Rating:
3.5 Stars

In a nutshell:
The Newmans are a real-life family who have their own scripted television show (think Ozzie and Harriet). When the head of the household and writer / director of their show gets into a car accident before the season finale, the family starts figuring out what life might be like without him.

Best for:
Those who enjoy good writing and the tracking of multiple characters across one interwoven storyline.

Quote that made me think:
“I have to spend so much time with myself. I want to be good company.”

Why I chose it:
Part of a book club.

Review:
I read this book in two chunks – the first hundred pages and then the last three hundred. It sucked me in and I wanted to see how it would resolve. It was a decent read, though not my favorite.

Dinah and Del have two mostly adult children – Guy and Shep. Dinah and Del were both actors and singers in Hollywood in the 40s and 50s, and have been the stars of their own scripted Leave It To Beaver / Ozzie & Harriet style sitcom for the past dozen years. But it’s now 1964, and things are changing, including the tastes of TV viewers. The season finale is coming, and it might end up being the series finale.

Then Del is in a serious car accident, and Dinah, Guy and Shep all have to navigate what life might mean if Del doesn’t survive, against the backdrop of a time that is holding them all back in different ways (Shep probably the least, but that’s fine – not everyone needs to be having a life changing epiphany in a book). Dinah meets writer Juliet, who is putting a profile together on her. The butt heads across generations, but eventually end up working together on a project to make sure the final episode of the show is memorable.

Because the book is set in the 1960s, there is a lot discussed about the US is changing, with The Feminine Mystique as the through line. There is some discussion of racism and the civil rights movement, and the Lavender Scare / gay rights is a large part of the book as well. But the focus is (white) feminism. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but I think that’s fine. Much like a lot of people found something deep for them inside the Barbie film monologue, I think some readers will find something similar in this. Its basic feminism, but basics exist for a reason.

I’d probably not choose this book again, but I don’t feel like I wasted my time reading it. And also, as depressing as it is, the absolute basics of women’s rights are sadly back in question in so many cities, states, and nations. So what SHOULD be acknowledged as the absolute bare minimum of what women deserve is once again apparently on the table. So I guess it isn’t as basic as I thought. Sigh.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Sure. The writing is good, the characters well-developed, and not every book about feminism needs to be a PhD level seminar.

Rating:
3 Stars

In a nutshell:
In this conclusion to the HMRC trilogy, the witches of the UK coven come together to fight a few different forms of the devil.

Best for:
Fans of the series. Fans of books about modern witches. People who don’t mind a bit of time travel as clean-up to resolve plot lines.

Quote that made me think:
N/A

Why I chose it:
I’d read and somewhat enjoyed the previous two books.

Review:
There is a lot of good in this book. Namely, the ability of the author to develop multiple characters so distinctly that I feel as though I know them and understand their motivation. There are many main and point of view characters – I count five – but there are also even more periphery characters who fit in well and make sense in this world.

The story starts where the last one ended, and resolves some of the cliffhangers straight away. It also resolves pretty much every storyline, so I appreciate that as well. And I love that the focus is on women throughout – there are a couple of men in the books, but the story is about the women and their relationships and friendships, set against this fantastical backdrop.

With that said, I think this book might be what convinces me that this genre is not for me. I like the idea of stories about witches and magic, but I have some expectations about how things should work in books. Yes, I accept this world the author has built, and the magic within, but some of the choices she made didn’t work for me. Specifically, the entire battle that takes up most of the last bit of the book relies heavily on time travel, and I just don’t find that to be interesting or successful in this case. I’m still not even clear how it actually worked within the book, as I couldn’t quite follow exactly what was going on. I am sure that people more well acquainted with the genre would say it was done cleverly and successfully, so perhaps I just … didn’t get it.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Sure – I just don’t think I am the target audience.

Rating:
2.5 Stars

In a nutshell:
Author May explores the changing of the seasons and the different ways we weather the literal and metaphorical winters of our lives, as told sort of in memoir form.

