nothingforpomegranted's reviews
635 reviews

I enjoyed this a lot at the beginning, and I noticed significant parallels to On Beauty by Zadie Smith with the family branches, different political attitudes, and especially the teen daughter thinking just a bit too highly of herself within university politics. However, just like with Smith’s novel, my enthusiasm started to wane as the novel continued, and I wasn’t so interested as I reached the end, which was a bit disappointing. 

I think I like quiet, character-driven novels, but there’s some limit when I start to desire more drama. 

I heard about this series from the Fated Mates podcast because Sarah MacLean described the plot of the second book as a brother’s best friend who comes to the defense of a ruined lady only to discover that the rumors of her lost virtue are actually true! 
This first book concerns that brother himself, who is on a mission to find his father’s former mistress in order to save his sister’s dowry. Turns out, the best person to help with the job is the mistress’s niece, who just so happens to be the woman John had not stopped thinking about since their rendezvous in a garden under secret identities. The two rivals—divided by history of family scandal—travel through England to find the mistress and fall deeply in love along the way. 

🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️

I wasn’t expecting much from this, just a lighthearted book about a library, but I really love these characters. At the end of the book, I even found myself tearing up, thinking about the  relationships between parent and a child and the way memories stick with us. Each story was unique, and I loved the way that they tied together through the library. The  
 
was
 
a
 
truly fascinating character, and I loved the sneak peek into her life from the receptionist at the market.

I was expecting this to be informative and a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it ended up being a book that didn’t take anything seriously at all. The entire thing seemed like a joke or a satire, and I was disappointed because the concept actually sounds incredibly interesting! I would love to read an accessible academic history of many of these places, and instead what I got was a lame comedy special. 

I’m not quite sure what to rate this book. I understand that the whole purpose is that the film within a book within a book within a book is intended to be confusing, but I’m having a hard time even coming to conclusions. For most of the book, I was really enjoying both the strange layout and intertwining experience of the text and the stories, but I think I expected to have a few more loose ends tied up by the conclusion. I am glad to have read this, and it was definitely the right decision for me to read this independently of any other books, but I’m quite ready to return to more typical reading. 

The Navidson Record is a fascinating concept of a film, and I think that was my favorite aspect of the book. On the other hand, all of Johnny Truant’s footnotes were intriguing, though some of them were utterly disturbing and over the top, and while I think it was mostly intended to augment the rest of the story, I ended up preferring the time in Zampano’s story than the confusing back and forth about Johnny’s personal history. 

I think I’ll need to listen to a few more podcasts and read some more literary analyses to continue processing what’s happening in this book, and I’m looking forward to understanding other close readings. 

- interesting to discover that the structure was based in part on that of the Talmud

This was a lot of fun to read and discuss in our family book club. I really enjoyed the chapters about yeast and fermentation, and I loved drawing the parallels between booze and bread. Certainly those two chapters were the most engaging for me because I had a schema for understanding them. Some of the final chapters, particularly about the body and the brain made scientific references and used vocabulary that was unfamiliar to me when talking about compounds and processing. That made it a bit harder for me to appreciate the content, despite the casual pop science tone of the narration. 

Rogers included excellent anecdotes throughout the book, and I laughed out loud at several points. I’m curious about Maria the Jewess, who may have invented the still, and I particularly appreciated the quoted stance on whiskey contributed by a Michigan state senator in 1958.  

I don’t remember exactly which Everand list I found this book on, and I’m not sure what prompted me to pick it up, though I imagine it had something to do with the comp to Boys in the Boat. I love the Olympics, and I enjoy sports stories, and this seemed to have interesting history. However, this book was so short and so fast that I didn’t feel like I really got an insight into the characters’ experiences and motivations that led them to accomplish amazing athletic feats. 

I would be interested in learning more about the history of Hawai’i in this time period!

