of society' storytelling arcs that I deeply despise.

This novel did have a deus ex machina 'bad guy' who comes out of nowhere and goes into nowhere. Just like any good plot device should.

Negative stars for me personally. I hated this book.

Three stars as a market research read.

This one was definitely not for me.
]]> 3.74 2020 Invisible Girl
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/08
date added: 2024/07/08
shelves: 2024-reads, books-i-really-dislike, chick-lit, contemporary, fiction, no-thanks, one-star-read, why-do-i-hate-myself, women-s-fiction-chick-lit, wtf
review:
Published in 2020, "Invisible Girl" was another bestselling domestic thriller by powerhouse author Lisa Jewell.

This was the third and final book I'll ever force myself to read by this author. "Invisible Girl" was the worst of the bunch, and trying to read this book was pure punishment.

The ending of "Invisible Girl" was so anti-climactic and ridiculous that it wasn't even laughably bad. It was just bad.

I hate the macro-level narrative messaging that Lisa Jewell puts into her books. In all three books I have read, Jewell always demonizes the female characters, ignores all reality, and advocates for the 'some people are just born bad and need to be murdered for the good of society' storytelling arcs that I deeply despise.

This novel did have a deus ex machina 'bad guy' who comes out of nowhere and goes into nowhere. Just like any good plot device should.

Negative stars for me personally. I hated this book.

Three stars as a market research read.

This one was definitely not for me.

]]> The House We Grew Up In 18764826
Then one Easter weekend, tragedy comes to call. The event is so devastating that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear the family apart. Years pass as the children become adults, find new relationships, and develop their own separate lives. Soon it seems as though they've never been a family at all. But then something happens that calls them back to the house they grew up in -- and to what really happened that Easter weekend so many years ago.

Told in gorgeous, insightful prose that delves deeply into the hearts and minds of its characters, The House We Grew Up In is the captivating story of one family's desire to restore long-forgotten peace and to unearth the many secrets hidden within the nooks and crannies of home.]]> 388 Lisa Jewell 1476702993 Melissa 3
I read this in May of 2024, and it was the first novel I've ever read by this author.

Nothing about this book worked for me. There is not a single thing I enjoyed.

I'd normally do a spoilers-level analysis on a book as problematic as I found this one to be, but the novel is not worth the time.

I was surprised by how depressing this book was. Even with the Hallmark-worthy HEA slapped on at the very end, this novel is grim, dull, and a lot like those signs that read: "Due to budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, the light has been turned off at the end of the tunnel."

Not for me.

Negative stars for me personally.

Three stars as a market research read. I am definitely not the intended audience for this book.
]]> 3.73 2013 The House We Grew Up In
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/08
date added: 2024/07/08
shelves: 2024-reads, books-i-really-dislike, contemporary, fiction, no-thanks, one-star-read, why-do-i-hate-myself, women, wtf
review:
Published in 2013, "The House We Grew Up In" was one of bestselling author Lisa Jewell's earlier books in her career.

I read this in May of 2024, and it was the first novel I've ever read by this author.

Nothing about this book worked for me. There is not a single thing I enjoyed.

I'd normally do a spoilers-level analysis on a book as problematic as I found this one to be, but the novel is not worth the time.

I was surprised by how depressing this book was. Even with the Hallmark-worthy HEA slapped on at the very end, this novel is grim, dull, and a lot like those signs that read: "Due to budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, the light has been turned off at the end of the tunnel."

Not for me.

Negative stars for me personally.

Three stars as a market research read. I am definitely not the intended audience for this book.

]]> Then She Was Gone 35297426 She was fifteen, her mother's golden girl. She had her whole life ahead of her. And then, in the blink of an eye, Ellie was gone.

NOW
It’s been ten years since Ellie disappeared, but Laurel has never given up hope of finding her daughter.

And then one day a charming and charismatic stranger called Floyd walks into a café and sweeps Laurel off her feet.

Before too long she’s staying the night at this house and being introduced to his nine year old daughter.

Poppy is precocious and pretty - and meeting her completely takes Laurel's breath away.

Because Poppy is the spitting image of Ellie when she was that age. And now all those unanswered questions that have haunted Laurel come flooding back.

What happened to Ellie? Where did she go?

Who still has secrets to hide?]]> 359 Lisa Jewell 1501154648 Melissa 3
This novel is a perfect mashup of the 1987 hit movie "Fatal Attraction," only told from a woman's point of view and devoid of anything that is actually 'thrilling,' blended with all of the aesthetic and storytelling values of the Hallmark channel.

If you love books that demonize women, advocate that fixing the world means killing all the 'bad seeds' (and send the most market-friendly bookselling message that people are 'bad' because they were born that way), and then wrap up the most ridiculously fantastical, absurdist storyline with a perfect Happily Ever After bow, complete with plastic, cheesy smiles on everyone who has just survived the most traumatizing of horrors, then I definitely recommend you pick this one up.

For myself, I hated this book with every cell in my body.

Negative stars for me personally.

Three stars as a market research read.

I am NOT the intended audience for this thing. Kill it with fire.
]]> 4.02 2017 Then She Was Gone
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/08
date added: 2024/07/08
shelves: 2024-reads, books-i-really-dislike, chick-lit, contemporary, fiction, no-thanks, one-star-read, should-never-have-finished, thriller, why-do-i-hate-myself, women, women-s-fiction-chick-lit, wtf
review:
First published in July 2017, "Then She Was Gone" was sold as a thriller/domestic thriller/psychological thriller and was a mega-hit by bestselling author Lisa Jewell.

This novel is a perfect mashup of the 1987 hit movie "Fatal Attraction," only told from a woman's point of view and devoid of anything that is actually 'thrilling,' blended with all of the aesthetic and storytelling values of the Hallmark channel.

If you love books that demonize women, advocate that fixing the world means killing all the 'bad seeds' (and send the most market-friendly bookselling message that people are 'bad' because they were born that way), and then wrap up the most ridiculously fantastical, absurdist storyline with a perfect Happily Ever After bow, complete with plastic, cheesy smiles on everyone who has just survived the most traumatizing of horrors, then I definitely recommend you pick this one up.

For myself, I hated this book with every cell in my body.

Negative stars for me personally.

Three stars as a market research read.

I am NOT the intended audience for this thing. Kill it with fire.

]]> <![CDATA[You Could Make This Place Beautiful]]> 61273812 You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes. With the spirit of self-inquiry and empathy she’s known for, Smith interweaves snapshots of a life with meditations on secrets, anger, forgiveness, and narrative itself. The power of these pieces is cumulative: page after page, they build into a larger interrogation of family, work, and patriarchy.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful, like the work of Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, and Gina Frangello, is an unflinching look at what it means to live and write our own lives. It is a story about a mother’s fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman’s love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility. With a poet’s attention to language and an innovative approach to the genre, Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.]]> 320 Maggie Smith 1982185856 Melissa 3
I had no idea that Maggie Smith was a "famous poet" who had written a poem titled "Good Bones," a poem that went "viral" a few years ago (as I write this review in 2024).

I guess I'm just not online enough to know all of these things. Smith assumes that the reader of her memoir already knows all these things. She even states that assumption to the reader directly in this memoir; just one of the many self-aggrandizing statements Smith makes in this book.

I found "You Could Make this Place Beautiful" to be a one-star, godawful read. I picked this up as a market research read, and I genuinely hoped it would be amazing, since it's been riding high on bestseller lists since it was released.

I am definitely not the target audience for this memoir. I'm glad the book exists for the many readers who love it, but I will never be able to call myself a fan.

'The Guardian' published a scathing review of this book on April 27, 2023. Rachel Cooke's excellent review perfectly encapsulates my own thoughts on this memoir, so I will quote her words here:

'[T]he cloyingly titled "You Could Make This Place Beautiful" is all the bad things at once: self-pitying, but also self-regarding; incontinent, but also horribly coy; trite and mawkish and bulging with what even its author acknowledges as “woo� (Smith, who only turns down the chance to attend a “vision board workshop� for fear she’ll produce something that looks like a late Rothko, sees a “regular� therapist, an “intuitive therapist� and an “emotional alchemist�). How terrifying to open a book, and find a long enumeration of all the cute things her children have said (mostly about her). How horrifying, to see a writer unashamedly listing all their positive attributes (“[I am] as funny as hell�). Quotes from other writers � Joan Didion, Clive James � should alleviate the agony, but not even they can save her. Dishing up that famous line from Whitman � “I am large, I contain multitudes� � she can’t resist coming back at him with yet another of her humblebrags: “But here’s the thing, Walt� Sometimes I’m tired of my multitudes.� This line, like many others in the book, floats alone on a white page, the better that we might absorb its author’s wit and wisdom, all her beguiling contradictions.'

'Look, abandonment is an agony like no other. To be a lover who is not loved back necessitates language that feels both infinitely renewable (we try, and try again) and utterly redundant, and it’s this that makes it territory for the writer: impossible, universal, the ineluctable quest. But Smith’s book has nothing to do with all this, and not only because her prose is so grindingly workaday (for a poet, she’s surprisingly fond of non-lyrical terms such as primary caregiver). As the more glowing of the reviews suggested when it came out in the US, where this kind of stuff goes down rather better than here, its real subject is not loss, let alone humility or forgiveness. It is about self-love, and the (apparently) “beautiful work� involved in the struggle to achieve this.'

'Personally, I could find among its pages no evidence that Smith did not love herself plenty already. Her husband, she suggests, left her in part because he was envious of the “fame� that came her way when one of her poems went viral. But this isn’t really my point. Self-optimisation � self-adoration � is the great disease of our age, a social pathology that makes a virtue of a certain kind of narcissism, and scapegoats of everyone else, and this, in the end, is why Smith’s book repulsed me. Its true moral is inadvertent. Every page serves as a reminder that it is far, far better to understand yourself than to love yourself. Love should be reserved for other people, who will always need it much more than you do.'



Trenchantly said, and I wholeheartedly agree.

All I want to add about this book is the following:

Smith accuses her husband of turning her into 'staff' -- but she did that to him, too. Her husband sacrificed his own creative writing ambitions in order to give Smith what she wanted: two children (children that he did not want, but she adamantly did), and he earned a high-level income doing a job he'd never intended to do (in law) to financially support them.

Shortly after they were married, Maggie Smith stopped "seeing" her husband. As soon as she had her children, she put all of her seeing, hearing, loving, and caregiving into her children. Her self-sacrificing husband became just a thing in the house: someone she totally disregarded. She stopped seeing him at all. He wasn't "a friend" to her anymore. Hell, he wasn't even human anymore. She treated him like a piece of furniture. Except I think Maggie Smith probably has more regard for a kitchen chair than she had for this man, starting immediately after their children were born.

News flash to Smith: relationships take a lot of work. Like, every day, you have to water this particular plant, to keep it green and thriving. Also, pro tip: treating your husband like a piece of furniture is not great for your marriage.

This level of awareness is *not* in Smith's book. But she gives the reader all of the evidence they need to see it for themselves.

Smith did not find any happiness or joy in her husband as the person he was. Smith reserved all of her happiness for her children. And that meant there was none left for him. No smiles, no love, no delight. I bet she looked at him with "easily deniable" passive-aggressive hatred and loathing. I bet all of her internal lack got projected onto him as contempt. He was nothing more than the receptacle of her negative emotions and blame. The more she smiled at their children, the more she looked at him with cold cruelty. I've been on the receiving end of people like Smith enough to know exactly how horrible this treatment is. It's hard to put into words this kind of disgust.

And I'm sure she would outright deny all of this, if anyone suggested it to her. Smith is the innocent victim of her husband's affair and the saintly Best Mom Ever, after all; in her own view, she did no wrong. Despite her attempts to tell the reader -- directly -- that the book is not the story of "a bad husband," I want to be clear that this is still exactly what she wrote. The ex was awful, and she was perfect. The lack of self-awareness in this book was astounding.

The more pages I read of this book, the more compassion I had for her husband. The reader learns that he was not a part of her poetry. Not a part of her daily note-taking about her 'beautiful and terrible' life. But Smith never stopped being "seen" by her husband. He even wrote a list of 40 things he loved about her for her 40th birthday, and not only did Smith lose the list, she doesn't even remember ever receiving it. (Smith's mother remembered him doing this.)

Her husband was just a non-entity to her. I kept shaking my head and thinking it was no wonder that he had an affair. All of us need love, need people to see us, need people to smile when they see us. Smith had the two children to love her, all day every day. And it's clear she monopolized their love, and kept a tight rein on making sure they loved her more than their father, who she even says in the book was like "a stranger" to her once she became a stay-at-home mom.

In short: this memoir is a Martyrdom of Motherhood tale, combined with a 'poor me' divorce story, all of it told in the most annoyingly coy humble-brag prose.

Personally, I would not recommend this. "You Could Make This Place Beautiful" is what I imagine people must read in Hell, in the torture room.

I'll donate the copy I bought to my favorite used bookstore, and I know the owner will sell it quickly, and I'm sure this book will end up with someone who loves it. Because there is clearly a rabid fan base for this one. "You Could Make This Place Beautiful" is like Rupi Kaur meets Leslie Jamison's "The Empathy Exams." Absolutely not my jam.

]]> 4.03 2023 You Could Make This Place Beautiful
author: Maggie Smith
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/03
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: 2024-reads, books-i-really-dislike, chick-lit, contemporary, family, memoir, no-thanks, nonfiction, one-star-read, parenting, poetry, why-do-i-hate-myself, women
review:
Published on April 11, 2023, Maggie Smith's debut memoir, "You Could Make This Place Beautiful," is frequently described as a memoir about "motherhood and divorce."

I had no idea that Maggie Smith was a "famous poet" who had written a poem titled "Good Bones," a poem that went "viral" a few years ago (as I write this review in 2024).

I guess I'm just not online enough to know all of these things. Smith assumes that the reader of her memoir already knows all these things. She even states that assumption to the reader directly in this memoir; just one of the many self-aggrandizing statements Smith makes in this book.

I found "You Could Make this Place Beautiful" to be a one-star, godawful read. I picked this up as a market research read, and I genuinely hoped it would be amazing, since it's been riding high on bestseller lists since it was released.

I am definitely not the target audience for this memoir. I'm glad the book exists for the many readers who love it, but I will never be able to call myself a fan.

'The Guardian' published a scathing review of this book on April 27, 2023. Rachel Cooke's excellent review perfectly encapsulates my own thoughts on this memoir, so I will quote her words here:

'[T]he cloyingly titled "You Could Make This Place Beautiful" is all the bad things at once: self-pitying, but also self-regarding; incontinent, but also horribly coy; trite and mawkish and bulging with what even its author acknowledges as “woo� (Smith, who only turns down the chance to attend a “vision board workshop� for fear she’ll produce something that looks like a late Rothko, sees a “regular� therapist, an “intuitive therapist� and an “emotional alchemist�). How terrifying to open a book, and find a long enumeration of all the cute things her children have said (mostly about her). How horrifying, to see a writer unashamedly listing all their positive attributes (“[I am] as funny as hell�). Quotes from other writers � Joan Didion, Clive James � should alleviate the agony, but not even they can save her. Dishing up that famous line from Whitman � “I am large, I contain multitudes� � she can’t resist coming back at him with yet another of her humblebrags: “But here’s the thing, Walt� Sometimes I’m tired of my multitudes.� This line, like many others in the book, floats alone on a white page, the better that we might absorb its author’s wit and wisdom, all her beguiling contradictions.'

'Look, abandonment is an agony like no other. To be a lover who is not loved back necessitates language that feels both infinitely renewable (we try, and try again) and utterly redundant, and it’s this that makes it territory for the writer: impossible, universal, the ineluctable quest. But Smith’s book has nothing to do with all this, and not only because her prose is so grindingly workaday (for a poet, she’s surprisingly fond of non-lyrical terms such as primary caregiver). As the more glowing of the reviews suggested when it came out in the US, where this kind of stuff goes down rather better than here, its real subject is not loss, let alone humility or forgiveness. It is about self-love, and the (apparently) “beautiful work� involved in the struggle to achieve this.'

'Personally, I could find among its pages no evidence that Smith did not love herself plenty already. Her husband, she suggests, left her in part because he was envious of the “fame� that came her way when one of her poems went viral. But this isn’t really my point. Self-optimisation � self-adoration � is the great disease of our age, a social pathology that makes a virtue of a certain kind of narcissism, and scapegoats of everyone else, and this, in the end, is why Smith’s book repulsed me. Its true moral is inadvertent. Every page serves as a reminder that it is far, far better to understand yourself than to love yourself. Love should be reserved for other people, who will always need it much more than you do.'



Trenchantly said, and I wholeheartedly agree.

All I want to add about this book is the following:

Smith accuses her husband of turning her into 'staff' -- but she did that to him, too. Her husband sacrificed his own creative writing ambitions in order to give Smith what she wanted: two children (children that he did not want, but she adamantly did), and he earned a high-level income doing a job he'd never intended to do (in law) to financially support them.

Shortly after they were married, Maggie Smith stopped "seeing" her husband. As soon as she had her children, she put all of her seeing, hearing, loving, and caregiving into her children. Her self-sacrificing husband became just a thing in the house: someone she totally disregarded. She stopped seeing him at all. He wasn't "a friend" to her anymore. Hell, he wasn't even human anymore. She treated him like a piece of furniture. Except I think Maggie Smith probably has more regard for a kitchen chair than she had for this man, starting immediately after their children were born.

News flash to Smith: relationships take a lot of work. Like, every day, you have to water this particular plant, to keep it green and thriving. Also, pro tip: treating your husband like a piece of furniture is not great for your marriage.

This level of awareness is *not* in Smith's book. But she gives the reader all of the evidence they need to see it for themselves.

Smith did not find any happiness or joy in her husband as the person he was. Smith reserved all of her happiness for her children. And that meant there was none left for him. No smiles, no love, no delight. I bet she looked at him with "easily deniable" passive-aggressive hatred and loathing. I bet all of her internal lack got projected onto him as contempt. He was nothing more than the receptacle of her negative emotions and blame. The more she smiled at their children, the more she looked at him with cold cruelty. I've been on the receiving end of people like Smith enough to know exactly how horrible this treatment is. It's hard to put into words this kind of disgust.

And I'm sure she would outright deny all of this, if anyone suggested it to her. Smith is the innocent victim of her husband's affair and the saintly Best Mom Ever, after all; in her own view, she did no wrong. Despite her attempts to tell the reader -- directly -- that the book is not the story of "a bad husband," I want to be clear that this is still exactly what she wrote. The ex was awful, and she was perfect. The lack of self-awareness in this book was astounding.

The more pages I read of this book, the more compassion I had for her husband. The reader learns that he was not a part of her poetry. Not a part of her daily note-taking about her 'beautiful and terrible' life. But Smith never stopped being "seen" by her husband. He even wrote a list of 40 things he loved about her for her 40th birthday, and not only did Smith lose the list, she doesn't even remember ever receiving it. (Smith's mother remembered him doing this.)

Her husband was just a non-entity to her. I kept shaking my head and thinking it was no wonder that he had an affair. All of us need love, need people to see us, need people to smile when they see us. Smith had the two children to love her, all day every day. And it's clear she monopolized their love, and kept a tight rein on making sure they loved her more than their father, who she even says in the book was like "a stranger" to her once she became a stay-at-home mom.

In short: this memoir is a Martyrdom of Motherhood tale, combined with a 'poor me' divorce story, all of it told in the most annoyingly coy humble-brag prose.

Personally, I would not recommend this. "You Could Make This Place Beautiful" is what I imagine people must read in Hell, in the torture room.

I'll donate the copy I bought to my favorite used bookstore, and I know the owner will sell it quickly, and I'm sure this book will end up with someone who loves it. Because there is clearly a rabid fan base for this one. "You Could Make This Place Beautiful" is like Rupi Kaur meets Leslie Jamison's "The Empathy Exams." Absolutely not my jam.


]]> <![CDATA[Pure Land: A True Story of Three Lives, Three Cultures, and the Search for Heaven on Earth]]> 36189680
"There is such tragic irony here. The very things that Japanese tourist Tomomi Hanamure is so deeply passionate about--the wild, stark, beautiful American West and Native American culture--are what leads to her violent death. Around this single horrific event Annette McGivney has masterfully woven three separate, highly personal narratives."
-- S. C. Gwynne, Author of Empire of the Summer Moon, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

"McGivney intuitively grounds her narrative while exploring humanity's roots of culture and origins of character, like the light of the sun awakening each intricate layer of earth in the deepest of canyons. She is a storyteller of the highest caliber, with a style reminiscent of Jon Krakauer's journalistic skill and unmistakable purpose."
-- Carine McCandless, author of The Wild Truth, the New York Times bestselling follow-up to Into the Wild

"Annette McGivney has gathered three disparate narratives and braided them into a bewitching tapestry of darkness and light, pain and atonement, along with the unexpected gifts that can sometimes accompany profoundly devastating loss."
-- Kevin Fedarko, author of The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon]]> 354 Annette McGivney 0998527882 Melissa 3
I bought this ebook after my book club chose "Pure Land" for a winter 2024 monthly read, and my fellow book clubbers had interesting comments to share regarding their own personal catharsis as a result of reading the book. Other book clubbers despised the memoir material, and thought that it detracted from the "far more interesting" tale of the murder.

I was intrigued enough to examine the memoir material, and spend some time reflecting on just how much of this book is memoir, and how much of it deals with the murder.

It's been at least three months since I read this book, and I think I came away from it thinking that at least 40% of this book is memoir material, maybe more. It's definitely over a third.

Throughout 2023, I started a deep dive into studying Complex PTSD (CPTSD), and by the time I read "Pure Land," I was definitely a lot farther along on that course of study than the author was when she penned this book.

I think mileage is definitely going to vary, regarding how much a reader will get out of this book and whether the text is able to feel educational or illuminating at all.

Sadly, this book wasn't for me. While I am glad that McGivney was able to find healing and reconnect with her sister, the content and execution of "Pure Land" left much to be desired for me. But I deeply appreciate that this book exists for the readers who give it four or five stars.

Three stars overall. I wasn't the intended audience for this.
]]> 4.23 2017 Pure Land: A True Story of Three Lives, Three Cultures, and the Search for Heaven on Earth
author: Annette McGivney
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/07
date added: 2024/06/07
shelves: 2024-reads, biography, contemporary, crime-drama, memoir, nonfiction, racism, women, indigenous
review:
Published in 2017, "Pure Land: A True Story of Three Lives, Three Cultures, and the Search for Heaven on Earth," by Annette McGivney, recounts the tragic tale of a murder and the author's own personal journey of dealing with suppressed childhood memories and suppressed childhood trauma.

I bought this ebook after my book club chose "Pure Land" for a winter 2024 monthly read, and my fellow book clubbers had interesting comments to share regarding their own personal catharsis as a result of reading the book. Other book clubbers despised the memoir material, and thought that it detracted from the "far more interesting" tale of the murder.

I was intrigued enough to examine the memoir material, and spend some time reflecting on just how much of this book is memoir, and how much of it deals with the murder.

It's been at least three months since I read this book, and I think I came away from it thinking that at least 40% of this book is memoir material, maybe more. It's definitely over a third.

Throughout 2023, I started a deep dive into studying Complex PTSD (CPTSD), and by the time I read "Pure Land," I was definitely a lot farther along on that course of study than the author was when she penned this book.

I think mileage is definitely going to vary, regarding how much a reader will get out of this book and whether the text is able to feel educational or illuminating at all.

Sadly, this book wasn't for me. While I am glad that McGivney was able to find healing and reconnect with her sister, the content and execution of "Pure Land" left much to be desired for me. But I deeply appreciate that this book exists for the readers who give it four or five stars.

Three stars overall. I wasn't the intended audience for this.

]]> <![CDATA[Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child]]> 12124
Validate your inner child through meditations and affirmations
Give your child permission to break destructive family roles and rules
Adopt new rules allowing pleasure and honest self-expression
Deal with anger and difficult relationships
Pay attention to your innermost purpose and desires...and find new joy and energy in living.]]> 304 John Bradshaw 0553353896 Melissa 5
I finished this book in December 2023 or January 2024, and it was such a challenging, difficult read that I kept putting off writing a review for it.

Here I am, in June of 2024, deciding that today is finally the day I mark this book as 'read' and rate it five stars.

I discovered John Bradshaw's work through Patrick Teahan's YouTube channel for survivors of childhood trauma. As a licensed therapist, Teahan states that he often has his clients read the first four chapters of this book as a homework assignment at the beginning of starting therapy with him.

I read Bradshaw's other seminal work, "Healing the Shame that Binds You," right before I read "Homecoming." Both books are incredibly difficult, emotionally challenging reads. I think "Homecoming" was more difficult for me than "Healing the Shame that Binds You."

The content of this book gets *dark* -- there is a lot of heavy stuff in this book. It's healing quality has a lot to do with how much Bradshaw's work 'normalizes' the most severe and traumatizing parental abuses.

It took a lot of energy to read this book. Sometimes I could only read a page or two at a time, and then I'd need a long break.

I really benefit from authors and researchers who don't hesitate to tackle these subjects, and can do so in the most normalizing way, as Bradshaw does in his work.

Books can go places that a YouTuber cannot. The therapeutic impact of reading Bradshaw's work is so much more potent than listening to people discuss it, however adept they are at drawing out his points in the most public-consumption-friendly way.

I know I'll need to reread "Homecoming" at some point in the future. But just getting through it once felt like a lot.

I can see why it's better to read this book while in therapy, so you have someone to help you process the content. Because reading it solo is like scaling a mountain all by yourself. Sure, you can do it. But it's a lot harder to go it alone.

I'm still glad I read this. But it was not a fun read whatsoever.

Five stars.

]]> 4.01 1984 Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child
author: John Bradshaw
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1984
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/06
date added: 2024/06/06
shelves: 2024-reads, books-that-make-life-worth-living, contemporary, domestic-violence, family, horrifying-acts-of-violence, nonfiction, parenting, real-life-monsters, self-help, therapy
review:
Originally published in 1990, "Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child," by John Bradshaw, is a seminal work of therapeutic self-help.

I finished this book in December 2023 or January 2024, and it was such a challenging, difficult read that I kept putting off writing a review for it.

Here I am, in June of 2024, deciding that today is finally the day I mark this book as 'read' and rate it five stars.

I discovered John Bradshaw's work through Patrick Teahan's YouTube channel for survivors of childhood trauma. As a licensed therapist, Teahan states that he often has his clients read the first four chapters of this book as a homework assignment at the beginning of starting therapy with him.

I read Bradshaw's other seminal work, "Healing the Shame that Binds You," right before I read "Homecoming." Both books are incredibly difficult, emotionally challenging reads. I think "Homecoming" was more difficult for me than "Healing the Shame that Binds You."

The content of this book gets *dark* -- there is a lot of heavy stuff in this book. It's healing quality has a lot to do with how much Bradshaw's work 'normalizes' the most severe and traumatizing parental abuses.

It took a lot of energy to read this book. Sometimes I could only read a page or two at a time, and then I'd need a long break.

I really benefit from authors and researchers who don't hesitate to tackle these subjects, and can do so in the most normalizing way, as Bradshaw does in his work.

Books can go places that a YouTuber cannot. The therapeutic impact of reading Bradshaw's work is so much more potent than listening to people discuss it, however adept they are at drawing out his points in the most public-consumption-friendly way.

I know I'll need to reread "Homecoming" at some point in the future. But just getting through it once felt like a lot.

I can see why it's better to read this book while in therapy, so you have someone to help you process the content. Because reading it solo is like scaling a mountain all by yourself. Sure, you can do it. But it's a lot harder to go it alone.

I'm still glad I read this. But it was not a fun read whatsoever.

Five stars.


]]> <![CDATA[In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction]]> 617702 In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts begins by introducing us to many of Dr. Maté's most dire patients who steal, cheat, sell sex, and otherwise harm themselves for their next hit. Maté looks to the root causes of addiction, applying a clinical and psychological view to the physical manifestation and offering some enlightening answers for why people inflict such catastrophe on themselves.

Finally, he takes aim at the hugely ineffectual, largely U.S.-led War on Drugs (and its worldwide followers), challenging the wisdom of fighting drugs instead of aiding the addicts, and showing how controversial measures such as safe injection sites are measurably more successful at reducing drug-related crime and the spread of disease than anything most major governments have going. It's not easy reading, but we ignore his arguments at our peril. When it comes to combating the drug trade and the ravages of addiction, society can use all the help it can get. --Kim Hughes]]> 480 Gabor Maté 0676977405 Melissa 5
I'm glad for that, since I personally gained a lot more usable knowledge from "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" than I did from "The Myth of Normal."

This was not a fun book to read. In hindsight, I wish I'd skipped the first half of the book, detailing the daily lives of the patients Dr. Maté was treating, and simply plunged into the material I needed: Maté's takeaways about addiction and how to assist those with addiction.

A lengthy section near the end of the book discusses efforts to decriminalize the use (and possession) of hard drugs, and since I read this book in May of 2024, I took a lot of time studying what recently happened in Portland, Oregon.

In 2020, voters in Oregon overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of hard drugs, including fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. (The bill is still commonly referred to as Measure 110.)

In March of 2024, voters in Oregon overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to recriminalize hard drugs, essentially doing away with Measure 110.

It was fascinating to look at the failures and problems Portland faced as a result of Measure 110 -- most of them having to do with the lack of infrastructure in place to support addicts.

My deep dive into Portland's recent history was all inspired by picking up "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts." So I definitely appreciated the learning arc.

What I most enjoyed about this book is this takeaway: that addicts live at the whim of their unconscious minds; that addicts profoundly lack self-insight and self-awareness.

This lack of self-awareness is the legacy of the childhood traumas and emotional neglect these people faced growing up. Childhood abuse and neglect primed the neural pathways in their brains to prioritize short-term, external rewards over any kind of long-term gains.

When addicts have relational safety (securely attached relationships with other adults), they have the best chance they'll ever have to develop the self-awareness they need to free themselves of their addictions. But because the hurdles they face in developing self-awareness, as adults, are simply so steep and overwhelming, many of them will never be able to come to terms with their own histories and psychologies enough to do so.

I have dependents in my life who are adult addicts, and a few years ago, I said to them that I could not understand why every penny they earned went to alcohol, why they chose to be unhoused/homeless rather than go without alcohol, and I looked at them searchingly, hoping they could explain themselves to me.

I have a lot of compassion for the person I was then, who could finally just tell the truth at the table, and say aloud that all of this was beyond me to understand because I am not in their heads, I cannot know what they are thinking.

After reading this book, I now understand that my dependents could not at all understand themselves, either. Yes, they are inside their own heads, the only people who are intimate with the gray matter inside their own skulls. But they have no more insight or awareness of their own thinking processes than I would have as a complete outsider.

Learning that the main driver of addiction is a deficit of self-awareness has been profoundly helpful to me.

Loving addicts means loving them while they're on their own path of self-destruction, and compassionately accepting that they might never change course. I'm big enough, inside, to hold space for that level of suffering. To love people who are destroying their own bodies and minds due to the legacies of their own childhood traumas.

Knowledge is power, and for me, having the ability to understand an addict's thinking, even when they cannot understand themselves, is tremendously freeing. The addict might be trapped in a hell made of zero self-awareness, but I can have penetrating insights into their thoughts and behaviors, despite their own lack of insight.

"In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" is a deeply sympathetic portrayal of addiction, and since I grew up with severely addicted adults, I hated reading the first half of this book. I have spent my whole life sympathizing with addicts and sacrificing my own needs to care for them as a parentified child. This book was a lot more of the same.

But then Maté finally stops sharing chapters upon chapters with the goal of humanizing addicts, and gets to the meat of the book: understanding what is going on with them. And that content was very rewarding and satisfying to me.

I both hated and loved reading this book. Even typing this review, I feel hatred toward this book, and I feel love for this book, in equal measure.

It was overall an ugly reading experience.

Recommended with caution. For anyone who grew up with severe addicts, the first half of this book might be super triggering, and you might have an inner child like mine, who was internally screaming in rage, "I already know this!" My inner child wanted to DNF this book like a MF.

I'm glad I stuck with it. But man, it was painful. I really wish I'd skipped the first half, because it was definitely not helpful to read that stuff.

Five stars.
]]> 4.49 2007 In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
author: Gabor Maté
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/06
date added: 2024/06/06
shelves: 2024-reads, addiction, contemporary, domestic-violence, family, nonfiction, self-help, therapy, unlikeable-protagonists
review:
First published in February 2008, "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction," by Gabor Maté, has received a new cover and bookstore presence due to the author's surging popularity and the bestselling success of "The Myth of Normal."

I'm glad for that, since I personally gained a lot more usable knowledge from "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" than I did from "The Myth of Normal."

