So this is about a guy who went to live in the woods for 27 years and avoided all people except to steal their food. And also a reporter who repeatedly harassed him and his family to write a book about it.

It honestly made me feel pretty gross. Like I've for sure read worse books and I didn't hate this, but listening to this made me feel like I was a participant in the harassment. Finkel wrote Knight a few letters, which he initially responded to. Then he stopped, so Finkel flew across the country (Montana to Maine) to visit him unannounced in jail. Finkel interviewed Knight (I think) 7 times in the jail for an hour each. By his own admission, Knight never seemed pleased to see him and didn't seem to want to talk to him. Knight never invited him to the jail. But Finkel kept going because that's where the story was. And Knight did willingly speak to him. He was able to refuse and didn't, and he did consent to the book.

But he also repeatedly told Finkel to go away. To leave him and his family alone. He wrote letters telling him under no circumstance should he show up and when Finkel did show up, Knight told him to leave. Several times. Knight's family also refused to talk to him despite numerous attempts, by phone, mail, and in person. Finkel doesn't leave him alone until Knight threatens to call the police. It was incredibly invasive and made me wish I hadn't picked up the book.

There's also a point when Knight tells Finkel he's considering suicide, which distresses Finkel enough that he sends many letters and flies across the country to check on him. But apparently not alarming enough for Finkel to inform the DA, Knight's therapist, or any of the other people involved in the case. 

As far as the actual story, maybe Knight could've been an interesting person to read about, but Finkel doesn't offer any interesting insights. He kept going back to Knight's campsite like it was a shrine or something, which was kind of weird. I did enjoy the sections about Knight's day to day life and just generally how he functioned in the woods, but it didn't seem like he gave Finkel nearly enough material for the book because there was so much filler.

It mostly seemed like a desperate reporter trying to revive a career he killed by making stuff up for an article. I don't often genuinely regret reading books, but I do regret this one.

 As with all anthologies, this was a bit hit or miss. I really loved Anna Marie McLemore's story, and Elliot Wake's was great as well, but I don't really remember any of the others. They were all pretty fine, but largely forgettable. I had a nice time while reading it, but couldn't justify four stars. I would recommend it for the good ones, though. This book definitely made me realize I've been putting off Anna Marie McLemore for way too long.

Some of the stories mildly annoyed me, but I don't honestly think there were any I disliked. I will say there was a weird bit of magic in this book. I'm not sure if it was off putting because I didn't like it or because I didn't expect it, but I definitely went into this thinking it was realistic historical fiction and was a bit taken aback by random teleporting and other magical bits.

I also wasn't expecting the vast majority of these stories to be in the romance genre. But this was a good time. Highly worth it for the good stories, and even the bad ones were at worst forgettable. I recommend if you want some queer YA historical fiction. 

This book felt like it was trying to do a lot and failed in pretty much every respect. 

For starters, I hated the main character and the whole contemporary timeline. She was annoying. She had very little personality, constantly made obviously terrible decisions (she loves warm and sunny days, rain and winter give her anxiety- so she moves to San Francisco. brilliant), and treated people really badly. I think we were supposed to connect with her flaws, but she was just so shallow and insufferable. I didn't care about anything she did or any of her romantic drama.

This book was trying to draw parallels between Nazi Germany and current immigration problems in the US. Which could have been fine, but McCoy didn't really discuss anything? Like one of the characters is a border patrol agent and is responsible for sending people back to Mexico and he feels guilty, but that's pretty much it. The only reason given for why he does it is that he's following the rules. Which again, I get that she's drawing parallels to Nazi Germany, but that's more than a bit heavy handed. This could have been so interesting in theory, but the entire contemporary timeline was focused on Reba's romantic problems and dissatisfaction with herself.

There were bits here and there that contained a lot of serious topics (like her abusive father who apparently raped people when he was a soldier), but those were barely delved into. They just kind of existed as brief mentions. This was true for the historical timeline as well.