Best for:
I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps those experiencing challenges right now? This book is a bit all over the place.

Quote that made me think:
“The needle breaks the fabric in order to repair it. You can’t have one without the other.”

“Have we really got so far into the realm of electric light and central heating that the thythm of the year is irrelevant to us, and we no longer even want to notice the point at which the nights start getting shorter again?”

Why I chose it:
I picked it up a year ago but didn’t get to it – it looked interesting. Then life took over and other books jumped to the top of the pile. It caught my eye again at the start of Autumn, but took me about three weeks to read.

Review:
I should say up front that I think I get what the author was trying to do, and why she took this approach. It’s just not very successful for me.

The book feels a bit like an autobiography in search of a topic. I don’t think that’s how it started, but its more about the author than the overall concept of winter. In the epilogue (or perhaps the afterward?) she says she started out with the idea of interviewing a lot of people about winter, and traveling to many places that experience different aspects of winter. But she mostly did not do that, though she does call upon a trip she took to see the northern lights in Norway one January a few years ago.

The book is broken up into months – October through to March – and she explores some interesting ideas of literal winter (staying in, tacking stock, preparing for the next year) and metaphorical – illness, career challenges, life challenges. They don’t quite work together, but I do get what she was trying to do. Some chapters seemed bizarre and irrelevant – the one about wolves just seemed like it was filling space. Others stuck with me, and made me think about how I view not just winter, but where I am in any moment. The idea of life as not just linear but also cyclical. And it made me interested in thinking more about how to live in the moments as they are, not pining for spring in the winter, or autumn in the summer. So that’s good at least.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Maybe? I don’t think I can say I would recommend it, but I don’t think it should be avoided if one is interested in reading it.

Rating:
4 Stars

In a nutshell:
Author Ralston explores the world of football (soccer in the US) refereeing told via interviews with some of the top professionals in the game.

Best for:
Anyone who claims to be a football fan. Anyone who has yelled ‘REFEREE?!’ at their TV (or at a live match). Referees.

Quote that made me think:
“A refereeing error can influence the result, but so does a payer misplacing passes, the manager making the wrong substitution, or a club owner signing the wrong striker.”

“When you’re a coach or a payer, you can have a bad match or even a bad season, but referees cannot.”

Why I chose it:
In my free time, I am a referee in Scotland, generally refereeing grassroots girls matches and the occasional club academy game.

Review:
After nearly 35 years of playing football off and on, a little over a year ago I decided to become a referee in Scotland, and the set-up here is pretty amazing. We have termly trainings where they go over video to discuss calls. There are weekly fitness trainings spread across the geography of the city, where referees of all levels – including the ones refereeing the Scottish Premier League – train together. There’s a dedicated WhatsApp group for women referees, and we get our own trainings. Which might strike folks as odd – why would referees need their own community? Don’t you just show up, piss off players, and go home with some extra money?

This book explains why. Using the clever convention of matching each chapter to one of the 17 Laws of the Game, Ralston explores what it is like to be an elite referee, including how isolating it can be. Obviously very few people will ever reach that level, but the stories in this book are relevant not just to the grassroots referees like me, but to anyone who enjoys sport. There are loads of interesting stories, both infuriating and inspiring – from grassroots referees jumped in parking lots to referees realizing their dream of managing a World Cup final.

Through interviews with professional referees (mostly men, but a couple of women too), Ralston explores the challenges of being a referee. Aside from the obviously physical ones — I I am essentially doing a HIIT workout every Saturday — there are the mental challenges. I remember my very first match, and how exhausted I was not from the running but from paying attention. Where I referee, we don’t have assistant referees, so every single call comes only from what I see. There’s no mentally turning off ever, and it requires so much energy. Look away for just a moment, and a I might miss a cheap foul, or not be able to tell whether the striker going for the ball was offside.