This was not a fun book to read. In hindsight, I wish I'd skipped the first half of the book, detailing the daily lives of the patients Dr. Maté was treating, and simply plunged into the material I needed: Maté's takeaways about addiction and how to assist those with addiction.

A lengthy section near the end of the book discusses efforts to decriminalize the use (and possession) of hard drugs, and since I read this book in May of 2024, I took a lot of time studying what recently happened in Portland, Oregon.

In 2020, voters in Oregon overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of hard drugs, including fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. (The bill is still commonly referred to as Measure 110.)

In March of 2024, voters in Oregon overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to recriminalize hard drugs, essentially doing away with Measure 110.

It was fascinating to look at the failures and problems Portland faced as a result of Measure 110 -- most of them having to do with the lack of infrastructure in place to support addicts.

My deep dive into Portland's recent history was all inspired by picking up "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts." So I definitely appreciated the learning arc.

What I most enjoyed about this book is this takeaway: that addicts live at the whim of their unconscious minds; that addicts profoundly lack self-insight and self-awareness.

This lack of self-awareness is the legacy of the childhood traumas and emotional neglect these people faced growing up. Childhood abuse and neglect primed the neural pathways in their brains to prioritize short-term, external rewards over any kind of long-term gains.

When addicts have relational safety (securely attached relationships with other adults), they have the best chance they'll ever have to develop the self-awareness they need to free themselves of their addictions. But because the hurdles they face in developing self-awareness, as adults, are simply so steep and overwhelming, many of them will never be able to come to terms with their own histories and psychologies enough to do so.

I have dependents in my life who are adult addicts, and a few years ago, I said to them that I could not understand why every penny they earned went to alcohol, why they chose to be unhoused/homeless rather than go without alcohol, and I looked at them searchingly, hoping they could explain themselves to me.

I have a lot of compassion for the person I was then, who could finally just tell the truth at the table, and say aloud that all of this was beyond me to understand because I am not in their heads, I cannot know what they are thinking.

After reading this book, I now understand that my dependents could not at all understand themselves, either. Yes, they are inside their own heads, the only people who are intimate with the gray matter inside their own skulls. But they have no more insight or awareness of their own thinking processes than I would have as a complete outsider.

Learning that the main driver of addiction is a deficit of self-awareness has been profoundly helpful to me.

Loving addicts means loving them while they're on their own path of self-destruction, and compassionately accepting that they might never change course. I'm big enough, inside, to hold space for that level of suffering. To love people who are destroying their own bodies and minds due to the legacies of their own childhood traumas.

Knowledge is power, and for me, having the ability to understand an addict's thinking, even when they cannot understand themselves, is tremendously freeing. The addict might be trapped in a hell made of zero self-awareness, but I can have penetrating insights into their thoughts and behaviors, despite their own lack of insight.

"In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" is a deeply sympathetic portrayal of addiction, and since I grew up with severely addicted adults, I hated reading the first half of this book. I have spent my whole life sympathizing with addicts and sacrificing my own needs to care for them as a parentified child. This book was a lot more of the same.

But then Maté finally stops sharing chapters upon chapters with the goal of humanizing addicts, and gets to the meat of the book: understanding what is going on with them. And that content was very rewarding and satisfying to me.

I both hated and loved reading this book. Even typing this review, I feel hatred toward this book, and I feel love for this book, in equal measure.

It was overall an ugly reading experience.

Recommended with caution. For anyone who grew up with severe addicts, the first half of this book might be super triggering, and you might have an inner child like mine, who was internally screaming in rage, "I already know this!" My inner child wanted to DNF this book like a MF.

I'm glad I stuck with it. But man, it was painful. I really wish I'd skipped the first half, because it was definitely not helpful to read that stuff.

Five stars.

]]> <![CDATA[The Pilot's Wife (Fortune's Rocks Quartet, #3)]]> 5191 295 Anita Shreve 0316601950 Melissa 3
In 2009, I picked the book up after an aspiring author told me they were trying to emulate Anita Shreve's prose and content, and named "The Pilot's Wife" as the best of her work. I couldn't get into the first five pages, and DNF'd.

In 2024, I suddenly remembered trying to read this cluster-mess many years ago, and added it to my list of market research reads.

I'm glad I did that, though I really hated the experience of reading this book. I can understand why this book was so popular, but that knowledge always seems like cold comfort after reading something this loathsome.

"The Pilot's Wife" is a one-star read for me personally.

Three stars as a market research read. This novel was definitely not written for me.

I'll include some spoiler thoughts below.

*

**Spoiler warning**

The prose style of this novel was so very similar to Jodi Picoult's writing style that I could not tell the difference. Since I had just recently finished "The Book of Two Ways" before reading "The Pilot's Wife," it kept startling me how many plot elements were similar, with plane crashes, teenage daughters, secret children, secret loves, and all the rest.

I do not like Picoult's writing style and I definitely don't enjoy Shreve's prose style, either. They are such twins of each other that I think of Shreve like the OG to Picoult's bestselling author career.

These authors absolutely write "women's fiction," and while I am sorry that both authors find the term to be so pejorative, it is an accurately descriptive one.

All of the plot beats of this book belong to the romance genre. "The Pilot's Wife" is structurally a romance, one with the plot contrivances of a mystery clumsily -- and quite fantastically -- overlaid.

The protagonist, Kathryn Lyons, is 33 when the novel begins. The reader is left to infer that Kathryn is still stunningly beautiful, and that this is why the union rep who comes to her door -- Robert Hart (who I heard on the audiobook as the ur-obvious "Robert Heart"/OTP du jour) -- is immediately taken with her, and behaves in the most loving way toward her throughout the length of the novel.

Kathryn's father's name is "Bobby" -- and it was not lost on me that the OTP's name is the same as her father's (Robert). In real life, Anita Shreve's father was a pilot for Delta Airlines, just as she wrote Kathryn's husband as being a pilot (for the fictional "Vision" airlines). So there's a lot of great fodder here for how to read the unconscious mind and unconscious longings into an author's work of fiction.

It is immediately revealed in the novel that the plane's black box was recovered, and that authorities suspect that Jack carried a bomb onboard the plane. The CIA and the FBI would have been searching the house, if that were the case. But since "The Pilot's Wife" exists outside reality, then the strictures of reality need not apply.

Jack Lyons (age 51 or 52 at the start of the book) comes across as a total P.O.S. in this novel, and yet no one ever calls him one, not even Kathryn. It is revealed that he basically started a relationship with her in the most predatory way: he was 33 years old (the same exact age as Kathryn is at the start of the book), and Kathryn was only 18 years old when they first meet.

Jack walks into her grandmother's antique store, where Kathryn is working, and immediately wants to date her. His dialogue in this scene is as unrealistic as it is cringe. Later, the reader discovers that both of Kathryn's lifelong-drunken parents had recently died in the same car crash, which is why she had dropped out of college and come to stay with her grandmother.

Kathryn was an emotionally broken girl of 18 when Jack meets her, and he immediately knocks her up. They get married by a justice of the peace when she is a few months pregnant with their now-15-year-old daughter, Mattie.

Kathryn's grandmother never saw anything wrong with Jack... and this is why women need feminism. Because authors like Anita Shreve were penning this stuff into novels in the 1990s and no one was calling this out.

A flashback scene of a fight is included in the story, from anywhere between one to five years before the novel begins, and Jack comes across as the most magnificent asshole. But his behavior is never called out for what it is, and Kathryn never expresses rage over any of it. As a reader, it means I'm left feeling a lot of emotions that are never acknowledged, spoken, validated, or even hinted at anywhere in the narrative.... And that kind of writing is Super Bad News for me, all around.

This level of cluelessness is what really makes Kathryn sound like a child of about four or five throughout the length of the novel, not a grown woman in her early 30s.

According to the rules of patriarchy, women are "not allowed" to express anger, only men are, so I do understand why Kathryn isn't allowed to "have anger" in this book. But I still need to say that she would be feeling a lot of anger, regardless of what "is or isn't allowed" in American culture.

Of course, Jack is lured into criminal activity by a homewrecker named Muire, who is already engaging in criminal activity when the two first hook up.

And of course, Muire goes into full disclosure mode (FDM) regarding her criminal activity in front of Kathryn and a man she has never met before (Robert), even though Muire knows she can go to prison for this and she has two young children to raise. This behavior is so unbelievable that I think watching the 1987 comedy film "Spaceballs" is more realistic than reading this book.

Jack allowed someone to put a bomb into his flight bag, without even looking in his bag before he boarded the flight, and this led to the deaths of 104 people. That kind of ignorant behavior is never called out in the novel, not by Kathryn or anyone else. Kathryn calls it "betrayal" -- that Jack was "betrayed" by people he trusted.

But the truth is, Jack was a fool. He was also a liar, an inveterate liar. His behavior was despicable.

Then the novel ends with Kathryn lying to her daughter about her father's behavior. Kathryn continues to withhold the truth from Mattie: that Mattie has two half-siblings, that her father had a second wife and a second family in London.

Instead of the book standing on any kind of moral grounding -- regarding Jack's lying and his utterly traumatizing betrayal -- the book morally uplifts Kathryn's choice to continue lying to her daughter, and wants the reader to view this choice as good parenting.

For the record, I don't think a lie on that level would have brought Kathryn and Mattie closer together, as this novel depicts. I think Kathryn's choice to keep lying to Mattie would've just torn them further apart. But that is a reality-based view that really has no place in this total fantasy novel.

In short, I hated reading this book and I would recommend it to no one.

As a market research read, I understand that this novel is working as an emotional allegory for all of the unspoken, forbidden rage that women feel when they discover a husband's betrayal.

The story gives readers a wish fulfillment conclusion that simply removing a wedding ring is enough to "heal" this level of trauma: a couple of weeks after Jack's death, Kathryn drops her wedding ring in the sea and states that she has now been "relieved of the burden of love" she had for Jack.

Like, it would be nice I guess if life were that easy. But the truth is, Kathryn would need a ton of therapy and mental health support if what takes place in this novel were true. Jack preyed upon her and used her, and the scar that would leave would be significant. Mattie would also need therapy, counseling, group support, all of that kind of stuff in order to regain any kind of trust in her family unit.

I think the popularity of this novel had a lot to do with the fact that there weren't a lot of books dealing with this kind of women's experience: the experience of being a woman whose husband has committed this kind of betrayal.

I think the book handled the topic with the same depth of insight as a piece of two-ply toilet paper, but it sure made the author a boatload of money, so my opinion is definitely in the minority.
]]> 3.56 1998 The Pilot's Wife (Fortune's Rocks Quartet, #3)
author: Anita Shreve
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/05
date added: 2024/06/05
shelves: 2024-reads, books-i-really-dislike, chick-lit, contemporary, fiction, main-character-is-a-mouse, no-thanks, one-star-read, romance, why-do-i-hate-myself, women, women-s-fiction-chick-lit, wtf
review:
Published in 1998, and chosen as an Oprah's Book Club pick in 1999, I did not read "The Pilot's Wife," by Anita Shreve, in the years when it was sold in every mainstream bookstore.

In 2009, I picked the book up after an aspiring author told me they were trying to emulate Anita Shreve's prose and content, and named "The Pilot's Wife" as the best of her work. I couldn't get into the first five pages, and DNF'd.

In 2024, I suddenly remembered trying to read this cluster-mess many years ago, and added it to my list of market research reads.

I'm glad I did that, though I really hated the experience of reading this book. I can understand why this book was so popular, but that knowledge always seems like cold comfort after reading something this loathsome.

"The Pilot's Wife" is a one-star read for me personally.

Three stars as a market research read. This novel was definitely not written for me.

I'll include some spoiler thoughts below.

*

**Spoiler warning**

The prose style of this novel was so very similar to Jodi Picoult's writing style that I could not tell the difference. Since I had just recently finished "The Book of Two Ways" before reading "The Pilot's Wife," it kept startling me how many plot elements were similar, with plane crashes, teenage daughters, secret children, secret loves, and all the rest.

I do not like Picoult's writing style and I definitely don't enjoy Shreve's prose style, either. They are such twins of each other that I think of Shreve like the OG to Picoult's bestselling author career.

These authors absolutely write "women's fiction," and while I am sorry that both authors find the term to be so pejorative, it is an accurately descriptive one.

All of the plot beats of this book belong to the romance genre. "The Pilot's Wife" is structurally a romance, one with the plot contrivances of a mystery clumsily -- and quite fantastically -- overlaid.

The protagonist, Kathryn Lyons, is 33 when the novel begins. The reader is left to infer that Kathryn is still stunningly beautiful, and that this is why the union rep who comes to her door -- Robert Hart (who I heard on the audiobook as the ur-obvious "Robert Heart"/OTP du jour) -- is immediately taken with her, and behaves in the most loving way toward her throughout the length of the novel.

Kathryn's father's name is "Bobby" -- and it was not lost on me that the OTP's name is the same as her father's (Robert). In real life, Anita Shreve's father was a pilot for Delta Airlines, just as she wrote Kathryn's husband as being a pilot (for the fictional "Vision" airlines). So there's a lot of great fodder here for how to read the unconscious mind and unconscious longings into an author's work of fiction.

It is immediately revealed in the novel that the plane's black box was recovered, and that authorities suspect that Jack carried a bomb onboard the plane. The CIA and the FBI would have been searching the house, if that were the case. But since "The Pilot's Wife" exists outside reality, then the strictures of reality need not apply.

Jack Lyons (age 51 or 52 at the start of the book) comes across as a total P.O.S. in this novel, and yet no one ever calls him one, not even Kathryn. It is revealed that he basically started a relationship with her in the most predatory way: he was 33 years old (the same exact age as Kathryn is at the start of the book), and Kathryn was only 18 years old when they first meet.

Jack walks into her grandmother's antique store, where Kathryn is working, and immediately wants to date her. His dialogue in this scene is as unrealistic as it is cringe. Later, the reader discovers that both of Kathryn's lifelong-drunken parents had recently died in the same car crash, which is why she had dropped out of college and come to stay with her grandmother.

Kathryn was an emotionally broken girl of 18 when Jack meets her, and he immediately knocks her up. They get married by a justice of the peace when she is a few months pregnant with their now-15-year-old daughter, Mattie.

Kathryn's grandmother never saw anything wrong with Jack... and this is why women need feminism. Because authors like Anita Shreve were penning this stuff into novels in the 1990s and no one was calling this out.

A flashback scene of a fight is included in the story, from anywhere between one to five years before the novel begins, and Jack comes across as the most magnificent asshole. But his behavior is never called out for what it is, and Kathryn never expresses rage over any of it. As a reader, it means I'm left feeling a lot of emotions that are never acknowledged, spoken, validated, or even hinted at anywhere in the narrative.... And that kind of writing is Super Bad News for me, all around.

This level of cluelessness is what really makes Kathryn sound like a child of about four or five throughout the length of the novel, not a grown woman in her early 30s.

According to the rules of patriarchy, women are "not allowed" to express anger, only men are, so I do understand why Kathryn isn't allowed to "have anger" in this book. But I still need to say that she would be feeling a lot of anger, regardless of what "is or isn't allowed" in American culture.

Of course, Jack is lured into criminal activity by a homewrecker named Muire, who is already engaging in criminal activity when the two first hook up.

And of course, Muire goes into full disclosure mode (FDM) regarding her criminal activity in front of Kathryn and a man she has never met before (Robert), even though Muire knows she can go to prison for this and she has two young children to raise. This behavior is so unbelievable that I think watching the 1987 comedy film "Spaceballs" is more realistic than reading this book.

Jack allowed someone to put a bomb into his flight bag, without even looking in his bag before he boarded the flight, and this led to the deaths of 104 people. That kind of ignorant behavior is never called out in the novel, not by Kathryn or anyone else. Kathryn calls it "betrayal" -- that Jack was "betrayed" by people he trusted.

But the truth is, Jack was a fool. He was also a liar, an inveterate liar. His behavior was despicable.

Then the novel ends with Kathryn lying to her daughter about her father's behavior. Kathryn continues to withhold the truth from Mattie: that Mattie has two half-siblings, that her father had a second wife and a second family in London.

Instead of the book standing on any kind of moral grounding -- regarding Jack's lying and his utterly traumatizing betrayal -- the book morally uplifts Kathryn's choice to continue lying to her daughter, and wants the reader to view this choice as good parenting.

For the record, I don't think a lie on that level would have brought Kathryn and Mattie closer together, as this novel depicts. I think Kathryn's choice to keep lying to Mattie would've just torn them further apart. But that is a reality-based view that really has no place in this total fantasy novel.

In short, I hated reading this book and I would recommend it to no one.

As a market research read, I understand that this novel is working as an emotional allegory for all of the unspoken, forbidden rage that women feel when they discover a husband's betrayal.

The story gives readers a wish fulfillment conclusion that simply removing a wedding ring is enough to "heal" this level of trauma: a couple of weeks after Jack's death, Kathryn drops her wedding ring in the sea and states that she has now been "relieved of the burden of love" she had for Jack.

Like, it would be nice I guess if life were that easy. But the truth is, Kathryn would need a ton of therapy and mental health support if what takes place in this novel were true. Jack preyed upon her and used her, and the scar that would leave would be significant. Mattie would also need therapy, counseling, group support, all of that kind of stuff in order to regain any kind of trust in her family unit.

I think the popularity of this novel had a lot to do with the fact that there weren't a lot of books dealing with this kind of women's experience: the experience of being a woman whose husband has committed this kind of betrayal.

I think the book handled the topic with the same depth of insight as a piece of two-ply toilet paper, but it sure made the author a boatload of money, so my opinion is definitely in the minority.

]]> <![CDATA[The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany]]> 767171 No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced an almost hour-by-hour record of the nightmare empire built by Adolph Hitler. This record included the testimony of Nazi leaders and of concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters—all the vast paperwork behind Hitler's drive to conquer the world.

The famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer, who had watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925, spent five and a half years sifting through this massive documentation. The result is a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind.

This worldwide bestseller has been acclaimed as the definitive book on Nazi Germany; it is a classic work.

The accounts of how the United States got involved and how Hitler used Mussolini and Japan are astonishing, and the coverage of the war-from Germany's early successes to her eventual defeat-is must reading

]]> 1147 William L. Shirer 0671728687 Melissa 0 to-read 4.20 1960 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
author: William L. Shirer
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1960
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lights Out 212009455 The viral TikTok stalker dark romance, burning with high heat, hilarious banter, and a love story like you’ve never seen before. Can you handle the ride?

I want someone with a soul as black as night. Someone who would burn the world down for me and not lose a single minute of sleep over it.

Trauma nurse Alyssa Cappellucci doesn’t need any more kinks. She likes the one she’s landed on just fine. To her, nothing could top the masked men she follows online. Unless one of those men was shirtless, heavily tattooed, and waiting for her in her bedroom. She dreams about being hunted by one in particular, of him chasing her down and doing deliciously dark things to her willing body. She never could have guessed that by sending one drunken text, those dreams would become her new reality.


I want things most people don’t, craving darkness and depravity instead of light and love.

Joshua Hammond has an infamous father—the kind of man that true-crime podcasts love talking about. Josh has spent his life avoiding the limelight, but his online persona is another story. At night, he posts masked thirst traps for his millions of fans to drool over, but one follower has caught his Aly. After reading a comment begging him to break into her house wearing a mask, he decides to take her up on her offer.


Together, Aly and Josh live out their darkest fantasies, unaware that Aly has captured the attention of someone else. Someone with far more sinister intentions than a little light stalking. As Josh turns from predator to protector and the stakes heighten, he must ask himself how far he’s willing to go for the woman he’s obsessed with.


Lights Out is a fast-paced dark romance with a morally gray male lead. Some themes and scenes may be disturbing to readers. Please check the TWs at the beginning of the book.
]]> 338 Navessa Allen Melissa 0 to-read 4.40 2024 Lights Out
author: Navessa Allen
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Ask Again, Yes 42201996
Ask Again, Yes is a moving novel about two families, the bond between their children, a tragedy that reverberates over four decades, the daily intimacies of marriage, and the power of forgiveness.]]> 388 Mary Beth Keane 1982106980 Melissa 3
In May of 2024, I spotted the book cover at my library, and remembered seeing it everywhere a few years ago. I decided to pick it up as a market research read.

Sadly, nothing about this book worked for me.

Because I have recently read three novels by Jodi Picoult, I did want to point out that the prose style reminded me a *lot* of a Jodi Picoult novel, especially the storytelling style in "The Book of Two Ways."

A number of Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ reviewers state that "Ask Again, Yes" is literary fiction, but I don't agree. I'd be fine labeling this novel 'upmarket book club fiction,' but not literary.

While it's not a deal-breaker for me, I didn't like any of these characters. Unlikeable characters aside, nothing about the setting or the content helped me connect to the story, either. I didn't find myself absorbed in the plot. The novel seemed entirely focused on relating the most mundane details about life in the most mundane way, and skipped over high action scenes in favor of recapping them as backstory. The storytelling lens never seemed to mature, but remained vague and juvenile up until the end.

I'm glad this book worked for the readers who loved it. I just wasn't the right audience for this one.

One star for me personally.

Three stars as a market research read.

]]> 3.92 2019 Ask Again, Yes
author: Mary Beth Keane
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/04
date added: 2024/05/04
shelves: 2024-reads, contemporary, historical-fiction, fiction, no-thanks, parenting, unlikeable-protagonists, family
review:
First published in May 2019, the historical/contemporary novel "Ask Again, Yes," by Mary Beth Keane, quickly became a bestseller, and garnered a sea of rave reviews.

In May of 2024, I spotted the book cover at my library, and remembered seeing it everywhere a few years ago. I decided to pick it up as a market research read.

Sadly, nothing about this book worked for me.

Because I have recently read three novels by Jodi Picoult, I did want to point out that the prose style reminded me a *lot* of a Jodi Picoult novel, especially the storytelling style in "The Book of Two Ways."

A number of Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ reviewers state that "Ask Again, Yes" is literary fiction, but I don't agree. I'd be fine labeling this novel 'upmarket book club fiction,' but not literary.

While it's not a deal-breaker for me, I didn't like any of these characters. Unlikeable characters aside, nothing about the setting or the content helped me connect to the story, either. I didn't find myself absorbed in the plot. The novel seemed entirely focused on relating the most mundane details about life in the most mundane way, and skipped over high action scenes in favor of recapping them as backstory. The storytelling lens never seemed to mature, but remained vague and juvenile up until the end.

I'm glad this book worked for the readers who loved it. I just wasn't the right audience for this one.

One star for me personally.

Three stars as a market research read.


]]> <![CDATA[Wendy, Darling (Wendy, Darling, #1)]]> 55411567
But Wendy Darling grew up. She has a husband and a young daughter called Jane, a life in London. But on night, after all these years, Peter Pan returns. Wendy finds him outside her daughter's window, looking to claim a new mother for his Lost Boys. But instead of Wendy, he takes Jane.

Now a grown woman, a mother, a patient and a survivor, Wendy must follow Peter back to Neverland to rescue her daughter and finally face the darkness at the heart of the island...]]> 333 A.C. Wise 1789096812 Melissa 3
I'm always intrigued by feminist takes on Peter Pan, so I was happy to give "Wendy, Darling" a try.

Unfortunately, I found the book to be very confused and confusing, with a writing style that definitely did not work for me. The main character, Wendy Darling, was intended to be a sympathetic person, but came across as extremely unlikeable and astoundingly immature, even though she is over the age of 30 and has a young daughter of her own when the story begins.

I can understand what the author was going for, and after listening to her speak about the book, I can appreciate what her intentions were.

But the execution left much to be desired. Sadly, there wasn't a single thing about this book I enjoyed. Wendy's characterization left me feeling a whole lot of WTF, and the story content in Neverland left me repulsed, underwhelmed, and wondering why so many authors feel the need to turn J.M. Barrie's iconic masterwork "Peter Pan" into a seething hellhole of unchecked depravity.

I'm feeling really worn out by this trend. It's like Care Bears meets Saw III and I'm over it.

One star for me personally.

Three stars overall. I was not the intended audience for this book.


]]> 3.57 2021 Wendy, Darling (Wendy, Darling, #1)
author: A.C. Wise
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/27
date added: 2024/04/27
shelves: 2024-reads, books-i-really-dislike, fiction, historical-fiction, main-character-is-a-mouse, no-thanks, why-do-i-hate-myself, women
review:
Published in June 2021, "Wendy, Darling" is the debut novel of historical speculative fiction by A.C. Wise. The book is advertised as "a lush, feminist re-imagining on what happened to Wendy after Neverland, for fans of 'Circe' and 'The Mere Wife.'"

I'm always intrigued by feminist takes on Peter Pan, so I was happy to give "Wendy, Darling" a try.

Unfortunately, I found the book to be very confused and confusing, with a writing style that definitely did not work for me. The main character, Wendy Darling, was intended to be a sympathetic person, but came across as extremely unlikeable and astoundingly immature, even though she is over the age of 30 and has a young daughter of her own when the story begins.

I can understand what the author was going for, and after listening to her speak about the book, I can appreciate what her intentions were.

But the execution left much to be desired. Sadly, there wasn't a single thing about this book I enjoyed. Wendy's characterization left me feeling a whole lot of WTF, and the story content in Neverland left me repulsed, underwhelmed, and wondering why so many authors feel the need to turn J.M. Barrie's iconic masterwork "Peter Pan" into a seething hellhole of unchecked depravity.

I'm feeling really worn out by this trend. It's like Care Bears meets Saw III and I'm over it.

One star for me personally.

Three stars overall. I was not the intended audience for this book.



]]> Dark Matter 205181201 A mindbending, relentlessly surprising thriller from the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy.

Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.

"Are you happy with your life?"

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend."

In this world he's woken up to, Jason's life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that's the dream?

And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could've imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human--a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we'll go to claim the lives we dream of.]]> 368 Blake Crouch 0593875737 Melissa 0 to-read 4.07 2016 Dark Matter
author: Blake Crouch
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Personal Librarian 55333938 This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780593101537.

The remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan's personal librarian—who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray.

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture on the New York society scene and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps build a world-class collection.

But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle's complexion isn't dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white—her complexion is dark because she is African American.

The Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths to which she must go—for the protection of her family and her legacy—to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.]]> 341 Marie Benedict Melissa 3
Sadly, nothing about this book worked for me, though I can tell from my experience reading bestsellers exactly why this novel became so beloved.

I can also understand why some readers found the protagonist unlikeable, though it wasn't her seeming perfectionism that turned me off, but the way the authors chose to characterize her, at age twenty-six, as lacking any personal ambition. I think the real-life Belle da Costa Greene had a lot more interior depth (and sexual awareness of high society men) than the protagonist of this novel had.

I'm glad this book exists for the readers who love it. I'm glad the authors put a spotlight on this facet of history and the issue of passing as white in 1905 New York City and Princeton University.

I'm just not a fan of the stock characterization, allegory emotional storytelling, and the specific set of women's fiction tropes this novel uses.

I had to DNF by page 28 (of 324 pages in my paperback copy).

Three stars.

This one was just not for me.
]]> 3.98 2021 The Personal Librarian
author: Marie Benedict
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/24
date added: 2024/04/24
shelves: 2024-reads, dnf, fiction, historical-fiction, no-thanks, women-history
review:
The 2021 historical novel, "The Personal Librarian," by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, became extremely popular with book clubs and bestseller lists in the U.S.

Sadly, nothing about this book worked for me, though I can tell from my experience reading bestsellers exactly why this novel became so beloved.

I can also understand why some readers found the protagonist unlikeable, though it wasn't her seeming perfectionism that turned me off, but the way the authors chose to characterize her, at age twenty-six, as lacking any personal ambition. I think the real-life Belle da Costa Greene had a lot more interior depth (and sexual awareness of high society men) than the protagonist of this novel had.

I'm glad this book exists for the readers who love it. I'm glad the authors put a spotlight on this facet of history and the issue of passing as white in 1905 New York City and Princeton University.

I'm just not a fan of the stock characterization, allegory emotional storytelling, and the specific set of women's fiction tropes this novel uses.

I had to DNF by page 28 (of 324 pages in my paperback copy).

Three stars.

This one was just not for me.

]]> The Book of Two Ways 50265329
Dawn, miraculously, survives the crash, but so do all the doubts that have suddenly been raised. She has led a good life. Back in Boston, there is her husband, Brian, her beloved daughter, and her work as a death doula, where she helps ease the transition between life and death for patients in hospice.

But somewhere in Egypt is Wyatt Armstrong, who works as an archaeologist unearthing ancient burial sites, a job she once studied for, but was forced to abandon when life suddenly intervened. And now, when it seems that fate is offering her second chances, she is not as sure of the choice she once made.

After the crash landing, the airline ensures the survivors are seen by a doctor, then offers transportation wherever they want to go. The obvious option for Dawn is to continue down the path she is on and go home to her family. The other is to return to the archaeological site she left years before, reconnect with Wyatt and their unresolved history, and maybe even complete her research on The Book of Two Ways--the first known map of the afterlife.

As the story unfolds, Dawn's two possible futures unspool side by side, as do the secrets and doubts long buried beside them. Dawn must confront the questions she's never truly asked: What does a life well-lived look like? When we leave this earth, what do we leave behind? Do we make choices...or do our choices make us? And who would you be, if you hadn't turned out to be the person you are right now?]]> 416 Jodi Picoult 198481835X Melissa 3
Published in 2020, "The Book of Two Ways" is the 26th or 27th-ish novel in the canon of work by this bestselling author of women's fiction. (Picoult finds the term 'women's fiction' pejorative, but I think the term is useful and apt for describing her books.)

In an interview promoting the novel's debut, Picoult stated that she was motivated to center this story on the theme of "the one who got away," and claims that the vast majority of people who come to her book signings fantasize about "going home to someone" who is not their husband.

You can hear the full excerpt at this link:



As someone who doesn't fit this target demographic, since I have never found myself fantasizing about "the one who got away" and I have not enjoyed any of Picoult's work, I'd also like to add that there is an aggressive lack of introspection in this novel. The book offers up a particular kind of power fantasy that is suited to a New Age/law of attraction wish fulfillment that I know readers often find really satisfying in fiction. It just really does *not* work for me.

**unmarked spoilers ahead. Please beware**

The story's central conflict is speaking to the sacrificial choice a lot of women make to provide full-time care to sick family members, underage family members who lack parents, the emotional labor of maintaining a marriage, and the relentless work of parenting one's own children.

The female main character (Dawn/Olive), who has sacrificed every part of her own personal life in order to be a nonstop caregiver to family members, decides on a whim that she deserves the right to walk away from it all, and run back into the arms of "the one who got away": the lover and soulmate she had in graduate school, when she was still on her way to being "an academic. An author. An archaeologist." (p. 395) Before her mother's untimely death and an unexpected pregnancy (over fifteen years prior) made her turn her back on all of that.

*Why* this character (Dawn/Olive) turned her back on her perfect lover, the immensely affluent and stunningly handsome Wyatt, who makes it clear at the end of the novel that he can work out any problem he needs to in order to be with Dawn -- this is never explained in the text. Dawn's entire plot set-up is meant to be vague and unbelievable so that readers can pour their own martyrdom-of-motherhood woes into the story, and be one with the vibes.

In describing the book's plot, Picoult says that the story begins with Dawn on an airplane, and when the plane has "an emergency," Dawn's life flashes before her eyes. The person she sees herself wanting to be with, right then, is not her husband (Brian) or their daughter (Meret), but her lover from graduate school (Wyatt).

Picoult goes on to say that "when the plane lands safely, [...] the book unfolds on two different paths, until you figure out really what the structure of the book might be." (See the 2:50-3:00 minute mark on the YouTube link above.)

I have no idea why an author would outright lie about her own novel this way. I can only assume that Picoult tells these lies because she didn't want to scare readers away from her book by stating the truth: that the novel opens with a horrific plane crash of a large, international commercial airliner (p. 5), and Dawn sustains a head injury that almost kills her. She has to receive emergency brain surgery to treat the "epidural hematoma" from the skull fracture caused by the crash. (p. 359)

Also, this book does *not* "unfold on two different paths." This is a book with one, and only one, thru-story. And the vast bulk of this novel is told as backstory. For pretty much the entire novel, the reader is sifting through a whole bunch of flashbacks that are all told out of sequence.

It's a deliberately coy form of storytelling that is purposefully confusing in order to give the novel a faux form of "depth," and I resent it. Picoult is essentially tricking the reader into thinking there is more to the book than there is, simply by taking advantage of the reader's ignorance in the first fifty pages.

Thanks, I hate it.

Picoult often employs multiple narrators and copious use of flashbacks in her fiction, but "The Book of Two Ways" features one sole protagonist, and there is only one life that Dawn is living in this story.

The Prologue (pages 3-7) introduces Dawn's current-time thru-story to the reader: she survives a horrific plane crash, walks away from the wreckage, and when an airline representative asks her where she would like to go, Dawn informs the reader: "I open my mouth, and I answer."

