Eduardo Santiago

It must be so hard to write a memoir: you need an interesting life story; sensitivity to those you’re writing about; and you need to connect to your reader. This reader, old and crotchety, found none of those in this book. I had hoped for more magpie; instead it was more (much more) about mental illness and generational trauma, but, see above. I was never able to relate to the narrator; instead I found myself wondering about his ability to connect with others. I could not understand the relationships.

Biggest and happiest takeaway: a newfound admiration and respect for David Gilmour, the author’s adopted father. Yes, that David Gilmour. I had never known anything about him as a person, only loved his music, and now, wow, what a beautiful patient giving human being he is (independently confirmed). For this reason alone I am glad to have finished: it lightens my heart to learn of kind decent people like that, particularly when they’re famous artists.

Uncomfortable for its trauma, multi-multi-generational and recognizable and so brutal. Uncomfortable also because there’s this problem I have with some memoirs: the people being written about aren’t there to defend themselves nor even present their versions of stories. Figueroa acknowledges trauma and systemic racism and patterns of abuse and toxic masculinity on one hand, while on the other demonstrating (IMO) little compassion toward the people in her life who are products of those. She comes off as a lost soul, desperately grasping for meaning and relevance; this does not always end well.

Unrated. I didn’t especially enjoy reading this, and am not likely to recommend it to friends, but I wish Figueroa success with this book. My sincere hope is that she found the writing cathartic and healing, and can use it to break the chain of abuse.

DNF, p.113. Religious fanatics; prophets; complex intrigue and plotting, deception and ruses. State-sanctioned mass executions. Abusive casteism. That’s just not what I need in July 2024. Maybe, if humankind survives the election, I’ll try again next year. Beautiful writing tho, descriptive and flowing. Occasional stunning moments of insight about humans and the systems we build.

Astonishing, powerful, gripping, and increasingly more so on all counts as the book went on. The pacing, for one, is phenomenal: started off intriguing, then kept developing, gradually, mercilessly. I felt more absorbed with each chapter. It's not so much the what—we know there’s going to be bad shit, or, more precisely, we know there was a lot of bad shit and some of it is going to get shown to us—no, it's the how: how do good people live with those memories? How do they live, day after day, with monsters?

The first-person narrator is a gem. Honorable, hardworking, capable, and deeply moral. I kept thinking of him as an embodiment of Stoic ideals, wondering if Forna has read Epictetus and Seneca. (Did I say "him"? Yes: Forna writes a completely believable male protagonist, with access to his rawest feelings and motivations. How can she do that?) (Okay, maybe a touch more sensitive than most males, but not impossibly so.) The rest of the characters are... well, they’re props. Lovable or despicable despite their lack of depth; this isn’t their story.

TW for cruelty, violence, heartbreak and suffering galore. Highly, highly recommended regardless.

Do you ever wonder, when looking at combat photos, about the person behind the lens? Addario provides a riveting, sobering account of her journey from ambitious young cub to seasoned and scarred veteran. Deeply personal, sensitive, and moving.

Combat is bad enough, but that life entails much more hardship. Disrespect, abuse, humiliations. Having to be civil to subhuman vermin such as Talibanis or Israeli soldiers. Seeing her work censored or filtered by cowardly editors. Relationships are nearly impossible to nourish; she frankly recounts her discoveries and setbacks and, finally, great fortune. And the brutal impact of seeing endless suffering. Despite all this, her huge heart comes through in her writing. I’m really sorry I missed her talk at SFILF. And I will never again look at war reporting the same way.

Wow wow wow. “Mirrored Heavens is the culmination of a dream,” Roanhorse writes in her end Acknowledgments. An amazing and exquisite and satisfying one, and I’m so ashamed to have doubted that she would finish the series. This is a worthy finale to a powerful epic.

Also brutal. So much intrigue, plotting, treachery, betrayal, cruelty and death. And kindness and love and complexity. Roanhorse kept me on my toes, played with my sympathies and my heart. What I most admire about her is that when she writes about gods she makes them truly, utterly incomprehensible. <i>That is how gods should be to us!</i> By understanding that, she creates a world that is fascinating and, more importantly, fair. Not in the justice sense; I mean in the sense of not cheating. Nobody is all good or all evil or simple. Evil things happen, as do good things, and some people try their best to swing things one way or the other, and ... well, the story is a good one, rich and fulfilling all the way to the last page.

