John

this is one of the most incredible books i've ever read and i can't wait to reread it.

this is a very good book for right now.

equal parts harrowing and insightful.

i liked the story and setting of this book but it needed a tougher editor. even though it switches perspectives, each character kept making the same brand of winking, cynical, occasionally-smug asides to the reader - that plus their tendency to speak in (beautifully-written) expository paragraphs made every character seem like the author in a different outfit.

jennifer egan is an incredibly transportive author - the diving scenes in this book were so vivid and evocative that i found myself rereading them again and again before moving on just because i wanted to relive the experience of diving in wallabout bay.

once i was a couple chapters in i found this book impossible to put down. i (unfairly) expected a sensational account of the author's unusual childhood, and while there are definitely some gruesome passages, the author's reflections on the fallibility of memory in traumatic situations, the dissociative effect of decades of gaslighting, and her refusal to reduce any members of her family - even in their cruelest moments - to mere caricatures are what made this such a compelling and engaging read.

i stayed up way too late reading the last 150 pages of this novel.

i love parker but everyone around him in this book is insistently two-dimensional.

the ooooonly thing i could have done without was the prologue/epilogue frame

if you're interested in the history of the area this is a great book to own and have on your shelf for reference. it does not particularly reward a start-to-finish read.

this book isn't easily laid out for reference purposes but it's a very interesting read - the chapters focus on historical anecdotes, stories, and reports surrounding Edinburgh's missing lochs.

also, oddly, the crown jewel is the appendix, which makes up half the book and spends A TON of time talking about the (to me) fascinating history of waterways, lochs, and wells in Edinburgh.

since goodreads won't allow 6 stars, i may have go back and lower most of the other books i've read this year by 1 star. this is a phenomenal book.

about five pages into this book i was like “this is not that remarkable, i can basically see where it's going” and then i blinked and it was 1 am and i'd read another 200 pages without getting up. it doesn't go where you think it's going to, and even when it does, it's still pretty moving.

this had some of my favorite elements of IT and The Stand and I tore through it in like two days. a great escape.

couldnt put this down

these are very good, very unsettling stories. i do not recommend reading this collection while traveling alone.

this is an excellent, comprehensive, gorgeous read that took me about 3 months. i would almost recommend keeping it on the shelf like a textbook (next to Understanding Comics) and reading through a chapter or two during creative dry spells.

i read this 1.5 times, because i approached it for the first 50 pages as a standard self-help book and was looking for bolded phrases and Action Items and end-of-chapter exercises. it isn't that, but if you read it slowly and thoughtfully (it's only 100 pages) and, if you're like me, with a pen and paper in hand, there are some really valuable insights in here.

this book is incredibly stressful.

made me think (among a million other things) about the outsized weight of tiny kindnesses

The history is fascinating and exhaustive and the author has done a ton of research, but some of the first-person asides dragged the book down and some of the historical details felt like they were one or two edits shy of being publishable (e.g. redundant sentences next to each other, some paragraphs that were chock full of good info but meandered.).

Caveat that I love Robert Webb and have watched hours and hours of him and David Mitchell, so perhaps I had an easier time reading this entire book in his Peep Show monologue tone - but this felt to me like a brilliant, vital, moving memoir.

this book includes several 5-star sections but some of the other digressions really slow it down. i appreciate what the author was trying to do, and some of the studies and conclusions will stick with me for ages. i just wish some of the more tangential bits had been trimmed.

If you're a creator feeling defeated or fatalistic about receiving any sort of financial compensation for your work, this is a great book to read. It doesn't paint too rosy a picture, but it effectively deflates a lot of the easy arguments for piracy, proposes a reasonable framework for copyright/anti-piracy efforts going forward, and offers promising evidence for a brighter future. My only complaint was the 50-60% of the book written in tiny italics - I like to read in dimly-lit restaurants.

i picked this up looking for a relatively light read after Lincoln in the Bardo but this is a brilliant and masterfully story. Stark/Westlake only improved as they aged.