Rating:
3.5 Stars

In a nutshell:
Four women living outside D.C. in the 1960s find themselves at crossroads, motivated by reading ‘The Feminine Mystique.’

Best for:
Those who enjoy stories of women finding themselves. Those who need a reminder of where we’ve been given where we are headed.

Quote that made me think:
“Somebody has to have the babies, don’t they? If they can?”

Why I chose it:
I was looking for a book about women, written by a women, as I’ve been reading a few books where men are the authors and protagonists.

Review:
Margaret, Viv, Charlotte and Bitsie all live in an exurb of Washington D.C., and are all facing challenges in their lives. Margaret is the main focus of the book, and the one bringing together the others for a book club, which starts with reading “The Feminine Mystique.”

Margaret is raising three children and isn’t feeling fulfilled. Her husband can be a bit of an ass, so she seeks support from her friends and neighbors. Charlotte is new to town, a bit brash, seemingly a bit detached from her children and husband. Viv and her husband have a wonderful marriage, and six kids. Viv is about to go back to work as a nurse. Bitsie is young, without children, and married to a somewhat older man who is also a veterinarian.

The book focuses on the friendships these women build, but also about the challenges they face in a world that views women as second class citizens. Viv tries to get birth control but needs her husbands sign-off, and in between the appointments she ends up pregnant. Margaret tries to open up a bank account for her own paychecks and is told she needs her husband’s permission. All face men – sometimes their own relatives – who belittle them and treat their interests as inconsequential and irrelevant.

While the author does speak to what Friedan missed out on with “The Feminine Mystique” – basically ignoring women who aren’t white, suburban and middle class – this book does also suffer a bit of the same. There is talk of civil rights, and there is one tertiary Black character, but the four main women are white and suburban, and their challenges, while infuriating, are not quite what one would call universal. For example, there is a bit of a discussion of money, but in reality none of the women or their families are at risk of serious economic challenge, so discussions around income don’t have the same kind of urgency. Additionally, none of the women choose the path of not having children, which would have been truly revolutionary.

This book was published last year, but given the optimism in it, I would have thought it was released in like 2010 or something. So much of what is discussed seems both so far away and so threateningly near. The pace the US is going, especially with things like the SAVE act, and the overturning of Roe vs Wade, women are getting pushed further and further backwards. Will we be able to have our own bank accounts? Will we be able to vote without jumping through hoops that men don’t need to? Will we be forced to have children, or be economically punished if we don’t? It kind of seems likely, which reminds me we haven’t actually come that far if it’s so easy to get back to where we started.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Yes. Despite the issues mentioned above, I enjoyed the storytelling and the character development quite a lot.

Rating:
3 Stars

In a nutshell:
In two separate, unrelated mysteries, the victim isn’t entirely clear.

Best for:
Fans of this genre – Yokomizo is a famous author of Japanese mysteries.

Quote that made me think:
N/A

Why I chose it:
It was a gift from my partner for my birthday.

Review:
Both of these stories focus on the idea that we might not be entirely sure of who the victim is. In the first, a woman’s body is found in the back garden of a cafe, and the owners have sold the cafe and left town. Is the woman in the ground who we all think, or might it be someone else? And either way, who is responsible for her death?

In the second, the death involves someone who is almost a twin – so is the dead person really he said he was before he was killed, or is he the other brother who looks just like him.

Both books have different storytelling modes – the first is a fairly standard narrative, while the second is told solely through letters from a relative of the murdered individual. Both are vivid in their storytelling; I could picture the scenes quite easily.

That said, there was something about the style of the writing that didn’t quite connect for me. Maybe it was the short story nature that didn’t allow enough time to develop the characters. Or perhaps it was that it felt like there was a lot of exposition and not a lot of the story unfolding on its own.

I am happy I read the book, but I probably won’t be seeking out more from this author.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
I think so, yeah.

Rating:

3.5 Stars

CN: Pet illness and loss.

In a nutshell:
Veterinarian Dr Attas started the first house call vet service in Manhattan and share stories of treating the pets of the ultra rich, the not rich, and the famous.

Best for:
Those who love animals, so long as one can handle some sad stories as well.

