Becca

Nix excels at world-building, which, as usual, is showcased in Saturday. Sorceress Saturday's realm is beautifully worked, with new classes of Denizen's, new personalities and gorgeously depicted scenery.
Saturday is also the most clear moral play of the books discussing the motivations and trustworthiness of the Will, the Old One, and Arthur himself as he progressively becomes less human.
However, I agree with other reviewers – this reads like a work unfinished. Every other book contained gaining both the Will and the Key of that day, except Saturday. There is not really a clear contextual reason for the book to end – it is neither a conclusion, nor a major cliffhanger, simply the book concludes.

So there's a genre of book about a child protagonist who has one (or many) precocious quirks. And it sounds like it would be too twee to be acceptable, but somehow I'm addicted. And in the same vein as [b:The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 1618 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Mark Haddon https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327882682s/1618.jpg 4259809] and [b:The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet 6065179 The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet Reif Larsen https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347685924s/6065179.jpg 6054277] we have 100 Sideways Miles. Finn Easton measures time in the distance the Earth has traveled in its orbit (20 miles/second), makes frequent references to the Knackery, and refers to his seizures as “blanking out.” And he is so real and so endearing that it never feels twee.The central premise of the book is one giant metaphor for coming of age: Finn's father, the famous writer Michael Easton, wrote a book about aliens that come to Earth through Lazarus Doors and used Finn's name for the protagonist, as well as several of his physical characteristics (his : : scar from when a horse landed on him, his heterochromia) and personality quirks. Only these aliens are Not Human. Finn is not sure whether he is a real person or just an alien from his father's book – and on a greater level is trying to figure out whether he's normal and how he fits into the world. I'm a sucker for a coming of age story, and this one is done well. (For no good reason, a huge network in my hippocampus is dedicated to recognizing Night Journey stories – a coming of age genre made up by my high school English class that doesn't exist in the real world.)Finally, it's worth noting that there are few books that allow characters of color to have a narrative of their own that doesn't revolve around their ethnicity. Julia Bishop is a refreshing counterpoint as a character of color, who's allowed to develop her own personality and her own story.

Just another Connie Willis book doing what Connie Willis does best: romantic comedy for the rest of us with some mixed in science fiction, comedy of errors and authority figures that don't listen.

This book is some brilliant ideas executed quite poorly. In trying to be a literary thriller, Descent really succeeds at neither genre. Nonetheless, in this failure, which is his debut novel, Johnston brings some rather unique ideas. The bad news first: this is yet another abduction/serial sexual predator novel. Why is this even a thing that exists? Also, stranger abduction practically never happens in real life, which makes the profusion of novels on the topic extra strange. But further, this novel doesn't really spend much time on the abduction. I came to the novel having seen it compared to [b:Gone Girl 19288043 Gone Girl Gillian Flynn https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1397056917s/19288043.jpg 13306276], so I thought it was a mystery and tried to read it as such – paying attention to all the details. Unfortunately, that way lies utter madness: there simply is no conclusion to the vast majority of storylines. Why is Grant missing two fingers? Who was the alleged rapist that grabbed a ride with Sean and whatever happened to him? Why was Sean also called Dudley? What happened to Angela after Faith died and was the story she told the real story of the drowning? None of these questions have clear answers, except maybe the first (he was drunk, the end.) and the last (yes, apparently, as billed.) Even the idea of this novel as an exploration of a family after tragedy falls flat as Angela's story gets dropped completely after only two chapters, and Grant and Sean's stories don't really come together until they settle in with the Kinneys. Finally, as many reviewers have already noted: you can either feature multiple timelines or multiple narrators, but not both, especially when you refer to your protagonists only by gender 95% of the time.The good news: there are so many cool ideas here. Johnston really wanted to look at the shockwaves of tragedy and the idea of vignettes of separate coping mechanisms had potential. I loved the idea to make it seem like the story of the “every-man” by referring only to characters as “the girl” or “the boy” and this was one of the most successful themes as it carried through also into Caitlyn's dissociative episodes in which she was watching someone else narrate her story. Johnston is also very into the idea of good luck, bad luck and religion as a result of experiencing bad luck, and this came through strongly, if heavy handedly, with nice parallelism with the story of Angela and Faith as well as the Kenney brothers. Overall, a fairly weak and not very enjoyable novel, but an ambitious one. I will definitely consider reading his second effort.

