Awescape
Pros: Really funny, great slice of life description. The best part of this book was the small details. My favorite character was Morris and I found that aspect incredibly charming, and also Andy's mother. I also loved the perspective shift at the end, and the endearing flaws of everyone involved.
Spoilers:
Cons: Not enough plot, meandered near the middle and end. Also while I liked the perspective shift at the end, it felt overdetermined, some minor plot holes in character reactions.
A really well written biography of Sylvia Plath that aims to be as neutral as possible and uses mostly letters, journals, calendars, and various points of view to establish what happened. It was 900 pages but I read it really fast so it must have been good. The book did a good job giving Sylvia's own voice to explain what may have been happening and not treading into mythologizing her or making too much of apocryphal stories or opinions others have of her like other bios. It focuses on her art, ambition, the effect her perfectionism, people-pleasing, and the sexist pressure at the time had on her as an artist and a person, as well as her romantic life and mental health issues. One aspect of her death and mental health struggles rarely explored is how the barbaric treatment of the time that forced unperfected shock treatment and potential life in an asylum to mentally ill or difficult women was a genuine threat, and so scared Plath she was wiling to do anything to escape it, and that her death was an attempt to control her dignity and life, not necessarily the "sad girl suicide" or the result of her marriage breaking down, although that is for sure a factor.
Plath's most amazing trait was her voice, her earnest desire to create art despite the patriarchal norms of the 50s and 60s she was coming up in, and her dedication to her dreams above all else. She was clearly a very intense and sincere, authentic singular artist with a precise and intelligent voice. This bio made me re-read The Bell Jar and understanding more about her and her history made the book more moving, witty, incredibly funny- it isn't my first re-read but it seems to get better with every year, as do her poems, Ariel, especially since I am now 30, about the age Sylvia Plath wrote the Bell Jar and the age she wrote Ariel, her magnus opus book of peoms. She was really a genius.
Written in a really fun way. I loved how joyful the friendship between the main character and her best friend James were, and how dirty her relationship with her boyfriend Carey was. The plot twist wasn't my favorite part of the book although it was part of the drama, my favorite part was the loving detail of the characterizations in their relationships with eachother, the descriptions of their dialogue and mannerisms. Very charming.
I feel bad giving this a two star review but it was just not for me. I just didn't like the writing style. Pros are the writing was often funny and wove a lot of Mexican culture, and the visuals were often vivid. That said, the story felt like the author was making it up as he went and was so unrealistic in a way that felt toothless and unrealistic in a way that removed all stakes and drama.
The towns elders and grown women sends a group of teenage girls in a dangerous area alone across the country and across the border? With no contacts to help them except a phone number from decade ago who no one bothered to call and verify they agree to help or are even still alive? This book was written by a man and I understand its a bit of a fairy tale but it just felt like stupid things happened to make the plot work. Living as a woman, the idea of naive high school age girls being sent to represent their town with no worldly knowledge and hardly any resources where they could be disappeared, sex trafficked, raped, or worse, is just so ridiculous. It would NEVER happen. The girls seem very unaware how much danger they're in or have any plan which I understand teenagers are dumb but I doubt most are this clueless. At times there are creeps or bad people, but then it's undercut by good luck, jokes, or an almost cartoony turn of events. At one point a character pole vaults over the border. A kind border guard decides to drive them across after they get caught and returned. And then the major plot resolution, if they manage to bring people back to protect he town, isn't even shown- the last couple pages is they make it across the border and then a quick scene of them coming back to town with an "army".
This book was so good! Despite being about 900 pages, it was incredibly addictive and I read it really fast and with pleasure. Madonna is an incredibly strong person, and her life was moving. The book covers her coming up as an artist, her decision to be an artist and embracing of her sexuality and strength despite her conservative Catholic upbringing, her years at dance school, going to New York where she became part of the New York art scene in the late 70s and early 80s, dancing at gay clubs and making friends with Basquiat and others. Madonna over and over championed her right to express herself and be an embodied, sexual, open women when both conservatives culture and feminists at times took issue with her. She's been through a lot and while not perfect still is inspiring to so many people, and her committment to her art is unwavering. The book described her attention to every aspect of her success, to every part of her shows, visual, auditory, and thematic. Madonna is a performance artist and views her much as a way to connect with people and express bigger themes, personal and political, and reading about her attention to detail, artistry, ambition, and focus was really moving in a culture that she forced to take her seriously even when they tried to make her a joke.