Quote that made me think:
N/A

Why I chose it:
In December we had to say goodbye to our cat of 14 years, Tigger. We knew we wanted to say goodbye at home, both to reduce the stress on him and give him a good experience, but also so his brother Jameson could know what had happened. Dr Kim works for a company that specializes in in-home euthanasia and took such amazing care of both Tigger and me and my partner. She was so kind, and so respectful. It made an absolutely horrible day bearable. When I saw a book about in-home vets, I knew I wanted to read it!

Review:
Dr Attas has always known she wanted to be a vet, and was able to make it happen. The book shares some of her early career and how she was able to volunteer with vets to confirm what she wanted to do. She talks about the first pets she adopted, including a blind pug, and she also shares some of her personal life, including how she met her husband. But most of the book is focused on the stories of the pets and the humans she encounters.

She definitely name drops, but it does make sense because these are the people who she interacts with – Joan Rivers helped her with her business when she started (after being fired by a disappointing former boss). Billy Joel, Cher, and even Paul McCartney eventually feature in the book. But the real stars are the precious animals Dr Attis treats. She shares stories of routine appointment, of devastating diagnosis, and everything in between. She talks of doting pet parents and jerks who abandon pets when something new and shiny (a baby, another new pet) comes into the home. She clearly cares about her clients.

The one thing that left me feeling kind of meh about the book and the author is how much she focuses on pure breeds. She definitely does not support puppy mills or anything like that, and she helps with rehoming and adoping pets, but I don’t recall any discussion of mutts in the book. She herself seems to have a preference for pugs, which are bred in such a way that they often have breathing problems. I would have loved to hear more about the harm created for these animals but there wasn’t much about that.

While this book is a fairly new release, most of the stories take place in the 90s, which I wasn’t expecting.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
I think so, but again, only if one can handle some very sad stories as well.

Rating: 4 Stars

In a nutshell:
Journalist Doctorow explores how technology is getting worse and offers ideas for what can be done to reverse the trend.

Best for:
Anyone is real tired of shit like having to subscribe to be able to print something from a printer they own.

Quote that made me think:
“Companies abuse you if they can get away with it. That’s the crux of enshitification”

“A world without regulation is a catastrophe.”

Why I chose it:
It’s been catching my eye every time I’m in a bookstore but it’s hard back still, so I decided to read the audio version.

Review:
I don’t even know where to start. Doctorow is a great writer, but the main reason this is a four star rating is because I’m still not sure about the ‘and what to do about it’ part of the subtitle of the book. He does a fantastic job of describing all the ways and reasons for the failures of corporations and technology, but the solutions as usual seem to lie in having better people making laws and regulations, and having the workers organize.

The book talks about companies you’d expect – Google, Apple, Meta, uber – and how much they really do suck. For him, enshitification has three steps:
– A company starts out optimizing for its customers. This is the cool part, when companies actually care about the people they are building the product for.
– As a company gets success, they start to optimize for the business, at the expense of the users / customers.
– Finally, the company chooses to optimize for shareholders at the expense of everyone.

And the bigger the companies get, the worse it is. As opposed to ‘too big to fail,’ Doctorow says these companies get ‘too big to care.’ We have effective monopolies on certain things – especially in the social media sphere because the original product helped people connect to others, and they don’t want to lose the ability to stay connected. I meant that’s why I returned to Instagram after a year break – I was bummed that I was missing out on seeing what was going on in the lives of my friends who live overseas. And there isn’t an alternative that they all use.

This review can’t go into all the interesting things I learned (and hopefully I correctly understood), but here are a couple of times I didn’t know but made me feel gross:
– Amazon requires those who sell on their site to sell it at the same price elsewhere. And Amazon shipping costs companies a ton, so sales on Amazon not only suck for the company but also suck for all of us because even if we don’t buy it on Amazon, Amazon influences it.
– App stores take a 30% cut of everything sold through apps. THIRTY PERCENT. Now I understand why I have to buy books on the Libro FM website and can’t buy any through the app — it’s to save that 30%. Gross.

There’s also a huge part of the book focused on right to repair and digital rights that is also infuriating. The anecdote about a ‘carve out’ to allow blind people the ability to convert digital books to be used with adaptive technology is especially farcical.

My biggest take-away isn’t necessary that capitalism is the cause of all this (though, I mean, it’s a big part of the problem), but that our governments are completely failing on this front. There needs to be much stronger regulation as well as much more freedom for the consumers. Which is hard to focus on right now for lots of us since many are fighting for other rights (like the right to not be shot or disappeared by ICE agents, or the right to not be forced to give birth, or the right to have safe workplaces).

