OK, I know I'm several years behind on this, but in case you haven't read it yet, I deem it: pretty fast-paced and fun! I get why infinity kids are into it. I like that it rewards nerdy knowledge of Greek mythology. Oh and having read (listened to) this I can now stop wondering if those "Camp Half Blood" T-shirts are offensive or not.

The audiobook was pretty solid. My favorite was his "bro voice" for Luke. I kind of want an audiobook read entirely in "bro voice." Or maybe I don't? Maybe it's possible to have too much of a good thing?

PERFECT. Smart, funny sci-fi that tipped its hat to sci-fi conventions and then blew them in the dust. Also the audiobook reader, Bahni Turpin, was simply perfect. Not only did she do a wonderful job with the book's human narrator, she was also so so great at weird alien voices. The only thing was I was not expecting there to be so many threats toward cats which I cannot handle in books!! So FYI this book has a lot of cat endangerment and it's very scary for cat-lovers!! TIGGER WARNING (that was a typo but it seems appropriate so I'm leaving it)

Hi do you like crying about animal friendships? If yes, may I recommend The One and Only Ivan?

I wasn't sure if I'd like this--I'd heard a lot of good things, but I wasn't really sure what it was *about*? Like, if anything actually *happened*? Well yes, things happen, and they will make you cry, and it was very good.

OK, so, I'd been vaguely hearing good things about this book from the ~feminist blogosphere~ and I'd seen some really good quotes from it being thrown around the internet, so I thought I'd read this. And I think first of all that there is a culture gap & a generation gap going on here?

Some of the stuff Moran writes in here is really great (and you've probably already seen those bits turned into graphics on Tumblr). Some of it is just like, WTF? There's a whole chapter about how crazy women are because we instantly imagine marrying men as soon as we meet them, and men shouldn't be alarmed because we can't help it. Um... what? There are a lot of other instances where she seems to be taking her own personal hang-ups and assuming that all women started working as journalists when they were teenagers and get paid to review lap dances, etc.

This book is marketed as some kind of neo-feminist manifesto but it's really the memoir of one weird, successful, funny woman. Which is a fine thing for a book to be! I also am not sure if she even let an editor touch it because it seems very, very rambly.

OK, I really enjoyed the experience of reading this book, having recently moved to an area that's not very vegetarian-friendly. Reading it was like, "Ahhh, someone understands me! But also this person is maybe kind of off the deep end about all of this!" I definitely do NOT recommend even touching this book if you are not vegetarian or vegan because it is extremely patronizing toward meat eaters. But if you are a vegetarian and are a li'l tired of being patronized by meat eaters it might be enjoyable to covertly read this.

Also this book is from 2002 and not all of it has aged well; eg it keeps advising the reader to offer to fax their friends vegetarian info sheets. It does have some good conversational strategies for how to get through meals without making anybody feel bad, which is mostly what I wanted from this book. Hooray!

I had weird deja vu reading this because it's basically an expanded version of the article David Lipsky wrote for Rolling Stone after DFW's death. Actually I kept thinking my Kindle was skipping around or something and then I finally realized that I *had* already read parts of this. Anyway, it's pretty much just the transcripts of the tapes Lipsky recorded while he was following DFW around on his Infinite Jest book tour. If that sounds like something you would like, you would probably like this.

Gah really great! I love Dear Sugar, so I was excited to read something by her alter ego. I was even more excited that it was about long distance backpacking. I just love reading about stuff like that, eg [b:A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail|9791|A Walk in the Woods Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail|Bill Bryson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320519729s/9791.jpg|613469]. It always makes me want to pack up and head for the woods, even if the longest backpacking trip I've ever taken was ~30 miles and it basically killed me. ONE DAY.

Anyway Cheryl Strayed aka Sugar is, duh, a fantastic writer and the backpacking trip she took after her mother died and after she got divorced is great material for her. A lot of beauty & a lot of sadness. A lot of complicated emotions perfectly captured.

OK. It took me like a year to knuckle down and read this but I loved it and I'm so glad I took the time to read it. Really good mix of quirky humor and boredom & revisits the themes he's touched on earlier of how to engage with boredom and what itmeans to be a good human being in this society, I guess?

As soon as I finished reading I immediately thought "I don't think I got all of that, I should re-read that." Which I also did with Infinite Jest which I have not re-read. ONE DAY. Make that ONE YEAR.

Also does anyone want to talk about the end? Or the lack of end? UGH dang it DFW why did you go and die?!

OK. This was a really intriguing read & definitely gave me new ways of looking at things like crime & education. Some of the ideas were so new & surprising to me that I want to have someone smarter than me fact check it? I know there are appendices & such, but, just, REALLY? A lot of it makes total sense though, like swimming pools killing way more kids than guns, and legalized abortion lowering the crime rate. It's written in an easy, conversational tone with data charts & such.