Becca

Very dry and not super age appropriate for the type of child that will be reading board books - the text is really at a level for a 4 to 5 year old.

Half how-to, half actual textbook, this is an easy to use and fairly thorough overview of computational techniques for answering bioinformatic questions. The writing is very approachable, the text light and compact – overall a good first source.

While widely considered the ur-textbook for genetic syndromes presenting with dysmorphology, Smith is invaluable as a reference, but limited as a textbook.

The closest thing that clinical genetics has to a pocket reference – this text is invaluable for the general pediatrician, pediatric neurologist or medical geneticist in training. Unlike many other dysmorphology texts, The Bedside Dysmorphologist categorizes traits by body part, helping to shape the approach to diagnosis.

Interesting premise, but Dr. Elliot has difficulty sticking to the thesis – the book feels like it is wandering, and overstuffed. I ended up feeling like only the first two chapters actually discussed enhancement technologies at all.

I appreciate what R'Abrams is trying to do: show Judaism as a more flexible religion, in which decisions were made as much for historical reasons as religious ones. But this book is kind of a literary failure. R'Abrams gets so deep in her movie analogies (most of which didn't age well), that I had to google movies I'd never seen to understand her point at times. I found them jarring, unignorable and completely disruptive to the flow.

Looking past the bulky cinematic digressions, The Other Talmud also struggles with just being a massive stretch at times. R'Abrams argues the Yerushalmi had more roles for women and was in general more liberal, but I think she's cherry-picking. I haven't read much of Bavli: just daf yomi for ~6 months, so 1/15th of it, but I could find lines from the Bavli, too, to make many of the same points. I think this was a good idea, poorly executed. 2.5 stars.

I'm not going to give stars to the talmud, because that would be weird. What I will say is that I switched to the Koren Noe edition for Daf Yomi about a dozen dapim in and I'm glad I did – the commentary provides a lot of necessary context. R'Steinsaltz' (z'‘l) translations are thoughtful and extremely helpful. I did read this primarily in the aramaic, and although my language skills mostly held up the original text is elliptic and full of unclear allusions, and I was very grateful for the side-by-side translation.

This is David's favorite book. He will read it aloud straight through when bored.

This was a truly fantastic – spare, haunting, starkly illustrated, in turns innocent and worldly – memoir, depicting the coming of age of a young, Iranian girl. Like the best of such memoirs, the author spends equal time on the political and historical events in Iran, the day-to-day life in such a regime and normal childhood experiences.

Super compulsive reading: all of the best parts of a police procedural with some nicely developed magical systems, all set in one of my favorite cities in the world.

The crime was creepy, but evocative. However, I felt like Punch and Judy manifesting in horrific ways has been done before, for instance by both Diana Wynne Jones and Neil Gaiman.

I liked Peter Grant and his character development. I liked that he was kind of spacey and distractable and well-paired with the detail-oriented Leslie May

I had two big complaints: one was the objectification of the female characters (about which I'd been warned, and also promised that it improves throughout the series, which hopefully is true.) The other is the pacing: climaxes of one scene would jump cut to hours of studying Latin for no clear reason. This is at its worst at the very end, where I really couldn't quite figure out what actually happened because the action was stuffed with exposition and another case. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the Rook: mystery/urban fantasy mashup with world building that occasionally butts its way into action.

Overall, it's chock-full of my favorite things: deeply urban (London, no less), interesting mystery and well-designed speculative fiction. Perfect camping reading, and I'm totally tempted to binge read the rest of the series

This was so perfectly comfortable. I read it in one sitting, when I was post-call from a shift at work and it was the perfect book for my semi-sleep deprived brain to read while curled up on the couch.

There are some books that are terrific because they're profound, or the writing is beautiful or the plot is breathtaking. This isn't one of those books. This book is terrific because it's essentially the platonic ideal of a young adult speculative fiction novel. The writing is approachable by the young reader, tight with nothing extra. The story is both fun and underlined by a coming of age theme. None of it is new, but Stead does it so perfectly and with her own witty twist that I didn't really mind. Her depiction of the transformation from mean middle schooler into young adult with insight into human imperfections could have easily veered into moralizing, but it was so on the nose with the depiction that one can't really complain.

