This was a very quick, engaging read about a CalTech biologist who raises an orphaned barn owl.  A lot of the information about owls was genuinely fascinating.  She and her winged companion had an unbreakable bond. 

This is the perfect book to listen to whilst working or doing chores.  Orange facts, soothing narration, and a delightful writer's voice.  I've never read anything by John McPhee but this really was a delight.

Jason Reynolds is such a gem.  I enjoyed the vignette format, even if I found some chapters better than others.  I’d recommend it highly for 6th-9th graders. 

I would recommend reading the first 75% of this book.  It gets quite loose and speculative at the end.  The first 3/4s of the book are case studies of communities in the United States specifically that have been affected by climate change.  The author typically outlines the disaster that occurred (some are fast like wildfires, some are very slow like bayou erosion), how the community was impacted, and where the residents were displaced to.

I found some chapters more engaging than others.  Perhaps because I've already read a lot about the Tubbs and Camp Fires, those chapters felt redundant.  But the chapters about Il de Jean Charles in Louisiana and water rights in Arizona were fascinating.  

This book is fairly recent and already feels out of date given the context of the LA Wildfires.   

At a certain point, this became more of a hate listen than anything else.  The corruption is so blatant, the greed is so profound, it is hard for a regular person to wrap their head around.

It's easy to see this book was exhaustively researched, and explained fairly complex stock market issues well enough for a novice like me to understand.  I found the first half of the book more gripping than the second and some of the deeply biographical chapters lagged a bit, but I would still highly recommend it.

Interesting premise for this historical fiction book:  Stock market intrigue between Dutch and Jewish traders in 17th century Amsterdam.  It was not lightning fast, but I definitely learned a bit.

God, this is a weird book.  An absurdist look at a German vegetarian, tired of society before the onset of WWI, who decides to start a colony in the South Pacific where he and his presumed followers will only eat coconuts. 

The characterization is excellent, I enjoyed it.

Really good overview of the rivalry between Real Madrid and Barcelona.  Understandably, a large portion of the book is devoted to how the clubs existed during Franco’s regime and the political implications of their alignments.  That part started to drag a little bit, but that would be my only quibble.  It’s current up to Mourinho leaving Real. So a bit dated now but still well worth reading!

Grace Lin is one of those children's lit authors where when I find a book of hers, it immediately goes to the TBR list.

This is such a sweet, fairly uncomplicated book.  It's a  straight-forward semi autobiographical retelling of the authors middle school years.  It's very wholesome, no one dies, there is some mild bullying, but it's just quaint.

I really enjoyed the context Grace Lin's afterword provided.  She wanted to write a book like the charming chapter books she read as a child that she could see herself in.  I would have loved this book when I was the age of the protagonist.  

As an aside, representation matters so much and I cannot think of another book I've read where the characters are specifically Taiwanese.  I think that's neat!

Challenging rate because it is 100% a product of its time and to the modern adult viewer reads *quite* racist.

I enjoyed it for what it was, a fast moving story about Westward expansion.