The prose in this memoir was remarkable, with many of the sections reading more like long poems than short chapters.  The memoir itself was poignant, recounting the author's experience in a Queer, poly relationship that was controlling and abusive.  I found the description of the complexity of the psychological abuse to be both unique in the world of abuse memoirs, but in many ways lacking as she dodged details in a way that left me feeling not only curious, but a bit guilty for wanting to understand more about the dynamics of the relationship. 

Some of her self-reflections are raw and reflect themes that I have heard from many survivors over the years of working with them:

"Afterward,  when she will not stop trying to talk to you or emailling you with flowery apologies on Yom Kappur and when people will not believe what you tell them about her and the dream house, you will wish that she had hit you  .Hit you hard enough that you would have bruised in grotesque and obvious ways, hard enough that you took photos.  Hard enough that you went to the cops.  Hard enough that you could have gotten the restraining order that you wanted.  Hard enough that the common sense that evaded you for the entirety of your time in the dream house had been knocked into you.  You have this fantasy, this fucked up fantasy, of being able to whip out your phone and pull up some awful photo of yourself looking glazed and disinterested and have your face is covered in a pulsing star.  This is, as you said, fucked up,  There are millions of people on the blunt end of a lover's fist who pray for the opposite daily or even hourly and to put that wish out into the universe is demented in the extreme.  You will wish for it anyway."

She just didn't shy away from writing about some of the things that are generally not shared, particularly around how survivors are supposed to be grateful that things weren't worse or having to put their own abuse on a scale of ranking abuse by focusing on how much harder others have it.  I found these to be her most powerful passages. 

The prose switched from first person "I" to second person "you," which was her "I" talking to her younger self as if some of the story was being told to and about her "you."  I found this distracting at times, but also an interesting way of conveying a sense of dissociation.
The author is aware of the uniqueness of her story, knowing that narratives of abuse in Queer relationships are not a part of the abuse memoire genre:

"I knew so few Queer people and most of them were my age, still figuring things out themselves.  I imagine that, one day, I will invite young Queers over for tea and cheese platters and advice and I will be able to tell them, you can be hurt by people who look just like you.  Not only can it happen, but it probably will because the world is full of hurt people who hurt people.  Even if the dominant culture considers you an anomaly, that doesn't mean that you can't be common, common as fucking dirt."

One of the things I particularly loved with the author's use of pop culture, particularly references to things I know well, like 80's pop music and Star Trek. Her discussion of the episode Chain of Command was a brilliant analysis of psychological torture, gas lighting, and brain washing in the context of intimate relationships. 

​Recommend. 

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​This is quite an interesting book for lay people about the study of whales and dolphins, particularly in respect to the question as to whether they have language and whether we will ever be able to interpret those languages.  Apparently, a video of the author nearly getting jumped on by a breaching whale led him to a deepened interest in whales and when the video went viral he got additional notoriety as well, leading ultimately to this book.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee79_7CZ0uM&ab_channel=InsideEdition

Read by the author, his reading voice is soothing, making this a good book to listen to as you fall asleep and not so great for when you are driving.  This is compounded by how there are parts that felt like fillers and that did not hold my attention. Other parts were quite interesting.

I found, for example, the discussion about how scientists have used AI and crowd sourced labor to help them analyze the over-abundance of data they are collecting to look for patterns in whale songs and noises.  To me, this was the most engaging part of the book.  I also particularly liked the history of the "Save The Whales" movement and campaigns.  Sometimes it is easy to forget the extent to which committed activists have always been fighting hard for things like conservation.   

​Not recommended.

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This is an odd book about a really quirky little family trying to navigate a world they don't fit into.  Their loneliness and isolation, even from each other, is palpable, and even as they live together they fail to share their experiences, which could have at least connected them to each other.  The fact that they sometimes succeed in turning towards each other, but aren't able to sustain it in a meaningful way makes this a painful read.  

