Lia
Before we had drunk history, we had rejected princesses on Tumblr!
That's basically how I feel about this. It starts out saying that people may not finish this book because they will read some inaccuracy or something that they don't understand and decide the rest of the book is full of inaccuracies also (which sounds strange because... is history not ever changing?). But the book also paints half of the tales and folklore and myths as fact and doesn't explicitly tell you every time that they might be propaganda or myths or legends until after the fact. Some of them are very clearly folk stories and other ones are pieced together from legend and fact but never is it clearly delineated which is which in every story. Some get graphic and some are very realistic and others are like children stories. Thankfully there is a legend that explains which are kid-friendly and which aren't, but honestly, it's a book about women's history, it's not all roses ever. I think ordering the stories for children and the ones that include mature events separately would have made for better reading to kids instead of skipping around the book. Instead everything is shuffled together and leads to a very odd rollercoaster of emotions as a reader. It doesn't feel well researched when everything is cobbled together in that sense, even though the bibliography and acknowledgments seem VERY thorough.
Anyway. I'm glad this this exists and that I own this, and have read it, finally. I just had issues with the presentation.
Also every trigger warning is needed.
When I was younger I used to love novelizations of movies because “you get to see what everyone's thinking in the different scenes”. The problem with doing a novelization of the Bible is that no one person is the expert for knowing what anyone who wrote or is characterized in the Bible was thinking or even saying. For most of my life people have been bickering over what every verse in the Bible actually meant through tons of translation.
I enjoyed this regardless, but a lot of the words were pronounced oddly in the audiobook, Philistines in particular, and it really made me question how well the narrator knows these characters and concepts, enough to, as I understand the narrator is the author, write this book.
A nice lengthy read of Southern/Appalachia magic. I expected it to break apart at times for recipes and workings but most of those were put at the back, which was a perfect way to read them. I know it's a well respected book in the witchcraft community, and I see why. The care and love the author has for his community and background is evident in the writing, not common in the rushed trendy books coming out these days. This is a real handbook of a particular sect of magic, the real thing.
This has been on my backlog since college. I bought it for an English course I took and we never got around to actually reading the book in the semester and I've held on to it all that time. I believe the reason our professor had assigned it to us was due to the attention to detail and the research into whaling.
Y'all I think Melville did a lot of research before writing this book. Just a bit.
Really strange to listen to the voices the narrator chooses for Roger and Eddie after growing up with the movie. I really like this as an alternate universe look at these characters (apparently this one gets retconned in the next book), and it was an enjoyable quirky noir that was maybe too predictable.
I remember hearing about this book and not knowing anything about the oil sands made it seem like they were drowning people for money but the people employed had no other income streams and just had no choice but to drown people.
Certainly there were negatives and positives, the misogyny, the sexual abuse, the way the loneliness crept up on the men and made them into a different sort of person, the way these people needed to make money to send home but lost all that time with their families versus the camaraderie and looking out for each other and the pay but unfortunately all the negatives are things that crop up with humans any sort of where.
I also appreciated the nuance as the book goes on as Katie starts to be changed herself by her time in the sands, hearing the vitrol in the comments from people back home, where she would so desperately love to be if she didn't need the money and how awkward it feels to make money somewhere else and take jobs from the locals because you yourself can't find jobs closer to your home.
A thoughtful graphic novel that deserves to be with other classics of their time.
I listened to the audiobook, so as others have said it's different than the actual book. I love Leslie Jones so I would listen to her ramble for 20 years. It's a great memoir despite the difference between audio and text. The best thing is now I get to read the book and relive this memoir in all its glory. If you expect humourous essays and jokes, this is not the book for you. If you want probably one of the realest, honest, brutal memoirs... this is the one.
When this book came out I was crazy about Ali Wong but after hearing about her marriage fall apart, this book is cringey at best to read. All her pride about how well their marriage works and how they're different than other couples... well, as a love letter to her girls there's definitely a few lessons to be learned.