Warning: like with Fevered Star, Roanhorse makes no allowances for readers who might not remember every detail of the first two books. So, reread them or prepare for a rocky ride.

Intense; a helluva ride. At times impenetrable, then shifting eerily to what felt like vignettes from my own lived experience and sometimes even innermost thoughts. Mostly somewhere in between. Early on I started thinking of it—with apologies to Milan Kundera—as The Unbearable Heaviness of Being and it stuck, felt more and more appropriate as I kept reading, and I mention it not to discourage you but to prepare you: Shapland’s neuroses are weighty. I needed frequent breaks to digest or sometimes just breathe. (Maybe she’d find mine equally weighty. Let’s not find out.)

Five long essays, each with a central theme and many tangents. Toxins, pollution, environmental racism, health (Los Alamos figures prominently in this first chapter, a curious serendipity given my having read 109 East Palace immediately beforehand). Fear, racism, moving through the world as a woman. Consumerism. Self-awareness and mindfulness. And, most interesting to me, the cultural obsession with having babies. Yes, she goes there, explores it from all sorts of directions, bluntly and with some perspectives that were new to me—possibly because I’m male, although I think it might be that I am less tolerant of fools than she is.

Shapland impressed me at this year’s Santa Fe Literary Festival; her stage conversation showed great vulnerability and wisdom. Her writing reinforces my impression of her as a remarkable person, insightful and gifted. Even despite the incomprehensible parts (mostly cultural references I’m too old for) and despite her annoying fretting about the opinions of others (she’s young, I think and hope she’ll grow out of it), this is a phenomenal book that I’m going to be recommending loudly to my friends. Even those with (wonderful! amazing! and I mean it!) children.

Exquisite. This is the human side of the Manhattan Project: the personalities of those who made it happen, the relationships, sacrifices, conflicts, logistics, and connections. Conant is by no means objective: she shows great warmth toward the heroes—McKibbin, Oppenheimer (J. Robert), Groves—and contempt for the villains—Teller, Oppenheimer (Kitty), and, later, McCarthy and Strauss. She seems to believe that women are people (!), so she frequently includes stories of professionals and wives and WACs and others. All of this adds up to a lovely and sensitive work.

If you want to read only one book on this part of history, and you care more about human elements than technical/scientific aspects, this is probably the book you want. And for those of us on the Hill, who already know most of the basics, this should be required reading.

A bit of a stretch, then increasingly so, well into preposterous and beyond. The main characters are Mary Sues, the villains cartoonish, the situations more and more hokey. Which makes the tension nonexistent because—not a spoiler—the reader knows that the heroes will miraculously escape this predicament and the next. It would probably work better as a movie than it did as a book, and I bet that was the hope. (If they do make it a movie, they should get Sydney Greenstreet to play the small role that’s perfect for him. I would totally watch that.)

Anyhow, fun for a change of pace. Noble heroes, imaginative albeit contrived story elements. I’ll probably stick to Preston’s nonfiction in future: that’s much more my thing.

Even in a post-2016 world, where we see new disgusting lows almost daily, the horrors documented in this book are appalling. Monstrous in scale, in cruelty, in shamelessness and just pure evil. Also some good, in the form of one helluva decent FBI agent, Tom White: his story—before, during, and after the Osage assignment—is one of nobility and honor. Not quite enough to balance out the monsters, but enough to leave me feeling some gratitude.

Grann shows tremendous respect toward the Osage. His research is exhaustive, and he is careful to remain within the boundaries of fact (with clearly identified moments of conjecture). This rigor sometimes makes for repetition or dryness, but it’s absolutely the right and responsible thing to do: the book is more trustworthy that way, its impact more powerful.

By page 30 I was strongly motivated to DNF; kept going because of the reviews. I regret continuing.

Narrated first-person by an affectless middle-aged man, completely dissociated from the events he relates, passively moving from one situation to the next but with no agency or engagement. You know those people who love to tell you their dreams? “And then this happened and then this and then I got in a car except it became a plane and then ...”? Like that, for two hundred pages. I’m not the kind of person who loves listening to dreams, so I found it increasingly tedious and even more so once I figured out what was going on. (The “twist” at the end is no such thing, it was telegraphed early and became increasingly obvious.)

