♥ Barbara Kingsolver ♥

If you have read all of her books, after awhile they start to be a tiny bit predictable, and I do not care at all. I would read 1000 books about marginalized women fighting the odds to rally their communities to protect the environment.

I loved Dellarobia and Dovey. I loved all the layers here, and I loved that each character had depth and complexity--even the megachurch pastor, even the controlling mother-in-law, even the grad students. I love the intersectionality of class and race and gender. I love the the privilege checking. I love the butterflies.

I LOVE BARBARA KINGSOLVER.

I'M NOT CRYING YOU'RE CRYING.

Just kidding, it's me, I'm crying.

This was a beautiful look at the complexities of life as a refugee from Sudan and later, immigrant to the US. It pulls no punches but never feels over-the-top with tragedy. (Note: this book contains the death and rape of children.) But it ends on a hopeful, optimistic note.

I will say I'm not totally sure why this is a "novel in verse"? It mostly just felt like there were weird line breaks, rather than actual poetry?? Maybe Farish is just going for a stream of consciousness feel, which worked just fine. The repeated imagery of the braiding was lovely, though.

This wasn't the most engaging reading ever... it read like an academic text by an author whose first language isn't English. Which is what it is. But I learned a lot and I appreciated all Lankov's insight into life in North Korea and especially his political analysis of what the current situation is there and what might happen next.

Recommended if you are really curious about North Korea, but not for casual pop nonfiction readers.

WOW, this book pulled no emotional punches. I loved Theo. I loved that this went so, so far beyond "ballet dancer with an eating disorder," and I loved how complex it was with regards to sex and love and consent. There are a lot of really important issues addressed in this book, but they all feel organic and important to the plot, rather than "issue novel-y." I loved how diverse it was and how it addressed Theo's feelings about navigating the white-heavy worlds of the suburbs and ballet classes.

Perhaps most importantly--damn, it was a page turner!! Recommended to fans of Laurie Halse Anderson, Sara Zarr, and other emotionally intense contemporary fiction.

This came across my desk by accident--it had been ordered by our adult fiction buyer but our TS department assumed it was for teen. I can see why, and I'm debating ordering another copy for teen. I definitely think it would have a lot of teen appeal, although the jokes are most squarely aimed at post-college life. There are a few jokes that are a little bit adult (the word "sexting" is used) but I don't think there's anything in here that's more explicit than say, a [a:Lauren Myracle|157676|Lauren Myracle|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1224298383p2/157676.jpg] novel.

I hadn't heard of the Fairy Tales for Twentysomethings blog before, but this is that blog in book form. Like a lot of blogs in book form, I think this is the kind of thing that's absolutely cute and charming on Tumblr, but when you sit down and read a whole book of it, it's like, yeah, okay, I get it, what if fairy tale characters had Facebook.

Still, there are a lot of solidly funny jokes in here, and the artwork is adorable.

Ah jeeze. I know it's not cool to write about the book you wish the author had written, but man, I wish I had read a nonfiction book about contemporary life in North Korea instead. Does anyone have any good recommendations for a book like that??

That said, Adam Johnson has traveled in North Korea and has a lot of very vivid details about the surreal, Catch-22-y dystopia that is North Korea. (I kept doing Google fact checks because I wanted to see if weird shit in here was true or not. I KNOW I'M MISSING THE POINT BUT I CAN'T HELP IT.)

The plot is interesting. Some of the threads about identity seemed a little heavy handed... is that the point? Is that his technique? Maybe for me, this is a 3 star novel with a 4 star concept??

This was kind of tough to listen to because every single story I'd be like, UGH I HATE THIS GUY, and literally every time I had that thought I'd be like, "Well, I guess the title of the book did warn me what I was in for." So I give DFW all due credit for being able to create such gross, gross dudes and still give them some glimmer of internal humanity.

It's very DFWy, which, as has been established, I like. If you tend to think he uses too many words and is a little too po-mo precious, well... maybe this isn't the book for you.

The audiobook is cool (and for me, is what bumped this solidly up into 4 star territory) because it has several different narrators, including DFW himself (which, I won't lie, I teared up when I heard his voice because I'm ~that girl~) and also John Krasinkski read one of the most hideous ones and it was SO WEIRD.

Hmmm. Hmm. I enjoyed reading this, and Moore is definitely a masterful writer. Each of these stories contains beautiful sentences, and it's worth reading them just to admire the way they're crafted.

None of these stories resonated with me the way that most of the ones from [b:Birds of America|19631|Birds of America|Lorrie Moore|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1388641896s/19631.jpg|1769] did. I suspect that might have to do with the fact that Moore published Birds of America in 1999, and the stories collected in Bark represent more middle aged concerns? Perhaps I should revisit Bark in 10 years or so.

AH this was adorable and surprising and sweet. It reminded me a little bit of Lemony Snicket, with its celebration of language and its straightforward approach to nonsense, but without all the noir. And with a superpowered squirrel. I loved it. I loved Flora's way of thinking in comic book terms, and the fraught relationships between Flora and her parents, and William and his parents all felt so genuine. Just a lovely look at how children and adults can misunderstand each other and act in ways that are hurtful even out of love, and how if you're lucky you can work things out with some late night poetry.

I feel about this much the way I felt about the Veronica Mars movie, which is to say I can't be objective about it because my overriding feeling is just YAY MORE VERONICA MARS YAY!!

I rarely read mysteries so IDK how this compares to other mystery books. It was as twisty and bonkers as an average story arc of the series. I was happy to see more of all my fave Veronica Mars characters--this picks up right after where the movie left off. (So if for some reason you're interested enough in Veronica Mars to want to read this, but haven't seen the movie yet... see the movie first.)

I wouldn't say I loved it quite as much as I love the show--a lot of Veronica's ~snarky quips~ work better when Kristen Bell is saying them, as opposed to just being read on the page. (I saw that she read the audiobook and I bet that would be worth pursuing.)

Still: I loved it! It's more Veronica Mars! Hooray!