Hmm. I liked a lot of these as individual stories quite a lot. I'm not quite sure how it worked as a whole novel? It was fun to go back and recognize threads as they were revisited, and some individual stories in this were amazing.

I also think maybe my standards for this were raised very high due to this having won pretty much every major literary award? I still liked it a lot but maybe I don't know if anything could live up to all the hype this book has?

I remember reading Selling the General in [b:The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007|821708|The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007|Dave Eggers|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1382939274s/821708.jpg|2845176] and I think maybe that was my favorite story? But also it was one of the stories that seemed to contribute the least to the overall narrative of the story?

Oh, also, the ending??? Was??? Ehhhh???

I love Eula Biss. [b:Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays|5523292|Notes from No Man's Land American Essays|Eula Biss|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1344313831s/5523292.jpg|5694315] is soooo important to me and so stylistically impressive. This is different--one structured narrative rather than an essay collection, but she does trace different topics related to the history of vaccinations and anti-vaccinations.

Ugh she's just so SMART and so good at making connections between things. And I love that she writes openly from her perspective as a new mother, a privileged mother, who can understand the panic that anti-vaccinators feel while so, so perfectly destroying their arguments on both a medical and ethical level. Just. Great. And she's such an impressive writer. I already said that. I'm just very impressed by her. *_*

Oh man. I really want to re-read the first two books now. I probably should have before reading this, but who has the time? I read the Wikipedia summaries for the first two and that helped jog my memory, but I think I definitely would have gotten more out of this if I'd had a clearer memory of those last two books.

THAT SAID I still really liked this and still got a lot out of it. It really did seem to tie up a lot of loose ends (... as far as I can remember) while still being exciting on its own. And it really does fit so well with Grossman's themes about magic and fantasy and growing up.

I grabbed this on audio because it was about the length of a trip I was taking, and I'd say the audio was fine. It wasn't like some audiobooks where the narrator detracts from it, nor did the narrator add a whole lot, in my opinion. (Except his Australian accent for Poppy was cute.)

hahahaa I totally loved this book, even though (or because?) I have never seen the Bachelor.

http://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers/episode-04-i-didnt-come-here-to-make-friends/

Uh... this was cute, but... uhh... weird? Like I had to check the copyright date because I thought it was newer? Apparently the TPB came out in 2012 but the comics first appeared in 2005? But they feel like they are from 1990. I think maybe they were supposed to be kind of a parody of the 90s? Or something?? I'm genuinely confused. Like Jubilee intervenes to make a gang leader let a gang member go to high school, while observing that she didn't think there were gangs anymore??

I feel like Jubilee is suuuch a loveable character that I do not understand at all why anyone would do this to her.

Also the art was weird and everyone looked lumpy.

I read this in search of ~scary stories~ to tell at a library event. I found one that I reworked to tell (the story of Bill Sketoe's hole). Most of them aren't scary--which when I picked this up I knew it wasn't a scary stories anthology but I was just looking for something different, and I intended to skim through it and just look for ghosts. But instead I read the whole thing because all the stories looked so interesting. It's... almost like it's a collection of BEST-LOVED stories or something. A cool mix of folk tales, historical stories, and personal narrative.

This took me awhile to get through but it was well worth the time investment. As usual, Naomi Klein is SO GOOD at combining intensive research and reporting with her own personal narrative in a way that is compelling and honest and readable.

This Changes Everything is SO important. Klein is very clear that we are seriously on the precipice of fucking up the earth irrevocably, and then she walks us through who's responsible, what can be done (and what NEEDS to be done ASAP), and what's being done.

I can't recommend it highly enough.

Whew! I read this after a chain of books that I felt kinda "meh" about and then I read this all in one day. I love Lauren Oliver's books for kids and teens, and it turns out I love her book for adults, too. I love the shifting narrative, especially the parts narrated by ghosts, and the how the story unfolds gradually between them all.

Also I personally like that it is a ghost story that's not really scary, just sort of reflective.

NOTE there is a dead kitten in this book but overall I still enjoyed it.

THIS BOOK IS A GARBAGE

http://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers/episode-03-the-secret/

oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh

I think the last time I've felt so connected to and validated by a book was [b:The Partly Cloudy Patriot|12358|The Partly Cloudy Patriot|Sarah Vowell|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388249904s/12358.jpg|229722], which as you may know I read and loved in college. (But I think Bad Feminist will have wider appeal than Partly-Cloudy Patriot, which I think is kind of a niche book.) I love Roxane Gay's writing wherever I can find it, and having all of these essays together is so amazing. I love when I agree with Roxane Gay about things because she makes me feel so smart and validated for having correct opinions. I love when I don't agree with Roxane Gay, or when she has strong opinions about something I haven't thought about before, becuase she is so great at persuading me to see things a different way.

She is just so smart and honest and great at picking apart complicated cultural tangles. I just want to buy 100 copies of this book and thrust it at everyone I know.