Nancy E. Shaffer's Blog

Madman in the Woods

Madman in the Woods: Life Next Door to the Unabomber by Jamie Gehring
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not what I expected. I listened to the audiobook version, which is read by the author. She has a sweet, feminine voice that is jarring at first simply because you get used to procedural books about crime and criminals read by voice actors taking on the gravitas of the law enforcement, legal, or psychology professionals behind those books. This book is half-cozy Life in the Pines, and half citizen resear...

Blue Dreams

Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds by Lauren Slater

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A bit of an eye-opener for anyone interested in the history of psychopharmacology. I suspect this writer is a wanna-be memoirist because the information is littered with personal experiences of mental health issues and treatments, and the delivery of information takes on the quality of a literary novel, but if you can shake off the expectation that a non-fiction book needs to...

The Book of Separation

The Book of Separation by Tova Mirvis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book unfolds slowly like a blossoming flower as the narrator and memoirist, Tova Mirvis, describes what to her at the time felt like a chaotic unraveling at worst, a no-rope bare-hands mountain-climb at best. She contrasts her orthodox life, tightly controlled from within as well as without, with the slow journey towards what seems to the reader an average life, but that to her, was an end, everything “falling apart,” except of ...

Cultish

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One of the downsides to finding a free copy of a book you want to read in the public library is that there can be a wait list, and during those weeks of waiting, you can build up some high expectations for a book you probably wouldn’t have approached with the same level of expectation had you simply paid for the damned thing. The same goes for putting yourself on a wait list to purchase an unreleased book, of course. I...

Making a Psychopath

Making a Psychopath: My Journey into Seven Dangerous Minds by Mark Freestone
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had this on audible pre-order for months, which doesn’t mean much in itself, yet at the same time builds up a lot of expectation. Which is why the book came across as rather lackluster–because of my expectations, not because of what the author themselves was trying to do, which I think is important. We need to get rid of a one-size-fits-all diagnosis when it comes to psychopathy, if we are ever...

Boys Enter the House

Boys Enter the House: The Victims of John Wayne Gacy and the Lives They Left Behind by David B. Nelson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is part of an encouraging new trend to take the spotlight off serial killers and their histories and instead feature the identities and lives of their victims. Books like The Five by Hallie Rubenhold, who retells researched details of the lives of the victims of Jack the Ripper, documentaries like “Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer”, which features Bundy survivor...

Chase Darkness With Me

Chase Darkness with Me: How One True-Crime Writer Started Solving Murders by Billy Jensen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this originally in early March of 2020. I bought it with the usual cringe of embarrassment at my true crime addiction. Rereading it now was like reading a new book. The only thing that sounded at all familiar was Michelle McNamara, Golden State Killer yada, yada.

Granted, my life– everyone’s lives–got very distracting in that 19-month span. I lost my mom, I suffered a couple f...

The Psychopath Whisperer

The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience by Kent A. Kiehl

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I supposedly read this in 2014, but I have no memory of doing so. It may be that “rereading” this after seven years of schooling myself on psychopathy and true crime in general just made my brain take in the information differently.

Something in my reaction changed, certainly, because I gave this three stars in 2014, and this time around I was fascinated by Kiehl’s experiences and conclusions....

Columbine

Columbine
by Dave Cullen

This was excellent. It based its portrayal not just on the facts of the events, but the facts of the emotional lives of the souls involved on all sides, even those whose claim to having a soul was tenuous. It made sense of the chaos with the benefit of a decade of hindsight and sought to teach the reader about the complexity behind every case of mass shootings we lump together as an epidemic of the same repeated tragedy. They’re not. I’ll admit morbid curiosity got me ...

The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This novel strikes me as a bit First-World-problemsy. This relatively privileged 35-year-old woman from 21st century England has infinite possibilities, but is that essential to the human condition? Would a person whose race made them prone to capture and enslavement in 18th century culture have infinite possibilities? Would a woman from a present-day conservative, poor nation have infinite possibilities? There’s really only certai...