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Category: 3 Stars

You May Also Like, Tom Vanderbilt

You May Also Like attempts to fathom the question of why people like what they like. Before reading this book, you’d probably answer “It’s complicated.” But after you read it? You’ll, um, you’ll still say it’s complicated. Human brains are complicated organs, and we are just not very good at understanding them. When I’m reading pop sciencey sorts of books, I am on a hair trigger with regard to bullshit neuroscience of the type that Cordelia Fine has conditioned me to be on a hair trigger w/r/t; i.e., that thing where it’s like “the same part of your brain lights…

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Alias, Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos

Happy Monday! It’s time for another installment of Angry Feminism by Gin Jenny, this time aimed at Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos’s Alias, the comic on which the Netflix Jessica Jones show is (loosely) based. Ready? Let’s get into it! This review will be broken up into two parts, one where I come not to bury Alias but to praise it, and then one where I have an enormous BUT and some further thoughts on Feminism. The bulk of Alias is a procedural story about Jessica Jones, Private Eye. I like this about Alias. If I had a complaint…

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Angry White People, Hsiao-Hung Pai

By total coincidence, my hold on Angry White People came in the same week that Jo Cox was assassinated in England, apparently for her support of Britain’s presence in the EU and other liberalish political agendas. I heard the name “Nigel Farage” for the first and second times in this book and the news (respectively? not respectively? I don’t remember). The real reason I put a hold on it in the first place was that I’m interested in what makes people choose one belief over another one. I try — I do try — to ground my own beliefs in…

43 Comments

Pandemic, Sonia Shah

I read Pandemic author Sonia Shah’s book The Body Hunter a few years back and was not satisfied with the quality of her citations. While I totally stand by that (the endnotes in that book were a mess), and I was all set to think ill of Pandemic also, actually the endnotes in this one were way much better sorted out. I conclude that she had better copyeditors this time around. This book’s about the spread of infectious diseases, and Sonia Shah herself admits that she’s not sure how to tell the story she wants to tell. Much of her…

19 Comments

Reading the End Bookcast, Ep.61: Summer Book Preview and Katie Heaney’s Dear Emma

Happy Hump Day to you all, beloved listeners! It’s time for another seasonal book preview (the most wonderful four times of the year) (except for Christmas, Christmas is still the actual most wonderful time). Whiskey Jenny and I also answer some listener mail, update you on what we’re reading, and review the fluffy, fun Dear Emma, by Katie Heaney. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go! Episode 61 What We’re Reading City on Fire, Garth Risk Hallberg The Summer before the War, Helen Simonson…

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The Secret Life of the American Musical, Jack Viertel

Jack Viertel’s The Secret Life of the American Musical (hat-tip to the fabulous Kim for the recommendation!) isn’t a history of the American musical — a thing about which I would not care at all1 — but rather a dissection of what goes into making it. Viertel breaks down an array of musicals, from Gypsy to Hamilton, into their component parts to explore what makes their engines run. Some of this I was already familiar with, like the not-a-rule-but-sort-of-a-rule that the protagonist has to sing an “I Want” song early on, to get the audience on board with whatever the stakes are…

25 Comments

And After Many Days, Jowhor Ile

One day, Ajie’s older brother Paul leaves their home in Nigeria, and he never comes back. Ajie was the only one who saw him go. And After Many Days is about the loss of Paul and his presence in their family before he goes. I was reading it in between other things (you’ll be hearing about The Raven King on Monday) that frankly I cared about more, and nevertheless I thought And After Many Days was awfully good. It tells the story of a 1990s Nigerian family in a way that makes a faraway (from me) country in an increasingly faraway time feel…

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American Gypsy, Oksana Marafioti

Before I launch into a proper review of Oksana Marafioti’s American Gypsy, a word about terminology. Marafioti never discusses, in the course of her book, her use of the term gypsy. However, many many many Romani people consider it to be an ethnic slur; and when the word appears in the course of this book, it’s more often than not being thrown at Marafioti or at her family as an insult. So although Marafioti herself has said that she’s not opposed to the use of the term, I’m going to stick with Romani throughout this review. And so should you,…

24 Comments

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Becky Chambers

It has taken me some time to put my finger on the problem I had with The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, but let me say before I start on that, I liked The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. It’s hard not to like a book that wears its heart on its sleeve the way this one does, dripping earnestness and longing to do the right thing from every page. Ashby Santoso is the captain of the Wayfarer, which bores holes in space to permit rapid travel between far-distant planets. In this world, humans are a…

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