LJ

2.5 stars but rounding down because I'm bored with this storyline. I figure I know how the series will end (because: duh) and I hate to quit here, but if I have to read one more mealtime description ima lose it. Definitely taking a break before book 3, possibly a permanent one.

This is not my typical genre, but as a denizen of the real-life “New Oslo” I wanted to give it a shot. I am so glad I did! This book was delightful. It was fun to read about places I can picture in detail because I've been there. The story was well-written and very well-edited; I thought the craftsmanship was significantly superior to several big-name best-sellers I've read recently. I'm a female veteran, too, so it was refreshing to read something accurate and relatable. (In my opinion she also does a great job providing context for the military/veteran aspects of the story for those who are not military-connected.) I'm definitely looking forward to reading the next one in the series.

I didn't want to DNF another so I skimmed/speedread the last 40%. As other reviewers have noted, there was a lot of telling vs. showing. Dialogue was awkward and expository in an unnatural way. (Small example: A main character runs an animal rescue, Emerald Creek Animal Rescue. She and others constantly refer to it by its full name in conversation, rather than “the rescue” or “ECAR” or some other natural shorthand. I was constantly thinking “This isn't how people talk...”) The storyline, interactions, and excerpts from the book-within-a-book also all got very repetitive.

DNF for now. I will come back to this, but might start with the beginning of the arc (picked it at random without realizing it's a continuation) or at least save it for summer. Too dark for winter reading.

Read to myself as a kid and just read aloud to Elida (age 6). I was happy to see the charm and appeal take hold for her just like they did for me when I was young.

I happened across the Mr. Carl story on an Instagram reel and decided to read this book. I really enjoyed it. I am a volunteer EMT, so most of my interaction with death and dying is trying to prevent or reverse it in an emergent context. It was really... peaceful, I guess, to read Vlahos' stories about death in another context. 11 out of 12 chapters entirely made me cry, but in a good way.

DNF at 19%. Protagonist is insufferable and getting worse. Headed to Goodreads to see if there's redemption ahead and other reviews make it sound like nope, so I'm out.

Meh? Probably 2.5 stars, but rounding down. I gave this book a chance after H A T I N G It Ends With Us, because all my Colleen Hoover devotee friends said it's outside her norm. I wanted to like it, and I did like It better than IEWO, but it was still just... not my favorite. It was definitely suspenseful, creepy, and successful at sucking me in (I read it straight through in one sitting) but the last 15% or so got a little too unbelievable for me to truly enjoy. (I read a lot of magical realism so I don't think imagination is my problem, here.) There were a couple of plot devices that felt shoehorned and (light spoiler ahead) the letter that concludes the story is entirely a lazy way to do a whole bunch of expository narrative to try to introduce a twist that isn't much of a twist. Just not my jam.

I wanted to enjoy this, but got to about 75% and stopped liking ANY characters. The narrator is semi-unreliable and unlikable. There's a plot twist I didn't see coming that felt shoehorned in and unnecessary, and another that was entirely predictable. Finished, but meh.

I absolutely adored this book.

I like JG's prose and the topics were varied and enjoyable. I think the Sycamore trees may have been my favorite review. I appreciate the way he weaves his struggles with mental illness through the book; sometimes they're central, even all-encompassing, and sometimes they're absent or just sort of quietly following along. It felt relatable.

(I was originally giving this a 3, but upgraded to 4, because I think it's a 4 for content, 3 for format.)

This is a collection of short essays. I knew that going in, yet I think I still expected some sort of arc, which there was really not. I enjoyed each essay individually but thought reading straight through was a bit of a slog. This would be a great book to keep somewhere you're only going to be able to read an essay or two at a time (bathroom? car?). (Also, every time I write a review I'm a little afraid the author is going to read it and then I'm going to become, say, the person who just recommended their book as a bathroom book to their proverbial face, and that makes me so uncomfortable. My review of reviews: two stars.)

I enjoyed this book very much. I was having enough fun with these characters that I was mildly annoyed by the inevitable climactic drama because it felt just like that, Inevitable Climactic Drama that had to happen because: Novel. I was satisfied by the resolution but honestly would have been content for the story arc to include basically zero drama at all because it was just so cute.

