Julia

Wonderful. I think all U.S. history taught in high school include An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States and this book - maybe bookending the year? Treuer powerfully interweaves historical documents, speeches, policy, etc. with personal narrative in his central argument: the story of Indigenous Americans has never ended, but persisted, with all the complexity that any human history has. His interviewees were generous in sharing their stories, and Treuer is also generous in sharing his own positionality. At the end, I did find myself wondering what this book would look like if published after 2020, but I think that's all part of Treuer's point: Native peoples will continue to change and adapt with the times as will we all.

The Ravenel series is starting to blur together for me, but I think I really liked this one? A Kleypas weakness is that she doesn't write enough heroines in bigger bodies, but Cassandra is one. Also plenty of good banter from other characters met in the series. I was curious to see how she would redeem Tom Severin, who has been an ass in a few of the previous novels, but she pulled it off. Overall, a fun, characteristic romp.

Really loved this - dystopian in all the best ways. Comparisons to Atwood are completely inevitable, I think (and Atwood's blurb is on the cover), but Alderman as akin to Atwood without being derivative. Multiple narratives are deftly interwoven, the countdown chronology is the drumbeat of a propulsive plot, and there are so many interesting questions raised by the world Alderman has conceived. The only thing I didn't love was the denouement. It felt a bit didactic in a way that none of the rest of the novel did, and I think it might have been stronger without it. Still, a great read!

These are just so consistently pleasant! The main issue here is that West Ravenel isn't nearly as terrible as he thinks he is, especially after exposure to his charm and kindness across the previous 4 Ravenel books. I'm a sucker for the the reappearance of the Wallflowers and their spouses, however, and this book has good heat. Plus it's nice to have a break from the female protagonists as virgins.

I liked this! Nice to have a Kleypas novel not focused on the "upper class," and lots of fun historical doctoring details in here. This suffers a bit from being several years old, because I think a current re-write could have leaned more into British colonial violence against the Irish, which was an interested subplot. Good mix of suspense and romance.

Read for my collective liberation book club. This book is about healing justice. It is about how to be alive and in relationship with others (human and more than human), but especially in the current US framework of "healthcare." I basically underlined the whole thing, so it was hard for me to even choose a few quotes of Raffo's writing that moved me, but here's two:

"Each of these weave together: stopping the violence, coming in to the present moment, and creating the conditions to allow deep healing. They are each part of the other, but, if we don't hold them with intention, systems of supremacy may find the cracks to, one small bit at a time, bring us to a place where healing is about feeling better within our isolated bubbles rather than a fiercely felt connection with life. None of this should be a task list. It is poetry, an incantation you whisper to yourself as you are planning your day, organizing an action, sitting down with a group of people to dream or act together, showing up out of deep respect for someone else's pain, or claiming your own survival." (p. 29)

"...how are we honoring the sovereignty of life rather than trying to control it so that we feel like we have done a good job?" (p. 84)

Practically perfect! I might go back and make this 5 stars later! I confess that part of the appeal is that this novel included the reappearance of one of my favorite couples from Kleypas' Wallflowers series, plus a cameo from one other character. There's also more of "lady doctor" Garrett Gibson, plenty of back-and-forth between the main couple about the legal erasure of women's personhood in marriage at the time, and a heroine with an "impulse control problem" such that she's the person the plot climax centers around. There's also a bit on Irish separatism here, though, that I think Kleypas has more sensitively handled in other novels (like even the previous novel in this series): here it's treated more as a vehicle for some plot drama and there's a missed opportunity to reexamine colonialism. Part of why I like Kleypas, however, is that's a remarkable thing to be saying about the plot of a romance novel!

It's always hard for me to discern exactly how I feel about romances I tear through quickly, but "generally positive" is my overall response to #2 in The Ravenels. Helen is more agentic than some of Kleypas' heroines (and they're all pretty agentic), Garrett Gibson gets introduced as the "lady doctor," and Kleypas has some of her typically good subplots about sociopolitical issues (in this case, anti-Welsh bias endemic to British colonialism). I will say overall that I find her novels pretty equally sexy, which is a great thing to be able to count on in a romance novel!

I haven't read any Kleypas since the beginning of 2023 (her Hathaways series), so excited to bookend (hah...I'll see myself out) with another series! This has all the Kleypas characteristics I read for: smart women, well-developed relationships in addition to the romantic duo (in this case, two brothers maturing with good humor together), class politics, etc. I liked that the "crisis" in this one came mid-plot, not 75% of the way through, and looking forward to plowing through the rest of these.

I wish I liked this better! There are many lovely tidbits in here, and it did make me like birds even more than I already do. Straussmann is a little (or a lot) judgy about competitive birding, and I think the book suffers a bit from what ornothology research is geared toward, which veered toward one too many studies about feeding strategies than I'm actually interested in. I suspect because it's relatively easy to study.

I started reading this with my collective liberation book club before the most recent conflict erupted, and finished it last night, the day Netanyahu formally declared war against Hamas. It was pretty instructive to follow a fellow book club member's advice to compare U.S. coverage of this with other countries, now that this book has enabled me to disentangle Zionism from Jewishness and better see the purposefully hidden entanglements between Zionism, settler-colonialism, and White supremacy. This book is beautiful and necessary, and I learned a great deal while also recognizing I have much more learning to do. I just wish it had had even more poetry!

Taken from my mother's library. Do you ever find yourself reading a translation and feeling jealous of the folks who got to read it in its original language? Not to knock the translator, because the prose of this absolutely sings - I just suspect it's even more exquisite in Polish. I loved the magical realism, loved the embedded study of Blake and astrology, loved the narrator winding her way through town and the woods knowing few people are more invisible than an older woman.

