Decent true crime about a grisly USSR mystery.

If I taught contemporary literature, I‘d want to teach this book. It‘s exactly what the title says.

Highly recommended reference volume for millinery studios and couturieres/decorators with an interest in such things. Arranged for type of flower and when they seasonally bloom.

I absolutely loved this author‘s book The Luminaries. This one couldn‘t be more different and although I understand why the author might have chosen to end the story as it does, it makes me regret spending as much time reading it as I did. I should have bailed earlier.

I can‘t begin to describe this book but I‘m glad I read it.

If you liked this author‘s other books, you‘ll probably like this one. I did.

A fun book and a quick read. It gave me an identity crisis because it‘s the first book where I identified with a character clearly coded as “an eccentric old woman,” which I guess I am now.

Bailing—the audiobook narration is not for me.

I‘m bailing on this. My library loan ended before I finished and the line to get it again is so long, I just don‘t have the patience to do it again. Interesting and informative but also very depressing.

I liked this more than I expected to, but it wasn‘t described as “junior high science teacher finds alien life and saves the world” and that‘s basically it.

I love Dolly. I have to get the physical print edition of this but I spotted the audiobook available through my library. Glad I listened to it and I can‘t wait to see the photos.

Absolutely couldn‘t put it down. I admit have a personal attachment to the setting, having been an exchange student in West Berlin before the wall came down.

Bailed at 30%. I keep trying to find memoirs I can get into but they‘re just not for me. I love cats and enjoyed the novels I‘ve read by this author. I‘m sorry for the abuse he suffered as a child. He clearly really loved this cat. If you like cats and memoirs, you might like this.

I bailed at 75%. I was all in even though I hated the narrator—I also empathized with her as a fellow academic and middle aged woman who grew up in a western patriarchal society. But she made a choice in the last section of the book that I found so dumbfounding and reprehensible that I had to stop reading it.

Smart analytical music criticism, love stuff like this and voices other than cishet male are rare.

Listened to the audiobook, illuminating and disturbing.

I have read three of this author‘s books and I am surprised that this one has some ideas I want to bring up at work.

I found this book hilarious and couldn't put it down.

Despite being a generation older than the protagonist and her friends, I empathized with their online-dating exploits.

Recommend even if you aren't generally a fan of what used to be called "chick lit."

I had to stop because the audiobook reader began to attempt various bad British accents as direct quotes from historical figures began to appear, and I just couldn‘t take it seriously anymore.

I don't know what I expected of this book but wow, what a wild ride through history, science fiction, psychological warfare and even alternative libraries. Fascinating, thorough, and one of Newitz's more compelling nonfiction adventures. Recommended for anyone who's lived through recent events and wondered whether they or the world had gone mad.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

My new best read of the year. A structural tour de force.

Wow! This book was recommended in a female empowerment workshop I attended and I ran right out and bought it (after reading the sample and watching the author‘s TED Talk). Highly recommended, not only for women with corporate ambitions but honestly any woman who has ever been catcalled by a stranger on the street or hit on by a boss.

Bailing at 80%. Too much brutality and violence.

Thought provoking, a fantastic Covid novel and one that in flashbacks captured the Y2K London art scene in what feels like a ketamine dream. I‘ve read one other novel by this author and I will seek out more.

I read an ARC of this novel from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Absolutely couldn‘t put down this compelling graphic memoir. And I generally don‘t stick with a memoir through the whole book but this one is 💯

I wish I‘d read this earlier in life.

Best novel of the year for me. A difficult and disturbing book. Audiobook highly recommended for keeping all the plot threads and characters straight via several narrators. I think it would have been harder to follow if I‘d read it as text.

The narrative structure of this book is fantastically creative and hooked me on the storylines, the way they braided together and it was fun to look for all the connections between the plot-streams--reappearing objects and legends and history and lore. Some of it is deeply brutal and violent. Recommend but maybe read it in small doses. I received an ARC of this title from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Absolutely loved this book. Despite the fact that I have not loved some of the author's prior novels, and despite the reviews that make valid points about the simplistic tokenism of the one Black supporting character, I nevertheless read this book voraciously and was all in for the whole ride.

I should accept that I really don‘t care for memoirs.

A plot twist near the end strained credulity to the breaking point.

The audiobook narration was too precious, like she was a children‘s librarian at preschool story time.

An interesting look at the concept of mental illness in history and culture, and the implications of stigma on wellbeing.

A fantastic must-read for any American concerned about the rise of Christian nationalism and the conflation of Christian faith with political ideology.

Unquestionably the best book of the year so far. Highly recommended for literally everyone who uses computers or has a smartphone, and especially women interested in the lost histories of women innovators.

Surprisingly scholarly yet readable, not a novelty book or a joke but still with moments of humor. Recommend to fashion history enthusiasts and those with an interest in the subject of social cultivation of body dysmorphia and beauty “standards.”

A fun trio of connected short stories about the Book People, a coven of libromancers that also appeared in this author‘s “The Withrow Chronicles” books.

This is a fascinating piece of ethnographic history. I‘m glad I listened to the audiobook because I get why it is important to write an oral history in the dialect as spoken but I think it would have been difficult to understand. Hearing it was clearer I think.

CW: lots of violence, brutality, murder, and tragedy.

This is the strangest book I‘ve read in years.

An excellent book for adolescents, young adults, and parents who want to shield their children from the effects of diet culture and the body-image obsessions perpetuated by Hollywood and advertising.

I loved this book until it began to strain credulity too far. I‘ll probably try another book by this author in the hopes that she reins in the tendency to jump all the sharks, because the conservationist thriller is a genre hybrid I‘m interested in.

If you are a woman, this book will confirm that you are not delusional in your perception of the world being phallocentric.

I read this because it was a #litsylovereads pick, and because I have a morbid interest in writing hoaxers who adopt and fetishize marginalized identities—think JTLeroy or Nasdijj. But it ultimately adds up to a depressing mental illness and this book portrays it well. It‘s just a difficult psychological space to be in for a first person perspective.

This is a brilliant encapsulation of a specific early-1990s community and if I had read it even ten years ago I would have been all in for the whole ride. Now it makes me sad that a community I was so deeply involved in is revealed to be so vapid and self absorbed.

Abandoning—I would have loved this in my 20s. Now, I prefer the author‘s 4000 Weeks.

Bailing at 56%. This is the type of memoir that is composed of one traumatic incident after another, relentlessly. I commend this author for surviving her shocking childhood and mentally ill, abusive family. I do not however have the voyeur‘s desire to rubberneck at the details.

A good book with an interesting structure. Looking forward to discussing it next month here!

So engrossing. This read like an adventure novel but is actual history and the author cites his sources, even including an appendix of the pseudonymous articles published in abolitionist papers. Highly recommend.

This is so thought provoking and inspiring! Highly recommend to all humans.

Probably a great book for Gen Z readers. I‘m middle aged tho.