For some reason, I seem to have read quite a few books about mushrooms and fungi in the past few years and perhaps it is because of this recent history that I found this book pedantic.  And of course, all things mushroom always circle around to psilocybin, no matter how much they start out about the many ways in which mushrooms and fungi could save the world--eating toxic waste, absorbing carbon, and so forth.  The religious fervor with which the fungi is worshiped here, as in How To Change Your Mind, just irritated me.  If you are going to read a book about the reverence we should have for fungi, stick to Finding The Mother Tree.  

I did enjoy some parts of it, though, like the part about raising truffle dogs and hunting for mushrooms in Oregon.  But, these parts deviated from the tone of relevance that characterized the rest of the book, which felt like conversing with a zealot in a fervor.  

Not recommended.

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Honestly, I think I have to stop listening to the free audible books and just start paying for some decent trashy romance.  Nothing in this book read "dirty" to me, although it was full of midlife crisis.  Plus, this is at least the third crazy ex-spouse storyline I have read this year and it is really getting old.  The way these books portray the these conflicts amidst the new relationships just does not seem sexy to me, which may just be an occupational hazard.  In any event, I was unimpressed by this story, despite the art classes with nude models, yoga classes, new careers, and learning to parent a teen you have never met before.

Do not recommend.

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I was very skeptical when I started reading this.  It felt like it was going to be another thrown together book by someone capitalizing on their 20 minutes of internet fame.  And it did start that way.  For some reason still unclear to me, and apparently still someone unclear to the author, the author becomes the target of COVID conspiracy theory smear campaigns, being accused of being part of the illuminati.  He found this quite distressing, to be hated and accused of orchestrating a massive hoax to require people to wear masks and isolate and take vaccines. 

But, once I got past the set up of the book, it turned out to be quite a fascinating deep dive into why people believe conspiracy theories---or really why anyone believes anything at all.  With references to interesting studies, including the ability for you to take some of the tests given to subjects in the studies, I found myself really thinking about my believe system and where it comes from.  From intuition to peer influences to personal experience to data and who I trust, this book got me thinking about where deeply held beliefs come from and how they are reinforced.  I was particularly drawn into the discussion about changing deeply held beliefs and the personality types that are more able to adapt to new information.  Turned out that I actually liked the book and would recommend it.

​Recommended.

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This was not a light read by any means.  An historical fiction novel about uninformed, forced sterilization of young Black women in Alabama.  Set in 1973, the year of Roe v. Wade, this story about the other side of choice in reproductive freedom tells the story of a nurse turned social worker whose part in a reproductive health clinic that she thought was empowering women and girls to make choices to delay parenthood haunts her throughout her life.  It is a powerful narrative of activism, guilt, and loss.  I particularly love the portrayal of the protagonist as she struggles with her own choices and relationships with her privilege against the backdrop of her patients lack of choice.  Poignant and weighty.  

​Recommend.




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A really slow start and if I wasn't always so committed to finishing a book, I might not have persevered.  The setup was the common plot scheme of two seemingly unrelated stories in two eras unfolding with similar themes of men betraying women, the loss of the dream of mothering in the manner dreamed of, and searching for a meaningful life when the path does not seem clear, unfolding in both time periods.  But, somewhere along the line, my interest was piqued.  It wasn't quite the story it felt like it was set up to be.  In the modern timeline an amateur, wannabe historian tourist finds an antique bottle with an etching and becomes obsessed with finding its origin.  Following a series of unlikely, but at the same time actually plausible, series of events, she ends up piecing together a marvelous story of an apothecary, a murderer, and an unlikely friendship, all while sorting through her own unhappiness and figuring out a way forward.  Turns out, I really liked how the story unfolded and I felt unusually satisfied with the ending.

​Recommend.  

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Written by a history professor, but billed as a "primer" on the the American system of democracy, I found that was it was a decent progressive survey of what we are facing right now.  I also, however, found it shallow and at times it felt preachy and like it was just propaganda for the left.  It felt well researched, but there wasn't a time when I felt like my beliefs were being meaningfully challenged or even added to.  For someone just coming into political awareness or who hasn't been paying attention to politics for the last decade, I could see it being useful, interesting, and capable of keeping ones attention.  I just didn't get much out of it.

​Not recommended.





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I will admit that I am not a connoisseur of fantasy novels, although as a result of the 50 Bookish Friends project, I have read a fair number of them in the last decade.  I think this book falls into the category of "urban fantasy" where mystical, mythical creatures are living in the modern world.  In this case, it is a druid living in Tempe, Arizona, running a metaphysical bookstore.  My imagination resists this kind of juxtaposition for some reason and these types of books always take quite a while for me to settle into. This one was no exception.  It had the added turn off for me of being quite violent in the ways that I really don't enjoy.  

This is not to say that there aren't a lot of funny passages and interesting, fun plot developments.  I just couldn't get myself to take the serious parts seriously when the main character has such a sense of humor and impishness that comes across as pretty passive-aggressive.  I didn't not enjoy the book, but for the first book in a 17 book series, I would have expected to be unable to resist immediately reading book two, but, alas, I found myself uninterested in continuing on.

​Not recommended.

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This is another book with a ton of critical success that I had a hard time really connecting with.  It is historical fiction, set after the American Civil War in the Reconstruction Era in the South with multiple intersecting storylines.  The characters were complicated to the point of being unpredictable, with no one portrayed as entirely evil, nor entirely good.  The complexity of this is approach to character development is generally something I love, but here I thought it might have been overdone as there were times when the people did things that seemed very out of character for them and, seemingly just when their character has been laid out for the reader in a particular way.  I was put off by the frequency of this technique because it started to feel overdone.

I did love the way the historical part of this historical fiction was handled, without fanfare or the scene development that I can find boring in this genre.  Here, the backdrop of time and place felt well developed, but was just that--the backdrop to a novel, not a historical tome.  

The beginning of the book--and continuing very far into the book--is heavy with grief.  And that depression hangs over the entire story, even while it is interspersed with explicit love scenes.  Those scenes, though, are always tainted with the weight of the homophobic of the time.  Indeed, there is very little light in this book as one horrible thing after another happens.  There is a long, drawn out, death that is painful not only for the person dying, but also for the caregiver. 

For sure, there is resilience in many places here and I love the vision the one woman character has for the future of the land she lives on, but unless you are looking for a heavy, heavy read, I would say pass on this one.

The author does get bonus points for having been born and raised in Oregon and being a graduate of U of O. I am hoping for a second novel with more joy and light.

Not not recommended.

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