I was a tiny bit skeptical about this because sometimes YA books where the teens are mysteriously obsessed with things that were popular when the author was a teen can be...clumsily done. But not so for Moxie! I completely bought Viv being inspired by her mom's old zine collection, and I thought the anonymity of the zines and the kind of new freshness of it at her school was really cool. I also thought it had a decent introduction to intersectionality (through the POV of a white feminist teen) and it's something that will be a great gateway, especially for white baby feminists. And the romance I thought was very sweet and I appreciated how it shows that even woke baes are influenced by the patriarchy, BUT that they can learn!

I loved this!! It deals with similar themes as the also-great Roller Girl--of friendship and identity and figuring out how "who you are" can be different from "what you like". This book is super sweet and funny and very #relatable, and the ren faire flair is really fun. I also liked the light but deft touches of classism/racism (Imogene's dad is Latino and "for some reason" always gets cast as the villain of the Ren Faire...)

Great for fans of Roller Girl, Raina Telgemeier, and the like!

Honestly I'm mad this book was so bad, because I think somewhere in here is a kernel of a book I could really love about a Vegas magician with ~*actual magickal powers*~ who is friends with Carrot Top.

But uhhh this is not a book that I could love. Nor is it YA (despite its brief, sketchy appearance on the NYT YA bestseller list).

For much more detail:

http://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers/episode-83-handbook-for-mortals/

My journey with Unstoppable Wasp was:
1) OMG, Jeremy Whitley is writing a Wasp book? Yay!
2) WTF, it's not about Janet? Who's NADIA?
3) I love Nadia.
4) I would die for Nadia.
5) wtf Unstoppable Wasp is canceled already?

sigh. nothing gold can stay, but this is a delightful, charming character and a really fun, really feminist series.

This was a quick and interesting read! I thought the shifting POVs were interesting, and it's great that it came with a playlist of recommended songs. In some ways I wish this gave more context? But I guess I followed it okay. The art has an intentionally sketchy quality to it that's kind of fun? IDK, it's fun for fans of 60s music/style and/or people looking for a cool iconic fat girl.

I mean for starters...I read this all in one day. I didn't mean to, in fact I actively kept trying to go to sleep, but I kept thinking "one more chapter...one more chapter..." until the end. So it's obviously compelling. What I generally like the most about John Green's books are his characters and their voices, and that's true here too. I love Aza as a narrator and I think the portrayal of anxiety and thought spirals here is super well done. I also love the way Star Wars fandom is woven into the thread of the book--it's funny but also you can tell it's an important part of Daisy's life, and that felt real to me, as did the quiet anger that Aza and Daisy's class differences brought up.

What didn't really work for me was the book's mystery plot? I don't really care though, I just think it's worth noting that it didn't really...make sense. (I mean, The Fault in Our Stars also kind of had teens trying to solve a mystery that ended up being really anticlimactic? And I think that's fine but I think the missing father's actions here don't really make sense.) Again--I think what matters more here are the characters' reactions to the ~mystery~'s resolution, and that worked for me.

I also think it's great to have more YA books about mental illness that don't demonize medication.

I'm kind of a national parks geek and if you're thinking about reading this, you probably are too. If you have an average or less than average interest in the national parks, just move on by.

OK hello. I overall enjoyed this book, which is basically a series of essays focusing on different aspects of Yellowstone National Park in history and popular culture. I learned some really interesting stuff (I loved the chapters about "parkitecture" and the specific style that's become associated with National Parks, and stuff about bears and wildfires and how those policies are shaped were very interesting.)

A couple of missteps:
- I thought the chapter about Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park causing Yellowstone to have an elevated role in popular culture was...interesting but also a stretch? And also he spent some time interviewing 2 random people about how much they liked Yogi bear as a kid and I thought it was going to be like "and now...they're park rangers" but they're not, I guess they're just randos who liked Yogi Bear. One of them has never even been to actual Yellowstone. Couldn't he have found a park ranger who liked Yogi Bear to talk to??
- Throughout the book he barely talked about Native Americans, but occasionally would refer to a "Nez Perce hostage incident" like the reader was supposed to be familiar with it, but didn't explain it until later on in the book. But also later on in the book he joked that maybe people reading this book are confused about the difference between Yellowstone and Yosemite, so like...this is clearly aimed at a casual-ish reader and not someone who's already an expert in the park's history. So explain that thing the first time it comes up jeez
- Anyway so throughout the book it was bugging me that he so so barely talked about Native Americans, since I know that in general tribes were often dislocated by national parks etc...and then I got to the epilogue and he said (direct quote) "I was pained to spend so little of this book discussing Native Americans. But I was looking at what the wider culture had valued through American history, and it had not valued indigenous people." OK SURE BUDDY BUT NOW YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM?!? I know he's talking about its role in popular culture/history but the absence of something can still be commented on.....or you could talk about how the park was viewed in tribal histories....or something?!
- also in the epilogue he was basically like "lol why is everyone so obsessed with the supervolcano, it's probably not going to kill us get over it"

ugh just take us now supervolcano

ANYWAY again I mostly enjoyed reading this book just got bugged by those things.

Also it was good at including photos of everything that I wanted there to be photos of, but they're all in the middle plates without necessarily indicating ("see photo in the middle plate") so I'd just have to optimistically flip to the middle of the book hoping he'd replicate for example the Ansel Adams photo he'd just described.

Anyway if you're only going to read ONE National Parks book I'd rec The Hour of Land by Terry Tempest Williams over this--she does a way better job of including Native Americans and also just writes about the parks so beautifully and honestly probably kind of ruined me for other parks books. But if you already read that and you're that big of a nerd that you want to read another national parks book, hell yeah this one will do.

ok this is kind of on me because I just saw "The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder" on the new books list and requested it because I loved those books and she's my problematic fave, but then when the book came in I was like "oh it's like.....literally the world?" Like literally Marta McDowell combed through all the books and found all the plants she mentioned and it's about those plants.

It's...an impressive work....of plants...but I don't like....care that much about plants, so I kind of heavy-skimmed this. There are a lot of great photos and illustrations, and it was kind of interesting?

Also the author seemed way hype about the ~sustainable lifestyle~ of the pioneers and made like, 1 throwaway mention of Native Americans, sooooo...not great. Last year's Annotated Pioneer Girl was much better about that I think.

Pick it up IF YOU LOVE PLANTS. Or if you're doing some kind of school project about plants.

Plants.

This is extremely John Hodgman, and I like John Hodgman.

There is a LOT of "I know this is a rich white person problem to have, but..." and I appreciate that he's self-aware and up front about it, and overall I enjoyed the book, but after awhile it was like I GET IT YOU HAVE TWO VACATION HOUSES AND THAT'S STRESSFUL IF NOT RELATABLE.

There's also some moving stuff about anxiety and grief and the loss of his mother. And of course, as you would expect, a lot of wryly persnicketty humor.

This book made so many strange choices. Like...I'd be into it if Lizzie was in a love triangle with her dad and another woman...I'd probably be into it if Lizzie were in a weird The Secret-style cult, I'd be into it if Lizzie had astral projection powers...but all of it together is an overwhelming mishmash.

Also it would introduce odd details from the actual case and then do nothing to follow up on them.

It was still kind of a fun read, but...not nearly as fun as its premise seemed to promise :(

http://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers/episode-84-lizzie-borden/