Is there a word for a memoir written by someone else? Not a biography, I do know how words word, but something that is constructed out of an authors own ideas and writings that is kind of them and kind of not?
This book is that; it’s an invitation into the life of Octavia E. Butler and I think I love her even more after it. I’m not sure how she’d have personally identified, but she feels like a neurodivergent role model. 
Also she refused to drive. 

I really liked this one; there's a sense I had that this book was not entirely written for me (which is what happens when you read a story by someone who is no longer of the community you are still a part of), but also that it captured a lot of what I love about Judaism and folklore.
It's also, itself, a kind of laugh/scream of the women who did not fit into the mold that traditional judaism imagined; both trying to give them a voice AND reflecting on all the ways that their reality was always far larger than the stories told. It's queerness as a story resonates along their axes and it seems obvious, then, that a main character named Shiva as a vehicle for mourning all those possibilities that were impossible makes perfect sense.
It's partially an evocation of reality and partially a departure from it.
Also, like so many novels of academia, it loves the ivory tower and is a little more generous to it than it deserves. 
(This book is, of course, the product of research, but whether it is itself research into the very kind of story its writing about feels like an open question. Yes but also only insofar as it creates more of the stories that it studies.)
And for another point in its favor: no golem.

It's interesting to feel immersed enough in a field that it's not entirely new to you, even if I really appreciated how Shew delved specifically into the intersection of technology and ableism and gave language for this idea of technoableism; the specific ways that techologies are deployed against (rather than for, which would necessitate with) disabled people.
The final chapter was my favorite; disabled futures are some of the most thoughtful, interesting, and hopeful things that I encounter.

I always like Yangsze Choo's stories, she has such a good sense of how mythology and history weave together and I realize I don't really have the background to talk about this work through the lens of authenticity, but the world she invites her reader into reminds me of some of my other favorite writers who blend legend and real time.
She's just so deft with it and the way she told so many stories at the same time - this wasn't quite a mystery or a love story or a revenge story, but it held all three gently enough to tell the story of a life.

Trust KJ Charles to tell her Duke story this way. This was so clever and fun and sweet and I love a good romance. This is very much written for fans of the genre who are already deconstructing some of the tropes a little bit; Charles invites that in the story she tells and also takes her aristocracy a bit more seriously. Not, heaven forfend, TOO seriously. But just enough to talk about ducal privilege.

Swinging your duke around indeed.

...this was more than I ever wanted to know about Novardok but also just such an interesting collection of essays. In particular, the way he writes about controversies and his extremely relentless need to not let people make strong ideological claims is incredibly compelling even if I don't always feel like I know how to write that way myself.
I think the essays on the talmudic sages were my favorites, followed closely by the disagreements in the Old Yishuv and, of course, the strawberries.

I have so many songs that I need to listen to after this book.
Abdurraqib's writing is poetry and he reads it wonderfully and the light touch of speaking the interstitial and comment material the way a musician talks between songs is just so beautifully done. The way he writes about music can make me fall in love with a song I have never heard and might not even like. But I love it in that moment. And then when he talks about crushes and love and loss. And racism and fear and pain and going on. It's such a glorious tapestry and it's a book of essays by a poet which makes it not poetry, but also not not poetry.

Le Guin is an extraordinary writer and what she does here is a story about morality that can only be told through narrative. It's not a story with a moral, but it is a story that tries to grab a hold of moral questions that are to slippery to ask and narrates them instead. It's good and painful and sad and is just the beginning of the questions human beings need to ask themselves. But they are not questions that can be asked, only stories that can be told.

This book took everything I liked about the last book, turned up the dial, and jettisoned basically everything that frustrated me from the first one. It was excellently done and I really appreciated the complexity of the story.
The focus is less on the mystery than on the story; the plot is an excuse to live in the world and I thought it was really well done.

This is an iconic work in the history of pedagogy and therefore I will rate it as...fine.
Mainly I felt that the writers who cite Freire are much more interesting and complex and have much better things to say than he does.
It helps that they tend to speak from their lives where as he is about as abstract as it is possible for language to be.
Show me how it works. Tell me stories, damnit.