Like most memoirs by comedians, parts are good and other parts are not so good. The chapter on his family’s relationship to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 was a bit jarring amidst the mostly light tone of the rest of the book.

I was intrigued by the premise: an owner of a soul food restaurant in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood falls in love with the man who might put her out of business. At the same time, that man is in the process of stepping away from his previous life of privilege. A romantic comedy featuring gentrification, inter-racial relationships, discussions of privilege? I thought I would enjoy it but instead it ended up being pretty improbable, even for an already improbable genre.

This is a young adult book about a young woman who gets interested in graffiti and ultimately joins a graffiti crew. I’m generally a fan of books that encourage teenage rebellion, but there was too much moralizing about vandalism. It’s portrayals of the subculture also felt very surface level.

This was an interesting academic book about gender and video games. Where else can you read about video games and Judith Butler?

I wanted a light read and this book definitely filled that need. It was a basic romance/comedy novel. The premise of former lovers being reunited to compete for a job promotion at the website (through a series of article-based challenges) was unique, but also improbable. The characters weren’t very interesting.

I selected this book randomly after reading its description on the Libby app. The book begins with a group of four friends at the end of high school and tells the story of how their lives changed over the next twenty-five or so years. It was an unexpectedly reflective and somber read dealing with how lives change and how people move in and out of each others lives. I really ended up enjoying this one.

This book provides an overview of ChatGPT and similar AI language models (with detours into a few other tools). It’s a very basic introduction to the topic in a broad way – probably ideal for someone who has no idea what ChatGPT is and who has missed the discussion around it. It covers how it works, ethical considerations, and how to get the most out of the tool. I was most interested in that last part, but the book doesn’t give that many practical tips for using ChatGPT. The author also tends to repeat similar points over and over.

I came across this book (full title: Didn’t See That Coming: Putting Life Back Together When Your World Falls Apart) without any awareness of the controversy around the author’s statements. Her comments comparing herself – a privileged white woman struggling to build a business – with Harriet Tubman were ridiculous. I can’t say that I’m too surprised; it seems like it fits in with some of the “pull your self up by your bootstraps” talk that permeates parts of the book. It’s too bad in a way because while the pop psychology aspects of this book aren’t the best, it does at time offer some helpful advice for navigating the “hard seasons” of life: death and grief, divorce, and job loss. As is the case in many books in this genre, parts seem helpful while others make me cringe.

This thriller sounded promising to me. A genealogist (Carolina “Carly” May) is hired to do a family history by an eccentric aunt of the governor of New Mexico. The family’s history stretches back to the days when New Mexico was a part of Mexico. Eventually, it becomes a story of corruption and the blending of two families, the Castillos and the Quintrells. I had a hard time following the various threads of the plot and keeping the histories of the two families straight. Additionally, the will-they-won’t-they romance between Carly and one of the family members had a lot of tedious banter. By the end, the story was pretty confusing and came to a rather abrupt – and disturbing – end involving incest and murder.