Sarah
Alright, I'm not gonna get too sappy with this, I swear. Okay, maybe a bit. I just knew when I saw this book existed that the me I was 5-6 years ago needed this so badly. I saw way too much of myself in these pages and it made me relive one of the worst parts of my life BUT it was so worth it! It's so validating and comforting to see that someone else has had similar experiences and come out on top.
I loved Sophie's art style here and found her use of comedy hilarious and relatable all at once. Her very unflattering caricatures of herself feeling at her worst are so funny and accurate to how gross we feel we look at the worst times in our lives.
If you've ever dated or even known someone manipulative and toxic, this book just perfectly illustrates what life is like with them and the insanity it is getting over them. But, if you're like me, reading something like this can be exactly what you need to continue processing that experience and feel better in the end.
I read a lot of true crime, but have never read any about the city I grew up in. It was so weird to see names of people in Rochester I'm familiar with and places I've been playing central roles in this story. It was fascinating how Rachel Rear never knew her stepsister but researched her and her death in such a way that she could learn more about her and make sure she wasn't forgotten. This was more sensitive and thoughtful than much of the true crime I read. I was reminded constantly throughout of Stephanie's humanity and vibrancy in life, which is something true crime can tend to fail in - the victims are often simply named and listed without making readers remember that they're humans too.
I had really high expectations for this because of its classic-ness. In some ways, it was met - the writing was really excellent and impressive. But the actual plot, the story of the crime, was suuuuuch a let down. I expected (and tbh, wanted) something more sensational, intense, mysterious, confounding, etc. It ended up being very straightforward and left me wondering why Capote wrote about it in the first place.
This book was a bit of a mess of organization, I think. It jumped back and forth in Ann's life and her mother's and then her father's and then back to Ann and it became a confusing jumble that could have been presented more linearly and not lost anything. Also, this book was more about reproductive rights and sterilization than it let on. The last part of the book focused more on the changes in the reproductive rights movement and tried (weakly) to tie it back to Ann's court case. Of course, I do not want to detract from the importance of this story. Ann was subjected to a horrible procedure that changed her life completely without her consent. So did the hundreds of thousands of women of color throughout this time period. It was utterly horrifying to read about how deeply insidious the eugenics movement was in American history and catastrophically impinged on the lives and rights of people of color in the country. One thing that stuck out to me was how some doctors would obtain “consent” for sterilization from Spanish-speaking patients by simply asking “más niños? (More children?) and waiting for the patient to say no so that they could perform what they often misrepresented as a reversible procedure. Anyway, this history is extremely important and ended up playing a large part of this book even though it wasn't necessarily billed as such. So, while the book was a bit of an organized mess, I appreciated the thorough introduction to this terrifying part of American history that, as the end of the book showed, isn't entirely in the past just yet either.
If you're like me, you're going to pick this up desperate for a new time management/productivity hack that will rebalance your life and fix your insane schedule. What you will find is something that will help you do that, but in a completely different way than you expect. This book is not at all what I expected it to be, but it was even better. I love that other productivity-seeking people will probably pick this up and experience the same surprise at what it's really about but also hopefully find real, lasting advice on what time management really means to us mortals. Give this book a shot because it will shift your perspective about your busy life!
I love graphic novels like these because I can learn something about a perspective I have zero connection to. At the moment, I don't want to have kids and I don't see that being something that will change. I have always found it hard to relate to baby fever and all that stuff that comes with kids and parenting. So, reading this was eye opening in terms of how much of a toll fertility struggles can take on a person and on a relationship. It requires a lot of communication and support and really seems to force a couple to reconcile with what they really want. While I don't foresee myself ever being in this situation, I appreciate the ability to step into these shoes and see what things might be like for those who are going through it.
I like to think I can handle reading just about anything but man oh man, the end of this book made me so nauseated. I had obviously heard things about Jonestown before - the “Kool-aid” joke being the crux of them. This book, while a slow, meticulous slog through the the mundane beginnings of Jonestown, is a thorough introduction to the group and their story. Guinn did a masterful job of in-depth research and somehow maintaining distance from this story with a horrific end. It was hard to reconcile the group at beginning of this book to the group at the end - how did things go so wrong and how did Jones become so unhinged? I appreciated Guinn's ability to stay removed and give us a full picture of the ups and downs of Jones and Peoples' Temple prior to the ubiquitous final tragedy. Objectivity with a case surrounding a tragedy of such tremendous proportions must have been difficult. I'm left dumbfounded and intrigued by the psychology of Jones in his years.