Super meh, definitely not as enjoyable as the first one. I kept reading just to find out how it would all end, but it was really repetitive and pretty anti-climactic. Cecelia was actively annoying the shit out of me by the 75% mark and I felt like some of the spice landed all the way on the wrong side of the consent line, even with suspension of disbelief factored in. Like I said, super meh. I gave it three stars but it's probably leaning toward a 2.5.

This was at least my 3rd time reading Sabriel over the course of the last 25 years and I have loved it equally every time. It has been a while since my last reading so I had forgotten enough to make it magical to read again. I plan to work through the remainder of the series this year; I think I've read the next two in the past but have definitely forgotten enough of those to make it worthwhile.

We've yet to actually “play” so I may upgrade or downgrade my rating based on how useful this winds up being in my life, but so far I'm a fan.

Most of the complaints I've seen about this book have been based on a voice/audience mismatch, and less about the substance, so I'll address that first. This book was written by a cisgender heterosexual woman in a marriage with children. Both spouses work in a white-collar capacity. The audience is primarily women in similar circumstances, though I think there is definitely value in the book for mismatched career levels and/or stay-at-home parents (especially if that arrangement arouse out of necessity rather than choice). She has a couple of drive-by references to LGBTQIA+ relationships, and if you are in a traditionally-arranged dyad I think this book is probably just fine as long as primarily husband/wife language is not offensive. (Now that I think about it, I guess there's not really any reason the game couldn't be played by more than 2, though most of the psychological references and dynamics are in relation to husband/wife arrangements.)

You may need to approach this with a “take what you like and leave the rest mentality,” but I think it's fantastic. There is one major area I have to adjust for my circumstances, and one minor one.
Major: She talks a lot about the prioritization/value of men's time over women's time. An example is when something goes wrong with one of the kids at school, it's often the “shefault” parent who has to adjust her day to go get them. This is totally true, in my experience, but I also have a milspouse who has an employer that is arguably even less flexible than your average similar civilian job. Granted, I think the reality of how flexible Uncle Sam is at his level is somewhere in between “parity with my job” and “as inflexible as he says” - and I think what I've gleaned from this book will help us suss that out some. (When we were both active duty, I was still the shefault, so there's that.)
Minor: We live a rural lifestyle and a couple of the cards needed to be adjusted accordingly. She doesn't address adding cards in the book, and I would be wary of doing so without considering whether a job that ought to belong to one person is being split unnecessarily. In our case, there's a real delineation between “pets” and “livestock” with different conception, planning and execution (CPE) needed. The book also has “lawn/plants” as one category, but for us it's more like “lawn/snow” and “plants/garden” based on the relevant CPE. So, I added two cards to account for those aspects of our lifestyle that differ from the ‘burbs.

I'm going to have J read this book, after some deliberation. I warned him that it's written for women, and that there are parts of it I could see making him feel defensive. However, I considered the book as I was reading from a male perspective and don't think it is man-bashing or patronizing. Some of the statistics are difficult to internalize as a woman living them; I suspect they'll also be difficult for men who don't actually intend to be part of the problem.

It did occur to me that older children could potentially be fully dealt cards, but for now I think the best way to do it is keep the cards held by parents so that an adult is accountable for the ultimate completion - even if it includes delegation as a kid chore.

Though we have yet to fully deploy the system, the book has already given me a new context for thinking and talking about recurring issues. I also like that it calls me out on a lot of my own bad behavior, which is one of the selling points I gave to J in favor of giving it a shot. After doing a lot of reflection on the cards, I realized I don't even want him to take over that much more. What I'd like is the cards that nobody is really holding to be owned by somebody - anybody - so they aren't in chaos. I'd also like the invisible work to become visible so we both feel seen for the things we do that aren't often recognized or appreciated. And I'd like for us to have good discussions about what matters and why, so we can reinvent the wheel less and reduce unnecessary conflict. The book left me hopeful for the potential in all these areas, so thus far I'd absolutely recommend it.

