candelibri's reviews
2064 reviews

The first 100 pages of this novel are beautiful and totally grabbed me. At that point, I got the hype, I understood why everyone was raving over this book. I liked the prose and the sobriety writing was beautiful too - very raw.

But once I hit that 100-page mark, we just started to meander: the POV slips, the narration gets…lazy? The banal conversations and extracts from Cyrus's book were just not engaging. The dialogues were flat (especially between Zee and Cyrus) and often rang hollow. The sense of the intimacy between the characters that I felt in the beginning was gone. 

The premise of Cyrus and Orkideh speaking was so interesting and yet so little comes of it! I was so invested when they met at the beginning of the book but they ultimately don’t have a single meaningful conversation. How do you fumble the most interesting plot point in the entire plot?! Just….so unfulfilling. 

Ultimately, beautiful writing, excellent premise but the middle fell flat and the ending felt rushed. Just didn’t do it for me.

A really excellent intro to Revolution in Iran. While it doesn’t deep dive into how each protest germinated, formed and began, it certainly focuses on the more recent ones and mentions other catalysts that should urge you to look further. Wonderful primer for those looking for a starting point into Iran and the political landscape it is now. 

This was beautiful. I also loved the photos scattered throughout of the author growing up. Lovely personal touch. 

Any aspiring medical professional should read this. 

I swear, the more I read nonfiction the more I wish I didn’t. 

This succinctly and straightforwardly covers what happened to commerce during COVID and after and it is beyond enlightening; enraging, exhausting and disappointing to be sure, but enlightening nonetheless. 

Meat packing workers being sacrificed for the sake of shareholders, CDL drivers being overworked to exhaustion and beyond (next time you hear of a shortage, please, come reread the chapter and refresh your memory on what they are constantly being pushed to do), freight cargo companies exploiting literally everyone that utilizes them due to lack of regulations…the list truly does go on. 

Goodman does an incredible deep dive into the intricate layers that intersect one another and how we are at the mercy of commerce and capitalism - and what needs to change if we are ever to escape from it. He is the type of journalist we could use more of.