Unless you are reading medical journals and cutting edge research, this book should be required reading for anyone teaching the laws of Niddah because, HOO BOY, it turns out that it's not just 1500 years ago that no one had a decent understanding about female genitalia.
Gross's book is brilliant and funny and delightful and she clearly has the best sense of humor and, in the process, she showcases critical developments in the last hundred or so years of scientific development and what it is we still just don't know.
It's a delightful reading experience, and an important first step in thinking about what (else) we should know about the way our own bodies work and just...don't.

This book speaks so deeply to me that I find it difficult to talk about.
As a book, however, it models for me a specific stance towards Jewish texts that I need to see more of - one that does not focus either on apologetics or on tearing down, but a stance that sees the text in its entirety and considers the pain points a call for action and the possibility of making a difference.
Early in the book, Watts Belser tells an anecdote from Rabbi Margaret Moers Werning of a Deaf child in her religious school. A teacher promised that, in the world to come, that child would be able to hear. And the child responded "No, in the world to come, God will sign".
The rest is commentary. Go and learn.

Since, like many people, I discovered Maggie Smith when “Good Bones” turned up on my internet, I felt implicated in this story from the beginning. Not in a bad way; in a way that is a testament to Smith’s power to create connection through her language. She’s so good and so thoughtful and so willing to use words to carefully make sense out of the world. 
Sometimes you read an author and you wish you could write like they do. Sometimes they’re just so far ahead that all you think is “I’m glad someone out there can write like that.”

This book taps into any number of odd emotional responses on my end - I suspect her absolute honesty about her experiences coupled with her ability to name and speak them means that my encounter with her world is one of dis/connecting to a story I know. Which is a good thing; but a strange one. 

This book has resonances with VE Schwab's A Darker Shade of Magic books, at least in terms of the overall setting and way that the magic works.
Also, wow, the story of a mom getting out for one night and having to save the world while kind of stuck in a time loop is kind of genius. I'm so glad this one found me.

Rivers Solomon is EXTREMELY good at what they do and the fact that you both know where this is going and wonder whether the distractions are real or distractions the whole time anyway is a testament to the craft.
So much of this story breaks my rules for what constitutes horror I can handle and this is right at the edge, but it's also amazing and the way that Solomon weaves God-talk and the rawness of being human into the story is beautiful.

I was also fascinated by the choice to take the desire to prosecute out of Ezri's hands; it felt both wrong and right and seemed like Solomon, rather than avoiding the problem of prosecution, was acknowledging how fraught it is and gently had the narration take the choice away from the character.

Another birthday recommendation and, yes, I see why this made the recommendation for incredible visual content and a mode of storytelling that is brilliant on so many levels.
History interwoven with personal narrative and it works because the art creates just the right amount of "within-historyness".
This is what comics can do in the hands of a master and, to the original recommender's point, it's why visual arts have so much to offer (and it's disappointing that they are so underused).
Also, my goodness, THE ART.

I do find the Something Something books to each be better than the last; in part because they give Hall a chance to showcase his impressive talent for taking "that bleeping guy" from the previous book and making them a fully fleshed out and deeply sympathetic main character.
Also I appreciate that, in doing so, Hall does not force them to come to terms with the character who--having read about before as deeply sympathetic, you now like a little more. 
Also I deeply dislike Bonny and his near absence in this book was appreciated.
I love that Hall is interested in what a queerplatonic relationship looks like, I love his irrepressible tendency to make fun of absurd things by putting them in the wrong century, and I really love that Hall understands that romance novels are at their best when they are asking "how am I to be good?" Because this is a deeply ridiculous story that is all about the question "how am I to be good? And to myself, most of all?"

Sometimes I realize just how little history I actually know, even though I do think I have a decent broad strokes overview but, wow, this was absolutely fascinating and Tuchman's investigation into all the different things happening was just really cool.
The research and narrative structure made it work as a book rather than a textbook; I think I would have felt differently about it if I was reading for research rather than just to know more about everything. And I do finally understand what was going on with the whole "We've had one pope, yes! How about second pope?" situation.

Okay, so the back cover copy begins with "Playing Koi" and I feel like that more or less gives you a sense of whether or not this series is for you. It's extremely silly, translated in a very particular style that doesn't always work for me and I think is due more to my relative unfamiliarity with the genre (register, am I right?) and also it is absolutely ridiculous and I continue to enjoy it greatly.

I really need to be stopped from reading sequels several years after the original, because it almost always leads to me saying "I'm sure this would be deeply affecting if I remembered a single thing from the first book. I did appreciate the "previously on" at the beginning, but I think the effect of the emotional punches is blunted somewhat when one has forgotten the character names and relationships.
It does put a certain cast on the question of legitimacy and authority in the story, though, and the way. that this is fundamentally a story that is about hierarchies and upending them while still trying to preserve the idea of authority and obedience. (The difference between "this" king is the problem and "monarchy" is the problem.) And I appreciate how interested this book is in how change revolts its way into being.