Rapid Fire book reviews #13

The Visitors by Catherine Burns. This was a short, fast moving little book that I had heard some buzz on, so I picked it up from the library. The big twists you could kind of see a mile away. It was less than 300 pages I read it in one sitting of maybe an hour and a half.

Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin. I have a weird love/hate on the modern novels that riff on classic novels and/or are fairy tale retelling. I've come to accept a lot of times that these will just be YA love stories (and if you love that, yay good for you!) I indulge in that genre occasionally but usually I want something more fleshed out and substantial. This WAS more fleshed out and substantial. I like the realistic grittiness and complications. And all the discussions about the duality of man's nautre, because of course, Dr J and Mr. H!

Reading people: how seeing the world through the lens of personality changes everything by Anne Bogel. I always think I like personality books but then it's a little bit too much self reflection. Like how for ennegrams I'm a 2, and that means I can be possessive of my friends and it ruined my whole month when I saw that, because I thought one of my few good traits was that I'm a super supportive and loving friend and now every time I do something nice for a friend I'm like "am I doing this because this is how I express my love for them or because I'm trying to take ownership of them in some way?" and it makes me have a little mini meltdown. So, this book might be good if you aren't an emotional, possessive of friends, mess like I am.

The Bravest Battle: The 28 Days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Dan Kurzman
I knew some things about the Warsaw Uprising but not as much as I should. And now I feel like I know a lot of things and they will all haunt me forever. There's so many tales of courage and bravery and self sacrafice in this book, I can't even do it justice. There are also a lot of descriptions of people being burned alive and dying in sewers. It was another one of those reads that was tough but necessary.

The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty by Simon Baron-Cohen. This was such a succinct, easy to read book on a tough topic. It talks about that lack of empathy doesn't make you evil (a lot of folks on the autism spectrum struggle with empathy) but a lot of people who don't have empathy are capable of doing pretty terrible things (hello Nazis) OR people who have a lot of empathy are still capable of doing bad things when they feel like it's for the right reason.Really interesting read!

Mem by Bethany C Morrow
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was shocked that this is this author's debut. I feel like it's one of those books that the less you know about it going in the better, because the concept is just so interesting and weird and great that it spoils it a little if you try to do a lot of detective work on it before reading. So, read the synopsis on goodreads and if it sounds intriguing to you you will probably like this book! Pick it up!