2020: tl;dr you need to sleep more.

This is one of the most repetitive and thorough books I've ever read. I can just see the Snowflake Method notes of his thesis repeated over and over, and sticky notes all over a wall with SLEEP MORE underlined on all of them. But Walker certainly got his message across.

I felt like I was already pretty onboard with the concept of a good night's sleep affecting my ability to function, but I did learn quite a bit. Walker provided a ton of serious and relatable examples to get his point across. I would definitely recommend AGAINST the audiobook version of this book; although the narrator had a lovely British accent, it would have been so much nicer to see the charts & graphs referenced in the text.

Our brains are actually really cool. "How can I understand and connect that which I have recently learned with that which I already know, and in doing so, discover insightful new links and revelations?" I love psychology and popular science books in general, so this was right up my alley. Definitely hit on a lot of creativity points and in particular why dreams are so weird, and how to be more creative.

Walker went into a ton of detail about how & why east-bound flights' jet lag are harder to recover from, as well as why you get crappy sleep the first night that you're in a new environment, such as a hotel. He asks insane questions that blew my mind a little bit, such as "how do you know that you have woken up?" The science is good and interesting, but the thesis is so simple and repetitive that it does get a little old.

2020: A fun reread and I love Captain Holly Short, but this series was not so enticing now for me to continue with it. Needed 1000% more Juliet.

2019: This makes me so happysad. I feel a greater thrill returning to characters of my childhood, while also suffering a greater loss at the understanding of just exactly what Lyra and Will went through. The entire trilogy becomes deeper the more I revisit it.

2014: I reread this book to prep for a paper in which I described my view of heaven, or at least describing what happens to ourselves when we die. It still perfectly encapsulates what I hope to occur: every particle of me returning to the earth and becoming part of the world around me.

2006: This book blew my mind, but it was mostly because it was the end of an amazing trilogy full of characters that I had fallen in love with. The religious components were understandable and helped the story along without getting in the way - or perhaps because I was raised in the Catholic tradition, it did not distract.

2020: Brown is the absolute BEST at taking ideas and feelings and turning them into tangible actions and processes that literally make you a better person. This is her most "self-help"y book, but it's broken down with real life examples, as well as workbook style practices, that you walk away feeling like you just had a really great therapy session and you have a new outlook on how to kickass at work. This book is Daring Greatly + Rising Strong set in the workplace with a leadership focus.

By placing courage at the center of our careers, Brown allows us to explore what it would look like to be a truly brave leader. We spend so much of our time at work (often more than a third of our lives) and it's important to get it right. Or, at least as Brown says, wouldn't the world be a better place if there were more brave leaders? Selfishly (she is the least selfish person, honestly) she wants to see it, so she's going to make it happen. We stan.

I love that she didn't edit out any "um"s in her audiobook. It's a delight to listen to, and she really hits home her message of authenticity. Brown has changed a couple of phrases and passages to more align with an auditory audience, and it often felt like I was listening to a podcast (maybe because I have been listening to a lot of "Unlocking Us" recently and I sometimes got them confused?) There's a point at which she literally does a breathing exercise with the listeners. It's amazing. I love her very much.

Read this book, it will make you a better human.

2020: I definitely should not have skipped around Murakami's list of top recommended books for this one, because it has the potential for me to write off Murakami forever, but Barack Obama told me to read it. Actually, what Obama said was "Haruki Murakami’s Men Without Women examines what happens to characters without important women in their lives; it'll move you and confuse you and sometimes leave you with more questions than answers." Which I guess is not wrong.

The stories all center around men losing women in some capacity, but it's very difficult to have any sympathy for any of them. They come across as rather weak characters who are unable to deal with the loss of these important women in their lives, but honestly? The majority of the women made it clear that they did not want to be with the men.

The stories got very repetitive after a while, and I honestly don't even know what happened in "Kino". There were a ton of misogynistic undertones, and it was very weird to have a book be praising Woody Allen in 2017 (when the book was published, unclear exactly when the story was originally written. BUT STILL).

It is funny to me to read about Murakami's continued obsession with The Beatles, just after having finished Norwegian Wood earlier this year. The first two stories in this collection are named after Bealtes songs ("Drive My Car" and "Yesterday"). "Yesterday" also had a ton of elements in common with Norwegian Wood.

Overall, I straight up would not recommend it.

2020: I read this book way back when, but I never really got into Percy Jackson. I think I was too distracted with rereading Harry Potter at the time. I was persuaded to read it again this year to do a movie watch - we'll see how that film stands the test of time as well!

