• I enjoy Jack's failed attempts at gardening. His cow doesn't produce milk, his cabbages are being eaten by caterpillars, his chickens have produced a singular egg. "May I pass you an egg, Stephen?"
• I love Mrs Williams, Jack's terrible mother-in-law, who fills the house with furniture that nobody's allowed to sit on because that will wear it out.
• Stephen falls into the ocean twice in this book and it's funny both times.
• I like Clonfert and Dr. McAdam. I like how Stephen grows to like Clonfert despite how annoying he is. I like how Clonfert's been obsessed with Jack for years and Jack has virtually no awareness of him. I like how Dr. McAdam is trying to invent psychology and how he's a raging alcoholic but the moment Stephen tries to bring up his alcoholism he fires back by calling Stephen out for his dependence on laudanum.
• I like how Stephen scolds Jack for not appreciating his daughters enough.
• Leaving aside that it felt like a gut punch and I was genuinely upset over it, the line "Come see your patient, Dr Maturin, you whore!" Has been playing through my head all day. I keep saying it out loud, trying to get the delivery just right.

This is one of those books that feels like it's right on the cusp of being really good, but there's something missing. It has a lot of interesting narrative threads: political upheaval, the main character becoming less of a chauvinist, culture clash, etc, but it still kind of feels like the plot is just drifting along. I think part of it is that there's a lack of emotional immediacy. The plot moves on pretty quickly from some major events. Something pivotal to the plot can happen and the author will sum it up with a few sentences, instead of dedicating a whole scene to it. Sad/horrifying things happen and the narrative doesn't spend much time on the main characters emotionally reacting. Interesting book to read, but it took me almost a year to make my way through it because my attention kept sliding off it. But I think I'll look back fondly on the ideas in it. Sometimes the experience of remembering a book is better than the experience of reading it.

Wouldn't recommend unless you're trying to become a nurse. None of the essays are particularly well-written or interesting. Good insight into the different fields of nursing, though.

This is a real hidden gem. It takes place in a society where magic has a dingy, back-alley type reputation, and witches and wizards are shunned by polite society. The heroine, a witch named Kyra, was kicked out by her father years ago. But now, Kyra keeps seeing omens predicting that her little sister's going to be murdered on her wedding night! This leaves Kyra no choice but to crash the wedding and cause a major scandal, and hopefully find out who's planning to murder her sister before it's too late.

Kyra herself has a charmingly bitchy and sarcastic personality, very fun to read about. She's got a bit of a mean streak which she's trying to overcome. The background characters all have a bit of depth to them; Kyra's a bit judgemental and her first impressions of people aren't always fair.

I'm avoiding spoilers for this review because I'm hoping some people see it and check the book out, but I also want to say, wow the plot came together in a way I wasn't expecting it to! It also got a lot heavier than I thought it would, but it was very well done.