3.5 rounded up. I loved Night Circus so I really wanted to love this book, but it wasn't quite there. The world-building is great. Morgenstern's creativity is really spectacular. Unfortunately, I feel like this book was about 100 pages too long and kinda went off the rails. It occurred to me that that might have been on purpose, to sort of mirror the plot in the reading experience, but... I don't know, maybe that's too meta for me. I felt like it kinda quit going anywhere slightly after the halfway mark and was left unsatisfied. There was a whooooole bunch of nothing that occurred and then major huge things that occurred in the epilogue that felt like an afterthought. I'm not sure if the things that were left open-ended were supposed to be done so in an imaginative fashion or a “there might be a sequel” fashion but I'm getting tired of every freakin' book having to be part of a series so that made me a little grouchy too.

I picked up Be Here Now after the passing of Ram Dass. I didn't actually know who the hell Ram Dass was until people were suddenly mourning him, but was quickly made aware that one of my favorite quotes - “We are all just walking each other home” - could be attributed to him, and decided to give it a shot.

This is a hard book to review, since it's really four books in one, and they're all rather different. The first part is an autobiography, the second part is a psychedelic, illustrated, Alice in Wonderland style trip that reads like a transcription of a speech, the third part is a how-to, and the last part is the first chapter of another book (Be Love Now). Overall, I gave it four stars, which puts it in the glad-I-read-it and would-recommend range.

I consider myself both a seeker and a skeptic, so I believe there are likely dimensions to existence that our human minds - limited both by biology and our own constraints - cannot readily perceive, and also that our human minds are capable of concocting some wacky shit. So, for example, I don't honestly know if seeing the light at the end of the tunnel at near-death is the experience of entering a heaven or a shared universal consciousness or if it's the experience of neurons firing along shared biological and chemical processes that all humans have.

Either way, I figure we're all on this ride together, so learning about each other and coexisting well is probably important. This book was useful for that end. I appreciated learning about Dass' trips, both the psychedelic and to-India types. I also thought his conclusions about psychedelics were poignant: Can be a good thing, but you'll always come down, whereas you can achieve a permanent trip with spiritual enlightenment. I agree with other reviewers that some of his descriptions were sort of vague or ethereal, but I can sympathize with the inability to properly explain something to someone who hasn't been there. Sometimes there aren't words.

There were some pearls of wisdom, lots of good quotes from other sources, and guidelines for action that most of us would benefit from following. There were also some things I just can't abide, like a passing reference to certain very-enlightened folks living on light alone. (I'm sorry, but... no. I cannot. We cannot photosynthesize. That's where I draw the line.) In sum, I think this book fits well in the “take what you like and leave the rest” category.

Not my usual genre but decided to give it a shot based on @farmhousevernacular's recommendation on IG, and I enjoyed it. 3.5 with ups and downs. This was a solid 4 for most of the book but trended downward in the last 20% or so, with an ending that can't even be called a cliffhanger - it just stopped. Obviously this is part of a duology (trilogy, now?) so I get that it's going to continue on, but there was zero effort made to have this be a self-contained story arc. There were a couple of lazy edits (I think the author thinks the word “enrapt” is “on rapt”?) but overall fun writing and decent dialogue. Spicy with a twist I didn't expect.

I read this book at a time I was already questioning the future of my status as an alcohol consumer. I haven't actually been at peak consumption, lately, but the very act of moderation had me asking: Why? What's the point in consuming this stuff if I'm not actually even drinking it to get drunk?

I was hoping the book would help me wicker out some answers to that, and it did. I found some of the chemical science helpful, but am a natural skeptic because I know studies can be found to back up any point and I wasn't going to PubMed every footnote - so I didn't give it a ton of weight. I found the psychology to be more useful, and used reading this book as a sort of meditation - time to chew on my thoughts and the ideas presented.

Some of the more interesting takeaways, I found, were where she deconstructed the “I like the taste” rationale, and the various points she made about alcohol and having fun. I'll freely admit that one of my last, but biggest, hesitations about committing to an alcohol-free life was imagining certain events - like my favorite music festival - without booze. Re-examining those events with her logic, I see now that the fun I've had in many of them were due to the company or activity, not the alcohol, and the rare occasions where I am unable to have fun without alcohol means the company or activity actually suck and the solution is to be an actual adult and don't be there, not to self-medicate into tolerance of shitty social settings. (I mean... duh, but yes, I required the thought exercise to arrive here.)

