Review: Bonfire

Bonfire by Krysten Ritter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got this book from Book of the Month, and for a quick read, and a first novel by an actress, it was surprisingly good! It is about a woman who returns to her childhood small town after becoming a lawyer to investigate an environmental charge against the town's largest employer, a chemical company. Replete with old boyfriends, high school drama revisited, and juicy characters, it kept me up late at night. A really fun read.

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Review: Dinner: A Love Story: It All Begins at the Family Table

Dinner: A Love Story: It All Begins at the Family Table by Jenny Rosenstrach
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love love loved this book. I discovered Rosenstrach when she wrote a column for Bon Appetit about the things she has learned about feeding kids, and when I posted that on Facebook, several friends turned me on to the fact that she has a cookbook, blog, and empire! This book was sweet - it was a memoir about her life before marriage, upon marriage, and upon kids, with recipes for each stage of life. And the recipes are delicious!! I loved hearing her stories, and really enjoyed getting a "professional" opinion on what is and isn't reasonable for toddlers and preschoolers to do at the dinner table, and to eat. A must-read for parents!

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Review: The Sympathizer

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a book that made me feel kind of dumb, or uncultured, or too impatient. It won the Pulitzer. It is considered groundbreaking and all that. And I didn't feel like I really "got" it. It was about a Communist spy embedded in Vietnam. Parts of the book were about his life, his escape from Vietnam in the last days before the fall of Saigon, and about his lifelong friendship with two boys, one Communist, and one not. But the structure of the book (a confession), the climax (the revision of the confession), and the denouement (not completely even clear to me) were confusing. I enjoyed reading about the narrator's life and story, but the ending got too theoretical and fantastical for me.

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Review: Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation

Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation by John Freeman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This might be one of those, "if you only read one book this year" books - in that it truly captures what is going on in America today. Not my America, of $5 lattes, but of people struggling to make ends meet, facing deep questions about identity, and many other important things taking place right now. I noticed this book in Denver's Tattered Cover bookstore, and seeing that it included writing by Ann Patchett, Roxane Gay, and Rebecca Solnit was enough to convince me. After reading it, I found many, many more wonderful authors sharing their stories and those of others, and I learned a lot.

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Review: The Sisters Chase

The Sisters Chase by Sarah Healy
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Oy. This book had promise - it was about a set of sisters whose mother dies, and the elder takes on raising the younger. The motel their family owns ends up owing too much in back taxes to be worth anything, so they go on the run, which begins with their distant (and filthy rich) cousins, and continues for several decades. I did not enjoy the writing, the plotting, or the characters. The characters were mostly archetypes, not well-developed, and the major twists were all thin and predictable. I did not enjoy this one at all.

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Review: The Nix

The Nix by Nathan Hill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was great - Lisa kept recommending it to me, and when I finally got started I could tell why. The story is nominally about a young man who, when faced with an overdue manuscript for his publisher, agrees to investigate his estranged mother, whom he learns is a radical from the 1960's. However, the book is so much more than that - Hill is a master at characterization, from the main characters to minor people, he paints such a clear picture of who they are, that it seems as if you know them. While the plot of this book was interesting enough, it was the characters that really made it great. Thanks, Lisa!

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Review: Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While I love Annie, I mean, REALLY love Annie, this book was just ok. I typically lose myself in her writing, invite myself into her anecdotes, and come out of reading her feeling like I have the power to be a better person. This book, not so much. It didn't have enough of her charming stories or self-deprecating encouragement for my taste - it was too straightforward without enough personality. I did like the idea of their being three categories of prayer (which, coincidentally was covered in my daughter's Hebrew School class the same week I was reading this), but didn't find that illuminating enough to carry the book.

I'll definitely read more of Annie's books, and hope they are more like her others than like this one.

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Review: The Girl with All the Gifts

The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a creepy book - one that I had seen twice at Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver this year (and I don't live in Denver!) - that I requested at the library. It is about a girl, who at the outset seems like a lovely and curious pre-teen imprisoned in an institution that is part mental hospital and part prison. Over the course of the book, however, we learn that some sort of apocalyptical event occurred and this girl (and others like her) may be very dangerous.

Part psycho-thriller, part post-apocalyptic story, and part a story about humans connecting to each other, with a dose of The Passage, this was thoroughly enjoyable, if you're into that kind of thing. And I am.

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Review: A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life

A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life by Ayelet Waldman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was really interesting. I noticed it on the shelf at the Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver, then requested it at the library. Waldman is an author (herself married to author Michael Chabon), known for both her books as well as a controversial Modern Love column where she proclaimed loving her husband more than her children.

The book is part memoir (of her life with mental illness: Depression, Bipolar, and PMDD), part medical log (of her month micro-dosing with LSD rather than traditional psychiatric drugs), and part history (of drugs in the United States, both medicinal and illegal). She has a very unique point of view, both as a patient and as a former attorney, and she is meticulous in how she wields those personas throughout the book. She is generous and brave and honest in her writing, and I learned a lot reading her book.

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