pineconek's Reviews (816)

If you like your true crime to be historical, you're in for a treat.

I knew exactly nothing about this case when I started the book. The narration was comprehensive and victim-focused - the author took great care to paint everyone affected as dignified human beings, a status not afforded to them at the time. I listened to this book but also leafed through my paperback copy, which had dozens of historical photos. I was impressed by how much the author consulted with the Osage when telling the story. All the little details are well worth reading and learning about.

I did however struggle to stay engaged - this is largely due to personal preferences.

The book was divided in 3 parts:

- part 1 introduced and humanized the victims, and gave an overview of the local politics and culture at the time. The deaths are presented.
- part 2 focused on the investigation led by the newly-formed FBI and the arrest of the bad guys
- part 3 rounded off with the modern fallout on the community as well as loose threads from the first investigation

I'm not interested in crime motivated by money, fraud, or undercover operations. I am however interested in the people affected by crime, including the loved ones left behind, and the cultural legacy of crime. As such, while parts 1 and 3 were fascinating, but I lost interest during part 2. As such, the "crime" part was the least interesting part of this book (and it was also good, but outside of my areas of interest).

Recommended if you enjoy more "classic" true crime (think In Cold Blood, Devil In the White City), have an interest in the history of America's indigenous peoples (circa 1920s), and are ok with a slow paced book that walks you through all the nit and grit.

3.5 stars rounded up

Julia Armfield owns my heart.

I find the "short story collections published right before the debut novel" are truly hit-and-miss situation. But when they hit... bull's eye.

Do you like stories about lonely confused sad women making aching relationship decisions? Do you like depictions of woman as beast, as wolf, as the undead? Do you like creepy stories with sweet characters that also feel like they could probably kill you? Do you want to read short stories that feel like our wives under the sea (especially the Casandra one) while still having their own unique twist? I hope you've answered yes and will be picking this up.

Recommended if you like sad women who fall in love with other women but also sometimes men, love beautiful writing that's imbued with loneliness, and especially if you can get this on audio. What a great collection.

I'm a simple woman. Book that's pro UBI = book I'm going to read.

"But...was is it that you actually do?" is a question I've wanted to ask countless times. The standard non-response of "oh, you know - emails about meetings and meetings about emails" is a great tip-off to a job rife with bullshitification, as the author puts it.

Not only does this book explore what bullshit jobs are and the interesting nuances between different flavors of them, but it also dives into many a follow-up question. Why do these exist when our economic system should prioritize efficiency and profit? What psychological and societal effects do these jobs have on employees? Why does it feel soul-crushing to be paid a lot to do nothing? How do people cope with these jobs? Why are certain important non-bullshit jobs (e.g. teaching) paid so poorly? What historical and sociological factors got us into this mess? What's the way out?

(While the author touches on the benefits of UBI, he emphasizes that this book is about describing the problem rather than proposing solutions.)

I appreciate the way the author grapples with these ideas. While he argues for a particular perspective, he's transparent about what that perspective is and where his views originate from and offers some nuanced counter-examples. It's what you want in non-fiction - thought provoking and informative.

All that said, I suspect that the author is kicking himself for not having published this post-2020. Then again, this text proved so prophetic that elaborating on pandemic-related labour shutdowns may have felt too on-the-nose.

Recommended if you're looking for some clarity into what your friends, acquaintances, managers, etc... do all day, are interested in exploring ideas around work vs idleness vs laziness in the context of human happiness, and are frustrated with the general state of things.

So this title is misleading.

I absolutely expected this to be a mashup of Doing Harm and Invisible Women, two great books about medical misogyny and data gaps that I highly recommend to interested readers.

This is however less a book about current medical misogyny and more of a historical perspective. We're given a sweeping perspective from ancient Greece to the witch trials, from hysteria to lobotomies, from the yellow wallpaper to roe v wade, from the pill to chronic fatigue syndrome. As a sociopolitical and historical perspective, it's comprehensive and fascinating.

The book suffers a little bit when it comes to balancing certain things. There's definitely topics we want to read more about, while others the reader will likely grow sick of before the section is over. The author also gave herself the difficult challenge of writing as intersectionally as possible while also not over-qualifying and minimizing some of the experiences she describes, and this led to some artificial language choices and weird inconsistencies. There were sentences that pulled me out of the book as they felt more virtue-signaling based rather than substance based. In other words, I suspected certain turns of phrase were added in the editing process as afterthoughts.

Recommended if you're interested in the history of how medicine has viewed "the woman", especially with a focus on the early to mid 20th century. If you're looking for something more modern, see my recs above.

3.5 stars rounded up.

July 2023 has been the warmest month ever recorded, or something like that. Days are breaking records previously broken only two days prior. Climate change is right here and we should be worried.

How worried? The author lays it out well. Not only do we do poorly in extreme heat (and we do - hydration will only take you so far when temperatures rise?), but the food we eat doesn't do so well either. I gained a lot of perspective on how even small changes in heat can collapse crops and livestock and I'm pretty spooked by the whole thing.

The book is incredibly current, with data from 2022 and interesting conversations around covid response peppered through the book. That paired with the real threat of pathogens that might emerge as the planet warms really added to the sense of impending doom. We also got to travel around the globe, from Paris to the arctic, for a kaleidoscope of insights. The author did an amazing job of presenting a multitude of leading voices in climate science.

