Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think based on a lot of the quotes people liked about this book, they missed the point that the book makes that nothing is fated (unless every potential outcome is simultaneously fated per physics).

It was interesting and fun, and I fell in love with some of the characters. The plot was not especially original (Sliding Doors), but it was still an ambitious undertaking. Despite a complicated plot, the author kept things like the characters internally consistent, which I appreciate.

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The Naked Brain by Richard Restak

The Naked Brain: How the Emerging Neurosociety is Changing How We Live, Work, and Love by Richard Restak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoy popular neuroscience books, and this was a pretty good one. It's pretty old now though (2006), so I've encountered most of this information in other neuroscience and behavioral economics books. I'd recommend it though because it does a good job of being interesting, succinct, and clear.

PS. Nearly no mention of any innate neurological differences between men and women. Not sure if this is indicative that there are none.

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Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a wonderfully paced, dramatic, and tense story. The experience of reading this is like running through a maze with beautiful monsters on your trail.

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Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed

Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Truthfully, I should have given it 3 stars because it is the most repetitive book I’ve ever read. But I imagined reading a book half this length with all the repeat sentences removed. Here’s what I appreciated: the focus on the falsity of the idea of the feminist as the cause her own suffering. I’ve recently encountered the argument here on Goodreads, that feminists aren’t unhappy because of outside injustice but because they’ve pushed back on this injustice too much. Ahmed also explores the idea of how people label those who complain about these injustices as killjoys. That’s really familiar.

I liked the exploration of the often ineffective diversity initiatives at most workplaces. How the reports and measurements and self-congratulatory events can become the very tool of oppression by managers that do not at all understand the issues of diversity in the workplace.

I also liked the idea of a feminist survival kit. I am not sure what I’d put in mine, but I’m working on it.

I didn’t like the idea that she put forward of feminists (be the feminist women, men, trans, other races, disabled) constantly snapping at each other. It’s okay to discuss different experiences but it’s exhausting not to have allies that don’t also attack.

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Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was really challenging. There were a lot of amazing thoughts threaded throughout, and there was a certain satisfaction in figuring out the storyline as things are revealed out of order, but it was also excruciating.

Have you seen the movie Memento? That's the idea, the entire storyline is out of order, constructed from gossip and different point of views, and sometimes pure speculation. And it's conveyed in sentences that are a paragraph long (though my husband assures me they are not "run-on" because the grammar is correct).

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Leadership In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Leadership In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very enjoyable read about Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, and Johnson. I'm not sure if I learned specific things about leadership, but I loved reading about how these Presidents fought for the rights of the poor and minorities.

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This Bright Darkness by Sarah McKinstry-Brown

This Bright Darkness by Sarah McKinstry-Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is really different because the poems follow a narrative about Persephone and her mother Demeter. I love mythology and this reminded me of the feeling of reading the epic poetry Odyssey, but at the same time, experiencing certain modern thinking underneath.

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A Lost Lady by Willa Cather

A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Listen, Mrs. Forrester is trying to do the best she can in a tough era, and I'm not terribly interested in Neil's indictment of her. As the entire midwest is sliding into shabbiness, Neil is growing up and his view of Mrs. Forrester, who he's put on a pedestal, is rapidly degenerating as well. His negative feelings are barely veiled sour grapes and later also some misdirected Ivy rage.

We never see the world directly from Mrs. Forrester's point of view, but even from Neil's biased view, we learn that Mrs. Forrester is deeply flawed and deliciously complicated. She's the Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary that SURVIVES, and even escapes and blooms again. I give Willa Cather a lot of credit for creating a character like that.

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A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this! I've always thought I'd love to hike the Appalachian Trail (#bucketlist) but now I've been dissuaded. I actually appreciated that Bryson cheated quite a bit because I think that's what I'd prefer to do one day.

He went from Georgia to West Virginia, discussed Pennsylvania a bit, and then returned to the Northern part of the trail later. In general, I enjoyed the discussion of the Southern locations more, either because I am somewhat familiar with those locations, or because having actually hiked that part of the trail all at once, he gave it more color.

The book was very funny, especially some of his friend's jokes, but sometimes it was a little unnecessarily mean.

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This Blessed Earth by Ted Genoways

This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm by Ted Genoways
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am perhaps more interested in this topic than the average reader. I moved to Nebraska about 6 months ago, and I've been trying to read more about Nebraska in general. Being fairly proximate to the farms (actually, I was close to farms in Long Island too) I'm especially interested in Nebraskan farming, and American farming in general. I'm especially disturbed by corporate ownership of seeds and specific plant genetic-variations.

Right when we moved here, our government started a trade war with China, which resulted in difficulty selling Nebraskan soybeans at good prices. The book ends right at about that point, and I'm interested in how that problem has developed.

Even with my very specific interest in this topic though, I felt like the book progressed slowly. Also, there was only one family member that I felt was sufficiently developed/described for me to take an interest in.

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The Unincorporated Man by Dani Kollin, Eytan Kollin

The Unincorporated Man by Dani Kollin, Eytan Kollin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The concept was sort of interesting, but the execution was pretty bad. I was most interested in Sebastian and the other assistants, but that never really got off the ground. I was able to keep reading and be fairly entertained but towards the end, the plot became even more tortured and unlikely.

Also, there was a little bit of random sexism and it seemed like the authors really went out of their way to add it to an otherwise sexism-free future. Just why?

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The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow, what a masterpiece of plot. I wasn’t very impressed at the beginning, and I predicted some of the outcome very early on, but it built and built until it was so much more than I expected. Very well done, and a new favorite of mine.

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