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3.5 stars. I just happened to be in the middle of reading Great Circle, about fictional aviator Marian Graves, when I saw a reference to Bessie Coleman's birthday and decided that I should learn more about her. Considering what this book is - i.e., a youth/student-level biography - I think it's pretty good. Among other things, it includes a thoughtful discussion of systemic racism.

3.5 stars. This covered a number of things I was somewhat familiar with (for example, the Pussy Riot arrests, the poisoning of Yushchenko, the Chechen school siege at Beslan, and the downing of the Malaysia Airlines flight over Ukraine), but it put all of that -- and many other events -- into context, providing a better understanding of Putin and Russia. A lot of helpful background information about the country's history and Putin's rise to power. I read somewhere that it was supposed to be funny or witty, at least to some extent, but I saw almost no humor in this (which is probably not really surprising, considering the subject matter).

Mostly bleak and brutal, but very good. I didn't think I was in the mood for anything dystopian, but I basically couldn't put it down once I started it. Really interesting to watch Lauren Olamina discover/develop her worldview and then share it with others and advocate for it as the book progresses.

I thought this book was pretty stunning. I decided to read it after seeing John Warner (AKA The Biblioracle) say that it "should absolutely be considered a great American classic."

It has some flaws -- for example, I thought it was somewhat sexist and didn't always succeed when he was writing from a woman character's perspective (although the Dymphna Willson chapter, describing a detailed interaction between Dymphna and Bethera, was very good).

The chapter focused on David, a white student who becomes close friends with a black student at college, was amazing. I didn't realize it until reading this New Yorker article after I finished the book, but the entire story is told exclusively through the eyes of white people.

The image of all the black people leaving the state is really burned into my mind. (I don't think that plot development is a spoiler, since I've seen it prominently mentioned in many descriptions of the book.)

There is only one copy of this book in our library system, and the library that owns it won't let users from other libraries borrow it. :-( But luckily I was able to get it from the Cloud Library.

4.5 stars. I thought it would take me longer to finish this 600+ pager, but it really gripped me and kept me moving along. Excellent and exciting storytelling, focused on aviator Marian Graves, with great characters in both of the book’s timelines. Very well written -- for the most part, I’d say it’s filled with sentences that are a pleasure to read.

Some of Barclay’s actions (and the supposed reasoning behind them) didn’t really make sense to me, and that distracted me a bit. But it’s a fairly minor complaint, considering how much I liked the book overall.

Weaved into the story in both timelines are many memorable observations about friendship, love, adventure, heartache, sexual desire and pleasure, artistic expression, self-destruction, sexism, war, and atonement, not to mention aviation and film-making. There's also a cinematic sweep to the whole thing that is breathtaking at times (which I think is not always easy to do in writing), e.g. ships at sea, crossing mountains north of Montana and heading west to the Pacific, flying across Antarctica, etc.

Another powerful and touching story from Keegan, beautifully written and with striking attention to emotional detail. I saw someone describe it as a triumph of narration from a child's perspective, and I have to agree. I was really looking forward to reading this, after recently finishing Small Things Like These, and it did not disappoint. I wouldn't look at these until after reading it, but there's an informative review from NPR here, and some very interesting thoughts from Keegan about the story specifically and fiction/writing/reading in general here (in response to students' questions about the book).