Recommended widely. An extremely important book for our time. Read it right now, but especially if these heatwaves and storms spook you, you can stomach hearing how big of a mess we're in, and if you need a ray of hope (a tiny one, because times are dire).


My only criticism of this book: all the temperatures are given in Fahrenheit. That was an objectively bad choice.

Backman breaks my heart in many a way. But I think The Winners is the first Backman to break my heart through disappointment.

It's a sequel to Beartown. It's a sequel to Us Against You, which rode the coattails of Beartown (and, in retrospect, this is what helped me see it I through rose-coloured glasses). I echo other posters who ask whether Beartown needed a sequel, and one reviewer I saw who suggested that Us Against You and the ending of the Winners could have been blended together. I'm inclined to agree.

What worked: it's Backman, so you know what you're going to get. Spoilers from the beginning, repetition of scenes from multiple perspectives, complicated human relationships brimming with emotion, and one liners that feel like a greeting card but somehow ring true. Characters you can't help but develop a soft spot for (I could read about Maya forever).

All of that is here. But it runs out of steam. I set the audiobook down for a month at about the 30% mark and forgot about it. It was easy to hop back into after the hiatus because everything was so familiar. I hope the ending (with its six-feet-under-esque closure of "where will they go from here) is a definitive one.

I dont want to bloat this review with more grievances, so here is instead a list of characters/subplots that I have some frustrations with:
Alicia ("it was all about her" was it?)
Ana (where...did her grief go....)
Matteo (that plotline was A Lot)
Alexander (where did you come from, where did you go)
Tails + every politician (I wish I cared about you)

Recommended for completionists in need of another Backman hockey town fix. I don't regret reading it, but it's not one that will live in my heart the way the first book did.

Ok, so the audiobook was a bad idea.

I typically love full cast audiobook recordings. They're like a bedtime story but someone's doing the voices! And the voices here were indeed done, which emphasized how ridiculously irritating Lyra was.

Sigh.

It feels so wrong to call a frightened twelve year old girl irritating, but I promised myself not to sugarcoat reviews so there it is. Lyra's main character trait seems to be saying "the street urchin children are people too and you mustn't be cruel to them!! You mustn't!!" with all the preciousness of a Victorian child university protege. It gets old fast.

I was also surprised by how formulaic and repetitive the events were. Battle, resolution, battle, resolution, battle, resolution, and we've made it! But we made it thanks to many deus ex machinas along the way.

The nostalgia factor wasn't worth it for me. I was hoping to do a reread of the trilogy because I remember really enjoying it as a child but... I'll leave this in my nostalgic past.

Recommended if you're looking for some YA fantasy that features a precocious narrator, multiple battles, and Evil Adults. Two stars because it's objectively decently written but did not resonate with adult-me.

Can't talk, thinking about snails.

The ends were indeed violent.

If you're looking for beautifully written TSH fanfiction, you've come to the right place. Perhaps it's a little glib to reduce this book as living in the shadow of Donna Tart but there's a reason it's marketed that way.

Julian and Paul are both 17 and feel misunderstood by everyone around them. Except each other. They worship each other with the kind of unparalleled toxic obsession young adults can fall into. As someone who's experienced that mutual obsession one too many times, I found it painfully realistic and enthralling. I couldn't put this book down.

And when you're obsessed, you do dumb things. You seek your own morality that justifies your obsessive impulses. You lie to others, because they'll never understand, and you become further enmeshed with your partner in (sometimes literal) crime. This extremely unhealthy dynamic is depicted perfectly.

My favorite part of this was that our third person narration primarily follows Paul's perspective - and Paul sees himself as a shy, gentle, unassuming victim. The narrative emphasizes that Julian is the one in power, to the point where the events appear to be Julian's fault. But we're given enough information to make up our own minds.

I agree with other critical reviews that the ending was rushed. I don't want to spoil anything so I'll only say this: we expected the stick of dynamite to explode, but the fuze fizzled out. But maybe that's realistic too.

Highly recommended if you want to read about two toxic teenagers who (wrongly) think they're smarter and more virtuous than everyone around them. Beautiful prose, pretentious characters, a college setting with chess, entomology, and philosophy. What's not to love?

This was a cute little graphic novel with INCREDIBLE art.

The good: I read this sweet book in one sitting. Although the format doesn't lend itself very well to small digital reading (phone and eReader - you'll have a bad time. iPad or laptop - you'll be ok), I powered through because the art was so compelling and beautiful. The pacing of the story was also neat. The other did an amazing job of being sparse with dialogue and using each panel to convey movement, sound, the passage of time... I particularly liked the long sweeping panels of empty desert with the phases of the moon. What a clever way to say "a few months later" in a beautiful fashion.

Where it didn't work for me: the plot/world building felt lackluster. This is likely because I was not the target audience, but I struggled to connect with the characters or truly care about our hero's journey. I had trouble getting "into" it, in other words, and spent most of my reading experience focusing on my enjoyment of the art itself.

All that said...

Recommended if you love graphic novels with beautiful art, stories of a solitary child figuring out her place in the world, and are looking for a cute, quick middle-grade read.