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I wasn't familiar with Norris's race card project until my wife recommended this book. It is actually extraordinary to witness average Americans trying to distill their experience with race and racism into six words, and the people quoted here have come up with an astonishing variety of submissions. Norris has organized the submissions into themes and done extended conversations with many of the people who made submissions. Those deeper conversations round out the stories behind the six words they submitted, and chart the complexity of race in America. The end result is that we get both the blunt assessment of Americans on this issue, and the life stories that led them to their conclusions.

In this novel, the narrator reflects on the death of her older sister, who died two hours after she was born. Their mother described the infant as "white as a crescent-moon cake." From that description, the narrator considers all the other ways that she has encountered the color white, and the emotions that they trigger in her about the sister that she never met. This capsule description doesn't do the novel justice, of course -- Kang thoroughly plumbs the emotional depths of the topic in moving and fascinating ways.

Nothing too earth-shattering, but some good ideas in here about determining what type of data one should use to analyze operations (not just the data that makes you look good), as well as knowing when to push on vs. when to pivot.

This is the first novel by James that I have ever read, so I was not entirely sure what to expect. I enjoyed tremendously James's close attention to detail to the characters, their appearance, their surroundings, and the turmoil of their inner lives. James establishes early on the independence of the heroine, Isabel Archer. In this exchange, Isabel says:

"I always want to know the things one shouldn't do." "So as to do them?" asked her aunt. "So as to choose," said Isabel.

In rejecting her various suitors, Isabel is determined to live life in the way that she sees best and not peremptorily close off any possible routes. Do we need spoiler alerts for books published in 1881? Let's just say that things do not develop as Isabel intends, and James keeps the reader's interest by not closing off possible outcomes and carefully considering each character's actions and motivations.

Armin Shimerman has noted that it was his "personal agenda" in DS9 to make the Ferengi a more three-dimensional race than they were portrayed in TNG (trekmovie.com/2018/03/21/armin-shimerman-feels-responsible-for-failed-ferengi-introduction-on-star-trek-the-next-generation/). This book might be seen as part of that effort, as Shimerman gives depth to Quark's interior life in this novel. But there's a lot more going on here than just one character. The novel sets up a conflict between Bajor and Ferenginar in an interesting way, contrasting their spiritual and materialistic societies. And we see some of the lasting horrors of the Cardassian occupation on Bajoran lives. Good moments for all the DS9 characters here, who Shimerman clearly knows inside and out. Weighs in at 450 pages, but I was never bored. Great book by an author clearly invested in the subject.