There is a lot in this book, and the audio version is read by the author, which I don’t usually see in these types of books, so that was fun. His tone and delivery were needed given the gravity of the topic.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Absolutely.

Two Stars

In a nutshell:
A pandemic has hit, and London is in full total lockdown (like, checkpoints and military shooting people who aren’t supposed to be there lockdown). While building a temporary hospital, contractors discover bones that were not there the day before.

Best for:
I’m not sure.

Quote that made me think:
N/A

Why I chose it:
I’ve been mostly enjoying this author this year and this one was available from the library.

Review:
Wooof. So this book had so much potential, but I struggled to finish it. It starts with a note from the author, where he shares that he wrote this book years before the COVID pandemic but no one was interested in it. Then, when the pandemic hit, he tried again and it was published. And I sort of get why publishers would be interested in a book set in a pandemic that doesn’t seem to be exactly ABOUT the pandemic, but this wasn’t great.

The main character is a detective who is about to leave the force. Like, in two days. I can’t even recall his name, but he is estranged from his wife and just done with the job. But he is called to a scene where bones of what turns out to be a young child have been dropped. The story itself goes on with some different point of view chapters, including from someone involved in the murder, and one of the forensic investigators.

The issues I had were with the language choices and character choices the author makes. The child in question turns out to be a young Chinese girl with a facial difference (cleft palate). I genuinely don’t understand why the author felt the need for that to be a defining characteristic, and why he repeatedly had characters talk about how ‘ugly’ the girl must have been. The fuck? What purpose does that serve? Even if they wanted the character to have a standout feature, why make it a facial difference that they would all then hammer home? It’s just weird.

And then there was the forensic officer who uses a wheelchair, and all sorts of language choices and descriptors that I would maybe expect to find in a book written in the 70s, not one published in the 2020s. Their inability to walk does play into the plot of the book at least, but the way the character is treated left me feeling icky.

The background discussion of the pandemic was interesting, especially the distribution of flu treatment, the dire situation in hospitals, and the very serious lockdown rules. IT was much more drastic than the COVID rules, showing how different things might have been with an even deadlier virus. But the rest of the book was not for me.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
No, because I think it is a bit insulting to the reader.

Rating:
3.5 Stars

In a nutshell:
Fin has been summoned to return to the island he left nearly two decades ago to assist in a murder investigation.

Best for:
Those who like a mystery with roots in childhood.

Quote that made me think:
N/A

Why I chose it:
May is author who writes mostly mysteries set on the island of Lewis, which is one of my favorite places in Scotland. I accidentally started reading the final book in the series, so immediately jumped back to pick this one up, which is the starting point.

Review:
May is an interesting writer, and paints vivid pictures, though at times the phrases he chooses seem a bit over the top. Once I got used to his style, I was absorbed into the book.

The chapters alternate – third person perspective following Fin, an Edinburgh police officer on leave whose 8-year-old son has just passed away. He and his wife are destroyed, and their marriage is struggling. When Fin is called to a murder similar to one in Edinburgh he worked, he is required to return to his home island of Lewis. His wife is livid, but he still goes.

Once there, he is faced with old friends he hasn’t seen in 18 years. This leads to alternating chapters, from the first person perspective of Fin, at various stages of his life. It’s not totally linear, but follows major points in his life, like when he became an orphan. These chapters provide insight into island life, and into relationships with people who now appear to be murder suspect, as well as into the victim.

There’s also a side storyline about a cultural practice of men going to an island to cull birds, and it is so descriptive I could feel the saltwater.

It took awhile to get into for me, but once I was into it I found it enthralling, and I’m looking forward to reading the second book in the series.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Yes – the twists and revelations are well foreshadowed but not totally obvious.

Rating:
4 Stars

In a nutshell:
Author Wachter-Boettcher explores what is so very wrong with modern technology.

Best for:
Those interested in how horribly tech has gone wrong, and the problems that persist today.

Quote that made me think:
“When those values reflect a narrow world view, one defined by privileged white men dead set on disruption at all costs, things fall apart for everyone else.”

Why I chose it:
This has been on my to read list for years, and the audio book was available in Libby so finally decided to check it out.

