Whalefall by Daniel Kraus
I’m not mad just disappointed. Just kidding, I’m pretty mad. I’m going to say what many reviewers have said before me: This is not a book about a man who is swallowed by a whale and has to use science to get out alive. This is a book about a man (a teenager, actually, but more on that below) who has daddy issues real bad, and he happens to be swallowed by a whale also. The parts with the whale are few and far between—it […]
Ultra-Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken
I like the idea of eating and living in a healthy way, so I’ve read a number of nutrition/food books. However, this topic is so complicated, and there are so many opinions that it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. It seems that everyone has an agenda and can cherry pick data to support their cause. Perhaps that’s why I thought Michael Pollen’s advice from In Defense of Food was the most helpful: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” You could say that Chris Van Tulleken […]
The Tyranny of Faith (Empire of the Wolf, #2) by Richard Swan
Look, I may feel differently upon re-read, but this author cannot write romance to save his life. Both of these books so far have been made worse by his efforts in that department. His instincts are all wrong. In the first book, it was an underdeveloped and ill-advised “romance” between our narrator, Helena, the apprentice of famed Justice Sir Konrad Vonvalt, and some village rube who had zero personality. Here, it’s between Helena and Vonvalt himself and just UGH. NO. WHY. Luckily the romance never […]
Lute by Jennifer Marie Thorne
Nina Treadway is the lady of Lute, but she’s only lived there for seven years, since she got married to Hugh. As a foreigner, she doesn’t believe in the island’s day of the tithe, but as things start going wrong all around her, she wonders if it might be more than a superstition. Folk horror! A mysterious day of human sacrifice as an island extracts the price of its bounty from its residents! An American abroad! And that cover is so very beautiful, and so […]
Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein
Best for: People interested in a novel way of looking at the complexities of modern politics. In a nutshell: Author Klein explores the different political realities people inhabit in areas as vast as vaccines and Middle East policies. Worth quoting: We are told that the way things are is the only way they can be, because every other model has supposedly already been tried, and all have failed. But these ideas about different ways of being and thinking and living did not all fail; rather, […]
Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
Recently, the way I use audiobooks has changed. I most often listen to books I’ve already read in print, rather than my previous habit of listening to long sci-fi and fantasy, or non-fiction books. I blame the pandemic, which has permanently changed my brain (I miss tv shows and movies, but my brain won’t go there). Regardless, I acquired the audiobook version of Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries and listened while I baked batches of cookies and loaves of bread. No apple cakes or pies, though. […]
