carlin

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

sorry gay people but this was awful

hard to put into words how and why this was so bad. Maybe lets start with the characters, who are many but only of two dimensions. Elsie, our protagonist, feels almost completely passive. Her life falls apart seemingly just because, but not to worry as it will be rebuilt just as effortlessly. All of her friends and family are fonts of wisdom, brimming with therapy speak and good advice. People who are bad are evil and have no redeeming qualities.

Elsie is 29 and I think this story would've worked a lot better if everyone was at least 10 years younger. A lot of the sleeping around, crashing at friends places, doing poetry competitions, misunderstanding of feelings etc would've worked way better in a secondary school context, and the integration of the family into the story would've been a lot more natural.

Also, Elsie is a poet, and unfortunately the author is not (Edit: intended as a roast, but actually Little is not a poet, the poems were written by Kai-Isaiah Jamal). The poems in the book do get better, and rosewater is actually good thankfully, but the prose is either bad or plain and over-explained:

I’ve been writing poetry since I was eight years old and the consensus is that my writing bangs. I even won junior poet laureate a couple of years back and people printed one of my poems (about an imagined utopia in which straight things didn’t exist) on totes and T-shirts.

In terms of the LGBT/romance aspect, a couple of the sex scenes are at least well written, and I can imagine that Elsie could be relatable, but the actual romance is fairly weak and it makes sense that it sells itself as a "meditation" on romance rather than actually one

At least helpful for me for figuring out what I don't like in books, maybe in the future I can DNF something like this, if it's not for a book club

I loved this so much. I wish I could've had this around the house as a child, I would've read and re-read this endlessly.

I love how cohesive it is in its packaging, and I think this book would be great for all age levels to be honest. Like I think this would still be really interesting and engaging if you couldn't read the words, and as you return and return to the pictures and stories you'll gain more each time. I also love the pacing of the stories page-to-page, and you can really tell Tan has an incredible grasp over when and how to deploy his illustrations. Frequently I was delighted to turn the page and to find a beautiful spread that I hoped for but didn't expect.

My favourite story is probably Alert but not Alarmed, which is also my favourite sub 500 word story ever