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| ------------------------ | ------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ | --------------- | -------------------- | ------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----- | ---------------- | --------------------------------------------------- | | ------ | | | checkbox | position | cover Hotel Bemelmans | title Hotel Bemelmans | author Bemelmans, Ludwig | isbn 0091887879 | isbn13 9780091887872 | asin 0091887879 | num pages 302pp | avg rating 3.80 | num ratings 513 | date pub Oct 10, 2002 | date pub edition Oct 10, 2002 | Madeline's rating really liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review I'm shelving this under both "memoir" and "essays", because this is a collection of short vignettes about the staff at the Hotel Splendide, seen throu I'm shelving this under both "memoir" and "essays", because this is a collection of short vignettes about the staff at the Hotel Splendide, seen through the eyes of a teenage employee. Ludwig Bemelmans (most famous for the Madeline books, which he also illustrated) really was from a hotel family who was sent to work at the Ritz in New York as a teenager, and Hotel Bemelmans is a collection of his short stories based on that period of his life, collected from different sources. One of the main appeals of this collection is Bemelemans' original drawings, which are peppered throughout and are a fantastic accompaniment to the stories, which are almost entirely character-driven. Bemelmans excels at description, both physical and personal, and the various staff members of the Splendide who inhabit this novel are all fully-formed and memorable and will almost definitely remind you of some coworkers from your past. It's also incredibly funny, like this passage where the narrator is describing how the maitre d', Monsieur Victor, treats guests try to get sat without a reservation:"As these intruders stand in front of him, Victor looks them over with a slow deliberate inventory of shoes, trousers, hands. He stops at the neckties: the face he has seen below, when it came in through the door at the end of the Jade Lounge. Victor has his heels together; he stands straight, then leans forward a little and turns his head in a listening gesture. The guest in front of him is now ill at ease and wishes he had not come; his is a plain, well-dressed, and respectable-looking person. 'Your name?' asks Victor. The man now has his hands to his tie, at which Victor has been looking all the while. Victor repeats the name to his assistant, lisping it slowly. The assistant looks at the list and finds no such name. 'You have no reservation?' says Victor now, with the tone in which he might say: 'Where did you steal that watch?''Reservation?' says the man.'Yes, reservation,' answers Victor. He turns to his assistant and says: 'Il n'as pas de reservation.''Oh!' says the assistant, regretting this on behalf of Victor. Victor, who has never once looked at the wife of the man though she has been standing beside her husband all this while, says, if he likes the look of the man, in French and to his fingernails: 'Find him a table somewhere else.' If he doesn't like him, then suddenly and with finality he looks at the man's face and tells him: 'Sorry, I have no table for you,' turns on his heel, and walks into the dining room, to bow and smile left and right to the good guests at the first tables."Maybe that passage gave you the impression that this is a book full of snooty waiters who think they're more important than they are. It is not. This little collection of stories is full of hardworking people scraping by and being kind when they can manage it, and honestly the best way I can illustrate the sheer humanity of these stories is by sharing this passage about the hotel staff cleaning up after a debutante ball:"Mr. Sigsag is busy collecting leftovers. No matter how tired his men are, they must help him save all the junk that can be rescued: cheesecloth draperies used in decorations, the stumps of candles, fancy lamps, Christmas ornaments, lost gloves and fans, branches of silver-sprayed smilax, empty cigar and cigarette boxes and the tinfoil therefrom, champagne corks, flower baskets. Even the oranges that were wired to trees he collects at five-thirty in the morning. The cut flowers are placed in water in champagne tubs; the rest goes up to his museum, a room filled from floor to ceiling with boxes and shelves of junk.When this is done, he leaves orders for the next day. The flowers in the champagne tubs are to be sent to friends, or given to the lady cashiers. In the middle of all this late work he sits down and writes a rough draft of the bill, and checks over stubs, his face the color of cold salmon. Under his desk, in a tub of ice, are some bottles filled with cocktails left over from dinner. He keeps them there for the scrubladies. ...The doorman is the last person from outside; he has locked the doors and turned off the lights on the marquee. He gets a drink too, half a glass of whiskey straight; he is cold from standing all evening in the slush and rain, the snow, or just the cold wind. When he is gone, the old scrubwomen come out of the elevator; they live in a dormitory on the top floor of the Splendide. Mr. Sigsag has fallen asleep, sprawled over his bills and the next day's orders. One of the scrubwomen knows where he keeps the drinks for them; she reaches down between his chair and the desk, careful not to wake him, and pulls the bottles out of the ice. Then they rub their brushes on brown bars of soap, tuck up their shirts, take another drink, stick into their hair flowers that have fallen off young dresses, and sing Irish melodies while they start to scrub the marble in the ladies' room." ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 4 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Sep 2025 | date added Sep 15, 2025 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Down the Drain | title Down the Drain | author Fox, Julia | isbn 1668011506 | isbn13 9781668011508 | asin 1668011506 | num pages 318pp | avg rating 4.37 | num ratings 85,560 | date pub Oct 10, 2023 | date pub edition Oct 10, 2023 | Madeline's rating it was ok | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review In some ways, the best kind of celebrity memoir is the kind written by the "famous for being famous" crowd. Before landing a breakout role in Uncut Ge In some ways, the best kind of celebrity memoir is the kind written by the "famous for being famous" crowd. Before landing a breakout role in Uncut Gems (playing, essentially, herself, but whatever, she was still electric), Julia Fox was known only within an extremely small, niche artsy community in New York - honestly the best way I can explain her whole schtick is that in another life, she would have been one of Andy Warhol's muses before getting banned from The Factory after two months. This book is Fox's life story, beginning with her early life as the child of neglectful parents, then her tumultuous adolescence and early adulthood as she struggles through abusive boyfriends and substance abuse, and ending with her career-making role in a major movie, which paved the way for this book's existence. In another world, this could have been a raw, soul-searching exploration of Fox's own struggles with addiction and toxic relationships, and a chronicle of her healing process. But Julia Fox doesn't have time for nerd shit like introspection or critical thinking. She's here to paaaaaaaaaarty. I think it would have been really fun to read this as someone who has never heard of Julia Fox. You'd find yourself reading this and wondering "when does she actually get famous?" Spoiler alert, she doesn't, but that's immaterial because in Fox' mind, not only is she a household name, but is something of a modern Princess Diana. And that level of delusion is what makes this worth the ride, at least for a little while. While it's true that Fox's life story is wild, legitimately (her dad let her move to Italy alone when she was a teenager, and there are easily six different times in this book when she should have died - basically imagine Alexis Rose if Schitt's Creek had the balls to admit that a character like that would obviously also be a hard drug user), her writing grated on me after a while. Julia Fox is so far up her own ass that this memoir sometimes feels like she's writing fanfiction of her own life. To hear Julia Fox tell it, every man she's ever met tells her she's the most beautiful woman in the world. She gets a job as a dominatrix when she's eighteen and, with no training or experience, becomes the most popular and in-demand girl at her job basically overnight. She "single-handedly started every trend of 2022." The Safdie brothers consulted her constantly during the writing process of Uncut Gems, sending her script drafts and relying on her feedback. In her screen test, she was such an incredible scene partner that she improved Adam Sandler's performance ("I was able to keep up with fucking Adam Sandler! And not just keep up but challenge him, push him, bring out the best in him.") She claims that her performance also generated Oscar buzz, and that's cute because I think the lasting impact of her (so far, singular) starring role is that time she went on a podcast and was so zonked out on drugs she pronounced the movie title "uncuh jaaaaaaaahms."But my absolute favorite "and then everyone clapped" moment from Julia Fox's life is when she's still working as a dominatrix and gets a sugar daddy, who is so insanely jealous and possessive that he hires a private detective to follow her around. (In the guy's defense, Fox was in fact dating someone else at this time, despite assuring Sugar Daddy that she had ended things with the boyfriend) Fox describes being out one day and realizing that she's being followed, and manages to turn the tables on the private detective and starts following him, and confronts him on the street. She then gets a call from Sugar Daddy, who tells her that he just got off the phone with the private detective: "Do you know that this guy, in his thirty-year career as a private eye, has never been made? And you managed to do it. You never cease to amaze me, young girl."Like...I'm sorry, Julia, I just don't think that happened. But it's a fun story! ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 3 | votes 14 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Aug 2025 | date added Sep 12, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Strandings: Confessions of a Whale Scavenger | title Strandings: Confessions of a Whale Scavenger | author Riley, Peter | isbn 1788166078 | isbn13 9781788166072 | asin 1788166078 | num pages 236pp | avg rating 4.05 | num ratings 82 | date pub unknown | date pub edition Oct 03, 2023 | Madeline's rating liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review "When I was thirteen, I helped a woman with blue hair load the jaw of a sperm whale into the back of a yellow Volvo 245. It only just fitted. What she "When I was thirteen, I helped a woman with blue hair load the jaw of a sperm whale into the back of a yellow Volvo 245. It only just fitted. What she'd got hold of wasn't quite as big as the one that greets you at the entrance of the Natural History Museum in Oxford; that's still the most enormous jaw I've ever seen. Nevertheless, what I helped carry was big. And heavy. Add to that the pounds of blubber and you get a sense of what we transported that morning - maybe the weight of a tall man. According to the butchers I've asked, it must have taken her at least half an hour to saw though. If you've ever handled a piece of whalebone, you'll know how durable and solid it feels - like reinforced, triple-weighted pumice. In the case of a sperm whale, it's even sturdier, needing to withstand higher water pressures that in other, shallower-diving members of its species. The blue-haired woman had accomplished this at night, alone, and in the steady Norfolk rain."So opens Strandings, which is a strange, slim little nonfiction account of Peter Riley's exploration into the niche underground community of people who track stranded whales along England's coast and harvest the corpses for bones, teeth, and ambergris. Along with the formative experience with the whale scavenger he had as a teenager, Peter Riley is also a journalist and a Herman Melville scholar, so he is uniquely positioned to dive into this subculture - a subculture that, due to the murky legality of scavenging dead whales, relies on secrecy to survive. This is a very brief book, and there were a lot of times when I found myself wishing that Riley had devoted decades to this project, so we could see him building stronger relationships with the scavengers he's able to track down, and give us a more in-depth look at their world. As it is, we get what amounts to brief vignettes of a handful of people, who are introduced and then fade into the background of the story almost immediately. The book is an odd blend of human interest stories, history of whale strandings in England (including a memorable account of the time a whale in Elizabethan England managed to swim into the Thames in central London and was almost immediately hacked to death by locals armed with axes), and impassioned plea against the dangers of global warming and industrialization. Each of these immense subjects can only be skimmed over, so again, I wonder if this book would have benefitted from a couple hundred more pages.But at the same time, this is a deeply personal book - to the point where I almost shelved it under "memoir." Peter Riley's interest in whale scavengers began with a personal encounter when he was a teenager, so it follows that the subject will be deeply ingrained with who he is as a person. Peter Riley, the author, is an active character in this book, and I think the only reason it works is because the book is so short - in a longer and more in-depth account, I might have gotten annoyed with how often our impartial reporter pops into the narrative to tell us how he's feeling. So I guess that's one benefit of this book not being longer. Overall, this serves mostly as an introduction to a much larger world, and a good jumping-off point to other books. It's interesting and engaging, but over as soon as it feels like it's starting to pick up steam. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 8 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Aug 2025 | date added Sep 03, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Women's Hotel | title Women's Hotel | author Lavery, Daniel M. | isbn 0063343533 | isbn13 9780063343535 | asin 0063343533 | num pages 272pp | avg rating 2.87 | num ratings 3,625 | date pub Oct 15, 2024 | date pub edition Oct 15, 2024 | Madeline's rating liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Taking place in 1960's New York and following the lives of several residents of the Biedermeier Hotel over the course of a few months, this book is es Taking place in 1960's New York and following the lives of several residents of the Biedermeier Hotel over the course of a few months, this book is essentially Daniel Lavery trying his hand at re-writing The Girls of Slender Means. If you've already read Muriel Spark's novel, you'll either enjoy the homage or wonder why Lavery took the time to write essentially the same book. As a longtime fan of Lavery's work on The Toast and The Chatner, I liked this mainly because it gave me a chance to immerse myself in his writing for an entire novel - the characters are engaging but we really only see them in slice-of-life increments, and there's the barest bit of plot connecting their stories, so you really pay the price of admission for the style here. My only real criticism is that the dialogue all sounds like it belongs in a 1920's British novel, not a story set in New York in the 60's. There is an ocean of difference between how the characters speak in this book and how the characters of Mad Men speak, despite the fact that they ostensibly share a setting. For me, the main selling point is the prose itself, not the characters or the story. Evaluate your own preferences and proceed accordingly."The first three decades of the twentieth century had seen an out-and-out scramble among developers to build hotels for every sort of working women, boardinghouses being now as hopelessly old-fashioned for the office-girl generation as horsehair sofas had been for their mothers. The working woman's moment required publicly available monuments to efficiency and reproducibility - part icebox preserving virtue until such time as its usage might be lawfully required, part beehive for concentrating the secretarial pool, and part sorority. The few built before 1916 were massive hulks, relentlessly absorbing all the fresh air and daylight and casting all their neighbors in perpetual secondhand shade. Eventually their neighbors got together and demanded that the city safeguard the public's access to the sun, which resulted in the 1916 Zoning Resolution. The hotels built in afteryears, including the Biedermeier, were forced to withdraw from the level of the street through progressive setbacks in what came to be known as wedding-cake style, as if each successive floor were being slowly eaten away. Venerable old firms, from the Allerton House Company to Murgatroyd & Ogden, all took a joint interest in producing neat little refrigerators for storing career-minded girls from just-good-enough families against spoilage, when root cellars and iceboxes would no longer do, or salt curing wouldn't take; right up until October 1929, after which point they had enough problems of their own and left the hotels to fend for themselves." ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 8 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Jul 2025 | date added Aug 24, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Geek Love | title Geek Love | author Dunn, Katherine | isbn 0375713344 | isbn13 9780375713347 | asin 0375713344 | num pages 348pp | avg rating 3.95 | num ratings 71,838 | date pub Mar 1989 | date pub edition Jun 11, 2002 | Madeline's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review "I was full-grown before I ever set foot in a house without wheels. Of course I had been in stores, offices, fuel stations, barns, and warehouses. But "I was full-grown before I ever set foot in a house without wheels. Of course I had been in stores, offices, fuel stations, barns, and warehouses. But I had never walked through the door of a place where people slept and ate and bathed and picked their noses, and, as the saying goes, 'lived,' unless that place was three times longer than it was wide and came equipped with road shocks and tires.When I first stood in such a house I was struck by its terrible solidity. The thing had concrete tentacles sunk into the earth, and sprawling inefficiency. Everything was bigger than it needed to be and there were so many shadowed, dusty corners empty and wasted that I thought I would get lost if I stepped away from the door. That building wasn't going anywhere, despite an itchy sense that it was not entirely comfortable where it was. That was when I first recognized a need to explain myself. That was the time when I realized that the peculiar look on people's faces when they saw me was not envy or hatred, but could be translated into one simple question: ' What the hell happened to you?' They needed to know so they could prevent it from happening to them. My answer was simple, too: 'My father and mother designed me this way. They achieved greater originality in some of their other projects.'"The Binewski family spends their lives traveling around the country with their circus, which revolves around a "geek" show featuring the Binewski children: conjoined twins Iphigenia and Electra, Olympia the albino dwarf, Arturo the Aqua Boy, and the baby Fortunato. Our narrator is Olympia, who as a dwarf isn't interesting enough to be part of the show and works instead as a carnival barker and assistant for her more marketable siblings. Looking back on her childhood as an adult, Olympia takes us through the saga of the Binewski clan, and the rise and fall of their empire. Does it sound whimsical? It is not (although it's often funny, in a very bizarre way). Make no mistake: this book is weird and gross and uncomfortable and so fucking good. It's one of those novels that you should read, if only because you will never read something else like it again. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 15 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Jul 2025 | date added Aug 05, 2025 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1) | title Gideon the Ninth(The Locked Tomb, #1) | author Muir, Tamsyn * | isbn 1250313198 | isbn13 9781250313195 | asin 1250313198 | num pages 448pp | avg rating 4.19 | num ratings 175,511 | date pub Sep 10, 2019 | date pub edition Sep 10, 2019 | Madeline's rating it was ok | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review I usually try to steer clear of the BookTok side of the internet, but on a whim (and an admittedly fun plot synopsis), I decided to dive into one of T I usually try to steer clear of the BookTok side of the internet, but on a whim (and an admittedly fun plot synopsis), I decided to dive into one of Tumblr's most-recommended fantasy series. And then I realized almost immediately why I don't use the internet for reading suggestions. This book feels like maybe the first or second draft of a really solid fantasy series, but often it reads like the author was under pressure to finish it and get it printed as quickly as possible, with no time to really dive deep into aspects of this world. The actual story setup and execution is really fun - Gideon the Ninth is an indentured servant to Harrowhark, who is the "Reverend Daughter" and heir to a society of necromancers. The Emperor needs new necromancers, so invites one from each of the nine houses to compete for a position. (If it seems like I'm speedrunning the exposition, don't worry, so does Muir) Each necromancer arrives to the competition with their "adept", and presented with what's essentially an escape room scenario: they're staying in an abandoned estate and tasked with finding keys and doing...something with them. The instructions given to the necromancers aren't super clear, and we as readers are not helped by the fact that our narrator Gideon does not particularly care about the competition. At its best, this book is almost The Big Lebowski, in the sense that we are thrown into a murder mystery but see the entire thing through the eyes of a narrator who not only doesn't have a clue what's going on, but also doesn't want to know. Harrow is here to solve the puzzles and win the competition (and figure out who's been killing the competition); Gideon is here to do a lot of pushups and have snarky back-and-forth with her necromancer. What killed this novel for me, and the reason I'm not going to continue the series, is the absolutely shitty worldbuilding. The foundation the entire plot rests on - that this is a society centered around necromancy - is executed so poorly it ruins the whole book. For starters, at no point does anyone in this book perform actual necromancy - aka speaking to the dead - and instead, this world's version of necromancy means reanimating skeletons. There are some genuinely cool setpieces where this is utilized and the mechanics of the magic are fascinating, but again, it ain't necromancy. Muir created a world that revolves around the dead, but neglected to examine what the means on anything more than a superficial level. This is a society of necromancers, yet the dead have no presence in the characters lives. When other characters start dropping dead, there are no funeral rites performed, and the others have to make an improvised morgue in the kitchen - excuse me, what do you mean the characters are living in what's essentially a necromancer research center and there's nowhere to store dead bodes? Muir is only concerned with the aesthetics of her world, and cannot be bothered to explore the why behind them, and peppers the novel with things that have no business existing in this universe: Gideon wears what are canonically described as aviator sunglasses, despite being raised in a necromancer nunnery in space thousands of years in the future. Where did she get them, and also where does she get her comic books and nudie mags? At one point, Harrow makes a joke by quoting a famous Reddit post, and there is no explanation for how our necromancer priestess knows about mid-2000's memes. Gideon says a character looks like mayonnaise multiple times; how does she know what mayonnaise is?This is a book built entirely on vibes, lazy meme regurgitation, and "this looks cool, don't worry about it" aesthetics, with nothing going on under the surface. It wants to be many things - a cool necromancer adventure, a bickering couple romance, a locked-house murder mystery - but fails because the author cannot engage with any of these concepts except in the most superficial terms. The fun action scenes and snarky banter might be enough to sustain you, and I will admit that I found myself enjoying some sections, but this book is a good reminder to take social media's recommendations with a giant grain of salt. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 3 | votes 21 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Jul 2025 | date added Aug 05, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Arabella | title Arabella | author Heyer, Georgette | isbn 0099465620 | isbn13 9780099465621 | asin 0099465620 | num pages 280pp | avg rating 4.10 | num ratings 22,545 | date pub 1949 | date pub edition Oct 07, 2004 | Madeline's rating really liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review I really need to make it more of a priority to read my way through Georgette Heyer's Regency romances - I've only read a handful of them, but so far e I really need to make it more of a priority to read my way through Georgette Heyer's Regency romances - I've only read a handful of them, but so far every single one has been an absolute delight. Honestly I don't know why anyone bothers with [redacted]'s cheap knockoffs when you can get the real deal. The story kicks off at the beginning of the London season, when Arabella Tallant is preparing for her debut. She's the middle-class daughter of a clergyman, but thanks to a wealthy godmother who is sponsoring her season, has a significant leg up on the competition. Arabella is looking forward to a fun season of parties and dancing, but unfortunately, before she even makes it to London, she crosses paths with thee bachelor of the season: the arrogant and extremely rich Beaumaris. When she overhears Beaumaris complaining to a friend that Arabella is just another fortune hunter, she decides to get back at him and starts a rumor that she's actually an incredibly wealthy heiress. The lie quickly spirals out of control, and the usual Heyer-esque shenanigans ensue (in this one, our aggressively good-hearted heroine rescues a dog and an orphan chimney sweep). In addition to being another charming, light-hearted romance, this book really demonstrates that historical fiction is an art that's harder to master than it seems. I can't really put my finger on why exactly, but Heyer's characters always feel accurate to the time period, unlike other historic fiction I've read where the characters all seem like people at Renaissance faire: they're wearing the outfits and talking with an accent, but it's clearly just a costume they put on. Heyer's characters never feel anachronistic, and aside from that, they're a lot of fun. Heyer has such a good ear for dialogue, and one of the only passages I remembered to mark was this conversation between Arabella and her brother's friend, when he has to tell her about his gambling debt:"She sprang up from her chair, but at this she paused. 'No? But how is this? Why has he left the inn?''Couldn't pay his shot,' explained Mr. Scunthorpe apologetically. 'Left his watch. Silly thing to do. Might have come in useful.''Oh!' she cried out, horror in her voice. 'Is it as bad as that?''Worse!' said Mr. Scunthorpe gloomily. 'Got queered sporting his blunt on the table. Only hadn't enough blunt. Took to signing vowels, and ran aground.''Gaming!' Arabella breathed, in a shocked voice. 'Faro,' said Mr. Scunthorpe. 'Mind, no question of any Greeking transaction! No fuzzing, or handling the concavesuit! Not but what makes it worse, because a fellow has to be dashed particular in all matters of play and pay, if he goes to the Nonesuch. All the go, I assure you: Corinthian club - best of good ton! They play devilish huge there - above my touch!'" ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 2 | votes 25 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Jul 2025 | date added Jul 25, 2025 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen | title Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen | author Rubenhold, Hallie * | isbn 0593184610 | isbn13 9780593184615 | asin 0593184610 | num pages 512pp | avg rating 4.23 | num ratings 1,412 | date pub Mar 27, 2025 | date pub edition Mar 25, 2025 | Madeline's rating liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review "Edwardian newspapers loved a terrifying tale of true crime, and the story of what had been uncovered at 39 Hilldrop Crescent contained all the elemen "Edwardian newspapers loved a terrifying tale of true crime, and the story of what had been uncovered at 39 Hilldrop Crescent contained all the elements that readers relished. Less than twenty-four hours after Drew and Mitchell had made their discovery, the names of Hawley Harvey Crippen, Belle Elmore and Ethel Le Neve appeared in headlines around the world. Their narrative was both sensational and Gothic. It was not simply the dastardly, spine-tingling act of murder and dismemberment that drew public interest, but its characters and scenarios. There was an air of moral ambiguity surrounding each of the three players - the wife: a glittering American music hall performer; the husband: an untrustworthy Yankee medical man; and the mistress: a typist, a single, vulnerable girl who lived apart from her family at the center of a morally bankrupt capital. That it had all unfolded behind the tree-shaded houses of polite suburbia further heightened the sense of titillation. A middle class that had only recently glimpsed an uncomfortable image itself reflected in the Pooters now found itself staring hard at the Crippens. Were the aspirant middle classes really so far removed from the events of 1888, when Jack the Ripper destroyed the lives and bodies of women living in the slums of Whitechapel? No amount of social climbing, crystal sherry glasses, seaside holidays or gala dinners was enough to spare them from the urban depredations of murder and mayhem. Hilldrop Crescent could be any respectable neighborhood. The Crippens might be your neighbors." ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 5 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Jul 2025 | date added Jul 19, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Care and Feeding: A Memoir | title Care and Feeding: A Memoir | author Woolever, Laurie | isbn 0063327600 | isbn13 9780063327603 | asin 0063327600 | num pages 352pp | avg rating 3.57 | num ratings 6,448 | date pub unknown | date pub edition Mar 11, 2025 | Madeline's rating liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review There is nothing especially unique about Laurie Woolever's story. Like millions of other people who made a living in the restaurant industry, she was There is nothing especially unique about Laurie Woolever's story. Like millions of other people who made a living in the restaurant industry, she was someone with addictive tendencies who found herself provided with an endless supply of rich food, alcohol, and drugs; and was surrounded by people who believed in never denying themselves any pleasures, and worried about the consequences later. Laurie Woolever gets to write a memoir, however, because she happened to spend the worst of her addiction years working for two titans of the food world: Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain. Woolever's book also has the added draw of being mired in tragedies: Batali's numerous sexual assault accusations, and Bourdain's suicide. In many ways, this memoir is very similar to Sweetbitter, in the sense that it chronicles a complicated female narrator as she makes a series of destructive lifestyle choices as she struggles to stay afloat in the cutthroat culinary world (and based on the negative reviews of this book, plenty of readers just cannot stop clutching their pearls over the fact that our drug-addicted, sexually active amoral narrator is a woman). The draw, as I said, is the inside look at Batali and Bourdain, although Woolever spent more time working for Batali, so he's definitely featured more heavily. (Having known Bourdain at the very end of his life, Woolever's account of him is interesting, but is mostly just deeply sad) One of the most fascinating parts of the book was when Woolever is working for Batali and doing things like accompanying him to strip clubs and sitting back while he abuses his other employees, and trying to decide where the line is. Because this is just the crazy, boozy world of professional chefs, baby! Sure, Woolever saw him being inappropriate with his staff, but how do you tell when it's bad bad? And how do you speak up? What if you wait too long? Woolever perfectly encapsulates the interior struggle that comes when you're trying to decide if the abuse you've suffered by a powerful man is...you know, abuse and not just you being uptight? Woolever shows exactly how easily a person can fall into that trap, even when all the evidence is pointing to something being very wrong:"I was afraid of crossing Mario, and I really didn't think this had anything to do with me. Wouldn't it be hypocritical to call myself a 'victim' now, when I had never truly felt like one, and had benefited from years of access and association? Sure, I'd cried when Mario grabbed my ass, and felt sickened by his behavior, but hadn't I also gotten drunk with him, laughed at his jokes, and made plenty of my own? Who was I to throw stones, when I was currently behaving pretty badly in my own life?"Aside from her tumultuous professional life, Woolever's personal life was also quietly imploding, and the main crux of this memoir is Woolever detailing her own struggles with addiction and recovery, and how working in the restaurant industry exacerbated those issues. It's a tough read, but Woolever should be commended for baring everything for the reader and allowing them to judge her choices (and hoooooo boy, do readers judge her) as she tells her story without excuses. People picking up this book expecting some kind of morality tale, or to get insider information about certain famous men, have missed the point. "Am I doing this for the story? I'm seeking out all of these experiences to feel something, to have them, to feel entertained. For maximum distraction. I have been collecting these stories for years. It is not so much the sex as the experience. I am doing it for the story, but who am I telling this story to?...My desire to do bad things keeps burning through the layers of tissue paper I wrap around the hot coal that is the true nature of me: I am a piece of shit. But: is unchecked excess always the road to ruin? Is there any story in which someone who indulges with no limits ends up happy, successful, healthy, loved?" ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 12 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Jun 2025 | date added Jul 18, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover The Glass Hotel | title The Glass Hotel | author Mandel, Emily St. John * | isbn 0525521143 | isbn13 9780525521143 | asin 0525521143 | num pages 307pp | avg rating 3.69 | num ratings 192,206 | date pub Mar 24, 2020 | date pub edition Mar 24, 2020 | Madeline's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review Emily St. John Mandel is one of those authors who's so good it makes you angry. I loved Station Eleven so much more than I expected to. I loved The Gl Emily St. John Mandel is one of those authors who's so good it makes you angry. I loved Station Eleven so much more than I expected to. I loved The Glass Hotel even more. This is one of my favorite types of books, the kind where the author spends their time taking you down different story threads that seem unrelated, only to bring them all together at the end and show you that they were working on a larger tapestry the entire time. Reading this is like looking at an Impressionist painting by staring closely at small sections one at a time, and then at the very end stepping back and seeing the entire canvas at once. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 1 | votes 24 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read May 2025 | date added Jun 25, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Malibu Rising | title Malibu Rising | author Reid, Taylor Jenkins * | isbn 1524798657 | isbn13 9781524798659 | asin 1524798657 | num pages 369pp | avg rating 4.02 | num ratings 1,251,249 | date pub May 27, 2021 | date pub edition Jun 01, 2021 | Madeline's rating liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review I'm at the point where I hardly ever buy new books (libraries - use em or lose em!) and the ones I do buy are usually longtime favorites that I know I I'm at the point where I hardly ever buy new books (libraries - use em or lose em!) and the ones I do buy are usually longtime favorites that I know I'm going to read over and over again. But then again, sometimes you're on vacation and have finished the book you brought with you way faster than you expected to, and you find yourself in a bookstore trying to find something to read on the flight home. Which explains how Malibu Rising ended up in my personal collection. I enjoyed The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones and the Six (the latter was my favorite of the two, I think) so you can understand why I figured I'd at least have a reasonably good time with Malibu Rising. And that's really what the book is - a reasonably good time that I wish I'd borrowed from the library. The story takes place in 1983, on the morning of the annual blowout party held at Nina Riva's Malibu mansion. By dawn the next day, the opening pages inform us, the house will have burned to the ground, set on fire by one of the guests. Taylor Jenkins Reid follows what seems to be a very trendy storytelling structure for these kinds of books: hour-by-hour installments walking us through the events of The Day Of The Party, interspersed with flashbacks showing How We Got Here. Nina and her three siblings - Jay, Hud, and Kit - are the children of famous 50's crooner and deadbeat dad Mick Riva (Jenkins Reid fans will recognize Mick as Evenly Hugo's shortest marriage, and Carrie Soto is also a minor character). He hasn't been in their lives since they were little, but their proximity to his fame has still granted them honorary Nepo Baby status in their world, so the siblings enjoy a small degree of status in the small beach community of Malibu, which explains why their annual party is such a draw. But back to the fire: who will start it, and why?My advice for enjoying this book is, don't concern yourself with the mystery, because if you're paying attention you'll probably figure it out pretty easily. It was...fine? Nina is really the only one of her siblings that was fully fleshed out, since she's very clearly the main character, even if it sometimes feels like Jenkins Reid doesn't have a clear idea of who she is and just makes her do whatever the plot requires (why would a character whose defining trait is Responsible Adult also be famous for throwing a wild party every year?). The 1983 setting is wholly unnecessary and also doesn't work, because Jenkins Reid makes absolutely no attempt to immerse us in the time period. I mean I guess there's a ton of cocaine usage at the party and nobody worries about fentanyl, but honestly any of the characters could have whipped out an iPhone at any point in the book and I wouldn't have questioned it. It's a solid installment in the Jenkins Reid Alternate Universe Hollywood that she seems to be mapping out with her novels (you can spot at least three characters who could easily get their own solo spinoff eventually) but there's really nothing memorable happening here. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 11 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read May 2025 | date added Jun 19, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover The Buffalo Hunter Hunter | title The Buffalo Hunter Hunter | author Jones, Stephen Graham * | isbn 1668075083 | isbn13 9781668075081 | asin 1668075083 | num pages 435pp | avg rating 4.08 | num ratings 20,331 | date pub Mar 18, 2025 | date pub edition Mar 18, 2025 | Madeline's rating really liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review "What I am is the Indian who can't die. I'm the worst dream America ever had." So I definitely got this book from the library because I had just seen "What I am is the Indian who can't die. I'm the worst dream America ever had." So I definitely got this book from the library because I had just seen Sinners* and, like everyone else, was obsessed with that five-minute scene we got of the indigenous vampire hunters and needed MORE. Full disclosure: this book is not that movie. People who read more than I do have definitely put together lists that do feature more of what we were teased in the movie, so you have other options. This is a book about a Native American vampire in the Old West, so...do I even need to work harder to convince you to read it? Stephen Graham Jones has proved with previous novels that he excels at creepy, gory set pieces and terrifying imagery, and he's showing off those skills to full effect here. This book is scary, bloody, and also deeply sad. It's a horror story that takes place during the post-Civil War genocide of the Native Americans, and Graham Jones is pulling no punches in the "can you find the wolves in this picture" kind of way that Scorsese did in Killers of the Flower Moon. This is not an easy read, but it's so rewarding. *hey have you seen Sinners yet GO SEE SINNERS ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 22 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Apr 2025 | date added Jun 19, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again | title You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again | author Phillips, Julia | isbn 0571216234 | isbn13 9780571216239 | asin 0571216234 | num pages 596pp | avg rating 3.40 | num ratings 1,568 | date pub Jan 01, 1991 | date pub edition Jan 01, 2002 | Madeline's rating really liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review This was gifted to me by a friend, and it's honestly not the kind of book I'd probably pick out for myself - Julie Phillips' Hollywood era was the 70' This was gifted to me by a friend, and it's honestly not the kind of book I'd probably pick out for myself - Julie Phillips' Hollywood era was the 70's and 80's (and then, post crash-and-burn, the 90's) and while I've seen a handful of the big blockbusters from that time, there's a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff here that will hit a lot harder if you've actually seen the movies that are at the center of the varoious dramas. I especially don't recommend going into this if, like me, you've never seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind, because Phillips goes deep into the making of that film, and I had very little context for most of what she talks about. And of course I had no idea who Julia Phillips was when I started the book, but that's kind of the point: a producer stays in the background, finding the money and basically running the show, but never becoming a household name. Julia Phillips, with the distinction of being the first female producer to win an Oscar, has more than earned this memoir, and it's really interesting to watch her casually name-dropping all the celebrities who were regularly in her orbit back in the day. Because make no mistake: Julia Phillips was a Big Fucking Deal, and she definitely has some stories to tell. She's also a hot mess of a human, and part of the delight of this memoir is the way she unapologetically chronicles the drugs, the binge drinking, the crazy diets, the bad boyfriends and the backstabbing. This is also a very personal story, so if you're looking for technical information on the making of a movie, you're not really going to find that here. It's more focused on how Phillips handled the huge egos and huger assholes she dealt with on a daily basis, and how her personal life was in an almost constant state of chaos. She's definitely not a great human being, but her voice is clear on every page and she makes no excuses for herself, which is always fun to read about. "One of the TV crew rushing around in front of me slips on some cable and steps on my foot. Hard. Just keeps going, too. Doesn't even apologize. He's with the team telecasting the event to one hundred million people or so, and he has more important things on his mind...he's only behaving the way everybody in The Business does; all is sacrificed on the altar of the show. Hey, whatever's good for the project...If you're fucking over your partner for the good of the project, that's different from just plain fucking him over. In fact, if you're fucking him over just for the hell of it, but you can make it seem like it's for the good of the project, you're applauded for 'being professional.' This poor son of a bitch is hurting my toes because they're in his way. He has to step on my feet for the good of the show. He does it to me several times during the course of the festivities; I'm finally forced to grab him by his bow tie and browbeat an apology and a promise from him that he won't do that anymore." ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 15 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read May 2025 | date added Jun 07, 2025 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover The Tale of the Body Thief (The Vampire Chronicles, #4) | title The Tale of the Body Thief(The Vampire Chronicles, #4) | author Rice, Anne | isbn 0345419634 | isbn13 9780345419637 | asin 0345419634 | num pages 464pp | avg rating 3.76 | num ratings 91,239 | date pub Oct 04, 1992 | date pub edition 2005 | Madeline's rating really liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review "I didn't answer. Then I said, 'My greatest sin has always been that I have a wonderful time being myself. My guilt is always there; my moral abhorren "I didn't answer. Then I said, 'My greatest sin has always been that I have a wonderful time being myself. My guilt is always there; my moral abhorrence for myself is always there; but I have a good time. I'm strong; I'm a creature of great will and passion. You see, that's the core of the dilemma for me - how can I enjoy being a vampire so much, how can I enjoy it if it's evil? Ah, it's an old story.'"Having been warned that the quality of the Interview With the Vampire series decreases as the books go on, I went into The Tale of the Body Thief with pretty low expectations, and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Other reviewers seem unhappy with how low stakes this story is compared to previous Lestat adventures; I liked that we took a break from exploring huge questions like the origins of vampires, and got to relax with a one-off adventure that's almost heist-like. It's light only in the sense that we're not delving into super heavy topics; rest assured that Lestat still can't catch a break.Catching up with Lestat after the events of The Queen of the Damned, we find our (my) favorite vampire lying low in Miami when he notices that he's being followed. Eventually, he is approached by Raglan James (as someone who hasn't read this far in the book series but is watching the AMC show, believe me when I say I almost gasped out loud when the book version of James is introduced), who has a proposition. Raglan James has the ability to inhabit other bodies (the body he uses to approach Lestat is, of course, not his original one) and he proposes a trade: he'll get two days in Lestat's body, so he can experience life as an all-powerful vampire, and Lestat will inhabit the body of a human man in his twenties and get to re-experience life as a human. To be fair to our boy, Lestat takes every precaution he can think of to ensure that the switch is temporary, but of course it's a trick, and the book follows Lestat - in human form! - trying to track down the guy who stole his body and force him to switch back. He's helped by a friend from the Talamasca (and based on their interactions, I really wonder if the TV version of Daniel is going to take on this character's role...) and also dear, sad Louis makes an appearance when Lestat is still considering James' offer. It goes about as well as you could imagine, and I could honestly read about these two disasters arguing and sniping at each other for the rest of time:"'Louis, this man can give me a human body. Have you listened to anything I've said?''Human body! Lestat, you can't become human by simply taking over a human body! You weren't human when you were alive! You were born a monster, and you know it. How the hell can you delude yourself like this.''I'm going to weep if you don't stop.''Weep. I'd like to see you weep. I've read a great deal about your weeping in the pages of your books but I've never seen you weep with my own eyes.''Ah, that makes you out to be a perfect liar,' I said furiously. 'You described my weeping in your miserable memoir in a scene which we both know did not take place!'"Perfection. The book also brings back Claudia, and I'm glad to see that she's still haunting the narrative (and Lestat). After the events of The Tale of the Body Thief, where Lestat actually - maybe - is forced to do some introspection and learn things about himself, I'm excited to see where he goes next. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 1 | votes 16 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Apr 2025 | date added May 06, 2025 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover World Travel: An Irreverent Guide | title World Travel: An Irreverent Guide | author Bourdain, Anthony | isbn 0062802798 | isbn13 9780062802798 | asin 0062802798 | num pages 480pp | avg rating 3.64 | num ratings 12,553 | date pub Apr 20, 2021 | date pub edition Apr 20, 2021 | Madeline's rating did not like it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review It's always an interesting exercise, as a reader, to approach a book with a simple question: who was this written for? I find this especially useful w It's always an interesting exercise, as a reader, to approach a book with a simple question: who was this written for? I find this especially useful when evaluating popular fiction that I know I, personally, would not enjoy. (A coworker keeps pressuring me to read that shitty fantasy A Fire Of Stars and Roses and Courts of Thorns or whatever, I can't be bothered to look it up, and I refuse) It can be liberating to acknowledge that no, this thing isn't bad, it's just not my taste and therefore I don't need any other justification besides "I didn't like it."That being said, I can't imagine what kind of person could possibly find World Travel: An Irreverent Guide to their taste. The concept of this book is a good one: Anthony Bourdain, along with author Laurie Woolever (his former assistant and frequent professional collaborator) wanted to write "an atlas of the world as seen through his eyes...the places, people, food, sights, markets, hotels, and more that had stuck with him, without aid of notes or videos, throughout nearly twenty years of traveling the world in the service of making television."Bourdain and Woolever had exactly one meeting in 2018 to brainstorm what this book would look like, and there was never a second meeting because only a few weeks later, Bourdain was dead by suicide. So, a warning to prospective readers: there is not a single new sentence written by Bourdain in this book. Woolever had the difficult task of trying to make Bourdain's vision for the book a reality, and her solution was to pull quotes from Bourdain's past projects and stick them in the book as needed. Every Bourdain quote that was taken from another source is printed in blue, and there's a whole lot of blue in this book. Okay, so it's not a new view into Bourdain (even the guest essays, by various chefs and other famous people in Bourdain's orbit, spend most of the time talking about whatever city they've been asked to write about instead of focusing on the voice that is conspicuously absent from this book), so how does it function as a travel guide? Not well, I'll tell you that. The book is divided into countries, with some larger nations like Canada and China getting divided into sections focusing on a couple of major cities, but otherwise an entire country gets just four or five pages' worth of hotel and restaurant recommendations. Someone involved in the planning process for this book also made the baffling decision to spend significant page space describing the major airports of each featured country - including how to get to the city center (spoiler alert, the answer will be "you can take public transportation or a taxi" every single time), and, for some reason, which airlines stop there (Who was this written for?) This was especially frustrating considering how few pages each country gets, and I wish they'd at least made the airport sections a little briefer so Woolever could feature at least a few more local restaurants. The hotel sections usually tell us where Bourdain liked to stay, and we learn that he preferred luxury accommodations like the Four Seasons. Which, fine - he's a TV star, after all, and god knows the man deserved a nice mattress, but it's not much help for the average traveler who might want to stay somewhere that's locally-owned, or at least more affordable. (Also, why do we need to know this? Do people really think they can saunter up to the concierge at the Ritz Carlton in Toronto, brandish a copy of this book, and demand to stay in the Anthony Bourdain suite?)Sure, you can find good restaurant recommendations for your next international trip, but there are plenty of sources for that. You're better off skipping this and just watching old episodes of No Reservations - at least there, Anthony Bourdain's distinctive voice and perspective comes straight from the source, and not second hand. Or better yet, seek out Laurie Woolever's recently-published memoir, Care and Feeding: A Memoir, which I haven't gotten my hands on yet but apparently does feature plenty of Bourdain, and sounds like it does a much better job of delivering what I wanted from this book. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 2 | votes 17 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Mar 2025 | date added Apr 25, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Feet of Clay (Discworld, #19; City Watch, #3) | title Feet of Clay(Discworld, #19; City Watch, #3) | author Pratchett, Terry | isbn 0552153257 | isbn13 9780552153256 | asin 0552153257 | num pages 411pp | avg rating 4.33 | num ratings 91,587 | date pub 1996 | date pub edition Oct 31, 2005 | Madeline's rating it was amazing | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review "Samuel Vimes dreamed about Clues. He had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They got in the way. And he distrusted the kind "Samuel Vimes dreamed about Clues. He had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They got in the way. And he distrusted the kind of person who'd take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, 'Ah, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fallen on hard times,' and then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance and the state of a man's boots, when exactly the same comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he'd been doing a spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen and in fact got sea-sick on wet pavement. What arrogance! What an insult to the rich and chaotic variety of the human experience!" ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 14 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Apr 2025 | date added Apr 08, 2025 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes | title Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes | author Boyer, Dwight | isbn 0912514477 | isbn13 9780912514475 | asin 0912514477 | num pages 294pp | avg rating 3.74 | num ratings 85 | date pub Jan 01, 1968 | date pub edition Jan 01, 1968 | Madeline's rating liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review It's hard to explain to people who have never seen them in person that the Great Lakes are not just lakes. They are, technically speaking, inland seas It's hard to explain to people who have never seen them in person that the Great Lakes are not just lakes. They are, technically speaking, inland seas and are only classified as lakes because they have fresh water, and they're bigger than some European countries. They will also fuck you up, as anyone who has heard The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald can attest, and the bottom of every one of the five Great Lakes is a literal graveyard of shipwrecks. Dwight Boyer's book takes us through just a handful of them (most having sunk between the late 1800's and the 1930's, when it became mandatory for all shipping vessels to have radio equipment on board). Fair warning for anyone intrigued by the title: no, this is not an anthology of ship-related ghost stories of the Great Lakes area, nor is it a chronicle of eyewitness accounts of supernatural sightings. This is a very straightforward history of famous shipwrecks, giving us the principle characters involved, the circumstances that led to the sinkings, and the aftermath. It gets pretty repetitive pretty quickly, because almost all of the stories can be boiled down to, "The ship left the port during bad weather conditions, it never showed up at the dock when it was supposed to, and we have no idea where it sank." And although Boyer will occasionally mention that residents will report hearing a distress horn years after the sinking, or see strange lights, this is definitely not a book of ghost stories. If anything, this is a fun guide to all the little islands that are scattered around the Great Lakes, most of which have turned into cute tourist towns.But I have to admit that even though this wasn't what I was expecting, I couldn't help being totally charmed by this book, because the writing is fun and engaging, and you just don't get history books written like this anymore:From the chapter titled Don't Change Her Name...!:"In 1924 she appeared to be just what the Dunbar & Sullivan Dredging Company of Detroit was looking for in the way of another craft to tow and service their rather considerable fleet of dipper, hydraulic, and clamshell boats and associated gear. They bought her and immediately changed her name to Sachem, a title signifying the mightiest of Indian chiefs. Someone with a delightful sense of humor, probably an Irishman, is responsible for naming the assorted craft belonging to the Dunbar & Sullivan organization. They have some conventional names, too, but imagine tugs named Sachem, Shaughraun, Shaun Rhue, Spalpeen, Paddy Miles, and Nanny Goat. Fancy such names for dredges, big ones, too, as Omadhoun, Old Hickory, Tipperary Boy, Pocantico, Handy Andy, and a drill boat named Earthquake. Glorious!" ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 13 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Mar 2025 | date added Apr 08, 2025 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise | title Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise | author Reichl, Ruth | isbn 0143036610 | isbn13 9780143036616 | asin 0143036610 | num pages 333pp | avg rating 3.94 | num ratings 47,678 | date pub Apr 04, 2005 | date pub edition Mar 28, 2006 | Madeline's rating really liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review When Ruth Reichl relocated from Los Angeles to become The New York Times' new restaurant critic, she realized very quickly that the New York dining sc When Ruth Reichl relocated from Los Angeles to become The New York Times' new restaurant critic, she realized very quickly that the New York dining scene was a completely different animal. Every high-end restaurant in the city had trained their staff to recognize Reichl at first sight, to ensure that she was guaranteed to have the best service and give a good review, and this meant that Reichl had to get creative. It was more than just throwing on a wig and some fake glasses. Reichl worked with an acting coach to create fully-formed characters who would function as her disguises when she went out to eat. Each of these personas came with full backstories and unique personalities, and Reichl found that not only did her disguise affect how she was treated by restaurant staff, it also affected her own experience, because she was dining out in character. The main draw of this memoir is, of course, the infamous "dual review" that Riechl wrote of Le Cirque, describing her experiences as Ruth Riechl, famous restaurant critic, and an anonymous nobody:"Dinner as the Unknown Diner'Do you have a reservation?'This is said so challengingly I instantly feel as if I am an intruder who has wandered into the wrong restaurant. But I nod meekly and give my guest's name. And I am sent to wait in the bar. And there we sit for half an hour, two women drinking glasses of expensive water. Finally we are led to a table in the smoking section, where we had specifically requested not to be seated. Asked if there is, perhaps, another table, the captain merely gestures at the occupied tables and produces a little shrug. There is no need to ask for a wine list; there it is, perched right next to me on the banquette where the waitress shoves the menus. Every few minutes another waiter comes to fling his used menus in my direction....Dinner as a Most Favored Patron 'The King of Spain is waiting in the bar, but your table is ready,' says Mr. Maccioni, sweeping us majestically past the waiting masses."The book also has a handful of recipes, and I can't speak for all of them, but I will tell you that when I finished reading this, I had make the Last-Minute Chocolate Cake recipe pretty much immediately, and it was incredible. Definitely save that one. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 14 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Mar 2025 | date added Mar 23, 2025 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover Maskerade (Discworld, #18; Witches, #5) | title Maskerade(Discworld, #18; Witches, #5) | author Pratchett, Terry | isbn 0575058080 | isbn13 9780575058088 | asin 0575058080 | num pages 285pp | avg rating 4.13 | num ratings 68,036 | date pub 1995 | date pub edition 1995 | Madeline's rating really liked it | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review By now, I've learned that Terry Pratchett writes an installment of the Witches series when he feels like doing his own spoof of a classic story. Wyrd By now, I've learned that Terry Pratchett writes an installment of the Witches series when he feels like doing his own spoof of a classic story. Wyrd Sisters was Macbeth, Witches Abroad was Cinderella, Lords and Ladies was A Midsummer Night's Dream, and now it's time to hear what Sir Terry thinks of The Phantom of the Opera. He, uh, has notes. Now that Magrat Garlick is off being a queen (literally, but I guess figuratively as well), Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax find themselves in a coven with only two witches, and anyone can tell you that that's not really a coven at all. But luckily, they have a potential candidate in Agnes Nitt, the local village girl who's shown signs of witch potential. Unluckily, Agnes has moved to the big city of Ankh-Morpork to chase her dream of becoming an opera star. And of course, the opera house has a ghost. I'll be honest that the only reason this didn't totally blow me away (and why I strongly considered bumping the rating down to three stars) is because it felt like the book was building to something much bigger than what the ending delivered. I wanted more of a bang, but overall this book was so much fun. Terry Pratchett has some opinions about opera as an art form, and you know what you're getting into right at the dedication:"My thanks to the people who showed me that opera was stranger than I could imagine. I can best repay their kindness by not mentioning their names here."Plus, this is our introduction to Agnes Nitt, and I can't wait for the next book when she's hopefully an official third member of the coven, because you can't not love her:"She'd woken up one morning with the horrible realization that she'd been saddled with a lovely personality. It was as simple as that. Oh, and very good hair. It wasn't so much the personality, it was the 'but' that people always added when they talked about it. But she's got such a lovely personality, they said. It was the lack of choice that rankled. N one had asked her, before she was born, whether she wanted a lovely personality or whether she'd prefer, say a miserable personality but a body that could take size nine in dresses. Instead, people would take pains to tell her that beauty was only skin-deep, as if a man ever fell for an attractive pair of kidneys. She could feel a future trying to land on her. She'd caught herself saying 'poot!' and 'dang!' when she wanted to swear, and using pink writing paper. She'd got a reputation for being calm and capable in a crisis. Next thing she knew she'd be making shortbread and apple pies as good as her mother's, and then there'd be no hope for her." ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 0 | votes 19 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Mar 2025 | date added Mar 23, 2025 | owned | format Hardcover | actions view (with text) | | | | | checkbox | position | cover An Offer From a Gentleman (Bridgertons, #3) | title An Offer From a Gentleman(Bridgertons, #3) | author Quinn, Julia * | isbn | isbn13 | asin B00DJYMJ7Q | num pages 390pp | avg rating 3.94 | num ratings 391,526 | date pub Jul 03, 2001 | date pub edition Oct 13, 2009 | Madeline's rating it was ok | my rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars add to shelves | review So here's the thing about the romance trope of "guy annoys girl on purpose because he thinks she's cute when she's angry":First, I hate it. I haaaaate So here's the thing about the romance trope of "guy annoys girl on purpose because he thinks she's cute when she's angry":First, I hate it. I haaaaate it. It's condescending as shit and is rooted in the idea that other people's emotions aren't real, so that makes it totally fine to upset someone on purpose because you think it's funny. Also it's always the guy doing it to the girl and is never the other way around, and you know that Julia "let's just do a beat-for-beat retelling of Cinderella and call it a day" Quinn certainly won't do anything inventive with the trope. But it's also an extremely tricky thing to pull off, because it requires the man to act like a total dick and the woman to be consistently beaten down by his "flirty" teasing and insults. The author has to work very hard to make the final act turnaround work. And that's the thing that kills An Offer From a Gentleman dead in the water: this dynamic of "guy is mean to girl because he can't admit he likes her" does not work in a Regency setting. At least if you have a bickering couple in modern day, you're comforted by the fact that if the girl really doesn't like the guy, she can tell him to fuck off, and walk away. Sophie Beckett, the heroine of this extremely frustrating and unromantic horror story, can do neither. Add that to the fact that Benedict's favorite way to needle Sophie is to remind her that she has no power and he can do whatever he wants, and the result is a love story where I was actively rooting for the heroine to murder the hero in his sleep. I mean, Jesus. At least with Anthony and Kate, their constant bickering worked because even if Kate wasn't as rich as Anthony, they were more or less social equals and had a level playing field. The Benedict/Sophie dynamic is just sad, because you're just reading about this woman getting constantly belittled and insulted, and the only way out is to marry the guy. Sure, Benedict doesn't rape her, and his narration is constantly insisting that "well, if she rejects me and means it of course I'll stop" but then literally a sentence later he's like, "She'll sleep with me eventually, I just have to wear her down." Not great, Julia! (I do love how Benedict is so delusional he just takes it for granted that becoming his mistress is the best thing that could possibly happen to Sophie. Provide references or shut the fuck up, bro. Also it's worth pointing out that in this era, being a rich guy's mistress was one step up from indentured servitude anyway, and GOD how I wish Sophie had pointed this out to him.)(view spoiler)[Also, I do not believe for one second that the other Bridgertons (and society at large) would be so chill about this pairing. Violet Bridgerton, a woman whose defining character trait is wanting her children to have good (ie, profitable) marriages, does not mind that her son is marrying a bastard servant girl because, well, as long as he's happy! We'll just invent some relatives for her and hope nobody looks into it!Excuse me? There are FIVE MORE kids who'll eventually need to get married, you're telling me that Violet isn't even a little bit worried about how this will affect their chances? For Christ' sake, the entire series is framed around a GOSSIP COLUMNIST whose WHOLE THING is uncovering characters' dirty secrets, are you seriously telling me that Lady Whistledown never finds out Sophie's real backstory?(No, of course not, because Lady Whisteldown is [redacted], so she can't ever do anything mean to the perfect Bridgertons)And remember, at this point in the series Anthony is recently married and doesn't have kids, which means if he gets run over by a carriage the entire family fortune goes to Benedict. Is Julia Quinn seriously going to tell us that Anthony (Anthony!) is cool with the second son marrying a servant?! There's even an epilogue where Sophie is thinking about her kids and their future marriage prospects, and she's like, well, it'll be fine because by then everyone will have forgotten the rumors. Sure, Jan. (hide spoiler)]An Offer From a Gentleman proves that Julia Quinn is the laziest kind of historical fiction writer, one who picks and chooses which rules from the era she wants to follow when it suits her story. She clearly chose the Regency era because she liked the idea of writing romances where unmarried couples could barely touch each other in public, but as soon as she runs into ugly realities of the time period, like the total lack of human rights for servants or the unbreakable rules of social hierarchies, she half-asses an explanation for why her characters can ignore them because to acknowledge the reality of how much the Regency era sucked for 95% of the population isn't sexy. Georgette Heyer is embarrassed for you. ...more | notes Notes are private! | comments 2 | votes 28 | # times read 1 | date started not set | date read Mar 2025 | date added Mar 16, 2025 | owned | format Paperback | actions view (with text) | | | |

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