Reviews
Browse all reviews by date posted or filter by rating, year read, or tag on the right to find something specific like a juicy memoir or a particularly unhinged review.
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All About Love: New Visions
I found the earlier chapters clearly defining love as “the will to nurture our own and others’ spiritual growth” really brilliant and challenging in a good way. Unfortunately I found the majority of the rest of the book incredibly repetitive and near nonsensical.
The Anthropocene Reviewed
★★★☆☆ This is an incredibly John Green book. The John Greeniest. The most John. The very Green. This book went down like chicken soup and I’m really not mad about it.
I’m Glad My Mom Died
★★★☆☆ This was good but not as good as everyone says it is? Well-written insofar as it’s a riveting tale, but can’t compare to the memoirs I’ve read by more seasoned writers.
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
★★★★★ My top read of 2021. A sweeping multi-generational medical and business drama about the Sackler family and the opioid epidemic from the family's humble beginnings as a band of immigrant Jewish brothers in New York to the shady marketing tactics that spawned the opioid crisis.
Crying in H Mart
I listened to this as an audiobook, narrated by the author herself, and remember I did in fact cry in a grocery store (not H Mart).
In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
★★★★☆ This book was a revelation. I love a book that peels back the lies marketing and Hollywood have shoved into our brains, and this book really does that for food.
The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family
★★★☆☆ Unpleasant to read. Wong’s paints her recollections in lurid, sensational, and vindictive grotesqueness.
Molly's Game: From Hollywood's Elite to Wall Street's Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker
★★★★☆ Devoured this in a day after re-watching the movie recently, because I was interested in Molly Bloom and also wanted the dirt on the celebs she names. Not quite as self-critical as I personally would’ve preferred and more than a little self-congratulatory/self-absolving in the end.
Know My Name
★★★★★ TLDR: this is the best memoir I have ever read and you must read it, I cried in anger, in joy, in catharsis, I learned, I was moved, shocked, proud - Chanel Miller is a phenomenal writer and immensely talented, smart, sharp, emotionally mature person whose writings and experience on trauma and rape culture and justice you absolutely need to read.
Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement
Davis talks about mass movements, transnational solidarity, and intersectional, radically inclusive feminism. This is the first book by Angela Davis that I’ve read but certainly not the last. She uses very accessible language to make her points, and pointedly does not bog her arguments down in heavy theory/dense vocabulary.
The Souls of Black Folk
The book is mostly a history and lives of Black people after the abolition of slavery. Dubois gives both a systemic history (Freedman’s Bureau, 15th amendment, other administrations and policies of abolition, etc.) as well as some very personal accounts from himself and other individuals who lived through this period and its aftermath.
Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life
★★★★☆ So so good, it’s called Dear Girls to her daughters but for me it was like reading a letter from an Asian American big sister.
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
★★★★★ The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer - from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.
Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race
★★★★☆ Not as provocative as the title would suggest.
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
★★★☆☆ What it says on the can - a very short, high school level (I assume) science book on astrophysics. I expected some more self-inserts from Tyson but he doesn’t even mention his own contributions to the demotion of Pluto as a planet.
Mongrel: Essays, Diatribes, Pranks
★★★★★ A phenomenally thought-provoking collection of essays, musings, and one or two more formalized reporting pieces on queerness and diasporic Asian identity.
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
★★★★★ It’s 2019 and I honestly forget sometimes that Mindy Kaling was one of the people who literally created The Office.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
★★★★★ The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of a multibillion-dollar startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end in the face of pressure and threats from the CEO and her lawyers.