ashleyholstrom's Reviews (1.38k)

Mmm.

Our narrator is young and beautiful, but deeply depressed and empty. Her parents are dead, her boyfriend is terrible, and her best friend is annoying. But it’s the year 2000 and exciting things should be happening for a young woman in Manhattan. Right? To avoid the world, she finds the worst psychiatrist she can and makes up stories to get medications to put her to sleep. And so, we get Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation. It was the perfect companion for the first month of COVID-19 quarantine.

From the Best Books We Read in April-June 2020 at Book Riot.

Stiff is the first of Mary Roach’s books I ever read, which prompted me to immediately gobble up two more once I finished it. Stiff is about what happens to bodies when they are donated to science — because, fun fact, if you choose to donate your body, you don’t have much say in where you go. Being used by medical students and for forensics research makes sense. But did you know cadavers are also used as crash test dummies and target practice? Or that some of those medical students hold a funeral-like ceremony for their cadavers at the end of the semester? Roach breathes life into the story of what happens to our physical beings after death in the most respectful, informative way. She digs into more than just the unusual science bits; she also gets into the ethical and moral issues surrounding the use of cadavers in any form.

From Reading Pathways: Mary Roach at Book Riot.

“A fun, straight-talking history of the clitoris, The Sweetness of Venus is a win for feminism.”

Reviewed for Foreword Reviews.

“Katherine Angel’s excellent academic study Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again concerns the politics of sexual expression.”

Reviewed for Foreword Reviews.

“Historian Julie Willett chronicles the rise of the 1970s caricature of masculinity and sexism in The Male Chauvinist Pig.”

Reviewed for Foreword Reviews.

“The Zodiac Revisited is a complete, unbiased, and riveting true crime book that chronicles the story of the Zodiac Killer.”

Reviewed for Foreword Reviews.

"Better Off Bald is a realistic memoir about being a caretaker for a loved one with cancer, one that reveals all of the vulnerability that was hidden for the patient’s sake."

Reviewed for Foreword Reviews.

I tend to stay away from biographies, but I couldn’t resist one about the beloved Robin Williams. Dave Itzkoff interviewed Williams’s family, friends, and colleagues to piece together his story, and it never once feels like a dull rehashing of dates and facts. The bonus of listening to this book is that the narrator, Fred Berman, absolutely nails Williams’s joke delivery.

From 8 Great Poolside Audiobooks at Book Riot.

It may sound strange to compare Mary Shelley, Charlotte Bronte, and Billie Holiday to Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, and Amy Winehouse, but then again, maybe it doesn’t. These women are deemed trainwrecks while the men who act similarly are beloved. We are fed tabloid madness about women, but the men are usually left out, unscathed. Sady Doyle digs into famous women throughout history and finds that many stories are similar, decade after decade. I absolutely loved this on audio.

From 13 Fabulous Feminist Audiobooks at Book Riot.