That's the last line of the prologue (p. 7). The reader is left wondering: where will Dawn go?

Then the vast majority of the book features all of the backstory that describes what led Dawn to being on board the plane that crashed. From page 9 all the way to page 359, the reader is solely reading Dawn's backstory, which finally catches up to the thru-story in the Prologue almost 90% of the way through the book.

That's when the reader learns that Wyatt, the man's face Dawn saw when her life "flashed before her eyes," was actually sitting right next to her on board that plane going down. This is finally the moment when the reader can put all of those flashback scenes into the right order.

My friends, there are only 406 pages in this novel. And if you are wondering if those last few dozen pages provide some satisfying conclusion to the question of "where will Dawn go?" the answer is no. No, the book leaves the reader exactly where they are at the end of the Prologue. The novel even ends on the very same line:

"I open my mouth, and I answer." (p. 406)

Will Dawn choose Wyatt, or Brian? Boston, or Egypt? Who knows, and who cares. Reader, you decide. Picoult has written the ultimate 'choose your own adventure' ending in this bonanza of nonsense titled "The Book of Two Ways."

This novel is a giant exercise in futility. If pointless books are your jam, this one will certainly satisfy.

The book's emotional climax appears on page 372, when Dawn tells her husband, Brian, why she abandoned her trip home from London, and hopped on a plane going to Cairo instead, to spend two weeks at Wyatt's dig site before they boarded the fateful plane that went down. Brian asks Dawn: "Do you have any idea how selfish that was?"

That is when Dawn finally reveals the entire point of this book:

"Selfish," I repeat. "Selfish? Do you know how many people I've put in front of myself for the past fifteen years? My mother. My brother. My clients. Meret. You. Even Wyatt. Everyone else's welfare was more important than mine. I am *always* the last person I think about. So just for a minute -- one *minute* -- I did. I know I didn't do this the right way, if that even exists. I know I should have told you what I was thinking, where I was going. But I had to go, for my own peace of mind. I couldn't stay here and pretend everything was fine, like usual, and let this eat away at me, wondering *what if.* Eventually, there would have been nothing left of me."

While I do genuinely feel bad that soooooo many women find themselves feeling this way, I was not feeling any sympathy toward Dawn. I was never convinced that sacrificing her career or her romance with Wyatt had been necessary. Especially by the end of the book, when it's made abundantly clear that she had never needed to do that. She'd just done it, for reasons that are never explained.

But worst of all, the book was too massively unrealistic and ignorant to gain any of my buy-in for this protagonist. Dawn consistently read like a twelve-year-old, not the accomplished almost-academic of enormous intellect that she was supposed to be.

Also, I just want to point out that Dawn is flying "from Cairo to Boston" when her plane crashes (p. 358), but in the Prologue, it's stated that the plane crashes "short of Raleigh-Durham" (p. 6), which makes no sense to me. Why is the plane that far south? The flight path from Cairo would've arced well north of Boston, to come down at Logan. How in the actual F did the plane end up trying to land at Raleigh-Durham instead?

"The Book of Two Ways" is full of details like this, ones that make no sense and feel like the author thinks I am too ignorant to know that this book is full of shit.

Many readers have complained that this novel features a lot of nonfiction material about Egyptology and quantum physics. That's true. Also true: none of this extensive material has any bearing whatsoever on the story. It's there as filler. It exists for no other reason than just to bump up the word count. And bump it up quite a lot.

I'd recommend this book to any woman who deeply resents her husband and children, and fantasizes that her life would be perfect if she only tracked down "the one who got away," as Dawn does in this novel. Also, since Dawn has a wonderful husband and an amazing teenage daughter, if a reader wants her to stay with her husband, instead of divorcing him to be with Wyatt, the ending is solely up to the reader. Dawn is deeply loved by two men who even get along with each other when they finally meet. The world is her oyster at the end of this book.

For any reader seeking some strong martyrdom-of-motherhood vibes, and likes the idea of reading copious amounts of Egyptology and quantum physics information that has no bearing on the story, definitely add this one to your TBR.

"The Book of Two Ways" is a one-star read for me personally.

But I'm giving it three stars as a market research read.

I had hoped to read at least five Jodi Picoult novels as market research. But I'm stopping at three. I just can't take any more.]]> 3.61 2020 The Book of Two Ways
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/06
date added: 2024/04/10
shelves: 2024-reads, books-i-really-dislike, contemporary, chick-lit, family, fiction, no-thanks, one-star-read, unlikeable-protagonists, why-do-i-hate-myself, women, women-s-fiction-chick-lit, wtf
review:
Reading this book was an exercise in misery. This novel is the third and final book I'll be picking up by Jodi Picoult.

Published in 2020, "The Book of Two Ways" is the 26th or 27th-ish novel in the canon of work by this bestselling author of women's fiction. (Picoult finds the term 'women's fiction' pejorative, but I think the term is useful and apt for describing her books.)

In an interview promoting the novel's debut, Picoult stated that she was motivated to center this story on the theme of "the one who got away," and claims that the vast majority of people who come to her book signings fantasize about "going home to someone" who is not their husband.

You can hear the full excerpt at this link:



As someone who doesn't fit this target demographic, since I have never found myself fantasizing about "the one who got away" and I have not enjoyed any of Picoult's work, I'd also like to add that there is an aggressive lack of introspection in this novel. The book offers up a particular kind of power fantasy that is suited to a New Age/law of attraction wish fulfillment that I know readers often find really satisfying in fiction. It just really does *not* work for me.

**unmarked spoilers ahead. Please beware**

The story's central conflict is speaking to the sacrificial choice a lot of women make to provide full-time care to sick family members, underage family members who lack parents, the emotional labor of maintaining a marriage, and the relentless work of parenting one's own children.

The female main character (Dawn/Olive), who has sacrificed every part of her own personal life in order to be a nonstop caregiver to family members, decides on a whim that she deserves the right to walk away from it all, and run back into the arms of "the one who got away": the lover and soulmate she had in graduate school, when she was still on her way to being "an academic. An author. An archaeologist." (p. 395) Before her mother's untimely death and an unexpected pregnancy (over fifteen years prior) made her turn her back on all of that.

*Why* this character (Dawn/Olive) turned her back on her perfect lover, the immensely affluent and stunningly handsome Wyatt, who makes it clear at the end of the novel that he can work out any problem he needs to in order to be with Dawn -- this is never explained in the text. Dawn's entire plot set-up is meant to be vague and unbelievable so that readers can pour their own martyrdom-of-motherhood woes into the story, and be one with the vibes.

In describing the book's plot, Picoult says that the story begins with Dawn on an airplane, and when the plane has "an emergency," Dawn's life flashes before her eyes. The person she sees herself wanting to be with, right then, is not her husband (Brian) or their daughter (Meret), but her lover from graduate school (Wyatt).

Picoult goes on to say that "when the plane lands safely, [...] the book unfolds on two different paths, until you figure out really what the structure of the book might be." (See the 2:50-3:00 minute mark on the YouTube link above.)

I have no idea why an author would outright lie about her own novel this way. I can only assume that Picoult tells these lies because she didn't want to scare readers away from her book by stating the truth: that the novel opens with a horrific plane crash of a large, international commercial airliner (p. 5), and Dawn sustains a head injury that almost kills her. She has to receive emergency brain surgery to treat the "epidural hematoma" from the skull fracture caused by the crash. (p. 359)

Also, this book does *not* "unfold on two different paths." This is a book with one, and only one, thru-story. And the vast bulk of this novel is told as backstory. For pretty much the entire novel, the reader is sifting through a whole bunch of flashbacks that are all told out of sequence.

It's a deliberately coy form of storytelling that is purposefully confusing in order to give the novel a faux form of "depth," and I resent it. Picoult is essentially tricking the reader into thinking there is more to the book than there is, simply by taking advantage of the reader's ignorance in the first fifty pages.

Thanks, I hate it.

Picoult often employs multiple narrators and copious use of flashbacks in her fiction, but "The Book of Two Ways" features one sole protagonist, and there is only one life that Dawn is living in this story.

The Prologue (pages 3-7) introduces Dawn's current-time thru-story to the reader: she survives a horrific plane crash, walks away from the wreckage, and when an airline representative asks her where she would like to go, Dawn informs the reader: "I open my mouth, and I answer."

That's the last line of the prologue (p. 7). The reader is left wondering: where will Dawn go?

Then the vast majority of the book features all of the backstory that describes what led Dawn to being on board the plane that crashed. From page 9 all the way to page 359, the reader is solely reading Dawn's backstory, which finally catches up to the thru-story in the Prologue almost 90% of the way through the book.

That's when the reader learns that Wyatt, the man's face Dawn saw when her life "flashed before her eyes," was actually sitting right next to her on board that plane going down. This is finally the moment when the reader can put all of those flashback scenes into the right order.

My friends, there are only 406 pages in this novel. And if you are wondering if those last few dozen pages provide some satisfying conclusion to the question of "where will Dawn go?" the answer is no. No, the book leaves the reader exactly where they are at the end of the Prologue. The novel even ends on the very same line:

"I open my mouth, and I answer." (p. 406)

Will Dawn choose Wyatt, or Brian? Boston, or Egypt? Who knows, and who cares. Reader, you decide. Picoult has written the ultimate 'choose your own adventure' ending in this bonanza of nonsense titled "The Book of Two Ways."

This novel is a giant exercise in futility. If pointless books are your jam, this one will certainly satisfy.

The book's emotional climax appears on page 372, when Dawn tells her husband, Brian, why she abandoned her trip home from London, and hopped on a plane going to Cairo instead, to spend two weeks at Wyatt's dig site before they boarded the fateful plane that went down. Brian asks Dawn: "Do you have any idea how selfish that was?"

That is when Dawn finally reveals the entire point of this book:

"Selfish," I repeat. "Selfish? Do you know how many people I've put in front of myself for the past fifteen years? My mother. My brother. My clients. Meret. You. Even Wyatt. Everyone else's welfare was more important than mine. I am *always* the last person I think about. So just for a minute -- one *minute* -- I did. I know I didn't do this the right way, if that even exists. I know I should have told you what I was thinking, where I was going. But I had to go, for my own peace of mind. I couldn't stay here and pretend everything was fine, like usual, and let this eat away at me, wondering *what if.* Eventually, there would have been nothing left of me."

While I do genuinely feel bad that soooooo many women find themselves feeling this way, I was not feeling any sympathy toward Dawn. I was never convinced that sacrificing her career or her romance with Wyatt had been necessary. Especially by the end of the book, when it's made abundantly clear that she had never needed to do that. She'd just done it, for reasons that are never explained.

But worst of all, the book was too massively unrealistic and ignorant to gain any of my buy-in for this protagonist. Dawn consistently read like a twelve-year-old, not the accomplished almost-academic of enormous intellect that she was supposed to be.

Also, I just want to point out that Dawn is flying "from Cairo to Boston" when her plane crashes (p. 358), but in the Prologue, it's stated that the plane crashes "short of Raleigh-Durham" (p. 6), which makes no sense to me. Why is the plane that far south? The flight path from Cairo would've arced well north of Boston, to come down at Logan. How in the actual F did the plane end up trying to land at Raleigh-Durham instead?

"The Book of Two Ways" is full of details like this, ones that make no sense and feel like the author thinks I am too ignorant to know that this book is full of shit.

Many readers have complained that this novel features a lot of nonfiction material about Egyptology and quantum physics. That's true. Also true: none of this extensive material has any bearing whatsoever on the story. It's there as filler. It exists for no other reason than just to bump up the word count. And bump it up quite a lot.

I'd recommend this book to any woman who deeply resents her husband and children, and fantasizes that her life would be perfect if she only tracked down "the one who got away," as Dawn does in this novel. Also, since Dawn has a wonderful husband and an amazing teenage daughter, if a reader wants her to stay with her husband, instead of divorcing him to be with Wyatt, the ending is solely up to the reader. Dawn is deeply loved by two men who even get along with each other when they finally meet. The world is her oyster at the end of this book.

For any reader seeking some strong martyrdom-of-motherhood vibes, and likes the idea of reading copious amounts of Egyptology and quantum physics information that has no bearing on the story, definitely add this one to your TBR.

"The Book of Two Ways" is a one-star read for me personally.

But I'm giving it three stars as a market research read.

I had hoped to read at least five Jodi Picoult novels as market research. But I'm stopping at three. I just can't take any more.
]]> <![CDATA[Death in Brittany (Commissaire Dupin #1)]]> 23014714
A summer hit in its original German, Death in Pont-Aven introduces readers to the enigmatic Commissaire Dupin, an idiosyncratic penguin lover and Parisian-born caffeine junkie whose unique methods of detection raise more than a few eyebrows. It is a book so atmospheric readers will immediately want to wander through the village’s narrow alleyways, breathe in the Atlantic air and savour Brittany’s seaside specialty dishes. Death in Pont-Aven is a spellbinding, subtle and smart crime novel, peppered with cryptic humour and surprising twists.]]> 320 Jean-Luc Bannalec 1250061741 Melissa 3
If you've read "All the Light We Cannot See," you might remember that the walled city of Saint-Malo is featured prominently in that novel (and in its television adaptation, released in 2023). Saint-Malo is one of the many places in Brittany that is extremely popular with tourists.

I've never visited Brittany, but I would guess that the man who recommended this book to me -- an older gentleman in his late sixties -- probably has. He told me he's planning to ride a BMW motorcycle through France this summer (in 2024), as part of a tour group.

Anyway, back to the book.

I assumed that reading the novel would evoke a sense of awe for the setting. But no. I'd recommend people simply watch YouTube videos of travelers touring the area, if anyone wants to armchair-travel this region. "Death in Brittany" has some of the most lackluster setting description I've ever read in a book. The fantastically dull 2021 mystery, "The Last Thing He Told Me," featured more setting description than "Death in Brittany" did.... and that's really saying something.

As to the characters, the protagonist is the classic archetype of murder-mysteries: the gruff, emotionally unavailable hard-boiled detective that this genre thrives on. White, male, able-bodied, neurotypical. You know the drill.

This one's name is Commissaire Georges Dupin. He's crotchety and prone to whingeing, but he's also 'brilliant,' apparently, and always gets his man. Or woman, I should say. One of the mainstays of murder-mysteries is that the great 'plot twist' is usually the Big Reveal at the end that a WOMAN is the heinous killer: SURPRISE! Standard villain monologues, in which the dastardly female 'reveals all' to the stoic detective most often ensue.

For readers who love to see Evil Women being stopped by the Lone White Man of Justice, and then listen to these women spilling their guts about 'why they did it' for no other reason than 'the plot said so,' this book will definitely satisfy.

I honestly struggle to see any appeal in reading this book. Sure, it's a trope-fest, but it's the most lackluster sort of trope delivery I've ever seen.

First, the action scenes are always skipped over, and summarized dully as backstory, despite the fact that there are only one or two places in the entire text in which there was any direct action.

Second, the vast majority of the book is devoted to Dupin whingeing about how hungry and/or thirsty and/or tired he is. This is such a turn-off for me. If you enjoy protagonists who are constantly irritated by life in general, and never take care of themselves, choices which only exacerbate their incessant complaining, this book will be a huge hit.

Third, the dialogue was also unpleasant. This novel read like a shoddy 1950s stage play, most of the time, and also like aliens from a distant galaxy were inhabiting the characters. People in the 2000s do not talk this way. Not in France or anywhere else.

Fourth, I didn't even get some pleasant travelogue material out of this book. Dupin's 'asshole energy' toward everything, including the setting, did not endear me to Brittany. Dupin complained about the weather, the swarms of tourists, the 'inauthentic' restaurants that catered to tourists.... I got the impression that the author owns a second home in Brittany, and wrote this book just to make the whole area seem so unappealing to travelers that they stayed away, so the author would have an easier time finding parking around local attractions.

The best character in this book was Dupin's second in command, a totally great guy named Le Ber. I really wish Le Ber had been the main character. But then the book would read more like a James Bond thriller, and completely lack the crusty hard-boiled detective stuff that lights up the mystery genre.

Madame Cassel felt way too perfect to be real. I could say the same of Le Ber, but his unquestioned devotion to Dupin didn't rub me the wrong way, since they were on the police force together, and Le Ber was always getting paid for his work, whereas Madame Cassel was an unpaid 'helper' turned unpaid employee of Dupin, and doing it all with a smile and constant graciousness. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

But for readers who love to see pretty white women falling all over themselves to serve the lone white detective who must 'get his man' (or Evil Woman) at any cost, then Madame Cassel will go over well.

All of the characters in this book felt like they'd been ordered up from Central Casting, French noir subsidiary. I felt like I was watching a badly written play being staged, and all of these stock characters still had the script in their hands, their delivery was so stiff and unemotional.

"Death in Brittany" is the most paint-by-numbers murder-mystery I've read in a while. It's the kind of book that is so boring and pointless, you feel your life slipping away into the void as you read it.

I'm definitely not the target audience for this genre.

Negative stars, for me personally. I'd rather sit in silence and watch paint dry. I would feel a lot less existential angst wasting my time in that way.

Three stars because I recognize that this book is a super trope-fest, and that means it has plenty of fans. "Death in Brittany" is the first in a series of mystery novels starring Dupin. But my journey with this whingeing male lead ends here.

]]> 3.54 2012 Death in Brittany (Commissaire Dupin #1)
author: Jean-Luc Bannalec
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/08
date added: 2024/03/08
shelves: 2024-reads, books-i-really-dislike, contemporary, fiction, mystery, no-thanks, one-star-read, why-do-i-hate-myself, unlikeable-protagonists
review:
Published in 2012, "Death in Brittany," by Jean-Luc Bannalec (which is the pen name of German author Jörg Bong), is the first book in a murder mystery series set in beautiful Brittany, France: the largest peninsula of France, which is also France's northwestern-most region, a hilly landmass featuring a lot of rugged coastline and picturesque views of the Atlantic Ocean.

If you've read "All the Light We Cannot See," you might remember that the walled city of Saint-Malo is featured prominently in that novel (and in its television adaptation, released in 2023). Saint-Malo is one of the many places in Brittany that is extremely popular with tourists.

I've never visited Brittany, but I would guess that the man who recommended this book to me -- an older gentleman in his late sixties -- probably has. He told me he's planning to ride a BMW motorcycle through France this summer (in 2024), as part of a tour group.

Anyway, back to the book.

I assumed that reading the novel would evoke a sense of awe for the setting. But no. I'd recommend people simply watch YouTube videos of travelers touring the area, if anyone wants to armchair-travel this region. "Death in Brittany" has some of the most lackluster setting description I've ever read in a book. The fantastically dull 2021 mystery, "The Last Thing He Told Me," featured more setting description than "Death in Brittany" did.... and that's really saying something.

As to the characters, the protagonist is the classic archetype of murder-mysteries: the gruff, emotionally unavailable hard-boiled detective that this genre thrives on. White, male, able-bodied, neurotypical. You know the drill.

This one's name is Commissaire Georges Dupin. He's crotchety and prone to whingeing, but he's also 'brilliant,' apparently, and always gets his man. Or woman, I should say. One of the mainstays of murder-mysteries is that the great 'plot twist' is usually the Big Reveal at the end that a WOMAN is the heinous killer: SURPRISE! Standard villain monologues, in which the dastardly female 'reveals all' to the stoic detective most often ensue.

For readers who love to see Evil Women being stopped by the Lone White Man of Justice, and then listen to these women spilling their guts about 'why they did it' for no other reason than 'the plot said so,' this book will definitely satisfy.

I honestly struggle to see any appeal in reading this book. Sure, it's a trope-fest, but it's the most lackluster sort of trope delivery I've ever seen.

First, the action scenes are always skipped over, and summarized dully as backstory, despite the fact that there are only one or two places in the entire text in which there was any direct action.

Second, the vast majority of the book is devoted to Dupin whingeing about how hungry and/or thirsty and/or tired he is. This is such a turn-off for me. If you enjoy protagonists who are constantly irritated by life in general, and never take care of themselves, choices which only exacerbate their incessant complaining, this book will be a huge hit.

Third, the dialogue was also unpleasant. This novel read like a shoddy 1950s stage play, most of the time, and also like aliens from a distant galaxy were inhabiting the characters. People in the 2000s do not talk this way. Not in France or anywhere else.

Fourth, I didn't even get some pleasant travelogue material out of this book. Dupin's 'asshole energy' toward everything, including the setting, did not endear me to Brittany. Dupin complained about the weather, the swarms of tourists, the 'inauthentic' restaurants that catered to tourists.... I got the impression that the author owns a second home in Brittany, and wrote this book just to make the whole area seem so unappealing to travelers that they stayed away, so the author would have an easier time finding parking around local attractions.

The best character in this book was Dupin's second in command, a totally great guy named Le Ber. I really wish Le Ber had been the main character. But then the book would read more like a James Bond thriller, and completely lack the crusty hard-boiled detective stuff that lights up the mystery genre.

Madame Cassel felt way too perfect to be real. I could say the same of Le Ber, but his unquestioned devotion to Dupin didn't rub me the wrong way, since they were on the police force together, and Le Ber was always getting paid for his work, whereas Madame Cassel was an unpaid 'helper' turned unpaid employee of Dupin, and doing it all with a smile and constant graciousness. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

But for readers who love to see pretty white women falling all over themselves to serve the lone white detective who must 'get his man' (or Evil Woman) at any cost, then Madame Cassel will go over well.

All of the characters in this book felt like they'd been ordered up from Central Casting, French noir subsidiary. I felt like I was watching a badly written play being staged, and all of these stock characters still had the script in their hands, their delivery was so stiff and unemotional.

"Death in Brittany" is the most paint-by-numbers murder-mystery I've read in a while. It's the kind of book that is so boring and pointless, you feel your life slipping away into the void as you read it.

I'm definitely not the target audience for this genre.

Negative stars, for me personally. I'd rather sit in silence and watch paint dry. I would feel a lot less existential angst wasting my time in that way.

Three stars because I recognize that this book is a super trope-fest, and that means it has plenty of fans. "Death in Brittany" is the first in a series of mystery novels starring Dupin. But my journey with this whingeing male lead ends here.


]]> <![CDATA[Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning]]> 134156069 Read by Liz Cheney with 50+ audio source material clips included, Oath and Honor is a gripping first-hand account from inside the halls of Congress as Donald Trump and his enablers betrayed the American people and the Constitution—leading to the violent attack on our Capitol on January 6th, 2021—by the House Republican leader who dared to stand up to it.

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump and many around him, including certain other elected Republican officials, intentionally breached their oath to the Constitution: they ignored the rulings of dozens of courts, plotted to overturn a lawful election, and provoked a violent attack on our Capitol.

Liz Cheney, one of the few Republican officials to take a stand against these efforts, witnessed the attack first-hand, and then helped lead the Congressional Select Committee investigation into how it happened. In Oath and Honor, she tells the story of this perilous moment in our history, those who helped Trump spread the stolen election lie, those whose actions preserved our constitutional framework, and the risks we still face.]]> 381 Liz Cheney 031657208X Melissa 3
Then she 'got some morals,' or something. And she's ready for her Gold Star for being.... an upstanding member of the GOP, apparently. Go, team.

"Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning," by Liz Cheney, was first published on Dec. 5, 2023. This book is making bank with Trump-hating Democrats. Since Liz Cheney voted with Trump over 93% of the time during her time in office, I fail to see the appeal.

I tried my best to read this thing, I really did. I made it 110 pages in before I just couldn't take anymore, and DNF'd. The hypocrisy in these pages is thick enough to cut with a knife.

Liz Cheney makes it abundantly clear that she is more than happy with Trump and the GOP, so long as the lies they are peddling are about bombing the sh*t out of people abroad, terrorizing and deporting immigrants, giving tax cuts to the wealthy, and doing everything they can to f*ck over the poor.

But when Trump's lies put Cheney's own precious life at risk, and she is suddenly the one facing the fire of the GOP's jingoistic lies and total bullshit, well then, she draws the line, y'all. And boy, is she here to make it clear that she respects the U.S. Constitution. Or something like that.

Liz Cheney wants it to be known that even though she did everything she could to put Trump in the White House, and staunchly supported him throughout his 2017-2021 term as U.S. President, she was pretty angry that he turned against her after the 2020 election, and treated her like common scum, and she's like, a real patriot, people. Plus a lot of Democrats apparently love her now. Liz wants to make sure the U.S. Constitution remains in place to keep people like herself safe from mobs. And she definitely wants to make sure that the jingoistic GOP rhetoric goes back to targeting people who don't have her pedigree.

Way to go, Liz! Sorry if I won't be buying any of your Team Cheney t-shirts. I guess I can't financially contribute to your special 'I'm not as bad as these other Trumpers' place in insurrectionist hell.

I'm glad that Liz Cheney has her fans. Good on her for finding some kind of morality after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

One star for me personally.

Three stars overall, because I know I am not the right audience for this book. I felt *more* disgusted by Liz Cheney for having read 110 pages of this book, not less.


]]> 4.58 2023 Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning
author: Liz Cheney
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/04
date added: 2024/03/04
shelves: 2024-reads, contemporary, nonfiction, politics, why-do-i-hate-myself, unlikeable-protagonists, real-life-monsters, no-thanks
review:
Ah, good ol' Liz. She was so happy to S Trump's D for so many years, playing a starring role in the GOP gonzo orchestrated by MAGA Republicans, up until the moment Trump sent his mob into the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and she suddenly realized she might star in a snuff film.

Then she 'got some morals,' or something. And she's ready for her Gold Star for being.... an upstanding member of the GOP, apparently. Go, team.

"Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning," by Liz Cheney, was first published on Dec. 5, 2023. This book is making bank with Trump-hating Democrats. Since Liz Cheney voted with Trump over 93% of the time during her time in office, I fail to see the appeal.

I tried my best to read this thing, I really did. I made it 110 pages in before I just couldn't take anymore, and DNF'd. The hypocrisy in these pages is thick enough to cut with a knife.

Liz Cheney makes it abundantly clear that she is more than happy with Trump and the GOP, so long as the lies they are peddling are about bombing the sh*t out of people abroad, terrorizing and deporting immigrants, giving tax cuts to the wealthy, and doing everything they can to f*ck over the poor.

But when Trump's lies put Cheney's own precious life at risk, and she is suddenly the one facing the fire of the GOP's jingoistic lies and total bullshit, well then, she draws the line, y'all. And boy, is she here to make it clear that she respects the U.S. Constitution. Or something like that.

Liz Cheney wants it to be known that even though she did everything she could to put Trump in the White House, and staunchly supported him throughout his 2017-2021 term as U.S. President, she was pretty angry that he turned against her after the 2020 election, and treated her like common scum, and she's like, a real patriot, people. Plus a lot of Democrats apparently love her now. Liz wants to make sure the U.S. Constitution remains in place to keep people like herself safe from mobs. And she definitely wants to make sure that the jingoistic GOP rhetoric goes back to targeting people who don't have her pedigree.

Way to go, Liz! Sorry if I won't be buying any of your Team Cheney t-shirts. I guess I can't financially contribute to your special 'I'm not as bad as these other Trumpers' place in insurrectionist hell.

I'm glad that Liz Cheney has her fans. Good on her for finding some kind of morality after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

One star for me personally.

Three stars overall, because I know I am not the right audience for this book. I felt *more* disgusted by Liz Cheney for having read 110 pages of this book, not less.



]]> Tom Lake 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X Melissa 1
I found the parental messaging in this book deplorable. The story presents the act of lying to one's own children and spouse about paternity questions as a morally righteous act, and presents the act of toxic secret-keeping as 'mother knows best' parenting goalz.

"Tom Lake" disgusted and sickened me. The plot twists are all revealed in the penultimate chapter, Chapter 20, and it was a horrifying level of mindf*ckery to realize I'd been following an unreliable narrator the whole time, a character who was not only happily participating in behavior that I morally condemn, but was also being touted as the moral hero of the story as well.

I was ready to DNF this novel by page 80, it had become so wish-fulfillment ridiculous as well as utterly boring, but I was curious to know why this book is currently such a commercial success, and that kept me going. I reached the last page on March 3, 2024.

My takeaways from this book are reflections on the extent that people lie to themselves and others to such a massive degree, and how so many people must want to believe that there aren't any consequences for lying to their own children about their identities.

Lara is the protagonist, and it is my fervent hope that her eldest daughter, Emily, have children of her own one day, and that something happens with those children, medically, that reveals the true nature of Emily's parentage, and that Lara be brought to task for the lies she has so skillfully dished out to her children and spouse for the entirety of her marriage and motherhood. Not to mention the fact that Peter Duke never learned that he had a daughter.

"Tom Lake" is the most saccharine novel I have read in quite a long time. Color me surprised when I learned, near the very last page, that I'd been consuming treacle poison with each sentence.

I am NOT the intended reader for this book. I would recommend "Tom Lake" to no one.

Negative stars.

I often give my market research reads three stars, as a testament to the fact that I know that I am not the intended audience for a book that I hated. But in the case of this novel, a one-star is far too generous a rating for this piece of garbage.

If moral bankruptcy as motherly righteousness is your jam, this book will definitely satisfy.]]> 3.92 2023 Tom Lake
author: Ann Patchett
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at: 2024/03/04
date added: 2024/03/04
shelves: 2024-reads, books-i-really-dislike, contemporary, family, fiction, no-thanks, one-star-read, parenting, recommended-for-no-one, should-never-have-finished, unlikeable-protagonists, why-do-i-hate-myself, women-s-fiction-chick-lit, wtf
review:
Published on August 1, 2023, the contemporary women's fiction novel, "Tom Lake," by Ann Patchett, has been riding high on the NYT bestseller list, which was why I finally decided to check it out.

I found the parental messaging in this book deplorable. The story presents the act of lying to one's own children and spouse about paternity questions as a morally righteous act, and presents the act of toxic secret-keeping as 'mother knows best' parenting goalz.

"Tom Lake" disgusted and sickened me. The plot twists are all revealed in the penultimate chapter, Chapter 20, and it was a horrifying level of mindf*ckery to realize I'd been following an unreliable narrator the whole time, a character who was not only happily participating in behavior that I morally condemn, but was also being touted as the moral hero of the story as well.

I was ready to DNF this novel by page 80, it had become so wish-fulfillment ridiculous as well as utterly boring, but I was curious to know why this book is currently such a commercial success, and that kept me going. I reached the last page on March 3, 2024.

My takeaways from this book are reflections on the extent that people lie to themselves and others to such a massive degree, and how so many people must want to believe that there aren't any consequences for lying to their own children about their identities.

Lara is the protagonist, and it is my fervent hope that her eldest daughter, Emily, have children of her own one day, and that something happens with those children, medically, that reveals the true nature of Emily's parentage, and that Lara be brought to task for the lies she has so skillfully dished out to her children and spouse for the entirety of her marriage and motherhood. Not to mention the fact that Peter Duke never learned that he had a daughter.

"Tom Lake" is the most saccharine novel I have read in quite a long time. Color me surprised when I learned, near the very last page, that I'd been consuming treacle poison with each sentence.

I am NOT the intended reader for this book. I would recommend "Tom Lake" to no one.

Negative stars.

I often give my market research reads three stars, as a testament to the fact that I know that I am not the intended audience for a book that I hated. But in the case of this novel, a one-star is far too generous a rating for this piece of garbage.

If moral bankruptcy as motherly righteousness is your jam, this book will definitely satisfy.
]]> <![CDATA[Take the Lead: Hanging On, Letting Go, and Conquering Life's Hardest Climbs]]> 75700704 World champion climber Sasha DiGiulian tells her story—from coming of age under the scrutiny of social media, navigating a male-dominated sport, and tackling her most heart-stopping climbs—and shares the power of perseverance and positivity.

At age six, Sasha DiGiulian stepped into a climbing gym for the first time and was competing within a year. Decked out in all-pink gear and with her blonde hair tied into pigtails, Sasha knew from an early age what it was like to be a girl in a traditionally male-dominated sport, vowing to never sacrifice her femininity to fit in. With a fierce love for the climb and incredible natural talent, Sasha soon won her first National Sport Climbing Championship at only seventeen, and a year later took the title of World Champion.

To her fans, it looked like Sasha was on top of the world. But under the accolades, she was just another young woman learning how to handle the intense scrutiny of social media and dealing with body dysmorphia, all while quietly facing a potentially career-ending injury. In a relatable and inspiring voice, Take the Lead reflects on the highs and lows of Sasha’s illustrious life and career for the first time, bringing readers on her remarkable journey from novice climber to Columbia University graduate, adventurer, environmentalist, and entrepreneur, and one of the most recognizable faces in climbing.