Pure fun.

I think I really summed it up when I explained: “it reads like assigned reading for an undergrad philosophy course. The really cool one, with the professor everyone adores, but still.”

Palmer has always been clearly been using her work as a vehicle for important cultural conversations, but that was paired with awe-inspiring world-building in Too Like the Lightning and a careful deconstruction of all of the holes in her world in Seven Surrenders. In The Will to Battle, nearly 300 or 350 pages are devoted entirely to dialogue, about half of which is between the narrator and either (a) the reader, (b) Hobbes or (c) other dead people as imagined by the narrator. It's important work about what it means to be a civilization, how to balance improving this world versus dreaming of bigger ones and what we as citizens in a global society owe each other. I think it may also be doing work holding up either end of the quartet in which it's placed (time will tell), but it's not really functional as a stand-alone novel.

I read this immediately after [b:Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void 7237456 Packing for Mars The Curious Science of Life in the Void Mary Roach https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1290480157s/7237456.jpg 8159756] - high on a newly discovered favorite author. I think Reading the two quite so adjacently resulted in a less favorable view of Stiff - there is an almost completely replicated chapter between the two discussing the use of cadavers to simulate forces on an astronaut's body during spaceflight, and the voice and humor is nearly identical between the two books. That being said, Stiff was still quite good, perhaps objectively the superior book as Roach covers a very broad range of subjects. She again excels at covering all angles of a subject. For instance, when covering the history of medical cadavers, she comments on the setup of modern anatomy classes, ceremonies respecting cadaver donors, the history of graverobbing for the purpose of providing anatomic cadavers, the history surrounding specific graverobbers as well as specific professors using their services as well as the theories about human anatomy during each period and how these changed over time using knowledge learned through dissection.

Bayes theory is cute. Pop nonfiction math books seem incapable of being patronizing on one extreme or invoking their math theorem as an abstract magical spell on the other. I prefer the later, which is what this is. How did we find Russian submarines? We cast Bayes at them. Sometimes, even as someone very familiar with Bayes theorem I found these invocations impossible to understand what was literally happening, but overall, this is an easy and mathy read. 3.5 stars.

This was really cute and unique. A perfect blend of tenement historical fiction, with really spot on accurate Jewish American history with a kid's fantasy book, with all the bells and whistles of typical YA fantasy.

Major props for the creativity - this is probably the only book ever written to combine a Dybbuk and Thomas Edison in more or less the same plot. Also, the magic feels well thought out with a clear culture of how magic is and isn't used and how this varies among the upper and lower classes. Finally, the tenement culture felt familiar and true to the historical nonfiction that I'm familiar with.

The weakness was the pacing - the entire book feels like a build up to the “to be continued” that occurs at the end. I think it probably would have been more satisfying to wait until the series was finished and read it all at one go.

You'd think I'd love this: I've played joust and zork and programed in BASIC and have feelings about THACO. And, well, I think I would have loved this had I read it in 2011, when it first came out, but in the last 9 years my tolerance for self-absorbed men who don't see women as human beings has deteriorated. You see, I've been a computer scientist while being a woman. You know that guy who begrudgingly tolerates you as long as you mind your place while he objectifies women, don't challenge his litany of his geeky obsessions and self-aggrandizing behavior? What if that guy wrote a not very well-written book (plot holes you could drive a spaceship through!), in which a thinly veiled version of himself was the main character, who became rich and famous for his geeky obsessions and then he became a multimillionaire? Yeah...