Binyam is fiercely smart: there are snippets of insight, cultural criticism, awareness of self-awareness that delighted me ... but briefly, and too rarely. This was too long, drawn out and rambling. I will optimistically seek out her shorter publications.

Disappointing after She Who Became the Sun. Much more intrigue and plotting and betrayal (yawn), many more plot twists, and almost zero tension: a few chapters in, you realize that no matter how dire the predicament, Zhu will face it with a gleeful "my fate is to win, so I will win." One or two dei ex machinae later, plus some knob tweaking on the Infinite Improbability Drive, and the crisis is solved. On to the next one.

Much more snappy repartee. Cute, fun, but awkward. More expository dialog. Too many wild coincidences to keep track of. Much more slaughter and cruelty, and a few (too few) tossed-in handwringing moments about the horrors of war, then back to more war. "It's for a noble cause." Two stars overall, but good ending pushed it up to three.

Heavyhanded, at times. Clumsy exposition through dialog, at times. Preposterous ... at times. Also gripping, beautifully written, well paced, compassionate, pragmatic, morally flexible, and unputdownable.

A smorgasbord of characters, all of them with strong drives: for power, revenge, justice, kindness; sometimes in odd proportions. I realize that makes it sound like a boring palace war intrigue blah blah soap opera, and there's quite a bit of that, but there's SO much more: the more interesting characters are profound. Worth journeying with: they keep the reader on their toes. They grow in unexpected ways.

Important material, poorly presented. Wish I could say otherwise. It is not controversial in 2024 to demand greater respect for Indigenous voices in environmental sciences, and Hernandez has valuable points to make about how to do so, but her bellicose tone and the publisher’s sloppy editing made for an unpleasant reading experience. Best part is a list of six principles on pages 87-91. Some seem measurable, others are uncomfortably handwavey. I want to be an ally, but am hoping for other entries in the field.

Six days ago, listening to Hua Hsu speaking at the Santa Fe International Literary Festival, I found myself thinking: what a beautiful human being. An hour after that I got to watch him in the hallway, interacting with fans and other invited writers, demonstrating patience and kindness and grace; initial impression confirmed. Of all the books I bought that weekend, his was the first I launched into. In hindsight it was a poor decision: the better decision would've been to read <i>Stay True</i> when it first came to my attention a year and a half ago.

This is a book about friendship and loss and wisdom, and it will only really make sense to anyone over forty. Even then, probably only a certain subset of that cohort: the quieter, nerdier, introspective ones. Hsu writes with gentleness and humility toward his teenage self, reminding us of some of the absolute certainties we held at that age; of the ease with which we came up with opinions and how ill-informed those were. The details of his youth made no impression on me—I still have no idea what a zine is nor do I know any of Nirvana's music—but the soul is completely recognizable.

So. Much. Trauma.

Everyone in this book is so wounded. So many ways to be abused; so many ways to cope. So much suffering. My heart goes out to Figueroa.

I’m going to punt on writing any sort of review and on assigning any stars. It’s too complicated. On the whole the book didn’t work for me—too many fantastical elements, too much bleakness—but I kept reading, felt drawn in, and am glad to have done so. I just don’t think I got everything out of it that the author intended.

Delightful and rewarding for the heart, the senses, and the brain: Garvin understands them all. The book hit so many of my buttons: grief; injustice; (mis)communicating; caring; belonging; responsibility; the joy of curiosity. The characters were complex, the villains despicable, their relationships growing ever more nuanced as the book developed. They all felt real. The science felt real, as did Frankie’s love of learning. The writing was evocative, rich in a way that my more visualizationally gifted friends might love; even I found myself closing my eyes at times and trying to see, hear, and feel.

Although the main storyline takes place in 1998, some of the zeitgeist felt anachronistic, more like 1978; I’d like to know if you felt that too. Some of the events are emotionally manipulative, especially near the end, ... and I was totally OK with it. I left the book feeling thoughtful and satisfied.

If someone had asked twenty-year-old me what I thought the most difficult challenges of my life would be I probably would’ve replied with something about technology, career, financial stability, something banal like that. By thirty I knew better: communicating with others is by far the hardest part of my life. And by forty I had a fair inkling that the effort was going to be a lifelong one.

