This was an interesting, readable look at the history of (chiefly) American incarceration. It’s fairly old now (2002), so some of the content on the War on Drugs seems dated, but in general still feels very relevant. I found the chapters on gendered incarceration particularly good. I’d recommend it if you’re interested in sociology.

Read this many, many years ago. It was the first book about viruses I'd read other than the Andromeda Strain. It had a really profound effect on me. It's one of those books that I can still remember details of 20 years later. Shame the show was so poor, I was really looking forward to it.

This was very inspiring. The passage about Tedy expecting his wife to make him dinner sucked. But no one’s perfect. He’s done a tremendous amount for stroke symptom awareness and that is commendable. He is also very honest about his shortcomings, which is refreshing to see and sorely lacking in some other memoirs I’ve read this year.

Absolutely beautiful biography by Maryse Conde of her grandmother. At some point during the past year Conde’s Segu was on a list of books I wanted to check out. It wasn’t available but Victoire was. Read on a whim because I needed a one word title for a book challenge and I’m so glad I did. This takes place in the Caribbean at the turn of the 20th century. While it’s a semi factual biography of the author’s grandmother, there is also so much history of the islands, labor movement politics, race relations, and above all else, culinary revelry.

Cute little sci fi story about teleportation.

The first third of this novel with Harker in Transylvania was very engaging. Once the plot took a right turn and got bogged down with all the Lucy Westernra “who should I marry” drama I checked out big time. It rebounded a bit but I’d still lost interest. I felt like this book had too many characters. Like all the suitors, I don’t even know why all of them were relevant. Just have one dude. You need Van Helsing, absolutely. You need Mina Harker, sure. But all those other random dudes, I feel like they muddled the plot. The zookeeper’s cockney accent annoyed me.

I’m the worst book reviewer.

This first half of this book was so inscrutable I almost gave up. It is very worth sticking with. I’d read Looking For Alibrandi years ago so I knew there was potential, the plot is just very obfuscated here. In the vaguest terms, this is a book about a teenage girl in Australia with a troubled past who is attending a boarding school in a remote part of the country. The boarding school has a turf war with what I presume is some sort of Australian ROTC equivalent. The book is about how the main character resolves this turf war and learns about her past along the way.

Anyway, it’s a great read. The resolution of the plot reminded a lot of Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me. If you liked that, I wager you’d like this.

Loved it! Last book of the year!

This was a very challenging first half. I am not sure why the first half was *so* dense compared to the first but half way through the plot resolution and pace really picked up. The first half took me the better part of a week, the second half took me an afternoon.

I appreciated all the backstory around the Sri Lankan civil war. It’s a country/time period I knew nothing about.

The characterization is very good in this book but I also think this book suffers from having too many characters. May just be my personal preference.

This book reads very acerbic. For having an extremely dark, graphically violent backdrop, there are some gallows humor moments.

This is a terrific read. I actually did not know anything about Jim Thorpe other than that he was a Native American athlete. This is a wonderful introduction (aimed at a YA audience) to his education at the Carlisle school and their heralded football team. Again, I’d never read anything about the Carlisle school but it definitely echos the terrible era of residential schooling in Canada. A large portion of the book centers around Jim Thorpe’s relationship with Pop Warner, and the sad situation surrounding Thorpe surrendering his Olympic medals.

I’d recommend this if you or a younger reader is interested in the history of football or Native American life at the turn of the 20th century.