I was initially confused about the decision to start a book that it is ultimately about the apocalypse with a tragic focus on the unrelated death of Arthur Leander. How can a personal tragedy be related to the apocalypse? How can we care when several million people are about to die? But ultimately that's kind of the point of Station Eleven. It's less about the apocalypse and more about everyone ever known to Arthur Leander in the peri-apocalyptic time from his first wife to the paramedic who tried to resuscitate him. It's a very character-focused exploration with some intertwining threads. The intense character study plays nicely with the themes of the book: not how humans survive the apocalypse, but really how humanity survives, with art and culture and museums and language. And in that, how individuals survive with their individuality. This is really a new approach to a pretty tired genre.

Sometimes, St. John Mandel is a little too on the nose, but it still usually hits home. For instance: the motto inscribed on the Symphony's van: “Survival is Insufficient,” or the fact that most of the characters belong to a traveling band of Shakespearean players. It really only rankled when she tried to draw parallels between Arthur having multiple wives (sequentially) being completely accepted in the conventional time line, while the prophet's, Arthur's son (in a plot-twist I saw coming on like, page 2) multiple wives are condemned, perhaps because he has them in parallel and also, a potential wife is 12. Similarly, the ironic cross-cut from Arthur's first wife bemoaning the likelihood that Kirsten will amount to nothing with her extreme competence and self-protection in the post-apocalyptic world. We get it: some people really came into their own in an apocalypse and it provides an opportunity for humanity to be cleansed. Great.

On the whole, I found Station Eleven to be a really unique and interesting take on the post-apocalyptic genre, with some beautiful character portraits.

This memoir of one of the most famous medical examiners is a decent showing. It is immediately clear that Dr. Baden's strength is science, rather than writing – many of his cases lack a proper setup, climax and/or conclusion and he could stand to add some excitement to his descriptions of his findings.

The two major flaws of this book are length and audience. At approximately 250 pages for a narrative that covers Kennedy, Belushi, Marilyn Monroe, three serial killers, a prison riot, Baden's sundry employment history and several other chapters, each section can only be granted 2-3 pages, which really undermines the richness of the narrative. In terms of Dr. Baden's intended audience, it is simply unclear. He states in his conclusions that one of his intentions is to encourage more medical students to enter the field; however, as a senior medical student, I was untouched by his accounts. The clinical discussion did not occur at a high enough scientific level to intrigue me. At the other extreme, I am doubtful of how interesting this book would be to a purely lay audience – there are several pages dedicated to the politics of the office of medical examiner, untold descriptions of hyoid bone fractures and petechiae and vitreous fluid, much of which with little explanation. A third drawback is that Unnatural Death is beginning to show its age – Baden's discussion of the pathophysiology of cirrhosis is outdated and his account of how to prevent SIDS makes no mention of sleeping position, which is now the standard of care.

Nevertheless, Unnatural Death is a quick read and a rare first hand account of the myriad of roles taken on by a medical examiner, from autopsy to crime scene investigation to courtroom. If you can overcome the awkward pacing and uncanny valley between medical text and popular science book, it is certainly worth a read.

I have been a long-time Ann Leckie fan, but in long-form I only enjoyed the Imperial Radch books, and I don't usually enjoy short stories at all, so I was hesitant approaching this, but it was mind-blowingly good. Each story had a new take, even when it felt like it was going to retread speculative fiction genre conventions. Almost all of the stories were about negotiation, persuasion and diplomacy and I liked that it felt like they were in dialogue with each other, but each story had a unique perspective to add.

