Julia

Meh. I think Petra is a great name for a heroine, but not much else (aside from her relationship with her two besties) was particularly compelling. There are some odd plot gaps (like Petra & her love interest have lived two blocks apart in London for years, but don't start regularly running into each other until doing so moves the plot forward), and what could have been a really interesting element to the book, which is that Petra is a suffragette and said love interest is initially “staunchly” opposed to women using their lady brains to vote, but they don't ever even have a real conversation about it!

(Spoiler alert)

Instead his mind is changed by his embittered French former mistress??? I don't get that choice. The sex scenes themselves are fine, I suppose, but because of plot-related issues, there's almost no erotic tension. I don't think I would avoid the other 2 in this series, exactly, but I wouldn't seek them out, either.

This was a slow start for me, but the momentum kept building and I felt inspired and lucky to be reading this by the end. This is despite the subject matter but because of Driskill's handling of it: their central thesis is that settler-colonialism needed to erase Cherokee queerness (of both gender and sexual orientation, which are themselves hegemonic ways of thinking about human behavior) in order to carry out the colonial project, in conjunction with the promotion of chattel slavery and lateral oppression. Even still! Queer and Two-Spirit memory and energy persists and can point a way toward a decolonial future. Driskill is so expansive in their scope, captured beautifully by a quote in the introduction: “Because if you can see that far into the past, you can see that far into the future.” I love the phantom of memory they make space for in revisiting the historical record, and the voices of queer Cherokee activists at the end. These are connected by Driskill's double-walled basket metaphor, because there is space hidden between the walls that can be revealed if the weaver chooses to undo and then reweave their work.

This one took me a while to read because Jacob and I started as a “read out loud on road trips” book, but I ended up finishing it solo. I also feel a weird and complicated attachment to it, because my dad read almost exclusively non-fiction, and this was the next book on his reading list when he died. Anyway! I loved the first half of the book much more than the second, completely related to content. Hariri summarizes the origins of humanity in sweeping early chapters that feel dazzling, the way you want the best intro courses in college to feel. He excels at synthesizing huge swaths of information punctuated by witty asides, and it's just a fun read. The second half of the book, especially the fourth part, however, has chapters on science and empire, capitalism, industry, etc., and thus the tour continues with the various ways we have more recently exploited each other, other animals, and the earth itself at a scale never before seen. I took some solace in Hariri's obvious distaste for the current situation: the book ends with the question, “Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?” I sometimes hear people talk about the challenges humanity faces now as just another iteration of the challenges humanity has always faced. If there's anything Sapiens makes clear, however, it's that our ability to wreak havoc quickly is unprecedented in our history, and our now-vastly-interconnected species means that such havoc can spin out exponentially quickly, likely far faster than our ability to reverse course (ahem see climate change and nuclear war). I think the importance of reflecting on this reality is more important than whether I “liked” the book.

Ehhhh. This was a lending library find through which I discovered that I do not care for vampire romance novels! I read the Twilight series one million years ago not too long after they came out, and found them amusing while also exasperating, and reading this made me realize there are probably some standard elements to this genre that just don't do it for me. Mainly this: I am happy that there are fictional characters out there having mind-blowing sex with vampires. But it honestly feels like a little bit of a “deus ex machina” for the erotic tension: the chemistry! It's amazing! Because they're immortal! I am sure this is exactly why some people find this a really appealing fantasy genre, but I find it more fun when people end up building the sexual energy without the help of...sparkles. The “rogue vampire” plot of this one also was so clearly part of a multi-novel arc that it felt more anticlimactic than suspenseful. I will say I like the character of Mrs. Wiggles the cat.

I will take ownership of my star rating as a personal failing - I read the first half of the novel in too many, too distanced spurts, and it took me recommitting to the read to feel the pace of the plot and keep the characters straight. I will say that I still have trouble imagining this as a movie (although perhaps I shouldn't doubt Gary Oldman's acting prowess) because it is mostly talking and psychological intrigue as opposed to action. It's great talking and psychological intrigue, though. Overall, it strikes me as an American reader as pleasingly British, and George Smiley is as lovable as an unglamorous-but-brilliant intelligence officer as one could ask for.

