sandrinepal's reviews
1234 reviews

The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson

informative medium-paced

3.0

Love me some Bill Bryson, but this one a) hasn't aged great or b) hit too close to my own area of expertise. In a way, it was fun to hear old standards like Labov mentioned in passing (hashtag grad school), but the information was a little too loosey-goosey. Same goes for some of the points made about pronunciation. It's crazy how one or two imprecisions can ruin... what's 'suspension of disbelief' for nonfiction? Anyway, not over Bryson, as I immediately embarked on "At Home" after returning this one to the library.

At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson

informative slow-paced

3.5

I'm going to call this one 3.5 stars, because I'm indecisive by nature. On the one hand, as all Bryson's books I have read, it is replete with delightful tidbits. The breadth is pretty astounding when you take a step back: mousetraps, cemetery ground levels rising, making bootblack, syphilis, grave robbers, telephones and gas lighting, Palladio and the White House, and the list goes on. William Morris poisoned people with his color choices, y'all! The average 19th c. bedding weighed 80 pounds! On the other hand, it gets a little challenging to hold all these alluring loose ends together after meandering through a dozen rooms of the house. I think the logic may have been more obvious to Bryson himself, since he organized the book around his own (no doubt gorgeous) English home. For me, it read like a laundry list of fascinating trivia that might have been better as a series of feature articles than a book.

Faut pas prendre les cons pour des gens Tome 4, Volume 4 by Vincent Haudiquet, Bernstein Jorge, Emmanuel Reuzé

dark funny medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Toujours un "oui" franc et massif pour moi, cette série. Tout le monde en prend pour son grade : c'est parfait.

So You Want To Be An Oligarch: A Go-Getting Guide For The Purposeful Plutocrat by C.T. Jackson

funny informative fast-paced

3.75

With a sophomoric tone that makes this the first book recommendation my 15-year-old has actually taken me up on, this is also a very in-depth look at how the fortunes of the obscenely rich are built, written in the purest muckraking tradition. My only beef with this book is its dire need of additional proofreading. The spelling errors in particular were eye-watering : you'll find it's for its, their for they're, and then for than aplenty.

Half Empty by David Rakoff

dark emotional funny reflective medium-paced

3.25

I became a major fan of Rakoff in the early 2000s after first discovering him, along with Sedaris, on NPR's This American Life. I remember buying Fraud in hardcover as soon as it came out, despite my meager entry-level employee salary at the time. His voice in this collection was certainly a trip down memory lane, but not all the essays work equally well. I absolutely loved "The Bleak Shall Inherit" : it has aged really well and makes as much sense today as almost 15 years ago. I feel almost glad for Rakoff's sake that he didn't live to experience 2016: I have fond memories of thinking George W. Bush was mind-bogglingly inept. Those were the days. The limits have definitely been pushed since.
Tearing down Rent in "Isn't It Romantic?" seems like it would have been cathartic, but as I have no dog in that fight, it was only a mild chuckle for me. I was much more taken with "The Satisfying Crunch of Dreams Underfoot" and its peek into the publishing world.
With all that said, the darker, introspective pieces about his cancer didn't capture the same deprecative tone that he so adeptly directs at himself and others in "Shrimp" or "Great Expectations". Maybe I found that level of humanity too scarily plain, coming from him, I'm not sure. 

The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster by John O'Connor

informative reflective slow-paced

2.0

This book is a reflection on people's fascination with Bigfoot, and marginally the author's fascination with the people in question. It takes great care not to be judgmental, though the portrait that emerges between the lines is still evocative of rural white America. I read this in part hoping to find fodder for a short unit I teach freshman science majors about cryptozoology and I largely came up empty-handed. Where Bill Bryson serves his reflections on nature with a healthy side of hard facts, this book relies mostly on the musings of the author. Everyone's entitled to their Walden, I guess, it just isn't what I was looking for. 

The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray

lighthearted medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

Hmm, I wanted to love this a lot more than I actually did. On paper, a mashup of Austen and cozy mystery was screaming my name. In reality, it was heavy on the dreaded YA-ish romance. Shipping a relationship between Lizzie Bennett's son and Henry Tilney's daughter is all fine and well, but I object to placing young Darcy on the spectrum with a less-than-subtle implication that his father is also in need of a diagnosis. I find that interpretation offensive, both to the character of Darcy AND to people who are on the spectrum.

