steph

This is the second book I've read in the last few months that deals with being a small part of a greater whole. Don't we all just want to belong? To be part of something greater than ourselves? Anna North's "Bog Queen" asks where humans fit in the long history of the world, what humans owe to the collective on the macro and micro scale. The moss will outlive us, despite our best efforts. Maybe not the best comparison, they're very different books. But the idea of the collective, the community, is a hot one right now.

Sarah Gailey's "Make Me Better" instead asks who can be seduced by the collective when the collective is harmful. Celia just wants to belong, to fall in love, to not be left the way she has been left, through no fault of her own. I think we can all see Celia for what she is, a traumatized, lonely person, even if the book doesn't explore that in a direct, therapeutic way. Making her the perspective character adds a certain weight to the book, since Celia isn't an outsider looking for fault. She's an outsider looking to belong.

There's a part toward the end where the book really spells out what it's been trying to tell you for 300+ pages, but that seems to be the norm now, and I'm not sure I can continue to hate it. It isn't going anywhere. But it also shows the direct change in Celia's thinking that is, truly, only a minor shift. We're all just a small push from looking away, since we do it so much in our daily lives.

I don't usually write this much about books. This is one I tore through as quickly as I could, partly because of the sense of foreboding, and partly because I just really wanted to see what was up with this island and this culty community. I've been thinking about it a lot, and I'll probably be thinking about it for a long time.

Oh, and if you usually skip the acknowledgements, don't skip these.

I’ll have to say more later. But for now — holy shit.

I loved pages 1-126, which create a curiosity about lifting and body building that encourages women to try out things, and to know why their beneficial.

Pages 127-208 can go right in the garbage heap. She turns it so quickly to gatekeeping. It goes to "there is only one way to lift, and that's to be a body builder and obsess over your nutrition and weight and work out 7 days a week," and gives a one-size-fits-all approach to lifting weights. But that's not true. Power lifting and body building and strength training are all vastly different, with different dietary needs, and different approaches.

Loved it until I hated it.

So great! This wasn't as abstract as the other Knútsdóttir (The Night Guest), it was just as amazing. Twice as amazing because nothing happens to the cats in this one.

A book about a cat who brings two people together who need each other? It's so good, and well written. Suspenseful and thoughtful at the same time.

Ruth, you got the shit kicked out of you, but you just kept going. You badass.