Five star review, originally posted here on January 11, 2023. Wow.

Three star review, originally posted here on January 19, 2023. To my surprise, Apt Pupil was the best and most engrossing story: 4 or 4.5 stars. The rest were fine. Interesting how the weaker stories made the best movies.

Two star review, originally posted here on January 11, 2023 I’m impressed by how such an interesting topic can be portrayed in such an uninteresting way. Even if you get yourself into the headspace to consider it a reference book instead of narrative… this is still just painfully dry.

One star review, originally posted here on July 18, 2022 garbage.

Four star review, originally posted here on January 5, 2024. One of my NY resolutions this year is to get back to writing book reviews. I used to be religious about it, but fell behind over the past couple years when pandemic-era audiobooks got me running through books faster than I could find time to … More Goodreads Review: The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, and the Kidnap That Shaped America by Matthew Pearl

Three star review, originally posted here on April 44, 2022. According to two minutes of extensive Wikipedia research, Dostoevsky himself thought this book was a failure. As did virtually every contemporary critic. Which makes me feel better for just not getting into this. I saw someone as on the discussion board when this book starts … More Goodreads Review: The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Three star review, originally posted here on January 27, 2021. For a linguist, this author sure seems to use a lot of words to not really say much. Her core ideas are interesting enough. I enjoyed learning about language tricks used by charismatic leaders, and I enjoyed the idea of applying these concepts to other … More Goodreads Review: Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell

Four star review, originally posted here on January 27, 2021. Well holy cow this book was violent!Reading this felt like trying to read Shakespeare. It’s kinda technically in English, but not quite. And so I spent a lot of time, especially at the beginning, not quite understanding what was happening, or coming up with my … More Goodreads Review: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Three star review, originally posted here on December 27, 2021. The title and description are both misleading for this audiobook. This is not a transcript of the trial; this is a carefully curated selection of excerpts from the trial transcript. I expected this much going in, since the trial lasted all day every day for … More Goodreads Review: The Trial of the Chicago 7: The Official Transcript

Five star review, originally posted here on December 27, 2021. Nearly perfect! Defoe somehow manages to present complex histories in under 3 pages each. Every bite-size history is a funny and entertaining without being disrespectful. It takes serious skill to balance these elements effectively. It’s even more impressive that Defoe manages to make each history … More Goodreads Review: An Atlas of Extinct Countries by Gideon Defoe