Rated We Have Always Lived in the Castle 8/10
Delightfully weird and nasty story from the perspective of a young woman who lost most of her family under mysterious circumstances.
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Rated Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood 8/10
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 All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers 8/10
clever, heartfelt essays about "troublesome" famous women like Courtney Love, Winona Ryder, Lil' Kim and Princess Diana, shot through with personal details about the author's life. you'll need a tolerance for a confessional, heart-on-sleeve style but it's a quick read and rewarding.
Rated Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran 10/10
A long, powerful, tremendously well-reported history of the ideological origins of the Iranian revolution and its reformers and dissidents. Chronological but not a straight history - it's seen through the people and especially the ideas that shape the times. If you are into a grim, careful book that takes you inside a country often seen as opaque or monolithically evil, this is precisely for you. In particular, I couldn't help but be struck by the way everyday life and the paranoia of living under a violent autocracy can intersect - and with the parallels between Iran's political scene and our own (I kept highlighting and tweeting photos of excerpts). Not for everybody, but riveting if a long intellectual history appeals to you.
Rated Sorcerer to the Crown 8/10
A real delight. Zen Cho manages to a bunch of things really well - build a convincing, coherent world with clever magical rules and norms, a plot with a lot of surprises and a lot of threads that lock together, some really sharp analysis of how race/gender/class operate - and also makes it a fun, quick read. Imagine the Ministry of Magic as told by Edith Wharton - adventure and wordplay and a dark creepy underside.
Rated Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone 4/10
Really disappointing, because there is no reason such a fascinating woman should have such a rote, boring biography. You get a lot from reading between the lines but it's a huge slog. Somebody should adapt a 200-page version of this book that eliminates the boring stuff.
Rated The Empathy Exams 8/10
Leslie Jamison is an exceptionally talented writer. She's better when she has something really concrete to talk about than something abstract, but her voice is really powerful and she's a sharp observer. This set of essays is mostly on sad topics - pain, oppression, heartbreak, diseases people might not have, crimes people may not have committed, and in particular the way Jamison herself reacts emotionally to all of these things she encounters.
Rated Vampires in the Lemon Grove 8/10
Like Catherine, I'd give this 3.5 if I could - some stories are great and some are ok.<br/><br/>Russell is probably the author I feel the most envy aout, because she writes like I'd like to write (fast-moving but atmospheric, perceptive internal viewpoints from distinct characters, sneaky magic realism) and because she's just a little younger than me.
Rated The Spy Who Came In from the Cold 8/10
Edited 86d ago
Wants to read 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die
Wants to read Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three