Nate is the child of immigrants and a Harvard graduate with a promising book deal and regular freelance reviewing gigs. Perhaps in the manner of many twenty-something Brooklynite men, he is simultaneously (or alternately) extremely confident and extremely insecure. Nate has recently broken up with his girlfriend of a year or so, Elisa, and he reflects on her mostly disparagingly, with occasional fleeting images of her beauty and his appreciation for her. When he meets one of Elisa’s friends at a dinner party she hosts, Nate is surprised to find her both attractive and appealing, and they begin a relationship that lasts about five months. Nate wrestles with his confusion about the fact that she is the kind of woman he believes he wants, and he genuinely likes her, but he finds that he isn’t attracted to her anymore. With that frustration, he begins to find everything Hannah does irritating. While he’s able to reflect on the vicious cycle of insecurity this creates, eventually the relationship fails. 

This is a novel of manners, slowly following our protagonist from bar to bar, book event to book event, interacting with the people of the town and industry with the occasional plot point thrown in there beyond the personal reflections. I enjoyed this book, though it was one I could just set aside and forget about for days until I finally decided it was time to just pick it up and finish it.

This was a meticulously well-researched book, and I just felt so uncomfortable the entire time that I couldn’t bring myself to like it, though I did feel like I was compelled to keep reading. 

The prologue was the best part of this book, in my opinion. We started with Li-Jon Tandem, the Chinese father of a half-Jewish son, who is determined to help his son find a sense of identity and heritage. He accompanies Alex and a few friends to a wrestling match, where they encounter a small thirteen year old boy who is bullied by his father and a secret autograph collector. Then, we get a stream of consciousness breakdown as we discover that Li-Jin is diagnosed with cancer and quickly succumbs to the disease (though the precise timeline is a bit unclear throughout the novel, with a reveal towards the end that suggests that Li-Jin actually died that very day) before the rest of the novel shifts to focus on Alex as an adult. 

Recovering from the trauma of his father’s death, Alex is in denial about his grief and presents an extremely unlikeable and unreliable main character. He cheats on his girlfriend, who just so happens to be his best friend’s sister, and he shows no remorse. He collects autographs and sells them, talking about how much he hates other Autograph Man while behaving exactly like them out at bars and avoiding his friends. He has an obsession with actress Kitty Alexander and has written her a letter a week since he was fifteen despite never receiving a response, and it is this obsession that kicks off the novel, which takes place over the course of about a week and a half. Too drunk and too high with his friends, Alex discovers a Kitty Alexander autograph, which fuels his obsession. He is convinced that it’s real, though his friends argue that he forged it himself under the influence, and the whole situation is made more dramatic by the fact that Alex crashed his car during this event, requiring Esther to need stitches on top of her scheduled pacemaker replacement surgery (which he’ll be missing to attend an autograph conference in New York). 

Alex irritated me, and the descriptions of his excessive drinking were gruesome. On top of that, the approach to Judaism made me pretty uncomfortable, and I had trouble stomaching those sections of the novel. I was especially thrown off by the use of the tetragrammaton as a section header in the first few chapters of the novel. Smith clearly researched this book heavily and demonstrated an admirable interest in cultures that, as far as I know, are not her own, and this highlights a certain level of respect. However, the approach to Alex and his understanding of Judaism was almost repulsive—reminiscent of Philip Roth—which was strange reading from the pen of a non-Jew, and I just didn’t feel great reading these descriptions. 

Also, it’s just important to note that this book would have to be disposed of in a geniza because of the publication of God’s name. Very strange to have that choice accepted by so many editors and publishers when it has real religious implications. 

This was cute and campy. Not really my style of of book, but I was able to listen to it on more than double speed and I finished it in just a couple hours, which is exactly how I’d like to consume this if I’m going to. A quick and easy YA thriller with all kinds of representation. Most of the representation was casual and fun (especially Gigi’s nonbinary mom), but some felt a bit forced just so that every character could have their contribution to representation. 

Gigi is a struggling student with a lifetime worth of training in jiu jitsu from her mother and a temper that has led to violence in school on more than one occasion. When she finds her favorite teacher, Mr. Ford, dead in his classroom after her latest detention, she decides to investigate with her best friends, who just so happen to be the only members of the Mystery and Thriller Literary Society. They get lots of threats along the way, suspecting the leader of a cheating ring

who turns out to be Gigi’s brother

until they realize that the murderer and the essayist must be different people, leading to a violent conclusion with two of the most popular kids in school.