And consider doing all that with people shouting at you. Imagine if you worked on spreadsheets, and when you went to enter a formula in a cell, someone screamed ‘that’s fucking wrong, you idiot’ from a hundred feet away. Or each time you sent an email, one of the recipients stood up and yelled ‘that’s not fair’ from their cubicle, Referees are at work, but players, coaches, and spectators all think it’s totally appropriate to just hurl abuse at them. Now, when I was a player I shouted in frustration, but I never abused or shouted AT a referee, and it is WILD to me how even some of the managers of the clubs I referee for think nothing of shouting inappropriate dissent onto the pitch. Just today, I experienced some abuse directed to me after the match based on my country of origin. (That young lady got herself a card for her troubles.) For higher level referees, multiply that by a few thousand, as well as a few hundred thousand more watching at home, sending abuse via social media and the airwaves.

One area Ralston spends some time on is how white professional refereeing in Europe is. It’s shocking how few referees are people of color and it’s even less at the professional level, and that is partly because of the pipeline — if you don’t have referees of color at the lowest levels, they aren’t there to be in the top flights. And there’s also some evidence that such referees aren’t promoted at the rates they should be, and don’t receive the support they should. Ralston also briefly mentions the lack of women referees, but he doesn’t focus on that. I’m not surprised.

Ralston also examines the limitations of the Laws of the Game. As I said above, there are 17, but some of them have to do with things like the size of the pitch or the equipment players and referees must have. While most of those do reference what to do if there is an infringement, only a couple of the laws talk about specific ‘fouls’ – and the designations that mean the difference between just a standard free kick and someone getting sent off the pitch. So much is up for interpretation, and the best referees know how to apply the laws while keeping with the spirit of the game and what the game expects. It’s such a challenging balance, and most folks who enjoy football don’t seem to really get that.

This is a very long review mostly because I really enjoyed the book. I got some ideas out of it, some tips, some perspectives that will help me improve my game. But I think the best thing this book does is help the reader have empathy for referees, and for the difficulty of the job. It is literally thankless, yet it is necessary for the sport so many across the world love.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Absolutely

Rating:
4 Stars

In a nutshell:
Comedian Tomlinson shares some of her life story via essays focused on areas where she’s grown and changed her mind.

Best for:
Fans of thoughtful essays with a bit of humor. Those who enjoy Tomlinson’s style of humor.

Quote that made me think:
I originally listened to the audio book (read by the author) so didn’t note any down. I plan to read the hard copy I also bought next year, so that review will I’m SURE have some quotes.

Why I chose it:
I first became aware of Tomlinson during the pandemic, when her first Netflix special was released. I rewatch that at least once every six months. I just found her observations so spot on. Her subsequent specials have all been slightly different, but always have me guffawing, giggling, and near tears. I also follow her on social media, and have seen her perform live one time. I think she’s incredibly smart and talented, and she’s clearly also got an intense work ethic.

Review:
This book was a delightful surprise, but the surprise is that it is definitely more of a literary memoir that a humor memoir, if that makes sense. It is not a funny book, and I think some folks will expect a comedian’s first book to be funny. It’s not NOT funny – there are loads of clever quips and moments where I laughed out loud – but the purpose is not to make the reader laugh. The purpose, I’d say, is for Tomlinson to share some insight into her life, and to the ways she has changed and grown over the years.

For those who aren’t aware, Tomlinson was raised in conservative Christianity, and got her start as a teen doing stand-up in the church circuit. Her mother died when she was very young – like 8 or 9 – and her father remarried quickly. She was engaged to a man in her early 20s, called that engagement off, and by her 30s came out as bisexual. She’s now no contact with her father, and considers her three siblings her best friends. She also managed to release four one-hour Netflix specials and host two seasons of the late-night game show After Midnight (the ending of which she details in one of her essays).