I deducted .5 stars because sometimes the book tried to ties themes of feminism into Madonna's story into other events happening at the time regarding politics ect to make a pleasing and neat universal narrative, which the author is not as educated in, especially in the later half of the book- for example, making sweeping statements about Hillary Clinton not being elected as a result of sexism and Hillary and Madonna being the same fighters of a sexist climate, in the middle of Madonna's story- where there may be some truth to that, Hillary's story is as complicated and nuanced as Madonna, and the trite, sweeping generalizations trying to tie Madonna's feminism and journey into a neat narrative involving other women or politics without proper research or nuance just felt really ham-fisted and like a different narrative that didn't belong in a book that was otherwise very objective and nuanced.
My favorite book of this year. Clearly it's polarizing and a lot of people found the main character annoying. Every single page gripped me. The writing style is amazing. It was like eating something delicious, the way it was written. The humor and the motivations of the character sneak up on you, as though you're inside her, discovering as you go things you don't even know about yourself. Every page was so witty even when it was heartbreaking or cringey or vulnerable. It was laugh out loud funny, so wry, and vulnerably, diving into desire, self-narrative, fear of aging, menopause, artifice, love, art, connection, disconnection. A beautiful, beautiful book.
A clear theme in Ferrante's work is "becoming" like someone else- be it children becoming their parents, someone's narrative or personal magnetism getting inside you and changing from the inside, or escaping or failing to escape our fate. The fact we can never tell if this a fear or paranoia of the narrator, or a reality, makes it even better.
This mysterious power that warps you without your will, changing your nature before you even realize it, is a palpable sticky energy in the book. Do we have our own essence or are we just shaped by the forces that touch us? Can a fate be rejected, can we choose who we are?
This book is about a child becoming an adult. A young girl hears her parents compare her to the aunt they hate, and she becomes with obsessed with what is so bad in her that her parents see her like this, to the point of seeking a closeness with the aunt. The child begin to learn more about the adults her parents are, and over time begins to readjust the simplistic perceptions she has of everyone she knows, including herself.
When I read this book, it took me a little bit, maybe 20-30 pages, to really sink into it. I had already read The Neopolitan novels and The Days of Abandonment by Ferrante and I think I assumed this book would be derivative of those or could not possible be as good. Soon I was hooked though, after which I read through the book very fast. It picked up density, meaning, and as with all Ferrante's work, the meanings added onto and subverted each-other, creating a self-contained world with a richness that rivals reality. My favorite aspect of Ferrante is the moment is plays with the narrator's reliability by giving them an alternative information and perspective that casts the entire narrative into doubt- we could spend chapters building an idea only to have it subverted, but never answered, only leaving us with questions on all sides- these are books that border omniscience but come from a first person point of view, leaving us to doubt not the narrator as unreliable but the world as unreliable, that it may be fundamentally impossible to arrive at truth, and the characters themselves are aware of this feeling of moving through murky and changeable water. It's through the tension created by the contrasting of opposites the feeling of doubt and beauty comes in, and an entire world in all its contradictions in one person.
One of my favorite books. I read this when I was young and it was very important to me.
The book is a bildungsroman that is somewhat autobiographical to the author, Somerset Maugham. The protagonist, Philip, was born with a club foot and after being orphaned grows up under the care of a somewhat cold religious relatives. He grows up shy and self-conscious, seeking belonging and a refuge from his loneliness in books and fantasies. As he grows he tries on various professions, falls in love with a girl who rejects him, gains and loses friends, finds his own self-definitions, and struggles with accepting himself and the world. The book introduces some concepts that I found really impactful, including some existentialist themes, the meaning of art and artistic fulfillment, romantic obsession, self-deception and self awareness . It's a beautiful book that is told from the point of a hungry soul trying to find peace. The prose is beautiful, elegant, and easy to read, but honest, direct, and evocative.
This book of essays is mostly about consent, body image, and complicated feelings towards sexuality. Dunham is really funny, wry, self-aware, and outrageous. She also is obsessed with and allergic to shame, and I love that about her.
Lena Dunham is really good at putting a voice to experiences people don't normally talk about. Like the shame of ending up in unhealthy relationships or nonconsensual situations in part because you were seeking something there, or being unable to name when something happened was wrong. The shame of deeply needing to be desired and important, shame of our interest in our bodies, and other people's. What makes her such a good artist is her relationship to artifice and self-revelation. Being an artist is an act of artifice, of curating aspects of your existence to be shared, and so is being a person. There is something so beautiful and ridiculous about that. In Dunham there is this desire to reveal everything ugly and make it beautiful by sharing it, like the light of human mutual understanding will cleanse it. I really love that about her, even if at times it repels people because it swings into self-indulgent narcissism. There is something so innocent about that impulse, and also deeply brave.