I appreciated the mental health representation, as well as the relatively positive portrayal of dyslexia in the book. The overall representation was pretty tame, and it's hard to ignore that when viewing it from a 2020 lens. Also, gotta say, it's pretty frustrating when I need to STRUGGLE to find a conversation that allows the book to pass the Bechdel test, and even then, I'm disappointed in what Riordan gives me to work with.

Overall, an engaging story, with lots of familiar faces from Greek mythology to keep things moving. The book is certainly more enjoyable the more you know your mythology. The gods get a fun modern update, and I loved the idea of Olympus sitting at the top of the Empire State Building.

2020: An absolutely fantastic read about an absolutely heart-wrenching true story. If this book doesn't make you anti-death penalty, I don't know what will.

I learned a lot about what life is like in prison, and in particular, on death row. Hinton is a natural storyteller, even with help writing this book from Lara Love Hardin. The book moves along at a good pace, even though the storyline is predictably lopsided (a lot from before he went to prison, and a lot at the end of his time in prison).

There were several times where I needed to put the book down and take a minute to wrap my head around the atrocities that were happening. The fact that one out of ten people on death row is statistically innocent is just mind-blowing.

The work that Bryan Stevenson does with the Equal Justice Initiative is straight up incredible, and the man deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. This is a great complement to Just Mercy, and an excellent addition to any anti-racism reading list.

2020: I'm still not exactly sure who told me to read this book, because I don't think I ever would have picked it up solely judging it by its cover (I feel like I'm not supposed to do that...) But I am happy it came my way and that I gave it a shot. It feels very similar to City of Girls, but perhaps only because I read that so recently.

The story follows Evelyn Hugo as she navigates 1950s-70s Hollywood and a world that wanted to deny her own agency. Told from a contemporary lens (Evelyn is now in her 80s, and is recounting her life story to young upstart Monique), this book provides an excellent example of how to tell a modern, inclusive story in an old fashioned and outdated setting. Mad Men could learn a few lessons from Taylor Jenkins Reid.

It's a shame how poorly Monique is treated in this novel, as compared to how well Evelyn is. I honestly thought she was a very flat character, with the characters in her life also flattened to stereotypes (her boss, her mom, her ex, blah). I was frustrated whenever we swapped back to the Monique story, and away from Evelyn's far more intricate and engaging life.

I confess I saw the twist at the end coming about halfway through the book, and dreaded that I would be correct (I was). The ending was so unsatisfying for me, because even though the conclusion to Evelyn's story revolved around her finally accepting and prioritizing her true identity and her real romantic love, the final reveal of the linchpin character shows him denying his himself the same! How frustrating.

2020: A very pleasant surprise of a romance novel that I very much enjoyed! It was both a smart read as well as a steamy CONSENSUAL slow burn of a romance. I was a big fan of how close January and Gus got to each other as friends before they started sleeping together (and it made it all worth it when they finally did).

The biggest thing that bothered me about this story was the complete abandonment of the main conflict. The book starts out with January's inability to speak to her mother, and her recent introduction to her father's mistress. Then, +/- 20 chapters of a completely different story happens, and they wrap things up nicely at the end. I get that this is probably something that happens quite frequently in romance novels, and might have been just a shock to me, but it was disorienting.

Henry does an excellent job tackling the grief that January is working through, and how insignificant everyday things can sometimes overwhelm you - it got way deeper than I thought it was going to. She calls out how difficult it is to be a woman in the writing industry, in particular in reference to the inherent sexism in the label "Women's Fiction". *insert eye roll here*

As snarky as I wanted to be about the meet-cute in the bookstore, I was actually truly cheering on this couple by the end of it. Their banter is excellent and I loved watching their friendship develop. I will say, if you're into bad boys who are really just sad boys waiting for someone to come along and patch them up, this book will definitely do the trick for you.

Two smaller notes / plot holes: there is NO WAY that her dad would have planned to ~reveal~ everything on her 29th birthday. He ABSOLUTELY would have waited until she was 30 and to pretend otherwise is asinine. Secondly, who on earth was paying the fees of the marina where her dad's boat was docked the whole time he was dead!?

2020: I chose to revisit Gilead for Banned Books Week 2020. Fitting, considering the restrictions on women that the United States Supreme Court might be revisiting itself with RBG's replacement on deck.

It was a much more fluid and enjoyable read the second time around. After spending time in Sally Rooney's quotation-marks-less world earlier this year, I was accustomed enough to jump right in to Atwood's. Since I knew the basic plot line, I was able to jump right into June's (?) head and follow her perspective with ease.

That all being said, it was a much more terrifying read, on the eve of this year's presidential election. I was in a much more naive place when I read it in 2016. Ah, what simpler times before Trump became president.

2016: I cannot believe it took me so long to read this book.