sarahweyand's reviews
355 reviews

Thanks to Tor Publishing Group and NetGalley for providing me an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and feedback are my own. 

This book's premise is so unique and I'm kind of obsessed with it. Like, our main character is a scientist who has died and whose consciousness has been put into a mammoth. So good. I think there was a good amount of development for a book under 200 pages and I really found myself caring about some of the characters (and loving to hate others). I felt like I was on the edge of my seat for most of the plot, and I thought the book had strong themes about extinction, poaching, and big game hunting. 

As it is with most novellas and this one in particular, I tend to wish there were a few more pages. I would have loved to see more depth concerning how Damira adapted to being a mammoth and the herd, and I wish we had spent more time with Vladmir. I found myself wanting more.

I am very excited to read Nayler's debut, The Mountain in the Sea, which I already own, and I greatly look forward to seeing what else he puts out in the future!

This is not a fun book. But it is an important one. In fact, it's the most important book I've read all year, maybe in multiple years. It's infuriating and informative and a scathing assault of facts and statistics and studies. Everyone should read it.

This book is divided into sections about home, the workplace, healthcare, and public life, and systematically proves how every single aspect of women's lives in each of these areas is based around being the "abnormal other" - that is to say, not men. Now, as a women, I'm pretty aware of most of these experiences; I've lived them. What I hadn't fully considered were the far-reaching impacts of some of these systems: how they go on to perpetuate the cycle of poverty, lead to greater gender gaps in data, and the further endangerment of women (no, that isn't an exaggeration).

I wish I had had the time to have consumed this book in smaller doses for two reasons. First, this book really does come at you with the facts and stats, and it can feel like drinking out of a firehose at times. I wish I had more time to have read this book at say, the pace of a chapter a week, so I could absorb information better and ruminate on what I had read. Second, this book can get really frustrating and depressing. I was mad the entire time. I like having the fire of justice and equality inside me to push me to do more and be strong, but at some point it start to have a negative effect on your psyche. I think taking this book in smaller doses would have helped to mitigate that.

I really enjoyed the moments in certain chapters that talked about improvements being made to certain systems and the positive outcomes change can have. It does help provide hope that these things can be overcome and that we can move in the right direction if we prioritize it.

The last thing I want to say is that I implore men to read this book. While I was reading Invisible Women, I talked to a number of male friends and coworkers, most of whom said something like "Oh! My [mom, sister, wife, friend] read that book and really liked it." But none of them said they had read the book themselves, despite it getting a positive review from a trusted source. This book is an expose on patriarchy, but it is not an expose on you. It may have you take a hard look at yourself and your preconceived ideas and help you to change your mindset, but it is not an attack on you personally. Feminists are not one gender, and men are essential allies in creating change that benefits everyone. 

I can't tell you how long I've had this book on my shelf - since college at least, so I'm guessing around five years. Figured it was high time I read it and I'm glad that I did.

If I could recommend this book to anyone, I think undergrad computer science students would get the most out of it (which is rich because I had this book as an undergrad computer science student and didn't read it). The text gives real-world applications to a lot of the ideas taught in early computer science classes, like different sorting algorithms, memory, and optimizations problems. Reading this as I was learning these concepts would have been hugely beneficial in helping to understand and contextualize them. I enjoyed the audiobook; as always, I love when an author narrates their own work.

While there are a lot of practical solutions this book can provide (about, say, optimal stopping when it comes to picking the best parking spot), Algorithms to Live By also offers a more abstract look into the choices we make to shape our lives and why we make decisions the way we do. Sometimes it seemed like the examples given were a little too niche to be applicable, but they definitely got me thinking about other algorithms we do use in everyday life.

I don't know if I'd recommend this to folks who aren't into computer science - this book might be too much to take in conceptually if you don't have some of the basic principles already, but I do think a lot of people would get something out of what this work has to say.

This was a HEAVY read, both in page count and in content, and it took me a long time to get through. On one hand, I can absolutely see why this book won a Pulitzer. The writing is wonderful, and the themes are thought-provoking. This is, objectively, a very good book.

With that being said, I didn't jive with it in the way I had hoped I would. The pace dragged for most of the length, and I felt like it was probably 100 pages too long. I thought the plot was interesting but it didn't move at a pace enough to keep me engaged. I thought the ending was good and ended on a slight up note, but the catharsis wasn't great enough for all of the trauma Demon goes through, in my opinion. 

