3.5, really, and most of my problems were that I was feeling old and cantankerous and not in a stubborn but in a good way twelve year old girl frame of mind.
I think I would have loved the world and the Jewish mythology in an adult novel. Taking points off of a middle grade book for being middle grade is unfair, and yet here we are. Because the things that I really wanted—the deep dive into everything we know about what Judaism looked like culturally "in those days"—was understandably sidelined in a book aimed at people two bat mitzvahs younger than me. Which of those practices reflected history and which were brought in by the author? How much are my own preconceptions tripping me up? I wanted the epic fantasy deep dive.
Points for using "malach ha-mavet" instead of "the malach hamavet", the pedant in me approves. And points for the entire plot; I could tell it was amazing even if it wasn't precisely my plate of baklava.

I'd give this six stars if I could.
I have neither distance nor objectivity when it comes to Hannah Gadsby. I wish I could explain what it feels like to see someone whose job it is to know what a crowd wants and hold it rapt talk about being autistic and not getting interpersonal interactions. Or what it is to be "the funny one" (which, I mean, I think I aspired to more than achieved) as a piece of identity that gives you the right to exist.
I thought for years that I didn't care about seeing myself in books because Jewish characters left me pretty cold, It turns out that what I needed to see represented was autistic women. 
Hannah Gadsby in glorious in her own right, and she's also one of the people who explains me to me.
This is not actually a review, is it?

3. Also known as the average of 5 and 1, which is basically what this book is.

There are two super important caveats, one of which Ramachandran himself *says* but then fails to follow it and the other of which he is unaware.

1) When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you have is neural connections, everything looks like (the interaction between) areas in the brain.

2) Ramachandran is entirely unfamiliar with the then prevalent and now even larger body of literature discussing models of disability beyond the medical and the "novel" idea that the wide diversity of human beings should be understood as ideal rather than a maladaptation to be corrected.

Obviously this came up most upsettingly in his discussion of autism (I braced for that chapter) and the way it was so clear to me that he was missing the value in what autistic people are actually good at in the process of tracking down which neurons are responsible for our failures. A less biased researcher might wonder take seriously the question of why it's valuable to a society to have people with varying levels of mirror neuron sensitivity and how having humans who cannot be easily convinced to follow others might also be valuable. But from within the medical model that sees variation as defect, it's impossible to have that conversation.

Having said that, the research itself is super interesting in terms of how the brain actually functions and how conscious experience is determined on a neural level. As with much in science, it's the imposition of the researcher's a priori perspective on the data that creates issues rather than the data itself. And, again, Ramachandran KNOWS this because he's not subtle in his digs at obnoxious colonial scientists who fail to appreciate what Indian art is doing. And in the process of skewering that perspective for what it fails to see, he steps into the same trap when it comes to ableism.

The aesthetics section was my favorite part of the book, though, and why I had picked it up in the first place. I particularly love the ways that art creates things that are more thing-y than the real thing and that is why we love it. I think I was already wondering, back in 2012 when I first encountered his work, how it applies to narrative and I think it's an even stronger question now that enhances, rather than explains, stories and why I love them.

The difference between horror and gothic is whether it takes place in a house or a castle and the past or the present, right?
Anyway, Moren0-Garcia is the absolute queen of the contemporary gothic. Her stories are a brilliant blend of contemporary sensibilities and a fidelity to history where the former drives the arc of the plot and the latter controls the content. It's so good and then she just digs in and really gets the genre and I'm mad at myself for having had this book sitting around for so long without actually picking it up and reading it.

The retrospective ones are always slightly harder for me because memory is not always a thing for me so it's very "who is this person".
Not that it really matters. I loved this one. The ways in which it was sad and difficult and about los(s|t) and successfully talks about the two at the same time and the difference between misplacing and having something taken away and choosing to give up and, ugh, beautiful.

Also, I had listened to Dr. Nicole Bedera talk about trigger warnings last week in a super interesting podcast and then thinking about what Seanan does with her content warning at the beginning to do more than warn, but to actually help and provide reassurance in a way that almost feels like part of the story. 

I picked this book up after learning that languages all develop words for color in roughly the same order (and that that explains why some of the language around blood in the Talmud is so weird).
It ended up being an adventure into color and art with a little bit of science and a lot of art and cultural history.
Watching Fox walk the line with white, in particular, between explaining how white as race came to be while still focusing on the color itself rather than the concept was very interesting. I don't think he was perfect, but it was so much better than it could have been and overall he handled it well.
Purple was way more fun, and the entire book was just a great example of a person sharing a ton of information about a topic they love and what's not to like about that?

Okay, one of two things happened. Either this book needed to have been read in one go and the bit where I went away for a week in the middle and only got back to it 14 days later entirely killed my immersive experience or I happened to stop reading right at the point where it went from gripping to frustrating.
I wish I knew.
I enjoyed so much of it and then the last 1/4 of the book just felt like the bad choices to give heft to the sequel conga line.
I did appreciate Zofia, the autistic Jewish character, though. (With one minor "why is the specific piece of Jewish information that the author shares also incorrect - that Jews can't be buried in a Jewish cemetary if they have a tattoo. It's not true. Why does Zofia think that??)

Surprise religion!
Not in a bad way and we all know how I feel about faith in fantasy, right? It was definitely an odd shift to go from "Pantheon" and mythology to a robust faith system with worship and different deities...and like WAY less sex.
I have no complaints, actually, but then again. I'm always fascinated when romance takes on repentance. And this book is VERY interested in repentance and what it looks like to forgive and be forgiven (and not). Derr's penitent's path and Rambam's teshuva process have a lot to say to each other.
The relationship between faith and forgiveness in this book and the way that the former is what makes the latter possible; faith is the thing that allows characters to believe in their own value and a meaning to their lives once they've hit rock bottom. Which is a little AA, but the rock bottom doesn't seem to be inherent. Just how it happens.
I don't...love the final scene, but I get what she's doing.
Also, five for five on "this person is wonderful and I dare not say anything for I am not worthy". Not that anyone is counting :)

This is about where this series started to drag for me. It's still fun and I actually really like that we are once again solving a love triangle with polyamory even if everyone, once again, thinks that they are not good enough for the other person.
Other themes of note are torture (and not the fun kind) and very much leaning into cultural stuff around food, which is interesting. Before it was just an argument over which countries have horribly British palates. Nice to see some food porn alongside the actual sex.

Super interested that gender is part of how we signal that a culture needs to change—cultures that are overly fixated on the past and what children owe to the clan's legacy are ALSO unwilling to accept gender fluidity—which, again, fits neatly into my ongoing theory that romance novels are educational prescriptions of how TO be rather than just attempts to delight the reader. Although, if you've made it this far in this series, I'm confused as to how you could still have remotely transphobic views, but I digress.

Anyway, it's fine. I have no complaints, but I'm also getting tired. Do plan to finish the fifth book asap though.

I mean, you know, one of the things I love about romance is that any other genre would treat the story of abuse survival as a) focused on the abuse and b) make it much more dramatic.
And romance is just like "yep, previous partner was evil, time to heal" and in some ways it's...more complicated, but out of all the promises that romances make, the one that says you'll be okay even if horrible things happened to you is pretty good.
There's a balance between taking evil seriously and giving it too much power and I'm not entirely sure how well romance walks that line, but I would say the same about any genre.
Anyway, this series begins explaining some of the gender stuff at this point, although it's already been make clear that this is already a very queer culture and the way Derr handles that is pretty good.
And, also, every single book is about two people who think they are not good enough for the other one (although one of them thinks that much more strongly)