Nota

The author made interesting life choices, but I don't think they effected the book negatively, I think it stands strongly regardless of the author's life and how she tricked young women, girls.

An amazing exploration of how the world can convince you that you are not worthy of yourself and others.

This book explores outdated biology, psychology, but in a way that's interest and thoughful, reveals what a person might have thought about these subjects at that time. It takes you through experiences of french women from birth to old age. Offers some limited understanding around race and homosexuality. Discusses religion, relationships, marriage and how they disempowered women at the time and in history. Women writers, women in men's literature, prostitution, “the mother”, birthcontrol. How women were encouraged to give up, try less, stayed passive, and devoting themselves to nothing.

Learned that religious saints were something I did not think they were. I felt called out even thought I was not born as a woman, but a lot of passive behaviors I definely adapted because of odd life experiences. I feel this book helped me to envision another path for myself and now I want to dream a little bigger and be a little more harsh to myself. There were lot of thoughts I had before that were recontextualized and found new strength with this book. I feel like my views around love are naive and incomplete and this crushed my odd convictions considerably which I feel is good. This book is full of love went wrong scenarios.

The conclusion is good, but there aren't many soliutions proposed as to how exactly it might get achieved.

I loved this as an experience and the first feminist work I have read. I now realise I read so little philosophy which is sad and must change, this is so nourishing. I think this is the first “harder” philosophical work I read. There must be a ton of less accessible works, oh boy, can't wait to tackle those.

Disclaimer: I haven't read any Greek mythology before so I can't compare this book to the original myths, I have heard that Achilles was originally crueler, but I'm glad the main characters were made into better role models. The author repurposed this one side character to create a discussion on a sexual assault which I am okay with, even though it might not be accurate to the myth.

Take a dip into a reimagined ancient myth, through the sea, an olive jar storeroom, and a rose quartz cave. Reexperience an idealized childhood bond that you never had through the eyes of someone who could never forget it. A fairytale, a legend “The song of Achilles” focuses on two boys, Achilles, and Patroclus, growing up and then facing the realities of war, and the expectations of their current time period.

“I saw then how I had changed. I did not mind anymore that I lost when we raced and I lost when we swam out to the rocks and I lost when we tossed spears or skipped stones. For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? It was enough to watch him win, to see the soles of his feet flashing as they kicked up sand, or the rise and fall of his shoulders as he pulled through the salt. It was enough.”

You can feel how much they care for each other, a simple kind of love, noticing small things, being happy for spending time together. A fig, a lyre, a pomegranate, sandalwood, and salt. There are a ton of symbols that are tied to the characters. The book is rich in descriptions.

“I did not have time to look away before he said, softly, but distinctly, “Catch” a fig leapt from the pattern in a graceful arc towards me. It fell into the cup of my palms, soft and slightly warm. I was aware of the boys cheering.”

Knowing about Greek myth is unrequited, and there's material to reference the figures mentioned at the back of the book.

As they grow up, the book gets sadder and more brutal, the characters' flaws become more visible, and get taken advantage of. You don't get too in-depth with the characters, but the ones that need to be are rounded well enough.

“He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget you can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.”

I have cried a ton while reading both happy, and sad scenes, this book can take you emotionally to a lot of places if you let it. I look forwards to reading more greek inspiring stories, and more from this author.

This book contains gore, relatable activist backstories, the lowest sins of humanity described from a compassionate side. It has interesting views of God and existence and analyses works of an interesting author which now I want to read, haunting word images about which I will be thinking about.

There's no hope for us. We vilify and insult the weakest and it's been continuing since forever, we insult the weaker by comparing them to the weakest and since committing terrible atrocities we are determined to commit more. If we end one war then we humanely continue another, we sleep on the victims forever.

It's so wild how people do not see connections between all cruelty and somehow compartmentalise it so that it's all separate. Violence against minorities is wrong and the animals are the biggest minority, people can't get convinced that they are even the same as us.

If we live in a society which treats its weakest people this badly then how is it strong at all? It's a ruin, if most people can live with a logic error this big it's hopeless to think that they are not committing all sorts of other cruelties all the time. They are not even doing the bare minimum.

I am not sure how many meat eaters would dare to read this one, but this feels very supporting to read as a vegan. There's a bunch of vegan/vegetarian history I knew nothing about in it and I suppose I should go on a journey to find out a lot more. I feel that animal activists books really speak to me in a voice like no other and that I should seek out more from it.

I want to read books by vegans for vegans, it is sickening how many of the books don't contain the basic moral of not eating the animals. I love that this book exists, I love that at least there are people speaking up about all the pain that animals go through and that they record it. The X-ray vision is real.

Thank you so much for writing it and being a voice for the animals.

My library only had this young adult version, not sure if they are that different, this one is shorter I think because I saw a slightly bigger one at the bookstore.

I would like to begin by stating that the author makes it clear that they aren't willing to be vegan for the planet despite wanting this to be inspiring and hopeful. They could have just not mentioned this, not put this in my brain and not let me think about their hypocrisy. The book is full of lists, cities that were affected by climate change. It is a bit annoying as I don't live in the US so the amounts mentioned went over my head. I don't orient myself well with US cities yet.

I think this is relevant and overall good although it doesn't offer any solutions and lists the problems. This does need to be seen as a problem and people need to be active for it. If you want to hear about examples of climate change damage this is it. There are some culture opinion rants at the end too about the apocalyptic themes in our fiction. Not sure what to make of it.

I feel like for an ecologist they don't understand the urgency behind veganism and animal agriculture though they do mention the horrible treatment of pigs and terrible animal farming a few times. I really dislike the way there were like “Oh haha plants are alive too you know so just stopping to eat animals is not the solulu” which was just a terrible take, I mean by not eating animals you eat way less plants and consume way less water. Oh yea, this book also glances over horse riding and beekeeper practices, I don't remember even a mention to at least lessen the damage with better saddles or anything haha.

But besides this I did enjoy reading about the effed up world of the animal kingdom and their horrific habits, them killing each other. I definitely got quite a lot of facts that I haven't heard about before, but that probably also means that I should read more books like this because I severely doubt this is one of the better ones on the subject. I like that this sort of book made it to the popular science label and that it educated people that animals are sentient and feel all sorts of things although the author doesn't make the best cases or arguments for it, they are way more focused on biology and just basically how animals live their lives. Which is still a decent approach just that it's missing a lot of stuff animal rights activists know how to present way better.

This book really made me want to include more biology in my writing or perhaps create some fictional animals on my own. There's so much beauty in how horrible the animals are, they are almost just like us, ew. All these little facts I learned will haunt me now in a good way.