I think this memoir does a great job of sharing a lot with the reader while also keeping a lot for the writer. We aren’t entitled to everything – for example, Tomlinson does share that she is not in contact with her father, but she doesn’t share details beyond that, and spends an entire chapter talking about some of the great things her parents did for her growing up. She seems to have processed that relationship and shares with us the take-aways that we might find helpful ourselves. I can’t relate to most of her life – wasn’t raised in a church, I lost my first parent only VERY recently, I’m still talking to my surviving parent, I’m not a famous entertainer – but I could relate to the meaning she has taken from what she shared. She tells anecdotes that are interesting but there seems to always be a purpose to each essay, and many memoirs don’t manage that.

The book isn’t long – the audio book came in under six hours – but it is efficient. Which I guess makes sense coming from a comedian who cuts right to the quick with her humor, and which I appreciate in a memoir. I’m looking forward to reading it again (hard copy) next year.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Absolutely.

Rating:
3.5

In a nutshell:
Sybil is a retired, divorced law clerk who writes letters (and occasionally emails) to pretty much anyone and everyone. We get a look at the letters she sends (and receives) over the course of a decade.

Best for:
Those who enjoy small stories that take place over longer periods of time.

Quote that made me think:
N/A (which is kind of surprising)

Why I chose it:
Book club.

Review:
This is an interesting way to tell someone’s story. It is mostly in Sybil’s own words, but so much is not included. It spans a decade, and we probably get no more than 20 letters each year. Letters will reference phone calls and such, which makes sense as no one communicates solely via correspondence, but its interesting what the author chooses to include and chooses to leave out.

There are a few different ‘plots’ – Sybil’s relationship with her adult children, her own adoption, the loss of a child, navigating a progressive illness (among other things). And they weave in as one would expect – not everything a person deals with is the forefront of every conversation or thought. But I think what I enjoyed most is seeing real character development across a decade when some folks might argue people have sort of solidified into who they are going to be. Sybil is in her post-retirement life, and at times herself wonders what she’s doing. But she is able to grow and change. She doesn’t become someone entirely different, but she allows herself the chance to learn and grow in her relationships.

This book took a bit of time for me to get into, and while on the one hand one could just pause at any time since each letter is usually two pages, and at most four. But one thing I disliked was the lack of chapters. I felt I needed to really set aside time to read it, which perhaps the author intended, but that meant for the first week or so I just avoided reading it if I only had 20 minutes or so.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Sure

Rating:
2 Stars

In a nutshell:
Anger, vulnerability, and desperately needing an honest editor.

Best for:
I can see that many people have sung the praises of this book. If you’re interested in reading it, maybe see if the people who liked it seem to have similar taste to you? And no matter what, don’t pick the audio book.

Quote that made me think:
N/A

Why I chose it:
Memoir read by the author. That’s like, at least 25% of what I read. Kinda wish I hadn’t.

Review:
Book CN: Child sexual assault, domestic violence

Some memoirs written by famous people are brilliant. The can get to the heart of really tricky matters, discuss important issues, and help the reader feel as though they have gotten to know the author. At the same time, I think that we all know that every memoir author has to make decisions about what to include and what to leave out. Sometimes that means one gets a fun little collection of essays that shows some vulnerability but that the author has been clear isn’t the full story, which is absolutely fine (like Anna Kendrick’s Scrappy Little Nobody). Sometimes that means one reads what feels quite self indulgent and lacking self-awareness (like Rebel Wilson’s Rebel Rising).

Here we get something else – the ‘maybe this story should have stayed between you and your therapist’ memoir. And that is NOT to say that memoirs cannot or should not dive into really tricky, challenging, even uncomfortable topic areas. I think a great example of this is Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died. Great writing, tough topics, but I got the sense that the author had processed her emotions, and her story, and gotten to a point where she could tell it.

