- Jen's inviting prose pulls the reader in to learn about how a Chinese American family adapts when hosting a relative from China.
- This novel also highlights the role and power the husband's mother held in the family, even from beyond the grave.
- I enjoyed how the story was told in short snippets from multiple viewpoints.
- In preparation for a trip in several months I wanted a German review.
- This course was a nice refresher with the opportunity to listen and speak German phrases.
- I think it would be difficult to start with Course I in this series to completely learn a new language.
- The print counterpart for the audio CD is not as strong as I had hoped.
- I'm a bit of a fan of medical history having studied it in undergrad and now for entertainment. I was well aware of John Snow's contribution regarding cholera before picking up this audiobook. However, even while acquainted with the facts, I learned much from Johnson's Ghost Map.
- The book starts out by focusing on sanitation and what all made London ripe for a cholera outbreak.
- This book is about how community and family intermingle throughout the aging process.
- Jen's characters are vivid and relatable.
- The ending of the novel is not a surprise, but the path to get there is.
- A YA novel based on the Clutter murders is unexpected. It is also unexpectedly good.
- This book combines elements of the crime and Truman Copote and Harper Lee's investigation for writing In Cold Blood to create an engaging novel told from the perspective Nancy Clutter's classmate.
- Current and former Kansans will appreciate all the local references.
- With so much drama about this book, I decided to pick up a political book. This is unusual for me.
- According to Wolff and his sources, the White House is composed of many strong and rotating personalities that don't play well together. These figures usually put personal issues ahead of the nation's.
- This book also confirms what was perhaps only an hunch before... that many of Trumps policy actions (via Twitter) are not planned or communicated to coordinating agencies before hand.
- Side note: Oddly there are many nicknames in this book that White House staffers assign to each other as a part of the in-fighting (e.g. Javanka).
- Second side note: Thanks to KCPL I read this book as an eAudiobook on Overdrive. Surprisingly, I found that 1.6x speed to be optimal.
- This is a nice addition to the canon of post apocalyptic fiction.
- Over the course of nearly two decades, the story of a family is told as the US as a superpower crumbles.
- Oddly, the book feels overly self aware at times. For example, at one point the narrator talks about how futuristic novels are really about the worst fears of the current age, not what is likely to happen.
