An elaborate modernization of Animal Farm, this book creates a world of sentient, talking animals in a fictionized African country as it flows from being colonized to an oppressive regime to complete chaos after the dictator is driven out. I think it is technically supposed to be an allegory, but it just feel too obvious, with the parallels too similar to the current world.  With situations and even language that clearly is lifted from real life current oppressive regimes, fascist leaders, and bigoted politicians from around the world, I thought it lacked nuance and was just force feeding us the analysis instead of letting the reader do any independent thinking or analogizing.  This, plus it used a literary tool in which the same words or short phrase was repeated over and over again--so much so that it became an irritant. This may not have been so aggravating in a paper book where your eyes could skip over the 2 minutes of repetition, but in an audio book, it was just distracting and it was so many times. It felt gimmicky, even if it was obviously being done to make a point.  The point was just too obvious.
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Not recommended.

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This is a lovely short book that follows up on the author's wildly successful book, Braiding Sweetgrass.  I have heard the criticism that despite the
indigenousness of the author that the books are written for a white audience and this may be true, but as the white audience I have to say that I loved both of them.  This one in particular talks about an ecology economy and the meaningfulness of a gift economy and of investing in community.  Whether this is because you want the benefits that come from gifting, in terms of the emotional connections, the furthering of your values, or even indirect marketing of your business, an economy that incorporates gift giving and receiving should not be underestimated. 
There were a couple of themes that particularly resonated for me.  First, wealth is not what you have, but what you give away and, second, if there isn't enough of what you want, then want something else.  Aren’t those just lovely ideas that you want to file away and remember? 

Recommend.

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This was the perfect book to fall asleep listening to. It wasn't so much that it was boring, as that the cadence of the narration is very soothing.  The author employs a writing technique in which he makes long lists of things, often the latin names for plants or animals, that might interest the hardcore biologist and botanist enthusiasts, but I found lulled me to sleep, like a lullaby.  In fact, I would listen to the same chapter several nights in a row, having not made it to the end of even one chapter before I drifted off to sleep.  I would like to say that the book was light and pleasant, as he describes at length the natural spaces that he is so drawn to--and there is something compelling about how much he loves these spaces and wants to make sure they are preserved--and yet the racism of 1901 finds its way into a world it has no business being.  This is in addition to the complete exclusion of women from the narrative in any meaningful way.  All said, I just can't recommend it.

​Not recommended.

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Another post-apocalyptic novel, which really seems to be disproportionately recommended in recent times, this one was extremely graphic in depicting gratuitous violence. This was oddly juxtaposed against explicit descriptions of sexual encounters.  I was disappointed that I did not like it more since the premise of the futuristic world felt well thought out and plausible, though incredibly depressing. 

Set in the dessert of the American southwest, the complicated backstory includes litigation over water rights, complicated interpersonal dynamics, lots of characters with compelling and believable backstories, and  a nuanced world created with attention to details that I really liked.  Ultimately, while there was a lot to like in the story, I really disliked the violence, which I did not think was needed to advance the story and which reflected a deterioration of human decency at a level that was just too dark for me.  I found that I couldn't listen to this unless I was in the right frame of mind and definitely not before bed.  

Not recommended.
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I als odid not This is a reflective memoir by a long distance, thru-hiker, which in places is sort of a micro-history of trails across contexts.  This read like a book written by someone who has spent a lot of time walking by themselves reflecting on random things and then using those ideas as the springboard to explore tangentially related things which comes back to walking for long periods of time alone in order to think more about the topic they are obsessed with.  I mean, some of it was interesting for sure, but there was just a lot of ruminating and reflecting on wildlife, snails, ants, and humans over time and space to come back to the same concept of trails.  I found it pretty pedantic, going over the same points in different contexts ad nauseam. I did enjoy the chapter on Newfoundland, while really disliking the chapter on the deer hunt. I also did not love the reverence with which he talked about indigenous concepts.  It felt oddly detached and maybe performative.  Even after reflection, I can't really put my finger on why I didn't like how he wrote those parts.  Overall, it was a very masculine reflection on a life of leisure time and isolation that just did not resonate with me.

Not recommended.

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 This book about domestic and sexual violence, writing by an American attorney, provides a detailed narrative that compiles information, data, and theory from a variety of disciplines and expertly describes how we disbelieve and blame victims of intimate violence, both in and out of the court system.  It does not read like a text book or legal brief, but rather provides case examples written in a succinct and captivating narrative.  The content is not more explicit than it needs to be and just does an excellent job of bringing together a lot of information in a good read.

