octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

This is the type of story that Star Trek does particularly well, and it's one of the ongoing themes that differentiates it from many of the other franchises, some of which have a lamentable tendency to grimdark. Picard and the Enterprise come into contact with two alien races, and the triangle of conflict between the three is slowly untangled to result in three well-meaning societies who have learned to communicate with each other and become friends. There's disagreement within each society as to what should be done, but little of it is mean-spirited and even the naysayers come around in the end. It's just all affirming and generally positive, albeit it does have one irritating subplot, and that (of course) includes Wesley Crusher, who couldn't not be annoying if his life depended on it. As it is, he and two teenage friends are on a training mission to evaluate their possible candidacy for the Academy, and they get caught up in what's going on, but manage to make it all about themselves and spend their time squabbling about who likes who and why, and if only we'd spent that wasted time with Picard instead, because his storyline was excellent. Or with Dr. Crusher, whose storyline inexplicably petered out halfway through and got essentially resolved off-page at the end.

I judged this book by its cover, really I did. With that big close-up photo of that furry face, I assumed that this would be a pop-sci book directed more at children, in contrast to the Natural History of Raccoons by Dorcas MacClintock, which I read a few months back and appeared (as indeed it was) to be a more scientific text. And I was wrong - Zeveloff's book is just as solidly scientific, and it is certainly not directed at children. Both books, if I'm honest, took a fair amount of wading through, regardless of the fact that they are both relatively short. I have to give MacClintock the edge, however.

Zeveloff's book can be a bit dry in places - the chapter on the two dozen odd subspecies of raccoons nearly put me to sleep, as there is only so often you can describe various shades of grey coats without losing me entirely. Credit where it's due, though - the chapter on the evolution of the species was particularly interesting, and the chapter "Living Arrangements" was really readable and my favourite of the bunch. If I hadn't read the MacClintock first I might have given this four stars, but it lacks the appealing anecdotes of the former, and it lacks the gorgeous illustrations. Don't get me wrong - Zeveloff's raccoon book also has a handful of nice illustrations, but they are not nearly so frequent, and they are supplemented by a number of not especially clear photographs.

I liked it, I did, but I think I am raccooned out at this point, and if I had to choose one of these two books to read again it would be the other one. Mostly, I admit, for the pictures.

I read this as part of the 2021 Book Riot Read Harder challenge - for task 23, a book that demystifies a common mental illness. It was excellent. Jamison, a scientist and researcher in mood disorders, has manic depressive disorder, and so this book approaches mental health from two angles: what it's like as a patient, and what it's like to research and treat patients with the same illness. For someone who enjoys reading science as much as I do, this was the perfect book for the task.

It was also enlightening, in a number of ways. I knew very little about manic depression before this, so that's the obvious result. I did know, however, that a lot of people with chronic mental health problems such as this frequently go off their medications, to unhappy effect. I never understood why, but I did always assume there was a reason for it that I just didn't understand due to lack of first hand experience. Exploring this is one of the major themes of the book, and Jamison admits she struggled with it herself, and spent substantial periods of her life first taking (and then refusing to take) the lithium that moderated her disorder. She describes it in terms of homesickness - being homesick for the brain that she knew and had spent her life with, the brain that had given her as much (if not more than) what it had taken away. And you know, that's so understandable. We reach for the familiar, don't we, in times of trouble, and our sense of identity, of personality and the way we look at the world, is perhaps the most familiar thing of all.

This, the next in the series, is (as I have just discovered) the first not written by Warner, as she died after #19 and the series carried on without her. Honestly, I can tell the difference, and it's for the better. All four children are featured equally, which is a marked improvement over the Benny Show that the Boxcar books were becoming, and there's also a return to the children being genuinely helpful and useful, as they go to stay with a lonely, injured friend of their grandfather, so that he has people to look after him as he recovers. The kids look after the garden and the animals and the house, and there's a mystery too, as always, and it's well-structured and interesting. The oddest thing is the kids seem to all be several years younger again, as they were in the first book, and not the aged-up versions of themselves that they had become by the last. I don't mind that, so long as the quality keeps up.

I'm in two minds about this. I love the art - the weird, fantastic images all layered on top of each other like collages. I love that the book uses art, and drawing, as a vehicle for learning writing and creativity. I love that there's so much detail in the images - I even spotted what looked like a kiwi on several pages! - and that welter of fascinating visual detail, all the cephalopods and anglerfish and so on. Fonts shifted all the time, and I liked the sense of instability that gave as well... although a little more legibility seriously wouldn't have gone astray, the number of times I had to guess and puzzle out some of the handwritten scrawls bordered on the frustrating.