I read the Wallflowers series out of order, so it's hard to know for sure, but I think this might have been my favorite had I not read “Scandal in Spring” first. It's at least pretty close. Definitely 5/5 stars for the sex scenes! I also appreciated that both the protagonist and her love interest have considerable character growth/development, and a subplot involving an inherited gambling house created some sustained non-sexy interest. I'm sure there's some folks who can't forgive Sebastian St. Vincent his crimes from “It Happened One Autumn,” but I must have been in a redemptive mood. Overall, I'm glad I found this series! The plots have a predictable structure for each book, so that felt a little tired by the end, but I appreciate Kleypas' creation of genuine female friendships sustained across the series.

Ehhhh...spunky heroine, but sometimes to the point of deliberate obtuseness regarding her willingness to investigate her own motives, despite lots of narrated rumination? Hero hellbent on revenge in a fairly simplistic manner, then a 180 near the end? A little too much reliance on the idea of “animal instincts” to characterize their attraction to each other? Plus an annoying pattern in which they each basically orgasmed very quickly and at the same time. There were three good supporting characters here, and the dialogue often zipped along, but I didn't find it particularly compelling overall.

So I read Wallflowers #4, then #1 and now #2. I can't tell if #4 has been my fave so far just because I started there? As a quartet, things get a little formulaic. The love story is always adversaries-to-lovers, which is a totally fine story (although I doubt there will ever be a finer version than Elizabeth Bennet & Mr. Darcy), but the repetition across this set makes me more critical of the idiosyncracies of each version. Lillian & Westcliff are my least favorite of the duos thus far, because their “we dislike each other so much maybe we're secretly crazy about each other” vibe is just a smidge too close to a “tease elementary school crush in ineffective and annoying ways” thing. They are legitimately obnoxious to each other at several points! But who am I to begrudge two fictional characters their happy ending of mutually pleasurable bickering punctuated by equally mutually pleasurable sex.

This was so great!!!! Szalavitz weaves together elements of memoir, a truly astounding synthesis of decades of research on addiction, and American cultural history of our long and racist series of wars on drugs. She then uses this tapestry to make the very compelling argument that addiction is best understood as a learning disorder, and translates that understanding into what our drug policy should look like. It's just a really excellent piece of work. There are wild details of personal history (the first time she did heroin was with the Grateful Dead), deservedly pointed social critiques, and huge amounts of compassion for people struggling. I really appreciate Szalavitz' insights as they relate to my current work setting, but this feels like an important book for most people interested in people to read. My one quibble is that I would have loved more citations for the huge volume of research she cites - she does a great job translating for the general public, but it would also be nice to be able to see more quickly what work she's referring to when.

Brisk and sexy! I have stuff to say about the series thus far that I'll add to the review of Wallflowers #2 I'm about to write, but this book has its specific charms. Probably at the top of the list is that because it's the start of the quartet, it's got the most about the development of the female friendships, which I like. There's an entrapment subplot that doesn't feel totally consistent with the heroine Annabelle's character, but then again, she looks with pretty clear eyes at the reality of being a English woman in her social class at this point in history. Also, as my goodreads makes clear, I've been reading lots of romance, and Kleypas writes the best sex scenes of any I've read. Carry on!

I can relate to another goodreads reviewer who said they felt like they set feminism back 100 years by reading and liking this - but I'm not sorry about it? So be forewarned that my reflections might really just be post hoc self-justification. First, the plot includes a female journalist getting a temporary assignment following the Seattle hockey team. I think the locker room talk is likely a highly accurate depiction, but that also means...you end up reading a fair bit of locker room talk! Second, the love interest has a reputation as a womanizer, so there's a lot of “he's just in it for the sex” stuff, which is a boring plotline. The thing that redeems this aspect, but not fully, is that we get enough character development of him to see that a lot of that perception of his current actions (not his past, which sounds very par for the “professional athlete” course sorrrrrry that sports pun just came out of left field oh god I can't stop) is actually misperception on the journalist's part. He is legitimately into her pretty quickly, and she is too caught up in her own crap to realize it. Third, journalist actually pays her bills by writing erotica, and I really like that premise, but Gibson didn't use it as effectively/interestingly as she could have. The journalist ends up having an internal virgin/whore battle going on that just...ugh. She shouldn't be apologetic about that!! Even if she's not advertising it to her colleagues!! Anyway, totally unrelated to sexism, Gibson is funnily obsessed with the glamour of the Space Needle, which is easily not one of the best parts of Seattle. All in all, smart woman gets super hot partner who is really into her, sex scenes are steamy, and this was definitely written in 2003.

