carlin

As someone who loves both Fun Home and Are You My Mother?, and hasn't read Dykes to Watch Out For, this was underwhelming and not my thing.

For one, Bechdel is satirising her own life, and I don't care for it (I'm not a fan of docudramas and I don't see why autofiction would have me feeling otherwise) and for another this is much less intricate than FH/AYMM due to the different genre — maybe the closest comparison i can give is between comic books vs graphic novels. For example, in this the pacing would occasionally jank as a scene ran out of steam after three pages or we have an unannounced time skip. I think what made this more uncomfortable for me, is this is her first (afaik) book fully coloured and shaded and so it feels like it should have a higher value due to the greater resource investment.

I also side-eye her outlook as a lottt of these jokes are about non-binarity, leftism and vegans...

The best part of the book is when it focuses on the other couple navigating their new realtionship (with their child). This was fun, but again parts of it make me be like what is the joke here? (there is a lot of focus on his sexual fantasy which I feel like is meant to be self-evidently funny). Idk it just feels like if this came out 15 years ago there would be an attack helicopter joke.

I think there is a generational problem with my enjoyment of this, as I relate most strongly with the characters in the generation below instead of Bechdal's generation. A flip side version written by JR about their mom etc would probably work better for me (in the way it wouldn't if Bechdel was to read it).

Overall, not for me. I continue to hunger to read books by communists

I loved Pillion, and I became a lot more interested in reading the book when I heard that Colin is fat in it

I enjoyed the voice of Colin (our narrator) and of course the story itself. I feel like my enjoyment is a bit diminished by the subtitle "A Story of Low Self-esteem" as it is redundant and colours the way I feel the author intends the relationship (or Why of this story)

I think the movie is an overall major improvement on the book story-wise, as the relationships between the characters are richer (the parents in particular are a highlight of the movie for me, and here they just kinda are). I do of course prefer Colin being fat, but it doesn't do all that much here besides providing yet another thing for him to be self conscious about.

This is of course a Fitzcarraldo Edition and I must say they do a very enjoyable presentation for reading with nice type-setting and the over generous margins at the bottom and opposite spine. Want to read more, but will unfortunately have to read the blurbs for them to find ones I'm interested in ahaha

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

unrated as DNF

I stopped reading as I felt myself having a grudge against the book which made my read critical and unpleasant

before reading I had heard a criticism that this is written for the tiktok generation with its short sentences and paragraphs, and they were not wrong. At first this was a salve after coming from Pride and Prejudice, but I came to dislike it. For example, I skipped ahead 100 pages and it was giving me enough context that I did not feel lost even though I missed the introduction of a couple main characters (including what the main plot is about).

It wasn't just the aforementioned issue that caused my grudge - I didn't know the book deals with alcoholism - but idk I might revisit if I hear even more heaped praise, and my grudge against it has lessened with time

for my record, I skipped ahead at p49 "...Ali drank gin at night..." and I stopped reading on p184 "...pull the plug..."

I enjoy having read Pride and Prejudice more than I enjoyed reading it

The book is well structured, there's lots going on, the chapters are short, it's unpredictable and so forth, however there is something about the style of writing which I found generally quite dry and unengaging. Given all it's qualities, it seems to lie mostly in the manner in which it is written due to it being over two centuries old.

However saying this, I found it very enlightening regarding the life and times of the period, and I would say that this really is a must-read for (British) people for that reason alone if you are unfamiliar with them.

As an example of both the difficulty and the enlightenment, the practice of referring to people exclusively as Mr, Mrs, Miss, etc is unfamiliar to me, such that I tend to pay attention more to the *name* than the *M.*, and so I frequently had to re-read which M. it was. However, at the same time, this is also revealing of what marriage is and its function (historically perhaps) which is not something which I had really thought much about.

Maybe surprising, but my favourite characters by far were Mr and Mrs Bennet! Also, there's that book The Other Bennet Sister and she really is the other one

--- spoilers ---

In terms of the plot/romance, I was really pleasantly surprised that the declaration of Darcy's love happens around halfway through! I was also surprised how much this isn't really about their romance though, but again was Jane Austen writing a "romance"? Maybe classically it is romantic but not what we would consider one to be nowadays. Anyways, I do ship them and they both feel very realistic. I especially loved "A man who had felt less, might"

I also must mention that I really was waiting for Darcy to profess his love in the rain. Which is also to say that I did read this fully spoiled, which I don't think is really possible to avoid

I very much see how suited this is for education as the title itself provides the breadcrumbs for you. It's almost distracting every time the words appear, but it was satisfying when I pieced together the foil of Wickham and Darcy in regards to prejudice (and to a lesser extent pride).

I went against my usual practice and around a fifth of the way through, I read the two appendices regarding Entail and Dancing. During the former, I got the idea that Mr Bennet dies during the book and so I read much of it trying to figure out when he would die 😅. Of course once Mr Collins is married, I knew that the clock was ticking, and when he kept living I was more curious. I decided though, once he had gone to town in search of Lydia that this would be the perfect moment! I imagined that roughly concurrently Darcy would propose to Lizzie and that Pemberly would be the life-raft for the Bennet's after they lose Longbourn. Alas Mr Bennet survives his trip to London in the end.

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 :)