Scientific American MIND The Psychology of SUCCESS: It’s not what you learn but how you learn ★☆☆☆☆ I got this from Value Village for $1.79. It was surrounded by a plethora of magazines about the British royal family. What were the circumstances that led to them being donated? Death in the family? Loss of interest? Bankruptcy..? Is there a specific magazine that covers the British royal family and only the British royal family?

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012) ★★★★☆ You know this book. You know the cool girl monologue. Did you know it only happens halfway into the book, on Page 222, not even at the beginning of the chapter? I didn’t know that. It gets the 4th star mostly for being aggressively readable. Is that enough of a reason? I wasn’t wowed by the writing, because I had sky-high expectations going in + knew the general idea of the plot.

★★★☆☆ Three Complete Novels by Michael Crichton: The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, The Great Train Robbery (1969, 1972, 1975, and 1994 for the three-book collection) Why does this guy’s name get to be bolded? Because it makes up a full 50% of the cover. They really wanted us to know that he’s the Bestselling Author of Jurassic Park, except I still missed it, because a single Value Village has ten thousand books and I only have so much time before the Outside reverts to a terrible place.

★★★☆☆ Cooks, Clowns and Cowboys: 101 Skills and Experiences to Discover on your Travels (2012) By thirty different authors, which I will not individually name. Once again I have lost my index note. Really, how hard can it be? Just need to stick it in the middle somewhere after finishing the book instead of doing who-knows-what. But it’s not like I had many notes anyway. Can I do a point form this time?

The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder by C. L. Miller (2024) ★★★☆☆ Note the bird silhouette in the O of “to”. Part of why I got the book! Spoilers! Another Winner’s clearance book. This one, though, only had two clearance stickers as opposed to four. I read the Goodreads reviews after finishing the book, but before starting the review. They confirmed my view that it’s just… a meh book. More three star ratings than anything else.

★★★★☆ No Nonsense Dog Training: A Complete Guide to Fully Train Every Dog by Haz Othman This is the second part of a two-part series on dog training methodologies. If you haven’t read my review of Zak George’s Guide to a Well-Behaved Dog, do that first. Or don’t. I’m not the boss of you. Okay, I have THOUGHTS. Firstly: the four stars represent my experience of reading the book and the sheer amount of new information I learned.

Zak George’s Guide to a Well-Behaved Dog: Proven Solutions to the Most Common Training Problems for All Ages, Breeds, and Mixes by Zak George and Dina Roth Port ★★★☆☆ So this was supposed to be Part One of a two book review series, and you the reader will see both reviews posted at the same time. I promised myself I wouldn’t begin reading the second book before finishing the review of this book.

★★★★☆ Ubik by Philip K. Dick (1969) This cover is great, isn’t it? My reading backlog is endless, and I only fitted this in due to a glowing recommendation from my dear and wonderful imaginary friend. He read Project Hail Mary at my recommendation, so I figured it was mandatory to return the social nicety. What am I saying? I really liked the book. And I don’t happen to have this lovely book in my library, so I had to find an ebook.

★★★☆☆ What If? 2 by Randall Munroe (2022) Alas I lost my index card bookmark of notes, so there are no direct quotes here. I liked this book. I didn’t like it nearly as much as the first one. Was it worse or was it just because I was far older while reading book 2? The original What if? was really magical to me. Young me, Costco, reading the back where it says you can eat the book for around 3,000 calories if you could eat books.

★★★★☆ A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (2015) This is not my most controversial review, but it’s definitely the most controversial book I’ve reviewed so far. There are literally famous criticisms of this book: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/03/striptease-among-pals/ - Paywalled being one https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/andrea-long-chu-new-york-magazine - and this one being another. It won a Criticism Pulitzer, though I thought the line between criticism and personal attack was pretty thin. This type of book inherently makes you wonder about the author, though.