Mostly this made me super hungry. I wish Nadia's Cafe delievered!! But also it was an enjoyable romance (that didn't end with a baby, yayyy) with some social commentary, myth, and history. And recipes!

this is SUCH a perfect look at the middle school/junior high transition, and making new friends, and the struggles of learning a new sport. and it's so funny!!

an obvious, awesome readalike for [b:Smile|6393631|Smile|Raina Telgemeier|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1256154174s/6393631.jpg|6582125].

of course, the true star is SLAY MISERABLES and her Hugh Jackman cardboard cutout, I mean, I can't even.

I mainly read this because a few of my co-workers read it and disagreed about the ending and wanted my vote. This book was strange... I appreciated the visceral grief of the unreliable narrator, but overall, not my cup of tea. Kind of like a darker [b:The Lovely Bones|12232938|The Lovely Bones|Alice Sebold|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1312524577s/12232938.jpg|1145090].

I should probably just stop trying to read memoirs by standup comedians because they're almost never as good as... standup comedy by standup comedians.

There's some interesting commentary about growing up Iranian in California, but... a lot of it is stuff I've heard in his standup, so it's not exactly groundbreaking at this point.

Still: he's definitely a funny guy, and I enjoyed reading about him getting movie-killed by Chuck Norris and entertaining the King of Jordan.

I think I'm subtracting a star for the audiobook--the narrator was like, TOO Southern? I mean I get that this book is super Southern, but it was like, Dukes of Hazzard or something.

That said, it's a cute, funny mystery with great, lovable characters.

http://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers/episode-22-the-target/

This was pretty dumb, but not the dumbest thing I've read for this podcast.

I'm so excited to throw away all my stuff now!! This was super interesting and I can't stop talking about it now. There are a few things in here that are like, a little bit beyond? But overall, awesome and I think will be really good for me to put into practice.

(btw I should, I suppose, take a moment to acknowlege the privilege involved with her suggestions like "donate that thing you don't use very often and just buy another one if it turns out you want to use it more after it's gone", but I think they are very applicable for my own lifestyle and for many middle-class consumers).

This is a FANTASTIC resource. It clearly and compellingly (that's a word right?) lays out the case for how our criminal justice system is fuckeddd. I haven't read the non-adapted version of [b:Race to Incarcerate|302013|Race to Incarcerate|Marc Mauer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1344716602s/302013.jpg|293077] but I have read [b:The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness|6792458|The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness|Michelle Alexander|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328751532s/6792458.jpg|6996712] so a lot of this information was not necessarily new to me, but I liked the layout and structure of this, and the rough black & white illustrations & graphs really drive home the information.

I know this is an adapted version of the adult NF book, and so I'm guessing if you want footnotes for any of this, you have to check that out? I mean I think putting a bunch of footnotes in the GN itself would probably be cluttery, but there's like, nothing.

But I do like that the end gives concrete ways to reach out to prison inmates, and overall, this is great. Would recommend to socially-conscious teens but maybe also to adults who don't feel like reading New Jim Crow or the full-length version of Race to Incarcerate.

I enjoyed this for a lot of the same reasons I like some fucked-up reality TV shows, like I couldn't look away from this trainwreck that was happening and I was so scared of how it might end. :O

A lot of the angst about the levels of best friend-iness and the first love-y feels felt super realistic.

A good one I think for fans of Lauren Myracle.

Ahh! I read this all in one evening. I couldn't put it down! (I'm so lucky to have 2 hands so I could keep holding on to it!) This is such a good combo of stuff I love--cult stories AND juvenile detention stories--and it's all well-done.

Some of the other plot elements I cared less about? But I'm still giving this 5 stars on account of how much I liked the other elements and how much I was rooting for Minnow and HOW I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN.