Amanda
Like the blog, but more of a personal story/memoir than a how-to. Her wedding is not the wedding I want, but even for an offbeat-lite person like me (white dress and all), this is a good reminder that it's your wedding, so do what you like. And don't do what you don't.
Loooooooved this. The minor characters are so great, especially Adelaide, who is completely Leslie-Knope-in-high-school. I like that the major conflict/story here is just about finding a place where you belong. Pretty sure everyone can relate to that.
Loved this book. It was realistic and complex and resisted the easy answers. I loved Deanna and her brother and Stacy.
Notes, May 2013: I wish Lee had been a bit more developed. I have no idea why she forgave Deanna and I wish Deanna had been the one to start that conversation.
Kate Bishop is better than you. This book is right up there with Matt Fraction's Hawkeye for me in terms of writing, characterization, and amazing and inventive art.
Star deducted for sexual harassment apologia by the authors, Rush Limbaugh and Tony Kornheiser's self-serving bullshit, and the bizarre paean to Michelle Beadle (of all people) toward the end. Really liked that they didn't ignore race/gender throughout, but got a bit bogged down in all the corporate stuff. The offscreen drama between personnel was the best part.
A little bit much as an audiobook - some of the grosser chapters were pretty rough going, and it's a lot harder to skim in an audiobook. I don't think I'm especially squeamish, but the chapter about grafting live puppy heads onto living dogs was making me sick, which isn't great for driving. That was one chapter of 12, though, and I love Mary Roach's style otherwise.
Some weird hiccups in the audio edition - sounded like they were trying to do an effect to differentiate footnotes from regular text, but it wasn't used consistently. Sometimes it'd be in the middle of a sentence or just a clause that didn't make sense grammatically as a footnote.
Anyway, as to the text itself. The earlier stuff about the territorial era was interesting, but I got a little bit lost in the acronyms. The very early stuff about the beginning of wrestling was great. Some of the later chapters were stuff that had been expanded from the Deadspin columns, which isn't bad, just a note. As a fairly new wrestling fan, this was a good overview of wrestling history, with a focus on (mostly) well-known names. I wish there'd been some non-dead wrestlers profiled, but most of them you get enough information on from their mentions in other chapters.
The first 12 issues are the strongest part of this collection. The rest is good but somewhat disjointed. I enjoy a good one-shot, but some connection to the rest of the book, please. Juan Bobillo's art is adorable; I love how he draws both Jen and She-Hulk.
I should just set up an automatic preorder for anything Courtney Milan writes. I didn't love this quite as much as ones like [b:The Heiress Effect 13489922 The Heiress Effect (Brothers Sinister, #2) Courtney Milan https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1373761621s/13489922.jpg 19028795] or [b:The Suffragette Scandal 17343236 The Suffragette Scandal (Brothers Sinister, #4) Courtney Milan https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1399859670s/17343236.jpg 24081161], but as far as contemporary romances go, it's definitely one of the best ones I've read recently. I wanted more Maria, so I'm glad to see the next book will be about her! The last twist with Blake's dad came a little bit out of nowhere for me, but I ended up liking where it took the story, so I'm not mad. :D
Such a fast, cute, fun read! I love Riley and Ted is exactly who I would've had a crazy crush on in high school.
Ugh, switched editions and Goodreads ate my review. I'll just say that I wish the ending was a little less abrupt (maybe a sequel?) and I really enjoyed the rest of it, particularly all the behind the scenes stuff - it's clear the authors really did their research when it came to all that.
(3.5, rounding up) A light, entertaining listen, though I could've done without the calling audiobook listeners lazy - I can't really read and drive, Aziz! The social science aspect was interesting, but I was really listening to this for Aziz's humor, and I feel like this book could have used a bit more of that. I appreciate the desire to do more than just a written standup routine, though, so I'm rounding up.
Loved the reading in the audio version of this, especially Nick Offerman as Washington and John Slattery as Lafayette. Probably learned more about specifics of the Revolutionary War than ... ever?
This series continues to be super-adorable and I love all the family relationships! Kitty is the best.
Really like romances that continue after the wedding, got a little tired of the “I love you”/”no you don't”, but I guess there needs to be some conflict. Loved the heroine in this one - I seem to really like loudmouthed American heiresses as a genre trope. Probably this is more like 4.5 - plot contrivances make it a 4, but a bonus half-star for the pineapple.
It was a challenge not to stay up all night finishing this book - I guessed some plot points fairly early on, but Abbott's writing is so compelling I wanted to keep reading to see whether I was right and how things played out. I had a hard time getting into Dare Me, but this was amazing and strangely frightening.
Another one that kind of peters out towards the end for me - the villain is almost over-the-top in his cartoonish evil, and his plan doesn't make much sense at all. I love the MC though, and her sisters are wonderful as well.
Loved the MC, but the plot here is ridiculous. Can't say more without spoilers, but it's over the top and then gets resolved way too easily, in a couple of pages, really. The MC was one of my favorite characters in her other appearances in this quartet, so it's disappointing that this book wasn't as good as I was hoping.
I put this one down for like a week and then finished it in two big gulps when I picked it back up. Really liked the MC and the appearances of various other Bridgertons, and even liked the kids, which are usually hit or miss. The male lead wasn't quite as developed for me, but this was fun and one I could see myself returning to as a reread.
Wanted to like this more than I did - I love Black Widow and Hawkeye, and like all the other characters (except Daisy, who I had literally never heard of before starting this book). I'm not really sure why the whole mind-wipe thing needed to be part of the book's premise, because it's creepy in general and even more so with characters like Natasha, what with her backstory. The book mentions that, but doesn't really explain why they went along with it, so ... not convinced. I guess Secret Avengers isn't supposed to be the most lighthearted book, but if I wanted grimdark all the time, I'd go read DC.
Really interesting and not super-technical - I don't know science really well, but the book made it really clear.
Beverly Jenkins is so good at creating fully-realized worlds in her novels - she does the research for her historical romances, and it shows. It's been quite a while since I read [b:Forbidden 25760151 Forbidden (Old West, #1) Beverly Jenkins https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1436290539l/25760151.SY75.jpg 45264426], the first book in the series, but since this takes place 15 years later and in a different location, I didn't feel like I was missing a ton. There's not a ton of conflict in this, and the one big external conflict/drama happens in the last 30 or so pages and is resolved in one chapter, so I honestly think it could've been cut out altogether. Regardless, Beverly Jenkins books have become sort of comfort reading for me, even if they're books I haven't read before - I know most of the characters will be good people, the bad ones will get their consequences, and everyone will end up happy. Plus, I'll learn something about history, all around a win.