Wishtree by Katherine Applegate

Wishtree by Katherine Applegate
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sweet and funny children's book about inclusion, friendship, environmentalism, and best of all- a busybody tree. Highly recommend.

View all my reviews

Real Friends by Shannon Hale

Real Friends by Shannon Hale
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After my 8-year-old son read this I saw that it had good reviews from adults so I read it too. I could really relate to some of Shannon Hale's childhood experiences and I think this is a wonderful book about how difficult it is to be a kid and to form friendships as a kid. I think especially as adults, we romanticize elementary school as the simple time when making friends is easy before popularity because a roadblock but it's true that elementary school often means that children are completely indelicate about forming or breaking off friendships. It's also a reminder that these breaks can be extremely painful.

View all my reviews

Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett

Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A love letter in book form. Patchett's nearly unconditional love for her friend Lucy Greely is palpable and I fell in love with them too. I don't think I've ever encountered a book conveys the importance and depth of friendship as well as this book does. And there's so much more here as well because both women were/are artists and deep thinkers.

View all my reviews

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.

View all my reviews

How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick by Letty Cottin Pogrebin

How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick by Letty Cottin Pogrebin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These are important issues to consider and I'm really glad someone wrote this book. I would have appreciated better organization and more science about what actually makes people feel better.

View all my reviews

Essentialism by Greg McKeown

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Henry Cloud has been writing about this since the 1990s so it's not new or shocking information. I found that it was written better than Cloud's books though and therefore more interesting and inspiring.

Could have been a little shorter though! Ha!

View all my reviews

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When I started reading this book I didn’t think I’d end up liking it as much as I do. It’s pretty unexpected. I enjoyed all the information about plants and plant research, and the struggle of being a research scientist, but more than that, this book is a friend-love story.

View all my reviews

Breathe by Anne-Sophie Brasme

Breathe by Anne-Sophie Brasme
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Interesting short French novel about Charlene's obsession with an American French girl that is awful to her. There's no surprise in the book, but only a meditation on the obsession. The writing is good and very interesting. It's true though that something is missing- after all Charlene appears to have a mental illness that pre-dates Sarah.

View all my reviews

The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan

The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel is about terrorism in India, both the victims and the terrorists themselves and their relationships. The novel is brilliantly written and the author is apparently a hardcore literary genius. The author's descriptions of grief are moving and real.

My only issue is that there's a little shark-jumping at the end that I suppose is actually a metaphor? I hope it is, but it still put a damper on the overall experience for me.

I strongly recommend this book to people who love literary fiction or who have an interest in terrorism.

View all my reviews

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I first read this as a kid, but my rating is the same as then. There are many interesting things to consider in this novel: a conscious computer, consciousness versus having a conscience, the principles of freedom and rebellion, the dangers of a crowded dystopian Earth, and some fun guesses at utopian futures: racial integration, varying family structures, tax-free government etc. All of this, plus the tricky revolution plots, make for a very fun book. But large chunks of the book drag, especially in the second half.

View all my reviews

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I thought this book was super fun to read. That's why I gave it a full 5 stars. Yes, it was a little formulaic and the love interest wasn't well-executed. I'm not a big 80s film, music, or video fan, but the author was pretty clear about what the references meant and made it fun to follow the progress of the hero. Actually, I'd like to watch some of the movies mentioned because the movies interested me the most. If I had to prepare someone for what reading this book is like I'd say: a significantly less sad Hunger Games.

View all my reviews

What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith

What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful by Marshall Goldsmith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I went into this book very dubious because I haven't had a lot of great experiences with "business" books, though I keep trying. My efforts were finally rewarded -- this book is terrific. I might like it so much though because it's highly applicable outside a business context. It might also have been named, "How to Play Well With Others" or "How to Improve Your Marriage."

The book has a lot of concrete solutions for how to find out what your major problematic flaws are (if you're not already aware of them) and how to implement a solution or cure to that problem by getting the very people you're annoying to help you solve that problem.

View all my reviews

Have Space Suit—Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein

Have Space Suit—Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a cute children's book, and is a better, earlier version of A Wrinkle In Time." This is the kind of book I'd be excited to see my kids reading. That said, as a kid, I didn't actually enjoy it much (and I did enjoy A Wrinkle in Time). So maybe it's a children's book for adults?

View all my reviews

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

A Separate Peace by John Knowles
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

We had to read this in high school and I hated it then. I recently reread it to see if I still hate it and I do. First of all, the main character has no sense of the significance of World War II. The only good part of the entire book is how well the author captures that sense of anger that those we love the most can inspire-- but nothing is ultimately made of it. The main character regrets his feelings and actions and even tries in a limited way to take responsibility but the whole literary exercise feels pointless, boring, and despicable all at once.

