alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)

It amazed me that this book was first published in 1948 yet is 100% current in its criticism of contemporary Christianity. Has nothing improved in seven decades?

Gonna have to reread this in a couple years.

Brian Vaughan never disappoints.

Joan Didion takes beautiful notes and I wish my journal entries were as insightful and full of promise as hers. However, this is just a collection of notes and memories, snippets of conversations or passing billboards. It's not that motivating to keep reading to get to the next part because there isn't continuity. The most interesting part was her conversations with white people in Mississippi just after desegregation. Again, just snippets, and I wish there had been more there. She, from what I understand in this book, never wrote an essay on her experiences roadtripping through the South. Ah well.

This book was pretty cute. The blurb tells the entire story though (conservative upper class white boy falls in love with Afghani immigrant), so there were zero surprises. A good lesson this book shows is that just because a person is kind or nice does not mean they don't have racist beliefs. Teens realizing that they believe something different then their parents, and how that is okay, is at the heart of this story.

The audiobook is pretty good. The story is set in Australia and the actors have Aussie accents.

PS the Australian edition cover is SO MUCH MORE SUITED to the story. Maybe the cover designer wanted to make a more "masculine" cover for the US edition?? But the US cover doesn't give you a feel for the story at all.

This was so fun! Murder mystery in verse with charming, sophisticated illustrations. That's just how I would describe this book: charming and sophisticated.

If you were teaching a poetry class, this would be a great book to use because there are examples of many popular forms and techniques. Plus, the poems are interesting because you are trying to work out the mystery as you read.

This is basically the plot of You've Got Mail but the characters are teenagers with major issues that will probably take years of therapy for them to recover from.

This book was really hard for me to get into at first, and I thought for sure I would DNF. The characters had me rolling my eyes, and there is a lot of emotional baggage and backstory right from the get-go. But I am glad I kept going because it turns out this book is a lot more about the importance of friendship and emotional honesty in relation to mental health than it is about teenage romance. I really loved how the story resolved, including one major spoiler that I won't share.

So, if you like YA where characters are dealing with the heavier things of life (Perks of Being a Wallflower for example), this book might be a good fit for you.

There was so much potential development in this story that wasn't taken advantage of. Though the technical aspects of the writing was quite good, I had so many questions:
- What do the male characters look like? Why are women only described if a male character has a sexual attraction to them?
- Is the I-ching/oracle a conscious diety/being?
- Does the Pacific States of America look like Tokyo now? Or does our version of Tokyo not exist because there wasn't an industrialization there because Japan won the war and didn't have a US occupation?

For the most part, this book is overrated.

If you don't love Anne Lamott it's probably because you have never read a book by her.

This book is about the "love mercy" part of Micah 6:8 -- What does God require of you? Do justic, love mercy, and walk humbly.

As Anne says: ok doing justice is following the rules, walking humbly is never going to happen ("my humbleness can kick your humbleness in the ass!"), but what does "loving mercy" even mean? Part memoir, part retelling bible stories in her notoriously irreverent voice, Lamott puzzles out what being merciful looks like and means in our humdrum lives.

Loved this. Want to buy it. Will read it again.

I grew up in Arizona, so I hung out with a lot of Mormons and the FLDS towns in northern Arizona were always in the news. That's why I was interested in this book (also: I like to read about cults). For some reason I thought this book would be less about the history of Mormons and more about the specifics of FLDS communities. The Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints are a separate sect that broke away from the mainstream Latter Day Saint church after the LDS church denied its doctrine of polygamy.

This book is about 60:40 Mormon history:specific individuals whose lives were involved in FLDS sects (there are various). The author Jon Krakauer grew up on the west coast (thus his interest in Mormons) but he himself is agnostic and skeptical of religions in general because of their ability to brainwash followers. So he posits that because of LDS history of violence (both towards them and towards others... but mostly towards others) and its continual revision of its doctrines, it will continue to inspire devout believers to break away into extremist/fundamentalist groups despite its best efforts to steer itself towards being a mainstream and suburban religion. I mean, if you are a devout believer, you have to decide that either the founder Joseph Smith is not the unerring prophet who the LDS leaders teach he is, or that God changed his mind several times in the past hundred years and thus is able to completely change the enitrety of the religion and holy books at any moment, or that LDS leaders after Brigham Young were wrong in what they "heard from the Lord" and thus the church should go back to the fundamentals of its faith (which includes polygamy and that people with dark skin are cursed by God). Krakauer's other point is that many Mormon heroes sanctioned lying, stealing, and murdering non-believers for the benefit and continued growth of the religion, so FLDS members today also have no problem in justifying these crimes if they believe that it is for a holy reason. This latter belief is not unique to Mormonism, as we can see with any extremist sect of major world religion: Islam is usually the first that comes to mind nowadays, but if you do some basic searching you will find that Hindus, Buddhists, etc and political beliefs can inspire this mindset as well.

It is well written and interesting, especially if you are familiar with the geography of Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. The audiobook narration was so-so.

This final book of the series is about tying up ends in Jaz's family secrets. The amount of terrible abuse that Jaz underwent in his childhood is treated lightly and I don't think the tone of the rest of the characters in the series is appropriate. Howie, Jaz's best friend, exists as comic relief (he's my favorite character actually), so every awful revelation about Jaz's past is bookended by corny jokes. I guess to not make this too much of a downer?? Idk, it repeatedly came off as inappropriate. The other thing is, Connie, Jaz's girlfriend, has this loyal faith that Jaz will make good decisions that made me want to shake her and say: BREAK UP NOW HE NEEDS TO GO THROUGH DECADES OF INTENSE THERAPY BEFORE HE WILL BE A SAFE BOYFRIEND. I don't think that Jaz would physically abuse Connie, but he is going to suffer a lot of emotional and psychological fallout that will create destructive relationship patterns. It's unfair to paint Connie as being mature enough to appropriately handle that at the ripe ol age of 17. And how many young women are already out there thinking they can be strong enough for their partner and willing to "see this through"?? Connie's character just reinforces this belief because the only fallout you as the reader sees is sexual dissonance (but Connie will wait until Jaz is ready.... however long that is), and hiding information (in order to protect each other... so that one is pretty normal for humans to do and not necessarily related to Jaz's past).

Overall, I think the series started off in a good direction (lighthearted serial killer fun, yay, lolz) but changed keys without changing the characters.