I loved this book and it came along just at the absolute right time, in this time when I am grieving the loss of a close friend and in a period of existential despair.  This history and exploration of the role of grief and melancholia in culture and community was actually healing and I appreciated how she situated these in the context of literature, music, and everyday life.  

​Highly recommend.

This youth adult (or even younger even) book addressing gun violence in the context of gang allegiance ​is very short and I see that it has been adapted into a graphic novel--a format I can see working for the piece. As is my usual approach, I had not read anything about the book before starting it and I did not notice how short it was, either.  Because of this, I was quite confused about what was happening initially.  The fantasy portion took a bit for me to figure out and the entire thing was over almost as soon as I got the hang of it.  I can see this being a really good addition to a middle school classroom library or book club, as the ambiguity of the ending leaves open lots of areas for discussion.  

All that said, I kind of liked it, but didn't love it.  Not not recommended.

This was a lot of information about breathing, much of which was interesting and some of which was just unusually pedantic.  It did draw me in, though, making me absolutely paranoid for a few days that I was breathing too much through my mouth and then wondering if I could tape someone else's mouth shut as suggested and described in the book in order to reduce their snoring at night.   I think that for folks more interested in the science of yoga, meditation, stress-management, and breathe work that I am, this would have been a better read. It just didn't pull me down the rabbit hole of minutia that this popular genre of micro-topic-non-fiction can sometimes do.
​Not recommended.

This is an incredibly depressing read.  As if the apocalyptic pandemic plot isn't gloomy enough, the imagined world has death parks for kids where parents make the decision to euthanize their children when things get so back they can't stand to watch them die any longer and they put them on a rollercoaster that causes their death.  Morbid doesn't even come close to the right word.  

Ultimately, of course, the theme of the story is love--love of family and children, love of people, love of life, but the world is haunting and while the layers of the story are complicated and in many places intriguing, I found the depth of sorrow too much.

​Not recommended.

This book was similar to The Book of Form and Emptiness that I just finished earlier this month in that the protagonist has significant delusions that are used to make them an unreliable narrator as their realities are stacked on one another, like a story within a story, but the edges of one story are fuzzy and disorienting.  I did not enjoy the narration of this book, either. It was in an unusual, clipped, and very slow cadence that I didn't like at any speed.  The book is replete with violence and despair.  Definitely not for the faint of heart, which it feels like I must be after several really dark reads in a row here.

​Not recommended

This book is not short on gory details about the killing and dismembering and torturing eels.  The book is also really sad since it spends a lot of energy talking about the demise of the eel population.  

That said, there was also a lot of really interesting history and ecology in this book that offset the gross descriptions of fishing and preparing these absolutely fascinating creatures. Moreover, the way that the author situates the conversation about the history of eels in the midst of really interesting philosophical conversations is captivating. In talking about the eels life span and ability to survive, his discussion of the meaning of time, boredom, and the eel's ability to delay death until the time has come to mature, procreate, and die is just nothing short of enchanting.  I had no idea about the sexual development of eels or their ability to essentially suspend their maturing process for decades while they wait for the time to migrate to where they will mate and then die.  Other interesting history includes the role of the eel in the early colonial American diet and Silent Spring author Rachel Carson's academic research on eels.  Who knew all these random facts could enrapture this reader?

Despite a number of sections that I really did get drawn into, I don't think this makes the recommend list because the graphic violence against these critters was just enough to tip me in the direction of it not being outweighed by the other stuff.

Not recommended.  

It is pretty unusual for me to recommend a self-help book, but this is an unusual self-help book.  Written by and for professional women struggling with burnout, I found a lot of their suggestions practical and useful and their overall themes to be a pleasant departure from the usual rhetoric that is spewed in this genre.  A couple of the concepts I particularly appreciated:

1. The belief that others around us will reciprocate in proportion to what we give them is called trust.  
2. Sadness is a beacon to others that you need help.
3. Active resting is critical to managing stress.

I also loved that they used pop culture examples, including Disney movies, throughout the book that were fun ways to think about the concepts they were suggesting we try.  It is a short read that can be done with lots of disruptions so it is actually perfect for its target audience in that was as well.

Recommendation.

This was a really interesting, depressing, dark book about grief, addiction, mental illness, and survival.  The structure is really clever, with one of the narrators being a book/the book itself and this falls into the category of books with an unreliable narrator.  The twists and mystery of the book kept me engaged in the story, even while the compounding pain of the character's lives was not enticing.  It wasn't like I really loved the characters and continued reading because I was invested in their story or development.  It was more that the plot was fascinating and I was curious where it would take us next.  

One of the things I kept thinking about was how so many families who aren't "making it" could or would be fine but for the compounding of issues.  And by "making it," I mean able to have a good life with some significant happiness and meaning in it.  In this case, the family might have been able to weather a few of the external things that happened if it wasn't that all of these things -- things that realistically can and do happen in families -- happened in close succession.  

The way that the novel unfolds with these unreliable narrators so it isn't entirely clear initially what is real and what is a product of the son's schizoaffective disorder or whether the mother is an actual hoarding or if the landlord is wanting to find an excuse to evict them.  The father's relationship with drugs and his death are similarly clocked in uncertainty as the story unfolds.

Despite how smart this book is, I don't have it on the recommend list because it really is deeply depressing, but also because I found that several passages were felt like preachy social commentary that didn't advance the story.  One example has to do with the library.  The library is a centerpiece of the story and a pretty obvious metaphor.  I think it is common knowledge at this point that libraries have become a de facto mental health care provider in the absence of adequate mental health services and the decline in the relevance of paper books to communities and individual's lives.  But this book really does not let up on this issue and I found it such a distraction.  Those passages that directly address this issue (and quite a few others) could have been eliminated entirely and left the reader to observe this in the story directly instead of being told about it explicitly.  I can see how other readers might be able to get past this part and I might have to if it hadn't been paired with the overall cloud of pain that the book left me with.

​Not not recommended.

rA novel with a slight twist of fantasy since part of the story is narrated by the remarkably bright aquarium octopus.  With a shifting narrator, I actually enjoyed the parts of the story told in this voice the most and wished an entire book, whether this one or another one, had been told by Marcello.  
I am a sucker for a good novel that weaves together multiple strands of people's lives  as they become entangled and intertwined.  This book follows that somewhat predictable format, but even though it is fairly easy to see what is coming in terms of how things tie in, I still found the storytelling to be alluring.

Recommend.

Highly recommend this historical fiction about a chemist struggling in the masculine dominated world of academic science in the 1960s.  I fell in love with the geeky characters and the chosen family put together by the protagonist, who only compromised her unwavering commitment to end sexist stereotypes when there was no better choice--and even then, she pushed back.  The small details that wound through the books were powerful, like the pencil she always wore in her hair, which plays a role in bad times and good.  
The first book of 2023 for me comes in as must-read.

​Recommend.