I thought the first third, the stand alone stories, were shockingly the strongest: I really liked the first-contact and symbiosis set up of the titular story, which really immersed me in the setting and world very quickly.

Hesperia and Glory also packed a punch in its short pages, about how perception defines reality

Another Word for World, which is clearly a descendent of Ursula Le Guin's A Word for World is Forest cut to the quick with its exploration on how well-meaning people could still fail to connect across linguistic and cultural boundaries

The imperial Radch stories were in fact the weakest, in part because they were all quite distant from the Radch we know. If they hadn't been marked as belonging to the same universe, they could easily have stood alone. The only one I remember is She Commands Me and I Obey, another great look at negotiation and what happens when we take the status quo for granteed.

The Raven Tower stories were somehow very successful (even though I really didn't like the Raven Tower?) with the one exception that each of them recited the rules for the gods not being able to lie – it would have been better if they'd been edited to be in a collection made to be read together. Of those, the Snake's Wife was by far the strongest – a disturbing read, but captivating and really a capstone on the themes of negotiation, manipulative practices and the ways that scheming to get the upper hand can fail.

Overall, a really strong collection organized along a powerful central theme with very little redundancy or “duds”

Medical memoirs are my version of brain candy and being weeks away from earning my own M.D. from Dr. Firlik's alma mater, I thought this would be an apropos read. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm part of Dr. Firlik's intended audience. Granted most medical memoirs are written for the layperson, but being some what of a connoisseur of the genre, I can tell you that some are more interesting to those of us who have done are own time in the neurosurgical OR and some of them are less so.

All of this is not to say that I didn't find Dr. Firlik's book entertaining. It certainly was, and in particular Dr. Firlik has inherited a gift of storytelling – her patient encounters are touching, detailed and never judgmental. This is clearly the strong point of the book.

The weaker parts of the book are that, while she is clearly trying to be, Dr. Firlik herself admits that she is no Dr. Sacks. She alludes to him frequently, but just as frequently apologizes for the lack of deep thought on the brain/mind dichotomy that she is interested in, explaining that as a neurosurgeon, her first commitment is to the operating room. Her honesty is appreciated, and at points it seems that she is doing herself a disservice, for she is a very introspective person. But at the end of the day, she's correct – she sees interesting questions that arise from her profession, but has not explored them in depth. At no point is this more clear than the very weak closing two chapters, particularly the last chapter regarding the future of neurosurgery.

This chapter is rushed and wandering. It contains too many ideas for one chapter, ranging from neuro-enhancements to minimally invasive surgeries to a discussion of turf-wars that may, in fact, be too entrenched in medical politics to be comprehensible to the lay audience. Dr. Firlik should play to her strengths – the ability to recount the daily life of a neurosurgeon and leave further exploration of the questions she raises on consciousness, the mind and neurological enhancements to the reader.

I went through a rut where speculative fiction was just not singing to me anymore. Over the last couple of years, some great new scifi (primarily by female authors) recaptured my attention, but I was really struggling to find fantasy that was compelling. The fifth season was perfect to recaptivate me – it was like discovering epic fantasy again for the first time. The setting is complex and unique. The metaphysics were unique and interesting. I loved the idea of the Fifth Season being a canonical phenomenon. I liked how there were so many genre conventions: magic users being discriminated against, the magic school, etc., but they were all a little turned on their head. It was even very well-paced for a trilogy.

