Ricky

Essential queer memoir detailing life as an unapologetically queer person during the early to mid 20th century. Published in 1968 when its author was about 60 years old, it's wild that this book came out only one year after homosexuality had been decriminalized in England and Wales. (A dozen years before it was decriminalized in Scotland and 14 years before it was done in Northern Ireland.) There's something elusive about this book. The author clearly got through life with the need of a lot of defenses, so there might be even more distance than would be explained solely by his Englishness. I found myself thinking sometimes that Crisp would likely have been diagnosed as autistic if he had been alive in the 20th century. I wonder what his gender identity might have been had he been alive in this context. Anyway, it's a fascinating life story, engagingly told.

I stumble toward my grave, confused, and hurt, and hungry.

mostly I found this enjoyable, but I have to say that the ending felt like a series of cop-outs.

I've read almost everything that is available to be read by Eve Babitz. I'm still reading her book about ballroom dance but I guess everything else. and I had already read this author's about Didion and Babitz. It feels kind of like I'm coming to the end of a romance cuz once I finish the book about dance, there's not really going to be anything left of this story, but maybe I'll go back and reread everything now that a lot of the mysteries have been unlocked by these two books by Lili Anolik. I had tried to read this one a few years back and didn't really get into it but then I really liked the one about Joan Didion so I went back and read this one after all. of course I wish I had succeeded in reading this one first because I think that would have made a little bit more sense at times but part of me wants to go back and reread that other one... One big mystery that remains though is what the fantasy series was that this author wrote under a pseudonym before writing all of this Eve Babitz stuff.

I read this because I never read any of this author's books when I was young and it seemed like a funny coincidence that this book randomly came up in two different contexts in the same week. The prose isn't great. It reminds me of how books for teenagers used to be written. I could be wrong, but I think a lot of them are written better now, I don't know. It took a long time to get going, but ultimately it was pretty engaging. I've read a little bit about the sequels and I'm not sure I'll bother reading them since the first one seems to end on a note that suggests a relationship in the afterlife, and it didn't seem that this continues in the other two books. I'm intrigued by the books though since people complain that they're basically a presentation of a sort of cosmology which seems entertaining enough.

At the end of the day, Southern California is a religion, and Eve Babitz has always been its most persuasive evangelist.

I saw this recommended somewhere online and I really don't get the affection for it. It's long, repetitive, and generally tiresome. None of the actions seem particularly motivated and the thoughts and dialogue are painfully bad. it's really endless. The writing is actually so bad that I just kept thinking about how funny it was that the audiobook narrator had to read it with a straight face. This book has one of my pet peeves in the genre where it feels like one of the people has borderline personality disorder and the other person is a stoic who's always apologizing. I don't think BPD is very much fun in person and it's not fun in entertainment either. I don't know if I'm completely opposed to the kind of age gap in this book, but although this kid is like 19, he acts like a child and that makes it creepy for me.

I wasn't expecting this Liza book to basically be a camouflaged hit piece about Lady Gaga. I feel like she expresses more vitriol for Lady Gaga than she does for David Gest lol.

As far as AI audiobook narration goes, this might be the best one I've ever heard, but it's still obviously AI. It's cute that they made it sound like Liza Minnelli but sometimes it's so silly it becomes camp.

finally got around to reading this. I know people really like it, but for me it would just okay. It starts off very slow. I literally had to restart it like five times because I would get a quarterbof the way into it and I would be like what is this book even about and who are all these people. anyway it was fine and now I feel like I have to go back and read those Dark Tower books again.

I've heard mixed thoughts about this book but I really enjoyed it and I can't wait for the third one.

I have to say, it wasn't really expecting to like this for some reason. SomethingI had read about it on the internet left me skeptical but I found it fairly well written. the quality of the prose is pretty good. I felt connected to the characters. I appreciated the way the themes came together. There were perhaps a few too many coincidences, but and magic pulls things together the way it wants to.