anniefwrites's reviews
330 reviews

If They Come for Us: Poems, by Fatimah Asghar

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emotional reflective fast-paced
A really excellent collection that tackles generational trauma, family, girlhood, and identity. This is exactly the kind of poetry I like—accessible yet with deep layers of subtext if you look closer. 
Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar, by Cheryl Strayed

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emotional funny reflective fast-paced
Cheryl Strayed has such a strong voice—it truly jumps off the page. I generally thought her tough-love advice was both generous and spot-on. I do think the book is a bit dated (it’s from columns published over a decade ago), but it is definitely a feel good book that is easy to dip in and out of. 
Soundings: Journeys in the Company of Whales: A Memoir, by Doreen Cunningham

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emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced
This is definitely a memoir unlike anyone I’ve read before, with both its style and content. I was hopeful that I’d love it because memoir is one of my favorite genres and whales my favorite animals, but the writing style felt a bit too opaque for me, as did the motivation for the trip. I found myself feeling disconnected from the story, which really is more about incompatibility with the writing than anything else. I don’t think this one was for me, but I am intrigued to see how other authors incorporate animals and biology into their personal stories. 
Girls That Never Die, by Safia Elhillo

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dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced
It has been a good long while since I’ve read any poetry, but by midway through this collection, I was back into it. Elhillo tackles girlhood, womanhood, her Sudanese culture, and violence against women artfully and powerfully. While a poem or two went over my head, the 
collection did resonate with me, especially “Ode to My Homegirls.” 
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The New Corner Office: How the Most Successful People Work From Home, by Laura Vanderkam

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informative fast-paced
I am generally skeptical of business books, but I found that this one had a lot of valuable and innovative advice. It’s super short, so the author doesn’t drag out the discussion with any unnecessary corporate buzzwords. I didn’t always agree with her takes, but I found her practical advice really useful—I definitely plan to apply some of it. 
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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emotional reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
All in all, I really enjoyed this book. TJR’s writing style is always vivid, reflective, and engaging. Following characters as flawed as Evelyn and Celia was an exercise in restraining judgment in a good way.
SpoilerI did sort of see the twist coming, though not in the exact way that it occurred. I think it didn’t quite land for me because in general,
I wasn’t drawn to Monique’s character and preferred to stay in Evelyn’s story. And I think at times Reid could have pulled back on spelling out connections and emotional changes—I think the reader is smart enough to put it together themselves based on her specific details and descriptions. (I also had some qualms about a white woman writing the fictional stories of two women of color—it seems like she did her due diligence, but it also feels like a moral gray area that I’m not quite equipped to unpack as a white person.) Still, Reid’s worlds always feel so real you swear it’s nonfiction. I’m always willing to read her again.  
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Nourish: How to Heal Your Relationship with Food, Body, and Self, by Heidi Schauster

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hopeful informative reflective medium-paced
I don’t struggle with an eating disorder, but I am privy to the horrible narratives around food and exercise that have been perpetuated in the US from the early aughts to today—so yeah, you could say I don’t have a great relationship with food/my body. I was skeptical of this book simply because so many books claim to do what it does but end up falling into the traps of anti-fatness and shaming. But this book actually does what it says it will—it offers you a guide to connect more with your body and improve your relationship to food outside of societal pressures and ideas. It’s informed by Health at Every Size, which I think makes a huge difference in tone to other things I’ve heard or read. I didn’t necessarily go through all the steps right away, but I am planning on reviewing my highlights and reflecting more deeply on its content and prompts. I wish more nutritionists and dieticians thought this way. 

I do want to add that it’s a pet peeve of mine for an author to say up front “this is meant for all genders, but I’m still going to use binary pronouns—just imagine I’m not.” The singular they is here to stay! Also, in the intros to some of the chapters she quotes some sus figures (If you have a Maintenance Phase episode about you, it’s a red flag), though not in the content and research, so it didn’t cause me problems when reading. 

Overall, a great start to my food book reading journey. 
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Working from Home: Making the New Normal Work for You, by Karen Mangia

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informative fast-paced
This felt a bit like a money-grab for pandemic times; much of the info could easily be found in articles online. I got some valuable advice out of it—tips for online presentations, reminding the reader that you can’t invest in something unless you divest from something else—but mostly, it was a bunch of corporate buzzwords strung together. Also the swinging back and forth between “you need to be comfortable” and “stop wearing sweatpants” was frustrating and felt a little out of touch. She also threw some fatphobia in there because why not. 
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Welcome to St. Hell: My Trans Teen Misadventure: A Graphic Novel, by Lewis Hancox

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emotional funny inspiring reflective fast-paced
Somehow Lewis Hancox made a childhood and adolescence full of gender-related trauma both funny and accessible. I think in particular, the addition of his current voice—a representation of a trans person who made it and got to the life he wanted—made the darker parts feel more hopeful. Like Fun Home meets Giant Days. 
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The Nineties, by Chuck Klosterman

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informative reflective medium-paced
Overall, I learned a lot from this book about a period of time that I’ve always loved and been fascinated by. I was born in the mid-1990s, so I remember little of what the period was actually like, and have no way of knowing how adults experienced it. Klosterman distills the dominant culture and attitudes of the nineties in the U.S. using many of the strange and silly bits of culture that made it up, and in a way that makes me better understand some of the differences between Gen Xers and Millennials. I did think his structure was a bit opaque at times—I thought that clearer chapter titles and adding subtitles would have been helpful to orient me as a reader sometimes struggling to see the connections between seemingly disparate topics. I also think that his argument that the dominant culture was white culture felt like a bit of a cop-out; he touches on people of color but insists that he’s trying to cover the nineties more generally and so doesn’t focus on aspects of their “subculture.” He does integrate some references to Black music, film, and TV, but the overwhelming focus is on white American culture, which, while I understand white people dominated control of the media in the ‘90s, I think dismisses that people of different races didn’t experience the nineties in the same way. It made me wonder how different a book like this would be if written by a Black person or a member of the LGBTQ+ community, etc. I guess that’s the trouble with trying to wrap up something as complex and unwieldy as an entire decade into one book—it’s still going to be subjective. I think the counter-argument would be that this book isn’t meant to be a complete history, but rather one guy’s musings on the connections within a decade and its relationship to the present (which I did find really fascinating—the points about answering/not answering the phone really got me).  But honestly, I didn’t find it all the funny, I think because I wasn’t necessarily the intended audience (a female Zillennial), and also because sometimes the tonal shifts were very dramatic, like when he covers acts of mass violence that occurred in the decade, which I did find powerful and enlightening. Generally, I did really enjoy the reading experience but found myself stumbling over claims that seemed inaccurate from a female perspective. (Also, as an editor, I gotta say, there were a lot of typos. What can you do?)
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