I was lucky. Sure, I wish I’d known all that earlier, had more time to learn and practice and connect, but I’m still thankful to have learned it at all: not everyone does. Since I was late to the game, I’ve relied on books for my ramping up and ever-continuing education: most notably Nasty People and Nonviolent Communication. And now—did you think I’d forgotten that this was supposed to be a book review?—possibly Supercommunicators, too. Too early to tell, but judging from my notes and page markers I think it has a good chance.

Duhigg’s principal focus is on recognizing three overall types of high-stakes conversations, which he memorably sums up as: Do you want to be Helped, Hugged, or Heard? From that starting point he elaborates fairly effectively, diving deeper into each, offering research, examples, and useful insights. Occasional tangents, such as advice for communicating online, were germane and welcome. My one quibble is hard to describe, maybe a chemistry thing: I occasionally found myself unable to relate. And I’ll leave it at that.

Four stars IMO, but five in importance. I found much new and thoughtful material in here despite my occasional disconnects. Your experience will differ from mine, you may get more out of it, or less, but I urge you to read it because we’re all works in progress, and we all have room for improvement in how we relate to each other. And because, despite it being the most challenging element of my life, communicating is also the most rewarding.

Not what I was expecting but wonderful regardless. Thought-provoking essays, mostly disconnected from each other, about humans and our connections with animals. Some are broad, some (Keiko) highly specific. Some relate to her own life, some not in the least. Most are essay length, the last 20% are short vignettes.

Orlean’s style is intriguing: she has a complex relationship with animals, is fascinated by them, gets attached, but she also manages to deromanticize then in her writing. Much of what she writes is uncomfortable, because much of what humans do to animals is uncomfortable. So is pretty much any aspect of any being’s life. I found myself thinking hard.

Design and inclusion are two of my hot-button favorite topics, so I was really eager to read this... and therefore really disappointed by it. This is a book for activists and community builders and extroverts, not for engineers or what I think of as designers. Even after realizing that I still couldn't get into the book. The tone felt patronizing, Mister Rogersy. Content was poorly edited and awkward to read. Physically, the pages were stiff; hard to flip. I expected much better design.

Unrated, because I’m clearly not the target audience. I want to think that maybe there’s good material here for someone else.

Really difficult to get into: the narrative voice felt mushy, distant. Maybe that was the point, given the themes of prejudice, alienation, and loneliness? Maybe her technique is brilliant but doesn’t translate well? Or maybe (probably) I’m just not smart enough to get it.

Riveting. Exquisite writing, masterful pacing, memorable characters.

In a recent interview with Dr. Laurie Santos, Malcolm Gladwell unconvincingly argues against journey-is-the-destination thinking. About halfway through this book, when it became increasingly obvious how it was going to end and how we were going to get there, I found myself remembering that interview with amusement because there was no way I was leaving this delicious journey. (To be fair, Gladwell’s focus was narrow and unrelated to reading).

Three narratives: one first-person, two third-person, an intriguing and effective choice that slowly starts to make sense as we learn how the protagonists’ stories are connected. Many story elements reminded me of Susanna Clarke—the nature of the magic, the complexity and depth of the main characters. Dark, in different ways. Hart’s voice is unique, though. I was hooked early, and devoured the book in one weekend.

For a brief while this was on my dont-bother list; I am grateful to A. for insisting that I try and for suggesting that I read with attention.

Another installment in the ever-popular Poor Life Choices series, but with a twist: the author is self-aware. Sometimes a little too much so: her childhood reminiscences have more emotional depth than I can really buy. Sometimes I let it go, sometimes not so much, but this is a powerful book regardless. Part memoir, part history lesson, part ethnography, and one hundred percent filled with grace. Taffa is not gentle: not with colonizers, nor her family, nor herself. Throughout the book she expresses her childhood anger over shitty situations: at those who caused them and at those who perpetuate them. She doesn’t sugarcoat the violence, rage, helplessness she grew up seeing, or the systemic bigotry and humiliations she experienced everywhere she lived. She is candid about her childhood selfishnesses, in a way that demonstrates remarkable forgiveness toward herself and others. And in the end, this is not a spoiler, she makes good with her life.

It’s a complex book. The Taffa who wrote this is in her fifties, still (justifiably!) angry but now wise enough to focus her energy. This is a book for all of us in the Southwest, may we learn to see and prevent injustices.