Candice

3.5 - 4. Parts are really funny, hearing Carrie read it is great, but some parts of the book don't really translate well to audio-only format.

I didn't hate it, but it felt like a mash up of mediocre term papers and BuzzFeed articles. A bit repetitive and meandering.

A lot of the same content that he uses in his standup, but still hilarious.

I enjoyed the book more the second time around, especially when narrated by Michael C Hall. The narration definitely put a new, darker, spin on the book for me. I loved all Hall's character voices except that of Holly, but I'd still give this 5 star for the narration and 4 or less for Capote because I still just don't really like the book.

This book was hilarious and spot on for a child raised in “the truth” in that time period. I'm guessing that those reviewing this poorly either do not understand what a memoir is, what growing up as (and recovering from life as) a JW is like, or have no grasp on sarcasm or sardonic humor.

Yes, parts of it are dark and terrible decisions are made with no seeming understanding of the consequences, but you also have to take into account that children raised as JWs are growing up in a totalitarian, mind controlling organization which leaves you completely terrified of and unprepared for the real world -- which Kyria addresses sardonically in the last chapters. It takes years, decades for some, for recovery from this kind of emotional stunting and trauma and she probably wasn't "out" for many years before the publication of this book. For a "snapshot" in time sort of memoir from a person who probably wasn't fully recovered at the time of writing, I think the ending is perfectly rounded.

This is a gem and I regret not buying it sooner. If you are DF'd or actively in recovery, you may be triggered by this book because it doesn't hold back.

3.5? I don't normally read thrillers. I did enjoy the writing and the pacing of the book, but the ending sort of falls flat and you don't ultimately end up liking any of the characters... so when it ends, you just find yourself glad you no longer have to read about how drunk the “protagonist” is today.

I don't read a lot of YA and this reeks of generic high school romance with some shallow characters, but that's okay and pretty much expected of YA in general. The plot issues I had were all swiftly dealt with in the author's note at the end and ultimately made sense for the purpose of the book.

The book is idealistic and hopeful and mostly uncomplicated, but honestly, I think that's fine for this book too. No book can cover all possible scenarios or personal struggles and it's not terrible for a book to offer education and hope. There were some genuinely funny and sweet scenes and overall it was well written.

There's not much of a “story” or character development in the manga bits, but the explanations are pretty good and backed up with more technical sections after every manga-story bit.

This is a book that's best read without reading the full synopsis first. While this is a memoir, it feels more like a psychological thriller that you don't want to put down. I felt so swept up in the meet cute and love story and the building of their lives together, that I didn't see the red flags. There were times when I felt the author was overreacting to this or that, because of hormones or sleep deprivation or general neuroticism, but then... was she? Because if she'd just ignored the things that happened altogether and stopped digging, how much longer would the lies have gone on? This book lets you live simultaneously through the infatuation of the honeymoon phase and the moment-to-moment panic, fear and shock about the things that happened as she discovered them. Heartbreaking and powerful.

Received advance reader copy free from Penguin Random House's “First to Read” program. My opinions are my own, blah blah blah. You know the drill.

Edited: I'm going to update this to 3 stars, because I was mostly entertained and if I step back from it, I have to believe that the entire story was a mockery of itself.... which ultimately is pretty funny.

Somewhat funny, somewhat nerdy, somewhat hot.... but then awkward?

I didn't like the main characters at all. There are odd time gaps and almost no dialog, so I don't feel like there was really a relationship built amidst all the bobbing cocks which are so rampant after about 53% (good god that first novella took for fucking ever for them to write!). Meh

There were a lot of funny lines and interesting references. The roommate character was interesting and felt more fleshed out (pun intended?) than the main characters themselves. The MCs making fun of the stereotypes of the genre was hilarious... but then the book also adhered to many of them itself, which may have been subtly intended? I just can't tell.

It really bothers me to find typos & discontinuities in a book supposedly about writers and it bothers me even more to have nerd/geek references which are just... flat fucking wrong. If you're going to make a literary or geek reference, for god's sake, do your research.

2.5 - 3

I hate rating memoirs because it feels like a personal judgement on the author's life choices. I didn't know anything about the author prior to reading the book. There are a some points I could relate to and her loss is tragic, but the book jumps around a lot with details that seem unnecessary/distracting. She just comes across as so self-absorbed that I have a hard time rating this work objectively.

I'll be honest, I had a hard time starting this since it starts on and uses 9/11 and the events following it as a backdrop. It's still a raw day for me. But I kept reading and eventually found I didn't want to put the book down and that the backdrop was fairly respectfully interwoven.

I loved the writing style – someone narrating the story of their life, or at least the highlights, as they remember them with small intimate details that still stick out through the fog of memory. The memories are immersive and flash by you, making the foreshadowing very subtle. You only get bits and pieces of memory– the perceptions of what happened over a lifetime, the questions about what could have happened instead, the things that were left unsaid, the choices made. If you're completely honest with yourself, no one looks back on their life and says, “I made all the right choices. I wouldn't have done anything different and I'm not remotely curious about any other paths my life may have taken.”

The protagonist isn't perfect, but no one is, and in the end, I am left hungry for the other perspectives we didn't get to see and for what recent and future thoughts and choices may be made and/or remorsefully questioned going forward. As an individual, constrained to our own perspective and singular experience, those other perspectives and alternative paths are things we would never be privy to anyway, so that hunger is completely fitting with the tone of the book.

Received free review copy from First to Read, opinions are my own, yadda yadda.

3.5?

First, this is not a high drama sensational lesbian prison novel, as some reviewers seem to have expected. This is not the TV show.