I have developed an obsession with Lucy Grealy. Two years ago, I found [b:Autobiography of a Face 534255 Autobiography of a Face Lucy Grealy http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175606552s/534255.jpg 95778] in a Goodwill, and picked it up simply because of how cool the title was. And then I got hooked. I think of Lucy almost as someone I know and am friends with. I feel like I know her, and her foibles are therefore half exasperating, but half endearing. Like, there she is, Lucy, being a little self-involved again. So Lucy.So from that context, As Seen on TV is everything I expected. She goes on stream of consciousness asides that wander maybe a little too much, but similarly, that's endearing. Her personality spills out everywhere in the book and that's probably its greatest strength. The essays absolutely feel raw, and in a lot of ways, that makes them more readable. However, I'm less able to gloss over the uneveness of the collection. There are some stellar pieces about a lost brother, about being on TV, about horseback riding, but some completely useless pieces. I felt that way especially about the last few essays, which are completely dry and use a lot of pseudointellectual jargon without saying much of anything. Lucy is lovable for her lack of editing and her closeness to her subject. Anything beyond her creative autobiographical nonfiction just falls flat for me.

The first thing to note about the book is the cover. I'm not a judge-the-book-by-its-cover kind of person, but there's something intensely embarrassing about reading a book with an embossed pink belt on the cover. I ran into a friend while carrying my copy and he asked what I was reading: “not a chick-lit rom-com” I answered, defensively.The only problem being, it kind of is. Lots of obsessing over what people are or aren't wearing, who is or is not dating whom and whether or not each character is popular. The attempt is to make it a self-aware, self-referential chick-lit rom-com, peppered with an introspective, if flawed protagonist.Which brings us to the crux of the issue: this would be fascinating, were it new territory. However, it's far from it. The flawed but introspective teenage protagonist who makes sense of the intricate, unexplicable world called teenagehood has already been done, most notably and incomparably by [b:The Perks of Being a Wallflower 22628 The Perks of Being a Wallflower Stephen Chbosky http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1313063835s/22628.jpg 2236198]. And also, while there's always room for another quality book in any genre, Lee Fiora has a lot more emphasis on the flawed than on the introspective. In fact, mostly, the best adjective for her is dumb. Its hard to imagine how she got into boarding school in the first place, much less on a scholarship. And every time she criticizes herself, you just want to agree with her: Yes, you're an idiot; yes you suck academically; yes you push away everyone who wants to be friends with you, of which there seem to be shockingly many, given that you're cruel to your friends, never make social overtures and push away everyone who wants to be friends with you.There was an attempt at a message about family and how hard it is to leave your family as a teenager, but Lee's family was so much more flawed than she was that I found the fact that she ever talked to them at all just another annoying quirk of hers (her father slapped her across the face in public. Last I checked, child abuse is rather unforgivable and never excusable)The bits that the book does well, on the other hand, it does very well - a sentence or two about the bond of a true friendship; the description of the sense of commingled sadness and joy when someone unexpectedly really and truly knows you; the episodic and fragmented nature of teenage experiences.

A classic coming of age tale meets a conspiracy theory thriller roughly at its peak and the two spark an entirely new type of story. Compelling and shockingly good.

This is cute, but it's basically 10% of a book that then got abandoned. You can see the seedlings of what ultimately became the scholomance

This is like a high-end restaurant's classy, deconstructed version of one's favorite childhood dessert: it hits all the warm and fuzzy notes that a fun, romp-like, young-adult faerie tale should, while also having very worthwhile commentary on such topics as security theatre, the advantages and lack thereof of growing up, and the importance of feeling that you have agency over your own life.

Despite trying to cover some Big Ideas, and despite having some of the best world-building I've ever read, I barely noticed either of those things until I finished, because ultimately, The Girl Who Circumnavigated [etc] is, at it's heart, a faerie tale, and it reads like one: seamless and mythic. I felt wrapped up in the plot and the characters, with some room spared to appreciate the atmosphere. It was just once I finished that I realized how novel the book was. This is the type of book that I'll want to reread over and over again, and I am completely confident that I will find more each time I do.

