pecsenye's reviews
153 reviews

These essays didn't age well. Kingsolver sounds prissy and bewildered, and 2002 was a confusing time, for sure, but this book is just so off-putting. I really enjoy her fiction and wish I hadn't discovered that I don't like her lukewarm takes. 

If you like Gene Wilder, you'll love this. If you don't, you won't.  It's just Gene, telling about his life as he saw it at the time. Some funny stories, some important moments, some heartbreak. It makes me want to go back and watch his movies again. 

I thought this book was going to be about tteokbokki, at least a little bit, but it was not. It's just the author's sessions with her therapist. 

Surprisingly deep and researched treatise on walking as a practice from the first Norwegian to reach the three poles. I thought this book was going to be wan and preachy, but it's eccentric and deep and a little vigorous, and is making me want to read his other books. 

This book thrills me. I think only very specific readers and cooks will enjoy this book, but I'm the perfect reader. I took it out of the library but am about to go buy three copies to send to friends who are also perfect readers for this book. 

This is exactly the memoir a professor of linguistics, Fulbright scholar, Norwegian stoic would write. It's essentially about Grue's struggle to get out of his head and into a body that has been limited by the way we've arranged our physical spaces to not accommodate people who use wheelchairs. Grue references Jorge Luis Borges and Michel Foucault throughout, so that's the level we're taking about. I found it delightful. Let's hope he writes another memoir once his son is an adult. 

A real treasure of a book. Especially lovely to look up the foods as you read about them. 

I really wanted to love this, but the whole thing just feels so oppressive and sad. Ostensibly it's about this hytte (Norwegian summer cabin) on a strange little island, but really it's about the grandmother, who was a horrible person who hurt her children immensely and threw herself into selfish hedonism at the expense of everyone around her. The author doesn't seem to get this, though, and idealizes her grandmother, and doesn't even seem curious about why her own mother is so unable to function in so many essential ways. All against a background of constant activity on this island, relentless busyness for the sake of activity, making up what seems to have been a tedious childhood of constant chores and performative Norwegianness. The writing is beautiful but bleak and disconnected from all the people and even the island itself. This book left me feeling sad about summer in Norway, which I don't think was the point.