Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Still Alice by Lisa Genova
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I appreciated the way this took me inside the life and experiences of someone going through something so different, and those experiences were so unexpected and real.

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Before the Fall by Noah Hawley

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really liked this book! It fails to fall neatly into any categories; it's a mystery/ not-quite-a-thriller with many literary qualities. From the beginning, you know who has died and only subsequently do you grow to know the players involved. But the real theme of the book is media, society, art, and death.

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Wasted by Marya Hornbacher

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Riveting memoir with very interesting insights into family, psychology, loneliness, and life in general. Kindle and Goodreads tell me that I highlighted 49 sentences or passages, which should give you an idea of how much I valued this writing. A lot of people are overly focused on the fact that the memoir is about the author's struggle with anorexia, but to me, the part I valued most was the author's honest and brilliantly written struggle with despair, depression, and just life itself. It is a bit lopsided because she discusses her pseudo-recoveries after her first two hospitalizations but not after the third, but perhaps her next memoir, which I plan to read, covers that more.

As I said, I highlighted many sentences in the memoir, but this one is so me, haha: "I was my parents' only child, which is unfortunate because you are their pride and joy and the bane of their existence all at once."

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Finish by Jon Acuff

Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done by Jon Acuff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A short and useful book. Here's what I got from it, but it might be worth a second read.

Pick a fun goal! And fun ways to achieve the goal.
Make the goal smaller than you originally want
Make the timeline to achieve your goal longer
Don't let "noble" prerequisites get in your way.
Don't let perfectionism stop you when you're almost done. (Actually usually for me, it's the opposite-- it's pessimism that gets me before I'm done.)
And you don't need to figure out what's next before you're done.

What are you getting from not finishing? (Fear of failure.)

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Nutshell by Ian McEwan

Nutshell by Ian McEwan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Even though the premise is somewhat silly in its device, this dark and humorous tale captivated me completely. I loved McEwan’s literary magic. In general, I try to avoid horror or even horror-tinged books, but this was grabbed me in slow increments and at the end I was so invested in the character of the baby that I wanted to know how the rest of his life went. Time to reread Hamlet.

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Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm not a huge romance book fan (though I haven't ruled out reading more of them in the future) but I really enjoyed this book because of the witty banter between the two young men, and because of the political components of the book. I definitely wanted to live in this alternate universe where the 2016 election never happened.

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