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amawomps's reviews
22 reviews
American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon by Steven Rinella
3.0
Did you know that there are 14 states with cities named "Buffalo", but Buffalo NY is the only one that's never had any buffalo inhabit it? I certainly didn't. I certainly didn't know anything about buffalo before this book, and now I feel like an expert. (This is also the first audiobook I've ever read so..cool!)
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
4.0
This was an extraordinary book about an extraordinary family. I can't even begin to imagine the everyday struggles, specifically the youngest boys and girls, had to experience living with schizophrenia, on top of the constant threat of believing you're going to be next to inherit the disease. This book does an amazing job at capturing each of the siblings' lives, specifically Margaret and Lindsey, who are true examples of thriving through trauma. I can't help but imagine that if the Galvins were born today they would've had a TLC show about them. Still, I couldn't stop reading this book, although I do wish there were a bit more personal memoirs from the siblings other than Margaret and Lindsey. Nevertheless, this book is another addition to the piles of literature that prove the mind is both a beautiful and horrible thing.
Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World's Worst Diseases by Nate Pedersen, Lydia Kang
5.0
The author, Lydia Kang is a mutual I've never met, but I know of since I'm friends with her nephew. He gifted this book to me and immediately just sifting through the pages I quickly found myself excited to read it. The images and the way the pages are formatted, even down to the letter spacing, font, and texture, it was fresh and made me learn about the intriguing nature of the history of disease in a way I never could've learned from a college textbook. I haven't read a non-fiction book in a while although they used to be my favorites as a kid; so this really inspired me to go back to what I love most in literature; learning.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
5.0
This was a classic case of “once you pick it up you can’t put it down”. All in all it probably only took me around 5 hours to read in segments, although the unique formatting definitely helped. This was a pretty haunting book, especially when no characters are actually given any names. It really comes to show the lengths to which people can survive if they have a child to take care of. The writing is simple too, almost too simple which makes the situations even more captivating. By McCarthy not giving a lot, your imagination is given the power to make up the rest, which I think makes a huge difference over whether you’re going to remember a story or not.
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
5.0
This might be one of the best books I've ever read. I'm almost tempted to question the author's own past when evaluating his writing and how disturbingly vivid Bateman's murders and rapes are. I think part of the enjoyment of reading things like this is that you get a view into the mind of what a true psychopath acts like; not the stereotypes from asylums we've come to associate with the word itself. The fact that so many questions are left unanswered is haunting, like how he ever was ever able to get out of that chase. It's interesting because just as people can block things out of their traumatic memories, it's not usually expressed in literature, which is why "American Psycho" is so brilliant because it's told as if it's really just in his mind, where important things are forgotten and simultaneously meaningless things like his extensive, chapter-long reviews of pop culture take first priority. Reading this as a woman is especially interesting as well because where I saw the meaning, emotion, and love behind a woman's encounter with Batemen, all he was seeing was how he was going to kill her; this part really shook me, especially putting myself in these otherwise unquestionable everyday situations. It really makes you double think about who you're getting involved with, even if they seem picture perfect.
The Naked Tourist: In Search of Adventure and Beauty in the Age of the Airport Mall by Lawrence Osborne
3.0
This was very interesting but all in all, I feel like I knew the answer to the question Lawrence was posing from the very beginning, that there will eventually be nowhere that nobody's seen before. It was a very interesting travelogue and it reminded me of how my dad would describe places he's been (which makes sense considering he's the one that gave it to me). I like the idea and the fact that Lawrence was simply a normal guy compared to his anthropologist peers on his journey, and that he was simply driven by boredom and curiosity, the privilege of many in America today. I do wish that the chapter on Papua itself was a bit longer, as most of the book was taken up by accounts of the lands leading up to it which to me wasn't the central part of the curiosity for me. I loved the ending though, it was very eloquent and left me thinking about my own travels and why I have the urge to travel more.