I'm still mulling over exactly how I feel about this book. It's very, very rare for a book to ever make progress from my “partially read” shelf to my “read” shelf. I'm still a little shocked that I actually read this book. I meant to just make another college try at reading it, so that I could reshelve it without guilt. Instead, I found myself 50 pages in, than 100, than 300.I think part of the reason that I hadn't gotten very far in this book before is that I picked it up knowing nearly nothing about it. Being a big fan of [b:How to Buy a Love of Reading 5975766 How to Buy a Love of Reading Tanya Egan Gibson http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1267911725s/5975766.jpg 6149015] and [b:Special Topics in Calamity Physics 3483 Special Topics in Calamity Physics Marisha Pessl http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1309200115s/3483.jpg 910619], I anticipated it to be another meta-book. I was extremely disappointed to open it and realize that it was a holocaust book.You see, I spent much of my childhood haunted by the specter of the holocaust. My maternal grandparents are concentration camp survivors, and it felt like it was the only thing that my grandparents ever talked about. Every day in Hebrew school and day camp and overnight camp seemed to be Holocaust day. I think every fiction book my mother has ever read, and certainly every book she has sent to me unsolicited has been about the Holocaust. I think I've read nearly every Holocaust book every written, and the only one to date that I've liked has been [b:A Thread of Grace 16047 A Thread of Grace Mary Doria Russell http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166697257s/16047.jpg 882031] To say I am burned out on the Holocaust is a major understatement. And, more importantly, I was extremely skeptical that there is anything new to say about the Holocaust that hasn't been said already. But once I actually got into The Book Thief, it was gripping. Liesel was so vulnerable in the beginning, Hans was so warm and, I figured, at least it's about communists, not Jews. And then I got into Hans teaching Liesel to read and the beauty of those stark, midnight scenes, illuminated only by paternal love and the desire to read was so beautiful written, and the choice of the Gravedigger's Handbook both poignant and hilarious. Ultimately, what kept me reading was the characters. There's not a single character in the book who is forgetful. And far from being caricatures, all of the characters are well-rounding, with flaws and virtues and react appropriately to situations and change. Perhaps my favorites are the damaged, uncertain mayor's wife and the coarse, prickly, but loving Rosa. The imagery of words is heavy-handed, and often it feels like Zusak is screaming “I'm using imagery here! Look at me!” That being said, the animation of words as a concept is fascinating, and a powerful thread linking the book together. Words fly out of people's mouths, fall heavily and a thousand other movements. Much has been written about death as a narrator, but to me, it felt like a minor part of the novel. It certainly was not overdone: death barely made an appearance in the first 300 pages. By the time he did, it added a nice foreshadowing and helped contextualize the activity within a very small community within the broader setting of world war II.

My terrible internet ate my review of this book (thanks, Comcast. I hope Catherynne Valente reinvents you as a horrible, inept beast-thing.)

Valente takes this moment to take a hiatus from the plot and September. It's an odd choice in the penultimate book of a five book series. It works in that by backing off to a new character, she recaptures some of the wonder and joy that makes the Fairyland series so special. And by sticking her Changelings into the Real World, Valente gets a chance to play with a different kind of fantasy, which is a great deal of fun. But I must admit I was less invested for the absence of September. Also, great swathes of this book feel quite rushed; it reads more like a novella than anything else.

The summation of my opinion is of course heavily swayed by Valente's bottomless imagination, which is still on full display here, with a post office staffed by Benjamin Franklins, delivering changelings; every type of tree imaginable, a knitted combat wombat and much more. Valente is a true master...but, as much as it pains me to say it, the early parts of the series were better.

It's tricky to say what I thought of the denouement of the Fairyland series. Indubitably, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making is one of the best books ever written and it sets a standard by which nothing can compare, if purely because the novelty was part of the charm. Still, Valente is probably the most inventive, logophillic writer in the current generation. And she loves her characters with a deep intensity. But, The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home feels more like a museum of Fairyland than an actual story. We go on adventures so that Valente can show off her cleverest, most beautiful creations one last time and love her most favorite characters again, but it feels distant. The stakes, which should feel serious, feel terribly shallow (and they are – the worst that will happen is that September will go home, which in theory will happen eventually anyway. Even when Saturday starts losing his memory, the story is so busy skipping around to Pandemonium and Maude and Lye and September's Shadow and Death and...that it never really focuses on the tension that something bad is happening.

