exploringthestacks
🤟🌊🧶📚 maddie, 25, she/her | library worker & power patron | crocheter | walk-taker | reading a little bit of everything!
3781 points
October 2026
4.41 average · 333 reviews
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(No star ratings because I’m not sure how to boil my thoughts down into a number of stars for this one)
Truthfully, I don’t know how to describe my feelings about this book. It wasn’t enjoyable, per se, but it was very compelling. Jaycee’s story is of course heartbreaking, but her grit and determination to survive left me in awe for much of the book. I was particularly moved by her determination to educate her daughters as much as possible while they were in captivity. Her reunion with her mom, sister, and aunt moved me to tears and I felt overwhelmed with happiness for them that they got to be reunited.
Something that struck me over and over again was how young Jaycee’s voice sounded in the text. In the beginning, she’s very clear that how she wrote her story is how she remembers it, which is why there are some parts where the narrative feels confusing. I admire her ability to share her story in such an authentic way. Because there was very little editing, the tone is undeniably, for lack of a better word, juvenile. It underscores the utter horror of her story because it reflects the young age at which she was taken, as well as the denial of her continued education for 18 years. Her experiences turned my stomach, and her tone turned it again because of how young she sounds.
I always have such mixed feelings when it comes to memoirs like this. On one hand, this was an incredibly difficult read and I have to protect my own mental health. On the other hand, I do feel an obligation to bear witness to these stories, especially when it’s coming from the person who experienced it. Jaycee wanted to tell her story, and she talks about a big reason being that it meant Phillip and Nancy Garrido couldn’t hide from their actions anymore after she put everything out in the open. I appreciate the power and agency that Jaycee got from telling her story, and I’m glad that she eventually got to a place where she felt comfortable and safe to tell her story. After reading this book, I am curious to see how Jaycee grew and adjusted back to her life, so I’m curious about her second memoir, though I think it’ll be some time before I’m ready to read that one.
This book is quite literally my dream fantasy book. It was fast-paced, but not rushed or underdeveloped, and the perfect length to get invested in the story without having to invest a ton of time into it (don’t get me wrong, I love long novels, but short novels have a special place in my heart when done well!). My favorite element was the basis in Slavic folklore. I really enjoy exploring and learning about folklore from cultures around the world, and I felt that this was a really nice introduction to Slavic folklore. It was nice to listen to and read this one at the same time so I could enjoy the feel of the book and understand how to pronounce the Polish words. I also loved that Roth incorporated the folklore from other cultures with the banshee family being Irish and Mexican.
One element that was really well done was the idea of culture and belonging. All three of the main characters feel like outsiders within their cultures, and Roth explores things like familial duty and immigration in an interesting way within the context of a magical Chicago.
The real-world setting was amazing as well. Magical realism is probably my favorite fantasy sub-genre, and this book was all the more fun to read being set in Chicago, where I live. I could really feel Roth’s intimate knowledge of the city, particularly the north side, and I was so much more immersed in the story because of how real the world felt.
I loved how immersive this novella was and quite enjoyed the introduction to Slavic folklore that it provided. I can’t wait to pick up the second book!
My one sentence review for this book: This book should be required reading for EVERYONE whose soul is feeling lost or alone or hurt because this book is the medicine that will soothe it.
If I were to get deeper about this book: It’s everything I could ever, ever want in a book. Bertino examines the human condition in a way that is so intensely empathetic and compelling. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Adina’s observations, and her story still has my heart. Adina’s character is so well-crafted and developed, even during the parts of the story when she’s a child. Beyond Adina, I found all of the characters in her periphery to be compelling and interesting as well. I think my favorite relationship in the whole book is the relationship Adina has with her mother, and I loved reading about how it grew over time. Bertino uses vignettes to tell Adina’s story, which serves the purpose of the plot well, since the vignettes really do feel like reports back to her home planet. Some of the vignettes are quite short, just a sentence or two, and Bertino carefully chooses her words in a way that made such an impact on me.
I’ve read some discussion that this novel is a good metaphor for being a person with autism, and while I don’t have autism myself, I can certainly see why people make that connection and having that thought in my mind added to the story for me. Adina has many characteristics that I’ve read are characteristics of autism, such as black-and-white thinking. I’m interested to read more people’s thoughts on this analysis because this is a layer of the story I would have missed if it weren’t for others’ discussion!
I think I’ve found that I just love books that use aliens as a way to examine and discuss humanity (talk about a niche micro-genre!). Adina feels so alone at so many points in the story, and yet I was constantly thinking “I’ve felt this way, too,” while reading it. Despite the tragic ending, I felt a sense of hope at the end of this novel because to me, Adina’s observations of humanity show the goodness in the world. Books like this one are an important reminder that even when everything feels too big and hard, we’re never truly alone in this universe.
When We Lost Our Heads
Heather O'Neill
Beautyland
Marie-Helene Bertino
exploringthestacks commented...
Thank you for sharing these resources! September is also Library Card Sign Up Month in the United States (with Laufey as the honorary chair this year!), so make sure to sign up for a library card at your public library if you don’t have one yet! If you already do, look into reciprocal borrowing policies at your library or nearby libraries to gain access to even more resources! For example, any cardholder in the state of Illinois can link their library card to other library systems in the state.
September is National literacy month within the U.S and I think Canada, along with September 8th being recognized as international literacy day by UNESCO. So, I thought would post some resources.
Free books Project Gutenberg (Project Gutenberg) Project Gutenberg is a library of over 75,000 free eBooks. With a focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired, you can find books like the Great Gatsby or the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, among many others.