For readers of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and Megan Rapinoe’s One Life, Take the Lead ultimately emphasizes the power of perseverance, fearlessness and positivity in tackling some of the most daunting and fearsome climbs—on and off the wall.]]> 278 Sasha DiGiulian 1250280710 Melissa 4
Before reading this memoir, I knew absolutely nothing about rock climbing, and I'd never heard of DiGiulian before. I'm also not on Instagram, so I'm completely unfamiliar with her huge following on social media. I've never seen any of DiGiulian's media content, either on her own social media platforms or in any of her mainstream media appearances.

I only found out about this book a few weeks ago, because Aspen Winter Words featured DiGiulian as their February 2024 guest speaker. DiGiulian looks like a supermodel in the author photo for this event. She is a very beautiful young woman.

I read this book in about two weeks, and while I did learn quite a bit about rock climbing, the book didn't leave me with a good impression of the sport. It seems like an activity that the ultra-wealthy engage in, flying all over the world, racing around in chartered planes and helicopters trying to 'outdo' each other nonstop. The competition for money, status, 'first' ascents [called 'sends'], and bragging rights, all while competing in a sport that requires hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, and probably a lot more than that for DiGiulian, just left a bad taste in my mouth.

Other readers have remarked that there is a lot of unexamined, unremarked upon socioeconomic privilege in this book, and I definitely agree. It becomes really off-putting at times.

DiGiulian is earnest and sincere. I do think she is speaking from the heart in these pages.

"Take the Lead" is a 'success and meritocracy' narrative, and DiGiulian's commitment to positivity is relentless.

I wanted to DNF so many times. I kept hoping for something deeper on the page, some richer level of soulfulness; I wanted a payoff for pushing through. But this book doesn't have the kind of depth I was hoping for.

DiGiulian is honest about difficult aspects of climbing. I definitely learned a lot from this book, even if the author's narrative choices and the money required to do this sport really put me off.

2 stars for me personally.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4 overall, because I know I'm not the intended reader for this book.]]> 3.97 Take the Lead: Hanging On, Letting Go, and Conquering Life's Hardest Climbs
author: Sasha DiGiulian
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.97
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/15
date added: 2024/02/15
shelves: 2024-reads, adventure, contemporary, memoir, nonfiction
review:
Published in September 2023, "Take the Lead: Hanging On, Letting Go, and Conquering Life's Hardest Climbs," by Sasha DiGiulian, is a memoir of the author's life of becoming a world champion climber. DiGiulian mostly climbs rock surfaces, but she also competes in ice climbing and non-rock climbing surfaces, too.

Before reading this memoir, I knew absolutely nothing about rock climbing, and I'd never heard of DiGiulian before. I'm also not on Instagram, so I'm completely unfamiliar with her huge following on social media. I've never seen any of DiGiulian's media content, either on her own social media platforms or in any of her mainstream media appearances.

I only found out about this book a few weeks ago, because Aspen Winter Words featured DiGiulian as their February 2024 guest speaker. DiGiulian looks like a supermodel in the author photo for this event. She is a very beautiful young woman.

I read this book in about two weeks, and while I did learn quite a bit about rock climbing, the book didn't leave me with a good impression of the sport. It seems like an activity that the ultra-wealthy engage in, flying all over the world, racing around in chartered planes and helicopters trying to 'outdo' each other nonstop. The competition for money, status, 'first' ascents [called 'sends'], and bragging rights, all while competing in a sport that requires hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, and probably a lot more than that for DiGiulian, just left a bad taste in my mouth.

Other readers have remarked that there is a lot of unexamined, unremarked upon socioeconomic privilege in this book, and I definitely agree. It becomes really off-putting at times.

DiGiulian is earnest and sincere. I do think she is speaking from the heart in these pages.

"Take the Lead" is a 'success and meritocracy' narrative, and DiGiulian's commitment to positivity is relentless.

I wanted to DNF so many times. I kept hoping for something deeper on the page, some richer level of soulfulness; I wanted a payoff for pushing through. But this book doesn't have the kind of depth I was hoping for.

DiGiulian is honest about difficult aspects of climbing. I definitely learned a lot from this book, even if the author's narrative choices and the money required to do this sport really put me off.

2 stars for me personally.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4 overall, because I know I'm not the intended reader for this book.
]]> <![CDATA[What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma]]> 58214328 A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life.

"Every cell in my body is filled with the code of generations of trauma, of death, of birth, of migration, of history that I cannot understand. . . . I want to have words for what my bones know."

By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.

Both of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.

In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don't move on from trauma—but you can learn to move with it.

Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body—and examines one woman's ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.]]> 352 Stephanie Foo 0593238109 Melissa 5
This book is part memoir, part Intro 101 class on C-PTSD (complex PTSD).

The author doesn't cite any material from Pete Walker's seminal 2013 work on the subject (though she does cite his description of 'the 4Fs' from his website, on p. 323), and there was absolutely no mention of John Bradshaw in this book; these authors have been crucial in my own journey thus far. Any mention of inner child work in this memoir is relegated to the pages that feature Dr. Ham.

I picked up this book in order to learn more about Dr. Jacob Ham, and while "What My Bones Know" is a very fast read, I admit that I was anxious at first, and then increasingly bummed that it took so long for him to appear. Of the 317 pages of this memoir, Foo's therapy sessions with Dr. Ham are covered in about 50 pages near the end (p.252-299). I wish it had been more, but I was *thrilled* with what I got.

It motivated me to start rewatching a number of the YouTube videos featuring Dr. Ham that I have already seen, and I felt like I got even more out of them after reading Foo's far more detailed descriptions of working with him in this book.

I'm so glad that Stephanie Foo had the opportunity to receive free therapy sessions with Dr. Ham, and I'm incredibly thankful that she shared her therapy journey with the world.

I'm really glad I had a chance to read this memoir.

Highly recommended.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5]]> 4.50 2022 What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
author: Stephanie Foo
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/15
date added: 2024/02/15
shelves: 2024-reads, books-that-make-life-worth-living, contemporary, family, immigrant-stories, memoir, nonfiction, parenting, racism, self-help, therapy
review:
Published in 2022, "What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma," by Stephanie Foo, is an excellent work of nonfiction.

This book is part memoir, part Intro 101 class on C-PTSD (complex PTSD).

The author doesn't cite any material from Pete Walker's seminal 2013 work on the subject (though she does cite his description of 'the 4Fs' from his website, on p. 323), and there was absolutely no mention of John Bradshaw in this book; these authors have been crucial in my own journey thus far. Any mention of inner child work in this memoir is relegated to the pages that feature Dr. Ham.

I picked up this book in order to learn more about Dr. Jacob Ham, and while "What My Bones Know" is a very fast read, I admit that I was anxious at first, and then increasingly bummed that it took so long for him to appear. Of the 317 pages of this memoir, Foo's therapy sessions with Dr. Ham are covered in about 50 pages near the end (p.252-299). I wish it had been more, but I was *thrilled* with what I got.

It motivated me to start rewatching a number of the YouTube videos featuring Dr. Ham that I have already seen, and I felt like I got even more out of them after reading Foo's far more detailed descriptions of working with him in this book.

I'm so glad that Stephanie Foo had the opportunity to receive free therapy sessions with Dr. Ham, and I'm incredibly thankful that she shared her therapy journey with the world.

I'm really glad I had a chance to read this memoir.

Highly recommended.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5
]]> <![CDATA[Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are]]> 11282018

Topics include:

ĚýĚýĚý•ĚýHow to cultivate loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity
ĚýĚýĚý•ĚýConscious parenting
ĚýĚýĚý•ĚýSpirituality and sexuality
ĚýĚýĚý•ĚýThe way of forgiveness

ĚýĚýĚý•ĚýCommitting ourselves to healing the suffering in the world
Bringing Home the Dharma includes simple meditation practices for awakening our buddha nature—our wise and understanding heart—amid the ups and downs of our ordinary daily lives.]]> 304 Jack Kornfield 1590309138 Melissa 4
Parts of this book were very dry and made for dull reading for me, especially in the first half. It took me over two months to finish "Bringing Home the Dharma," and I found myself missing the beautiful self-help Zen energy that infused "No Time Like the Present," which is the only other book I've yet read by this author.

The second half of "Bringing Home the Dharma" was much more enjoyable, most notably when Kornfield acknowledges that meditation and Buddhist practice cannot necessarily heal trauma, or make anyone more self-aware of their own abusive behavior. Parts of this book dip into memoir material, and Kornfield opened up about seeing a therapist to deal with his own childhood trauma, even after years and years of being an acclaimed Buddhist teacher. I was very much here for it.

I love this author, and I know I'll keep reading his books. He has so many to choose from. I've come to his books after having spent many hours listening to him on YouTube, especially on the Be Here Now Network (the Heart Wisdom episodes). I only discovered Jack Kornfield in 2023, after a friend brought him to my attention.

I give "Bringing Home the Dharma" a solid four stars. I'm glad that I read this. I look forward to reading more from Jack Kornfield.






]]> 4.06 2011 Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are
author: Jack Kornfield
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/29
date added: 2024/01/29
shelves: 2024-reads, contemporary, nonfiction, religion, self-help
review:
Published in 2011, "Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are," by Jack Kornfield, is a nonfiction book examining the different schools of Buddhism, especially how those different schools are being adopted, blended, or used antagonistically against each other in the U.S.

Parts of this book were very dry and made for dull reading for me, especially in the first half. It took me over two months to finish "Bringing Home the Dharma," and I found myself missing the beautiful self-help Zen energy that infused "No Time Like the Present," which is the only other book I've yet read by this author.

The second half of "Bringing Home the Dharma" was much more enjoyable, most notably when Kornfield acknowledges that meditation and Buddhist practice cannot necessarily heal trauma, or make anyone more self-aware of their own abusive behavior. Parts of this book dip into memoir material, and Kornfield opened up about seeing a therapist to deal with his own childhood trauma, even after years and years of being an acclaimed Buddhist teacher. I was very much here for it.

I love this author, and I know I'll keep reading his books. He has so many to choose from. I've come to his books after having spent many hours listening to him on YouTube, especially on the Be Here Now Network (the Heart Wisdom episodes). I only discovered Jack Kornfield in 2023, after a friend brought him to my attention.

I give "Bringing Home the Dharma" a solid four stars. I'm glad that I read this. I look forward to reading more from Jack Kornfield.







]]> There There 36692478 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525520375.

Tommy Orange's wondrous and shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize.

Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle's death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American--grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism.

Hailed as an instant classic, There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.]]> 294 Tommy Orange Melissa 3
The book has a strong Prologue, and I enjoyed the first character introduction in Part I, that of Tony Loneman.

But after that, this book consistently went downhill for me, dropping from a solid 4-star read into 2-star and even 1-star territory. The urge to DNF became unbearable, and I put the book down by page 100, then forced myself to pick it up again and keep reading. By page 105, I hit an internal wall of resistance so strong that my willpower to keep reading was crushed. That wall was made up of all the unspoken certainty that there would be no payoff for carefully reading this book.

I skipped to page 220, and read the last 70 pages, to see where this was going. To see if I could dismantle my DNF wall, and carefully read the middle section. Sadly, the last 70 pages confirmed for me that my reader mind had not led me astray, that I had been right to close the door on this book.

Due to my lack of investment, I know that these characters will not stay with me. As fiction, this book had zero emotional impact for me, other than moments of reflection in asking myself, 'Why isn't this working for me, when so many other readers 5-starred this book?'

*spoilers ahead*

*stop reading here to avoid spoilers, thanks*

I like that Orange used multiple narratives of grandmothers being primary caregivers for young children. I wish the overarching narrative had drawn that out more, and capitalized on the multiple women in this novel who completely shoulder the work of raising the next generation: what that means for a culture, and for society at large. I know that literary fiction draws its greatest source of power from all of the inferencing the reader is forced to do, but the level of inferencing in "There There" felt excessive, crossing the line from "inferred conclusions" into "total meaninglessness" and "beyond the author's intention."

I like that multiple characters longed for their fathers. But then the text puts the missing fathers onto the page, too. So what is left completely unexplored is the psychology of abandoning children, as well as the psychology of fathering multiple children through rape. Even the psychology of two children born of rape and/or never knowing their biological parents who unwittingly sort-of date each other as adults: Orange introduces that reality to the reader only through complete inference, because the only thing one of the two characters is suddenly aware of is meeting her biological mother for the first time, whereas her male friend/colleague is meeting his biological father for the first time. Neither one even knows that they are half-siblings before the shooting begins.

And maybe that's meant to be an unspoken theme of the book: the complicated, unknown ways that we are related to each other, as humans born of histories of rape and adultery, etc.

But that was certainly not my takeaway. I don't see that inference being upheld by the novel. I feel like I'm trying to put meaning onto something that textually felt entirely random to the story and completely contrived by the author. Not for the purpose of making meaning, but for the purpose of spectacle.

As to the mass shooting: the reader is left to infer that one of the drug dealers smuggled metal guns into the powwow, or most likely, more than one of them. This inference can be made by the fact that ammunition is smuggled into the powwow, so metal weapons were most likely smuggled in as well.

The reader is left to infer that only metal weapons could produce the mass killing that takes place at the powwow, since Orange does show Tony Loneman having to throw down the 3D-printed handgun soon after firing it, because it is too hot to handle. Plastic guns are also notorious for lasting only one or two rounds before falling apart, and with so many bullets fatally wounding so many people in this climactic scene, representing dozens of bullets being fired in a matter of seconds, I can only assume that metals guns are in the hands of multiple killers.

The reader is also left to infer why the drug dealers decided to kill their associates in public like that, during the robbery, rather than shoot them later, in secret, as would make any kind of logical sense. There is no explanation given as to why the objective to steal a box full of gift cards turns into a mass killing.

Again, maybe Orange meant this as a reference to the tide of history: that in order for white colonists to steal something/take something by force, a mass killing had to take place. But this inference doesn't feel upheld by the text; it feels like me reaching for something to make meaning of a passage of text that felt entirely meaningless.

Orange writes of Orvil's fate: "She has to wait and see what the number of swings [of the hospital doors opening] will say. The doors come to a rest on the number eight, and Opal breathes in deep, then lets out a sigh and looks up to see what the doctor has to say." (p. 285)

Orange's follow-up novel is being published next month (February 2024), and Orvil is a main character in that book. "Wandering Stars" will pick up with Orvil again after surviving this shooting. I'm sad to say that I have zero desire to continue on with his story.

I agree with reviewers who state that this book has more to say about poverty in general than about Indigenous people. I'd like to add that the dire consequences of parental abandonment, regardless of socioeconomic status, is a massive part of this book.

In "There There," the poverty and fractured families of the characters are both a legacy of racism and colonialism as well as a rupturing force cutting them off from their Indigenous history and identity.

I appreciate reading about that reality. I picked up this book expecting to love it, especially after the Prologue opened the novel in such a powerful way.

I also deeply appreciate that this novel is Orange's long meditation on his own fractured identity as a Native American, as an urban American whose white mother made the choice to cut him off from his Native father.

This life experience makes for rich reading material. If Orange ever pens a memoir, I want to read it.

But as to this novel, it fell flat for me. The choice to focus so much on poverty, familial abandonment, and sociopathic drug dealers felt like spectacle to me, just more depiction of Native Americans as alcoholic, substance-abusing f*ck-ups. People who are their own worst enemy. I really didn't need this. The depiction of an overweight millennial Native man living off his white mother, crying and whining and literally sh*tting his pants at age thirty, this also felt like spectacle to me. I don't feel like "There There" is doing the representation of urban Indians any favors.

I personally recommend the work of Anton Treuer so much more. He has such a richer depiction of the varied lives of Native Americans, including urban Natives.

And I know Sherman Alexie has been shunned by the literati, for his misogynistic behavior with women, to the point that Tommy Orange had to distance himself from Alexie and Alexie's support of his work, but I just want to say: Alexie's work also dealt with urban Indians. Including urban Indians who are completely cut off from their heritage, and have no ties to any tribal membership or reservation.

I think that touting Tommy Orange as doing something that has never been done before has more to do with market positioning than it has to do with reality.

Regardless, I'm glad that Tommy Orange has done so well with this book, and that for a great number of readers, this novel has had enormous value.

I just wasn't the right audience for "There There."

Three stars.
]]> 3.98 2018 There There
author: Tommy Orange
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/27
date added: 2024/01/27
shelves: 2024-reads, contemporary, family, fiction, indigenous, literary-fiction, no-thanks, racism
review:
Published in June 2018, "There There" is the highly acclaimed and bestselling literary debut of Tommy Orange.

The book has a strong Prologue, and I enjoyed the first character introduction in Part I, that of Tony Loneman.

But after that, this book consistently went downhill for me, dropping from a solid 4-star read into 2-star and even 1-star territory. The urge to DNF became unbearable, and I put the book down by page 100, then forced myself to pick it up again and keep reading. By page 105, I hit an internal wall of resistance so strong that my willpower to keep reading was crushed. That wall was made up of all the unspoken certainty that there would be no payoff for carefully reading this book.

I skipped to page 220, and read the last 70 pages, to see where this was going. To see if I could dismantle my DNF wall, and carefully read the middle section. Sadly, the last 70 pages confirmed for me that my reader mind had not led me astray, that I had been right to close the door on this book.

Due to my lack of investment, I know that these characters will not stay with me. As fiction, this book had zero emotional impact for me, other than moments of reflection in asking myself, 'Why isn't this working for me, when so many other readers 5-starred this book?'

*spoilers ahead*

*stop reading here to avoid spoilers, thanks*

I like that Orange used multiple narratives of grandmothers being primary caregivers for young children. I wish the overarching narrative had drawn that out more, and capitalized on the multiple women in this novel who completely shoulder the work of raising the next generation: what that means for a culture, and for society at large. I know that literary fiction draws its greatest source of power from all of the inferencing the reader is forced to do, but the level of inferencing in "There There" felt excessive, crossing the line from "inferred conclusions" into "total meaninglessness" and "beyond the author's intention."

I like that multiple characters longed for their fathers. But then the text puts the missing fathers onto the page, too. So what is left completely unexplored is the psychology of abandoning children, as well as the psychology of fathering multiple children through rape. Even the psychology of two children born of rape and/or never knowing their biological parents who unwittingly sort-of date each other as adults: Orange introduces that reality to the reader only through complete inference, because the only thing one of the two characters is suddenly aware of is meeting her biological mother for the first time, whereas her male friend/colleague is meeting his biological father for the first time. Neither one even knows that they are half-siblings before the shooting begins.

And maybe that's meant to be an unspoken theme of the book: the complicated, unknown ways that we are related to each other, as humans born of histories of rape and adultery, etc.

But that was certainly not my takeaway. I don't see that inference being upheld by the novel. I feel like I'm trying to put meaning onto something that textually felt entirely random to the story and completely contrived by the author. Not for the purpose of making meaning, but for the purpose of spectacle.

As to the mass shooting: the reader is left to infer that one of the drug dealers smuggled metal guns into the powwow, or most likely, more than one of them. This inference can be made by the fact that ammunition is smuggled into the powwow, so metal weapons were most likely smuggled in as well.

The reader is left to infer that only metal weapons could produce the mass killing that takes place at the powwow, since Orange does show Tony Loneman having to throw down the 3D-printed handgun soon after firing it, because it is too hot to handle. Plastic guns are also notorious for lasting only one or two rounds before falling apart, and with so many bullets fatally wounding so many people in this climactic scene, representing dozens of bullets being fired in a matter of seconds, I can only assume that metals guns are in the hands of multiple killers.

The reader is also left to infer why the drug dealers decided to kill their associates in public like that, during the robbery, rather than shoot them later, in secret, as would make any kind of logical sense. There is no explanation given as to why the objective to steal a box full of gift cards turns into a mass killing.

Again, maybe Orange meant this as a reference to the tide of history: that in order for white colonists to steal something/take something by force, a mass killing had to take place. But this inference doesn't feel upheld by the text; it feels like me reaching for something to make meaning of a passage of text that felt entirely meaningless.

Orange writes of Orvil's fate: "She has to wait and see what the number of swings [of the hospital doors opening] will say. The doors come to a rest on the number eight, and Opal breathes in deep, then lets out a sigh and looks up to see what the doctor has to say." (p. 285)

Orange's follow-up novel is being published next month (February 2024), and Orvil is a main character in that book. "Wandering Stars" will pick up with Orvil again after surviving this shooting. I'm sad to say that I have zero desire to continue on with his story.

I agree with reviewers who state that this book has more to say about poverty in general than about Indigenous people. I'd like to add that the dire consequences of parental abandonment, regardless of socioeconomic status, is a massive part of this book.

In "There There," the poverty and fractured families of the characters are both a legacy of racism and colonialism as well as a rupturing force cutting them off from their Indigenous history and identity.

I appreciate reading about that reality. I picked up this book expecting to love it, especially after the Prologue opened the novel in such a powerful way.

I also deeply appreciate that this novel is Orange's long meditation on his own fractured identity as a Native American, as an urban American whose white mother made the choice to cut him off from his Native father.

This life experience makes for rich reading material. If Orange ever pens a memoir, I want to read it.

But as to this novel, it fell flat for me. The choice to focus so much on poverty, familial abandonment, and sociopathic drug dealers felt like spectacle to me, just more depiction of Native Americans as alcoholic, substance-abusing f*ck-ups. People who are their own worst enemy. I really didn't need this. The depiction of an overweight millennial Native man living off his white mother, crying and whining and literally sh*tting his pants at age thirty, this also felt like spectacle to me. I don't feel like "There There" is doing the representation of urban Indians any favors.

I personally recommend the work of Anton Treuer so much more. He has such a richer depiction of the varied lives of Native Americans, including urban Natives.

And I know Sherman Alexie has been shunned by the literati, for his misogynistic behavior with women, to the point that Tommy Orange had to distance himself from Alexie and Alexie's support of his work, but I just want to say: Alexie's work also dealt with urban Indians. Including urban Indians who are completely cut off from their heritage, and have no ties to any tribal membership or reservation.

I think that touting Tommy Orange as doing something that has never been done before has more to do with market positioning than it has to do with reality.

Regardless, I'm glad that Tommy Orange has done so well with this book, and that for a great number of readers, this novel has had enormous value.

I just wasn't the right audience for "There There."

Three stars.

]]> <![CDATA[Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and THE WASHINGTON POST]]> 65211803
Politics. Money. Media. Tech. …It’s all here in Collision of Power.

� All the President's Men for a new generation.� � Town & Country

Marty Baron took charge of The Washington Post newsroom in 2013, after nearly a dozen years leading The Boston Globe . Just seven months into his new job, Baron received explosive Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, would buy the Post , marking a sudden end to control by the venerated family that had presided over the paper for 80 years. Just over two years later, Donald Trump won the presidency.

Now, the capital’s newspaper, owned by one of the world’s richest men, was tasked with reporting on a president who had campaigned against the press as the “lowest form of humanity.� Pressures on Baron and his colleagues were immense and unrelenting, having to meet the demands of their new owner while contending with a president who waged a war of unprecedented vitriol and vengeance against the media.

In the face of Trump’s unceasing attacks, Baron steadfastly managed the Post ’s newsroom. Their groundbreaking and award-winning coverage included stories about Trump’s purported charitable giving, misconduct by the Secret Service, and Roy Moore’s troubling sexual history. At the same time, Baron managed a restive staff during a period of rapidly changing societal dynamics around gender and race.
In Collision of Power , Baron recounts this with the tenacity of a reporter and the sure hand of an experienced editor. The result is elegant and revelatory―an urgent exploration of the nature of power in the 21st century.]]> 549 Martin Baron 1250844207 Melissa 0 to-read 4.18 Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and THE WASHINGTON POST
author: Martin Baron
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.18
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Storyteller 15753740
Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t, and they become companions.

Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret—one that nobody else in town would ever suspect—and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With her own identity suddenly challenged, and the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family. When does a moral choice become a moral imperative? And where does one draw the line between punishment and justice, forgiveness and mercy?

In this searingly honest novel, Jodi Picoult gracefully explores the lengths we will go in order to protect our families and to keep the past from dictating the future]]> 461 Jodi Picoult 1439102767 Melissa 3
It amazes me that this novel is already over ten years old. I didn't know it existed until I decided I should finally read some books by Jodi Picoult, at the tail end of 2023. This was the second book of hers I have tried (read in January 2024), with "Small Great Things" being my first.

I had to DNF "The Storyteller" around 40% of the way into the audiobook. I found this novel unbearable. It amazes me that anyone can even finish it.

I thought this 2-star Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ review by Georgie, posted on December 18, 2023, was the very best plot summary and book review for this book that I've read:

"A story within a story within a story and he’s the GOOD Nazi, okay!!!"

Chef's kiss.

And a big thank-you to all the one and two-star reviewers who described the book's ending in their reviews. I so appreciated seeing the plot twists spelled out. To know that those nonsensical twists were coming facilitated my decision to DNF. Getting to that ending was just not worth it to me.

I do think that this novel followed the same formula that "Small Great Things" did: Picoult picked heavy nonfiction subjects (racism, the Holocaust) that she wanted to didactically describe to her readers, and for her fans, these books do a great job at teaching them things that they didn't previously know.

I don't turn to novels for my nonfiction though. I also find what is being taught in these books incredibly faulty at times, to put it mildly. I think the didactic lessons in these novels are often as accurate as the medical information on popular dramedy TV shows.

I do think that Sage, the main character in "The Storyteller," turned a lot of readers off right away because she is having an affair with a married man at the start of the book.

For me, I don't mind that the protagonist is making this choice. While it doesn't endear her to me, it doesn't make me want to DNF, either.

Picoult's insistence that the reader sympathize with a murdering SS member, though: I could not take this. It enraged and sickened me, and it reminded me so much of her treatment of Turk in "Small Great Things," how the reader was meant to be super compassionate toward an uber-violent U.S. neo-Nazi, who faces no consequences for any of his many crimes in the book.

I can't take this in my fiction. Especially when the novel already exists in such a fantasy headspace, as this book does, with its extremely silly depiction of an FBI agent and the gratuitous violence on display in the vampire fairy tale, etc. For the readers who found this book "way too dark, way too sad, and way too grim to keep reading," I totally feel that.

A year after this novel was published, Anthony Doerr's "All the Light We Cannot See" hit bookstore shelves (in May 2014), and I was one of many thousands of readers who 5-starred that book. The Nazi characters are drawn in a way to evoke sympathy and compassion, while at the same time facing dire consequences for their choices. I was there for it.

Ditto Ruta Sepetys' 2016 bestseller, "Salt to the Sea." Another sympathetic, compassionate examination of Nazis, and the children of Nazis, while not sparing anyone the dire consequences of those choices and realities.

Josef (who has two other names in this novel) is spared the thing he most fears: having his "legacy" as an upstanding member of the New Hampshire community tarnished by the truth of what he has done (during WWII), by standing trial, and having the world know of his deeds.

This is much the way Picoult treated Turk in "Small Great Things." And I just can't with it.

Negative stars, for me personally. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.

Three stars because I know I am not the right reader for this book.]]> 4.28 2013 The Storyteller
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/19
date added: 2024/01/19
shelves: 2024-reads, books-i-really-dislike, women-s-fiction-chick-lit, unlikeable-protagonists, contemporary, dnf, fiction, main-character-is-a-mouse, no-thanks, one-star-read, women, wtf
review:
First published on Feb. 26, 2013, "The Storyteller," by Jodi Picoult, is a romance novel sandwich, a women's fiction fantasy sandwich with a lot of Holocaust information serving as its faux-deep filling. Chick lit romance is the bread: the alpha and omega of this novel. A vampire fairy tale, sympathetic portrayals of murdering Nazis, and [the part that I skipped] a blend of "Schindler's List," "Night," "The Pianist," and other accounts of surviving the Holocaust make up the hearty fixings of this fictional meal.

It amazes me that this novel is already over ten years old. I didn't know it existed until I decided I should finally read some books by Jodi Picoult, at the tail end of 2023. This was the second book of hers I have tried (read in January 2024), with "Small Great Things" being my first.

I had to DNF "The Storyteller" around 40% of the way into the audiobook. I found this novel unbearable. It amazes me that anyone can even finish it.

I thought this 2-star Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ review by Georgie, posted on December 18, 2023, was the very best plot summary and book review for this book that I've read:

"A story within a story within a story and he’s the GOOD Nazi, okay!!!"

Chef's kiss.

And a big thank-you to all the one and two-star reviewers who described the book's ending in their reviews. I so appreciated seeing the plot twists spelled out. To know that those nonsensical twists were coming facilitated my decision to DNF. Getting to that ending was just not worth it to me.

I do think that this novel followed the same formula that "Small Great Things" did: Picoult picked heavy nonfiction subjects (racism, the Holocaust) that she wanted to didactically describe to her readers, and for her fans, these books do a great job at teaching them things that they didn't previously know.

I don't turn to novels for my nonfiction though. I also find what is being taught in these books incredibly faulty at times, to put it mildly. I think the didactic lessons in these novels are often as accurate as the medical information on popular dramedy TV shows.

I do think that Sage, the main character in "The Storyteller," turned a lot of readers off right away because she is having an affair with a married man at the start of the book.

For me, I don't mind that the protagonist is making this choice. While it doesn't endear her to me, it doesn't make me want to DNF, either.

Picoult's insistence that the reader sympathize with a murdering SS member, though: I could not take this. It enraged and sickened me, and it reminded me so much of her treatment of Turk in "Small Great Things," how the reader was meant to be super compassionate toward an uber-violent U.S. neo-Nazi, who faces no consequences for any of his many crimes in the book.

I can't take this in my fiction. Especially when the novel already exists in such a fantasy headspace, as this book does, with its extremely silly depiction of an FBI agent and the gratuitous violence on display in the vampire fairy tale, etc. For the readers who found this book "way too dark, way too sad, and way too grim to keep reading," I totally feel that.

A year after this novel was published, Anthony Doerr's "All the Light We Cannot See" hit bookstore shelves (in May 2014), and I was one of many thousands of readers who 5-starred that book. The Nazi characters are drawn in a way to evoke sympathy and compassion, while at the same time facing dire consequences for their choices. I was there for it.

Ditto Ruta Sepetys' 2016 bestseller, "Salt to the Sea." Another sympathetic, compassionate examination of Nazis, and the children of Nazis, while not sparing anyone the dire consequences of those choices and realities.

Josef (who has two other names in this novel) is spared the thing he most fears: having his "legacy" as an upstanding member of the New Hampshire community tarnished by the truth of what he has done (during WWII), by standing trial, and having the world know of his deeds.

This is much the way Picoult treated Turk in "Small Great Things." And I just can't with it.

Negative stars, for me personally. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.

Three stars because I know I am not the right reader for this book.
]]> Go as a River 63922274 A sweeping, heart-stopping epic of a young woman's journey to becoming, set against the harsh beauty of mid-century Colorado

On a cool autumn day in 1948, Victoria Nash delivers late-season peaches from her family's farm set amid the wild beauty of Colorado. As she heads into her village, a disheveled stranger stops to ask her the way. How she chooses to answer will unknowingly alter the course of both their young lives.

So begins the mesmerizing story of split-second choices and courageous acts that propel Victoria away from the only home she has ever known and towards a reckoning with loss, hope and her own untapped strength.

Gathering all the pieces of her small and extraordinary existence, spinning through the eddies of desire, heartbreak and betrayal, she will arrive at a single rocky decision that will change her life forever.

Go as a River is a heart-wrenching coming-of-age story and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettable characters and a breathtaking natural setting, it is a sweeping story of survival and becoming, of the deepest mysteries of love, truth and fate.]]> 320 Shelley Read 1954118236 Melissa 3
My review was too long to fit on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ, so in order to read my thoughts, you'll need to go to this link:



I would NOT recommend reading this review if you enjoyed this novel.

One star for me personally.

Three stars because I know I am not the right audience for this book. ]]> 4.20 2023 Go as a River
author: Shelley Read
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/01/16
shelves: 2024-reads, ableist-bullsh-t, books-i-really-dislike, women-s-fiction-chick-lit, women, why-do-i-hate-myself, family, historical-fiction, indigenous, no-thanks, one-star-read, racism, wtf
review:
Sadly, I did not enjoy this book.

My review was too long to fit on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ, so in order to read my thoughts, you'll need to go to this link:



I would NOT recommend reading this review if you enjoyed this novel.

One star for me personally.

Three stars because I know I am not the right audience for this book.
]]> <![CDATA[Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process]]> 628975 Writing With Power speaks to everyone who has wrestled with words while seeking to gain power with them. Here, Peter Elbow emphasizes that the essential activities underlying good writing and the essential exercises promoting it are really not difficult at all.

Employing a cookbook approach, Elbow provides the reader (and writer) with various recipes: for getting words down on paper, for revising, for dealing with an audience, for getting feedback on a piece of writing, and still other recipes for approaching the mystery of power in writing. In a new introduction, he offers his reflections on the original edition, discusses the responses from people who have followed his techniques, how his methods may differ from other processes, and how his original topics are still pertinent to today's writer. By taking risks and embracing mistakes, Elbow hopes the writer may somehow find a hold on the creative process and be able to heighten two mentalities--the production of writing and the revision of it.

