tracithomas's reviews
1010 reviews

I’m not sure what exactly I just read. I struggle to articulate what she was trying to do here - it was weird and had jokes but also felt serious. Some essays were really good and some went over my head. A mixed bag. 

I wanted to love this book but it was just medium for me. I think if you know a lot about Boy Scouts you might appreciate it more. It just felt like it dragged a lot or didn't quite capture the balance between reporting, history, and personal stories in the way a book like this can to really make it stick. I also really did not care for the audiobook narrator and he might have impacted my reading of the book in a negative way.

This book is so tender and heartwarming and lovely. I was surprised and charmed by how earnest it was. I also felt like I learned a lot. I really appreciated the variety of subjects and writerly styles. It was a great length. 

This is a perfect nonfiction book for people who do not read nonfiction. It covers a lot of ground and is very easy and accessible. For me, this book was way too surface and lacked the authority of an expert and felt more like a person reciting facts they learned on a topic they're obsessed with (which Green basically admits is what is going on here). 

The research that went into this book is astounding. Jones really puts he chops as a historian on display. I love the intimacy of the book. It does feel long and slow in parts in a way that felt very much like this was something she needed to write for herself. I appreciated the lyrical style and the tension of race and it's shifting boundaries.

I liked this collection it covers a lot of ground. No one poem stuck with me, but a lot of the writing is thoughtful and enjoyable. I liked how themes carried over throughout the book, and I liked how she was thinking about writing and poetry as a subject in her poems that were not actually about that at all. 

This is such a lovely reflection on art and self. I enjoyed learning about K Pop but struggled to really grasp the references. The writing reads as casual which I was impressed by because that conversational tone can feel cheap in memoir, but not here. It’s very enjoyable— like a convo with a smart friend but not a pretentious one. Kwon is genuine and eager and that is nice to spend time with. 

This is such an impressive work of academic research and history. It is easy to read in the sense that the author breaks things down clearly and gives tons of examples. It is a slower read bc of the need to cite and prove points to an academic standard, which can be a little more challenging for a lay reader. I appreciated the arguments crafted and the sheer depth of the research. A real feat. 

There are some really juicy parts of this exposé memoir. I liked her writing style but think there were too many extra details about things that were only minor to her story (like her fear of getting Zika, which she didn't get). The last 30% she does get into the juicy stuff and proves facebook is run by a bunch of egomaniacal (or nicer, careless) people, who are not nearly as smart as we want to give them credit for. If this had been shorter it could've really packed a huge punch, but over all, for what it was trying to do I think she did a very solid job.

People need to read this book. It gets at a super specific and rising trend in homelessness in the USA that we are not talking about enough at all. It is super engaging and reads like a novel because of the narrative structure. I would say sometimes things get confusing as he follows 5 families and I was forgetting who was who a bit here and there. I also think it was a touch too long and repetitive, but overall I was hooked.