alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)

I'm blown away by this concept! Each category of the cookbook has pairings of 3 main ingredients, and a few recipes with those pairings. The coolest part though is a little chart that comes with each pairing that lists the flavor profile of the ingredient, a tip or fun fact, substitutions, and other ingredients that compliment it well.

This book is perfect for my level of cooking skill: I'm at the point now where I want to experiment with gourmet concepts and mature palettes, but it is hard to know how to adapt fancier recipes with ingredients that I'm not too familiar with. So like I said, this book is perfect because it teaches you how to pair, adapt, and substitute. I'm going to be playing with this book for a few weeks to decide if I'd like to buy it. Either way, I'm looking forward to learning.

Ok the series is getting better. How one family has so much drama happen to them, I don’t know. But I liked getting to know the characters a little more, and now I want to live on a cute island too.

I think I possibly like this one the best so far. The characters are maturing (especially Ava), and there are a lot more of friendship and a lot less catty competition.

Angela Davis, an American icon.

My very first introduction to the concept of prison abolition came from an online bookclub that I heard about on Twitter. We read Are Prisons Obsolete? by Davis and it blew my mind. It is a short book, a but over 100 pages, and it sums up the history of prisons, then asks, "If prisons did not always exist, should they always continue to exist? In light of our evolving understanding of humane justice, should we not evolve the way justice is enacted?" I honestly had no idea about any of it, and my ignorance was very much by design.

This book, Abolition, is a collection of essays and speeches over the years. The main argument here is that modern prisons in America are a direct descendent of slavery and have little to do with bringing justice to the community or "reforming" criminals. Critics questioned their effectiveness even before their initiation, and there has been no accountability from the state in the face of overwhelming evidence that prisons are a failure at their stated aims.

The nature of the book means that it is repetitive; reading it straight through kind of gave me a de ja vu feeling. Davis is a powerful writer and able to wrap stories and facts together in a captivating way, and I am glad this book exists. The audiobook is a gift that she reads herself. That said, I wouldn't recommend this book as a starting point just because it isn't structured like a typical book. I would love to see an adapted version with updated stats though! It probably already exists.

My second book by Liz Moore and I was very satisfied by this read! Long Bright River is urban and gritty - think Mare of Easttown - and The God of the Woods is its rural counterpart. This one is set at a summer camp in the Adirondacks in the 1970s and led by several varied and interesting women.

The dual disappearances of Barbara and, a decade earlier, her older brother Bear plus a huge cast of suspicious side characters gave more than your average thriller's worth of opportunities to scheme up whodunnit theories. Deffinitely glad I buddy read this!

It wasn't all cheap thrills, though. I'd say the pace is medium, with slower chapters spent on Barbara and Bear's mom Alice and her complicated relationship with their father. That said, you can tell that every sentence in the book is deliberate, polished, and pulling its weight.

Really solid read overall, especially for summer thriller season (I say this as it's 50 degrees and winter down here, ha)

It's been a while since I have done a food pairing! Let's go with camp dining hall classics: sloppy joes, carrot sticks,and rice crispie treats.

DNF @ 30%

I started this for the Virtual Socialism Reading Group but then I got sick and lost motivation to finish. It was cool to hear other people talk about it though.

DNF @ 15%
I have to be in a very specific mood to read fantasy and these days I feel like that less and less. So many people love this series so I am still interested in reading it in the future.

For years I had seen this book on every “best true crime books” list and I finally got around to reading it. It is different than most true crime books nowadays, in that it is more about the personality of the city of Savannah and its unique culture and eccentric characters than it is about a murder. It is quite engrossing and I, like so many others who have read the book, was charmed by the idea of the city and would like to visit if I got the chance.

I love reading survivalist stories and this book was great. Ken has had a hard life, and not just because he chose to live most of it in a rural setting without electricity. He makes it seem like that was the easy part, actually. I loved hearing his outlook on the choices he had made. He continually emphasizes how our every breath is a gift. Life is a miracle, don't squander it.

I always appreciate Dr Levine's teaching and perspective on Christian interpretations of Jewish history and culture. It is eye-opening and a solid corrective of centuries of misunderstanding.

This collection was a fun one, with the various interpretations of Jesus' parables undergoing an X-ray analysis and many of them failing the anti-semitic sniff test.

The main thing I took away from this is: beware any time someone quotes "Jewish sholars" or "Jewish teaching" without citing their sources. It is disingenuous and dubious AF. Even when they do cite their sources, if you follow that rabbit trail as Levine does, you might see that the sources are taken out of context (it happens a lot with Mishnah being read by Christian folks), or A quoting B quoting C and nobody does their due diligence in fact checking where C came up with it (Levine found a particularly good example where "Jewish scholars" ended up being a Nazi).

Another thing that I had never paid attention to before is that the gospel writers themselves, particularly Luke, often do a first pass at parable interpretation for the reader, and sometimes do not even attribute the interpretation to Jesus. So when you remove that layer of interpretation, what other possible readings emerge? The challenge is to read the parables anew with the eyes of a child. To slow down and question why some details are deemphasized or skipped over in common interpretations--who decided they were unimportant and why?

Parables, contrary to what I have heard many teachers say, were not meant to make spiritual concepts easy to grasp. They were meant to provoke a mental wrestling--whether in trying to understand the teaching or in confronting the listener's expectations. They usually have a gotcha moment where the known story pattern is broken or reversed.

In my opinion, the major fault with this book is that Levine leans heavily into the philosophy of the koan. Koans are Buddhist parables of sorts that are not meant to be understood on the first, second, or fiftieth pass. They are an enigma that the listener can meditate on and perhaps one day reach an understanding using non-conscious logic. What I mean is, after critiquing many common interpretations of the parables, she does not provide her own interpretation and leaves that up to the reader to figure out. In some chapters it works better than others, where the reader is guided along the way to reach their own conclusions. But sometimes the chapter ends and you are left hanging. A western style academic critique didnt't blend so well with an eastern style non-conclusion.

Overall it was interesting! Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I had someone to talk about it with.