I didn't love the style of writing.  Written in the first person, the narrator's voice stayed in a young, simplistic style long past when the character grew up.  When the character was young, the voice seemed too old and when she grew up, it seemed to young.  A definite downside of the book, as I found it distracting from the narrative.  I also found some of the fantasy to be hard to follow and backed up and re-read some parts to make sure I understood what happened.  Spoiler alert, the super weird things that you thought you understood you read as having happened are probably what happened.  It wasn't you not paying attention or misunderstanding.  Yes, it will get stranger as it unfolds, some parts coming together to make sense and other parts just getting stranger.

The premise of the story, though, and its quirky characters have a gentle pull to them, leaving me unable to not recommend it.  Thus, it is in the unusual category of Not Not Recommended.

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I am a pretty big Star Trek: The Next Generation fan, so I was pretty excited to start a book that I knew would be about TNG to some extent and that would be read by Captain Picard, I mean Patrick Stewart.  My favorite part of this book, by far, was the part when Stewart writes about his surprise appearance at the 2018 Trek Convention in Vegas.  I was there when they shut down everything and funneled everyone into the main theatre, where we were all wondering what was going on. When Stewart, who was not on the list of stars attending, took the stage, the crowd was at a fevered pitch, but when he announced he was coming back for a new series, everyone lost it.  I imagine it was like being at a large sporting event where everyone in the arena is rooting for the same team and they just won.  People were hugging and drying and screaming and it was an amazing feeling of excitement and joy.  Hearing his perspective of this event brought me back to that moment and there was something amazing to read that he, too, felt that energy and describe it as the best crowd response he has ever experienced in all his years on stage.  

There were other stories in the book that I found touching or interesting.  His rough childhood, including exposure to domestic violence and experience of poverty were moving.  

But all that said, there were for sure things I didn't really know about him before that I found less than charming or endearing.  His unapologetic stories of womanizing, for one, reminded me that Captain Picard he is not.  

Overall, it is a not recommended.  Kind of a disappointment, but there we are.   

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The Rules:  I read 50 books recommended by 50 different friends.
1. Only books I have not read, but if you recommend one in a series that I have not finished you can opt to recommend the next book in the series I haven’t read.
2. Only one recommendation per person. You have to pick just one
3. No duplicate authors.
4. Must be available from Audible or Learning Ally.
5. First 50 recommended are on the list.
6. Any genre, any length. Just make it a book you loved, loved to hate, hated but think I might like, found interesting, or think would be good for me to read.

1. Making It So
2. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
3. How To Speak Whale
*4. The Black Witch
*5. Ma and Me
*6. Against the Loveless World
*7. The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
*8. The Betrayal Bind
9. Let Us Descend
10. Foster
11. Creation
12. Soldier of the Great War
13. Rosalind Parker Takes The Cake
*14. The Devil’s Chessboard
15. There There
16. The Joy of Missing Out
*17. The Winemaker’s Wife
*18. Las Madres
*19. Tom Lake
20. Book of Delights
21. The Covenant of Water
22. You Could Make This Place Beautiful
23. Under The Whispering Door
24. The Sweetness of Water
25. Hounded
26. Democracy Awakening
*27. The Lost Apothecary
*28. Take My Hand
*29.Misbelief
30. Entangled Life
**31. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
32. To Paradise
*33. Eve
34. The Pull of The Stars
35. Going Postal
36. The History of Sketch Comedy
37. The Postmistress of Paris
38. The Science of Stuck
*39. The Heart's Invisible Furies
40. Autobiography of a Face
41. Don't Know Tough
42. Daffodil Hill
43. The Labors of Hercules Beal
*44. G-Man
45. The Heart of Understanding
46. The Seed Keeper
47. Love & Saffron
48. Under the Skin
49. Surviving God
50. The Rediscovery of America 

2024 books not on the original list:

​*1. In The Dream House
*2. The Iron Flower
*3. The Shadow Wand
*4. The Demon Tide
*5. The Light Mage
*6. Wandfasted
7. The Deepest Well
*8. A Million Quiet Revolutions
*9. All I Love and Know
*10. Stand Up For Yourself, Set Boundaries, and Stop People Pleasing (If That's Okay With You)
11. Dirty Little Midlife Crisis
12. Sure, I'll Join Your Cult