There may be familiar characters you recognize by tiny snippets of their stories, but ultimately this is a memoir of Piper's life as she remembers it during her incarceration and as she made the best of a bad situation. And yes, she was a white woman of privilege when she went in and she openly acknowledges that throughout the book and that she had a different and unique experience because of it. But I can also respect that she recognized and actively pointed out the unfairness of her preferential treatment, even if she did occasionally take advantage of it. And after she left prison, she didn't just “cash out” with this book deal – she became a strong and continuing advocate for other incarcerated women and for prison reform.

I flip-flopped a lot through this book, equally liking and disliking her, and my rating is not a reflection of my opinion of her as a person. This isn't a piece of fiction with a perfect protagonist who always says and does all the right things.

I read this fairly quickly and found the day to day anecdotes, routines, and the relationships she made fascinating. Her voice transitions back and forth between her WASP upbringing to prison slang to personal desperation to advocate. It's clear there was a measure of personal growth and a deep sadness for the plight of the other women she was incarcerated with who didn't have her advantages in life. Overall, this is a well-written, interesting memoir and I'm glad to have read it.

I don't want to spoil it, so I'll add tags and just say I really like the writing style & character building in general and the book has a really important message that it conveys well... but there were story choices that just felt outlandish that detracted from the otherwise fairly realistic portrayal of the protagonist's dilemma (e.g. the meet cute with the rich girl whose never had a job in her life and suddenly wants to work while in high heels and oh, btw, she's the sister of the random guy you met 6 months ago on some random building. ).

I have mixed feelings about the ending and feel it would have been much stronger overall had the Epilogue been omitted entirely (e.g. Yay! Empowerment! I courageously divorced my abuser and broke the cycle... but... he's such a great dad, so I'm going to leave my still non-verbal child with an physically abusive person with no impulse control. *Projectile Vomit* )

Don't skip the author's note at the end. The author's note made me almost excuse the existence of Epilogue, because I understand that in her own personal situation the wife-beater didn't hurt the children, but if the message of the book is "end the cycle" then the whole "leave your non-verbal 11 month old alone with an abusive person" just seems reckless and not at all breaking the cycle. In her own situation, the children in the household were all old enough to speak up if something happened.

This is a bit dry and in the Swedish style, so if you don't like that, then pass on this.

Otherwise, if you can relate to the completely love sick and neurotic main character, it has a lot of poignant bits which make you go “Doh! Is this really how I was acting? I'm an idiot!”

I liked it but it's definitely not for everyone.

There is some fantastic prose, at times.
There are some beautifully heartbreaking short story asides.
Parts of the ending are pretty moving as standalone circumstances.

But there really isn't any romance between the main characters, in their past or present...

And I don't even mean physical interactions here, as the main character loves reminding you every other page that he has no penis, because that's all that matters right?



I kept waiting for it. Surely by the time the main character moves in with his mysterious benefactor in the present timeline, she'd have told him this moving, heart-wrenching story of their love right? Nope.

There's literally zero emotional connection. No romantic dialog. No physical interactions from the time they were both fairly whole. No witty, playful banter. Nothing beyond the circumstances of her being a nun and him being a deserter and now we're facing the world as outcasts... yadda yadda yadda.

I'm glad I read this as there were beautiful stories and descriptions in it, but as a “transcends time” sort of love story, it fell flat for me.

Interesting read. A little gimmicky at times, but enough thoughtful parables and interesting tidbits that I'm glad I read it even if the book just wasn't ultimately what I was looking for.

As someone who actually bought and read this book, I can honestly say that much of it was a chore to read once you get over how pretty the cover art is.

Note: I'm not a Ph.D candidate or a true Londoner and I've never read the original edition of this book, so maybe I just picked up the wrong book for me personally.

While the book is divided into sections, which sounds lovely and organized, the content is a mishmash of essays (of varying approachability and largely unknown age of original publication) tucked under one section or another with no real cohesion or meaningful progression of topics.

It felt a bit like an non-specific call for papers that just got pasted together despite their sometimes redundant coverage of certain topics. The book was edited to add reference notes in parentheses to refer back to chapters within itself, but these notes fail give it any real cohesion either.

As someone who has never been to London, I found it confusing that the section devoted to a basic walkthrough of the general sites with simple references to the associated lore of each site appears in the middle of the book, rather than the beginning. In the beginning, where you might have expected to see a general introduction to the city in plain english, you get instead a laborious old English style geographical poem excerpt which drags on for 4 pages but then offers nothing in the way of explication or summary. (While the Poly-Olbion is famous and excerpt was topical, it's bloody difficult and a bit painful to read with no context.)

Many of the essays are so high brow only a devoted scholar of that topic could appreciate the “you had to have been there” thesis feel. A few of the essays were genuinely enjoyable and approachable, but many of them dryly repeat the same 4 or 5 bits of lore with varying levels of detail. One essay had a fantastic story in it... but then, disappointingly, had no provided references and I couldn't find anything else to support it anywhere.

Overall, I did enjoy the book and certain essays within were an absolute delight (Chapters 6, 10, and 11 offhand and a few others I can't recall at the moment), but it's largely unapproachable for the layman and feels a bit messy because of the pasted essay format. But again, my criticism may just be a result of having different expectations of the book and having no foreknowledge of the locale or lore.

“The Friendly Orange Glow” by Brian Dear was a fascinating tech history by a master storyteller. I knew nothing about PLATO when starting the book, as most of the events and innovation took place before I was born, but now feel as if the technology, along with people and places that built and ‘hacked' and enriched the community surrounding it, are my old friends and familiar haunts. Some readers may be put off by the long-windedness of some of the personal stories and anecdotes, but I found that they added a surprising richness and cohesiveness to the book and a offered a delightful buildup to some mind-blowing revelations of this lost technological history. I was given a free ARC from Penguin's First to Read program, but my opinions are my own, etc.