From students and teachers to novelists and poets, Writing with Power reminds us that we can celebrate the uses of mystery, chaos, nonplanning, and magic, while achieving analysis, conscious control, explicitness, and care in whatever it is we set down on paper.
]]> 416 Peter Elbow 0195120183 Melissa 4
An uncle loaned me this book in October 2023, and I admit: I’d never heard of Peter Elbow before then. While reading this book, I did some research on composition studies, and it turns out that Elbow is a major figure in the evolving field of composition and rhetoric.

I think “Writing with Power� is a good read, and I think much of what Elbow introduced in his work has been taken up by so many writing instructors across the U.S. that his ideas now pass as “the norm.� I’ve unknowingly become highly familiar with Elbow’s ideas ever since I started reading craft books in the mid-2000s.

I think this book would’ve been a lot more useful to read when I was just starting out. Some of the chapters, on Audience and Feedback, in particular, are extremely relevant and necessary for writers today. A lot of writing instructors pay little to no attention to those topics, and Elbow writes with insight and clarity on the subject.

Other parts of the book, I was very much less impressed with, and definitely bored by, being overly familiar with the subject matter. Had I read this book earlier in my life, I would have certainly found it more interesting.

For me, “Writing with Power� was a 2-star read. I’m glad I had a chance to take a look at it, and to reflect on the evolution of how writing is taught in the United States. But this book wasn’t a good fit for me at this stage in my life.

Four stars as a seminal work on writing craft. Elbow has clearly altered the entire field of writing instruction, to everyone’s benefit.

Highly recommended to any writers who are just starting out.


]]> 3.89 1981 Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process
author: Peter Elbow
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1981
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/01/16
shelves: 2023-reads, nonfiction, writing
review:
First published in 1981, “Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process,� by Peter Elbow, was the author’s follow-up nonfiction book after his bestseller, “Writing without Teachers,� took the writing world by storm.

An uncle loaned me this book in October 2023, and I admit: I’d never heard of Peter Elbow before then. While reading this book, I did some research on composition studies, and it turns out that Elbow is a major figure in the evolving field of composition and rhetoric.

I think “Writing with Power� is a good read, and I think much of what Elbow introduced in his work has been taken up by so many writing instructors across the U.S. that his ideas now pass as “the norm.� I’ve unknowingly become highly familiar with Elbow’s ideas ever since I started reading craft books in the mid-2000s.

I think this book would’ve been a lot more useful to read when I was just starting out. Some of the chapters, on Audience and Feedback, in particular, are extremely relevant and necessary for writers today. A lot of writing instructors pay little to no attention to those topics, and Elbow writes with insight and clarity on the subject.

Other parts of the book, I was very much less impressed with, and definitely bored by, being overly familiar with the subject matter. Had I read this book earlier in my life, I would have certainly found it more interesting.

For me, “Writing with Power� was a 2-star read. I’m glad I had a chance to take a look at it, and to reflect on the evolution of how writing is taught in the United States. But this book wasn’t a good fit for me at this stage in my life.

Four stars as a seminal work on writing craft. Elbow has clearly altered the entire field of writing instruction, to everyone’s benefit.

Highly recommended to any writers who are just starting out.



]]> Small Great Things 41021501
Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a winning strategy. Conflicted by Kennedy's counsel, Ruth tries to keep life as normal as possible for her family—especially her teenage son—as the case becomes a media sensation. As the trial moves forward, Ruth and Kennedy must gain each other's trust, and come to see that what they've been taught their whole lives about others—and themselves—might be wrong.

With incredible empathy, intelligence, and candor, Jodi Picoult tackles race, privilege, prejudice, justice, and compassion—and doesn't offer easy answers. Small Great Things is a remarkable achievement from a writer at the top of her game.]]> 510 Jodi Picoult 034554496X Melissa 3
This book is an excellent blend of "The Help" meets "American Dirt," only with the Black urban experience being the focus of this particular thought experiment exercise, rather than undocumented immigrants crossing the border.

I don't think this book would've sold as well in a post-George Floyd America. I really see this novel as being a product of its time, especially with its gratuitous, relentless use of the n-word. Turk's POV is especially egregious, but even Kennedy (the female Atticus Finch) uses it freely in recounting a story from childhood.

Ruth goes from being a highly principled, incredibly restrained person, in complete control of herself, and transforms into an Angry Black Woman stereotype (less than a third of the way into the book), a transformation that was completely unbelievable. Ruth's immature and nasty behavior, which was written to put her in stark contrast to the Atticus Finch vibes from Kennedy, was incredibly grating to me. It burns us.

Ruth gets abandoned by her union representative at the first sign of trouble at the hospital. She's just fed to the sharks by her union, who hang up the phone on her and go no-contact. That is not realistic at all.

The more ignorant the reader is about the actual legal system, unions, and the Black labor involved in understanding racism as a tool of oppression, the more rewarding this book is to read. The content of this novel was nails on a chalkboard to me.

Fun fact: the actual legal case this novel was based on did not involve a dead baby, and did not involve a White Savior lawyer. Four Black nurses sued their hospital in Flint, Michigan (a few years before this book was published) after the head nurse wrote on a Post It note, which was placed in a baby's file: "No African American to touch this child" (or something like that; it's on record online; Picoult used the same text in this novel), and the hospital settled out of court with all four of those women, under charges of racism (for obeying the wishes of a white supremacist patient who didn't want Black people touching his baby). The women were each awarded around $65,000.00.

Another fun fact: Ruth is not awarded ANY money in this novel, and the hospital is never found guilty of racial misconduct at all. Instead, White Savior Kennedy (the white woman lawyer who is totes awesome) gets to have her own Awakening to Racism, and then teach Ruth all about what Black people need.

Also, Turk (the violent white supremacist neo-Nazi) gets entirely forgiven! And redeemed with a whole new wife, a whole new baby to love! Even Ruth forgives Turk everything! Yay for White people!

Turk beats a homeless man to death in this novel, and never faces legal consequences for that crime, or for any of the horrible violence he commits in this book. Yay for White people!

In case it's not clear, the 'yay' statements are meant as sarcasm. I was not a fan.

I did not enjoy this book, and would not recommend it. I think novels like this are what I would be forced to read in Hell.

Three stars because I know I am not the audience for this book.




]]> 4.38 2016 Small Great Things
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/13
date added: 2024/01/13
shelves: 2024-reads, books-i-really-dislike, contemporary, fiction, no-thanks, racism, real-life-monsters, society-drama, women, women-s-fiction-chick-lit
review:
Published in October 2016, "Small Great Things," by Jodi Picoult, is a well-intentioned novel meant to teach the reader (in the author's own words, in YouTube videos available online) about racism in America, complete with a heavy dose of White Saviorism via a female version of Atticus Finch, who gets to teach the Black protagonist the word 'equity' at the end of the book, explain what it is, and then tells the woman that what Black people need is equity.

This book is an excellent blend of "The Help" meets "American Dirt," only with the Black urban experience being the focus of this particular thought experiment exercise, rather than undocumented immigrants crossing the border.

I don't think this book would've sold as well in a post-George Floyd America. I really see this novel as being a product of its time, especially with its gratuitous, relentless use of the n-word. Turk's POV is especially egregious, but even Kennedy (the female Atticus Finch) uses it freely in recounting a story from childhood.

Ruth goes from being a highly principled, incredibly restrained person, in complete control of herself, and transforms into an Angry Black Woman stereotype (less than a third of the way into the book), a transformation that was completely unbelievable. Ruth's immature and nasty behavior, which was written to put her in stark contrast to the Atticus Finch vibes from Kennedy, was incredibly grating to me. It burns us.

Ruth gets abandoned by her union representative at the first sign of trouble at the hospital. She's just fed to the sharks by her union, who hang up the phone on her and go no-contact. That is not realistic at all.

The more ignorant the reader is about the actual legal system, unions, and the Black labor involved in understanding racism as a tool of oppression, the more rewarding this book is to read. The content of this novel was nails on a chalkboard to me.

Fun fact: the actual legal case this novel was based on did not involve a dead baby, and did not involve a White Savior lawyer. Four Black nurses sued their hospital in Flint, Michigan (a few years before this book was published) after the head nurse wrote on a Post It note, which was placed in a baby's file: "No African American to touch this child" (or something like that; it's on record online; Picoult used the same text in this novel), and the hospital settled out of court with all four of those women, under charges of racism (for obeying the wishes of a white supremacist patient who didn't want Black people touching his baby). The women were each awarded around $65,000.00.

Another fun fact: Ruth is not awarded ANY money in this novel, and the hospital is never found guilty of racial misconduct at all. Instead, White Savior Kennedy (the white woman lawyer who is totes awesome) gets to have her own Awakening to Racism, and then teach Ruth all about what Black people need.

Also, Turk (the violent white supremacist neo-Nazi) gets entirely forgiven! And redeemed with a whole new wife, a whole new baby to love! Even Ruth forgives Turk everything! Yay for White people!

Turk beats a homeless man to death in this novel, and never faces legal consequences for that crime, or for any of the horrible violence he commits in this book. Yay for White people!

In case it's not clear, the 'yay' statements are meant as sarcasm. I was not a fan.

I did not enjoy this book, and would not recommend it. I think novels like this are what I would be forced to read in Hell.

Three stars because I know I am not the audience for this book.





]]> <![CDATA[Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn't Food� and Why Can't We Stop?]]> 74843812 An eye-opening investigation into the science, economics, history and production of ultra-processed food.

It's not you, it's the food.

We have entered a new 'age of eating' where most of our calories come from an entirely novel set of substances called Ultra-Processed Food, food which is industrially processed and designed and marketed to be addictive. But do we really know what it's doing to our bodies?

Join Chris in his travels through the world of food science and a UPF diet to discover what's really going on. Find out why exercise and willpower can't save us, and what UPF is really doing to our bodies, our health, our weight, and the planet (hint: nothing good).

For too long we've been told we just need to make different choices, when really we're living in a food environment that makes it nigh-on impossible. So this is a book about our rights. The right to know what we eat and what it does to our bodies and the right to good, affordable food.]]> 399 Chris van Tulleken Melissa 0 to-read 4.49 2023 Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn't Food… and Why Can't We Stop?
author: Chris van Tulleken
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Raising Hell, Living Well: Freedom from Influence in a World Where Everyone Wants Something from You (including me)]]> 78292292 Ěý
“Jessica Elefante practices what she preaches by rising above complaints to confront modern, twisted problems right in the face.”—Jaron Lanier, bestselling author of Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

We live in a world that is under the influence.Ěý

Our lives are being choreographed by forces that want something from us. Everything from ingrained family values to mind-altering algorithms create our foundations, warp how we see the world, manipulate our decisions, and dictate our beliefs. Yet rarely do we question these everyday influences of our modern times even as we go further down the path of unwell, unhappy, and unhinged .Ěý

A high-spirited exploration through the troublesome influences of our world, Raising Hell, Living Well , Jessica Elefante’s eye-opening debut, follows one bullshit artist’s journey, from small-time salesperson to award-winning corporate strategist to founder of the digital wellbeing movement Folk Rebellion, in coming to terms with how she was wielding influence—and the forces she was under herself.ĚýĚý

With whip-smart writing and wry humor, Elefante’s collection of essays is a head-trip through her misadventures. From explaining productivity as a symptom of the influence of capitalism to how the wellness industry makes us feel more unwell or our unquestioning participation in oversharing, optimization, and instant gratification, she invites us to reexamine our world, our pasts, and ourselves through the lens of influence. Now a reformed brand strategist, Elefante lays bare her own culpability, sharing what she learned—and what she got wrong. She offers a new take on intentional living and provides a simple practice to deconstruct how the powers-that-be are attempting to modify our behaviors. Before you know it, you’ll be questioning everything from how you take your coffee to how our social institutions are structured. And you’ll learn how to live free from the influences around us—including Elefante herself.Ěý

The much-needed subversive voice to demystify these times, Elefante will make you angry, make you laugh, and make you think about how you’re really living. Unpretentious, sharply observed, and devil-hearted, Raising Hell, Living Well holds out a hand to help you climb out from under the influence.]]> 384 Jessica Elefante 0593500563 Melissa 3
First published on October 10, 2023, "Raising Hell, Living Well: Freedom from Influence in a World Where Everyone Wants Something from You," by Jessica Elefante, is a millennial memoir flavored with some well-known Twitterverse self-help.

I am definitely not the audience for this.

I found the prose and the content insipid and slow, and downright obtuse in a number of places.

I read the first ten percent, then skimmed to 16%, amazed that the prose and the content seemed to slow down even more, and grow more juvenile and asinine the further I read.

I bought "Raising Hell, Living Well" as an ebook, so it's aggravating to me to have wasted my money. This memoir falls into my "hell the f*ck no" category of DNF.

But I'm giving it three stars, because I'm sure there's an audience for this book, it just isn't me.

Not sure who I would recommend this book to. It's a hard pass for me.



]]> 3.08 Raising Hell, Living Well: Freedom from Influence in a World Where Everyone Wants Something from You (including me)
author: Jessica Elefante
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.08
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/28
date added: 2023/12/28
shelves: 2023-reads, dnf, contemporary, memoir, no-thanks, nonfiction, one-star-read, self-help, why-do-i-hate-myself
review:
DNF at 10%

First published on October 10, 2023, "Raising Hell, Living Well: Freedom from Influence in a World Where Everyone Wants Something from You," by Jessica Elefante, is a millennial memoir flavored with some well-known Twitterverse self-help.

I am definitely not the audience for this.

I found the prose and the content insipid and slow, and downright obtuse in a number of places.

I read the first ten percent, then skimmed to 16%, amazed that the prose and the content seemed to slow down even more, and grow more juvenile and asinine the further I read.

I bought "Raising Hell, Living Well" as an ebook, so it's aggravating to me to have wasted my money. This memoir falls into my "hell the f*ck no" category of DNF.

But I'm giving it three stars, because I'm sure there's an audience for this book, it just isn't me.

Not sure who I would recommend this book to. It's a hard pass for me.




]]> <![CDATA[Healing the Shame that Binds You]]> 98399
Shame is the motivator behind our toxic behaviors: the compulsion, co-dependency, addiction and drive to superachieve that breaks down the family and destroys personal lives. This book has helped millions identify their personal shame, understand the underlying reasons for it, address these root causes and release themselves from the shame that binds them to their past failures.

Key Features]]> 316 John Bradshaw 0757303234 Melissa 5
The text of this book is a lot darker, and made for much more difficult reading. It took me almost six months to finish reading this book.

While I did find "Healing the Shame That Binds You" an educational and rewarding book to read, the content was so difficult and triggering for me that I'd recommend it only with caution. I had to put this book down for weeks at a time. It was very slow going, and I found myself dreading the content whenever I would pick it back up.

I think Bradshaw's book might be better read while a person is in therapy, especially if they are engaged in group therapy for CPTSD. Just reading this book on my own felt super painful and was not a great experience for me. I could tell that if I'd had someone informed about this subject to process the book with, it would've been a very different experience.

I just don't have access to any CPTSD-trained therapy or group therapy at this time, and from what I understand, given what people have shared online in the past few months, it's really difficult to find any therapists who are trained in CPTSD. Just slapping the words 'trauma-informed' on a website is not sufficient. Thanks to YouTubers like Patrick Teahan, Daniel Mackler, Anna Runkle, and Heidi Priebe, I feel a lot more aware of just how very difficult it is to get professional help treating CPTSD.

I certainly do not regret reading Bradshaw's book, and I'm glad I own an e-copy of it, and can go back and reread it whenever I like. I just want to be clear that I found the content to be so heavy and difficult that it often caused physical and mental pain to read it.

Recommended, with the above caveat. Five stars.]]> 4.09 1988 Healing the Shame that Binds You
author: John Bradshaw
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1988
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/26
date added: 2023/12/26
shelves: 2023-reads, contemporary, family, friendship, horrifying-acts-of-violence, nonfiction, parenting, self-help, therapy
review:
After reading Pete Walker's 2013 nonfiction book, "Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving," in the summer of 2023, I immediately sought out more books on the subject, and began reading John Bradshaw's 1988 nonfiction book, "Healing the Shame That Binds You."

The text of this book is a lot darker, and made for much more difficult reading. It took me almost six months to finish reading this book.

While I did find "Healing the Shame That Binds You" an educational and rewarding book to read, the content was so difficult and triggering for me that I'd recommend it only with caution. I had to put this book down for weeks at a time. It was very slow going, and I found myself dreading the content whenever I would pick it back up.

I think Bradshaw's book might be better read while a person is in therapy, especially if they are engaged in group therapy for CPTSD. Just reading this book on my own felt super painful and was not a great experience for me. I could tell that if I'd had someone informed about this subject to process the book with, it would've been a very different experience.

I just don't have access to any CPTSD-trained therapy or group therapy at this time, and from what I understand, given what people have shared online in the past few months, it's really difficult to find any therapists who are trained in CPTSD. Just slapping the words 'trauma-informed' on a website is not sufficient. Thanks to YouTubers like Patrick Teahan, Daniel Mackler, Anna Runkle, and Heidi Priebe, I feel a lot more aware of just how very difficult it is to get professional help treating CPTSD.

I certainly do not regret reading Bradshaw's book, and I'm glad I own an e-copy of it, and can go back and reread it whenever I like. I just want to be clear that I found the content to be so heavy and difficult that it often caused physical and mental pain to read it.

Recommended, with the above caveat. Five stars.
]]> <![CDATA[Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving]]> 20556323
I felt encouraged to write this book because of thousands of e-mail responses to the articles on my website that repeatedly expressed gratitude for the helpfulness of my work. An often echoed comment sounded like this: At last someone gets it. I can see now that I am not bad, defective or crazy…or alone!

The causes of CPTSD range from severe neglect to monstrous abuse. Many survivors grow up in houses that are not homes � in families that are as loveless as orphanages and sometimes as dangerous.

If you felt unwanted, unliked, rejected, hated and/or despised for a lengthy portion of your childhood, trauma may be deeply engrained in your mind, soul and body.

This book is a practical, user-friendly self-help guide to recovering from the lingering effects of childhood trauma, and to achieving a rich and fulfilling life. It is copiously illustrated with examples of my own and my clients� journeys of recovering. This book is also for those who do not have CPTSD but want to understand and help a loved one who does.

This book also contains an overview of the tasks of recovering and a great many practical tools and techniques for recovering from childhood trauma. It extensively elaborates on all the recovery concepts explained on my website, and many more. However, unlike the articles on my website, it is oriented toward the layperson. As such, much of the psychological jargon and dense concentration of concepts in the website articles has been replaced with expanded and easier to follow explanations. Moreover, many principles that were only sketched out in the articles are explained in much greater detail. A great deal of new material is also explored.

Key concepts of the book include managing emotional flashbacks, understanding the four different types of trauma survivors, differentiating the outer critic from the inner critic, healing the abandonment depression that come from emotional abandonment and self-abandonment, self-reparenting and reparenting by committee, and deconstructing the hierarchy of self-injuring responses that childhood trauma forces survivors to adopt.

The book also functions as a map to help you understand the somewhat linear progression of recovery, to help you identify what you have already accomplished, and to help you figure out what is best to work on and prioritize now. This in turn also serves to help you identify the signs of your recovery and to develop reasonable expectations about the rate of your recovery.

I hope this map will guide you to heal in a way that helps you to become an unflinching source of kindness and self-compassion for yourself, and that out of that journey you will find at least one other human being who will reciprocally love you well enough in that way.]]> 376 Pete Walker Melissa 5
I really wish I'd had this book my whole life. Walker's "Complex PTSD" was even more helpful to me than reading "Loving What Is" in my early twenties.

This is one of the very best books I have ever read. I absolutely loved it.

I immediately bought numerous extra copies of this book, and handed them to family and friends who were interested in the topic. Not everyone who took a copy from me was ready to read it, or to start healing. But some of them were, and I'm glad that this book facilitated getting help to people in need.

Five stars. Highly recommended.
]]> 4.55 2013 Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving
author: Pete Walker
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/26
date added: 2023/12/26
shelves: 2023-reads, books-that-make-life-worth-living, contemporary, family, favorites, nonfiction, self-help, therapy, friendship
review:
First published in 2013, I read Pete Walker's phenomenal nonfiction book, "Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving," in July and August 2023, ten years after it was originally published.

I really wish I'd had this book my whole life. Walker's "Complex PTSD" was even more helpful to me than reading "Loving What Is" in my early twenties.

This is one of the very best books I have ever read. I absolutely loved it.

I immediately bought numerous extra copies of this book, and handed them to family and friends who were interested in the topic. Not everyone who took a copy from me was ready to read it, or to start healing. But some of them were, and I'm glad that this book facilitated getting help to people in need.

Five stars. Highly recommended.

]]> The Adults 9061509
An irresistible chronicle of a modern young woman’s struggle to grow up, The Adults lays bare—in perfect pitch—a world where an adult and a child can so dangerously be mistaken for the same exact thing.]]> 307 Alison Espach 1439191859 Melissa 5 3.45 2011 The Adults
author: Alison Espach
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fortune's Frenzy: A California Gold Rush Odyssey]]> 60198507 324 Eilene Lyon 1493070061 Melissa 5
Lyon draws on extensive research material to bring this historical narrative to life, and the result is a remarkable book about the triumphs and tragedies involved in this infamous period of 19th century industry.

My favorite parts of the book included the detailed accounts of crossing Panama by land, and the horrors involved in getting to California by sea, with so many unscrupulous American businessmen taking people's money and leaving them to die. The sections of text that are set in California itself, and describe the daily grind of placer mining, highwaymen, gold bandits, bull and bear fighting, mountain travel, and the sheer numbers of people risking it all in the hope of striking it rich, made for spectacular reading.

"Fortune's Frenzy" has a large cast of characters, and I struggled at times to keep all the names straight. In the opening chapters, I often felt impatient to just get to California, since I picked up the book solely focused on reading about the Gold Rush itself. But Lyon's intention was to help the reader understand what it took for so many working-class people to travel vast distances to engage in an activity that they knew nothing about, and I think she did that remarkably well. This is a profoundly educational book that I will not forget.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in this period of history. I'm so glad I bought an ebook copy of "Fortune's Frenzy," and was able to read it right after it was published. This book is a gem!

Five stars.
]]> 4.54 Fortune's Frenzy: A California Gold Rush Odyssey
author: Eilene Lyon
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.54
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/12
date added: 2023/12/12
shelves: 2023-reads, adventure, family, history, nonfiction, society-drama, travel, western
review:
Published on September 1, 2023, "Fortune's Frenzy: A California Gold Rush Odyssey," by Eilene Lyon, is a nonfiction book examining the life and times of a group of working-class white men who participated in the California Gold Rush in the late 1840s/early 1850s.

Lyon draws on extensive research material to bring this historical narrative to life, and the result is a remarkable book about the triumphs and tragedies involved in this infamous period of 19th century industry.

My favorite parts of the book included the detailed accounts of crossing Panama by land, and the horrors involved in getting to California by sea, with so many unscrupulous American businessmen taking people's money and leaving them to die. The sections of text that are set in California itself, and describe the daily grind of placer mining, highwaymen, gold bandits, bull and bear fighting, mountain travel, and the sheer numbers of people risking it all in the hope of striking it rich, made for spectacular reading.

"Fortune's Frenzy" has a large cast of characters, and I struggled at times to keep all the names straight. In the opening chapters, I often felt impatient to just get to California, since I picked up the book solely focused on reading about the Gold Rush itself. But Lyon's intention was to help the reader understand what it took for so many working-class people to travel vast distances to engage in an activity that they knew nothing about, and I think she did that remarkably well. This is a profoundly educational book that I will not forget.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in this period of history. I'm so glad I bought an ebook copy of "Fortune's Frenzy," and was able to read it right after it was published. This book is a gem!

Five stars.

]]> <![CDATA[The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)]]> 20518872 472 Liu Cixin Melissa 0 to-read 4.08 2006 The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Sympathizer 30374088
The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.]]> 495 Viet Thanh Nguyen Melissa 0 to-read 4.05 2015 The Sympathizer
author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Thirst for Salt 61340225 “A love affair so richly and attentively imagined it carries the grace and gravity of memory itself.� ―Leslie Jamison It’s hard to remember now that I was once that girl, lying in the sand in my red swimsuit and swimming late into the day. Sharkbait , he called me.

It’s in the water where she first sees him: a local man almost twenty years her senior. Adrift in the summer after finishing college, a young woman is on holiday with her mother in an isolated Australian coastal town. Finding herself pulled to Jude, the man in the water, she begins losing herself in the simple, seductive rhythms of his everyday life. As their relationship deepens, life at Sailors Beach offers her the stability she has been craving as the daughter of two drifters―a loving but impulsive mother and an itinerant father. But the arrival of Maeve, a friend from Jude’s past, threatens to rock their fragile, newfound intimacy. And when she witnesses something she doesn’t fully understand, she finds herself questioning everything―about Jude, about herself, about the life she has and the one she wants. A magnetic and unforgettable story of desire and its complexities, and a powerful reckoning with memory, loss, and longing, Madelaine Lucas’s debut novel, Thirst for Salt , reveals with stunning, sensual immediacy the way the past can hold us in its thrall, shaping who we are and what we love.]]> 272 Madelaine Lucas 1953534651 Melissa 3
First published in March 2023, "Thirst for Salt," by Madelaine Lucas, is a debut literary novel about a twenty-four-year old woman falling in love with a forty-two-year-old man.

I think this novel is meant to be emotionally moving and tragic.

I found it completely lacking the insightful content and lyricism I expect from a literary novel. The unnamed protagonist frequently refers to herself as still being a "child," and is actively longing for the level of care a toddler receives from her mother, a mother who is her best (and seemingly only) friend.

The socially isolated protagonist also wants to be sexually "touched" by a man, and when Jude appears in her life (the 42-year-old man), he is initially attracted to her because he sees her in a swimsuit. The protagonist is framed as being the most conventional kind of woman, while also having significant 'not like other girls' vibes. Seriously not my cup of tea.

After the opening, the beginning sections of this book read like an Elin Hilderbrand novel, but without any comedic relief or happiness.

If you're looking for a "tragic beach read," this might scratch that itch.

For me, this book was unreadable. Especially when I skipped ahead to the final few pages, and saw how it ended. Negative stars for me personally.

Three stars overall, since I know I am not the right audience.

]]> 3.82 2023 Thirst for Salt
author: Madelaine Lucas
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/19
date added: 2023/11/19
shelves: 2023-reads, contemporary, chick-lit, dnf, fiction, main-character-is-a-mouse, no-thanks, one-star-read, wtf
review:
DNF at 5% of the ebook

First published in March 2023, "Thirst for Salt," by Madelaine Lucas, is a debut literary novel about a twenty-four-year old woman falling in love with a forty-two-year-old man.

I think this novel is meant to be emotionally moving and tragic.

I found it completely lacking the insightful content and lyricism I expect from a literary novel. The unnamed protagonist frequently refers to herself as still being a "child," and is actively longing for the level of care a toddler receives from her mother, a mother who is her best (and seemingly only) friend.

The socially isolated protagonist also wants to be sexually "touched" by a man, and when Jude appears in her life (the 42-year-old man), he is initially attracted to her because he sees her in a swimsuit. The protagonist is framed as being the most conventional kind of woman, while also having significant 'not like other girls' vibes. Seriously not my cup of tea.

After the opening, the beginning sections of this book read like an Elin Hilderbrand novel, but without any comedic relief or happiness.

If you're looking for a "tragic beach read," this might scratch that itch.

For me, this book was unreadable. Especially when I skipped ahead to the final few pages, and saw how it ended. Negative stars for me personally.

Three stars overall, since I know I am not the right audience.


]]> <![CDATA[Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science]]> 1000990
At the time, Phineas Gage seemed to completely recover from his accident. He could walk, talk, work, and travel, but he was changed. Gage "was no longer Gage," said his Vermont doctor, meaning that the old Phineas was dependable and well liked, and the new Phineas was crude and unpredictable.

His case astonished doctors in his day and still fascinates doctors today. What happened and what didn’t happen inside the brain of Phineas Gage will tell you a lot about how your brain works and how you act human.]]> 96 John Fleischman 0618494782 Melissa 5
I really enjoyed reading this book. The included photographs are all great, and the author did an excellent job providing historical context for a middle grade or YA audience.

Five stars. A short, scientifically accurate, engaging read.


]]> 3.64 2009 Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science
author: John Fleischman
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/11
date added: 2023/11/11
shelves: 2023-reads, disability-stories, nonfiction, science
review:
Published in 2002, the nonfiction book, "Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science," by John Fleischman, is a kid-friendly account of the famous case of Phineas Gage, who suffered a traumatic brain injury during a workplace accident on September 13, 1848, when a tamping iron shot through his skull, left a permanent hole at the top of his skull, and changed his personality for the rest of his life.

I really enjoyed reading this book. The included photographs are all great, and the author did an excellent job providing historical context for a middle grade or YA audience.

Five stars. A short, scientifically accurate, engaging read.



]]> Attached at the Hip 195790639 Survivor meets The Bachelor in Attached at the Hip, an irresistible, romantic adventure by New York Times bestselling author Christine Riccio.

Orie Lennox has spent her entire life prepping for her happily ever after -- and now that she’s graduated, she’s low-key wondering, when the heck is it gonna hit. Her love life, her new job, her relationship with her sister: none of it is quite what she envisioned it to be.

One evening, on a whim, she applies for a reality show where she’ll be stranded on an island, with a bunch of strangers, to play a game of human chess for a shot at a million dollars. What better way to force herself to break up with the things that aren’t bringing her joy, than to abandon them all on short notice to live off the grid on a beach in the South Pacific!

Orie's shocked when she ends up cast in an experimental romantic edition of the show: and even more surprised to find that her old high school crush, Remy, has been cast as well. Orie's one of ten contestants, set to compete in formidable challenges, while speed dating, in the wilderness: without deodorant, toilets, shaving cream, or showers. (How!?)

She finds herself tied up � literally � in a game of risky alliances as she navigates ever-growing feelings for her one that got away, alongside an exciting array of budding new relationships.]]> 400 Christine Riccio 1250760097 Melissa 0 to-read 3.75 2024 Attached at the Hip
author: Christine Riccio
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Care and Feeding of Tenants 281713 120 Andy Kane 0873642406 Melissa 3
I found a dusty copy of this book while cleaning out an old factory office in October 2023. I assumed someone had given it to my deceased uncle as a gift, and with such a horrible piece of cover art, I was curious as to what the contents might be.

I found this book loathsome and cruel. If there was meant to be humor here, I certainly missed it. I'd rather eat a plate of steaming dog crap than read this book.

I wish my uncle were still alive so I could ask him who gave him this book. I'm sure it must've been intended as a gag gift. I can't imagine anyone taking this POS seriously.

The author gleefully promotes violence, greed, cruelty, oppression, and every kind of -ism there is, such as racism, ageism, ableism, sexism, classism, classism, classism.... And it's all packaged for laughs. This is the meanest kind of humor there is.

I don't know what else to say about this drivel, other than it belongs in the garbage.

For me personally, this book is worth negative stars. I would never recommend this trash to anyone.

Three stars overall, since I know I was not the intended reader for this book. I honestly have no idea who would be.
]]> 3.82 1980 Care and Feeding of Tenants
author: Andy Kane
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1980
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/06
date added: 2023/11/06
shelves: 2023-reads, books-i-really-dislike, dnf, horror, one-star-read, recommended-for-no-one, real-life-monsters, wtf, why-do-i-hate-myself, unlikeable-protagonists, no-thanks
review:
Published in 1981 by Paladin Press in Boulder, Colorado, the nonfiction-meets-fantasy self-help book for landlords, "Care and Feeding of Tenants," by Andy Kane, is hopefully intended as satire. But I definitely wasn't laughing.

I found a dusty copy of this book while cleaning out an old factory office in October 2023. I assumed someone had given it to my deceased uncle as a gift, and with such a horrible piece of cover art, I was curious as to what the contents might be.

I found this book loathsome and cruel. If there was meant to be humor here, I certainly missed it. I'd rather eat a plate of steaming dog crap than read this book.

I wish my uncle were still alive so I could ask him who gave him this book. I'm sure it must've been intended as a gag gift. I can't imagine anyone taking this POS seriously.

The author gleefully promotes violence, greed, cruelty, oppression, and every kind of -ism there is, such as racism, ageism, ableism, sexism, classism, classism, classism.... And it's all packaged for laughs. This is the meanest kind of humor there is.

I don't know what else to say about this drivel, other than it belongs in the garbage.

For me personally, this book is worth negative stars. I would never recommend this trash to anyone.