I suspect (and hope!) that the lifelong impact Dr. Nieto's work will have on me will be staggering - working through what she conveys has honestly felt a bit seismic. Dr. Nieto brings art of all forms (poetry, song, folklore, even vivid descriptions of movies) to the work of liberation, with a developmental, holarchical framework that is quite different from many more intellectualized (not more intellectual, just more intellectualized) approaches to anti-oppression (which she argues is a part of, but more narrow than, liberation), yet also deepened my understanding of and ability to work on myself within and through those other frameworks. It feels like a disservice to try to give examples of the model in action in an abbreviated medium, but I'll try: one thing that has stuck with me is Dr. Nieto's deft analysis of the intersection of systemic and interpersonal power, and how looking for both at once can enable us to better articulate why some anti-liberation arguments (like people who ask “What about reverse racism?”) happen and how to respond to them. Another is building tolerance for long-term anti-oppression work. She gently and incisively points out how unwillingness to acknowledge that most of us will revert to less skilled behavior when stressed or threatened perpetuates this behavior and inhibits growth, and how to be patient with this recursive process of growth. I don't know! Even reading what I just wrote, I'm like, “Just get the book!” or read Dr. Nieto in her own words! The only thing I should note is that I've taken a continuing education seminar with Dr. Nieto, and experienced her consultation work in a professional organization I belong through, and her approach, which includes tremendous expertise in psychodrama and experiential work, really springs to life live as opposed to in writing. I think I benefitted from “hearing” her as I read. The book is plenty powerful on its own, but if you ever have the chance to hear her speak, don't miss it.

Hmf. I feel mildly resentful I read this. The main characters are both likeable, and I like the friendship their romantic relationship is built upon, but MY GOD are the sex scenes euphemistic to the point of ridiculousness. During such passages, Laurens overutilizes techniques like alliteration or even rhyme with so much repetition that it adds a Seussian feel I highly doubt was what she was going for. Here's a quote another goodreads reviewer excerpted that captures the absurdity nicely:

“Reassuring, restating, revisiting, and reiterating, they dived in again, plunged in again, seized and surrendered and shared the scintillating delights once again.”

WUT. Stop the madness! Plus, it's also a murder mystery, except there's less suspense-building, and more “let's have as many characters as possible in the large Cynster family discuss the actual logistics of how they might catch the criminal,” which was boring. On the upside, one of the lending libraries I frequent is full of Laurens' other novels, and now I know to steer clear unless desperately bored.

Got this from my mom - the verdict from her and one of her book clubs was a hearty thumbs up, and I agree! I will say that she and I are both predisposed to have liked it. The context of the novel is union activism in Spokane in the early 20th century: she's a labor lawyer, and I just relocated from there. Walter is very adept at blending facts about that history and geography with his fiction, and the details (some of which I knew, some of which I didn't) really resonated with my love-hate relationship with the locale (e.g., small details like the names of bars that have been reincarnated in recent years, a building I used to work in makes a cameo appearance, and how strange it is that the courthouse is across the river from other important municipal buildings, big chunks of history like George Wright's evil genocide of Spokane and local Indigenous people and their horses [a road named after him only got renamed in 2020 to honor Whist-alks, a Spokane woman who contributed to the resistance to his violent oppression], and things in between, like how a part of the country that created Taft, the wickedest city in all of America for a few short years before burning up in a literal ball of flames, shaped the region's culture [truly, the history of Taft is a wild ride I recommend]). Anyway! Enough about my feelings about the inland northwest. Walter is quoted in an interview as intentionally using the economic and social strife of this time as a commentary on our own, and to his credit, those echoes are loud and clear without feeling didactic. The threads from multiple narrators were skillfully interwoven, I appreciated that the characters were just people without either pure saints or sinners, and this is the sort of book that I read always feeling driven to know how the story ended.