Standard Ebooks (Standard Ebooks) "Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven effort to produce a collection of high quality, carefully formatted, accessible, open source, and free public domain ebooks that meet or exceed the quality of commercially produced ebooks. The text and cover art in our ebooks are already believed to be in the U.S. public domain, and Standard Ebooks dedicates its own work to the public domain, thus releasing the entirety of each ebook file into the public domain. All the ebooks we produce are distributed free of cost and free of U.S. copyright restrictions."
Librivox (Librivox) "LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain, and then we release the audio files back onto the net for free."
I am also going to add into here the imagination library which was created by Dolly Parton, just in case anyone has kids or knows someone with kids where they might be able to use and apply for the imagination Libary (Imagination Library) "dedicated to inspiring a love of reading by gifting books free of charge to children from birth to age five, through funding shared by Dolly Parton and local community partners in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and Republic of Ireland."
Dolly Parton created the imagination library because she was inspired by "her father’s inability to read and write Dolly started her Imagination Library in 1995 for the children within her home county. Today, her program spans five countries and gifts millions of free books each month to children around the world."
Gen AI in book spaces News and similar things on AI in book spaces
AI companies are apparently buying Antique books and feeding the books to AI models (Article here) "AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale" (Article be found here) Says that "many companies, including Anthropic, have turned to ingesting physical books instead, which they can buy countless used copies of on the cheap. According to the settled lawsuit, Anthropic used a hydraulic powered cutting machine to neatly remove the pages from the books it procured from book resellers and then scanned them using industrial-grade imaging equipment. In other words, it was literally ripping off authors’ books to train its AI.
This process took advantage of a legal concept known as first-sale doctrine, which allows a buyer to do what they want with a purchase without the original copyright holder’s say-so. And since Anthropic was turning the original physical texts into digital ones — rather than redistributing them as new copies — a judge found this to be “transformative,” and therefore protected by fair use."
In the article they also mention a book seller stating "One small book seller said that in April, he suddenly went from selling no more than 20 books a week to hundreds, and he’s almost certain that the customers are AI labs, noting the random selection of the books and how they all have ISBNs. He added that his inventory is full with rare and out of print books, meaning that an AI company could be destroying some of the few remaining copies that can be found."
Authors Guild (Authors Guild) "Human Authored is a project of the Authors Guild that allows an author to certify that their book is created by a human. “Human Authored” means that the text of the book was written by a human and not generated by AI, with the exception of minimal uses such as AI applications that check spelling and grammar or for brainstorming or research."
Society of Authors (Society of Authors) "The Society of Authors (SoA) has launched a Human Authored scheme to help identify works written by humans in a market increasingly flooded by AI-generated books. The scheme is the first of its kind launched by a UK trade association to help protect an entire profession." "The Society of Authors’ new scheme allows authors to register their books and download a ‘Human Authored’ logo to display on the back cover of their books, helping to identify their work as created with uniquely human skill, hard work and creative endeavor."
Need help staying focus? Sometimes people need a little help staying focus when reading, and that's totally fine!
I miss my Library (I miss my Library) I miss my Library offers a to-do list and library sound effects like rain or the sound of pages turning, to help you stay comfortable and productive.
They also have I miss my cafe (I miss my cafe) Similar to i miss my library they have sound effects, you can also log into Spotify and connect it to the site and listen to your own music, they have a to-do list along with a timer and a dark mode.
Flocus (Flocus) Flocus helps users manage tasks, track progress, and maintain focus. They also have themes and customizable options. You can get stats if that's something that helps motivate you, you can pick a quote that motivates you and have it displayed. You can connect to Spotify or pick from the sounds on the site, they have a tasks list along with a notepad.
Education websites Jstor Daily (Jstor Daily) JSTOR Daily provides context for current events using scholarship found in JSTOR, a digital library of academic journals, books, and other material. they publish articles grounded in peer-reviewed research and provide free access to that research for all of their readers.
Jstor (Jstor) JSTOR brings together peer‑reviewed journals, scholarly ebooks, primary sources, and millions of images on one trusted platform. As a nonprofit partner to libraries, museums, and publishers, they curate and preserve content, so links remain stable, and citations stay reliable. I think at most what some people might need to access JSTOR is a library.
The Perseus Digital Library (Perseus Digital Library) The Perseus has a particular focus upon the Greco-Roman world and classical Greek and Latin, but the larger mission provides the distant, but fixed star by which we have charted our path for over two decades. Early modern English, the American Civil War, the History and Topography of London, the History of Mechanics, automatic identification and glossing of technical language in scientific documents, customized reading support for Arabic language, and other projects that we have undertaken allow us to maintain a broader focus and to demonstrate the commonalities between Classics and other disciplines in the humanities and beyond.
MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OpenCourseware) Free lecture notes, exams, and videos from MIT. A free and open publication of material from thousands of MIT courses across the entire MIT curriculum.
Censorship What you can do about potential censorship
The American Library Association (American Library Association) If you go onto their website, they have a whole page on banned/challenged books. "Often times ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) receives requests from students and researchers for information about specific banned and challenged books" so if someone is a student or another person who may not be able to find a book, they want it seems like you can reach out to them asking about it. Along with that on the website is says "The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom provides confidential support during censorship challenges to library materials, services, and programs. Anyone can report censorship, even if they do not require assistance. Report censorship by filling out this online form or contacting OIF via email:" They also go into detail on when and what you should do, "How to respond to challenges and concerns about library resources", "What is your institution's policy and procedure?", "Formal written requests for reconsideration" and more.