It's worth noting, as an aside, that Valente's work is also extremely strong from a gender perspective: she has self-sufficient, interesting female characters who have myriad personalities and goals besides romantic ones. And unlike some books that have gotten critical acclaim for strong female characters, The Girl Who [etc] stars characters who break the bookish-eager to please-sidekick mold of female characters: the titular September is brash, nosy and heartless as well as brave, inventive and persistent; her mother is a mechanic.

There are so many other positive things to say: the denouement is clever (and extremely obvious once you know it, but so brave that I never expected it to be true!) and profound and sad, all at once. There is a Wyverary - a mix of a wyvern and a library who knows everything about everything as long as it starts with the letters A-L. There is a soap golem, who of course, has Truth inscribed on her forehead, and is of course, named Lye.

It's like the Phantom Tollbooth crashed into a faerie tale and it is absolutely delicious.

Satrapi's strength is the ability to write a book that is about her life that is meaningful in the context of the historic events occurring in Iran during her lifetime, but also about her inner narrative. There's a contrast between the parts that are nearly unimaginable for the average American – a co-worker who is beaten by the police for a misinterpreted cartoon, worrying about holding hands, two men beaten for driving in a car together, inability to show one's hair and so forth – and the feelings that are universal: the desire for belonging, fear of isolation and a spectrum of normal teenage emotions.

I found the parts set in Vienna less interesting – I think the compelling nature of the narrative derives in part from Sartapi's self-insight either at the time or in retrospect, and while in Vienna it mostly feels like she wasn't herself. There's a detachment and a lack of emotionality that drives the parts of the narrative set in Iran. Additionally, the strongest parts of the book were when Sartapi had conflict between her mother, father and grandmother – these relatives are so close to her and so fundamental to her being that the conflicts had a clear tension. Without these supporting characters in the narrative the stakes seemed much lower.

Satrapi's black and white illustrations are stark and sometimes simplistic, which I think allows the underlying narrative to shine through, although I frequently had trouble distinguishing between characters, especially men.

Sometimes you can learn a lot about a person by comparing themes across their works. Wells loves to write books about protagonists who are different and slowly come to find their place within a group. They have morally ambiguous pasts, about which they feel guilt. Her settings are expansive and luscious with rich world-building. Her villains have mind-control powers. It gives you a sense, right?

This was a very solid epic fantasy. I'm not in love yet, but I wasn't in love with murderbot by the end of the first book either. I'm interested to see what happens next.

Every five years, I have a year of no-book-buying, to give myself a chance to read the dozens of books that I own but haven't read. (This is inevitably thwarted by living in West Philadelphia, land of free books, and $1 books, which are essentially free, and locally-owned bookstores at which buying books is a philosophical act, really, so it should be allowed...Anyways,) this is one of those years. And this is one of those books that happened to be sitting around. I was excited to get back to my SF/F roots after a couple of years of heavy “literary fiction” reading, but unfortunately, this was not far enough removed from a life of SF/F reading to stand out.

Miss Peregrine's home is simply generic fantasy. Cliches can be nice if they're good renditions, but this isn't really. There is not a single memorable or unique element. It's fine. Nothing more or less, but fine.

The disclaimer here is that I'm not particularly visual, so I wasn't super into the photographs. I wanted a good story, not a bland story with 10 or 20 old photos that were occasionally spooky thrown in but not particularly tied to the plot in any way or really crowbar-ed in. People who like old and/or creepy photos may enjoy more.

That was actually quite cute. I was pretty sure I would not like it, based on the first 50 pages, which were incredibly twee: second-person present tense; ancient enchanters and arcane duels and a steampunk circus? But I fell into the evocative writing and the enchantment of a mystical place, and I found it just as atmospheric as intended. Yes, there was no plot and no characters to speak of, but those things weren't strictly necessary to the goal, which seemed to be purely setting description. In a lot of ways, I found it most similar to Palimpest, in that the focus was exploring the depth of a physical place, its rules, its sights and sounds and scents, rather than a traditional narrative.