Review:
This book was written around 2016/2017, so it is a bit outdated, in that things have gotten even worse. The information in this book is pre-Twitter’s switch to become Elon’s and white supremacy at large’s playground, pre-most of generative AI, and pre Trump 2.0. But the author does predict in general terms things that have come to pass, and it’s just frustrating that in ten years, instead of making tech better and safer, it’s just gotten even worse.

This book is just chock full of examples of how technology is not working for the majority of people, and serves instead the whims of the tech billionaires and their minions. For example, Pure Gym had a long list of titles (Mr / Miss etc) that members had to select as part of their membership. When one woman who was a Dr and used that title tried to access the women’s locker rooms, she couldn’t, because in the system, Dr coded to male. Basically, default options that are created by a homogeneous group (generally well-off white dudes) don’t lead to positive experiences. Like the period tracking app that assumes the main reason people want to track their cycles is because pregnancy (seeking or avoiding), which leaves out anyone who doesn’t have sex that could result in pregnancy.

The book also explores how certain tech – like Facebook (now Meta) becomes the arbiter of things that are way too important to be left to tech bros. Like the ‘real name’ controversy, where individuals using chosen names, or names that don’t fit into white European norms (such as indigenous names) are rejected, and people have to appeal for recognition. When technology becomes essential, we struggle with the private sector wanting all the benefits of being essentially a utility but without any of the regulation or oversight.

It also addresses the ‘pipeline’ problem – the claim that if we just fix the pipeline, there will be more diversity in tech. But the reality is even as the pipeline expands and diversifies, the end point is a sewer. Not many people want to work in a cesspool of overinflated tech egos that’s only getting more and more disgusting.

It’s obviously not an uplifting book, but I do think the information is important to know and to keep in mind as we all interact with more technology every day.

I listened to the audio book and I found the voice artist to be distracting. Do you remember the Vanessa Bayer character from Saturday Night Live? The young theater kid? The voice artist was a member of SAG and seemed to overact a lot of narration. It was unpleasant to listen to, but the content of the book itself was engaging.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
I think so, with the caveat that it is ten years old, so while still depressingly relevant, some of it is outdated.

Rating:
3.5 Stars

In a nutshell:
A series of very short suggestions for ways to reconnect with one’s self and the world.

Best for:
Those of us who may find ourselves easily distracted and/or hoping to focus more on what is important in our lives.

Quote that made me think:
“What, among everything you encounter, could be made better somehow?”

Why I chose it:
I spend so much time on my phone, multi-tasking, and sort of floating through life, and I was hoping this would give me some ideas of how to be more intentional with my time and attention.

Review:
This book was not quite what I expected, which is my own fault, as I didn’t spend enough time looking through it when I bought it. Instead of containing traditional chapters, it has five sections, each containing suggested projects along a theme. Each project is rated on a scale of 1-4, with one being very easy to do and four being challenging / very involved.

The areas of focus are ‘looking,’ ‘sensing,’ ‘going places,’ ‘connecting with others,’ and ‘being alone.’

The book feels a bit more like a collection of bits of performance art, and indeed the author very openly borrows many of the suggested practices from performance and other types of artists. Which isn’t quite what I was expecting, but it was still interesting to contemplate nonetheless. Example projects are as basic as ‘notice something new every day’ and as complex as ‘exhaust a place.’

There are definitely some projects in here that I plan to pursue, but it will require some intentionality. Unlike, say, a ‘do this each day’ type of book, where each day you’re assigned a new task, this book is just a catalog of ideas, and its up to me to actually pick one and go with it. For me, the easiest ones would probably be in the ‘looking’ and ‘being alone’ sections, which probably means I should start with the other sections.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Yes, with the understanding that some of the suggestions will likely be a bit much.

Rating:
3.5 Stars

In a nutshell:
Actress and dancer Kelly Bishop tells the story of her life.

Best for:
Fans not just of Gilmore Girls, but fans of theatre, and those who just appreciate a clever woman.

Quote that made me think:
“Aren’t we lucky that there’s such a wide variety of dreams to choose from, and so many people who choose them.”

Why I chose it:
I watched Gilmore Girls on streaming and found the characters interesting. Thought this might be an interesting read.

Review:
This is a good memoir, at least by my measure, which is this: did I learn something new about the author’s life (yes) and did it feel like they were as honest as reasonable (yes). I came away thinking that Bishop is the rare person who is not brutally honest – they are just honest. There’s only apologizing when it is warranted, but there isn’t the cruelty that so often comes with it. Basically, I get the sense that Bishop is who the average ‘I just tell it like it is’ person THINKS they are, when in reality the vast majority of them are just assholes. And she does not strike me as an asshole.

