Carla
Read in one gulp
Tonya does not pull punches, not with the details of the graphic accusations, nor with her own weaknesses and mistakes. This blunt honesty makes her story most compelling and powerful. For people who watched Making a Murderer and thought, “Could small town social politics become so petty that such a conspiracy develops?” In Tonya's case, at least, the answer is yes, and she unflinchingly explains how.
Completed cover-to-cover with a client. Highly recommended–I especially love how it makes the emotion-body connection.
2 1/2 stars. I'm not sorry I read it, but. I read once that Rowling regrets the epilogue to Deathly Hallows, that she wrote it to please fans. So this script surprises me, because it's an extension and justification of that epilogue.
And it doesn't ring true, especially with regards to Ron and Hermione. Ron took on Fred and George's joke shop, and their personalities. “Oh no we're going to get in trouble” Ron is now practical joker extrovert Ron. It feels off. Also, Ron is super kissy-smoochy with Hermione in a way that feels forced in the script, and doesn't feel reciprocated to me. In almost every scene they are in together, Ron is either declaring his love randomly to her, kissing her, or blowing her a kiss...it's odd. They don't have chemistry, not in my opinion.
The story itself, saving Cedric Diggory, the major guilt of Harry's life, is an interesting device. Add to that what happened to Bellatrix, and this could have been much more than it was.
An incredible memoir of reckoning and of CPTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder, and high I also have). Mae is unflinchingly honest with her complicated feelings toward her parents and her siblings.
I am a huge fan of true crime books, yet I had to force myself to finish this one. Turgid.
I loved it, I recognized myself in certain parts, which made me feel both seen and heard. I relished the honesty. Reading it made me proud that I promote his show Maron via thedollop.net. It also made me a little horny. There's your stream-of-consciousness, alphabet soup, heartfelt, five-star review.
I received a copy of this book from WildBlue Press In return for an honest review:
Jackson revisited the case of the rape and murder of 14-year-old Brandy DuVall, a case so brutal that he considered no longer writing true crime. It's a sobering and violent read; DuVall was raped, tortured and murdered by a group of other teenagers. Jackson does a fine job of balancing sharing the details in order to honor Brandy's suffering and not lingering over them in the service of salaciousness. I think knowing what a victim suffered is important; when true crime consumers hear “raped and murdered” over and over, it loses its meaning. What happened to DuVall at the hands of seven boys and young adults is not encompassed by that throwaway phrase, and Jackson understood this, but also did not overwhelm the reader—the details were dealt with sensitively and powerfully over the period of the book, which also gives the reader a fascinating insight into gang culture, which also led to the related murder of young Venus Montoya.
This is a dense, academic read, not recommended for the layperson unaccustomed to academia. The conclusion almost lost me, with its incredibly long, compounded sentences and few paragraph breaks. It felt like the author was taking a last stand at the lectern and wasn't taking too many breaths.
The one thing they didn't address is how satisfyingly similar Santino's voice is to actor Penn Badgley, who plays Joe in the miniseries You.
Wonderful...like having a breakfast nook or walk through the woods talk with Madeleine–the talk began about the liturgical year as delineated in the Book of Common Prayer, but has delightfully swerved back and fro to physics then troublesome Bible stories to family politics then the place in our society for the very young and the very old...
The coffee grows tepid, the dog bashes ahead in the brush. The talk continues and weaves and braids. There is always more coffee, and the dog knows the way, and is only following his nature. All is well.
Case of Stephen Stanko, Myrtle Beach area. Note: this true crime book is much more engrossing and intelligent and less sensational than its title would allow.
Since the book ended before the conclusion of the case, here it is: https://web.archive.org/web/20170419013451/http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/news/national/man-25-years-1979-case-missing-boy-etan-patz-article-1.3067605
I'm shocked. The civil case found Ramos guilty. Hernandez is schizophrenic, and delusions of sin are a symptom. Jim Clemente likened his confession to Carr's confession to killing JonBenet Ramsey. There seemed to be no motive or evidence, and this article also gives neither. Hernandez said he placed Etan in a box, strangled but still alive, on a curb with the trash. Everyone tore that street apart! That's impossible . I absolutely think Jose Ramos did it.
Brutally honest memoir about growing up poor, chaotic, enmeshed...and then pregnant and on television. I listened to Leah narrate it herself, which I highly recommend.
Transcendent. A novel about biology, ecology, geology, psychology and even “family life” science. But not just. Never just. Enchanting.
