I now feel like I could probably have like a yellow-green thumb rather than a black thumb. Thanks!

I really enjoyed my time with this book, despite feeling like I got more lost as I got closer to the end. But it had a lot of emotions that I could relate to. I don't know much more to say about it. I think I'll read it again sometime and see what more I can take from it.

"Better was it to go unknown and leave behind you an arch, a potting shed, a wall where peaches ripen, than to burn like a meteor and leave no dust."

After reading Crime and Punishment, I still wanted to try and get more into Dostoyevsky and I heard good things about The Idiot. I definitely had more moments of getting attached to the characters and interactions in this book, but I don't think I just ever got fully invested.

Just like every character in this book, I did find myself immediately loving Prince Myshkin. How could you not? I do love a good idiot. I could relate to him because I felt like I personally have a similar outlook (or I like to think I do) on people and life, as far as how kind he can be, but also tell myself I know where to have boundaries.

I know the whole theme is meant to be, the Prince is just too good and too kind for this world, and we could never deserve someone like that without ruining them. I appreciated that after I reflected upon it once I was finished with the book. But I just couldn't find myself attached to the story while reading it.

I went into this book fully understanding the science would most likely be outdated - but was still surprised at just how much has changed since then. It's very eye-opening to see just how short our history of earth science knowledge is - as well as realizing how much we are still learning.

If I had the patience and the time, I would have fact checked everything in this book along side reading it to see if we were wrong at the time it was written or figured it out (maybe I will still sometime, I could end up with a very heavily annotated edition). There were multiple times I checked things and it turned out we discovered something else, plenty of instances where things are still the same as far as we know, and a few times it said we didn't know something and...we still don't know. I appreciated that it showed a love for the ocean and a humbleness in our understanding of it.

I mainly wanted to read this book because I love the ocean, and I wanted to read one of the biggest books in sharing knowledge about the ocean before there was a lot of that. I definitely found myself in lulls during reading this, but still enjoyed everything it shared with me. I had some slight feelings I might be more excited for this book than what I would get out of it, and intentionally read it before I check out Silent Spring.

This book was definitely low-stakes and definitely cozy, which isn't something I normally go for but I was intrigued by this book through some twitter posts I saw. My pre-order got delivered right when I was in a lil reading slump and didn't really feel like committing to any books, so it was a perfect arrival for me. I enjoyed that it was mainly development of the café and character relationships. It felt very slice-of-life which I don't often see in fantasy, and I do love a slice-of-life.

This book was very hard to read just because the content is both so upsetting and so obvious. I knew a lot of the things in this book already - I have seen them. But the author links them together in a way that is hard to ignore. I'm glad that reading this book made me open my eyes to a lot of things I may not have seen the big picture to.

When she talked about being raised by strawberries or being raised by the water……. I loved that.

This book helped to remind me that nature and land are more than just property and places.  I want to be more mindful of the Earth and the world that shapes me. There were a lot of things I learned to help me observe and respect those things. 

"The arrogance of English is that the only way to be animate, to be worthy of respect and moral concern, is to be a human."

I listened to this as an audiobook, which was lovely especially because it's narrated by the author, but this is one of those books I will want to take time again to read it on my own and take in the words and thoughts at my own pace as well.

I find this book interesting enough and I want to love it but….the constant jumping through timelines is just too confusing for me. I like non-linear but going decades back and forth so often over a few pages is just too hard for me to keep up with. 

I added this book to my TBR back when I read The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro, as I tend to go down a bit of a rabbit hole when I read nonfiction, and I got interested in knowing more about Tammany Hall. (After reading Machine-Made, I have added books about Al Smith, Frances Perkins and the history of the republican party...this is not a sustainable habit.)

This book is definitely a lot of history, and was more compelling than I expected. While it is definitely still a deep dive on the history of Tammany Hall, I felt like there were certain things we moved through so quickly when I was wanting more, or felt like I missed something. However, coming into the book knowing almost nothing about Tammany (except hearing it referred to in passing, always with negative connotations, basically) I definitely learned a lot.

The book does also focus heavily on Irish immigration, which I found just as interesting. Since I picked up this book to learn more about local political history, it was a bonus to learn about what is my own heritage as well. I think the most interesting part for me is just finding the quotes of different politicians about different issues and finding I could apply almost the exact same outlook you see today. How Irish immigrants were viewed, how the potato famine was viewed...and the exact same things are being said about current immigrants or the handling of the covid-19 pandemic. History really does repeat itself (in detail.)

I had always heard about Tammany Hall as basically a mob, a collection of men looking for power and buying votes to earn that power. Maybe it was because this book looked at Tammany with a more empathetic view, but I struggled to continue to judge the political machine by "buying" its votes by helping the people that lived there. I cannot think of any politics that did not involve "power brokering", and to see the machine earn its votes by giving jobs to its constituents and coal to people who needed it... it was more refreshing than seeing they just made the rich richer. I am definitely intrigued in learning more about Tammany Hall in detail.

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“I never ask a hungry man about his past. I feed him not because he is good, but because he needs food.” Traditional reformers, immersed in Anglo-Protestant notions of worthiness rather than simple need, sought to change character and culture as part of a contractlike relationship with the poor and distressed.
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Every time they found a job for an unemployed immigrant, every time they arranged for a delivery of coal to a struggling widow, they did more than win a vote. Wittingly or not, they challenged the transatlantic Anglo-Protestant culture of rugged individualism and minimalist government.
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