She has also lived a FASCINATING life. I’m not going to get into it all here (that’s the point of the book, right?), but she was part of the workshop that resulted A Chorus Line, and one of the characters is basically based on her life. And she won a Tony award for it (coincidentally, she won the same night as future TV husband Edward Hermann). And who could forget that she was Baby’s mom in Dirty Dancing? And of course, the role that millennials likely know her from – Emily on Gilmore Girls.

Some things that really stood out to me where her love of animals, and her very clear desire to NOT have children. It’s one of the first things that comes up in the book (a musing she had as a child herself), and she sticks to it throughout her life. She shares in the book that she had an abortion when she had an unexpected pregnancy, and she doesn’t apologize for it or make excuses, because she doesn’t need to. She just shares why it was the right choice for her.

Her personal life had rough aspects to it – a horrible father, and a not-great first husband. But her second husband was clearly her great love, and she speaks of him (and his experience with cancer and ultimately his death) with an almost poetry.

The section on Gilmore Girls is not as long or detailed as I would have expected given the title of the book, but it makes sense if you think about how long a life she has lived. It is interested, for sure, but I probably would have enjoyed more.

The quote I chose to pull out I loved because I think it’s a great thing not just for aspiring dancers, or actors, or artists in general. None of us need to live the same lives, and that’s a good thing. We can dream of having children, and dream of not having children. We can dream of dancing in the West End or of teaching five year olds how to read. We can dream of being surgeons, or of partners, or of singletons traveling the world. Bishop dreamed first of ballet, then of acting, and she managed to turn those dreams into reality.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Yes, though if all you are looking for is hot Gilmore Girls gossip, you will be disappointed, as she spends maybe 15% (at most) of the book on that. Which makes sense, as it only ran for 7+1 seasons, and Ms Bishop has lived a long life.

Rating:
4 Stars

Lots of spoilers below (though I don’t spoil the unexpected plot point in part three).

In a nutshell:
Isabel is forced to share her home with her brother’s girlfriend Eva, and Isabel is not one to share. But events transpire, and plots twist, and lives change.

Best for:
People who appreciate good writing and storytelling and who aren’t deterred by very descriptive sex scenes.

Quote that made me think:
“Isn’t that strange, how that works? You can think something that used to be true but isn’t true anymore but still believe it in your bones.”

Why I chose it:
My partner and I only exchange books for Christmas, and this was one he picked out for me.

Review:
This book is broken down into three parts. The first part is a lot of build up and setting the scene. We learn about Isabel – this is all from her perspective. We learn she and her family left Amsterdam during the war and relocated to this home – Isabel, her mother, and her two brothers. Her mother has died, and her Uncle has left it to her brother Louis, but Louis is letting Isabel live there until he decides to settle down,.

Isabel is unyielding. She is controlling, and severe. She reluctantly goes on dates with a neighbor occasionally, but she has no friends to speak of, is harsh to the maid who keeps up the house, and is judgmental of everyone. Then Louise needs to go away for a month, and asks Isabel to host Eva. Eva appears to be everything Isabel is not – bit whimsical, kind, extroverted. Of course things are going to clash.

But the end of the first part / start of the second part, readers can see where this is going. Spoilers kick in here …

Eva and Isabel find themselves attracted to each other. It’s intriguing and well written (though not surprising at all). There is also quite a lot of sex in this part, and I’ve never been a fan of reading sex scenes. I understand why the author includes them, and I’m not sure how the book could exist with even watered down versions of these sections – it teaches us a lot about who these women both are. But that doesn’t change the fact that I really had to force myself to keep reading, as I wanted to see what would happen next. And to be clear in case it isn’t – I don’t like reading sex scenes between or among any variation of genders. I’m sure I could talk through it in therapy or something but eh, usually it’s not an issue in books I choose for myself.

The thing is I am so glad I kept reading, because part three is extraordinary. I didn’t see it coming, it was so well written, and I just was stunned by it. Without spoiling this part, I will just say that it was such an interesting exploration of trauma, and responsibility, and what we owe to others once we have all of the information.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Yes, if you don’t mind a lot of spicy bits in the middle.