aimiller's Reviews (689)

I received a free copy of this book directly from the publisher, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to read this and write a review. 

A powerful combination memoir and guide on how to navigate chronic illness in the US, Miller writes both of her own experiences and offers advice on how to deal with the changes wrought by chronic illness. The resources in the back of this I think could be very helpful; she writes about how to find a therapist who specializes in the changes of life and trauma associated with chronic illness, how to find a good doctor, and also reveals how absolutely garbage our healthcare system here is in the US. Her own journey of course is also really enlightening; she doesn't hold back in examining how her own privileges help her get the care she needs, and also how capitalism and the structure of work in the US really further damaged her health. 

I think this could be really helpful for anyone facing chronic illness or pain--it really does cover a lot of important ground, and it doesn't pretend there are easy answers for any of the challenges that arise. 

Some really gorgeous writing--Kincaid writes in particular about setting in ways that are gorgeous and haunting, and really disorient you in the best of ways. I think I would need to reread this again just to really get a sense of the writing, and really be able to let myself go and enjoy it to a deeper degree. But I really did enjoy it, and I think it's pretty accessible so could also be useful for the classroom for younger people. 

I really really enjoyed this; Jolie is such a careful, attentive writer with a clear passion for Cleveland and the surrounding area and a rigorous understanding of how the world she moved through as a child was constructed. Her writings about femmehood I think are some of the most clearly articulated I've read in a long time, and a much-needed antidote to the muddying of the term by a firm grounding in her working class upbringing. I kind of wanted more--she talks about embodying this as she goes through academia, and I think this is a tension point that she doesn't pick at any more, or what that means and I would personally find that super interesting (and because we don't yet have much if any good writing on that straddling and it's becoming more and more relevant I think, but I understand the structure here and the Rust Belt part of it fades whens he moves away so it's not necessarily relevant to the confines of the book. 

Definitely recommend it though! 

A really interesting look at how Black people and Blackness influence American ideas about the Gothic in lots of different genres, as well as the way that Black artists in particular play with and in Goth and Gothic arts. I wanted some of this to be more in depth than it was--it felt like we got a kind of taste of things but not as much of a dive as I would have wanted personally, and some of the analysis also didn't go as deep as I wanted it to, but I think it's a very good jumping off point, especially as a person who isn't as familiar with the Gothic as other folks might be. 

A really beautiful collection, even as it grapples with difficult things. Awkward-Rich's reflections on the sensations of being surrounded by death, have it pressing in, and have to tread water on how to continue with all of that. Favorite poems include "Meditations in an Emergency" and "Love Poem." 

Just a really exceptional look at sacrifice and how sacrifice--radical sacrifice--can help explain and explore a whole series of ways we need to be living an ethical life. Eagleton's sources that he draws on to lay out arguments around sacrifice, and examples he uses to discuss them, are expansive but he manages to make most of them approachable in breaking down their arguments and I really felt like I understood many of his points, and that they were in fact highly clarifying in a larger sense. The part about forgiveness in particular struck me as deeply useful as a place for jumping off to more thinking and discussion, though so much else also was really useful and clarifying for me. (I will also say that his explanation of original sin is also more approachable and compelling than any I've heard or read before!) 

I'm walking away from this wanting both to reread this (with my own, non-library copy so I can write in it properly,) and wanting to read like everything Eagleton has written ever, so that's a big endorsement in and of itself. Both accessible and thought provoking! Ideal! 

I received a copy of this book through the Early Reviewers program on LibraryThing, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to read this book.

There was much I enjoyed about this book--I think for teens who are interested in journalism and capital T Truth, there's a lot here to be interested in, and it's fun to see an asexual character's identity taken seriously but also allowing for her to

develop a relationship!

I think the balance of Kennedy and Ravi--a kind of 'the head and the heart' thing going on--really works here, and also leaves room for both of them to have heart in ways that I enjoyed.

My issue with the book is two-fold:

the "making of a monster" part of the book is not a thing I enjoy generally--I know it's intent is to dangle red herrings for you, but the tone was very weird and I don't think this book needs red herrings to work? Especially given that the end reveal is SO WILD and out of left field, so I guess maybe it's built in to make it feel less wild but like there's no backtracking from how wild it is (especially how it wasn't just the main bullies in the book whose children were attacked but just like SO MANY, like EVERY SINGLE DISAPPEARANCE IN THE TOWN WAS MURDERED BY THIS WOMAN.)

So an interesting book, and then the end is a wild left turn that kind of disappointed me. But I think if teens are interested in investigative journalism in the way that Kennedy is, they'll enjoy it more than I did! 

I received a copy of this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, and I am grateful to the publisher for the opportunity to read this book. 

An interesting look at the Calumet copper mine strikes and the Italian Hall disaster, seen through the eyes of community members with investments in the strike, either for or against. It did feel a little heavy on the perspectives of people opposed to the strike--a 2:1 ratio of narrators. I don't need it to necessarily be balanced, but I think adding the perspective of a union organizer might be useful to give better depth to how the workers were actually trying to change things (though I understand the impulse to instead focus on the wives of workers.) 

But what really moved it down from 4 stars to 3.5 for me was how quickly it ended? I literally kept tapping my ereader thinking there would be another page, it felt that quickly cut off. 

I do think this book showcased the diversity of workers and the community around mining in northern Michigan, which is something that can often be swiped under the rug, and I think the glance especially into the ways that Jewish people (who are often erased from these kinds of histories) lived, worshipped together, and worked might be really cool for people to read. 

Overall this was an interesting look at an event that maybe is not well known to people outside the region (or who, in my case, don't have a labor historian for a parent,) but felt surface at times and ended so abruptly I was literally confused when there wasn't more. 

This was... pretty disturbing to me, but in a way that was compelling? I did have to cheat and look up the ending on Wikipedia because I didn't feel I could finish the book if I didn't know how it ended ahead of time. Heim does this incredible thing with his narration where these details of the scenes he paints become so deeply haunting--not just the obvious ones, but all of them. 

Enormous trigger warnings for

detailed sexual abuse of children and a rape sequence

which I didn't know going in and would have approached with more caution if I did. 

[Stefon voice] This book has everything--tight, cinematic action sequences, developing relationships, a mystery to solve, Dan Cortez...

So this book doesn't have MTV's Dan Cortez, but it DOES have everything that I've come to love about the Murderbot novellas, all in a great amount of space. Wells doesn't luxuriate in the amount of space she has for one second--I kept saying "SO MANY THINGS ARE HAPPENING IN THIS BOOK!" over and over again, because the hits really just keep coming and nothing stops. It's not packed in, but really perfectly paced and gives you so much to chew on. Wells is truly a master of writing action sequences that don't completely confuse me or make me zone out for pages on pages, and the tension is so high but is equally broken up by the interactions between characters that feel so real and so loving. We really watched the results of a great deal of character growth in this book--while I think you could probably read this as a standalone, it's so much richer for having read the novellas. 

Anyway Ratthi is top ten favorite characters (and you can tell because... I remember his name... one tiny thing that's on me and not on Wells is just keeping straight all these damn character names... help me) and I love him and if you don't also love him by the end of the first chapter/sequence, you're wrong, thank you for your time.