Three stars overall, since I know I was not the intended reader for this book. I honestly have no idea who would be.

]]> <![CDATA[Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women]]> 30653590 Award-winning Northwestern University psychology professor Dr. Renee Engeln reveals how the culturalĚýobsession with women's appearanceĚýis an epidemic that harms their ability to get ahead and to live happy, meaningful lives, in this powerful, eye-opening work in the vein of Naomi Wolf, Peggy Orenstein, and Sheryl Sandberg.

Today’s young women face a bewildering set of contradictions when it comes to beauty. They don’t want to be Barbie dolls, but like generations of women before them,Ěýare toldĚýthey must look like them. They’re angry about the media’s treatment of women but hungrily consume the very outlets that belittle them. They mock modern culture’s absurd beauty ideal and make videos exposing Photoshopping tricks butĚýfeel pressuredĚýto emulate the same images they criticize by posing with a "skinny arm". They understand that what they see isn’t real but still download apps to airbrush their selfies. Yet these same young women are fierce fighters for the issues they care about. They are ready to fight back against their beauty-sick culture and create a different world for themselves, but they need a way forward.

Beauty Sick reveals the shocking consequences of our obsession withĚýgirlsâ€� and women’s appearance on their emotional and physical health and their wallets and ambitions, including depression, eating disorders, disruptions in cognitive processing, and lost money and time. Combining scientific studies with the voices of real women of all ages, Engeln makes clear that to truly fulfill their potential, women and girls must break free fromĚýcultural forces that feedĚýdestructive desires, attitudes, and words—from fat-shaming to denigrating commentary about other women. She provides inspiration and workable solutions to helpĚýgirls and womenĚýovercome negative attitudes and embrace their whole selves, to transform their lives, claim the futures they deserve, and, ultimately, change their world.]]> 358 Renee Engeln 0062469770 Melissa 3
For me, "Beauty Sick" was not a great read, and I had to push myself to finish this book over a period of eight months in 2023. "Beauty Sick" reads like a stale, child-friendly middle-grade version of Naomi Wolf's 199o bestseller, "The Beauty Myth."

And for anyone subscribed to Jessica DeFino's perspicacious Substack, "Beauty Sick" is really limping along in elementary school by comparison.

This is not a bad book. I appreciate all that Dr. Engeln stands for and is doing. This particular text just didn't give me any new information. And I found some things missing from the end of the book, regarding the young woman whose story is the focus of the last 20 percent or so, that really pushed my enjoyment into a free-falling tailspin.

I know there are readers for this book. It just wasn't my thing.

Three stars.
]]> 4.12 2017 Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women
author: Renee Engeln
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/10/30
shelves: 2023-reads, contemporary, feminism, nonfiction, women
review:
Published in April 2017, "Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women," by Renee Engeln, is a nonfiction book full of the most obvious takeaways and well-known advice about beauty culture over the past few decades.

For me, "Beauty Sick" was not a great read, and I had to push myself to finish this book over a period of eight months in 2023. "Beauty Sick" reads like a stale, child-friendly middle-grade version of Naomi Wolf's 199o bestseller, "The Beauty Myth."

And for anyone subscribed to Jessica DeFino's perspicacious Substack, "Beauty Sick" is really limping along in elementary school by comparison.

This is not a bad book. I appreciate all that Dr. Engeln stands for and is doing. This particular text just didn't give me any new information. And I found some things missing from the end of the book, regarding the young woman whose story is the focus of the last 20 percent or so, that really pushed my enjoyment into a free-falling tailspin.

I know there are readers for this book. It just wasn't my thing.

Three stars.

]]> <![CDATA[Watching for Dragonflies: A Caregiver's Transformative Journey]]> 80344503


Suzanne’s story begins with a phone call from her husband, Michael, telling her he has collapsed on the job. They soon learn he has multiple sclerosis. Despite the negative patterns threatening their marriage, she is determined to handle the caregiving tasks suddenly thrust upon her. Through love, psychological insights, and spiritual inquiry, she cultivates her abilities—and gains the courage to confront a medical system that often saves her husband but at other times threatens his life. As time progresses, Michael undergoes many hospitalizations; he also makes miraculous recoveries that allow adventure back into their lives, including a numinous experience with dragonflies. When Suzanne faces her own medical crisis, their world is shaken once again—but throughout it all, love is their bond, one even death cannot sever.



Often poignant, at times funny, and always riveting, Watching for Dragonflies will serve as comfort—and inspiration—for other caregivers struggling to care for a loved one.]]> 310 Suzanne Marriott 1647424372 Melissa 4
I discovered this book one night in September, while I was looking at the SparkPress catalogue online. I frequently dream of having the money to pay for a book contract with this company, and I was looking at the titles they'd put out earlier this year.

The pretty cover of this memoir snagged my attention, and I'm always down for reading about adult caregiving, so I decided to check this one out.

If anyone is familiar with the trauma work of Gabor Maté, I want to point out that Ms. Marriott doesn't appear to be familiar with Maté's trauma research around MS at all. If you pick up this book expecting it to be informed about possible causes of Ms. Marriott's husband's MS, you will be severely disappointed.

I also want to note that this book is focused on Ms. Marriott's personal journey (the journey of an able-bodied person), and as such, the word "ableism" never appears in the text.

"Watching for Dragonflies" is an interesting book, and Ms. Marriott includes a number of important details about the work of caring for MS that are illuminating. I enjoyed learning more about the many details of full-time caregiving for an adult with this condition.

Ms. Marriott also had a high financial resource level to draw from, so there are details about traveling with a disabled person, such as locking a wheelchair into the driver's seat of their personal vehicle, and flying across California to go on a vacation with a power chair, that are truly amazing to think about: having money like that, and being able to do so many trips and activities with -- not only a manual chair, but a power chair as well.

A lot of the book felt like the movie "Groundhog Day," very repetitive with no forward motion. The first half of the book was especially unpleasant; just a lot of difficult content with a "Groundhog Day" vibe. I'm sure that this is true to Ms. Marriott's lived experience, but it made for dull reading. The prose is good, and Ms. Marriott is a very skilled writer, but the content often felt more like reading the journal of a challenging time, rather than something more potent. The book lacked the over-arching scope of a narrative voice with something life-shaping to say.

I kept pushing past my natural DNF points because I wanted to see if Ms. Marriott would ever touch on the things I was most interested in, such as: her husband's understanding of ableism; her husband grappling with his own internalized ableism; whether or not she or her husband ever had any understanding of how his own personal trauma from childhood and carried through his adulthood manifested in his body's MS; what Ms. Marriott thinks about the trauma research surfacing in the years since her husband's death around the subject of MS.

For instance, very early in the book, Ms. Marriott describes how her husband (Michael) had completed an extreme diet in the months before she met him, had lost a *lot* of weight, and how she was initially so attracted to him because of his slim physique. Well, isn't that noteworthy somewhere later in the book, in helping to process the difficulties of "fitting in" and "being loved" as a man, not only as an able-bodied man, but as a disabled man -- and the question of whether Ms. Marriott would've ever married Michael if he'd been his previous weight when they met?

And how destructive is dieting like that on the physical body to begin with -- pointing toward all kinds of control issues and perfectionism struggles that probably weren't doing Michael's health any favors.

None of that ever comes up in the book, and I am sure that even questioning these things could easily be labeled as me being "way too hard on this book," because this memoir wasn't meant to be about grand ideas, like overlooked causes of disability, Michael's possible perfectionism struggles, and the impacts of societal ableism; this book was meant to be the story of one woman's life, and the book performs that job well enough.

"Watching for Dragonflies" is a competent memoir, one that I am sure many other caregivers for adults with MS can draw solace from.

So much of my ability to finish the book relied on me being able to read between the lines of what was excluded: all of the things I found missing and wished had found their way onto the page.

3.5 stars rounded up to four.]]> 4.48 Watching for Dragonflies: A Caregiver's Transformative Journey
author: Suzanne Marriott
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.48
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/25
date added: 2023/10/25
shelves: 2023-reads, disability-stories, contemporary, memoir, nonfiction, women
review:
Published on June 6, 2023, the memoir "Watching for Dragonflies: A Caregiver's Transformative Journey," by Suzanne Marriott, details the trials and tribulations Ms. Marriott faced after her husband of many years was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1996. Her husband lived for ten more years, and died on January 1, 2006. During all of that time, Ms. Marriott was his primary at-home caregiver.

I discovered this book one night in September, while I was looking at the SparkPress catalogue online. I frequently dream of having the money to pay for a book contract with this company, and I was looking at the titles they'd put out earlier this year.

The pretty cover of this memoir snagged my attention, and I'm always down for reading about adult caregiving, so I decided to check this one out.

If anyone is familiar with the trauma work of Gabor Maté, I want to point out that Ms. Marriott doesn't appear to be familiar with Maté's trauma research around MS at all. If you pick up this book expecting it to be informed about possible causes of Ms. Marriott's husband's MS, you will be severely disappointed.

I also want to note that this book is focused on Ms. Marriott's personal journey (the journey of an able-bodied person), and as such, the word "ableism" never appears in the text.

"Watching for Dragonflies" is an interesting book, and Ms. Marriott includes a number of important details about the work of caring for MS that are illuminating. I enjoyed learning more about the many details of full-time caregiving for an adult with this condition.

Ms. Marriott also had a high financial resource level to draw from, so there are details about traveling with a disabled person, such as locking a wheelchair into the driver's seat of their personal vehicle, and flying across California to go on a vacation with a power chair, that are truly amazing to think about: having money like that, and being able to do so many trips and activities with -- not only a manual chair, but a power chair as well.

A lot of the book felt like the movie "Groundhog Day," very repetitive with no forward motion. The first half of the book was especially unpleasant; just a lot of difficult content with a "Groundhog Day" vibe. I'm sure that this is true to Ms. Marriott's lived experience, but it made for dull reading. The prose is good, and Ms. Marriott is a very skilled writer, but the content often felt more like reading the journal of a challenging time, rather than something more potent. The book lacked the over-arching scope of a narrative voice with something life-shaping to say.

I kept pushing past my natural DNF points because I wanted to see if Ms. Marriott would ever touch on the things I was most interested in, such as: her husband's understanding of ableism; her husband grappling with his own internalized ableism; whether or not she or her husband ever had any understanding of how his own personal trauma from childhood and carried through his adulthood manifested in his body's MS; what Ms. Marriott thinks about the trauma research surfacing in the years since her husband's death around the subject of MS.

For instance, very early in the book, Ms. Marriott describes how her husband (Michael) had completed an extreme diet in the months before she met him, had lost a *lot* of weight, and how she was initially so attracted to him because of his slim physique. Well, isn't that noteworthy somewhere later in the book, in helping to process the difficulties of "fitting in" and "being loved" as a man, not only as an able-bodied man, but as a disabled man -- and the question of whether Ms. Marriott would've ever married Michael if he'd been his previous weight when they met?

And how destructive is dieting like that on the physical body to begin with -- pointing toward all kinds of control issues and perfectionism struggles that probably weren't doing Michael's health any favors.

None of that ever comes up in the book, and I am sure that even questioning these things could easily be labeled as me being "way too hard on this book," because this memoir wasn't meant to be about grand ideas, like overlooked causes of disability, Michael's possible perfectionism struggles, and the impacts of societal ableism; this book was meant to be the story of one woman's life, and the book performs that job well enough.

"Watching for Dragonflies" is a competent memoir, one that I am sure many other caregivers for adults with MS can draw solace from.

So much of my ability to finish the book relied on me being able to read between the lines of what was excluded: all of the things I found missing and wished had found their way onto the page.

3.5 stars rounded up to four.
]]> <![CDATA[No Time Like the Present: Finding Freedom, Love, and Joy Right Where You Are]]> 34372285 In this landmark work, internationally beloved teacher of meditation and “one of the great spiritual teachers of our time� (Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple) Jack Kornfield reveals that you can be instantly happy with the keys to inner freedom.Through his signature warmhearted, poignant, often funny stories, with their a-ha moments and O. Henry-like outcomes, Jack Kornfield shows how we can free ourselves, wherever we are and whatever our circumstances. Renowned for his mindfulness practices and meditations, Jack provides keys for opening gateways to immediate shifts in perspective and clarity of vision, allowing us to “grapple with difficult emotions� (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and know how to change course, take action, or—when we shouldn’t act—just relax and trust. Each chapter presents a path to a different kind of freedom—freedom from fear, freedom to start over, to love, to be yourself, and to be happy—and guides you into an active process that engages your mind and heart, awakens your spirit, and brings real joy, over and over again. Drawing from his own life as a son, brother, father, and partner, and on his forty years of face-to-face teaching of thousands of people across the country, Jack presents “a consommé of goodness, heart, laughter, tears, and breath, nourishing and delicious� (Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird). His keys to life will help us find hope, clarity, relief from past disappointments and guilt, and the courage to go forward.]]> 322 Jack Kornfield Melissa 0
I read this book sometime during the first few months of 2023, and I really enjoyed it. "No Time Like the Present" is classic Jack Kornfield: every sentence is like a big warm hug.

I had never heard of Jack Kornfield before January 2023, when a good friend sent me a link to one of his talks on the Be Here Now Network on YouTube. I enjoyed that link immensely! I listened to sooooooo many more of his talks before I finally bought one of his books. Kornfield has published so many titles, and "No Time Like the Present" was more than worth every penny.

Delightful! Highly recommended.

Five stars.]]> 4.23 2017 No Time Like the Present: Finding Freedom, Love, and Joy Right Where You Are
author: Jack Kornfield
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2023/10/24
date added: 2023/10/24
shelves: 2023-reads, books-that-make-life-worth-living, contemporary, nonfiction, self-help, therapy
review:
Published in 2017, "No Time Like the Present: Finding Freedom, Love, and Joy Right Where You Are," by Jack Kornfield, is a nonfiction book featuring Kornfield's contemporary self-help presentation of mindfulness, compassion, and Zen Buddhism.

I read this book sometime during the first few months of 2023, and I really enjoyed it. "No Time Like the Present" is classic Jack Kornfield: every sentence is like a big warm hug.

I had never heard of Jack Kornfield before January 2023, when a good friend sent me a link to one of his talks on the Be Here Now Network on YouTube. I enjoyed that link immensely! I listened to sooooooo many more of his talks before I finally bought one of his books. Kornfield has published so many titles, and "No Time Like the Present" was more than worth every penny.

Delightful! Highly recommended.

Five stars.
]]> <![CDATA[Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want]]> 20146159 274 Nicholas Epley 0385351674 Melissa 3
I discovered this book in 2023, after I read an interesting article about the unconscious mind and researched the author, Mr. Epley. I was interested in learning more, so I bought his book and gave it a go.

The article turned out to be a much better read. "Mindwise" isn't a bad book; it just wasn't revelatory or impactful for me.

Mileage will definitely vary for this one.

I read this book in February, March, or April of 2023, and it slipped out of my awareness as quickly as sand through an hourglass. Only the fact that I bought the ebook, and kept seeing it in my digital library, reminded me that this book existed, and that I had read every word.

Three stars.

There are definitely readers unfamiliar with the data and theories presented in this book. "Mindwise" would be a great read for the right person.
]]> 3.98 2014 Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want
author: Nicholas Epley
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/24
date added: 2023/10/24
shelves: 2023-reads, contemporary, nonfiction
review:
Published in 2014, "Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want," by Nicholas Epley, is a nonfiction book about the unconscious and conscious thinking involved in the mind.

I discovered this book in 2023, after I read an interesting article about the unconscious mind and researched the author, Mr. Epley. I was interested in learning more, so I bought his book and gave it a go.

The article turned out to be a much better read. "Mindwise" isn't a bad book; it just wasn't revelatory or impactful for me.

Mileage will definitely vary for this one.

I read this book in February, March, or April of 2023, and it slipped out of my awareness as quickly as sand through an hourglass. Only the fact that I bought the ebook, and kept seeing it in my digital library, reminded me that this book existed, and that I had read every word.

Three stars.

There are definitely readers unfamiliar with the data and theories presented in this book. "Mindwise" would be a great read for the right person.

]]> <![CDATA[A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence]]> 62039219
From the bestselling author of Women Rowing North and Reviving Ophelia- a memoir in essays reflecting on radiance, resilience, and the constantly changing nature of reality.

In her luminous new memoir in essays, Mary Pipher-as she did in her New York Times bestseller Women Rowing North -taps into a cultural moment, to offer wisdom, hope, and insight into loss and change. Drawing from her own experiences and expertise as a psychologist specializing in women, trauma, and the effect of our culture on our mental health, she looks inward in A Life in Light to what shaped her as a woman, one who has experienced darkness throughout her life but was always drawn to the light.

Her plainspoken depictions of her hard childhood and life's difficulties are dappled with moments of joy and revelation, tragedies and ordinary miseries, glimmers and shadow. As a child, she was separated from her parents for long periods. Those separations affected her deeply, but in A Life in Light she explores what she's learned about how to balance despair with joy, utilizing and sharing with readers every coping skill she has honed during her lifetime to remind us that there is a silver thread of resilience that flows through all of life, and that despite our despair, the light will return.

In this book, she points us toward that light.]]> 320 Mary Pipher 1639731636 Melissa 0 to-read 3.62 A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence
author: Mary Pipher
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.62
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia]]> 127489378 The definitive takedown of fatphobia, drawing on personal experience as well as rigorous research to expose how size discrimination harms everyone, and how to combat it—from the acclaimed author of Down Girl and Entitled

“An elegant, fierce, and profound argument for fighting fat oppression in ourselves, our communities, and our culture.”—Roxane Gay, author of Hunger

For as long as she can remember, Kate Manne has wanted to be smaller. She can tell you what she weighed on any significant her wedding day, the day she became a professor, the day her daughter was born. She’s been bullied and belittled for her size, leading to extreme dieting. As a feminist philosopher, she wanted to believe that she was exempt from the cultural gaslighting that compels so many of us to ignore our hunger. But she was not.

Blending intimate stories with the trenchant analysis that has become her signature, Manne shows why fatphobia has become a vital social justice issue. Over the last several decades, implicit bias has waned in every category, from race to sexual orientation, except body size. Manne examines how anti-fatness operates—how it leads us to make devastating assumptions about a person’s attractiveness, fortitude, and intellect, and how it intersects with other systems of oppression. Fatphobia is responsible for wage gaps, medical neglect, and poor educational outcomes; it is a straitjacket, restricting our freedom, our movement, our potential.

In this urgent call to action, Manne proposes a new politics of “body reflexivity”—a radical reevaluation of who our bodies exist in the world ourselves and no one else. When it comes to fatphobia, the solution is not to love our bodies more. Instead, we must dismantle the forces that control and constrain us, and remake the world to accommodate people of every size.]]> 297 Kate Manne 0593593847 Melissa 0 to-read 4.18 2024 Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia
author: Kate Manne
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Prince and the Coyote 143354674
Fifteen-year old crown prince Acolmiztli wants nothing more than to see his city-state of Tetzcoco thrive. A singer, poet, and burgeoning philosophical mind, he has big plans about infrastructure projects and cultural initiatives that will bring honor to his family and help his people flourish. But the two sides of his family, the kingdoms of Mexico and Acolhuacan, have been at war his entire life � after his father risked the wrath of the Tepanec emperor to win his mother's love.

When a power struggle leaves his father dead and his mother and siblings in exile, Acolmiztli must run for his life, seeking refuge in the wilderness. After a coyote helps him find his way in the wild, he takes on a new name � Nezahualcoyotl, or "fasting coyote" ("Neza" for short).

Biding his time until he can form new alliances and reconnect with his family, Neza goes undercover, and falls in love with a commoner girl, Sekalli. Can Neza survive his plotting uncles' scheme to wipe out his line for good? Will the empire he dreams of in Tetzcoco ever come to life? And is he willing to risk the lives of those he loves in the process?

This action-packed tale blends prose and poetry � including translations of surviving poems by Nezahualcoytl himself, translated from classical Nahuatl by the author. And the book is packed with queer rep � queer love stories, and a thoughtful of pre-Columbian understandings of gender that defy the contemporary Western gender binary.

From Pura Belpré honoree David Bowles comes a young adult epic about one of the greatest minds of the Americas (honored to this day on Mexico's 100-peso bill).]]> 432 David Bowles 1646143361 Melissa 0 to-read 3.86 2023 The Prince and the Coyote
author: David Bowles
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mom Rage: The Everyday Crisis of Modern Motherhood]]> 75593807 256 Minna Dubin 1541601300 Melissa 3
In reading the book and listening to a few of the author's interviews on YouTube, I discovered that Ms. Dubin wrote an essay on the topic of 'Mom Rage' that went viral during the Covid-19 pandemic, and that was why a publisher reached out to her with an advance and a book contract to publish this book.

I discovered this book on its release day, when bestselling author Jennifer Weiner blurbed the book on her Facebook page, and described the book as essential reading for women everywhere. With a rave-review endorsement from Ms. Weiner, I was intrigued and eager to read "Mom Rage."

I can truly see the value of a book like this for so many women I know, though I have to be honest and admit that many of these potential readers would be highly put off by the hyper-trans-inclusive language used by the text. The author also makes frequent use of bell hooks' chosen term: the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, without really establishing the origin of this term or defining it for the reader. Ms. Dubin instead simply takes the term as a known quantity: a given and accepted phrase that all of her readers are on board with, when I know that for many readers, this isn't the case, including the readers within the chosen market demographic for this book.

I also want to point out that the author, even at the end of the book, is fixated on expressing compassion for raging mothers, including herself, but she has absolutely no understanding of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or what is often called Childhood Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD), and it makes for painful reading.

When a caregiver expresses explosive, violent rage toward a child in their care -- [and I'll give two examples that are described in this book: a raging mother leaning over a crib and screaming repeatedly into an infant's face to 'shut up'; a raging mother shoving a confused and overwhelmed toddler hard enough for them to fall over and strike the back of their head on a sidewalk] -- the correct term for this behavior is 'abuse.'

But Minna Dubin is completely opposed to this terminology, and does not label her raging behavior as abuse or abusive. Nor does she label any other mother or birthing person she interviewed for this book as exhibiting abusive behavior. In an interview for this book that I watched on YouTube, Ms. Dubin stated that anyone who would call her behavior 'abusive' simply "doesn't know what they are talking about."

I do know what I am talking about, though. And this book is so massively faulty, for that very reason.

Having compassion for people needs to extend both ways: to the overwhelmed adult caregivers [mothers, birthing persons, etc.] and to the underage dependents who are subjected to their caregivers' adult wrath: the violent rage that is the unprocessed shame and unprocessed trauma of an adult being inflicted upon an innocent child.

Using the word "abuse" does not make people "bad" or "immoral." It's an important term to use so that people can heal their trauma, especially their childhood trauma.

I found the book "Mom Rage" to be hyper-fixated on inclusive trans language and systemic structures of power, but completely lacking in any understanding of trauma, shame, and C-PTSD.

Ms. Dubin also had access to a socioeconomic resource level that none of the moms and birthing persons I know in my own life could ever relate to. This is a book examining the motherhood struggles of the upper-middle class and upper class, and while that is important and valuable, it also made the book a struggle to keep reading at times.

There are definitely readers who will love and champion this book, Ms. Weiner among them.

I'm sad to say that this book really wasn't for me. I knew within the first twenty pages that it was going to end up solely as a market research read, and leave me contemplating things that were not at all in the text: primarily, the shortcomings of the prose, and all I found missing and needed.

One star for me personally. Three stars because I know I'm just not the reader for this one.]]> 3.77 Mom Rage: The Everyday Crisis of Modern Motherhood
author: Minna Dubin
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.77
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/21
date added: 2023/10/21
shelves: 2023-reads, contemporary, family, memoir, nonfiction, parenting, self-help, women, why-do-i-hate-myself, no-thanks
review:
Published in September 2023, "Mom Rage: The Everyday Crisis of Modern Motherhood," by Minna Dubin, is a nonfiction book interspersed with memoir material, all of it focused on the topic of the explosive rage that is experienced by what the text refers to as 'birthing persons' as they do the hard work of parenting the children who are under their care.

In reading the book and listening to a few of the author's interviews on YouTube, I discovered that Ms. Dubin wrote an essay on the topic of 'Mom Rage' that went viral during the Covid-19 pandemic, and that was why a publisher reached out to her with an advance and a book contract to publish this book.

I discovered this book on its release day, when bestselling author Jennifer Weiner blurbed the book on her Facebook page, and described the book as essential reading for women everywhere. With a rave-review endorsement from Ms. Weiner, I was intrigued and eager to read "Mom Rage."

I can truly see the value of a book like this for so many women I know, though I have to be honest and admit that many of these potential readers would be highly put off by the hyper-trans-inclusive language used by the text. The author also makes frequent use of bell hooks' chosen term: the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, without really establishing the origin of this term or defining it for the reader. Ms. Dubin instead simply takes the term as a known quantity: a given and accepted phrase that all of her readers are on board with, when I know that for many readers, this isn't the case, including the readers within the chosen market demographic for this book.

I also want to point out that the author, even at the end of the book, is fixated on expressing compassion for raging mothers, including herself, but she has absolutely no understanding of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or what is often called Childhood Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD), and it makes for painful reading.

When a caregiver expresses explosive, violent rage toward a child in their care -- [and I'll give two examples that are described in this book: a raging mother leaning over a crib and screaming repeatedly into an infant's face to 'shut up'; a raging mother shoving a confused and overwhelmed toddler hard enough for them to fall over and strike the back of their head on a sidewalk] -- the correct term for this behavior is 'abuse.'

But Minna Dubin is completely opposed to this terminology, and does not label her raging behavior as abuse or abusive. Nor does she label any other mother or birthing person she interviewed for this book as exhibiting abusive behavior. In an interview for this book that I watched on YouTube, Ms. Dubin stated that anyone who would call her behavior 'abusive' simply "doesn't know what they are talking about."

I do know what I am talking about, though. And this book is so massively faulty, for that very reason.

Having compassion for people needs to extend both ways: to the overwhelmed adult caregivers [mothers, birthing persons, etc.] and to the underage dependents who are subjected to their caregivers' adult wrath: the violent rage that is the unprocessed shame and unprocessed trauma of an adult being inflicted upon an innocent child.

Using the word "abuse" does not make people "bad" or "immoral." It's an important term to use so that people can heal their trauma, especially their childhood trauma.

I found the book "Mom Rage" to be hyper-fixated on inclusive trans language and systemic structures of power, but completely lacking in any understanding of trauma, shame, and C-PTSD.

Ms. Dubin also had access to a socioeconomic resource level that none of the moms and birthing persons I know in my own life could ever relate to. This is a book examining the motherhood struggles of the upper-middle class and upper class, and while that is important and valuable, it also made the book a struggle to keep reading at times.

There are definitely readers who will love and champion this book, Ms. Weiner among them.

I'm sad to say that this book really wasn't for me. I knew within the first twenty pages that it was going to end up solely as a market research read, and leave me contemplating things that were not at all in the text: primarily, the shortcomings of the prose, and all I found missing and needed.

One star for me personally. Three stars because I know I'm just not the reader for this one.
]]> <![CDATA[Audience-ology: How Moviegoers Shape the Films We Love]]> 57147116
Audience-ology takes you to one of the most unknown places in Hollywood—a place where famous directors are reduced to tears and multi-millionaire actors to fits of rage. A place where dreams are made and fortunes are lost. This book is the chronicle of how real people have written and rewritten America’s cinematic masterpieces by showing up, watching a rough cut of a new film, and giving their unfettered opinions so that directors and studios can salvage their blunders, or better yet, turn their movies into all-time classics.

Each chapter informs an aspect or two of the test-screening process and then, through behind-the-scenes stories, illustrates how that particular aspect was carried out. Nicknamed “the doctor of audience-ology,� Kevin Goetz shares how he helped filmmakers and movie execs confront the misses and how he recommended ways to fix the blockbusters, as well as first-hand accounts from Ron Howard, Cameron Crowe, Ed Zwick, Renny Harlin, Jason Blum, and other Hollywood luminaries who brought you such films as La La Land , Chicago , Titanic , Wedding Crashers , Jaws , and Forrest Gump .

Audience-ology explores one of the most important (and most underrated) steps in the filmmaking process with enough humor, drama, and surprise to entertain those with only a spectator’s interest in film, offering us a new look at movie history.]]> 210 Kevin Goetz 1982186674 Melissa 0 to-read 3.68 Audience-ology: How Moviegoers Shape the Films We Love
author: Kevin Goetz
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.68
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1)]]> 16034235
The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her. But something evil dwells in the castle of glass—and it's there to kill. When her competitors start dying one by one, Celaena's fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival, and a desperate quest to root out the evil before it destroys her world.]]> 406 Sarah J. Maas 1619630346 Melissa 2
This is a book about an assassin. She is eighteen years old. Her name is Celaena, which is pronounced "Sell-lay-nah," according to the book's pronunciation guide.

If you ever, for a moment, forget that the main character is an assassin, don't worry -- the third person narrator will frequently remind you of her job title by referring to Celaena as "the assassin" in exposition.

Celaena/the assassin is not just any assassin. On page one, she is identified as her kingdom's "most notorious assassin." On page nine, the Crown Prince of her kingdom calls Celaena "the greatest assassin" in the world.

Except a year before the story begins, when Celaena was seventeen, she got caught. Busted. Betrayed by some unknown person, and imprisoned by the King. The King put Celaena on trial, and then sentenced her to die in a death camp. This particular death camp is a salt mine, and we're told most prisoners die within a few months, if they even make it that long.

When the book begins, the reader learns that Celaena has survived an entire year at this death camp/salt mine. On page eleven, we're told she once tried to escape, and "killed her overseer and twenty-three sentries before they caught her."

On page 122, we are told that even though Celaena was whipped on her first day at the mine, was almost starved during her time there, and was often beaten like the other slaves/prisoners, none of the guards at the death camp ever "raped" Celaena because they were "afraid" of her.

Celaena is a virgin. Despite being the most notorious assassin, who was betrayed and imprisoned by a corrupt king, and then sentenced to die in a death camp where other women were raped and killed as a matter of course -- Celaena survived with an unviolated vagina intact.

On page one of the book, Celaena is being removed from this death camp in order to compete in a "competition" at the King's castle, a competition that turns out to be a lot like a high school track meet. There is an archery test, a climbing test, a running test... The King designed this competition himself, and he told 24 members of his court -- including his own son, the Crown Prince -- that they could pick a person to compete in this high school track meet-style contest.

So these court members each pick whatever scummy, ruthless people they believe might stand the best chance of winning: convicted serial killers, murderers, thieves, criminals... folks like that. There are 23 of them, plus Celaena.

So Celaena has to defeat 23 competitors to win the contest, and avoid being sent back to the salt mine. She will become the King's "Champion," his most trusted killer and doer of dirty deeds.

Hmmm... where have I seen that number "23" before? Oh yes: when Celaena tried to escape the salt mine, she killed 23 sentries. Of course. Big thanks to the author for broadcasting exactly how this book will end.

"Throne of Glass" is not really about this contest though, or Celaena's work as an assassin. This book is the equivalent of reading a YA contemporary about a white girl living in a wealthy white suburb who moves to a new school (located in a castle), makes new friends (a princess, a maid, a puppy), and sorts through her emotions concerning two really cute boys who both fall in love with her (the Crown Prince and the Captain of the Guard, who is only 22 years old).

Celaena spends hours upon hours in this story worrying about which pretty dress she should wear, reading books, playing the piano, playing billiards, strolling the grounds of the castle, hanging out with her friends, and listening to people tell her how pretty she is. Lots of people in this story comment on Celaena's good looks.

Even though Celaena has no idea who betrayed her right before she was captured, she is very trusting of everyone in the palace. She participates in the contest for several weeks before she thinks to look around her big bedroom one night, pulls aside the tapestry on the wall, and discovers a doorway that leads directly outside. Even though some kind of monster has been turned loose in the castle by then, and the competitors are slowly being shredded/mauled/eaten/dismembered by this unknown thing, Celaena does not leave the castle and run for her life. She returns to her bedroom and continues flirting with cute boys.

And shortly after participating in a "name that poison" kind of contest with the other competitors (in which Celaena earns a perfect score by cheating) -- she finds a sack full of candy in her bedroom, placed on her pillow. No note, no idea who sent it or what is really in that candy -- Celaena just immediately starts eating it, stuffing handfuls of the sugary treats in her mouth, blissfully.

The narrator has to keep calling Celaena "the assassin" throughout the book because she never acts like one. Celaena behaves like a modern American teenager, navigating the perils of high school, which is focused on image, popularity, prestige, and maybe participating in a high school track meet.

In the real world, once a person has started killing for money, they are a target. People hire assassins to kill other assassins in vengeance. (Or surviving family members and friends can choose to go after them on their own.) Celaena stood trial, and was put in a death camp -- it is completely unbelievable that someone didn't kill her while she was either in the King's dungeon or at the death camp. If she was good at her job, she killed someone of means. And people of means are missed by other people of means when they're gone -- in other words, missed by people with the money to hire a killer of their own.

