Brittany
Focusing on how Facebook is transforming us into a hyper-digital society, Losse supplies an alluring glimpse into the early days of the startup. And though I enjoy her nontechnical perspective of the company, I would have preferred a more critical, self-aware examination of the culture since she, too, is a constituent of the same well educated, whitewashed, upper middle class that she ridicules.
The Passion According to G.H. is the internal monologue of a woman undergoing a paradigm shift. Lispector's prose is nebulous and challenging due to the constraints of language to outwardly communicate inner experiences while also feeling intuitive and validating for anyone who's tried.
Inherent are themes of identity such as authenticity and the vulnerability that accompanies it:
“If I talk to you will I frighten you and lose you? But if I don't, I'll lose myself and in losing myself, lose you anyhow.”
The unfamiliarity of ourselves:
“Why don't I have the courage to find just a way in? Oh, I know that I have gone in. But I've been afraid because I don't know where that way in leads. And I've never before let myself go without knowing where.”
Of having more questions than answers but asking anyway then realizing the answers lie within and always have:
“What was happening to me? I shall never be able to understand it, but there must be someone who can. And I shall have to create that someone who can inside myself.”
And the resulting surprise of being more than you thought you were.
Truly one for the mistresses, mad-women, and poets.
Rilke's brilliant mysticism and reverential perspective had me whisper-swearing to myself the whole way through.
Emily Dickinson and I are soulmates born a century apart and no one can convince me otherwise.
Jordan Hall said it best: “this ethereal, infuriating book”
Reader's log: • Came for Carmilla Karnstein, stayed for the mystical moon child Mademoiselle De Lafontaine • Steamiest passage: “A small income in that part of the world goes a great way; eight or nine hundred a year does wonders.” [Half] kidding. It's probably: “Sometimes there came a sensation as if a hand was drawn softly along my cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, longer and longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat...” • Langor¹⁷ • Everything I could want in a good Gothic — dark, damp, and dusty castles, dramatic carriage wrecks, creepy portraits, unexplainable maladies, strange dreams, mysterious strangers, a story within a story...
Now, how many stars should I knock off for the author promulgating the whole ‘queer women as monsters' trope?
Thank goodness for Lanternfish's edition, which is Le Fanu's Carmilla, kintsugi'd. Carmen Maria Machado's edits and commentary make this 1872 Gothic much more accessible. And the modern reframing of the narrative adds nuance while turning the monstrous lesbian trope back onto its makers, whose “own accounts become highly suspect.” “I wished this edition to bear LaFanu's shame,” Machado writes. “I wish the reader to come to the book with a complete understanding of its inadequacy.”
Now that's the punk rock Mary Shelley energy I'm here for.
And how about those illustrations by tattoo artist Robert Kraiza?
The teenaged male gaze is essentially what you'd expect, but Eugenides makes it pretty: “We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn't fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.”
Reads as MFA thesis-cum-journal and contains many (too many?) interesting historical and philisophical references — like Epicurus and his garden school and the rise and fall of 1960s communes — but ultimately lacks structure. Using Odell's own phrase to describe the talk that spurred the book, it's “weird and blobby and hard to define.”
Succinct and accessible; a homage to the best of us that makes us even better
Favorites: • “The Weakness of Strength” • “Suffering and Meanness” • “What is the Purpose of Friendship?” • “Why Affectionate Teasing is Kind and Necessary” • “Why Flirting Matters”
Personally attacked by: • “Politeness”
This is my third reading of Stephen Graham Jones, and I've yet to warm to his writing style.
A sci-fi story so relevant it could be misconstrued as nonfiction, but it's obvious that Eggers' searing desire to warn his audience about the consequences of an overly connected society upstages his capacity to craft a plot-dense, character-rich narrative.
For other possibilities, see also [b:God's Debris: A Thought Experiment 50221 God's Debris A Thought Experiment Scott Adams https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1407177447l/50221.SX50.jpg 2005793] and [b:Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives 4948826 Sum Forty Tales from the Afterlives David Eagleman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320528453l/4948826.SY75.jpg 5014561]
More about the incessant drama surrounding the founders than the actual creativity that went into building the social medium, this book is definitely well-researched and thorough — albeit slightly biased — when viewed through the lens of “money, power, friendship, and betrayal” as the title suggests. Bilton offers fascinating insight, and the talk of venture capitalists, successful entrepreneurs, A-list celebrities, and deft hackers are enough to keep the book's tension at an all-time high. But I could have done without the plethora of groan-worthy metaphors and egg puns.