Werewolves are my favorite monster, and the language is lovely and lyrical, so I really enjoyed it, and I will continue with the series eventually (looks like there's only a second one). I only scored it three stars out of five because of the bestiality. It was gratuitous and strange. The mani characters only had sex when he was a werewolf; they never consumated their relationship as two humans, only as a human female and a male werewolf. And it was graphic. Graphic and hairy and slobbery. It was so pretty, and frightening, with these amazing ideas about the nature of good and evil, and then that would happen. I'm no prude, but I don't like when my horror makes me uncomfortable around my dogs.
The beginning was strong and all about self-confidence and self-knowledge, then he tells some awful stories about both of his parents...but we are supposed to still align with and even celebrate his parents? which doesn't feel good. The second half is interesting stories about his career and his wandering a. The last third is arrogant and pretentious dribble. I hate to say that, because I still love him. But I finished it thinking what did I just read? And that's not how you should feel upon finishing a book, especially a memoir. If I didn't feel shook finishing Anne Heche's memoir, which is literally called Call Me Crazy, I shouldn't feel that way reading his. But the last twenty pages or more were not memoir but rather I Am Your Guru, and they didn't feel good, and they tainted the rest of the book.
As a chronically ill and disabled person, and as a fan, I am so disappointed. There's just so much complaining—an entire chapter devoted to his love/hate relationship with golf, plus more wry grousing about it elsewhere, complaining about things in his movies (cool scene but they unfortunately used “Walking On Sunshine”), complaining about being sick to the nth degree, and more. There's discussing your negative feelings about your symptoms, and about the before and after of being disabled, and then there is complaining.
Five chapters in, and kinda getting the impression that Michael thinks he and his people are awesome, and everything and everyone else needs some work. I didn't want to know that.
Great idea ruined by an inexplicable ending. Was it all supposed to be a dream? Then the author didn't explain that very well at all. I finished wondering what happened, and not wanting to expend the energy to sort it out.
This is now my go-to Advent meditation book. It's thoughtful, well-written, and avoids stereotypical platitudes. Lovely Narnia visit for this quiet, dark season of thoughtfulness.
For this holiday season, I'm made two recipes so far–the creamy eggs, and the cinnamon French toast–and both were hits!
I have read this before, and have no memory of it. Not a good sign. Perhaps that's brain fog plus Covid stress.
This is a fascinating but irritating read: irritating because Holmes is a liar and malingerer, and because the first part of the book is devoted to describing how he was an all-American child—baseball, big smiles, good grades, lovey-dovey, the whole nine yards. That part goes in far too long, and could have been summarized; the length of it was insensitive given what he did. It just went on and on about how he was the Best Boy you could have ever wanted, and not in context of his mental illness developing later. So odd.
For the lying and malingering: Is he severely mentally ill? Absolutely. But. He lies to his therapist and to the author, and others. He creates symptoms, writing in his notebook and telling the author that his symptoms interferes with what he wanted to do, so he chose to be only be catatonic at lunchtime. He claimed to be not be fully in control of his actions, yet stopped before he headed out to the theater to check his dating profiles, to see if he might have a chance of hooking up. And on and on. He also claimed that, in the theater, he couldn't see to choose targets because his helmet visor was scratched up—it was brand new. I found myself really getting angry and frustrated with the subject in a way I never do; I have been studying psychology since before I started my undergrad degree in it in 1990, and this never happens. This guy got under my skin.
I am glad I read this, but I have denominational disagreements with the doctrine of the author (I'm Episcopalian, for what it's worth). This book felt like it was coming from an evangelical, strict and literal reading of the Bible, so I did not jive with some passages. Also, l am not one who puts Easter and Jesus' death all over Christmas; many Christians do, and this author did, and I found that a little off-putting. You would not believe how many Advent devotionals talk at great length about his crucifixion.
Some good nuggets here, but frankly I recommend The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Say About Jesus' Birth, by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossman, both highly educated theologians that wrote their book not to preach but to educate and to learn.
I was given this book by Wild Blue Press in exchange for an honest review.
It's not only the story of the true crime that inspired the novel Peyton Place, but also the story of the peculiar and eccentric author herself. The two stories are hopelessly intertwined; Grace was a strange woman, who exaggerated and fibbed about everything except her fiction. She was desperate to write, abandoning her housework...and her family, emotionally. And she continued to stubbornly live amongst the community that resented her telling their stories out of turn for the rest of her life.
The crime itself is unclear. The motive is clear. But how it happened is not at all, was never worked out forensically by the court. That part doesn't make sense. See what you think.