I don’t think Applegate is there yet. I think she has faced – and come through – way more than any one person should have to handle. And she’s very forthcoming about how all of it has affected her. She leans HEAVILY into the opposite of bright-siding things – she is more likely to focus on the negatives than the positives in any situation. And that is her absolute right – she gets to decide how she handles the trials she faces. But there’s an overall chaos to this memoir that does not work in its current form. I think the editor and publisher have let Applegate down, because she has put so much of herself out there, in a book that ultimately is not, to me, well done. And as always, it feels gross to write that about someone’s life story, but the book is telling her story, and I think her story deserved better.

She also suffers from the same thing I’ve seen in other memoirs – the inclusion of problematic people without acknowledging it. This is such a small thing, but in a book where there isn’t actually just a flood of name dropping, two names she does choose to drop somewhat affectionately are Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt. Two men who have been accused of domestic abuse. Wild.

As I said in the title, what I think may have deeply impacted my feelings on this book was the bizarre delivery of the audio book. When talking about things she will go from chuckling to actually crying, to making weird sarcastic voices in places where it doesn’t quite make sense. It felt as though someone was reading it as sort of a joke melodrama audition? Where they’d not read the material beforehand but got to parts where they wanted to make an acting choice and just went all over the place? It was disconcerting to the point that I again want to know where were the people who should have caught this. Where was the audio book producer, the voice coach? Was she receiving proper support when having to put her voice to the words she’d written about her own trauma? It was just … off. So I do wonder if reading a hard copy of the book would have led me to a different conclusion. Alas, I’m not about to read this again, so this review will stand as is.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
No.

Rating:
3.5 Stars

In a nutshell:
Una has left Reykjavik to take a job in a remote small town in Iceland, spending the winter teaching two young girls. While there, things transpire.

Best for:
Fans of the genre of cozy, Icelandic mysteries.

Quote that made me think:
N/A

Why I chose it:
I love Ragnar Jónasson’s books.

Review:
Una is a bit of a frustrating character, but also somewhat relateable. She’s lost and looking to change things up, and while a move in general seems like a reasonable choice, picking a place with fewer than a dozen residents and thirty minutes from the nearest proper grocery store is a bit extreme. She vastly underestimates the insulatr nature of a town with just ten residents, most of whom grew up there. She’ll never really belong, but the question she wrestles with is can she fit in?

She stays with the mother of one of her pupils, in a house that might be haunted. But then one of the pupils dies, and there is possibly a missing man who has disappeared in town. Is any of it connected? Do the townspeople know what’s really going on? And if they do — will they share it with Una?

The townspeople are often infuriating, and there were a couple of scenes with them that pissed me off to no end – like I could feel my blood pressure and anxiety cresting. I get why the scenes were necessary for the book, but ugh, I didn’t like that at all.

The book resolved fairly nearly, though not entirely in a way I would have liked. Even so, this was an interesting read. As is somewhat standard in Jonasson’s books, there is the main story, and a side story, and it isn’t clear until the end how the two stories interact. But they always do. Predictable? Yeah. But for me, it’s entertaining nonetheless.

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Yes

Rating:
4 Stars

In a nutshell:
Noah, Loralei, Charlie, Alice and Izzy are a family of five heading to Charlie’s last lacrosse tournament before he heads to university on a scholarship. He is behind the wheel of the family’s self-driving minivan, with his dad Noah next to him. There is a car accident, and the individuals in the other car die.

Best for:
Those wrestling with the creeping of AI into every aspect of our lives, and what that means for personal and communal responsibility.

Quote that made me think:
“We do the world no good when we throw up our hands and surrender to the moral frameworks of algorithms.”

“When humans do something wrong, they generally face consequences…Algorithms face no such consequences for their misbehavior, either societal or emotional. Punishment, guilt, culpability are alien to them. There are no moral qualms in an algorithm.”

Why I chose it:
I was a bit hesitant when I saw the ‘Oprah’s Book Club’ sticker (she did help platform grifters Dr Phil and Dr Oz), but my sister-in-law mentioned it was on her list, and I generally trust her taste in books. Plus the premise was intriguing.

