Westover manages to journey from an abusive, weirdly religious upbringing to some of the world's best educational institutions. Educational played a huge part in her ability to take control of her own…
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67 reviews · The most recently submitted reviews from readers.
Westover manages to journey from an abusive, weirdly religious upbringing to some of the world's best educational institutions. Educational played a huge part in her ability to take control of her own…
Read full review →The author apparently draws from his own experiences and creates an honest but fanciful view of the world that involves love, loss, pride , its downfall the possibility of redemption . This is just an…
The saddest book I've read in years. Keyes makes you fall in love with Charlie twice in the same novel, in two completely different ways, and then takes both away. The ending destroys you. Essential.
Long, yes. Indulgent at times, yes. Impossible to put down, absolutely. Rothfuss has a gift for making you feel like every detail matters, and mostly it does. Denna remains a frustrating character and…
One of the best memoirs written in the last decade. Westover's story is extraordinary but what makes the book exceptional is the writing. She holds the complexity of loving a family that harmed you wi…
Marvin the Paranoid Android is one of literature's great characters and I will not be taking questions. Adams writes with a lightness that conceals real depth. This book has made me laugh out loud on…
Sanderson is operating at a completely different scale here. The Stormlight Archive is the most ambitious ongoing fantasy series being written today, and The Way of Kings sets up a world with the scop…
The pacing is relentless from chapter one. Collins builds tension like a professional and doesn't flinch when she needs to hurt you. The world is totalitarian without feeling cartoonish. A book that t…
The section on the agricultural revolution alone is worth the whole book. Harari's argument that farming made individual humans worse off while making the species more powerful is one of those ideas t…
Read this for the first time as an adult and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It doesn't talk down to you. The mystery of the stone actually works as a mystery. Dumbledore is funnier than I rem…
Impossible to put down and impossible to shake. The Idaho sections are vivid in the most disturbing way. Westover has written something genuinely rare: a memoir that is also a serious inquiry into epi…
The funniest science fiction novel ever written and also, somehow, the saddest. Adams uses comedy to sneak genuine philosophical anxiety past your defenses. The answer being 42 is funny until you real…
One of the most emotionally precise pieces of science fiction ever written. Keyes uses the journal format brilliantly — watching Charlie's intelligence rise and fall through the grammar and vocabulary…
Put the book down twice in the final hundred pages just to process. The scope is massive but Brown never loses sight of the personal cost of war. Sevro's arc alone is worth the price of admission. Thi…
Bernard Marx is a frustrating protagonist and I think Huxley knows it. The point is that even the dissenters are shaped by the system they're dissenting from. The Savage's arc is the one that actually…
Read this in two days. Westover's voice is controlled and precise throughout, which makes the chaos she's describing even more striking. The relationship with her brother Shawn is one of the most unse…
More complex than Red Rising, which will lose some readers but rewarded me. The cast is larger, the scheming is denser, and the action set pieces are even bigger. Lysander au Lune introduced here beco…
Tighter than the first two, darker in all the right ways, and the twist lands hard even on a reread. Rowling is clearly having more fun here. You can feel the series opening up into something bigger.
The twists are less surprising the second time you know McFadden's style, but the tension is still real and the story goes to darker places than the first book. A solid continuation.
Emotionally exhausting in the best way. The revolution pays off everything the first two books set up. Not a perfect book, some threads get dropped, but the emotional core is unimpeachable. Brown made…
Some of the examples are repeated a few too many times, but the core framework is solid. The habit stacking concept in particular is something I've actually used. Worth reading even if you're skeptica…
Long and sometimes repetitive, but the ideas are important enough to justify the length. The anchoring experiments are particularly striking. A book that has actual practical value beyond just being i…
The worldbuilding is the star here. Diagon Alley, the sorting hat, the moving staircases. Rowling made magic feel like it had rules and history and that's what makes Hogwarts feel real. The plot is si…
The arena sequences are brilliant, but what makes this book stand out is the pre-Games setup. The reaping, the training, the interviews. Collins understands that the horror of performance is just as f…
