gerikatz

I'll read anything Marcie Rendon writes. This was probably the best of the three Cash Blackbear books so far.

I've always loved Erik Larson's nonfiction books. He's a master storyteller, so it makes perfect sense that his fiction would be gripping and beautifully written.

The best book I've read all year, maybe the last 5 years. I don't have words beyond that.

I wanted to rate this a four because I deeply appreciated the research the author did to portray the medical and social history surrounding the plague in such detail, but oy. The “surprise” reveal, the twist, the other twist and the sudden geographic relocation at the end was a bit much. Had the soap opera stuff been eliminated in favor of an examination of faith during and after a time of great hardship, I would have liked it more.

Entertaining, but I never got over a rich white woman trying to speak for black maids in the 60s. There were moments when I felt she captured the terror African Americans must have felt during the era, but for the most part it just felt like a nostalgic look back on her childhood. The detailed descriptions of all the domestic tasks left me wishing I had a full time maid, but that was about the only lasting impression.

Masterful, honest, grueling storytelling.

Read this to my 8 year old who loved it. I remember loving it as a kid but had completely forgotten the whole story so I enjoyed it with him. A white male author writing a fictional account of a real indigenous woman is cringe, of course.

One of the best, most moving pieces of YA fiction I've read.

One of the most stunning pieces of narrative nonfiction I've ever read.

I'd actually give this a 3.5. I wanted to like this book. I love libraries and book people and history of public institutions. But this book just never caught my attention. It was well written and researched, but the narrative just never went anywhere. It took me months to finish. It felt like it should have been a New Yorker article instead of a 300+ page book.

What a wild ride. This excellent piece of investigative journalism reads like a spy thriller.

In this era where corporate greed and hubris run roughshod over real people's lives, it's immensely satisfying to read a story where this behavior results in harsh punishment and complete humiliation. It's refreshing to see disregard for patient safety in favor of profits be treated with the harshness deserved when human lives are at risk. As a bonus it's nice to see horrible people like Kissinger and Mattis tainted by their association with this fraud.

I might have to subscribe to the WSJ to read their coverage of the upcoming criminal case against Holmes and Theranos.

While the subject matter is a complex combination of chemistry, engineering, and business practices, it's written accessibly enough for a history major with no scientific or business training to understand and appreciate. But I can imagine a reader with any background in those subjects would find the book even more gripping than I did.

A gorgeous depiction of the intergenerational trauma wrought by colonialism, slavery and war.

A fascinating book, start to finish. The detailed examination of the infiltration tactics of the KGB was especially interesting in light of the 2016 Russian misinformation campaign and the resulting Russian asset (allegedly) in the White House.

Outstanding journalism, storytelling and history.

Pleasantly surprised by the way the characters developed throughout the story.

I read this to my eight year old who gave the book 4 stars. He said if it hadn't been so sad and set during the Depression he'd have given it 5. He laughed his head off at a lot of dialogue, and the ending was very satisfying for both of us. (I loved it too, and would give it a 4.5 myself.)

Gorgeous.

This is a sweet little book by a lovely Swedish woman who describes herself as between 80 and 100, about her experiences cleaning out after the death of loved ones, and again for herself before she moved to a smaller home. Don't read this for a revolutionary new technique to declutter; read it for the charming stories about her life, the recipes, and the comfort it brings if you are doing this work yourself. I found it very soothing to read as I was cleaning out my mom's apartment after her passing.

I love the true story of the Radium Girls and their fight for workplace safety as they sped toward death from radiation poisoning. This fictional telling of the story was compelling and kept me wishing this book had been around when I was a YA.

I knew a little bit about the smog of 1952 (probably due to “The Crown”) and a lot about Reg Christie (thanks to true crime podcast Murder Mile) but found every bit of this book enthralling. Even the bits about parliamentary debates between Norman Dodds and Tories who tried to cover up the smog deaths. I loved the stories about individual families and victims of the smog, which humanized the catastrophe in a way that statistics can't. Ultimately, for me, the Reg Christie storyline served as macabre entertainment between more interesting sections about the smog.

I really loved this book. Perfect specimen of historical fiction.

I was a serious Little House fan as a kid, rereading the books regularly, and I've read other bios of Wilder, but I learned things I never knew and made connections to American history that fill in the blanks left by Wilder's fictionalization of her life.

Rose and Laura's anti-New Deal fanaticism was especially fascinating and outrageously hypocritical. A family whose livelihood came from free land stolen from indigenous people by the US government has a lot of nerve to criticize desperate people seeking relief during the depression. The connection of the Dust Bowl back to the destructive farming practices of homesteaders ads another layer of hypocrisy on to their obsessive opposition to collective social solutions to public crises.

Also, Rose was quite a piece of work, more than other bios have ever let on.

I read this for my son's 5th grade book club. I didn't expect much from a YA novel about refugees, but it was a gorgeous book about courage and love in the face of cruelty and fear. It was beautifully written and the characters were lovingly crafted. Please give this book to kids in your life, especially kids who live a comfortable life with few worries. We need our future leaders to have more empathy than our current ones.

Finally read this, almost 20 years after it was published. While some of the science she reported on is no longer new or controversial, the book still holds up, mostly for the behind the scenes glimpses into the worlds of the study of decomposition, anatomy, and crashes. The chapter on the effect of bullets on the human body is upsetting when you think about the relaxation of gun laws (specifically assault rifles) since it the book was written.

Beautifully written and meticulously researched, this examination of the systematic murder of dozens of Osage in the 1920s is chilling. Rarely do we have the opportunity to see the American genocide against indigenous people so closely with personal detail about the victims and the generational trauma that follows their descendants to this day. The history of the birth of the modern FBI and the investigation and judicial proceedings against the murderers was fascinating.