This book is clearly a labor of love from the Quinault Indian Nation to its members. I really appreciated the gorgeous photos and extensive history. There were times when I felt a bit overwhelmed by the level of the detail about the logging industry in this area in the 19th and 20th centuries for my particular purposes, but as I type that, I think it's really that I could have used an update in the 31 years that have elapsed since this was published, especially as the climate continues to change.

This little book isn't strictly clinical, but is written by a psychologist and largely overlaps with his other great Kaizen book, One Small Step Can Change Your Life, hence my categories. Dr. Maurer's insight is really helpful to read after having a managerial role for a year, and heading into a new one now; I hadn't had this thought before, but there is a lot about Kaizen in the workplace that dovetails beautifully with Alison Green's approach on Ask a Manager, which is such a beacon of workplace sanity in late-stage capitalism. To summarize, which risks making this approach to personal and professional excellence sound less sophisticated and wise than it is, using Kaizen principles entails always looking for the smallest steps and most sustainable approaches to change, which is both psychologically healthy for individuals and the larger ecosystem of workplaces, and how to maintain gains over time. It's the opposite of “disruption,” and I wish a lot more people had the patience and long-range vision to utilize these principles. I'm certainly going to be trying to.

So this would have been a solid 3-star rating from me, but then Horsman shares at the end a really interesting tidbit of history on which the plot is based. Hip hip hooray for wild women swimming boldly against the current of their time in history, whether now or in medieval France. Aside from this fun historical inspiration, this is just a solid romance novel. The heroine is captured with more and better nuance than her lover, but there's more than enough other elements that keep the plot moving swiftly: accusations of witchcraft! cesspools of corruption and hidden violence in the hierarchy of the Catholic church! complex sibling rivalry! A good read.

I am supremely confident that life in the Australia outback in the early 20th century was not for the faint of mind or body, but at some point, the tragedies befalling the Clearly family got just a wee bit melodramatic. I read another goodreads review that captured the feeling well: you end up reading a lot about things that happened to the characters, without quite as much balance based one what they did as one might need to keep the plot from feeling like a string deus ex machina (not sure how to pluralize that??). The characters are also divided in a bit too pat of a fashion between “saintly” and “not saintly” for my personal taste. Also...I could write way more about this, and no spoilers here, but the subplot about a romance between a Catholic priest and his teenaged parishioner has not aged well. (although that's not to say that such encounters don't happen, and McCullough did write in a way that casts light on the dark corners of the priest's mind that justify his behavior to himself). But look at me, being all negative! On the plus side, I hung on because I really enjoyed the sense of place McCullough conveys about the geography, climate, flora, & fauna of rural Australia, and there were moments of painfully accurate psychological acuity in some of the characters' struggles.

UGH! This novel cured me, albeit I'm sure only temporarily, of my streak of romances. There was just so much to dislike! London leaned way too heavily into the “look at the man from Scotland trying to adjust to big city London” (I will admit that Outlander raised my awareness about just how much British bullshit gets directed toward Scotland, in addition to, ya know, their history of colonialist violence), and as a result, the Highlander just appears dumb as a rock. I didn't love the chemistry between him and Ellen, and SHE is a piece of work. I suppose her betrayal and his forgiveness is supposed to show us how love conquers all, but her moment of reckoning rings false, and it's not comprehensible why exactly he finds her behavior excusable given that she never even really gave a good apology! Color me frustrated, and it was bad enough that I'm not sure I'd try this author again.

Yowza! Five stars based on heat alone - I loved the chemistry between Daisy & Matthew. Their vibe was “Pride and Prejudice” without being too overtly derivative. Plus, some strong female friendships as nice adjunctive plots. Definitely made me want to read more from Kleypas.

