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Kudos to any author even willing to attempt to touch this hot potato with a neutral lens. Doubly so for a topic that's ever-changing with new developments; the original publication was in 2021, but my version had an updated Epilogue post-October 7th, 2023 that basically said, "while this book may now seem outdated, the historical events that set up what's currently happening are still relevant and important to understand." Hard to argue with that.

I've only ever had a surface-level understanding of the region because, frankly, I and most other Americans felt like we could ignore it for most of the past few decades. That time now feels like it's decisively passed, and having a grasp of how we got to this point feels important. This book does a competent job at walking the tightrope of depicting basically everything between the Ottoman defeat in WWI through the 2021 uprising as detached and unbiased as possible, while also providing at the end of each chapter contemporary opinions and experiences of real-world Israelis and Palestinians for the given decade under discussion.

I do feel like there are some big aspects that are curiously absent (wish there was an explanation on when and why the US became such a close ally to Israel, discussion of how Israel's nuclear program developed, or literally any mention of Iran in the entire book at all), but in retrospect this is marketed as the shortest history of just two peoples after all, so maybe the narrower focus was intentional. Still, this could've been handled a lot less tactfully, and I walked away from this with new knowledge so that's a win in my book.

Sometimes being in a book club lets you read and discover great books you normally wouldn't seek out on your own. And sometimes it gives you the satisfaction of confirming that you didn't like that book you didn't think you were gonna enjoy going into it. Guess what happened here?

I don't like literary fiction or stories with themes about family relations or really any books with child characters, so I was probably never destined to enjoy this book. Doesn't help that there was also way more upsetting and visceral domestic spousal abuse going on than the back-of-the-cover blurb hinted at. Also not the biggest fan of when real-world tragedies - especially fairly recent ones - are utilized for fictional purposes (the event in question here is the 2015 Paris Bataclan attacks); it just strikes me as a little tacky to piggyback off literal terrorist attacks for entertainment purposes.

Structurally this book was fine, even a little interesting; a new mother has to decide what to name her newborn son (either the name her husband has dictated, what her younger daughter suggests, or what she wants to name him for herself), and we follow the family as a whole with a focus on the son as his life pans out depending on which name is chosen for him. Because they're told concurrently, I was getting a little mixed up with what was happening with any given side character across iterations, but at least the three timelines were fairly distinct in broad strokes.

I'm sure there's a better way to more concisely analyze and critique this book, but it just didn't click with me and I'll admit that my reasons are largely superficial. If you loved this book and disagree with my take, know that at least you're in the company of literally everyone else in my book club.

For as much as I consider a book that markets itself as "humorous" to be a giant red flag, I do keep reading them for some reason or another. And while this one hit the mark more times than it missed, it doesn't take away from the fact that this is actually two separate plots from two different genres that were squeezed into a get-along shirt. If you like tonal whiplash, you'll love this one.

We bounce back and forth between Peyote (works in hell, first-person narration) and the four members of the Harrison family (upper-middle class spending the summer at their lake house, third-person narration), and chapters are short and digestible. There's never any confusion about who we're following at a given moment because the vibes between these two stories are so distinct from one another. Peyote's chapters feel like a surreal version of a corporate drama with schemes against coworkers and strong, cutthroat personalities eager to fuck each other over for a promotion. Whereas the Harrison chapters feel like your standard chick-lit domestic thriller with buried family secrets we don't talk about.

Which isn't to say that I can't enjoy something this daring and experimental, but I found myself disproportionately more interested in Peyote's journey than the other 50% of the book. Both plotlines do end up culminating at the same time and tie together, but the very very ending started jumbling up so many threads that I was getting confused.

I didn't love it, but I can't deny that it was ambitious for a debut novel.

This is one of the most bizarre nonfiction books I've ever read. It's like 25% history of 19th century stage magic, 25% applied kleptomania, and 50% "Using Roofies: For Dummies!"

It opens with a lengthy introduction about the early days of the C.I.A. and how the concept of fair play went right out the window in favor of ruthlessly using any possible advantage for information-gathering purposes. Apparently that included hiring Houdini and his contemporary ilk to teach agents how to do slight of hand tricks. After a recap of some of the more silly and out-there methods we tried (and failed) to kill Fidel Castro, the book pivots to the actual reprinting of an original classified manual from the 50's that was rediscovered in 2007.

From this point on, a lot of time is spent on multiple methods for slipping 1) pills, 2) powders, and 3) liquids into an unsuspecting mark's drink before we change gears and talk about how to use distraction and psychological tricks to swipe small objects right in front of someone's eyes. Which I guess would be handy skills for an aspiring spy. The part that interested me the most and what felt most like my understanding of spycraft - recognition signals and working as teams - was given the least amount of time, but at least it was addressed at all.

It's a very dated manual of its time (it's assumed that everyone smokes cigarettes, carries loose change, and that women don't leave the house without at least one handkerchief), but as a historical time capsule of what early espionage techniques looked like you could certainly do worse. Also there are tons of helpful sketches and diagrams, so maybe try getting your hands on a physical printing if you're interested.

Urban legends and hyper-local word-of-mouth stories have always interested me, and what are cryptids but a smaller niche of that already limited subculture? I had thought that I was well-versed in all the different kinds of critters that may or may not be roaming this country and going bump in the night, but apparently there are a lot more than I realized!

I did enjoy the premise of this book more than the execution however. There are interesting glimpses at why some towns embrace their local cryptids with annual festivals and statues, whereas others are embarrassed by supposed sightings from decades ago. I wish there was more exploration into the anthropological and cultural aspects of how unsubstantiated creatures can affect local communities, but chapters were too short and there was too much ground to cover to really allow for that kind of deeper analysis. Just when things were getting interesting, the chapter would end and we'd be launched into another anecdote starting with teenage boys riding around the backwood roads of their small town in the middle of the night (a surprising number of cryptid sightings begin this way).

This also felt like it was aimed towards maybe a slightly younger audience than I was expecting, so I'd recommend this for younger readers or just anyone looking for a broad but shallow understanding of Bigfoot, Mothman, the Jersey Devil, and the rest of the gang. Anything more substantial than that, maybe look elsewhere.