So yes, it's lovely, and yes I will finish the series (I skipped book 4 – the Only Buying Books in Proper Bookstores and Not the Internet thing has fulfilled its deep nostalgic purpose – in my ongoing search for the 4th book, I stumbled on this one instead (in Kramerbooks when I should have been catching the metro to NIH for a very boring symposium) and since the whole point is to restore the deep appreciation for books because they're hard to come by from my youth (and, yes, supporting locally owned bookstores), reading series out of order seemed apropos.) but it's not the paragon of speculative fiction that its predecessors were.

No one does sentimentality like Backman. He just toes the line of twee, has a lot to say about good people stuck in bad systems and just makes the most likeable characters ever.

The most positive thing I have to say was that this was an easy read, which was vaguely enlightening on what it's like to work minimum wage. And it's well annotated with multiple scholarly citations.

On the other hand, I'm a resident. It's like the trump card in all pity poker games forever. Which makes pity poker no fun at all. Oh, normal people whine about not getting paid time and a half to work 11 hours in a row? I've worked 34 hours in a row for less than $10.00/hour. You stand for four hours in a row? I've stood for 30 hours in a row, in an operating room. You had to clean up peoples pubic hairs? I've had to put my hands in people's orifices, including orifices that someone just created with a scalpel and hold their spleen in the air so that the stool that accidentally just entered the peritoneal cavity doesn't get on it. And I've had almost every bodily fluid imaginable on my hands, feet, and occasionally face. When I was a med student, I paid for such privileges. Cry me a freaking river. I just can't be bothered to feel sorry for someone working 60 hours/week or 7 days/week with some of them being part time.

Also, while I agree that the amount of money spent on the criminalization and prosecution of marijuana (in this case, evidenced by drug testing) is nothing short of inane, you lose your moral high-ground if you actually were using marijuana just proximal to the time you knew you were applying for a job. Like seriously, ideals are all well and good if you serve them with a side of common sense.

And there's just no answers offered here, either. You think the minimum wage isn't a living wage? You do realize that if you pay everyone more, prices will just go up, right? And as much as I'd love to live in the socialist wonderland that she proposes in her afterword - with government-subsidised school and healthcare and housing, I'd rather read a book about how she's trying to get there or stop-gap measures we can employ, rather than “I worked at Walmart and it was awful, but the people who worked there full time didn't seem to mind so much.”

Huh. I think I may have read this too close to [b:The Robber Bride 17650 The Robber Bride Margaret Atwood http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320478077s/17650.jpg 1119196] to properly appreciate it. Both books have women carefully selected to contrast each other. Both focus on their childhood, their adolescence and then their adulthood, starting with adulthood then going back to childhood and working their way forward. Both grapple with dark themes and child abuse. In contrast, Two Girls, Fat and Thin has beautifully vivid writing, particularly in the chapters narrated by Dorothy where her imagination roams free, but less substantial characterization.

Sometimes I get on runs of books that just fail to thrill me. I like Matt Fitzgerald's points: humans evolved over millennia to eat basically all food and all fad diets are dumb. This is also a pretty obvious point to anyone who's spent any time thinking about food or metabolism and since I'm a professional metabolist...

I was hoping either for scientific rigor or bystander fascination (e.g. a review of the craziest fad diets of all time.) Instead I got a lot of common sense: people are healthy eating a wide-range of foods in moderation and there's no magic diet mostly stated without citations.

I will say, though, I was grateful to the chapter dedicated to the overhydration cult and the dangers of free water intoxication as that's my personal pet peeve.

Unclear who his target audience is: most people who already think about these things already know what he's saying to be true OR have their heads buried in the sand of their favorite fad diet.

