Vladimir, Julia May Jonas

 

Vladimir by Julia May Jonas is another attempt to find a way to enjoy romance novels.

Started: July 19, 2025
Completed: July 22, 2025
Recommendation: Mild Recommendation
Recommended By: The Guardian

Review:

I guess I am a pretty pedestrian (some might say, "Hallmark," romantic).  I don't find masturbation romantic.  I'm not a BDSM kinda guy.  I guess I just really like when two people click.  I do see this in the Hallmark romances, although it is not common there.  The push me, pull you style of romance has no attractiveness for me.  I don't get a rush over the enemies turned lovers (although I have room for that...it is more that there is not the "thin line" between these two things as some suggest for me).  I get how everyone has a bunch of angst around romance and so a touch of that is just realistic...a month of that seems, to me, like a wild indulgence.  Not so interesting for me.  The book is well written with pretty good character development and a reasonable story line (until the end when it all falls apart in my mind and becomes a rush to stop writing at some word requirement).  There is a lack of transition to the ending (imagine, and they all lived happily ever after--though that is not the exact nature of this particular ending).  It just felt like it wrapped up once the romantic drama was done, then there was a bunch of hand waving and it is over.

Frames of Mind, Howard Gardner

 

Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences by Howard Gardner

Started: July 10, 2025
Completed: July 19, 2025
Recommendation: Mild recommendation
Recommended By: Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

oeuvre -- the sum of the lifework of an artist, writer, or composer

Review:

This book is dated.  I knew that when I selected it, but I was still surprised at how dated it was.  The concepts behind multiple intelligences were all new to me, so it was not dated in that sense.  It was dated in how it referred to society and computers in particular.  I don't find fault with this (it was written quite some time ago), but it did surprise me.  In any case, I thought it was great to see the story behind the concepts of multiple intelligences and how the research sort of began.

Lawless, Leah Litman

 

Lawless:  How the supreme court runs on conservative grievance, fringe theories, and bad vibes by Leah Litman

Started: July 7, 2025
Completed: July 11, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Lots of political reviews

Review:

It seems like this is an effort to make the book more approachable, but there are a lot of references to the Barbie movie, the Mean Girls movie, Game of Thrones, Arrested Development, and American Psycho.  I found these largely distracting and rarely applicable beyond the surface level.  On the other hand, I've gotten rather well versed in how the Supreme Court works and didn't really need analogies in order to see where things were headed.  More important to me, was the collection of information that pointed the entire activity of the court to grievance.  I can easily see Justice Kavanaugh acting on the basis of grievance.  As Kavanaugh said in his own testimony, "This is a circus...what goes around comes around..."

Heretic, Catherine Nixey

 

Heretic:  Jesus Christ and the other sons of God by Catherine Nixey

Started: July 3, 2025
Completed: July 7, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: I cannot remember how I came to choose this book.  I must have read some sort of a review, but I cannot remember what it might have been.

Review:

Nixey uses the word, "heretic," grounded in the original Greek and meaning to choose.  In a survey of other saviors before, during, and after the time of Jesus, Nixey presents a world of choice.  She explains why we are mostly unaware of these choices in terms of the Catholic church's effort to burn books, outlaw teachings, kill believers (of alternative versions of Jesus, etc.), and destroy churches.  Remember the inquisition?  Well, all of this works, and Nixey has to work with scant works (only pieces remain) and deal with partially or poorly understand religions.  This isn't fully eye opening (it is hard to say that Gilgamesh remains "news"), but it is revealing and that is very interesting.

How To Lose Your Mother, Molly Jong-Fast

 

How To Lose Your Mother:  A daughter's memoir by Molly Jong-Fast

Started: July 1, 2025
Completed: July 3, 2025
Recommendation: Mild Recommendation
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

Jong-Fast does not think much of herself as a daughter.  Or her mother as a mother.  Or her step-father as a father (though she does give him some credit).  She seems to feel that her father, especially now, has stepped up somewhat.  A child who wanted for nothing, self-described as obnoxious, was reared largely by a nanny with occasional swoop-ins from the parental figures around her.  She fought a battle with drug abuse (alcoholism apparently being the worst of it) and is now sober.  Her mother much less.  Her mother is not dead at the time of the book's writing (nor now as I write this), but she has dementia which has become increasingly intense.  This book pivots around Jong-Fast's realization that she is never going to be able to fix her relationship with her mother and, ironically, she is required to care for a mother who did not provide personal care for her in largely the same way (by hiring help).  Meanwhile, in what can only be described as a year from hell, Jong-Fast deals with deaths in her family and her husband's very serious bout with cancer.  It is a lot.  Jong-Fast reads the book and I find her voice grating...I may have gotten more from it if it didn't seem like she was whining at me the whole book.  Maybe not.

The Bones Beneath My Skin, TJ Klune

 

The Bones Beneath My Skin by TJ Klune with a bit of trepidation I step into "spine tingling" as I'm not particular a horror fan, but I am a TJ Klune fan, so...

Started: June 28, 2025
Completed: July 1, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This book was not horror.  I did enjoy this book, but cannot really say anything about it without giving something away.  I have to admit, as odd as it sounds, that this book was very normalizing in the midst of almost constant unreality.

A Drop of Corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett

 

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett is the next book in the Shadow of the Leviathan series.

Started: June 24, 2025
Completed: June 28, 2025
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I truly enjoy reading what I have read by Robert Jackson Bennett.  This series is truly rich and, somehow, Bennett manages to continue world building with strong character development and simply excellent turns of phrase.  I do not generally enjoy mysteries, so I think it is likely that I am not a good person to recommend them.  I enjoyed this mystery.  I particularly enjoyed the lack of a "secret clue" and I also fully accepted that Ana could connect things that I could not.  A fun, adventurous mystery with enough fantasy to make the world richly different.  The author's note at the end was particularly fantastic.