Emily

Nothing wrong with this per se, but the author is a bit young for a memoir (22), so there's not a lot of meat to this.

And I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of the title, which sounds like a surprised response to successful masking. The author wears his autism quite visibly by being a comedian whose humor talks about his experiences. Which is great, but we never hear the conversation of the title, and it sounds like he must get a lot in adulthood. Instead we hear about his childhood/teens where everyone could tell that he was autistic, and the bullying and outcast feelings that come with it. (Which is fine - include that in your memoir, by all means, but I was just expecting the title to come in somewhere I suppose.)

Very fun. I don't read a lot of modern superhero comics but this was recommended by a friend. My friends who like Superman say there are some really solid stories to read about him, that do him correctly, since he's kind of a hard character to make interesting. This book focuses a lot on the kids who's family is being harassed by the klan, and a nephew of the local klan leader's (though this uncle is clearly a father figure) who's conflicted about the situation.

Per the back of the book, this story originally was done as a radio show in 1946. So any comments crying this is “woke” are nonsensical, because apparently he's always been this way. The back of the book has a brief history on how and why Superman would be a POC ally (tl;dr: he's an alien and his creators are Jewish. Duh).

I really like that the villain, before you know for sure what his role in the story is, starts off with some really sound advice for his nephew - before completely going overboard and revealing to him that he's the grand scorpion for the klan. That and the fact that his nephew struggles internally so much with trying to rationalize what his family does and says, because it's bad stuff; but he's only ever seen them as good, loving people before this. People can have good shades to them while still doing or endorsing terrible things.

Superman also starts off not having all his powers, because he wasn't originally designed with all of his modern powers, which I liked. I hear DC does a lot of “let's do the origin story again!” so I don't know if this angle is common for his stories, but I'd sort of forgotten that he used to be described as “leaping a building in a single bound” and now he flies.

Religious book posing as a psychology book.

Two entries in here did not feel properly edited - one had font that was incredibly small and difficult to read, and the other had pacing/dialogue done so poorly I could barely understand what was going on (I ended up skipping that one after a bit, unfortunately.) That said, the other six stories were very fun and pretty. Favs are probably Rougarou or Into The Darkness.

It's okay. Just okay. The flashbacks to the carnival are the best sections, for a LOT of reasons, the biggest one being that MOST of the characters in those sections are likable. The main character in the present-day plot unfortunately is not, and neither is his sister that he's so worried about. The big twist of the book (That the curse isn't affecting women in his family, but anyone who takes on the "mermaid" carnival role, meaning it can affect male water performers as well, and Simon becomes the curse target once he joins his sister's troupe) is guessable when you're about 1/3 of the way through. So after that point, the mystery becomes “how do all the pieces fit together?”

The carnival flashbacks were a lot of fun, though, and enough to make me say this is just “okay.” But if you want a mystery to keep you guessing, this is not it.

Recommended to me when I asked for books about starting meditation that don't have a religious angle. Going to assume the person who recommended this hasn't actually read it. Maybe two minutes was spent on actual instructions on how to meditate. That's not the reason for the two-star rating, but I'm trying not to do negative reviews in general here, so I'll end it there. This book wasn't for me.If anyone's looking for a book on secular meditation, I found [b:Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book 34962306 Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics A 10% Happier How-To Book Dan Harris https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1509153842l/34962306.SY75.jpg 56237226] to be more helpful, personally.

This was fun! This reminded me a lot of being younger and growing up online in fan communities, and then being super awkward in my offline life, haha. I'm apparently only a few years older than Cath too, based on her saying 9/11 happened in 3rd grade.

This is a coming-of-age story for Cath, twin sister to Wren, as the two of them move from Omaha to Lincoln to attend UNL. I bought the book because it was local and it sounded fun, even though it's outside my usual genre. Cath and Wren grew up as huge Simon Snow fans and would write/post fanfiction together. As they enter college, Wren is ready to put that childishness aside and enter the party college life, but Cath isn't.

I appreciate that even when Cath is obviously wrong and just being driven by emotions/anxiety/etc, we get into her head to understand that. A fair number of books I've read in the last couple of years had authors who seemed to forget you can do that, so it's refreshing to read this one. Some of her anxieties are ones that I relate to and her friends are there to help her figure out how to navigate the real world. Love all the characters.

Small complaint: It was weird that Levi eventually mentions "Harry Potter" when Simon Snow is obviously a stand-in for Harry Potter. It's kind of a double-take moment since it feels like we agreed that this is a world where Simon Snow *is* Harry Potter, and now brings up the question of what's Potter's place in the world? It only comes up once though so it's easy to forget.