octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

This airport thriller was first published back in the 1960s, I think, but a lot of it still feels contemporary. I think it's because of the very effective focus on all the different interlocking parts of the airport and the people who work in it. Hailey has clearly done his research, and the different jobs, stresses, and priorities of everyone from traffic controllers to mechanics to pilots, administration, and stewardesses are given genuinely thoughtful treatment; the parallels to today are easily drawn. I enjoyed it, and the last third, in particular, was tense and exciting... but my goodness, the glacial pace of the first two thirds! Because there's so much focus on all these different characters and elements, this book is heavily weighted to set-up. I didn't give the blurb much of a read, to be honest, before I started on this, so at the halfway point I was genuinely wondering if I'd misunderstood the genre and this was just going to be a slice-of-life novel about tensions at an airport during a snowstorm, or if something thriller-ish was actually going to happen. Well, it did happen. Eventually. 

Very eventually. And it was worth it when it did, but it took a long while to get there. 

This is a really enjoyable little novella; one of those books that you can read in a single sitting on a lazy afternoon (which is what I've just done). I haven't read a lot of Courtney Milan, but the few books of hers I have read are much of a piece with this: very socially aware of the different challenges disadvantaged people laboured under in times past, with a fundamentally optimistic outlook as the protagonists decide to put themselves first and subsequently succeed. There can be a tendency, in some romances - not that I'm an expert - towards the self-sacrificial, and so I really enjoy stories where the main characters say, with perfect truth, that they deserve better and work to get it.

That doesn't mean they're perfect, of course. Both hero and heroine here, while sympathetic, are rather too used to seeing life through the lens of their own marginalisation. Crash (and I'm sorry, but that's a stupid name) experiences bigotry due to his race, but is less aware of Daisy's struggles because of her gender... and vice versa. They both grow and change, and as always when it comes to reading romance, I am disposed to care for decent people doing their best to behave decently, even if they don't get it right at first. 

In total defiance of publication times and related petty temporal concerns, Captain Aubrey gets what I call the television Jon Snow treatment: the "politics is petty and awful and I shall not sully my hands with it" characterisation. Which always turns out badly, because politics is part of life and refusing to acknowledge this is arrogant, ignorant bullshit, and it's left (as it always is) to the characters who actually engage with reality to clean up the mess. As is typical of the TVJS approach, Aubrey is seen by his peers as a blameless martyr, but really... what kind of idiot takes financial tips from a stranger, shares them with people he knows to be absolutely untrustworthy, and then refuses to take advice from legal experts (and anyone with two brain cells in their head) as to the damning political environment he finds himself in, and the consequences thereof for himself and his family?

This idiot, that's who. I still found myself feeling sorry for him, and I'm a bit annoyed about that. My previous rants on him aside, he's not a stupid man, and his refusal to learn is therefore irritating rather than admirable. Even so, the minimal sea battles in this, and the much more extensive political shenanigans, made this one of the more enjoyable books of the series for me. 

There's something very depressing about a story like this: a cop who is faced with the widespread corruption of his colleagues, but who is consistently thwarted in his efforts to combat this by his superiors, who are either on the take themselves or too politically and ethically gutless to do something about it. No surprise that things finally started moving when Frank Serpico had enough of banging his head against a brick wall and went to the press instead. It reminded me, very clearly, of the epidemiologist Peter Buxtun, and how he tried for years to get the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment shut down, and who eventually had to go to the press when the American medical establishment showed no inclination to behave with any ethics whatsoever. 

Both whistleblowers finally involved the press in the early 1970s, and it was a successful move for both of them. Clearly, allowing organisations to police their own corruption is a risky endeavour, and I'm not convinced that the fifty odd years that have passed since then have seen any great change in this regard. The media is not always reliable (and should be held to account by outsiders to that industry as well) but as always: sunlight is the best disinfectant. 

This is one of those books I admire rather than love. It's a short little collection, comprising only four stories, and they're all well-written and achingly well-observed portraits of working class families. The title story, particularly, is very touching in its ending... but there's a tendency to circumlocution in the prose, a sort of meandering under-conversation, that I found it difficult to warm to. It didn't get to the point where I was thinking "Would you please just get on with it!" but I could see that point approaching in the distance. 

The first story, "I Stand Here Ironing," was my favourite. It was the most simply told, I think, with a sort of threatening bittersweet tone that loomed over its portrait of an estranged mother and daughter. If the rest of the stories had been like that one, this would have been a four star collection for me. As it was, the introduction, by John Leonard, had the prose that affected me the most. I'd like to be able to write an introduction like that - it was just gorgeous.

