dckathleen's reviews
266 reviews

The Lost Stetl is about a little Stetl in the forest in Poland which has been cut off from the rest of the world for a century. Someone leaves, someone is sent to find them, and suddenly the town is rediscovered. Without giving anything away, this rediscovery runs through some cycles. There was a part about a third of the way through where I took a break, but I am so glad that I went back to it. 

This is short and mostly sweet. It's an exploration of loss and found family and friendship. 

In addition to a story about a very wealthy and weird COVID bubble, this book also explored questions about what makes for a successful artist, how much is talent and how much is hype? What about keeping it real versus commercial success? 

Another Hari Kunzru book that I loved was White Tears. 

Sweet story. 

TW: lots of talk about suicide 

This book has everything- it's the story of caracaras (fascinating birds of prey), but it's also a history of animals in the Americas, a little paleontology, a travelogue, and a bit about Darwin, William Henry Hudson and others.

A star from Hollywood's golden era tells her story, and it isn't what anyone expected ...she was part of the Warsaw uprising in world war 2, worked for the underground, and did what needed to be done to get revenge and help her community. If you liked Alice Network and Evelyn Hugo, then you'll like this one. 

This was good, and the story wasn't what I thought it would be...but I mean that in a good way. This book explodes what happens when your "perfect" world falls apart. 

This was great! Two snakes become (mostly) human women. Over the centuries their lives diverge, but they always consider each other to be sisters. One has become a free spirit in NYC while the other is a political wife in Singapore. They reunite after many years apart. 

This is an interesting overview of the eight existing bear species on earth. Human impact on habitat and climate are obviously beg factors hurting bears.

One note is that the audiobook narrator made some weird errors that actually had me looking up whether this was read by AI, but it was a real person. It didn't ruin the book for me, but I did think it was strange that nobody caught this. A few examples: The year 1254 was read "twelve thousand 54" and the year 2100 was read, "two thousand one hundred." The word archipelago was read incorrectly once, and correctly a few other times. The Thames River was mispronounced. 

I volunteer for a wildlife rehab center, and love working with the turtles. This Sy Montgomery book on turtles is really about turtle rehab and about the pandemic a little bit, but mostly turtles. I love her writing because she does hands on work and research and then makes them very readable. In this book she works with a turtle rehab in Massachusetts, and learns about what turtles face in the wild and how they are both tough and fragile. She also visits a facility where extremely endangered turtles are raised, saves cold shocked sea turtles on Cape Cod, and learns about different measures for protecting turtles. Several times she talks about people not caring for turtles properly. Montgomery doesn't flinch away from terrible injuries and illness and doesn't sugarcoat things... anyone familiar with animal rehab work won't be shocked, but this might not be for everyone. 

One thing that I thought was fascinating is that she talks about how turtles perceive time, including their inability to see fast things, like cars. A car driving looks to them the way a hummingbird wing looks to us.