Acceptance is the third, and final, novel in the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. It continues on with VanderMeer’s excellent writing. This is my favorite series by far in the series. I cannot wait to reread it all again.

The conclusion to this series answers all the questions and absolutely none of them. It is not going to tie everything up in a neat little bow. Yet, this book is an amazing addition and conclusion to the series. It will make you think well after the ending.

It is ironic that while I am disappointed I was also captivated. It was perfect, even if I wanted something else. If you have already read the first books in the series then continuing on is a must. However, even if you have not I highly recommend that you read this trilogy. It is amazing and captivating. It will make you want to go and post quotes on Twitter, write in your book, and read the book out loud.

What happens when the internet takes over our minds and connects us directly to machines? All it takes is the ultimate hack for the world to fall down around us. The Feed is a post appoctolyptic novel that touches on family, society, and our use of technology.

The book is well written, yet is not spectacular. I was looking forward to this book and was hoping for a bit more then I got. Yet overal it is a solid piece of work. While the characters were real I wish they were a little more flushed out.

I think the best part of the novel was the ending -not because it was over - because it started to talk about the real issues. Although it tried to be a bit mystic it really was not. I have not decided if I actually like how the book ended. It is just that the end of the book is when it really seemed to pick up and be truly interesting.

This is book is amazing. Shusterman is an extremely gifted author who creates vivid new worlds. His characters are so believable that they become real. You relate with them and struggle with them. Their fear becomes your fear. His world is not our own, but how easily it could be. The rationalization makes sense and in our current climate you could see how easily something so horrific could start taking place.

If anything this book was too real.

I am the parent of three teenagers all of which have special needs. While they are all amazing they also have struggles. There is a long history of doing away with children like my own. They were put in camps during the Holocaust, shoved in unsafe asylums, and any number of atrocity. In Shusterman's world my children would not stand a chance. I think this is why it hit a little too close to home to me. I just cannot see myself being able to continue reading this series.

Yet it is a story that needs to be told. People need to think about the value they put on other people's lives and the justifications they use to devalue them.

The Other Brain focuses on the mostly ignored part of the brain - glial cells or white matter. Even in my course work I mostly just learned that glial cells were responsible for cleaning up and myelination. Although new evidence is showing that these underrepresented cells are responsible for so much more and we are just now discovering how much.

Fields takes a comprehensive look into the field of glial cells including his own research. The information presented is pretty cutting edge, which is even more exceptional since it is a book. The writing is engaging and the book is well laid out.

However I would have liked more science. A lot of the information presented was still fairly basic and a lot of the new research was not very in depth. I really picked up this book because it claimed to talk about the neurological discoveries into schizophrenia - a topic that is of particular interest to me. Yet nothing presented was really new or even contained much depth. A lot of the research is still preliminary and the implications are not well known. This is fascinating in and of itself, I wish the book did not make claims beyond that.

I was a major Twilight fan in my 20s. I read all of the books so much that I would know what the next line would be. I attended release dates for the new books and went to see the movies. Then I put the books aside. Twilight got a bad rap and I was trying to grow up.

After so many years without reading the series it was with trepidation that I picked it back up again. I am surprised by my own reaction.

First, Twilight is a good book. No it is not a major piece of classical literature. However having read hundreds of books in between readings I can attest that the writing of Twilight is good. The words flow well and there are no glaring mistakes. Although, as I have always believed, the strength of the book lies in the characters. They become real. You see Bella, Edward, and the rest of the Cullen family. They are people (or vampires) and even the minor characters are distinct and vivid in your mind.

Yet I did not swoon over the romantic nature of the book like I once did. If anything I think I would now be annoyed by such a relationship. Edward is pretty controlling and while Bella fights to hold her own too often she just lets him dominate her. It is a young and naive love that is not unique to Twilight. I was surprised about how fast the timeline is in the book. I remember this long drawn out love affair, but they barely knew each other. They only ate lunch together a few days and they were barely becoming a couple when they were risking their life for each other. It was just as young and pathetic as Romeo and Juliet.

I am very glad that I went back and read this series. As I am nearing forty I would not wish to have a relationship such as Edward and Bella. Yet, I did enjoy the book for what it is - the story of young and inexperienced 'love.' I am very excited to see what my reaction will be as I continue on with the rest of the books.

Presenting Data Effectively is a relatively short compact volume on visual research presentation. I expected a book that talked about charts and graphs, however this is more about report presentation. This is still a useful topic that opened me up to thinking about font and color choices in my reports. It was more of an introductory book leaving the reader with just enough information to be dangerous and not enough to be effective.

I appreciate the information she presented on font choices and item placement. I was writing a report while reading this book and I went back to format it to make it more visually appealing. Then I scheduled a meeting with our communications team when I realized I did not yet have the tools to be successful.

It was very frustrating that Evergreen told the reader to look at chart and visualization placement and then published a book that continually had charts and graphics on different pages then when they were referenced in text. I found myself continually flipping through pages. In addition, in the last chapter Evergreen used the word "schizophrenic" as a descriptive for two texts that do not match. Schizophrenia is a word that was created specifically for a mental health diagnosis. To use it in that manner is as offensive as misusing any other categorical identification in a flippant manner. It left a really bad impression and turned me off from reading any other books by Evergreen even though I believe her later works may be more effective then her first book.

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue is a book that I have been seeing all over BookTube and various book blogs. It took a few reviews before I decided that it was worth trying out. It is a different read for me. I am not big in historically set fiction, and this book is set in Europe of the past.

Monty is a player. He is also bi in a society that considers male relationships as depravity. He is also a gentleman expected to play a part and settle down to run an estate. Monty is not an extremely likable character. He makes a lot of bad choices and is pretty self absorbed. Considering he was raised with a friend who is mixed you would think he would be a bit more sensitive to the way the world works. Yet is his entitled and clueless.

There is thankfully a lot of growth in this book for all characters. Although it comes about slowly. There is also a weird plot twist involving alchemy, giving the story a fantasy element.

Overall it was a good read. I like that it took me out of my element. Although, it did not really wow me.

Turtles All the Way Down is an own voice book by John Green about a girl struggling with her fathers death, and with Obsessiveness Compulsive Disorder.

In the past I have loved the way that Green is able to build these dynamic characters. His books are one of the few that have caused me to shed tears. Yet, all the emotion is missing from this book. I wonder if it was just too close to home that he distanced himself off when he wrote it.

I also wonder at the way he described OCD. I do not have OCD. I do have a form of autism that consists of compulsive behavior, and I have a child that has extreme anxiety and obsessive and compulsive behavior. Yet, nothing that Green described really resonated with me. It also did not connect me to the main character. If anything I felt distance was continually being built.

To top it off the plot was not really anything spectacular. I felt like it was an over done story that did not add anything new. The actual writing was fine, but not breathtaking. Without the strong characters that Green is amazing at, I felt this book was lacking.

Magic Gifts is a novella in the Kate Daniels series. In many ways it is hard to review the story separately. It is so mixed in with the rest of the books. I first read about this story in one of the main novels of the book. I still had this book on hold and had skipped over it.

While I enjoyed going back and getting a better context of what led to the events of the story I was also a little disappointed that there was not more. There was just enough plot to make this a full book instead of a novella. Yet the writing was good and it was a good story. I do highly recommend reading the novella and short stories in this series.