In terms of the historical timeline, it was a lot more interesting with better developed characters and more purpose, but it still wasn't great. One of the worst parts of the comparison between Nazi Germany and present day immigration was that the present day characters were treated as normal people who made mistakes and grew. The Nazi characters were mostly evil rapists and murderers. I'm not trying to argue that there were "good Nazis," but the scariest thing is that they weren't all a bunch of sociopaths. They were average people who still did monstrous things. I kind of thought that's where this book was going with the comparison, but then it kind of just focused on Nazi dudes who raped their friend's fiance and the good Germans who worked against them. It kind of felt like it circumvented the point of the book.

Also, this is totally the pettiest criticism known to man, but the main character in the contemporary setting at one point wears a Richmond Flying Squirrels jersey. Unless there is another Richmond Flying Squirrels (which seems unlikely?), that's just not possible. The contemporary timeline was set in 2008 and the Flying Squirrels started in 2010. I get that this doesn't really matter to anyone else, but I found it so annoying that I had to put the book down for a while. It does not take a lot of research to correct little things like that, especially for an author who lived in Richmond.

I feel like there were a lot of interesting intentions happening here, but it failed for me. The best thing I can say is that the writing flowed pretty smoothly and I was emotionally attached to Elsie, the German girl in the historical timeline. 

Choosing not to rate this because I was very much not the target audience, so my lack of enjoyment isn't really indicative of the quality here. I knew this was YA, but I really thought it was a memoir. Turned out to be a little closer to self help or a how to guide, with chapters on things like dealing with bullies. Which is totally fine, I think this book would be a great fit at a middle or high school library, but it definitely wasn't written for a 30 year old cis woman.

I did enjoy the parts about his life and his personal story. A lot of the information on being trans was incredibly basic, but I do think it's largely intended for kids who are just beginning to figure out their gender, so that's fine.

I would definitely recommend this for younger trans teens and parents/teachers of trans teens, but there's probably just not enough here for the average reader.

In terms of the historical information, I loved it. I learned so much about the Navajo and how their language created the code used in World War II in the Pacific. I also really enjoyed all the information about the war in the Pacific, because so many of the WW2 historical fiction I've found focuses on Europe.

But there was barely any story here. In the author's note at the end, Bruchac said the first draft was basically all historical information and he'd write the character later. I feel like he was still a draft or two away from getting a fully developed character and narrative. Ned Begay basically functioned as a vehicle through which to share all the research. The narrative wasn't anything more than "this is what Navajo experienced during the war." There were a few extra details about Ned, but to be honest, the main character could have been someone else with less editing than it would take to fully develop Ned.

It made for a really dry, dull book. But you can tell Bruchac did tons of research and I enjoyed it for that. I do kind of wish he'd just written a nonfiction book on the subject because that probably would have been more interesting.

 This was a such a beautiful book. House has this gorgeous storytelling that offers up minimal information, but draws you into the characters and their stories. I devoured this in a day was obsessed.

I struggled with the writing style. It's told in present tense with the main character looking back on his young adulthood many years ago, so it creates a great deal of distance for the reader. As much as I loved the story, I didn't feel very close to it. Like I was seeing what they experienced, but not feeling the immediacy of it.

I loved the characters. I think one of my favorite types of stories is an adult coming of age novel, and this was that to perfection. Lark is in his twenties, but still just a kid in so many ways. You don't get to see him in the wider world and only brief scenes of his past, but you still know him so well. It's masterful writing. You got such little information on all of the characters. I couldn't have told you almost anything about his companion's life, but I still felt like I knew her as a person so well.

House has called this book a meditation on grief, and I felt that. This book is more about the ideas of grieving and hope and what it means to be human that it is any concrete story. While I enjoyed that for the most part and I felt like House did a fantastic job writing that story, it was missing a little something for me. Like I just wanted it to be a little more literal, a little more information about everything and everyone. It was so close to amazing for me, but not quite there.