Contains spoilers
This book is about descending into a dark place and wanting to stay there, needing to stay there. Hibernation, isolation, break-down depression. That said, it's a funny, mean, moving book, that is above all very honest. Maybe it will be more easily understood by those who have experienced depression and can find humor in it. On top of being funny, it's a quick and effortless read.
The main character is a good looking girl who appears to have all the advantages of being blonde, pretty, and from a wealthy family. But inside she is emotionally dead and incredibly isolated. After a series of disappointments leads her to major depression, the main character begins to earnestly seek to spend a year locked away in her apartment asleep as much as possible, floating away on prescription medication and transforming into her future self. Just not yet.
Her best friend is also lost, but copes with in the complete opposite way: frenetic superficial self improvement plans and an obsession with appearances. Best friend dismisses the main character's depression because she envies her beauty. In return, the protagonist treats her friend like crap, a bond of mutual sadomasochistic loneliness.
Her psychiatrist is the unhinged and ready to prescribe Dr. Tuttle, my favorite character. Bless you, Dr. Tuttle. You made me laugh out loud so many times.
I loved many things about this book. The descriptions of disassociation and fugue states. The terrible men. The superficial art world. The frank analysis women have of their own appearances and the treatment it affords them, and the frank discussion of eating disorders. How mean the main best friends were to each-other, and how they tried to love each-other as well. The flashbacks that got us to this point. The way depression makes us brittle and mean. How when you shrink your world down to a tiny stage, the mundane becomes a delight, like your favorite brand of ice cream or the deli coffee from around the corner. The rewatching of Harrison Ford and Whoopie Goldberg videotapes by the protagonist while locked in her depression apartment. When I experienced an episode of major depression, at one point all I could cope with was re-watching various VHSs. It's just so real.
These books light my brain on fire. The beauty at times was so unbearable I had to put the books down, overcome by a dizzying energy and joy, before I could start again.
I read this multiple times! After I read it, I got the audiobook and listened to it multiple times while doing other things. Her narration really brings the humor across in the book and is darkly ironic and detached from a serious subject matter. Jennette is a brave person and a great writer who is able to articulate the parts of our psyche we normally struggle to name, which scratched a weird itch in my brain.
This book relays the issues of covert emotional abuse, unhealthy family relationships, a fractured sense of self, people pleasing, and eating disorders, in a way that is somehow both enraging, entertaining, and easy to understand. The codependence we form with unhealthy relationships and how we twist ourselves to fit them is described, but also the freedom of breaking those bonds.
One of the most brutal and raw books in the world, one of my favorites. Some of the imagery feels so visceral years after reading it, it still filters into my brain. Ferrante's writing style is my favorite writing in the world. It both deeply submerses you in the emotion and reality of another human being, it's like being in your own head. It moves as effortlessly as though it's unfolding in your own unconscious. The movement of emotions and rationalizations as one moves through heartbreak, the dissolution and reconstitution of reality, it's so beautiful and painful. Ferrante is so good at saying things that I have never heard named
I could not get past the writing style. I totally believe some people were into this, I was just not one of them. There was almost no plot. Instead the whole book was setting the mood of a scene, sometimes for pages and pages. At one point it took a character a chapter to walk around a room and forget what they were looking for, at another point 5 pages to walk a few steps down some stairs, with endless asides to describe the light hitting an object evoking at least three metaphors. My eyes glazed over. After describing something tiny with such momentous detail you think that would be significant to the plot in some way, but nope, nothing follows, just more description of something equally irrelevant. The characters did not grow or change or even have personalities. The book was basically a a few vaguely connected scenes stretched as far as they could go, drowned in some wordy but arresting visual imagery.
Kind of fun but also cheesy. Its basically med-high quality fanfiction. Feyre is the self insert MC who is shy but brave, beautiful but doesn't know it and desired by everyone. The hot faerie love interests are part beast part man but change forms and also have masks so they are impossible to imagine, when I try to visualize them I see a blur. The world building is interesting although the plot beats are often forced or cliched. Cool things about the series: the female main character is never punished by the plot for being sexual. Entertaining, but not that deep and not that sexy either.
Simultaneously an excellently written historical romance, and a piece of racist propaganda by an author who believed the “southern lost cause” myth, that being that the civil war was not over slavery and romanticized the plantation-era south, including downplaying slavery as “benevolent”- not remotely historically accurate. Unfortunately it was used by post reconstruction southerners as a piece of political propaganda to support their the romanticization of the antebellum south. Enjoy it but enjoy it critically.
This book has some beautiful scenes, a lot to say about guilt, grief, and love, but it also tended to be a bit wordy and self congratulatory to me. The author occasionally seemed high on her own supply. I did like it but I wouldn't re read it.