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Rated Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay 10/10

These books are so good. It's really all one big story and I don't think this one really stands alone, but it's excellent, a sharply observed look at the narrator (the one who left her hometown of Naples) and her friend Lila (the one who stayed) as they go through their 20s and 30s, navigating careers, family, romance and the political turmoil of the late 60s and early 70s. Beautifully illustrates enduring, freshly relevant truths like "violent fascism operates to the benefit of the capital-owning class" and "men love to hear themselves talk and expect women to listen." I am looking forward to the final installment; while #2 is still the best of the individual books, as I've said, it's really one lifelong story and all together it's a masterpiece.

Rated Dare Me 8/10

Sitting at a weird intersection of teen drama, noir, literary fiction and body horror, this book is dark, trashy-smart and engaging. If you can suspend your skepticism about a story that tales place in high school, you'll be rewarded: Abbott is sharp at constructing plots, building tension and exploring her characters' minds and motivations. She takes the world of her teenage protagonist seriously, depicting cheerleading as something like gladiatorial combat and intra-group friend rivalries as political bloodsport. As clever and mean and claustrophobic as [b:Gone Girl|19288043|Gone Girl|Gillian Flynn|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1397056917s/19288043.jpg|13306276], with better prose.

Rated Animals Strike Curious Poses 8/10

Essays on the interactions between animals and humans, each focused on a specific, named animal ranging from a frozen mammoth to Darwin’s pet tortoise to a sign-language-speaking gorilla and the spider that rode on Skylab. Some of the essays are experiments that fail interestingly, some of them are just stunning and insightful.

Rated Mislaid 8/10

Curious and compelling. Zink pulls off something very difficult really well, and though it doesn't always land quite right - and wraps up too neatly - it's really enjoyable, rich with distinctive characters all with their own perspective. As with her last book [b:The Wallcreeper|22237292|The Wallcreeper|Nell Zink|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1400625481s/22237292.jpg|41610859] there were times that I stopped short and sort of squinted at this book, as though in a conversation with somebody with poor social skills who doesn't know it; unlike that book, the rest of the time it's terrific and feels real and lived-in and yet delightfully weird.

Rated Swing Time 8/10

There's so much going on in this story it's hard to do it all justice - it starts with the treacherously close friendship of two biracial girls growing up in London and spirals out into the wider world, taking in Parliament, the Gambia, and pop stardom even as the memory of their friendship has a gravitational pull over the whole story. Really well-done in terms of rich characters, pacing, emotional depth, political insight and vivid detail; there's maybe 10% too much plot but it still all hangs together well. Highly recommend!

Wants to read Unaccustomed Earth

Rated The Obelisk Gate 10/10

I love this book - it definitely requires having read THE FIFTH SEASON first, and if you've read that you don't need me to convince you this one is great too. Super-compelling, a rich and well-thought-out world, exciting and emotionally gripping and smart. Also deeply weird.

Wants to read Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell

Wants to read The Leavers

Rated Songbird Journeys: Four Seasons In the Lives of Migratory Birds 6/10

Really wanted to like this more than I did. It's very dry and technical, with lots of lists of specific birds that aren't super-meaningful to me, who doesn't know a thrush from a warbler, let alone the distinctions between different thrushes and warblers; the good stuff is kind of buried. It also feels a little bit like a series of essays, rather than the arching narrative it suggests. Still, I enjoyed it, but it's definitely only for people who are hardcore about birds. Would love to read a feature-length article version of the interesting stuff herein.

Wants to read All We Know: Three Lives

Rated Umami 8/10

Warm, smart and funny story of the people living in a small complex in Mexico City. Very bright and breezy and weird, especially for a book that's so much about loss and mourning. It's very odd structurally, not really for any reason, and it doesn't quite amount to as much as it seems like it's going to, but I enjoyed it.

Rated Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy 10/10

Wants to read Autonomous

Rated Infinite Home 6/10

Slow, pleasant, sweet story of a ratty old apartment building in New York, the misfit-toy people who live there and the landlady who keeps them all there. Not a knockout but a decent read.

Rated Master and Commander 8/10

Rated All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers 8/10

clever, heartfelt essays about "troublesome" famous women like Courtney Love, Winona Ryder, Lil' Kim and Princess Diana, shot through with personal details about the author's life. you'll need a tolerance for a confessional, heart-on-sleeve style but it's a quick read and rewarding.

Rated The Wallcreeper 6/10

I had a hard time getting my head around this book. It's sort of less than the sum of its parts, though many of its parts are quite good and I'm definitely glad I read it. There are some beautiful images and clever, devastating turns of phrase, but it's also kind of a bummer - the narrator is very frustrating and the story she tells ends up being wishy-washy in a way I think is intended but doesn't quite work. I compare it unfavorably to After Birth, which is also about a brief slice of the life of a woman who feels very isolated and lonely, but manages to cohere and sell it even though it has less "plot" than the Wallcreeper.

Rated The Girls 8/10

Creepy, lyrical, intense story of a woman who was caught up in a Manson-esque cult as a teenager. Really remarkable, especially for how well it conveys an adolescent-girl's-eye-view of the world, tragic and dreamy and emotionally rich and unsettled.

Rated The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World's Great Drinks 6/10

Light and breezy yet encyclopedic. Kinda like getting cornered at the party by the foodie who wants to tell you all about the appetizers. You can skip around at your leisure rather than trying to read it straight through, but it's full of fun factoids.

Rated The Age of Miracles 8/10

really liked this - i ended up reading it all in a few sittings over about a day and a half. fascinating, creepy, sad. <br/><br/>not quite as cripplingly depressing as [b:Never Let Me Go|6334|Never Let Me Go|Kazuo Ishiguro|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165592008s/6334.jpg|1499998], but has that same kind of otherworldly, calm sadness. the sci-fi concept isn't over-analyzed; really it's a slice of life of the concept as seen through a teenage girl's experiences.<br/><br/>very affecting.

Rated Life After Life 8/10

Terrific. It's no spoiler to note that the protagonist dies right away; the book could be called "There Are A Lot Of Ways To Die In The 20th Century." It's like watching somebody carry out a choose-your-own-adventure, but it rarely gets frustrating and never seems cutesy; the characters are so real and well-drawn and the world is so lived-in that it stays compelling throughout. It is, I will note, so extremely British that I had to look up the Briticisms.

Rated One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays From the World At Large 10/10

<div>Reading this shortly after two different trips to Missoula (during one of which I purchased the book) almost certainly colors my immense fondness for it, but so what? It's great all the same. It's got a lot of Montana nature, but said nature is not made exotic. Maybe I am just similarly-concerned, but-not-THAT-concerned-about-bears, but sometimes it's nice to read about a place you're deeply familiar with that is written by someone who is also deeply familiar, but no one is here to romanticize it. For every beautiful expanse of sky and leaves and running rivers, there are also the days where your socks keep getting wet and you're in a fight with the wind.<br><br>The bits about Missoula are also good because, yes, we do actually have civilization here, even if it's on a smaller scale. Written from the point of view of a local who lives at the edge of a small city, this snapshot of a year and a mixture of other thoughts inspire a desire to slow down, to really look at where you are, to find a good story to tell later. I'm glad I finally read it.</div>

Rated Neuromancer 6/10

Rated Sorcerer to the Crown 8/10

A real delight. Zen Cho manages to a bunch of things really well - build a convincing, coherent world with clever magical rules and norms, a plot with a lot of surprises and a lot of threads that lock together, some really sharp analysis of how race/gender/class operate - and also makes it a fun, quick read. Imagine the Ministry of Magic as told by Edith Wharton - adventure and wordplay and a dark creepy underside.