What can I say, I love Leaphorn & Chee! I read this over a very gray and rainy few days in the Pacific Northwest, so it was really nice to be transported mentally to the sunny Southwest (although Hillerman is also adept at capturing the drama of a desert thunderstorm). These mysteries are so reliable - good plot, main characters you really root for, and respectful cultural detail (Google tells me that the Navajo Nation gave Hillerman their “Special Friend of the Dineh” award in 1987 for the strength and dignity of Navajo culture he accurately captured; this novel also has elements of Hopi culture). My only quibble is that I could have done without the romance piece - it is aligned with their personalities for both Chee & Janet Pete to be reserved with each other, but their guarded distance is distractingly painful in this book and much less fun to read than the other elements of the plot. This was also an interesting time to read this particular novel, because the plot centers around the threat of pandemic disease. I wish it felt more speculative than it does in 2021.

If stars were based on reading time, this would be 5; I accidentally polished it off in one sitting last night. It hums along at a nice, quick clip, both the heroine and her lover are a little dark and stormy but not obnoxiously so, and the plot is clever - I didn't see the end coming, but also didn't get the feeling that it was because it was wildly implausible, either. Good heat in the sex scenes, although I could have stood for one or two more! The 1930s setting is interesting, as there's some “modern woman” talk sprinkled throughout that I liked. My one quibble, which grew as I kept reading, was that many of the details feel “historical fiction,” but the dialogue didn't, with a few notable exceptions (e.g., “pros” for prophylactics/condoms) that actually make the rest of the language stand out more. Obviously, I have no real idea what people sounded like in the 1930s, but there was some very modern-sounding conversation that distracted from the otherwise immersive setting of Hollywood that Quick created. Actually! Another quibble. Both of the protagonists had intuition that was described as sort of paranormal, but it's almost like Quick didn't commit to that idea. I would rather she had just left it as very deft interpersonal awareness, or amped it up to more actual magical realism.

I am so glad to have found this in the bookstore at Seabrook (https://www.facebook.com/joiedeslivres.seabrook/, if you ever need a great beach bookstore)! I've recently relocated to the Olympic Peninsula, and had not found many readily accessible options for tribal history, so this book, by the Olympic Peninsula Intertribal Cultural Advisory Committee, was a great addition to resources I've been collecting. There are chapters by S'Klallam, Skokomish, Squaxin Island, Quinault, Hoh, Quileute, and Makah tribal members, and each chapter covers so much ground - everything from origin myths, historical and ongoing cultural traditions and events, to treaty signing (which, on the part of the U.S. government, was in bad faith from the beginning and then shamefully and criminally additionally exploitative), and the status of language maintenance. This is 4/5 stars because I wish it was longer! As it is, however, this would be a lovely guide for someone visiting the Olympic Peninsula. Each chapter includes opportunities for visitors to engage with each tribe, their history, and the land they steward.

My goodness, what a gift this book is. I heard Sara present last year, when I was living in an urban area surrounded by rural areas, and have since moved to rural area...surrounded by other rural areas. I re-read this cover-to-cover, and it is just a wealth of information, practical tips (especially about how to approach the ethical dilemmas unique to rural health care), and food for thought. Sara writes clearly, compassionately, intelligently, and with great humility about her work (her gift for therapy shines through regardless - or because of! - that humility). She mentioned when presenting that she tried to write the book she wished she had had when she started rural practice, and she absolutely succeeded. Anyone practicing mental health in or near a rural community should read this important book.

My aunt gave me this Granta as a joke (be sure to look at the cover for the full title) after a very enjoyable conversation on extended family dynamics. The issue was...less enjoyable just because the first two pieces are difficult to read because of how acutely they hew to the subtitle. Mikal Gilmore's essay about his brother who died by firing squad and Sappho Durrell's diaries (she later died by suicide; I'm not sure I want to revisit her dad's Alexandria Quartet now) were two very different but very adept portrayals of intense psychological pain. Oh! Plus later a story of a family of four that dies by roadside fire. Yeesh. There are some great photography series in other parts, and a story by Gregory Wolff (older brother of Tobias) is a palate cleanser at the end, but overall, this felt really uninterruptedly heavy to read. Not bad; just consider yourself forewarned should you ever come across it.