Loved it. Incredibly important, compelling material but also very accessible. Seriously sickening stuff, though--like a living wage in China would be 87 cents/hour, but instead most garment factories pay more like 13 cents/hour? And have 400% profits? But there is hope, too, whew, and it's there in the last few chapters.

So I read this around when it first came out and then lately everyone's (okay like three people) been like, Hey Renata, have you read White Teeth? And I've been like, yeah, I know I did, but I can't remember anything about it.

Which is not a good sign, really, but I figured I should re-read it anyway. It was good, I suppose. Kind of like Salman Rushdie Light. Sometimes a little heavy-handed when dealing with race, but sometimes not. Pretty funny, and I liked the way the plot all came together at the end (though I have a bit of a weakness for deus ex machina). Probably a few years from now, though, I'll have completely forgotten the plot again.

I found reading this book to be vaguely unsatisfying but I'm not exactly sure how to articulate why. It was simultaneously kind of boring but also kind of had too many things going on at once. And I felt like the ending was pretty tacked on. It was very readable, and I enjoyed it, but I am a little mystified by its Pulitzer Prize. I've been (perhaps over-)thinking about it since I finished it to figure out what about this book would merit the prize and I'm still coming up short. Ah well.

Amazing. I was already a big Barbara Kingsolver fan but somehow had never read this one, which I think is my new favorite of hers. Such wonderful, believable characters with such a compelling backdrop (revolutionary Congo)... ohh, I loved it.

I mean it was an enjoyable enough read, but it comes across like an early draft for The World According to Garp, but way less good. So unless you are a hardcore John Irving fan or, like me, have a lot of free time and somewhat limited book selection, I'd recommend that you just read Garp.

I was a little disappointed with this year's BANR actually. It seemed kind of hit-or-miss, which I guess is always going to happen with collections like these. I felt like it had more "misses" than previous years, or not even "misses" really, so much as just mediocre pieces. Some great stuff, though, including Judy Blume's introduction.

So many awesome examples of my very favorite genre of writing ("literary nonfiction," a label that Ira Glass shuns in his introduction)! I was kind of expecting this to be "This American Life: The Book" but actually I don't think any of the pieces here were on TAL, which was great--new authors, hooray!

Super enjoyable. I don't understand why David Rakoff isn't as well-known as David Sedaris. I mean Sedaris is more prolific or whateverrr but seriously, to me, just as funny.

Good stuff. The only other book of his I'd read was Working, plus listening to some of his interviews here and there. This one is his "best of," with interviews from all his books plus the introductions to each book. The net result is a higher percentage of direct Terkel writing than usual, which is okay by me. It really is a decent social-historical glance at the century, and he's so good at getting good details out of people.

Before I read this book I did not even know what a world-system was. Uh I don't really know how to review this, it was kind of dry but it's a book of theory. About world-systems. Basically I'm just trying to keep my brain from atrophying too badly post-college. And pre-reading the Twilight series.