The author tries to explain why the people in the kingdom didn't know Celaena was at the death camp by saying that the King kept her trial "a secret." Obviously the author has never heard the expression: "Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead." There is no way the King could keep the TRIAL of the MOST NOTORIOUS ASSASSIN a SECRET. Even if the King MASSIVELY BRIBED every official and guard who interacted with Celaena throughout this entire capture-and-trial process, I guarantee that the families and friends of the people Celaena had killed were willing to pay EVEN MORE for her name. And I guarantee that the men working for this corrupt and foolish King would have eagerly pocketed that money, too.

I had equal believability problems concerning the Prince deciding to keep her identity "secret" long after he takes her out of the salt mine. When the Prince comes to collect her, he has fourteen guards with him, plus the Captain of the Guard, plus a vicious/evil character name Duke Perrington. ALL of these people know who Celaena is, and why the Crown Prince is taking her to the castle. To make this secret-keeping even more ridiculous, Duke Perrington is also a rival of the Crown Prince -- the Duke is fronting his *own* competitor to compete in the contest -- a muscle-bound thug named Cain. (Because whoever sponsors the winning "Champion" of the contest wins a bunch of gold, courtesy of the King.)

After Celaena arrives in the castle, and has met all of the other competitors, the Prince tells her he will keep her identity a secret during the contest, and that she is to use the name "Lillian" from now on. No mention is ever made about ALL THE PEOPLE who already KNOW who she is, including Duke Perrington. Yet much later in the book, when Cain tells Celaena that he knows her real name, Celaena is shocked and freaked out by the revelation. If I was meant to think of Celaena as an intelligent person, "Throne of Glass" failed abysmally in achieving that goal.

This book made me feel especially sorry for all of the real-life survivors of death camps. Of course the Holocaust comes to mind first, but there have been countless death camps all over the world. To survive a year in a death camp takes an enormous psychological toll on a person. Anyone who thinks that Celaena's behavior in this novel is an accurate portrayal of a traumatized death camp survivor should consider picking up some nonfiction titles to read. Holocaust concentration camp survivor tales might be the most accessible for readers who are curious about how a person might behave after spending a year being beaten, whipped, and deprived of proper nourishment while doing manual labor.

A large number of readers adored "Throne of Glass" because Celaena, unlike Katniss Everdeen in "The Hunger Games," cares about wearing pretty dresses, being told she is pretty, and flirting with boys. Celaena also has moments when she tells the reader that looking at the handsome Crown Prince makes her feel "ridiculously tingly and warm."

At no point does Celaena ever question why a King would let OTHER PEOPLE pick his competitors for the role of "most trusted Champion." News flash: the competitors will always hold loyalty to their sponsor over their corrupt and ineffectual "king." What this story has done is guarantee that this King has a Death Wish, putting himself close to people who cannot be trusted at all.

And the King has an ENTIRE ARMY to choose a Champion from -- why is he scraping the bottom of the barrel here, and having criminals compete in a track meet to find a "personal assassin" to kill in his name? All I can say of "Throne of Glass" is that this book exists in a Logic Free Zone.

I had other problems with the story. The timeline is all wonky, for one. We're told the contest will take 13 weeks before the final duel will take place, but 3.5 months go by (14 weeks), and then at least two more weeks go by, and the contest is still going on. It's like the author forgot the rules of the game.

I really didn't like the random mashup of bastardized Pagan words the author used in this book. She did this for the purpose of world-building, and even though there were only two, both made me angry. First, there was "Samhuinn," a bastardized term for the Pagan celebration of "Samhain." That one really aggravated me. But then I discovered "Yulemas" on page 272, described as "a holiday to celebrate the birth of the Goddess's firstborn son. It was simply a day when people were more courteous, looked twice at a beggar in the street, remembered that love was a living thing."

This was the first time in the book the word "Goddess" was used, and the thoughtless combination of taking what sounds like the author's own experience of Christmas in real life, and inserting an unnamed Pagan "Goddess" into the place where the Christian "God" should appear, upset me a great deal. Maybe people who spit on *all* religion just do not give a damn about insulting the belief systems of real people, and I do understand that many readers mock modern Pagans who celebrate Yule. I am not one of them. This sloppy, thoughtless "fictional holiday" of Yulemas hit me like a slap in the face. Especially since the only other world-building term from real-life used in this book -- Wyrd -- wasn't bastardized, and only made the author's mashup of words feel even more random.

The word "Yulemas" appeared at the same time the unmarked bag of candy appeared on Celaena's bedroom pillow. The combination of the candy-eating on Yulemas caused my brain to simply Shut Down and Switch Off and Refuse To Continue Reading This Book. I turned a few more pages, but the end had arrived.

If you want to read "High School Drama" set in a castle starring a Mary Sue in a Love Triangle with Two Cute Boys -- with the word "assassin" in place of "student," and the word "King" in place of "mom and dad" -- this is your book. If you want to read a YA fantasy starring an assassin who isn't a "real-life scary" assassin but kind of a manic pixie dreamgirl who is totes gorgeous, this is your book. And if you want to read some YA Fantasy Lite, a book that is simply designed to be fun entertainment, without lots of gore or extreme deprivation or rape -- "Throne of Glass" may be exactly what you're looking for. There are plenty of sequels. And a super huge fandom. Enjoy.]]> 4.15 2012 Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2017/03/25
date added: 2023/10/12
shelves: 2017-reads, ya-fantasy, why-do-i-hate-myself, stereotypical-first-world-problems, romance, no-thanks
review:
DNF at 69%

This is a book about an assassin. She is eighteen years old. Her name is Celaena, which is pronounced "Sell-lay-nah," according to the book's pronunciation guide.

If you ever, for a moment, forget that the main character is an assassin, don't worry -- the third person narrator will frequently remind you of her job title by referring to Celaena as "the assassin" in exposition.

Celaena/the assassin is not just any assassin. On page one, she is identified as her kingdom's "most notorious assassin." On page nine, the Crown Prince of her kingdom calls Celaena "the greatest assassin" in the world.

Except a year before the story begins, when Celaena was seventeen, she got caught. Busted. Betrayed by some unknown person, and imprisoned by the King. The King put Celaena on trial, and then sentenced her to die in a death camp. This particular death camp is a salt mine, and we're told most prisoners die within a few months, if they even make it that long.

When the book begins, the reader learns that Celaena has survived an entire year at this death camp/salt mine. On page eleven, we're told she once tried to escape, and "killed her overseer and twenty-three sentries before they caught her."

On page 122, we are told that even though Celaena was whipped on her first day at the mine, was almost starved during her time there, and was often beaten like the other slaves/prisoners, none of the guards at the death camp ever "raped" Celaena because they were "afraid" of her.

Celaena is a virgin. Despite being the most notorious assassin, who was betrayed and imprisoned by a corrupt king, and then sentenced to die in a death camp where other women were raped and killed as a matter of course -- Celaena survived with an unviolated vagina intact.

On page one of the book, Celaena is being removed from this death camp in order to compete in a "competition" at the King's castle, a competition that turns out to be a lot like a high school track meet. There is an archery test, a climbing test, a running test... The King designed this competition himself, and he told 24 members of his court -- including his own son, the Crown Prince -- that they could pick a person to compete in this high school track meet-style contest.

So these court members each pick whatever scummy, ruthless people they believe might stand the best chance of winning: convicted serial killers, murderers, thieves, criminals... folks like that. There are 23 of them, plus Celaena.

So Celaena has to defeat 23 competitors to win the contest, and avoid being sent back to the salt mine. She will become the King's "Champion," his most trusted killer and doer of dirty deeds.

Hmmm... where have I seen that number "23" before? Oh yes: when Celaena tried to escape the salt mine, she killed 23 sentries. Of course. Big thanks to the author for broadcasting exactly how this book will end.

"Throne of Glass" is not really about this contest though, or Celaena's work as an assassin. This book is the equivalent of reading a YA contemporary about a white girl living in a wealthy white suburb who moves to a new school (located in a castle), makes new friends (a princess, a maid, a puppy), and sorts through her emotions concerning two really cute boys who both fall in love with her (the Crown Prince and the Captain of the Guard, who is only 22 years old).

Celaena spends hours upon hours in this story worrying about which pretty dress she should wear, reading books, playing the piano, playing billiards, strolling the grounds of the castle, hanging out with her friends, and listening to people tell her how pretty she is. Lots of people in this story comment on Celaena's good looks.

Even though Celaena has no idea who betrayed her right before she was captured, she is very trusting of everyone in the palace. She participates in the contest for several weeks before she thinks to look around her big bedroom one night, pulls aside the tapestry on the wall, and discovers a doorway that leads directly outside. Even though some kind of monster has been turned loose in the castle by then, and the competitors are slowly being shredded/mauled/eaten/dismembered by this unknown thing, Celaena does not leave the castle and run for her life. She returns to her bedroom and continues flirting with cute boys.

And shortly after participating in a "name that poison" kind of contest with the other competitors (in which Celaena earns a perfect score by cheating) -- she finds a sack full of candy in her bedroom, placed on her pillow. No note, no idea who sent it or what is really in that candy -- Celaena just immediately starts eating it, stuffing handfuls of the sugary treats in her mouth, blissfully.

The narrator has to keep calling Celaena "the assassin" throughout the book because she never acts like one. Celaena behaves like a modern American teenager, navigating the perils of high school, which is focused on image, popularity, prestige, and maybe participating in a high school track meet.

In the real world, once a person has started killing for money, they are a target. People hire assassins to kill other assassins in vengeance. (Or surviving family members and friends can choose to go after them on their own.) Celaena stood trial, and was put in a death camp -- it is completely unbelievable that someone didn't kill her while she was either in the King's dungeon or at the death camp. If she was good at her job, she killed someone of means. And people of means are missed by other people of means when they're gone -- in other words, missed by people with the money to hire a killer of their own.

The author tries to explain why the people in the kingdom didn't know Celaena was at the death camp by saying that the King kept her trial "a secret." Obviously the author has never heard the expression: "Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead." There is no way the King could keep the TRIAL of the MOST NOTORIOUS ASSASSIN a SECRET. Even if the King MASSIVELY BRIBED every official and guard who interacted with Celaena throughout this entire capture-and-trial process, I guarantee that the families and friends of the people Celaena had killed were willing to pay EVEN MORE for her name. And I guarantee that the men working for this corrupt and foolish King would have eagerly pocketed that money, too.

I had equal believability problems concerning the Prince deciding to keep her identity "secret" long after he takes her out of the salt mine. When the Prince comes to collect her, he has fourteen guards with him, plus the Captain of the Guard, plus a vicious/evil character name Duke Perrington. ALL of these people know who Celaena is, and why the Crown Prince is taking her to the castle. To make this secret-keeping even more ridiculous, Duke Perrington is also a rival of the Crown Prince -- the Duke is fronting his *own* competitor to compete in the contest -- a muscle-bound thug named Cain. (Because whoever sponsors the winning "Champion" of the contest wins a bunch of gold, courtesy of the King.)

After Celaena arrives in the castle, and has met all of the other competitors, the Prince tells her he will keep her identity a secret during the contest, and that she is to use the name "Lillian" from now on. No mention is ever made about ALL THE PEOPLE who already KNOW who she is, including Duke Perrington. Yet much later in the book, when Cain tells Celaena that he knows her real name, Celaena is shocked and freaked out by the revelation. If I was meant to think of Celaena as an intelligent person, "Throne of Glass" failed abysmally in achieving that goal.

This book made me feel especially sorry for all of the real-life survivors of death camps. Of course the Holocaust comes to mind first, but there have been countless death camps all over the world. To survive a year in a death camp takes an enormous psychological toll on a person. Anyone who thinks that Celaena's behavior in this novel is an accurate portrayal of a traumatized death camp survivor should consider picking up some nonfiction titles to read. Holocaust concentration camp survivor tales might be the most accessible for readers who are curious about how a person might behave after spending a year being beaten, whipped, and deprived of proper nourishment while doing manual labor.

A large number of readers adored "Throne of Glass" because Celaena, unlike Katniss Everdeen in "The Hunger Games," cares about wearing pretty dresses, being told she is pretty, and flirting with boys. Celaena also has moments when she tells the reader that looking at the handsome Crown Prince makes her feel "ridiculously tingly and warm."

At no point does Celaena ever question why a King would let OTHER PEOPLE pick his competitors for the role of "most trusted Champion." News flash: the competitors will always hold loyalty to their sponsor over their corrupt and ineffectual "king." What this story has done is guarantee that this King has a Death Wish, putting himself close to people who cannot be trusted at all.

And the King has an ENTIRE ARMY to choose a Champion from -- why is he scraping the bottom of the barrel here, and having criminals compete in a track meet to find a "personal assassin" to kill in his name? All I can say of "Throne of Glass" is that this book exists in a Logic Free Zone.

I had other problems with the story. The timeline is all wonky, for one. We're told the contest will take 13 weeks before the final duel will take place, but 3.5 months go by (14 weeks), and then at least two more weeks go by, and the contest is still going on. It's like the author forgot the rules of the game.

I really didn't like the random mashup of bastardized Pagan words the author used in this book. She did this for the purpose of world-building, and even though there were only two, both made me angry. First, there was "Samhuinn," a bastardized term for the Pagan celebration of "Samhain." That one really aggravated me. But then I discovered "Yulemas" on page 272, described as "a holiday to celebrate the birth of the Goddess's firstborn son. It was simply a day when people were more courteous, looked twice at a beggar in the street, remembered that love was a living thing."

This was the first time in the book the word "Goddess" was used, and the thoughtless combination of taking what sounds like the author's own experience of Christmas in real life, and inserting an unnamed Pagan "Goddess" into the place where the Christian "God" should appear, upset me a great deal. Maybe people who spit on *all* religion just do not give a damn about insulting the belief systems of real people, and I do understand that many readers mock modern Pagans who celebrate Yule. I am not one of them. This sloppy, thoughtless "fictional holiday" of Yulemas hit me like a slap in the face. Especially since the only other world-building term from real-life used in this book -- Wyrd -- wasn't bastardized, and only made the author's mashup of words feel even more random.

The word "Yulemas" appeared at the same time the unmarked bag of candy appeared on Celaena's bedroom pillow. The combination of the candy-eating on Yulemas caused my brain to simply Shut Down and Switch Off and Refuse To Continue Reading This Book. I turned a few more pages, but the end had arrived.

If you want to read "High School Drama" set in a castle starring a Mary Sue in a Love Triangle with Two Cute Boys -- with the word "assassin" in place of "student," and the word "King" in place of "mom and dad" -- this is your book. If you want to read a YA fantasy starring an assassin who isn't a "real-life scary" assassin but kind of a manic pixie dreamgirl who is totes gorgeous, this is your book. And if you want to read some YA Fantasy Lite, a book that is simply designed to be fun entertainment, without lots of gore or extreme deprivation or rape -- "Throne of Glass" may be exactly what you're looking for. There are plenty of sequels. And a super huge fandom. Enjoy.
]]> An Honest Man 61425815
Israel Pike was a killer, and he was an honest man. They were not mutually exclusive.

After discovering seven men murdered aboard their yacht â€� including two Senate rivals â€� Israel Pike is regarded as a prime suspect. A troubled man infamous on Salvation Point Island for killing his own father a decade before,ĚýIsrael has few options, no friends, and a life-threatening secret.

Elsewhere on the island, 12-year-old Lyman Rankin seeks shelter from his alcoholic father in an abandoned house only to discover that he is not alone. A mysterious woman greets him with a hatchet and a “Make a sound and I’ll kill you.�

As the investigation barrels forward, Lyman, Israel, and the fate of the case collide in immutable ways.]]> 373 Michael Koryta 031653594X Melissa 0 to-read 3.98 2023 An Honest Man
author: Michael Koryta
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)]]> 18214414 Private investigator Cormoran Strike returns in a new mystery from Robert Galbraith, author of the #1 international bestseller The Cuckoo's Calling.

When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days—as he has done before—and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.

But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives—meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced.

When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has encountered before...]]> 464 Robert Galbraith 0316206873 Melissa 3
The final third of this novel really went off the rails, and the book descended into negative-stars territory for me. I finished the novel, hoping things would turn around before I got to the end, but the trainwreck just kept on wrecking. It dealt a fatal blow for this whole series for me. I cannot force myself to read anymore of these books.

What I truly loved about "The Silkworm" were the excerpts from 'Bombyx Mori,' the novel written by one of the characters in this story. Everything about 'Bombyx Mori' felt like the most savage skewering of Norman Mailer's work, and I was so there for it. I was ready to give "The Silkworm" five stars simply based on how satisfying it felt to have Mailer's novels eviscerated on this level.

But the excerpts from 'Bombyx Mori' are such a tiny, tiny part of "The Silkworm," and after the halfway point of the book, there are no more of them. My sole enjoyment factor ended, and what happened next was not good for me. Not at all.

"The Cuckoo's Calling" was not a fun read for me. But "The Silkworm" was so much worse. At least "The Cuckoo's Calling" followed the plot beats of a mystery novel. "The Silkworm" runs on contrivance, convenience, clunky authorial withholding for fake suspense, plot-pulls that felt laughable, and plot-shenanigan ridiculousness that was probably intended to be dramatic and/or exciting, but just left me rolling my eyes and shaking my head in disgust.

By the time Robin showed up driving a taxi cab, this book had become all the yikes on all the bikes, and I just can't with it. This level of silliness in what is supposed to be a novel for adults is just not for me. When the WTF meter hits infinity, I am done.

As far as my star-rating goes:

Five stars for anything that takes Norman Mailer to task.

Negative stars for 98.5% of this book. I am sick of reading about what Cormoran Strike is eating, and I am sick of his authorial pedestal, and I am sick of reading about Robin catering to his food and drink preferences to show what "a good woman" she is and how "worthy" she is of dating this man. I am clearly not the audience for this book and I am beyond turned off by this budding romantic relationship.

'Kill it with fire' stars for the choices the author made with the main villain at the end of this book. Wow, did I hate those story choices. Wow, was the exposition here something else. Wow, did it ever guarantee that I won't be reading anymore of these novels.

Three stars overall. These books are just not for me.
]]> 4.02 2014 The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)
author: Robert Galbraith
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/30
date added: 2023/08/30
shelves: 2023-reads, contemporary, fiction, mystery, no-thanks
review:
Published in June 2014, "The Silkworm," by Robert Galbraith [J.K. Rowling] is the second book in the Cormoran Strike murder-mystery series.

The final third of this novel really went off the rails, and the book descended into negative-stars territory for me. I finished the novel, hoping things would turn around before I got to the end, but the trainwreck just kept on wrecking. It dealt a fatal blow for this whole series for me. I cannot force myself to read anymore of these books.

What I truly loved about "The Silkworm" were the excerpts from 'Bombyx Mori,' the novel written by one of the characters in this story. Everything about 'Bombyx Mori' felt like the most savage skewering of Norman Mailer's work, and I was so there for it. I was ready to give "The Silkworm" five stars simply based on how satisfying it felt to have Mailer's novels eviscerated on this level.

But the excerpts from 'Bombyx Mori' are such a tiny, tiny part of "The Silkworm," and after the halfway point of the book, there are no more of them. My sole enjoyment factor ended, and what happened next was not good for me. Not at all.

"The Cuckoo's Calling" was not a fun read for me. But "The Silkworm" was so much worse. At least "The Cuckoo's Calling" followed the plot beats of a mystery novel. "The Silkworm" runs on contrivance, convenience, clunky authorial withholding for fake suspense, plot-pulls that felt laughable, and plot-shenanigan ridiculousness that was probably intended to be dramatic and/or exciting, but just left me rolling my eyes and shaking my head in disgust.

By the time Robin showed up driving a taxi cab, this book had become all the yikes on all the bikes, and I just can't with it. This level of silliness in what is supposed to be a novel for adults is just not for me. When the WTF meter hits infinity, I am done.

As far as my star-rating goes:

Five stars for anything that takes Norman Mailer to task.

Negative stars for 98.5% of this book. I am sick of reading about what Cormoran Strike is eating, and I am sick of his authorial pedestal, and I am sick of reading about Robin catering to his food and drink preferences to show what "a good woman" she is and how "worthy" she is of dating this man. I am clearly not the audience for this book and I am beyond turned off by this budding romantic relationship.

'Kill it with fire' stars for the choices the author made with the main villain at the end of this book. Wow, did I hate those story choices. Wow, was the exposition here something else. Wow, did it ever guarantee that I won't be reading anymore of these novels.

Three stars overall. These books are just not for me.

]]> <![CDATA[The Road 2 Redemption: A Journey of Chasing Love & Doing Life The Hard Way]]> 125057509 192 Cam Williamson Melissa 5
I discovered Cam Williamson after he posted a critical YouTube review of the romance novel "Things We Never Got Over," by Lucy Score, and I decided to check out Williamson's own book.

I'm glad I did. I hope the author keeps learning more about writing craft, and keeps publishing his work. He's very open and honest about the events in his life, and it's rare to see that level of vulnerability in a memoir. "The Road 2 Redemption" takes the reader places that the vast majority of memoirs do not.

This is not a fun read. But it's a real one.

Five stars.


]]> 5.00 The Road 2 Redemption: A Journey of Chasing Love & Doing Life The Hard Way
author: Cam Williamson
name: Melissa
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/08/26
date added: 2023/08/26
shelves: 2023-reads, contemporary, nonfiction, memoir
review:
Published in April 2023, "The Road 2 Redemption: A Journey of Chasing Love & Doing Life the Hard Way," by Cam Williamson, is a difficult memoir to read. There is a lot of pain in this book, and the text reads like a personal journal, or a long therapy session full of unprocessed unloading. It took me months to read this short book, because the entire memoir is so unrelentingly brutal and raw.

I discovered Cam Williamson after he posted a critical YouTube review of the romance novel "Things We Never Got Over," by Lucy Score, and I decided to check out Williamson's own book.

I'm glad I did. I hope the author keeps learning more about writing craft, and keeps publishing his work. He's very open and honest about the events in his life, and it's rare to see that level of vulnerability in a memoir. "The Road 2 Redemption" takes the reader places that the vast majority of memoirs do not.

This is not a fun read. But it's a real one.

Five stars.



]]> <![CDATA[The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living Like the World's Healthiest People]]> 22822903 Ěý
With the audacious belief that the lifestyles of the world's Blue Zones could be adapted and replicated in towns across North America, Buettner launched the largest preventive health care project in the United States, The Blue Zones City Makeovers, which has impacted the health of millions of Americans since 2009. In The Blue Zones Solution , readers can be inspired by the specific stories of the people, foods, and routines of our healthy elders; understand the role community, family, and naturally healthy habits can play in improving our diet and health; and learn the exact foods—including the 50 superfoods of longevity and dozens of recipes adapted for Western tastes and markets—that offer delicious ways to eat your way to optimum health. Throughout the book are lifestyle recommendations, checklists, and stories to help you create your own personal Blue Zones solution. Readers will learn and apply the 80/20 rule, the plant slant diet, social aspects of eating that lead to weight loss and great health naturally, cultivating your "tribe" of friends and family, and your greater purpose as part of your daily routine.
Ěý
Filled with moving personal stories, delicious recipes, checklists, and useful tips that will transform any home into a miniature blue zone, The Blue Zones Solution is the ultimate blueprint for a healthy, happy life.]]> 320 Dan Buettner 1426211929 Melissa 3
I listened to this on audiobook during a road trip in June 2023. It helped the time go by, though my husband and I were already well aware of the great bulk of information summarized in this book.

The first two discs were so dull and repetitive, I didn't think we could finish it. Even my husband expressed his frustration multiple times, and suggested we just turn it off.

This isn't a bad book, though I do think it would've benefited from tighter editing. I'd recommend this to anyone interested in learning about "blue zones" (those places where people regularly live able-bodied, dementia-free lives into their hundreds). None of this information was new to me or my husband, but mileage is going to vary with this one.

Three stars.
]]> 3.93 2014 The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living Like the World's Healthiest People
author: Dan Buettner
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/26
date added: 2023/08/26
shelves: 2023-reads, contemporary, nonfiction, self-help
review:
Published in 2015, "The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living Like the World's Healthiest People," by Dan Buettner, is a nonfiction book full of meal choices and lifestyle tips to help people live able-bodied, dementia-free lives into their hundreds.

I listened to this on audiobook during a road trip in June 2023. It helped the time go by, though my husband and I were already well aware of the great bulk of information summarized in this book.

The first two discs were so dull and repetitive, I didn't think we could finish it. Even my husband expressed his frustration multiple times, and suggested we just turn it off.

This isn't a bad book, though I do think it would've benefited from tighter editing. I'd recommend this to anyone interested in learning about "blue zones" (those places where people regularly live able-bodied, dementia-free lives into their hundreds). None of this information was new to me or my husband, but mileage is going to vary with this one.

Three stars.

]]> <![CDATA[Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It]]> 61783798 A hilarious and poignant memoir grappling with family, disability, and coming of age in two closets—as a gay man and as a man living with cerebral palsy

Greg Marshall’s early years were pretty bizarre. Rewind the VHS tapes (this is the nineties) and you’ll see a lopsided teenager limping across a high school stage, or in a wheelchair after leg surgeries, pondering why he’s crushing on half of the Utah Jazz. Add to this home video footage a mom clacking away at her newspaper column between chemos, a dad with ALS, and a cast of foulmouthed siblings. Fast forward the tape and you’ll find Marshall happily settled into his life as a gay man only to discover he’s been living in another closet his whole life: he has cerebral palsy. Here, in the hot mess of it all, lies Greg Marshall’s wellspring of wit and wisdom.

Leg is an extraordinarily funny and insightful memoir from a daring new voice. Packed with outrageous stories of a singular childhood, it is also a unique examination of what it means to transform when there are parts of yourself you can’t change, a moving portrait of a family in crisis, and a tale of resilience of spirit. In Marshall’s deft hands, we see a story both personal and universal—of being young and wanting the world, even when the world doesn’t feel like yours to want.Ěý]]> 304 Greg Marshall 1419763601 Melissa 5
I think my original review was way too hard on this book.

I'm increasing my rating from four to five stars. I'm glad this book exists, and I hope Greg Marshall keeps publishing books.

This author is a wonderful person. I wish him all the best with his life, and with his publishing career.




Published in June 2023, "Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It," is the debut memoir of Greg Marshall.

The book details Marshall's childhood, his burgeoning sexuality and adult sex life, and the lovingly chaotic, label-withholding atmosphere of his home life. That label-withholding atmosphere included keeping the words 'cerebral palsy' out of the Marshall home. The word 'autism,' it turns out, was also banned in his youth. Marshall and his younger sister were told they were 'normal' and 'just like everyone else,' and this attitude was strictly enforced and upheld by everyone in the family.

While I appreciate that this book exists, and I am truly glad that Marshall had the courage and grit to pen his story, "Leg" was not a good read for me. I found this book to be overloaded with disparate information and analytically lacking to the point of feeling immature, and even juvenile. I believe "Leg" would've been better served as three different books, maybe more. The topics in this book needed more room to breathe, more room for reflection, more space for emotional depth. There was still so much unchecked, overt ableism on display in these pages that it made for very painful reading for me.

Marshall was raised in an affluent home, a home that employed a "cleaning lady" and a family that regularly vacationed in Hawaii, etc. His family's ability to make sure Marshall 'passed' as 'able-bodied' for the first thirty years of his life was largely a function of how much money they had to facilitate their denial. None of which is put into words in this book; the reader is left to puzzle out the truth for themselves, putting that information into words that Marshall does not use.

The majority of the page count of "Leg" is actually devoted to Marshall's life as a gay man, and the many challenges he has overcome in his search for romantic intimacy and connection.

In penning this book, it seems that Marshall longed to shed his societal role as a polite, mannered man and allow his writer's voice to revel in sarcasm, dark comedy, and graphic, gratuitous details of gay sex, body ailments, and all manner of unsettling content that is often completely taboo in 'polite company.' While I am often okay with grimdark depictions of physical details, the sarcastic tone just didn't work for me here. I did not find this book funny. I rode various waves of horror and revulsion on every page of this memoir.

Marshall grew up with an adopted Native American sister, and the issues of racism and Indigenous adoptions are as unexplored in this book as the issues of class, as well as the generational trauma that contributed to the mother's lifelong battle with cancer and the father's sudden death from ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis).

"Leg" read as a disjointed series of gratuitous spectacles, each one designed to be more shocking than the next. The book is not at all chronological, and pages and sections can be read completely out of order without losing any meaning.

Personally, this memoir is a one or two-star DNF for me, because I would not have finished this had I not felt compelled to do so. The author will be visiting my local bookstore this month, and the bookstore staff asked me to help promote the event.

I'm happy to give the bookstore a hand, and as far as this book goes, I think it's important that disabled people with different experiences are sharing their stories.

I listened to an author Q&A on YouTube today, and it was clear that the majority of Marshall's audience were gay men. I do think "Leg" is a great read for gay men who share Marshall's experience of struggling to accept their sexuality, fear of AIDS, and coming out in their youth. Also, the graphic details that Marshall shares about gay sex must be a relief for certain people to read about, when society mostly shuns that level of honesty.

Nothing about this book felt like it was written for me, and I just don't think I'm the right audience, in any way, for this memoir.

But I will give it 3.5 stars and round up to 4. I'm glad it exists for the people who need it. It's definitely not for me.]]> 3.93 2023 Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It
author: Greg Marshall
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/08/04
date added: 2023/08/24
shelves: 2023-reads, contemporary, disability-stories, family, lgbtqia, memoir, nonfiction
review:
8/24/23 update:

I think my original review was way too hard on this book.

I'm increasing my rating from four to five stars. I'm glad this book exists, and I hope Greg Marshall keeps publishing books.

This author is a wonderful person. I wish him all the best with his life, and with his publishing career.




Published in June 2023, "Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It," is the debut memoir of Greg Marshall.

The book details Marshall's childhood, his burgeoning sexuality and adult sex life, and the lovingly chaotic, label-withholding atmosphere of his home life. That label-withholding atmosphere included keeping the words 'cerebral palsy' out of the Marshall home. The word 'autism,' it turns out, was also banned in his youth. Marshall and his younger sister were told they were 'normal' and 'just like everyone else,' and this attitude was strictly enforced and upheld by everyone in the family.

While I appreciate that this book exists, and I am truly glad that Marshall had the courage and grit to pen his story, "Leg" was not a good read for me. I found this book to be overloaded with disparate information and analytically lacking to the point of feeling immature, and even juvenile. I believe "Leg" would've been better served as three different books, maybe more. The topics in this book needed more room to breathe, more room for reflection, more space for emotional depth. There was still so much unchecked, overt ableism on display in these pages that it made for very painful reading for me.

Marshall was raised in an affluent home, a home that employed a "cleaning lady" and a family that regularly vacationed in Hawaii, etc. His family's ability to make sure Marshall 'passed' as 'able-bodied' for the first thirty years of his life was largely a function of how much money they had to facilitate their denial. None of which is put into words in this book; the reader is left to puzzle out the truth for themselves, putting that information into words that Marshall does not use.

The majority of the page count of "Leg" is actually devoted to Marshall's life as a gay man, and the many challenges he has overcome in his search for romantic intimacy and connection.

In penning this book, it seems that Marshall longed to shed his societal role as a polite, mannered man and allow his writer's voice to revel in sarcasm, dark comedy, and graphic, gratuitous details of gay sex, body ailments, and all manner of unsettling content that is often completely taboo in 'polite company.' While I am often okay with grimdark depictions of physical details, the sarcastic tone just didn't work for me here. I did not find this book funny. I rode various waves of horror and revulsion on every page of this memoir.

Marshall grew up with an adopted Native American sister, and the issues of racism and Indigenous adoptions are as unexplored in this book as the issues of class, as well as the generational trauma that contributed to the mother's lifelong battle with cancer and the father's sudden death from ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis).

"Leg" read as a disjointed series of gratuitous spectacles, each one designed to be more shocking than the next. The book is not at all chronological, and pages and sections can be read completely out of order without losing any meaning.

Personally, this memoir is a one or two-star DNF for me, because I would not have finished this had I not felt compelled to do so. The author will be visiting my local bookstore this month, and the bookstore staff asked me to help promote the event.

I'm happy to give the bookstore a hand, and as far as this book goes, I think it's important that disabled people with different experiences are sharing their stories.

I listened to an author Q&A on YouTube today, and it was clear that the majority of Marshall's audience were gay men. I do think "Leg" is a great read for gay men who share Marshall's experience of struggling to accept their sexuality, fear of AIDS, and coming out in their youth. Also, the graphic details that Marshall shares about gay sex must be a relief for certain people to read about, when society mostly shuns that level of honesty.