Highly recommend

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I loved this book.  An Australian academic looks at the American law enforcement and legal systems in the context of domestic violence and it is good.  It is good in a way that stings it is so accurate.  Stemming from the premise that the US has gotten very very lost in its policy on intimate violence by first thinking that it could be solved by cops and jail, but then shifting to see abusing someone as a mental health issue.  It is an excellent summary and discussion of the recent studies and relevant data, but it also looks at what solutions are out there and how they might be useful across contexts.  The author uses many specific examples and case studies in her well-written analysis of the classic and emergent issues.
Highly recommend

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Even before I searched the author and discovered that there are serious concerns that her claims of indigenous history are fraudulent, I was not enthralled with this read.  It felt like a summary of classic books without a lot new to say or any particularly interesting added insight.  I think I would more likely recommend some old favorites such as Custer Died for Your Sins and Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.  Even  A People's History of the United States seems like a better written and cited history.  I would also choose Indigenous History of The United States  or 1492 over this one.

Not recommended.
 
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I really wanted to like this book more than I did.  I loved the idea of this book and I actually liked the writing in this book, in terms of way the words flowed in the story.  I didn't love the story itself as much as I could have.  I loved that it was an intergenerational story about family, which is one of my favorite plots.  This one, though, didn't quite have the complexity that a good intergenerational novel has. Because that narrative has so many just really exceptional books that weave the generations together, I think the bar might be set unreasonably high.

In many aspects, this book reminded me of The Overstory, which everyone else seemed to love while I felt left out for feeling less than enthralled by it.  I actually liked this one significantly more than that one, which I found fairly pretentious.  But still, the "lessons" here were too obvious and I like to work harder for my enlightment.

All in all, it is a Not Not Recommended.

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Sometimes, a book is just too sophisticated and avant-garde for me.  I started this book twice before I could get past the first 100 pages, plus it took me more than a month to read  The confusion I felt even after reading the beginning three times did not stop there.  After slogging through another 600 pages after that, I remained confused and frustrated with the story on many levels.  First, the main characters in the three different eras are mostly names Charles/Charlie, David, and Edward.  The story starts with an alternative history of the US, the origin of which is the end of the civil war when the South secedes after losing and the West breaks off into its own country.  In this alternative history, racism and classism persist, but homophobia is completely eliminated as prominent men regularly marry each other and take on childrearing, particularly by raising orphans abandoned because of the economic pressures on the poor.  In all three eras, women are relegated to their role as a daughter, sister, (birth) mother, or grandmother.  The book is entirely devoid of strong women, with perhaps one exception at the very end, but she would be considered "strong" in an unconventional way.  Instead, a complicated history unfolds that shows that putting gay men in charge of things does not result in a any better outcome than the mess straight men have made.  

The second section of the book tells another David's backstory growing up in Hawaii, filled with intimate violence and sorrow, and the third section is a dystopian landscape in a future New York under authoritarian rule that comes to power while trying to manage pandemics and natural disasters brought on by climate change.

I spent a lot of time and energy trying to link the three books, thinking that there must be a cohesive family tree I was supposed to be following, but could not.  In reading book summaries after I finished it because I remained so confused (something I almost never do--reading summaries, not getting confused), I think I have finally accepted that the three books were completely independent of each other, other than the tie each story had to a mansion in NYC.  I could have saved myself a lot of intellectual energy if I had realized it was three entirely separate storylines.  I am sure someone more committed to analyzing the books could come up with a lot more themes and B plots that tie it together, but I only caught a couple.  I did find the reuse of the names to be unnecessarily confusing.  

Each of the books were incredibly depressing.  The misery the characters inherit and then create for themselves and those around them is beyond my emotional capacity for the kind of investment this story required.  And yet in many ways the writing, particularly with respect to  character development and the absolutely lovely, detailed descriptions of their misery, was so good that I was sucked into the stories--despite being incredibly confused about who people were and how they related to each other.  As if this wasn't enough, each of the three sections leaves us with a cliffhanger such that I can say that this book at the most unfulfilling ending I can ever remember a book having-- and it had three of them.  I left completely unsatisfied, despite the author having put in an incredible performance in many ways and despite the fact that I invested a lot of intellectual energy trying to keep up with the narrative and figure out what was happening. 

The number of characters alone, many of them introduced quickly at the same time and many of them with the same names, just made this even more complex.  I am all for an intellectual challenge, but I left feeling that I put in a lot of effort only to find that none of that effort actually mattered. Moreover, the story is full of intimate and state violence that was exhausting and was left unresolved and unanalyzed. 

Ultimately, this is one of those books that I feel like I should have loved, but that I ended up feeling like I wasn't intellectually up to the challenge of loving.  

​Do not recommend.
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