Review:
I tore through this book because I found the plot interesting, and the writing clever. But I also enjoyed the philosophical questions underpinning the actions taking place on the page.

The book is told almost entirely from the point of view of the father Noah, who is a generally smart guy (he’s an attorney), but I think he’s meant to stand in for all of us who kinda get the issues with AI but don’t quite know all the details or understand exactly what questions need to be asked all the time. His wife Lorelei is an actual expert in AI, a bit of a rock star in her field of ethics of algorithms, and someone who is clearly grappling with the morality of it all.

While the actions of the book are set in motion with the car accident, nearly the entire book takes place over the course a few days about a month after the accident, when the family returns to seaside rental to spend a week just enjoying each other and recuperating. But the house is next door to a compound that we learn is owned but a tech billionaire. A tech billionaire with a daughter Charlie’s age, and they end up getting along QUITE well.

Charlie is being investigated for the collision that sets the book in motion, and it becomes increasingly clearer that there is more going on. Was the car driving itself? Was it the AI that fucked up, or did Charlie do something wrong? To that end, there is a side plot where we get another perspective – that of Charlie’s sister Alice, via her conversations with her AI ‘friend.’

The book has the plot action, but as I said, it also is dealing with real questions. From as basic (ish) as ‘how do we sort out the safest way of using self-driving technology’ to ‘what role should AI have in military action’, the book explores so many of the challenges that I don’t think society is taking seriously enough. There’s zero mention of the ecological impact of AI use, which is fine, as that’s not the focus of the book, but it’s a reminder to me that there is so much that AI can already fuck up, and society has entrusted some of the least trustworthy people (e.g. billionaires) with implementing this technology. And what happens when it causes harm? Who suffers? Do CEOs go to prison? Do companies get fined out of existence, their founders banned from starting new companies in their place? Who is, in a word, culpable?

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Yes

Rating:
4 Stars

In a nutshell:
Gilda is anxious. Or maybe depressed? Or perhaps having a heart attack? She’s definitely unemployed and needs a job. So why not a Catholic church receptionist? Perfect for a gay atheist.

Best for:
Those who liked books like “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine”

Quote that made me think:
“I am smiling despite it. I am presenting as happy because people prefer that.”

“I find it so bizarre that I occupy space, and that I am seen by other people.”

“It’s strange people don’t like how their bodies look. It’s strange we waste any of our time concerning ourselves with how our skin drapes over our bones or how fat cultivates.”

Why I chose it:
I was perusing my favorite bookstore in Seattle and saw this one, and it did not disappoint. The cover caught my eye and the blurb kept me interested.

Review:
What a delightful surprise! This book could have felt weirdly dark, or cheesy in the vaguely philosophical questions Gilda asks throughout, but in the hands of author Austin it instead feels grounded. I believe that Gilda is going through it, HAS been going through it, and isn’t sure what she wants to be doing. She cares about her life but also finds it hard to do the basics like get up for work on time, or clean dishes in a reasonable amount of time.

It’s the former that leads us to the main plot of the book: when she is late too many times, Gilda is fired from her job at a book store. She also gets in a minor car accident, and has a challenging relationship with her parents. She sees a flyer for therapy and goes to the address, which turns out to be a Catholic church. When she arrives, the priest assumes she is there for the receptionist job, and she just goes along with it, not revealing that she is an atheist and also a lesbian.

Through her work at the church, as well as her time dating Eleanor (and possibly dating a guy she definitely is not interested in), she starts to spiral, but also make some connections she’s not made before. In the background is the question over the death of the person whose job Gilda has taken but this isn’t a murder mystery. I don’t quite know how to define this book, but I appreciate it and I enjoyed reading it. Gilda is complicated but relatable, and by the end I just want the best for her

Would I recommend it to its target audience:
Yes