I loved [b:Shine Shine Shine 13167199 Shine Shine Shine Lydia Netzer https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1325702786s/13167199.jpg 16422717], so I jumped on this when I found it in our local little library. In conclusion, I think Lydia Netzer basically can only write one book. Also, I'm pretty sure I will happily read that book as many different ways as she would like to write it. The book is this: quirky and star-obsessed scientist(s) – in Shine Shine Shine an astronomer; here a pair of astrophysicists – face obstacles in their love for each other, but are just too quirky to really integrate with the rest of society. The conclusion is a light, but deep-hearted, geeky romantic comedy formula that seems to be just my speed.I was worried the premise of the mothers setting up their children to be soul-mates would turn out to be twee, but the twists it took from the back cover saved it, in addition to the other plot elements. I liked that Irene and George were full characters with personalities and goals beyond their romance and the quirkiness. This isn't a perfect novel – George and Irene's respective initial significant others are pretty one-dimensional and seem to exist for comic relief alone. A bizarre narwhal-filled interlude is cute but unharmonious with the rest of the novel. It's clear it was Netzer's pet scene (and she says as much in the afterword) and she couldn't quite pull it out even when it was clear it wasn't working. Lydia Netzer may only write one book, but, in my foray into literary fiction I've learned that 90% of literary fiction is the same retread “modern novel” over and over and it's very dull. So I'll take her repetitive, but geeky, quirky and fresh novel as many different ways as she wants to write it.

I'll be honest - I didn't expect to like this book at all. I half hate-read Fizzy McFizz's totally obnoxious blog: A Cartoon Guide to Being a Doctor, because she is just so self-pitying, especially about residency. I went into this knowing that this was a semi-fictionalized account of Fizzy's intern year and expected the same over the top, self-pitying whining about a pretty normal internship.
I've got to say, this was more enjoyable than I expected, and on the nose about many aspects of medical training: it had the intern who always seems to manage to do less work than everyone else (and yet still complains about it), the cruel senior resident who seems to be enjoy being mean and you wonder how she can possibly also be a mom (my equivalent senior resident made me cry when I was an intern...more than once), the way that there is a culture to how to do everything (in my program it's four-colored pens, rather than sticky notes), and how bad things happen only to the nicest patients.
Overall, it was kind of fun and not nearly as obnoxious as expected.

Sometimes cynical, sometimes self-aggrandizing and often self-contradictory the read is very uneven, but overall an enlightening and occasionally even instructional presentation of the best tools that we can bring to the bedside to approach our patients.

I love Veronica Mars more than probably any other TV show in the history of TV. It's certainly the only show I ever donated to the kickstarter of. The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line reads exactly like a Veronica Mars episode – the pacing's the same, the visuals are the same, the mandatory cameos of the season regulars are the same – to the point that I could imagine the commercial breaks. And it's fun. It has Rob Thomas' characteristic wit and depending on how fast you read you might, like me, find that it's in fact less of a time commitment than watching an episode.

Downsides? Maybe I just don't have Veronica momentum any more. This just didn't really stick with me. It didn't have the context that a VM episode did, so it mostly felt like a filler one-off episode. I want wry class commentary, anti-hero feminism and friendly camaraderie. Oh, Veronica, we used to be friends, a long time ago, but I have yet to see a high school show that makes the transition to post-high school and retains its je ne sais quoi.

I found this a shallow but enjoyable exploration of the trendy foods of the last few decades and who the major movers and shakers in those food fields were. Sax doesn't particularly get into the whys of particular trends, so I think there's more depth that could have been there, but it was fun enough.

I was beyond thrilled to find that there was another, posthumous, DWJ book. Unfortunately, DWJ died before she could finish the book, and to me, it was very, very obvious where she'd left off and her sister had taken over. Most DWJ books have a twist-ending that is built on the seemingly irrelevant facts introduced earlier. In contrast, in The Islands, I found the tail-end rushed and flat. I think her sister found the half-finished manuscript and just tried to get it done as soon as possible. Even in DWJ's very young adult books, there's a sincerity and depth to the plot and character development and especially coming of age that just doesn't shine through in the Islands of Chaldea.

It's still a fun romp. In particular, I enjoyed the alternate history of the UK/Ireland feel. I thought the world-building felt relatively complete. The animals and child protagonists were cute.

Yeah, I don't have that much to say – it just felt shallow and unfinished.

I bought this from Laura Marx Fitzgerald at least year's Princeton Children's Book Festival because it looked intriguing and she promised me that it was like the Westing Game. I think that's a decently fair synopsis – a fun YA romp, with lots of puzzles that are not too clever for the young adult set, but not so juvenile to make the book unreadable to an adult reader.