Charming, charming, charming!! Hibbert for sure sticks to a plot arc formula, so that feels less fresh by the 3rd time, but each character is truly unique, and it's nice to get cameos from the other Brown sisters. Plus, Hibbert is really, really gifted at representation (e.g., for this novel, neurodivergence) in a way that feels loving, genuine, and not preachy.

Talia Hibbert is 2/2 in the 2/3rds of the Brown sisters trilogy I've devoured. This isn't a full 5 stars for me because Dani's commitment phobia is so similar to Chloe's, but is still relatable and charming, and the dynamic with her love interest is sufficiently unique to the first one to make it enjoyable if not surprising. Plus these books are funny! #DrRugbae forever. I am also always here for a bisexual protagonist of a heterosexual romance novel when it's not treated as a token schtick, and Hibbert is A+++ at including reality (e.g., anxiety disorders! chronic pain!) into her romance novels without weighing them down.

I'm reserving the right to amend this star rating after rating the whole Brown sisters trilogy. So far, so excellent! I'm not sure what more you could want in a romance novel: real adult characters who talk about their feelings, hot hot sex, and Tibbert is very funny, to boot! Perhaps the clearest indication of how good this is is that I ordered the other two books the day after finishing this one.

This a 3.5-4 star most of the way through, until the end which BLEW MY MIND. I liked House of Earth and Blood just fine, but was feeling a bit Maas-ed out. After the ending of this one, however, my friend's exhortation to JUST READ THIS made perfect sense. You know an author's hooked you on the plot(s) when you feel aggravated that the next one doesn't come out for SIX MONTHS! Patience is not one of my virtues. My only plot-related note is that Maas is getting gayer as she goes, and I'm in full support of that!

Was just sitting here twiddling my thumbs, because who knows when another of Maas' ACOTAR books will be published, and then a friend recommended the Crescent City series (and to skip the Throne of Glass series). Don't let my star rating fool you: I was captivated! Maas knows how to write imperfect characters you really root for, and Bryce Quinlan are Hunt Athalar are great examples. What kept this just a bit less zippy than something like A Court of Mist and Fury or A Court of Silver Flames was both slightly clunkier world-building (I'm not sure how else to say this, but this high fantasy world has too many middle managers), and there's plenty of sexual tension, but not one full sex scene! So prob great for folks who find some of the later ACOTAR books too steamy.

This is a powerful anthology: Page & Woodland make lyrically clear that healing justice is more than just "healing" and "justice," and chart a line from past to future of what liberation looks like. A few standouts included Kenyon Farrow's chapter ("A House Is a Temple: How Dance Music Culture Became a Refuge in the HIV/AIDS Epidemic) and related playlist, and Page's chapter, "Our Land as Kin," with such powerful wisdom from environmental justice activists. One particular theme that will stay with me is how Page & Woodland normalized and depathologized the ebbs and flow of activist work. Would recommend for anyone thinking about sustainabile activism.

Really enjoyed this. Daunis Firekeeper and Perry Firekeeper-Birch are an amazing auntie-niece pair across this and Firekeeper's Daughter. Perry is smart and sassy and impetuous and loving, and there are so many excellent parts (like her complicated relationship with twin sister Pauline). 4 stars instead of 4.5 because I wanted a little more of the cute love story, and the end felt like it had one plot twist too many. Will read whatever Boulley writes next! Plus, loved the detail that she was inspired to write this by a tweet from Sarah C. Montoya: "movie idea: laura croft but she's native and returning artifacts that meuseums stole." Yes yes yes!

I don't know how to summarize this except to say that this is a collection of the most extraordinary love letters from Maynard & Betasamosake Simpson to each other, to their communities, and to possible futures. They made space to bear witness to our current world while imagining new ones; two Maynard quotes especially captured each half of this dialectic for me:

"I am exhausted by the notion that the 'age of humans' - and all the violent universality that the term presumes and disguises - is responsible for what is threatening our communities today. It voids the current catastrophe of its politics, of its history. Put otherwise, it is a way of 'All Lives Matter'-ing the climate crisis by erasing both the real authors and the first victims of the crimes enacted on planetary life." (p. 18-19)

"To value collective livinginess, to touch and know life fully, to know a life that is not in some way predicated on and subsidized by the suffering of another: I suspect that is what liberation is." (p. 250).

Lending library. It's been over a year since I read another of these, and now I really think I'll be able to resist revisiting them. I was entertained, but at the cost of filling my head with stuff that has aged really poorly, and a captivating but also totally irritating dynamic in the central love triangle. Plenty of flirting in this one that felt frustrating as opposed to fun. The internet tells me that Stephanie Plum still hasn't chosen between Joe Morelli and Ranger more than a dozen other books later, which: a) neither of those men would put up with that shit for that long, and b) my completely unsolicited two cents is that Evanovich should have just written them as a throuple, clearly!

Two therapy clients recommended this to me in one week, so I figured I'd better get to it ASAP! This is just so, so good. One could hardly wish for a better hero that Daunis Firekeeper, plus everything else a person could want in fantastic YA: a fast-paced plot, lovingly crafted and complex characters, zero underestimation of teenage intelligence and wisdom, and, in this case, Boulley's centering of Ojibwe history and culture as healing and resilience. There are times when her writing style feels a tiny bit didactic/overly expositional, but that's the smallest of quibbles. I bought her second book at the same time, and am glad I did, because I wanted to hear more from the Firekeeper women right away!