carlin

i really loved all three of our main characters and the story we're told

for me it was only after 100+ pages that i was really engaged with the story, but once i was i really enjoyed it. Also Ive been having to read a lot of another book at the same time, which gave me the rare feeling of wanting to read more of this but not being able to

I found the concept quite compelling and definitely one which would be fun to tease out with a friend or a reading group - both the ethics and the mechanics. Personally i found my opinion changing as the story went on.

Really interesting to me that they made a movie about this. Feels very soft and pensive and not exactly dramatic. I wonder if it plays out the same or if it's like insipired by this setting

-- spoilers--

kazuo ishiguro recorded some tiktoks re his books and I really want to watch the one i saw where he answers the question "why don't they run" which seems unrelated to this story to me

DNF, no rating

I was really excited to read this from the title alone. However from reading the introduction I found this to be very surface level in terms of engaging with the material functions of the Internet but extremely high level in the type of language that is used. The introduction was mainly interested in giving a literature review of this field of academia and very little actually introduced new ideas to me about digital networks.

I had assumed that this would be an anthology and not singularly authored, and so when I realised that the whole (short) book would be from this voice, and that none of the table of contents really stuck out to me, I decided that I would not gain much from reading this.

From my experience, the book doesn't really seem to engage with what Post-Internet would look like, which is unfortunate.

I read this impromptu by the river after impromptu sushi, I was in a japanese mood i guess

enjoyed the three pieces here, individually I would rate 4.5, 4, and 3.5. In a bamboo grove is very strong and I love the conceit. I feel it's better executed here than in the movie, however I feel that's maybe just because I found the movie much less intelligible.

I wish the penguin little black classics had a *note on the text* or something, it would've been nice to know beforehand that the latter two pieces are autobiographical.

--- 2nd review ---

probably less effective the second time around 😅

the second and third pieces are mostly interesting to him I fear ... I wonder why they didn't bundle more of his actual stories for this collection

my rating stands for this specific version of the book as my rating of the manifesto itself would be +.5.

I read the manifesto first (I think it should come first in the book) and I really enjoyed it. It's very funny and provocative and it's plain nice to read something not tempered by like 12 million imagined counter arguments. It not something that I feel I can seriously engage with as it's very literally radical feminist, in believing that gender is the pre-eminent issue, and as a communist I don't think this is productive. However it is super engaging and feels very nutritious for the brain in how it constantly folds in on itself.

The essay is good, but it's a lot more poetically/aesthetically involved than I would've expected. I thought it would be disentangling how serious Solanos is, and how best to interpret, but it appears that Ronell takes her at her word and we should interpret the manifesto without any irony, levity, etc. Personally I feel that part of Solanos is just having pure fun, and that this was her working out her frustrations in a productive way

disappointing

I've previously read LJJ's debut, At Certain Points We Touch, and this book is really quite similar but less developed

Both books are seemingly obscured re-tellings of her life stories, but dressed up in a fanciful way that maintain a sense of glamour even under the duress of penurious precarity. The debut wasn't for me, but I appreciated its immersiveness and its ruminations on grief.

However in Lean Cat, Savage Cat (meaning of the title remains murky) the fictive narrative doesn't really go anywhere and remains quite shallow throughout. Additionally, I understood the crux around half way through and unfortunately the book became much less rewarding after that point.

I don't think LJJ is for me, but I am guaranteed to learn new words and they make for interesting discussions in our book club :)