What really made Under the Egg stand out for me was the way that it made art accessible to an art-naive reader, such as me and most of the YA set. Without being pedantic or preachy, Fitzgerald's evocative descriptions of art, and her loving understanding of how and why paintings are made will stick with me for awhile.

Being Jewish is a fundamental part of my identity, but being raised in a small midwestern city with no Orthodox community outside of a single Lubavitch family, I had very little insight into the yawning divide between me, what Leah Vincent refers to as a “Lox-and-bagels, my son the doctor, Woody Allen Jew” (except I hate Woody Allen) and Charedi (Ultra-orthodox) Jews. I kind of always assumed that Charedim were like me, just more. Yes, more synagogue, more Kosher, more Shabbat observing, but also more of the cultural tropes of American Jewry: highly educated, wealthy, liberal.

So, if you've ever actually met a Charedi Jew, you'll know that I was in for a surprise when I moved to Philadelphia for medical training and joined the pediatric hospital that provides care for the children of Lakewood, NJ. I realized that the gulf between me and the Orthodoxy wasn't a matter of degree, but was a true cultural divide. I was fascinated by the commitment to making Judaism the sole, core identity, avoiding secular books, TV and education in many cases. And I was stunned by families that avoided ever visiting their children with genetic diseases, in case the rumor got out in their community that they had a genetic disease in the family. My bosses had to explain first the entire concept of Shidduch (Jewish matchmaking) and then that the presence of a genetic disease in the family would affect Shidduch for all of the siblings, even though we knew that they weren't carriers.

What I'm saying is that I had the context to understand why Leah's family cut her off when she started to slide off the derech. Nonetheless, her tale is heart-wrenching. I would find myself getting frustrated with her decisions and then she'd slip in a note about her age. Most of the book takes place over the course of her teen years: she leaves her family home around 15 to go to England, gets sent to live independently in Israel at 16 and then is expected to be completely independent, including financially independent in NYC at 17. To the secular world that summary alone is startling.

I wish Vincent had spent more time on the relationship between her and her parents, her and Judaism, and her life prior to leaving the Charedi community. The bulk of the book is a very awkward series of, at best, semi-consensual sexual encounters written full of uncomfortable details. These depictions are sad, but ultimately (and sadly) redundant. I think most people reading this book are like me: deeply curious about Charedi life and looking for reflections from the inside. I appreciate that Vincent has instead crafted a book that is more of a memoir for her, but it feels a little like a waste to me. She has written numerous articles that are much more reflective pieces and discuss her relationship with the Charedi community now, and her relationship with Judaism. I think more of that incorporated into Cut Me Loose would have made for a more complete book.

Space is fascinating. Space is fascinating because it is big and because it's filled with unknown stuff and it is fascinating because it is profoundly isolating. Most sci-fi can only handle at most two of those things. In fact, most sci-fi focuses on disposing of the isolation of space as quickly as possible. In contrast, The Martian dials up isolation and down exploration. This shouldn't work, but it does and it's awesome.

The whole book reads kind of like a merge of an escape the room game and an episode of MacGyver, except set on Mars. The entire first sequence is Mark trying to do the algebra and botany to figure out how to create a farm from his own stool and the provisions in his emergency kit. The utter solitude of Mark on Mars is omnipresent for the first third of the book, and I really enjoyed contemplating that. If your speed is more space opera, this runs slow and technical. There's a lot of math and a lot of science and a lot of facts about Mars.

It's also really novel and deeply enjoyable to read a book where the conflicts are people versus the environment. All of the characters in this book (and eventually, there is more than one) get along and work as a team. On the one hand, Weir cares little for his characters and most of them read flat, on the other hand, it really optimizes the exploration of what really smart people, working together at their best can accomplish. I have no freaking clue how they made this into an enjoyable movie, BTW, maybe watching that should go on to my to-do list.