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

Four star review, originally posted here on December 23, 2021. Wow. Just wow. This book was soooo funny. It’s amazing how well humor and wit can age. Did everything in the book hold up? No, of course not. But so much of it did. I do have one complaint, though. I feel like a big … More Goodreads Review: Don Qixote by Miguel Cervantes Saavedra

4 star review, originally posted here on December 22, 2021. Hey, this Dickens guy can write. Just in case you didn’t know. I’ve been trying to read more classics recently, and naturally I find myself grappling with the question of what allowances we make for the author and the characters based on the time period … More Goodreads Review: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Three star review, originally posted here on December 20, 2021. There are two halves to consider here: the epic of Beowulf, and this particular translation. I remember really liking Beowulf in high school. That was, admittedly, a VERY long time ago, so my memory isn’t the clearest. Did we even read the entire poem, or … More Goodreads Review: Beowulf: A New Translation by Unknown and Maria Dahvana Headley

Three star review, originally posted here on November 29, 2021. I was kind of disappointed in this book. I was hoping for a lot more facts and data to support the author’s opinions here. But we don’t really get any. The arguments she did present were kind of flimsy and disjointed. Which is a shame, … More Goodreads Review: White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America by Anthea Butler

Two star review, originally posted here on November 4, 2021. I’m glad I read this supposed classic, but that doesn’t mean that I liked it. First, our protagonist is a thoroughly bad person. Maybe, just maybe, an argument could be made that Crusoe is an unreliable narrator or an antihero, but… I dunno, that doesn’t … More Goodreads Review: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Four star review, originally posted here on October 15, 2021. Ack, I just realized that I forgot to review this right after reading it, and now I can’t remember all the stuff I wanted to say! For the most part, my review matches most of the other reviews I’ve read. This books really picks up … More Goodreads Review: A Black Women’s History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry, Kali Nicole Gross

One star review, originally posted here on September 24, 2021. This book was so boring. I dunno, maybe it’s just me. I’ve been supposedly “reading” 3 books concurrently recently, and never finishing any of them, because all of them are boring. But I can’t bring myself to do 3 DNF’s at once, especially since I … More Goodreads Review: Tonight We Bombed the U.S. Capitol: The Explosive Story of M19, America’s First Female Terrorist Group by William Rosenau

Four star review, originally posted here on August 16, 2021. This was the perfect summer read for non-fiction history nerds such as myself. Bryson jumps from topic to topic to deliver a clear snapshot of America at onr particular point in time. While we focus heavily on Lindburg to tie it all together, we hit … More Goodreads Review: One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson

Four star review, originally posted here on June 9, 2021. Where the hell has this book been my whole life? I listened to the audiobook, but want to buy myself a hard copy to keep on the shelf for reference, with the hope that is comes with a solid index and illustrations (folks with hard … More Goodreads Review: The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina—Separating the Myth from the Medicine by Jennifer Gunter