I did find her language somewhat heavy-handed at times, like the refrain of alcohol as “poison.” We put all kinds of things in our bodies that are arguably toxic, from the inadvertent byproducts of modern living (chemicals in plastic) to the I-don't-care-because-tasty (bacon). That line of language/thinking might be helpful for others, but it isn't what speaks to me. I'm - maybe wrongly - less concerned about long-term health effects and more concerned about short- and medium-term psychological, social and acute physical effects.

The bottom line is I read this book at a time when I was trying to decide if the best LJ is, or ought to be, a drinker or non-drinker, and how to navigate the concerns I had about choosing the latter. It hit the spot, and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone wanting to do some critical thinking about their relationship with alcohol.

Like others, I expected the book to be more how-to (a la Marie Kondo) and less memoir, but it was enjoyable all the same. Flanders and I share some traits, namely the propensity to need to do things all-or-nothing to make them stick. I had a few a-ha moments reading the book, like when she drew parallels between other bingey behavior and shopping. Like Flanders , I don't see myself as a shopaholic because I don't fit the stereotype of the cosmopolitan woman with a shoe closet - but I'm totally guilty of the retail therapy/getting stuff I don't need at Target thing... and for what? I've really been trying to focus on things in my house having a place, and if they don't have a place evaluating whether that means I need better storage (which, in an old farmhouse, is true in many cases) or if I need to not own them at all. But, Kondo's “Does this spark joy?” thing never quite helped me make the final decisions, so the biggest, most helpful takeaway I got from this book was when the author raised the point that some things she owned because they're appropriate for who she really is, and other things she owned because they were who she was trying to or thought she should be. The quote I highlighted was: “But there were really only two categories I could see: the stuff I used, and the stuff I wanted the ideal version of myself to use.” That really clicked. I've been purging some things and asking myself that question along the way, and it's gotten me past the things that “joy” didn't define.

A very quick and excellent read. I got it for my emerging 6th grader and decided to preview it - would strongly recommend for kids and adults alike. I'll try to come back later to add her thoughts.

I was ‘assigned' this book for the leadership fellowship I'm participating in. It was a quick read and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I think I may have skipped the last chapter or two due to time constraints; I'd revisit it but I loaned it out to my boss.

Not long after I read the book, we went through the process of hiring two new team members for our region, so the concepts were at the forefront of my mind, and I could see how they played out. I think it presents solid ideas in an easy-to-digest format. None of it is necessarily groundbreaking, but I liked the way the three virtues were defined and the fact that it was a cohesive ‘story' as opposed to the overwrought blog format so many modern self-development books seem to be adopting. I would recommend it for anyone in a position to work with, or especially hire, one or more individuals.

I grabbed this off the available audiobook list in Overdrive because I'm interested in this method of learning/structure. As others have said, its value is limited as a standalone. It did inspire some thinking, though, and led me to add the parent book - For the Win - to my to-read list. I may revisit this and revise my rating after I get around to that one.

Very early DNF. I'm getting a more depressing vibe than I want to subject myself to right now. Not enough hours of daylight this time of year for any voluntary melancholy. Flitting off in search of something pulpy and fun!

Rounded down from like a 3.4999. (I really wish Goodreads would incorporate at least a half-point, if not 1/10th...)

I liked the Irish mythology (which is what drew me to the book).

I had a hard time vibing with the MC. Despite knowing she got dealt a pretty bad hand what with the curse and all, I didn't enjoy her whole can't smile/committed to misery schtick. (I am probably not the target market for B&TB or retellings thereof.)

I got tired of the chess analogies. Also, with the intentional anachronisms (readily-available books, pockets, chocolate) why not just call it chess, instead of Fidchell which is an different game entirely?

I think I would have rounded up to 4 if the book were about 25% shorter - it took me quite a while to get through and part of my concluding feelings are a return-on-investment thing.