this is my sister's boyfriend's mom's celebrity crush's memoir. and that's why i read it!
this book actually provided more insight into the deaf experithis is my sister's boyfriend's mom's celebrity crush's memoir. and that's why i read it!
this book actually provided more insight into the deaf experience than anything else i've read ever. it was enlightening and cute and fun without glossing over things or going easy on people.
i loved the first half of this the most, writing about growing up in a Deaf family, and i didn't love the back half as much, when it was synopses of reality television episodes, but overall this was SO MUCH better than i thought it would be. kind of a slay for low expectations.
bottom line: rare win for celebrity memoir!...more
rip franz kafka you would have loved real estate brokers
some of these stories were really good and really captured the kafkaesque scary grueling monotrip franz kafka you would have loved real estate brokers
some of these stories were really good and really captured the kafkaesque scary grueling monotony of bureaucracy in modern life: undergoing MRIs you don't think you need, that elif batuman rendering of buying an apartment.
some of these were really good but not kafkaqesue: yiyun li's carrollian dialogue between punctuation, tommy orange's look at k-holes.
some stories were not good, but kafkaesque, which is kind of a compliment in and of itself really — rarely do you break from actual kafka to take the time to be like, wow, this is so lovely.
and some of course were neither good nor kafkaesque.
that's the trade you take, i guess.
bottom line: i mostly read this as an excuse to say kafkaesque, in case you couldn't tell.
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
--------------------- tbr review
an all star lineup of authors writing like kafka? am i dreaming...more
i love blurbs. now i get to read a book because an author i like told me to!
anyway.
for most of this book, you're kind of like "i wonder what's happeni love blurbs. now i get to read a book because an author i like told me to!
anyway.
for most of this book, you're kind of like "i wonder what's happening here." it's sort of ambling along, following a small group of characters. you've been dropped right in the middle of someone's life, and the narrator is not doing any more to explain where you are or why than someone's internal monologue would happen to touch on. for the first 200 pages, you'll just be like, "this is kind of weird." not bad, not good, not memorable, just weird.
then for the last few dozen you will feel such a range of emotions you might catch yourself crying without noticing.
bottom line: a very strange reading experience. i recommend it.
this is like if ottessa moshfegh wrote a brandon taylor book.
and also shakespeare is somehow involved, i guess. i (like many people who dare to call tthis is like if ottessa moshfegh wrote a brandon taylor book.
and also shakespeare is somehow involved, i guess. i (like many people who dare to call themselves bookworms) have not read any of shakespeare's history monarch-y plays, so much of the henriad retelling was lost on me even though i very bravely read the wikipedia.
like moshfegh (more so than melissa broder), it delights in being crass and gross-out without being cheerful about it. i thought it was very good, if a little shallow in places, which is a critique i have of moshfegh and not at all of taylor.
if anything with taylor it's the opposite. please stop being so deep about everything. i'm haunted by a description of an underenjoyed potluck submission i read 3 years ago.
anyway.
my only other real thought about this is that no one on earth could possibly eat as much lamb as these people do. is that how you have to be rich in britain? maybe i'm ok with being a middle class american after all.
anyway again.
bottom line: i read this 2 months ago but it still stands out for me. even if a lot of that is lamb.
------------------- tbr review
if brandon taylor calls it "one of the finest novels I’ve ever read," i'm reading it
(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)...more
horror retelling of snow white focusing on the impossible beauty standards of today as unwillingly passed down from the women that came before us...
thhorror retelling of snow white focusing on the impossible beauty standards of today as unwillingly passed down from the women that came before us...
this was brilliant before i even started reading it.
i wish i hadn't read all's well before this, because the two are sadly very similar (with nearly identical protagonists, writing styles, and meltdown arcs) and this one is much more interesting to me.
instead, i felt pretty irritated by the middle of this book, which was not only a bit repetitive in and of itself but far too reminiscent of that one.
do i feel like it was necessary to make tom cruise and a surfer bro window-washer and a cop character with a romance hero's name major characters? no. but who am i to question whatever was going on here?
mona awad's writing is so, so weird. and if the beauty industry was any less freakish, it wouldn't work. but thankfully we don't have that problem, and the two fit well!
bottom line: in a weird-off, mona wins every time.
i read this the day after juneteenth, but the truth is this little book is a must-read year-round, packing history and memoir abetter late than never!
i read this the day after juneteenth, but the truth is this little book is a must-read year-round, packing history and memoir and analysis into just 148 pages. it holds a contrast within itself — how annette gordon-reed can be a proud texan while remaining aware of the story of racism at its core — and manages to explore it more fully in a short time than some much longer books can claim.
if i five star a book by an author, i will read everything they write for the rest of forever.
including amazon-exclusive essays with old-timey standupif i five star a book by an author, i will read everything they write for the rest of forever.
including amazon-exclusive essays with old-timey standup titles.
this was so totally charming and lovely. i find greer's writing style funny as always, and his real cast of characters in his life i found so unforgettable i almost wish he would write full-on nonfiction instead of very lifey and very whimsical metafiction. my only complaint is that it's too short! the ending was abrupt and unwelcome.
lame.
bottom line: why can't things i like go on forever?
i love books about women having mental breakdowns.
and this was kind of that, but what it mostly was was very, very good.
it's a brilliant exploration oi love books about women having mental breakdowns.
and this was kind of that, but what it mostly was was very, very good.
it's a brilliant exploration of womanhood, of what it means to mother and to work and to try to do your moral best and look around at everyone else and be unconvinced they're doing any of it — and for that worry to extend so far you wonder if you're actually doing any of it yourself.
this encapsulation of a few days in one ordinary life totally riveted me. i loved the protagonist's children, and while i wish a few more things were fleshed out — the husband, the babysitter, the ending — all in all this felt like drinking a cool glass of water.
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