End rant. The mystery was sort of meh, but I must admit it was fun to imagine the future of the characters one loved in Austen novels. I could really do without the kids' generation is all. Based on the titles of the subsequent volumes in the series, it sounds like Claudia Gray is very much about villains getting their comeuppance and I'm not mad about that.

 

The Rage of Replacement: Far Right Politics and Demographic Fear by Michael Feola

informative slow-paced

3.75

This book feels eerily timely, which is both a blessing and a curse, in my opinion.

On the one hand, as elections loom in many countries (France just had snap congressional elections in early July, while the US is gearing up for the next round of presidential madness this November), this information about far right movements and how they are bleeding through to the "traditional" right needs to be widely publicized.

On the other hand, because the situation is so volatile, it seems difficult to capture it in any kind of definitive way, especially in writing that is not meant for a periodical. The book makes many (very logical) references to the Charlottesville incidents of 2017, but seven years later, that almost seems like a blip on the radar in light of all that has developed since.

The book is dense with research and connections between American and European far right movements. The writing can be a little opaque at times, but the gist remains quite clear. I would love to read more off-the-cuff, shorter pieces from Feola in magazines or online.

Thanks to NetGalley and University of Minnesota Press for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review. 

Americanon: An Unexpected U.S. History in Thirteen Bestselling Books by Jess McHugh

informative reflective medium-paced

3.5

What was most unexpected for me was the fact that all 13 books referenced in Americanon were non-fiction. I suppose it speaks to what a fiction junkie I am that when I read the phrase "Thirteen Bestselling Books", my brain defaults to "novels". Nevertheless, I persisted, and I must say McHugh's description of her search criteria seemed very sound once I read the introduction.

Another unexpected development is the fact that some of the authors come out smelling rosier than others. There were a few tidbits about Benjamin Franklin that really tickled my fancy, especially about his journey to France to hit up Louis the 16th for... well... louis and support. The fact that he was welcomed like a total rock star (Ben Franklin wallpaper, you guys!) is not something that we French people are taught in school. No love lost, however, for the viciously homophobic author of Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know about Sex. Yes, yes, of course, "those were different times", etc. but the man still paved the way for untold misery for so many people.

Lastly, I appreciated McHugh's perspective on American self-reliance as an expat in France. As a French person who was an expat in the US for over 20 years, her comments about the do-or-die need to be self-sufficient because help is not baked into the system really resonated with me. 

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

 This came out of left field for me: I didn't expect to love it as much as I did. I think in part I was accidentally a great demographic for it at this particular point in time. Let me count the ways...

☑ I just finished reading a small mountain of books about Latin American governments in the 20th century, including Jonathan Blitzer's Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here, so I was primed to empathize with the chaos of authoritarianism, extrajudicial disappearances, and torture.
☑ I also just took a couple of graduate credits' worth of courses on Northern Ireland's Troubles, so Eilish's day-to-day struggle with checkpoints, restrictions, and employment discrimination felt eerily familiar and realistic.
☑ Last, but certainly not least, my country (France) has seen a steep rise of the far right. It recently culminated in congressional elections earlier this summer. During the campaign, some of the prospects being debated were sweeping changes to the constitution, should the nationalist party come to power (which, thankfully, they did not).
☑ Oh, and did I mention I have a teenage son and an increasingly dependent aging parent?

So... yeah.

This is one of those books where I went searching for people's reactions after I finished reading it. It affected me so deeply that I felt the need to find kindred spirits. I won't dwell on it too much, but I was disappointed in many reviewers' reactions. Some argue that the book is not dystopian enough, that it doesn't live up to the golden standards of the genre, like 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale. I disagree, in part because I don't think Prophet Song purports to be dystopian: I found it chillingly realistic, from cover to cover, which is partly why I'm giving it 5 stars. Many readers also complained about the opacity of the style (no dialogue punctuation? Egads!) I found it a very effective style for evoking Eilish's mounting confusion and distress.

Are there a few passages that are a little too florid? Maybe. But for me, overall, this was a Ken-Loach-award-winning-film of a book and I will recommend it to just about anyone who will listen.