I'll definitely be reading Silas House in the future. I'm hoping some of his realistic fiction might offer the more concrete feeling that I needed here. I would highly recommend this. It's such a wonderful story. 

I get what Lisa Jewell was trying to do, but this did not work for me. I found it so dull. I enjoy slow books, but they need to be building toward something. This book felt like I was waiting for something to happen. It opens on 12 year old Pip finding her 13 year old sister's half naked body outside their apartment building. Then we immediately skip back in time to find out how we got here. Then we get a little bit in the present, find out pretty quickly what exactly happened, and skip forward another year to get some nice little closure.

It felt like nothing happened and while nothing was happening, I didn't really care about the characters or their stories. I finished this book earlier today and I feel like I'm already forgetting it.

But it wasn't terrible. I like Lisa Jewell's writing style and I didn't hate anything about it. It was just kind of dull.

I listened to the audiobook for this and I was so bored. At about the halfway mark, I just couldn't do it anymore. I know this book is beloved, but the cadence of the narrator's voice lulled me into daydreams every other sentence. I probably would've gotten along with this better if I'd read the physical version, but dinosaurs aren't my jam so I won't bother trying. I kind of wish this had made me more interested in dinosaurs, though. It mostly felt like I was back in school struggling to pay attention to a boring lecture.

I don't get it. Like I should probably love this book. I love slow, drawn out character studies. Those are my favorite types of books. And I saw Irving doing that throughout this book, but I was so bored. I didn't care about any of the characters. I didn't care about 90% of what was happening. It took me three weeks to read and I was reading consistently almost every day, which is absolutely wild for me. I just did not care.

If it hadn't been so long and wasted three weeks of my time, I probably would have given this three stars. I did really enjoy his writing style and pacing. It's the kind of pace I enjoy most, where we're just following these people's lives for over a decade. I thought it was well done.

I also liked sections toward the end. I almost started to get the point of the story then and I even found it a little bit interesting! I wouldn't call it enjoyable, necessarily, but it was at least pretty close. The discussion around the Vietnam war and the politics and what it all meant to everyone in the book was the best part to me.

But it just took so long to get there and I did not care. I love a slow book, but I still have to care about what it's building toward and I very much didn't here. I just suffered. For more than 600 pages over three weeks. I probably should've just dnfed.

I picked this up for a fun little book on grammar to listen to while driving because I'm a nerd.  For a while it delivered. It's really basic and Clark has such generic dad humor, but that was kind of a good vibe for the first half of the book. But the second half was grating. I just stopped having fun and it felt long. I struggled to keep focus.

He has a chapter on singular they and pronouns as they relate to transgender people. Which I do really appreciate his attempt to be inclusive. He was for sure trying to be inclusive and came down very much in favor of the singular they. But there were a lot of problems in that chapter. He winds up disagreeing with every option offered by transgender people in terms of their pronouns without any good reason. They just don't work for him, apparently. And he shared a passage written about a transwoman in which she was misgendered the entire time (not once in that passage was she correctly gendered) and Clark proceeded to deadname her. Perhaps it was just because this book was written in 2010 and we've come along way since, but it was very difficult to get through.

He also talked about articles who outed Johnny Weir as gay and said he disagreed that it was a bad thing (which I don't fully remember the context since I was pretty young at the time, but outing anyone without their consent is bad). Then he shared another article about Johnny Weir as an example of "show don't tell" which basically coded him as gay without explicitly saying. Which is gross. You're not a gay man just because you like shopping. Like maybe I misunderstood his intent, but he would share passages in each chapter as examples of the grammar he was discussing, and proceeded to talk about "show don't tell" immediately after the Johnny Weir passage.

Again, it was 2010 so maybe he was just trying his best and falling short. Hopefully he's come a good ways since writing this.

It wasn't terrible, just kind of basic. I wish I'd had fun throughout, but it just fell short. Not a terrible option if you're looking to brush up on the basics, but I feel like there are probably better options.