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Rated Mislaid 8/10
Curious and compelling. Zink pulls off something very difficult really well, and though it doesn't always land quite right - and wraps up too neatly - it's really enjoyable, rich with distinctive characters all with their own perspective. As with her last book [b:The Wallcreeper|22237292|The Wallcreeper|Nell Zink|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1400625481s/22237292.jpg|41610859] there were times that I stopped short and sort of squinted at this book, as though in a conversation with somebody with poor social skills who doesn't know it; unlike that book, the rest of the time it's terrific and feels real and lived-in and yet delightfully weird.
Rated Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay 10/10
These books are so good. It's really all one big story and I don't think this one really stands alone, but it's excellent, a sharply observed look at the narrator (the one who left her hometown of Naples) and her friend Lila (the one who stayed) as they go through their 20s and 30s, navigating careers, family, romance and the political turmoil of the late 60s and early 70s. Beautifully illustrates enduring, freshly relevant truths like "violent fascism operates to the benefit of the capital-owning class" and "men love to hear themselves talk and expect women to listen." I am looking forward to the final installment; while #2 is still the best of the individual books, as I've said, it's really one lifelong story and all together it's a masterpiece.
Wants to read All We Know: Three Lives
Rated The Idiot 8/10
One of the most spot-on depictions I've read of what it's like to be a freshman in college, where your personal life and life-of-the-mind are scaling up and getting tangled up in each other in the process. A Turkish-American girl goes to Harvard and falls in with an Eastern European crowd. Really sharp, manages to be breezy and thoughtful at the same time.
Rated The Girls 8/10
Creepy, lyrical, intense story of a woman who was caught up in a Manson-esque cult as a teenager. Really remarkable, especially for how well it conveys an adolescent-girl's-eye-view of the world, tragic and dreamy and emotionally rich and unsettled.
Rated Umami 8/10
Warm, smart and funny story of the people living in a small complex in Mexico City. Very bright and breezy and weird, especially for a book that's so much about loss and mourning. It's very odd structurally, not really for any reason, and it doesn't quite amount to as much as it seems like it's going to, but I enjoyed it.
Rated Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg 8/10
What a delight! An excellent, light-hearted survey of Justice Ginsburg's life and career, with excerpts from briefs and decisions and fan art given similar footing. Breezy and quick but a great survey of why Justice Ginsburg is so important, from her pathbreaking early career as an advocate to her recent dissents against decisions that undermine voting rights and women's rights.
Rated The Unfinished World and Other Stories 8/10
Really lovely, uncanny short stories, with something of the feel of fairy tale or legend. Absorbing and strange.
Rated White Teeth 10/10
A sprawling, insightful story of immigrant and first-generation families in London. Lots of rich characters all with idiosyncratic perspectives, coming together and clashing across class and generational and racial and cultural lines. Well-put-together and lived-in and more relevant than ever given the turn towards xenophobia in Britain.
Rated Crude: The Story of Oil 6/10
Great until it goes extremely wrong.<br/><br/>Most of the way through, this book is quite good - a well-explained, brief-but-detailed summary of the history, science and economics behind oil and the problems our reliance on it can cause, with an obvious but not obtrusive left-wing analytical lens. However, it was written in 2004, and as such it is badly dated - missing major events later on that expand, complicate or change the story Shah is telling. Chapter 9, in particular, is premised on the concept of "peak oil" - the idea that we're running up against the limits of the reserves available and our production of oil is going to enter a new era of decline and scarcity. What has happened, instead, is a remarkable growth in our ability to extract and refine oil from "unconventional" sources. Shah alludes to mining tar sands, but doesn't get into hydraulic fracking and other methods of producing oil from formerly hard-to-reach sources. If anything, the biggest problem we have with oil now is that there's more of it than we can safely use and not enough incentives to get off of it.<br/><br/>There are many developments in the story of oil that Shah by necessity misses by finishing up in 2004 - including the long slow spiraling out of the Iraq War, the soured "Arab spring" that led to crisis in Libya, and the rise of ISIS in Syria; the Obama administration's new fuel economy standards and investments in renewable energy; the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico; the political battles over pipelines; the Paris climate agreement; the emergence of the electric vehicle market, particularly in California and Europe; and most recently the 2016 election, with its possible promotion of Exxonmobil's CEO as Secretary of State. But by far the biggest thing she misses is the boom in unconventional oil development, only faintly visible from her vantage point in 2004 and now half of U.S. oil production. <br/><br/>First chunk of the book would merit 4 stars; the closing section drops it to 3. Needs a new edition, at least.
Rated The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World's Great Drinks 6/10
Light and breezy yet encyclopedic. Kinda like getting cornered at the party by the foodie who wants to tell you all about the appetizers. You can skip around at your leisure rather than trying to read it straight through, but it's full of fun factoids.
Rated The First Bad Man 8/10
Every Miranda July story is about two or more people whose ability to function in a social setting is deeply compromised in a distinct, different way, and how they react to each other. It's always a little disorienting and it's a weird place to spend a lot of time. I mean this in a good way; she is a lovely and clever writer.
Rated The Moor's Account 8/10
Really well-done - a great story. It takes place in the 1550s in the New World; it's based on a true story of lost Spanish conquistadors, told from the perspective of a Moroccan slave. Highly recommend.
Rated The Tiger's Wife 8/10
Doesn't quite hang together like I was hoping - it seems a little scattered between four or so storylines - but so beautifully written and evocative that it hardly matters.
Rated The Spy Who Came In from the Cold 8/10