This is a sort of taster book for urban food production, if that makes sense. It showcases over thirty urban farmers along the west coast of North America - primarily from San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver - and the different means they use to farm what are often very small plots. This isn't a long book, so the profiles are brief and rely heavily on photographs, but its biggest strength is how it argues the case for accessibility: that even people who live in a city can produce some of their own food, and find pleasure in doing so. No argument there! 

The most interesting profiles, for me, were the mushroom farmer and the group of "guerilla grafters" adapting ornamental city trees to produce fruit. I would have liked to see a little more of this sort of variety in the farming subject matter - as I read through the book, it felt as if a lot of the profiles related to chickens and goats. Now my sister and I had pet goats as children, and that same sister did keep chickens at one point, and I like both even if I am vegetarian... but the continued focus on these two animals did start to feel quite repetitive. That invitation to accessibility might have been more effective if a broader range of profiles had been attempted, I think. 

I have to admit that the poetry did not thrill me here. I could see that it was well done, but it didn't really appeal - the more romantic of the poems, often titled as "Complaints" were honestly rather whiny. And yes, I get it's the whole courtly love thing, but still: whiny.

What I did enjoy here was the language. This particular edition combines both the original Middle English, alongside a modern English translation. Now, I've never studied Middle English and prior to this would not know it if it fell on me, so I was surprised and interested to find that I could mostly follow along. Not well, and I often had to read the original out loud to try and bypass the spelling in order to get to the meaning, but even so. It took a while, and some lines I simply could not puzzle out before resorting to the translation (I read the Middle version of each poem before the modern), but the attempt was entertaining if the poetry was often not so much.

I do like puzzles! And there was one short poem where Chaucer wished mange upon a scribe who was inaccurate in his work, so that was amusing. 

This was really cute! I read it for Book Riot's Read Harder challenge, for the webcomic task (and honestly, I picked it because my small town library had it in printed form) and it was just the kind of optimistic, goodnatured read that I wanted on a rainy day like today. It's also set largely in a magic bakery, and I'm all for those.

Routinely, though, whenever I read romance, my preferences go towards tales where each of the protagonists has their own storyline, separate from the other, that develops alongside the relationship. It helps me to see them as real people, not just there to inhabit the "love interest" slot. Here, Ray struggles with the idea that her chosen career is less fulfilling than she imagined it to be, and has to find a way to engage with her magic talents, and her vocation, in a more productive and rewarding way. And Laurie, nephew to the awesome magic baker, has to face up to his tendency to please other people at the expense of himself. Given these two live in a very fantasy world (travel by broomstick is common, for instance) their very relatable problems, and how they encourage each other to overcome them, is just plain appealing to read. It's sweet and happy and now I just want cake. 

This is such a readable piece of research - if only all historians and various scholars could write with such clarity! It comes across as a great entry-level text for disability studies, and I say that as someone who reads very little in disability studies and is therefore quite ignorant, but who was consistently interested and informed as I read this. Please note that when I say that it's entry-level, I don't mean to be disparaging. It's just that this book covers a period of several hundred years, ranging from pre-1492 to the present, and (excluding things like notes and index) it does it in less than 200 pages. That's a relatively short page length to cover such a span, and so I'm left feeling that I've just read a very competent overview of a very complicated topic... a generalist approach that provides useful context before readers can delve into texts of greater specificity.

As someone who likes to read generalist texts in the sciences, books like this one can be invaluable, both to experts and to interested novices. The readability I mentioned earlier underlines this, eschewing theory for personal stories taken from letters and articles and lived experiences during different time periods. Nielsen's linking of perceived disability to economic capacity is a convincing one given the cultural context of the history she's relating, and it's got me thinking about disability in new ways. (New to me, anyway.)

The whole thing was just extremely lucid and very informative. I enjoyed it immensely. 

This is a very convincing book - as it should be, with so many examples drawn from the author's life. She very clearly has experienced what she's talking about, and her arguments as to how Black women (and Indigenous women, trans women, and so forth) have different experiences of feminism that are often in direct conflict with the goals and approaches of white feminism are well-argued and supported. I liked having the sources in the back as well... some interesting further reading there!

I think what most struck me here was the interconnection between the issues that Kendall raises. This should be obvious, of course, but the ever-increasing weight of consequence that unstable housing, unreliable food sources, and bigotry in education and policing have on each other, let alone fifty other different things, is starkly illustrated. But no. That's not what struck me most. That was the anecdote of Kendall's teenage son, who a teacher tried to trespass for sitting quietly in an empty classroom and studying. Apparently it meant he lacked discipline. I mean, for fuck's sake! I hate to think what that so-called teacher is doing to other kids. 

It's the determined avoidance and ignorance of these lived experiences that Kendall is aiming at. And she's absolutely right.