shane_the_reading_rat's Reviews (1.21k)

dnf’ed after the author disclosed that she used to write for the Epoch Times. that’s an extremely conservative, right-wing newspaper (i know this because my parents are very conservative and right wing and have read it for many years). Epoch Times themselves have massive ties to Falun Gong. i was getting those vibes from this book  before that info was disclosed, and frankly i don’t trust someone who used to write for Epoch Times.

i can already tell that this formatting (no quotation marks for sentences) is just not going to work well for me, + i never handle massive amounts of characters being introduced at once well. pretty sad about this, i’ve had this one on hold for weeks and anticipated it a lot :(

as someone who truly had little knowledge of reality tv before reading this book, it seemed like a pretty in-depth exploration of the format (genre?? i’m not sure which one reality tv would be). learned a lot, but GOD the section about The Apprentice/Trump at the end was nauseating to listen to. i completely understand why it was included, but i hated listening to it

after reading this, it truly feels like everything is, in fact, tuberculosis.
john green is an author who i've been reading for several years now (in my early teen years the amount of times i read Looking For Alaska and Paper Towns was absolutely unreal), but i haven't read his nonfiction before and am excited to report that this book is incredibly good :) it covers an incredible amount in 198 pages, including: discussion of tuberculosis both in the modern day and historically, the country of Sierra Leone's history, discussion of how racism and classism (among other factors) affect who can get medical care, the work of TB activists, and the story of a Sierra Leonean man named Henry who John Green knows. extremely informative, would highly recommend

i haven’t read much litfic, admittedly, so i’m not completely sure what to say about this but it was absolutely good. 

this book has the curse of being fine, and a little forgettable. i think it would probably read better in its original language (French), as the writing style was definitely flowery but felt off and disjointed in spots. best parts were the chapters about overfishing.

this is very easily one of my favorite nonfictions of this year so far (and a lot of what i've read is nonfiction, so that's saying a lot). easy to understand, evenly paced, incredibly interesting and talks about how things mentioned could be implemented in america. i am incredibly jealous of the Finnish school system now.

most of this book was beautiful and impactful. really my only qualms with it are: i wish the historical sections had lasted a bit longer. in my mind, the modern chapters at the end could have been just an epilogue, as i really didn't find them as compelling as the rest of the book. i also wish that

instead of the ghost chapters only being from the POV of Dao, that we'd gotten to hear from some of the other ghost characters. i don't really understand why it was solely Dao

.

lovely lovely romance <3 both eden and harding were incredibly lovable, i was rooting for them the whole time. + the humor is fantastic,

the carriage chase scene was amazing

How Could You gave me exactly what i wanted and expected out of it, lots of relationship drama.
i really like how realistic it feels, not all of the friendships are repaired by the end (

fair honestly, those people were not all good for each other

).
the art style (especially in party scenes) was awesome!!!