Nothing about this book felt like it was written for me, and I just don't think I'm the right audience, in any way, for this memoir.

But I will give it 3.5 stars and round up to 4. I'm glad it exists for the people who need it. It's definitely not for me.
]]> <![CDATA[The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works]]> 123979539 446 Helen Czerski 1324006714 Melissa 0 to-read 4.17 2023 The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works
author: Helen Czerski
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1)]]> 16160797 456 Robert Galbraith 0316206849 Melissa 3
I was never interested in reading this book, mostly because I know murder-mysteries aren't really my thing, I always disliked the book's title, and I really disliked the cover.

But a friend who loves this series convinced me to check it out, and for the sake of my market research reads, I'm glad I did. While this book certainly isn't for me, it's an excellent example of a work of commercial fiction that is perfectly attuned for the market.

In short, if the prose of "The Goldfinch," the love story of "Pretty Woman," and the formulaic mystery plot of a Tony Hillerman novel got into bed together and had a child, the result would be "The Cuckoo's Calling."

This novel is a spectacularly trope-laden work that hits its marks without missing a beat. The deft blend of rom-com with murder mystery is commercial fiction at its finest.

There were parts of this book that certainly weren't for me, and one scene in particular took me straight into DNF territory. When Robin is caring for her drunken boss, having only been on the job for less than two weeks, I was personally so repulsed by the scene that I was ready to quit.

No amount of explaining or excusing this material could ever make it salvageable for me. I was well and truly ejected from this text at that point. If I were new to a job and my boss were abusing substances on the clock and after hours, I am not going to repeat my childhood of caretaking alcoholics to cater to him. I wasn't even aware of what a massive trigger this kind of "romantic behavior" was for me until I found myself physically sickened by Cormoran and Robin's interaction in this scene. Being a codependent to a drunkard... oh hell no. Just hell the f*ck no.

But I did understand how the scene was *supposed* to work for the reader: Robin is displaying her properly womanly duties to care for an honorable, deserving man who is in need of her compassionately feminine ministrations. And Robin performs her gendered task with aplomb.

Cormoran also performs his role as ruggedly singular badass of virile masculinity with stoic good cheer. His substance abuse exposes his vulnerability, and provides a way for Robin to illustrate to Cormoran and the reader that she is an especially competent woman.

Despite my personal DNF point, there are many things I genuinely liked about this book. Cormoran's backstory and his disability top the list. I loved the fashion designer Guy's short appearance. He was a brilliant character, and I was laughing aloud during his scene.

But a lot of the popular tropes in commercial fiction are just wasted on me. I feel neutral toward them at best, and actively hate them at worst. There were certain tropes and genre conventions that really turned me off in this book. The paint-by-numbers Hillerman-style plot with the high-action villain reveal had me shaking my head, reminding me exactly why I stay away from the mystery genre.

Three stars as a market research read. This book wasn't for me, but I can certainly see the appeal.
]]> 3.88 2013 The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1)
author: Robert Galbraith
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/16
date added: 2023/08/16
shelves: 2023-reads, contemporary, fiction, mystery
review:
Published in April 2013, "The Cuckoo's Calling, " by Robert Galbraith, immediately caused a stir when it was revealed that Robert Galbraith is the pen name of J.K. Rowling. An adult murder-mystery, "The Cuckoo's Calling" is book one in the Cormoran Strike series.

I was never interested in reading this book, mostly because I know murder-mysteries aren't really my thing, I always disliked the book's title, and I really disliked the cover.

But a friend who loves this series convinced me to check it out, and for the sake of my market research reads, I'm glad I did. While this book certainly isn't for me, it's an excellent example of a work of commercial fiction that is perfectly attuned for the market.

In short, if the prose of "The Goldfinch," the love story of "Pretty Woman," and the formulaic mystery plot of a Tony Hillerman novel got into bed together and had a child, the result would be "The Cuckoo's Calling."

This novel is a spectacularly trope-laden work that hits its marks without missing a beat. The deft blend of rom-com with murder mystery is commercial fiction at its finest.

There were parts of this book that certainly weren't for me, and one scene in particular took me straight into DNF territory. When Robin is caring for her drunken boss, having only been on the job for less than two weeks, I was personally so repulsed by the scene that I was ready to quit.

No amount of explaining or excusing this material could ever make it salvageable for me. I was well and truly ejected from this text at that point. If I were new to a job and my boss were abusing substances on the clock and after hours, I am not going to repeat my childhood of caretaking alcoholics to cater to him. I wasn't even aware of what a massive trigger this kind of "romantic behavior" was for me until I found myself physically sickened by Cormoran and Robin's interaction in this scene. Being a codependent to a drunkard... oh hell no. Just hell the f*ck no.

But I did understand how the scene was *supposed* to work for the reader: Robin is displaying her properly womanly duties to care for an honorable, deserving man who is in need of her compassionately feminine ministrations. And Robin performs her gendered task with aplomb.

Cormoran also performs his role as ruggedly singular badass of virile masculinity with stoic good cheer. His substance abuse exposes his vulnerability, and provides a way for Robin to illustrate to Cormoran and the reader that she is an especially competent woman.

Despite my personal DNF point, there are many things I genuinely liked about this book. Cormoran's backstory and his disability top the list. I loved the fashion designer Guy's short appearance. He was a brilliant character, and I was laughing aloud during his scene.

But a lot of the popular tropes in commercial fiction are just wasted on me. I feel neutral toward them at best, and actively hate them at worst. There were certain tropes and genre conventions that really turned me off in this book. The paint-by-numbers Hillerman-style plot with the high-action villain reveal had me shaking my head, reminding me exactly why I stay away from the mystery genre.

Three stars as a market research read. This book wasn't for me, but I can certainly see the appeal.

]]> Before We Were Yours 32148570 Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty.

Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption.

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.]]> 342 Lisa Wingate 0425284689 Melissa 3
I saw this book in every Walmart, Target, and bookstore I visited throughout the pandemic (2020-2023), so I know this book had massive staying power on the New York Times bestseller lists. In 2023, a friend pressed her hardback copy into my hands and asked me to give it a read.

Sadly, this just wasn't a good experience for me. I found the unchecked racism, classism, and ageism in this text hella problematic (by which I mean: I was bothered by the -ism's that were in the authorial/narrative content, *not* the historical content), and the spectacularly ageist conclusion of this novel left an extremely bad taste in my mouth.

Everything about the "river gypsies" as they're described in this book: classist, ridiculous, and inspired nothing in me but rage.

Everything about the black midwife being described as an incompetent blusterbuss and a total shithead: thanks for the racism, book.

Everything about the ableist description of the one white male rapist having a stutter and hideous teeth "like a beaver" that sets him apart from all the good able-bodied white people: seriously, I just can't. F*ck all of this.

Everything about the one black male character being described as "big and scary" and immediately inspiring rape fears in the twelve-year-old "river gypsy" who has already been sexually assaulted by a white man, but does not ever fear that other white men will rape her, only this one "big and scary" black man: honestly, f*ck off, book.

Everything about a twelve-year-old "river gypsy" in 1939 thinking and acting like a hyper-classist version of a 40-something white woman via 2010s America imagining herself in the girl's place: no thank you. Being in Rill's POV was excruciating to me.

The setup of the story itself was also loaded with plot holes and contrivances which did not appeal to me. I know the author had to deus-ex-machina her way into the schmaltzy Hallmark-channel-appropriate content in the last third of the book, but that doesn't mean the novel in any way gave me a taste for the saccharine. The narrative breaks with all reality made this book read more like fantasy to me, not historical fiction.

The depiction of nursing homes and dementia are all pulled from Hallmark-generated visual media. Sanitized, cutesy, and completely inaccurate. Writing like this does not get my vote.

Even the initial impulse that led to the protagonist (Avery) researching her grandmother's past was simply unrealistic as hell. While attending a political event for her father, taking place at a nursing home neither of them has ever visited before, a strange elderly woman tugs on Avery's arm, calls her "Fern," and this brief interaction inspires Avery to begin questioning her grandmother's entire life. Despite the fact that her grandmother is not even housed in this nursing home, but in a 'Memory Care Unit' at an uber-posh mansion in another town.

This kind of suspension of disbelief worked for a great many readers, and while I wish I could claim myself one of them, I hopped aboard the WTF train for this ride.

For some spectacularly excellent ageism, I give you the final conclusions of what this text thinks about old people, as illuminated by both POV characters, Rill Foss/May Crandall and Avery Stafford.

From May:

"'To look at me now, you would think I'd never understood the secret [of the music of life]. This music of old age... it isn't made for dancing. It's so... lonely. You're a burden to everyone.'"

That passage was shared in spoken dialogue to Avery on page 315.

Avery immediately reflects on this information:

"The music of old age is difficult to hear when it's playing for someone you love."

That passage represents the great wisdom of Avery's interior monologue on page 315.

Look, if this kind of ageist content works for you, then power to you. For me, I hate it with a kill-it-with-fire level of rage. I also want to note Avery's unspoken narcissism right here: "old age music" isn't "difficult to hear" when it's playing for old people Avery *doen't* love, apparently, because for those old people, Avery simply does not give a damn.

And you know: fair. This is the way a lot of people are. They are ageist on this level, and they honestly don't give a sh*t about anyone but the people who add value to their own lives, especially if those people are wealthy old ladies with a large inheritance to leave their granddaughters.

But I'm not gonna get behind this kind of messaging and call it "art." This content is the hegemonic domain of the (ableist) white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, and I am not a fan.

Negative stars for me personally. I'd rather eat rotten fish wrapped in used cat litter than read this book.

Three stars because I know this was not written for me. I am not, in any way, the intended market reader for this book.]]> 4.38 2017 Before We Were Yours
author: Lisa Wingate
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/11
date added: 2023/08/11
shelves: 2023-reads, ableist-bullsh-t, books-i-really-dislike, contemporary, historical-fiction, no-thanks, one-star-read, real-life-monsters, why-do-i-hate-myself, women, women-s-fiction-chick-lit
review:
Published in June 2017, "Before We Were Yours," by Lisa Wingate, is a work of historical fiction that takes a look at the real-life horror case of Georgia Tann (1891-1950) and the criminally abusive and murderous adoption program she ran for decades: the Tennessee Children's Home Society.

I saw this book in every Walmart, Target, and bookstore I visited throughout the pandemic (2020-2023), so I know this book had massive staying power on the New York Times bestseller lists. In 2023, a friend pressed her hardback copy into my hands and asked me to give it a read.

Sadly, this just wasn't a good experience for me. I found the unchecked racism, classism, and ageism in this text hella problematic (by which I mean: I was bothered by the -ism's that were in the authorial/narrative content, *not* the historical content), and the spectacularly ageist conclusion of this novel left an extremely bad taste in my mouth.

Everything about the "river gypsies" as they're described in this book: classist, ridiculous, and inspired nothing in me but rage.

Everything about the black midwife being described as an incompetent blusterbuss and a total shithead: thanks for the racism, book.

Everything about the ableist description of the one white male rapist having a stutter and hideous teeth "like a beaver" that sets him apart from all the good able-bodied white people: seriously, I just can't. F*ck all of this.

Everything about the one black male character being described as "big and scary" and immediately inspiring rape fears in the twelve-year-old "river gypsy" who has already been sexually assaulted by a white man, but does not ever fear that other white men will rape her, only this one "big and scary" black man: honestly, f*ck off, book.

Everything about a twelve-year-old "river gypsy" in 1939 thinking and acting like a hyper-classist version of a 40-something white woman via 2010s America imagining herself in the girl's place: no thank you. Being in Rill's POV was excruciating to me.

The setup of the story itself was also loaded with plot holes and contrivances which did not appeal to me. I know the author had to deus-ex-machina her way into the schmaltzy Hallmark-channel-appropriate content in the last third of the book, but that doesn't mean the novel in any way gave me a taste for the saccharine. The narrative breaks with all reality made this book read more like fantasy to me, not historical fiction.

The depiction of nursing homes and dementia are all pulled from Hallmark-generated visual media. Sanitized, cutesy, and completely inaccurate. Writing like this does not get my vote.

Even the initial impulse that led to the protagonist (Avery) researching her grandmother's past was simply unrealistic as hell. While attending a political event for her father, taking place at a nursing home neither of them has ever visited before, a strange elderly woman tugs on Avery's arm, calls her "Fern," and this brief interaction inspires Avery to begin questioning her grandmother's entire life. Despite the fact that her grandmother is not even housed in this nursing home, but in a 'Memory Care Unit' at an uber-posh mansion in another town.

This kind of suspension of disbelief worked for a great many readers, and while I wish I could claim myself one of them, I hopped aboard the WTF train for this ride.

For some spectacularly excellent ageism, I give you the final conclusions of what this text thinks about old people, as illuminated by both POV characters, Rill Foss/May Crandall and Avery Stafford.

From May:

"'To look at me now, you would think I'd never understood the secret [of the music of life]. This music of old age... it isn't made for dancing. It's so... lonely. You're a burden to everyone.'"

That passage was shared in spoken dialogue to Avery on page 315.

Avery immediately reflects on this information:

"The music of old age is difficult to hear when it's playing for someone you love."

That passage represents the great wisdom of Avery's interior monologue on page 315.

Look, if this kind of ageist content works for you, then power to you. For me, I hate it with a kill-it-with-fire level of rage. I also want to note Avery's unspoken narcissism right here: "old age music" isn't "difficult to hear" when it's playing for old people Avery *doen't* love, apparently, because for those old people, Avery simply does not give a damn.

And you know: fair. This is the way a lot of people are. They are ageist on this level, and they honestly don't give a sh*t about anyone but the people who add value to their own lives, especially if those people are wealthy old ladies with a large inheritance to leave their granddaughters.

But I'm not gonna get behind this kind of messaging and call it "art." This content is the hegemonic domain of the (ableist) white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, and I am not a fan.

Negative stars for me personally. I'd rather eat rotten fish wrapped in used cat litter than read this book.

Three stars because I know this was not written for me. I am not, in any way, the intended market reader for this book.
]]> <![CDATA[A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life]]> 30981730 Final words and heartfelt remembrances from bestselling author Pat Conroy take center stage in this winning nonfiction collection, supplemented by touching pieces from Conroy’s many friends.

This new volume of Pat Conroy’s nonfiction brings together some of the most charming interviews, magazine articles, speeches, and letters from his long literary career, many of them addressed directly to his readers with his habitual greeting, “Hey, out there.� Ranging across diverse subjects, such as favorite recent reads, the challenge of staying motivated to exercise, and processing the loss of dear friends, Conroy’s eminently memorable pieces offer a unique window into the life of a true titan of Southern writing.

With a beautiful introduction from his widow, novelist Cassandra King, A Lowcountry Heart also honors Conroy’s legacy and the innumerable lives he touched. Finally, the collection turns to remembrances of “The Great Conroy,â€� as he is lovingly titled by friends, and concludes with a eulogy. The inarguable power of Conroy’s work resonates throughoutĚýA Lowcountry Heart, and his influence promises to endure.

This moving tribute is sure to be a cherished keepsake for any true Conroy fan and remain a lasting monument to one of the best-loved masters of contemporary American letters.

Praise for A Lowcountry Heart

“A fascinating look into the mind of one of the South’s greatest authors . . . something to remember him by and cherish for years to come.��The Clarion-Ledger

“Fans of Conroy . . . will relish the chance to spend more time with him in this glowing valedictory to his life and writing . . . Eloquent, folksy, and sometimes brutally honest.��Publishers Weekly

“A moving and proper tribute to a true Southern icon.â€�â€�The Florida Times-UnionĚý

“Elegant essays [that] will not disappoint.� —The Washington Post

“Resplendent . . . As always, his storytelling, word choice and rhythm are gorgeous, almost lyrical.��USA Today]]> 292 Pat Conroy Melissa 4
I thought this book was pretty interesting, and it gave me incentive to read Conroy's work. I've never read "The Prince of Tides," "The Great Santini," or anything else he has published.

"A Lowcountry Heart" is ostensibly about "a writing life," but there was very little content in this book about the work of a writer. Mostly, this book is just a bunch of memoir material about Conroy's personal life and lived experiences.

My attention wandered at times. Either from boredom or my own personal distractions, I couldn't say. I think fans of Conroy's work would get a lot more out of this than I did.

3.5 rounded up to four stars. I thought this book was a good primer on the life and times of Pat Conroy.
]]> 4.41 2016 A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life
author: Pat Conroy
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/09
date added: 2023/08/09
shelves: 2023-reads, contemporary, essays, history, memoir, nonfiction, writing
review:
Published in October 2016, "A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life," by Pat Conroy, is a collection of various blog posts, speeches, and other nonfiction material written by Conroy, as well as a copy of his eulogy and other material people penned about him after his death in March 2016.

I thought this book was pretty interesting, and it gave me incentive to read Conroy's work. I've never read "The Prince of Tides," "The Great Santini," or anything else he has published.

"A Lowcountry Heart" is ostensibly about "a writing life," but there was very little content in this book about the work of a writer. Mostly, this book is just a bunch of memoir material about Conroy's personal life and lived experiences.

My attention wandered at times. Either from boredom or my own personal distractions, I couldn't say. I think fans of Conroy's work would get a lot more out of this than I did.

3.5 rounded up to four stars. I thought this book was a good primer on the life and times of Pat Conroy.

]]> <![CDATA[The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture]]> 58537332 In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing.

In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal� when it comes to health?

Over four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of “normal� as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. Now Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society—and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. Co-written with his son Daniel, The Myth of Normal is Maté’s most ambitious and urgent book yet.]]> 576 Gabor Maté 0593083881 Melissa 4
I enjoyed this book, but I found it easy to keep putting down. It took me three or four months to read this book, from February to May 2023.

I definitely think mileage is going to vary with this one. Gabor Maté has become a modern-day 'trauma whisperer' for so many people, and I'm so very glad that his work is finding commercial success and widespread appeal.

"The Myth of Normal" didn't crash over me in a wave of revelation, though. While I would not hesitate to recommend this book, it just wasn't the tsunami of eurekas I expected.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4. Recommended for anyone looking for a highly accessible, intersectional read on trauma literacy and the corrosive effects of modern culture on human nature.

]]> 4.30 2022 The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
author: Gabor Maté
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/05
date added: 2023/08/05
shelves: 2023-reads, contemporary, history, nonfiction, self-help, therapy
review:
First published in September 2022, "The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture," by Gabor Maté, is an excellent primer on current understandings of trauma and what healing trauma entails.

I enjoyed this book, but I found it easy to keep putting down. It took me three or four months to read this book, from February to May 2023.

I definitely think mileage is going to vary with this one. Gabor Maté has become a modern-day 'trauma whisperer' for so many people, and I'm so very glad that his work is finding commercial success and widespread appeal.

"The Myth of Normal" didn't crash over me in a wave of revelation, though. While I would not hesitate to recommend this book, it just wasn't the tsunami of eurekas I expected.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4. Recommended for anyone looking for a highly accessible, intersectional read on trauma literacy and the corrosive effects of modern culture on human nature.


]]> None of This Is True 62334530
A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?]]> 390 Lisa Jewell 1982179007 Melissa 0 to-read 4.08 2023 None of This Is True
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents]]> 23129659 If you grew up with an emotionally immature, unavailable, or selfish parent, you may have lingering feelings of anger, loneliness, betrayal, or abandonment. You may recall your childhood as a time when your emotional needs were not met, when your feelings were dismissed, or when you took on adult levels of responsibility in an effort to compensate for your parent’s behavior. These wounds can be healed, and you can move forward in your life.

In this breakthrough book, clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson exposes the destructive nature of parents who are emotionally immature or unavailable. You will see how these parents create a sense of neglect, and discover ways to heal from the pain and confusion caused by your childhood. By freeing yourself from your parents� emotional immaturity, you can recover your true nature, control how you react to them, and avoid disappointment. Finally, you’ll learn how to create positive, new relationships so you can build a better life.

Discover the four types of difficult parents:



The emotional parent instills feelings of instability and anxiety

The driven parent stays busy trying to perfect everything and everyone

The passive parent avoids dealing with anything upsetting

The rejecting parent is withdrawn, dismissive, and derogatory
Ěý]]> 201 Lindsay C. Gibson 1626251703 Melissa 0 to-read 4.36 2015 Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents
author: Lindsay C. Gibson
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lessons in Chemistry 58065033 390 Bonnie Garmus Melissa 3
This book is technically sold as historical fiction, but I found this book about as 'historical' as a Disney cartoon. I'd label this book fantasy women's fiction or gritty chick lit. It's an anachronistic romp through contemporary liberal progressive talking points, a trope-fest of contemporary issues told through a supposedly historical lens.

Set in 1952 and 1960/'61, the story follows chemist Elizabeth Zott as she navigates sex discrimination at work, single motherhood, and becoming the star of a cooking show on TV.

This book has sold bananas, and it's already been made into a TV show starring Brie Larson that will air in a matter of weeks, either in August or September 2023.

I do think the label 'White Feminism' (or CEO Feminism) completely applies to this book, and while the content of this novel deeply bothers me, I recognize that there are legions of readers who truly love it.

Not all books are for all people, and this book was definitely not for me.

I read "Lessons in Chemistry" as a market research read, and because a friend pushed a copy of it into my hands and begged me to read it.

I am glad that so many women are reading this book and feeling validated and empowered. I wish I had felt the same way.

Negative stars, for me personally. Three stars because I recognize that nothing about this book was written for me.
]]> 4.23 2022 Lessons in Chemistry
author: Bonnie Garmus
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/15
date added: 2023/07/15
shelves: 2023-reads, fiction, no-thanks, women-s-fiction-chick-lit, why-do-i-hate-myself
review:
Published in April 2022, "Lessons in Chemistry" is the debut novel of author Bonnie Garmus.

This book is technically sold as historical fiction, but I found this book about as 'historical' as a Disney cartoon. I'd label this book fantasy women's fiction or gritty chick lit. It's an anachronistic romp through contemporary liberal progressive talking points, a trope-fest of contemporary issues told through a supposedly historical lens.

Set in 1952 and 1960/'61, the story follows chemist Elizabeth Zott as she navigates sex discrimination at work, single motherhood, and becoming the star of a cooking show on TV.

This book has sold bananas, and it's already been made into a TV show starring Brie Larson that will air in a matter of weeks, either in August or September 2023.

I do think the label 'White Feminism' (or CEO Feminism) completely applies to this book, and while the content of this novel deeply bothers me, I recognize that there are legions of readers who truly love it.

Not all books are for all people, and this book was definitely not for me.

I read "Lessons in Chemistry" as a market research read, and because a friend pushed a copy of it into my hands and begged me to read it.

I am glad that so many women are reading this book and feeling validated and empowered. I wish I had felt the same way.

Negative stars, for me personally. Three stars because I recognize that nothing about this book was written for me.

]]> King: A Life 62039291
The first full biography in decades, Eig mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times.

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.―and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father―as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.

In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.

Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs]]> 688 Jonathan Eig 0374279292 Melissa 0 to-read 4.65 2023 King: A Life
author: Jonathan Eig
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.65
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Behind Closed Doors: Her Father's House and Other Stories of Sicily]]> 8328648 Ten stories of impoverished Sicilian women in the early 20th century—“honed, polished, devastatingly directĚý.Ěý.Ěý. verismo at its unsentimental bestâ€� (Kirkus Reviews). Ěý The Sicilian writer Maria Messina’s captivating and brutal stories of the women of her home island are presented in a “lyrical and immediateâ€� English translation by Elise Magistro (Publishers Weekly). Ěý Messina, who died in 1944, was the foremost female practitioner of verismo—the Italian literary realism pioneered by fellow Sicilian Giovanni Verga. Published between 1908 and 1928, Messina’s fiction represents the massive Sicilian immigration to America occurring at that time. Ěý The individuals in these stories are caught between the traditions they respect and a desire to move beyond them. Women are shuttered in their houses, virtual servants to their families, left behind while working men immigrate to the United States in fortune-seeking droves. A cultural album that captures the lives of peasant, working-class, and middle-class women, “Messina’s words will leave their mark. Their power makes them impossible to forgetâ€� (The Philadelphia Inquirer).]]> 204 Maria Messina Melissa 0 to-read 5.00 2007 Behind Closed Doors: Her Father's House and Other Stories of Sicily
author: Maria Messina
name: Melissa
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Another Bullshit Night in Suck City]]> 386 Another Bullshit Night in Suck City tells the story of the trajectory that led Nick and his father onto the streets, into that shelter, and finally to each other. .]]> 347 Nick Flynn 0393329402 Melissa 3
The majority of this book is about Flynn's father, Jonathan Flynn. I would say a solid seventy percent of this book is about Jonathan's life, and the other thirty percent is Nick Flynn describing how miserable his childhood was.

There is almost zero emotional insight in this novel. Unexplained details did not add up, leaving me baffled by the author's behavior and choices. Flynn emphasizes his extreme poverty as a child, and shows the reader flashes of his life with his mentally ill mother and brother in a grim, impoverished existence, and on the next page he's telling the reader he backpacked through Europe at age seventeen, attended a high-profile university, and later, he talks about traveling in Europe, even living in Paris with his girlfriend, in his twenties? How is this possible? I don't understand how Flynn made the jump between poverty, his own childhood addictions, motorcycle accidents, and crime, to suddenly being free to travel the globe as a teenager -- which takes a considerable amount of money and planning to do.

Also, there is no closure at the end of the book. The memoir just bluntly ends. If a reader is looking for some heartfelt takeaways from Flynn's journey through life, this memoir will not deliver.

This book was thoroughly not for me.

I had hoped to enjoy this a lot more, since I, too, had a chronically homeless alcoholic father. But a paper grocery bag is capable of more self-reflection than this memoir is.

Negative stars. I would not recommend this book to anyone.

Three stars because I recognize that there's a fan base for this book, and other readers have seemed to enjoy Flynn's dude-bro depiction of his F-up-father-as-spectacle. This memoir just wasn't for me.
]]> 3.81 2004 Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
author: Nick Flynn
name: Melissa
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/29
date added: 2023/06/29
shelves: 2023-reads, addiction, books-i-really-dislike, contemporary, family, history, memoir, no-thanks, nonfiction, one-star-read
review:
Published in 2004, "Another Bullshit Night in Suck City," by Nick Flynn, is a memoir recounting the author's upbringing as the son of a single mother and an alcoholic father who he was completely estranged from, growing up, until his father became homeless sometime when Flynn was in his twenties, and the two finally met.

The majority of this book is about Flynn's father, Jonathan Flynn. I would say a solid seventy percent of this book is about Jonathan's life, and the other thirty percent is Nick Flynn describing how miserable his childhood was.

There is almost zero emotional insight in this novel. Unexplained details did not add up, leaving me baffled by the author's behavior and choices. Flynn emphasizes his extreme poverty as a child, and shows the reader flashes of his life with his mentally ill mother and brother in a grim, impoverished existence, and on the next page he's telling the reader he backpacked through Europe at age seventeen, attended a high-profile university, and later, he talks about traveling in Europe, even living in Paris with his girlfriend, in his twenties? How is this possible? I don't understand how Flynn made the jump between poverty, his own childhood addictions, motorcycle accidents, and crime, to suddenly being free to travel the globe as a teenager -- which takes a considerable amount of money and planning to do.

Also, there is no closure at the end of the book. The memoir just bluntly ends. If a reader is looking for some heartfelt takeaways from Flynn's journey through life, this memoir will not deliver.

This book was thoroughly not for me.

I had hoped to enjoy this a lot more, since I, too, had a chronically homeless alcoholic father. But a paper grocery bag is capable of more self-reflection than this memoir is.

Negative stars. I would not recommend this book to anyone.

Three stars because I recognize that there's a fan base for this book, and other readers have seemed to enjoy Flynn's dude-bro depiction of his F-up-father-as-spectacle. This memoir just wasn't for me.

]]> Columbine 5632446
What really happened April 20, 1999? The horror left an indelible stamp on the American psyche, but most of what we "know" is wrong. It wasn't about jocks, Goths, or the Trench Coat Mafia. Dave Cullen was one of the first reporters on scene, and spent ten years on this book-widely recognized as the definitive account. With a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen, he draws on mountains of evidence, insight from the world's leading forensic psychologists, and the killers' own words and drawings-several reproduced in a new appendix. Cullen paints raw portraits of two polar opposite killers. They contrast starkly with the flashes of resilience and redemption among the survivors.]]> 417 Dave Cullen 0446546933 Melissa 5
I listened to the first two discs of this audiobook, and I know this is an excellent book. Authoritative, myth-busting, and informative, "Columbine" is also a highly emotional read. I absolutely intended to finish this.

But the content of this book is so dark that it's simply too much for my mental health right now. The content of this book became unbearable to listen to, and I had to put this one down.

I listened to the author give some interviews online, summarizing the main points of this book, and that was enough for me.

Maybe at a future date, I'll be able to come back to this, and finish it.

For now though, it's just not the right read for me at this time.

Highly recommended for anyone who wants a thorough analysis of the Columbine shooting.

Five stars.
]]> 4.28 2009 Columbine
author: Dave Cullen
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/29
date added: 2023/06/29
shelves: 2023-reads, contemporary, crime-drama, horrifying-acts-of-violence, nonfiction, real-life-monsters, school-shootings
review:
Published in 2009, "Columbine," by Dave Cullen, is a thoroughly researched nonfiction account of the school shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999.

I listened to the first two discs of this audiobook, and I know this is an excellent book. Authoritative, myth-busting, and informative, "Columbine" is also a highly emotional read. I absolutely intended to finish this.

But the content of this book is so dark that it's simply too much for my mental health right now. The content of this book became unbearable to listen to, and I had to put this one down.

I listened to the author give some interviews online, summarizing the main points of this book, and that was enough for me.

Maybe at a future date, I'll be able to come back to this, and finish it.

For now though, it's just not the right read for me at this time.

Highly recommended for anyone who wants a thorough analysis of the Columbine shooting.

Five stars.

]]> <![CDATA[The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment]]> 6708 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781577314806.

To make the journey into the Now we will need to leave our analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. From the very first page of Eckhart Tolle's extraordinary book, we move rapidly into a significantly higher altitude where we breathe a lighter air. We become connected to the indestructible essence of our Being, “The eternal, ever present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death.� Although the journey is challenging, Eckhart Tolle uses simple language and an easy question-and-answer format to guide us.

A word-of-mouth phenomenon since its first publication, The Power of Now is one of those rare books with the power to create an experience in readers, one that can radically change their lives for the better.]]> 229 Eckhart Tolle Melissa 3
First published in 1997, "The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment," by Eckhart Tolle, is a modern staple of New Age self-help lit and a favorite of Oprah's.

I finally read this on audiobook in June 2023 and I would not recommend this book. Repetitive, vague, and low-key aggravating, if not outright frustrating, this book is about as far from zen as I can imagine. The text is loaded with so much gender essentialism and ableism, I was amazed I was even able to finish it.

Negative stars. Did not like.

Not for me.

Three stars as a research read. This book is ugh to the tenth power.

On a more positive note: I thought this book would have New Age manifest-your-reality doctrine in it, and it thankfully did not. I was pleasantly surprised on that front. But this book was still ugh.

On a side note: Tolle never uses the word "trauma" in this book, but I just wanna say: there are ways to alleviate and heal Complex-PTSD/childhood-PTSD and PTSD, but Tolle's book ain't it. I'd recommend YouTubers like The Crappy Childhood Fairy, Patrick Teahan, and Daniel Mackler over this book, any day.

]]> 4.16 1997 The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
author: Eckhart Tolle
name: Melissa
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/16
date added: 2023/06/16
shelves: 2023-reads, ableist-bullsh-t, books-i-really-dislike, contemporary, no-thanks, nonfiction, one-star-read, self-help, should-never-have-finished, wtf
review:
This is a whole lotta nope. No thank you.

First published in 1997, "The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment," by Eckhart Tolle, is a modern staple of New Age self-help lit and a favorite of Oprah's.

I finally read this on audiobook in June 2023 and I would not recommend this book. Repetitive, vague, and low-key aggravating, if not outright frustrating, this book is about as far from zen as I can imagine. The text is loaded with so much gender essentialism and ableism, I was amazed I was even able to finish it.

Negative stars. Did not like.

Not for me.

Three stars as a research read. This book is ugh to the tenth power.

On a more positive note: I thought this book would have New Age manifest-your-reality doctrine in it, and it thankfully did not. I was pleasantly surprised on that front. But this book was still ugh.

On a side note: Tolle never uses the word "trauma" in this book, but I just wanna say: there are ways to alleviate and heal Complex-PTSD/childhood-PTSD and PTSD, but Tolle's book ain't it. I'd recommend YouTubers like The Crappy Childhood Fairy, Patrick Teahan, and Daniel Mackler over this book, any day.


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