Mercer
I used to love Augusten Burroughs. I'm not sure who has changed, me or him, but I disliked this book. First: so many scenes were familiar. Like, I wasn't sure if I'd read it before or not—turns out there's just a lot of rehashing from Dry and Running With Scissors.
Everything seemed trite and overwrought. I wasn't as compelled, and it felt like this book lost his typical humor as well.
Beyond that, as a nonfiction writer, I was really struck by my lack of trust in him as a narrator. Lots of hypotheticals and imaginings that made the narrative less potent as I questioned what was reality.
An interesting take on magic, to be sure. I felt disappointed that romance was brought into this story, as otherwise the plot and subject matter was fairly unique.
Great take on modern management. Obviously, just as with all business books, not everything will fit every person. Take what you need, leave the rest.
There were parts of this that were really hard for me to read. That said: the humans in this book are so relatable. The world building is so good. Everything feels very real.
The twists, if you can call them that, were surprising every time. I'm not sure if I was just so caught up in the narrative that I didn't see them coming, but dang. I can't wait to start the next one.
Second reading through. Damn. DAMN. this is a very different vibe from the first, and reading them back to back truly emphasizes that.
Second review: apparently I forgot that I read this book last year and I didn't remember until I was about halfway through this read, so I guess that suggests how good it is?
At one point, Brene Brown was the leading thinker in this space and this book was groundbreaking. At this point, the world has too much content like this and it all starts to sound the same, unfortunately.
This was cute! Felt much more heisty than the first one. I loved getting to see beloved (??) characters starting off and where it all began. Probably much less enjoyable if you don't already have context, but I am not sure.
A decent enough book about the inner workings of the social circles around the fictional Elysian literary prize. A quick read, nothing particularly insightful or unique, but interesting enough.
My son loves these books Becayse he wants to be doctor Doolittle. However, the books are vaguely problematic in their colonialist bullshit. It was a good opportunity to talk about stuff like that with my son, but I don't relish turning night time reading into a fairly complex conversation every single day. I suspect we will stop reading this series after this one...but did you know there are something like 11 books in this series?!
Oh my god. I am so grateful to have been introduced to this author this year. This book was exquisite. Devastating and beautiful and tender and heartbreaking. I appreciated the honest portrayal of the war from both sides. I loved all that was known and unknown. The characters were all so human and so good.
I wish I could read this for the first time all over again.
God. This series was perfect and this ending was so dang good. Full of hope and sadness.
My son loved this book and I was deeply endeared while reading it. I hope it becomes a regular in our rotation.
I really wanted to love this but deeply struggled with it. Part it feels like it wants to be hard SF, but is actually written like a Becky Chambers novel. I love Becky Chambers’ books because of how different they are from “traditional” SF, and this book, unfortunately, was not able to stick that landing.
The last 17% of the book was very interesting to me, but it resolved too quickly and easily. I’m giving it a three because I thought the premise was interesting, but it’s probably more of a two because I don’t know that I’d actually recommend it to anyone. An interesting thought experiment, I suppose, but not good enough to make me want to read the next two and endure more of the same.
Misdirection on misdirection. Truly so so good. Love the sociopolitical commentary as well.
While it did take me a while to get into this book, and (as sad as I am to say it) I do feel that Palahniuk is relying on his same old tropes, I did think that was interesting and well done. A unique continuity of Damned, for sure. Still not sure how I feel about it's epistolary style, though.
Someone recommended this as appropriate for kids and-hahaha-I can't agree. I also prefer the movie to the book, which has never happened in my whole entire life.
This man has some amazing metaphors and similes. Although I admittedly feel that the old-man-in-midlife-crisis plot is a bit tired, Chabon's beautiful writing kept me reading.
Perhaps good for parents who don't yet already have children. For me, it felt like Emily was strongly trying to push her own agenda—and some of the numbers felt pretty outlandish to me! I recognize her whole point is to “take what you need and leave the rest” but it still felt a bit like she focused really hard on making her SELF feel good about her choices. Mostly read out of curiousity rather than for actual advice, given that I have already gestated and birthed a human, though.
I feel like back when this first came out it would have been groundbreaking, but at this point empathy and advocacy for people in the workplace isn't really anything new?
While I enjoyed this, I also found it a fairly dense read. It is chock-full of great and interesting information, but seems to focus more on Hubbard's insecurities and failures as a man rather than on Scientology as a whole. The ending was lack luster, as well.
Definitely based in more fact and research than other books on Scientology, but it ultimately fizzled for me.
I thought that the essays in this book were a bit “heavier” than others, which is to be expected from the title. Quick read, but definitely worth it. The essays also seemed to connect two more significantly different subjects a la Malcolm Gladwell.
I find myself loving this author's books more and more as I move away from the most popular ones. I found this one to be an unfortunately short read; I wanted it to go on forever. While there are definitely some things left explained, and maybe even a bit obscure, I liked it for that.