Shan Fletcher
Well-written, but not what I wanted to read about teenage female melancholia–the girls and their depression is highly romanticized.
Very sweet, but really should not be a book of this length. Would make a great article or Ted Talk. You won't learn anything new or surprising, but will be reminded of good practices to keep.
This book is EPIC. You get quite a few VERY different points of view, and you follow them through decades of tumultuous time. Despite its grand scale though, I found this novel incredibly intimate at times. I think about this book a lot, and Franzen's characters have changed the way I encounter the world.
I loved this book. Mostly for the setting, the lush descriptions, and the time period. Not everyone loves a heavy exposition novel, such as this, but I sure do!
I listened to this as an audiobook, and I really did not enjoy it. The tone of the prose and the reader's voice made me very anxious.
I never read the Martian, but enjoyed the film, so I decided to give Weir's second novel a listen. At the sentence-level, Weir is a surprisingly bad writer. His attempt at writing a female lead was truly awful, too. Laughable, actually. Some of the funniest moments in the book come from that clumsiness. But, I still binge-listened to find out Jazz' fate! The science is fascinating. The world-building is not. (Someone never learned their “show, don't tell” lesson in grade school.) Honestly, he should probably just be writing movie concepts at this point. Or get a better editor? I recommend a woman.
TLDR: Just wait for the movie to come out.
I love Brene Brown. This book felt shorter and less meaty than her others, but I still loved it. She calls me on all my shit without even knowing me.
Do you ever see a skeleton in a museum, and wonder “where did it come from?” Did this person donate their body to science? Was it dug up for display? Was it stolen from a Native American burial ground in New Mexico? For a culture that largely believes that human remains are sacred, we sure have a lot of them on public display. And for every bone on display behind glass, there are hundreds more hidden away—tagged, measured, and kept in boxes on shelves in temperature-controlled museum storage rooms. Where did they all come from? Who collected them? Why were they chosen?
Samuel Redman answers these questions and many more in Bone Rooms. In the late 1800s, to the early 1900s, massive human remains collections were fervently built, studied, and shown off at traveling fairs, medical schools, museums, research facilities, and in private homes throughout America. The urgency to collect human remains was fueled by ego, money, the pioneer's attitude, the drive to obtain knowledge, the desire to justify certain ideas, and the opportunity to hold the attention of the masses. Unlike collectors in Europe and elsewhere, Americans during this period collected these remains distinctly in the interest of developing, spreading, and calcifying their ideas about race.
In the prologue, he writes, “the gradually deteriorating bones mostly languished on museum shelves, but the ideas surrounding them constantly evolved.” The primary project of his book is the exploration and documentation of that evolution, specifically in America. He traces the history of bone room collections by tracing the stories, motives, ethics, and philosophies of the soldiers, doctors, archeologists, looters, treasure hunters, scientists, racists, phrenologists, private collectors, museums, ethnologists, and anthropologists who eagerly filled them—as well as the thinkers, activists, and lawmakers who eventually challenged them. These motives, ethics, and ideas were and continue to be divisive and questionable. Modern museums and scientists both build upon and reject the legacy of the bone collectors who came before them. While we as a society benefit from the careful study of these human remains, it is important to understand and honor the humanity within them. One way to do that is to know the history of how and why they were collected in the first place. Bone Rooms tells that history, even the ugly parts, with eloquence and dignity.
Funny and insightful. I related to the main character very easily, despite having little in common with him.
Infinitely relevant.
Are you a human who sometimes interacts with other humans? Read this.
This is 100% not my genre, but I'm thankful for the wisdom I gained from Brené via this audio book. I can't help but think of her as my wisest, most supportive auntie. She's no guru, she's just a student who took the test last semester, and is gracious enough to share her notes with you–messy and personal as they are. I have all of her work in my Audible queue.
This book made me pilgrimage to the Colorado River, write three poems, and rewatch Into the Blue (2003) starring Jessica Alba's tan.