View all my reviews

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book. It explores some of our worst instincts in such a carefully constructed and subtle manner. The author doesn't condescend. Despite being a short book, it leaves a lot for you to think about. I snatched this book away from Kevin who was about to read it, but it would have been a perfect book club selection.

View all my reviews

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jaime, Michele, and I started a virtual book club, and Michele picked this for our first book in April. [Lot's of spoilers below.]

Here's what I liked: he tried to write a book about male platonic love. Not friendship, but love. He contrasted it to male romantic love, though he didn't necessarily do a great job with that, maybe because it was unclear if one of the gay characters was actually gay, and their was no part of the book from the perspective of the actually gay character. The least compelling relationship was the heterosexual romantic love which seemed opportunistic at best.

I also liked how he layered Moby Dick, and the fictional book that President Affenlight wrote about Moby Dick, and the fictional book called The Art of Fielding. Male platonic love, obsession, and introspective panic are all layered on top of each other.

Harry is infinitely more interesting after he starts freaking out. The line about how he expected life to improve little by little, but that that was not reality could have been my own diagnosis, and has stayed with me.

I also like Pella eating her earrings, because why not?

Here's what I didn't like. There's some problem with the pacing of this book, it goes very very slowly for the first 60% or so of the book, and then it moves quickly and somewhat unbelievably towards the end. My biggest problem with the plot is that Schwartz forgives both Harry and Pella. In real life, I think he could forgive one of them, either one, depending on how passionately he felt for one or the other, but not both.

The ending also felt like forced drama. Otherwise, no one is forgiven, nothing in particular happens, and everything just ends. But the baseball ending was forced drama enough- the rowboat scene is just too much. Oh look at us! Our friendship is so deep that we can rely on each other to grave rob! Sure.


View all my reviews

A House Like a Lotus by Madeleine L'Engle

A House Like a Lotus by Madeleine L'Engle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Some light spoilers ahead, but I tried to refrain from really telling anything.

First, this book is not for kids unless you're prepared to discuss sex, consent, and people taking advantage of teens.

As background, Calvin and Meg are 41 years old now, and move back to the US for Calvin's job. They settle on another island, this time in South Carolina. Their 7 children are a little older now: Polly (16 years old), Charles (14), Sandy "Zan" (12?), Den (10?), Peggy (8), Johnny (6), and Rosie (4).

While the whole family is mentioned, this story is mostly about Polly's "coming of age." She makes friends with a bunch of much older people in South Carolina: Maxine and Ursula who are in their 50s, and a medical intern Renny that she's dating. He's the absolute worst person in this book in my opinion, but Polly doesn't seem to notice. Max encourages her to take a trip to Athens, where she meets a total creeper guy Zachary in his 20s. He's the second or third worst person in this book. Again Polly doesn't seem to notice. Instead she focuses on being mad at Max for basically no reason at all. The story flashes back and forth between her town in South Carolina and Athens.

There are a lot of issues with this book, the biggest is that it is SO MELODRAMATIC. Maybe that's perfect for teenage girls? Another problem is the super high number of creepy characters willing to hit on 16-year-old Polly. Polly is tall, but she makes it clear that she does not look like an adult, so it's not an innocent mistake. Given that this was written in the 1980s we can't blame culture for this disaster. Another issue is that a whole bunch of new characters are introduced about 70% of the way through the book. Nope, sorry, I can't care about new people this late in the game.

Nonetheless, if I grade it on a curve, it's the best in O'Keefe series, and maybe one of the better in the bigger Kairos series (which is the 8 books in the Time quintet + O'Keefe series). There are references to great books, and there are a few deep thoughts.

More of a spoiler: Netson's Disease is fictional but I'm not sure why, as there are plenty of parasites that injure the heart. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/americans-may-be-more-at-risk-from-deadly-heart-parasite-than-realized/

View all my reviews

The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is more of a split score. I think I would have given it 4 stars if I'd read it when I was in highschool, and it's more of 3, maybe 3.5 for me now. The main character is a freshman in high school dealing with a lot of pain while trying not to be super awkward.

View all my reviews

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's beautifully written. It's about love, loneliness, poverty, injustice, and just going on in lonely old age.

The first time I read this I was lukewarm about it. It was only on my second reading that I appreciated the sadness (and happiness) of it more. But it was tough to get through both times even though it's short because it's so much fishing. It's as exciting as fishing will ever be, but it's still a lot of fishing.

View all my reviews