Anyway, for the first half of the book I was thinking this was going to be a four star read, surely, but then in the second half the writing exercises started. And look, I understand that this is a book designed to help teach writing, and that it is directed towards beginners. BUT. But. These are hands down some of the most tedious writing exercises I have ever come across in my life, and if I had learned creative writing this way I wouldn't have learned it for long. Granted, every writer learns in their own way - this is clearly not mine - but how such vivid, delightful art segues into such horrid, pedestrian exercises is beyond me.

This is an odd but appealing mix of fiction and nonfiction. The first two thirds of the book are a young adult novel, a coming of age type story in which a young girl navigates a difficult family life and the challenges of racism - particularly her own. It can be quite an uncomfortable read, as what Edna understands (or doesn't) about what's going on around her is often much more limited than what the reader understands is happening, so there are parts that just made me cringe... which I imagine is precisely the effect that Barry was going for. As a sort of aesthetic backdrop to the story, set in the 1950s or the 1960s I think, is Edna's appreciation for music, which is pretty much one of the few bright spots in her life.

The last third of the book are sketches - and when I say sketches, I mean page long summaries paired with actual paintings - that illustrate influential musicians and music styles of the early and mid twentieth century. They're interesting, and interesting in a different way than the novel, if only because music isn't something I know a great deal about. Even if I've a bare familiarity with the styles described here, a lot of the people featured are new to me, and I do like to learn new things.

This is terrible and wonderful together. It's an outstanding piece of literature, being the life of a woman born into slavery who, in her efforts to escape it, spent seven years hiding in her grandmother's crawlspace, watching her children grow up without her. She and they eventually get to freedom (of a sort) in the North, but her experiences are awful. As is to be expected, unfortunately. Slavery is a revolting, vicious institution, and as Jacobs points out - and she was one of the first, the introduction makes plain, to drag this particular consequence into public discussion - it was in many ways worse for women.

Jacobs herself, continually sexually harassed by her perverted enslaver, is one of the innumerable women who were raped and/or assaulted by men who believed their ownership entitled them not only to sexual enjoyment of their slaves, but to ownership of any resulting children. Not that that ownership seems to have been ameliorated by any sense of paternal feeling, as these kids were frequently ripped away from their mothers by their fathers so that those fathers could sell them off. The whole thing is vile, absolutely vile, and Jacobs drags it out into the light by main strength. Her shame and misery fairly leak through the pages... but so does her dignity, and her determination. It's a challenging read, but such a necessary one.

Who would be a teenager again? Not many people, probably. This graphic novel follows Maybonne, and her kid sister Marlys, over the course of a year. They live with their grandmother because their parents are hopeless and don't really want them, and Maybonne, in particular, spends her year in a cycle of cringeworthy romantic relationships, which are all extremely relatable, but still. I kind of wanted to shake her for whining on about Doug for so very long. Still, I suppose that's part of the coming of age story, isn't it - learning to let go of things and people that it doesn't do you any good to hang on to.

Honestly, the book's so clearly observed that it probably deserves four stars, but while I liked it, it didn't grab me outstandingly if that makes sense. And Barry's artwork, while distinctive, is not something I find immediately appealing.

I just bought the box set of the first three books in the series, but Goodreads tells me that this wee short story is the prequel. It's very short, and describes how one of the main characters (so I presume, I've just read the story and haven't opened the set yet) got his cat. It's a likeable little story, but it's more of a teaser than anything. I get the impression that the series is a historical paranormal romance, but this only really fits the first descriptor for me. There's a hint of strange activity in the narrator's past, but he also refers his stay in an asylum so it could be read as insanity rather than actuality, and while the story ends with (again, who I presume to be) the two main characters together, their entire journey is skipped over. No doubt it's in the first novel proper, but this is really just about the cat being rescued and given a home.

A ginger cat, too, which is nice. They've always been my favourites.

I'm so glad this is over.

That sounds like a terrible thing to say, because this is in many ways an excellent book. The research is incredibly thorough. And the argument itself is fascinating: that the history of science allows us to track changing attitudes towards nature, and that those attitudes have knock-on consequences for political and economic thought, and that they have particular consequences for the treatment of women. Merchant therefore observes, in frequently exhaustive detail, the similarity of approach to both nature and women during the Scientific Revolution, and how attitudes to the two often moved in synch.

She is very, very convincing, and I would love to have given this book four stars, because the quality of the research deserves that at least. It's just the book is so very, very dull. Well, not dull exactly. It is dry. It took me weeks to get through, a little a day, and even then I had to reread at least half the paragraphs at least twice, because I'd space out halfway through and go looking for water. I realise that academic prose is not easy, and I have certainly inflicted my terrible share of it, but that doesn't make it any better to read. In fact, what made it worse was that every so often there'd be several pages that were genuinely, appealingly readable, just plain readable, and I'd perk up for all of five minutes before being catapulted back into stodge.

It is truly a fascinating argument, buried underneath the soporific prose. If only I could bear to read it again... but I can't. I'm sorry, once is enough.