I think I would recommend this to people who are fans of literary fiction or hard-hitters, and, like I said, I understand why people love this book. I think it's deserved. However, this is not light reading and I wouldn't go into this on a whim. Could be slump-inducing if you're unprepared.

This is a unique book among the ones I've read recently in that the central character of this book is a place and not a person. Such a wonderful concept that I think was explored and executed well. This book read more like a connected anthology than one singular story, but I think I liked this format more.

I will say that the style of North Woods inherently lends itself to shallower character development, so I didn't love that I felt disconnected from most of our characters. Combined with some of the chapters that were more character-driven, I found myself struggling to care. As is the case with any short-story style, some plots were more compelling than others, but I definitely liked more than I disliked.

Overall, I thought this was a cool take on historical fiction, and I really enjoyed listening to the audiobook. If you're not into historical fiction, this probably isn't the book for you, but I liked it!

The speculative/metaphorical memoir genre has led to some of my all-time favorite nonfiction: In the Dream House, How Far the Light Reaches among them. So I am devastated when a book written in a similar style falls relatively flat to me. It's still a good memoir, but allow me to explain.

First: a personal bias: I was not expecting death to be such a prevalent theme. I figured it would be mentioned, but it was very pervasive and that topic often gives me anxiety and existential dread. This book was a lot sadder than anticipated and if I had known that I probably wouldn't have picked it up.

The premise of combining a memoir about mental illness and pregnancy and grief with a Japanese four-act narrative structure is brilliant. I enjoyed learning about yokai and other figures of legend from various cultures and I think I probably missed out by listening to this as an audiobook and not seeing the illustrations in the text.

However, some of the allusions to mythology and folklore seemed to fragment and confuse the memoir narrative. At times I felt like I wasn't drawing the proper comparisons between the memories presented and their legend/storytelling counterparts. I really wanted to stay engaged in the story, but I felt like I lost the thread a few too many times.

There's definitely something here to learn and reflect on, and this format is unique and thought-provoking. I might just not be its audience.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for providing me an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and feedback are my own. 

I guess I should start by saying I don't think this book is for everyone, and if you hate it, I can totally understand why. Much like Go as a River, which I also read this month, this book doesn't feel like it has much of a plot to it. More of a hard-hitting slice-of-life. I just happen to really relate to some of what's brought up here due to my career as a woman in tech.

I enjoyed the prose and the audiobook narration, and I was eager to know what would happen next even if I couldn't discern what the conflict was, if there even was one. I just felt like in another life, it could be me, and that was a captivating thought.

The *gimmick* of this book that I'm not totally sure I understood was the black hole. I can appreciate it as a metaphor and motif and its purpose thematically - in theory - but it felt like it didn't play enough of a role in the story. I was just expecting more, so that was a bit of a let-down.

All in all I was pleasantly surprised here. I probably wouldn't recommend it to most folks, but I appreciate it for what it is.

YESSSSSSS! The last time I had a 5-star read this year was mid-August and I just KNEW I could count on T Kingfisher to knock it out of the park. The atmosphere is eerie and Gothic and delightful and oppressive. The prose is just the right amount of descriptive and beautiful. 

I felt doom. I felt gloom. There were a couple sequences that had me genuinely squirming and on the edge of my seat. It was just the right length, which is something I don't often say about novellas (T Kingfisher always does wonderful with her pacing and length of books this size though). I thought the worldbuilding was interesting but not overbearing, and I got approved for an ARC for the sequel YUM YUM.

Classic Kingfisher W, can't wait to nosh on more reads by her.

Every time I finish a book, my husband will always ask what it was about. This is one of the few books where my answer is "How much time do you have?"; it's near impossible to give an easy synopsis of what I read here, but I do know that I enjoyed it.

This was a book about many things: family, love, loss, motherhood, perseverance, survival. It made me think about a lot of big questions without posing them directly or giving me an answer. The prose was wonderful to listen to (I enjoyed the audiobook), and the atmosphere felt like a dappled summer day, which is a nice change given that it's snowing outside.

Pacing here was medium-slow, especially because it was hard to tell where the plot was going at times. But I was always interested in listening and I felt like I really cared about our protagonist. I also really, really liked where this book ended. Perfect choice.

I'd definitely pick up something else by Shelley Read and will look out for future releases of hers! Give this one a read if you like historical fiction and heavy slice-of-life, introspective novels.