Not as good as Fun Home and Dykes – very meta, almost solipsistic, and I'm not sure the graphic form was the best to parse so much quotation from the very dense Winnicott. But still as always compelling and heartbreaking.
Read this for class. Dry, terribly written, but the mindfuck (if you analyze it deeply) is good.
This is one of the strangest books I have ever read and I wish I could rate it in question marks. It seems to be less concerned with plot or character than with being as absolutely bizarre and disgusting and weirdly majestic as possible. I kept telling myself I didn't like it but couldn't stop reading it.
Well written and interesting, a convergence of discussion on history, race, nature, and travel.
Darker than the first book, and at times felt like it juggled too many perspectives and got a little repetitive (I get it, Wang Baoxiang has a soul full of blackness!), with sexual dynamics that were both fascinating and sometimes disturbing, but even so I had so much fun and was so compelled. These books read like really good fanfiction, in the best way, e.g. they are deeply enmeshed in the psychology of characters whose similarities and differences make up a rich story tapestry, in addition to the actual plot.
I really wanted this to be a framework or guide post for setting out what you want in a “good enough job”, a work of philosophy maybe. (I read it because Oliver Burkeman recommended it and I really liked Four Thousand Weeks.) But it was more a work of journalism examining some different aspects of our relationship to work through the stories of individual workers, with a few broader statistics thrown in. It was fine for what it was but very little of the book contained new ideas for me and the authors conclusion is kind of just “a lot of our problems with work are institutional and societal, but you probably should just find your own middle ground between caring about your job and building a life outside it”.
Shorter (I think) than the first two and not quite as strong. I liked it plot wise as an ending to the series, eg it felt full enough of a circle, but the signature character and relationship development I've usually gotten from Butler seemed less present, more rushed. I guess at some point you have a large enough cast of characters that it's difficult to juggle them all with real depth – although in this case, the final book was (unlike the others) written in first person, and it seemed to share one of the complaints I had about the Parables: the cyclical and even repetitive thinking of the narrator, parsing a philosophical question or ideal. To me it's clear that Butler shines best with multiple viewpoints. I also wish the story had done more to question the validity and righteousness of the Oankali (but perhaps that's the resister human in me). By the end of the series, none of the characters had any remaining real objection to the manipulation from the Oankali. Which is maybe the point. It is interesting to read a book that does not give as much narrative punch to the “humans resisting alien colonization” argument as to the “humans are irreparable, inevitably destructive, and maybe thus aliens aren't so bad” one.
I tore through this one pretty quickly, compelled by the story. I was interested in the complex relationships between Lauren, her daughter, and her brother, and interested in the world building (or rather world-rebuilding) honestly as a model and thought exercise for survival and rebuilding and challenges to contend with in what I see as a possibly very similar descent in the real world. I appreciated the thoughts and questions on building community and cultivating resilience. But I also appreciated the new narrators interrupting Lauren's meditations, which are (intentionally) the work of a self interested philosopher. I was really interested in the people throughout the novel who kept insinuating that Lauren was manipulative and didn't actually care about people, or that if she did it was secondary to her purpose as cult leader and religion founder. Eg: Can you “shape” people and communities intentionally, for your own purposes, and yet also be a person who cares about others and wants a greater good? Questions of power, movements, demagogues. Lauren is a magnetic cult leader just like Jarret - the difference, supposedly, is the end goal and the collateral (or lack thereof) along the way.
It was of course a story in some ways brutal, in some ways beautiful, in some ways warm and others cold. Whether or not you agree with Lauren Olamina's religion, the duology ends with her goal accomplished, and after all the events of two books and several fictional decades, that conclusion feels satisfying. But with the losses along the way, it doesn't feel too perfect.
I think this is my last (major) Butler book, having read all the others in the Canon. As usual we have a simmering stew full of questions and uncomfortable ideas about consent, power, compulsion, free will, imaginative family structure, justice, what it means to be human, etc. The world building about the vampire race was fun; the driving antagonistic force was not super complex but felt believable. The problem is it's really hard to get past the creepy creepy terrible sex scenes with the main character who is a child. I get that Butler is often trying to transgress in terms of sexual dynamics and ethics in her books, given that so many of her protagonists are young women and teens who enter sexual relationships with men much older than them, but uh, this was pretty bad even knowing that.
Fun, tropey, corny in a sweet way. It was nice to see some genuine character growth from both love interests.
A few days later and pieces of this novel are still sticking with me. There were many loose ends not tied up ??? but I think that???s a good thing, because not everything can be neatly squared away in real life either. We never find out whether Aria reconnects with Steph, whether she connects with any particular queer label, and I think that???s a good thing. So much of Aria???s experiences are just presented to us without a lens or agenda toward a certain interpretation. I keep coming back to think about ways that ???illusion??? can apply to different aspects of the book, characters, plot, and finding more every time I return to the idea. The relationships between characters are complex, if sometimes not as fleshed out as they could be. I wanted this book to be longer, to learn more about the deeply interesting people who populate Aria???s life, but perhaps part of the coming-of-age genre is the solipsism: the focus on the narrator. Or: the illusion of the self as center of the world.
Definitely a coming-of-age book: The summer where Aria is literally caught between two selves. It recalled a lot of that exciting uncertainty for me. I loved the Lily and Kath cameos, too, even though they felt a little forced at times.
I did expect a little more engagement with questions of class and privilege, given that the book???s synopsis discussed Aria???s experience befriending ???a community of working-class queer folks???. The class discrepancies were touched on, occasionally prodded, but often by characters who weren???t Aria. Aria noted the class differences, but didn???t really engage with them beyond observation. She seemed too busy wrestling with her emerging queerness and her emergence as a nascent artist, as an inheritor of her family???s talents and downfalls, to also engage with the implications of class that separated her from Steph as well. And maybe that???s part of the point: she is no perfect person by any means, and still has growing up to do.
It was an accessible crash course to the canon of Western moral philosophy, which was what I wanted – the CliffNotes on Aristotle, Kant, and others (including concepts that might not strictly “count” as philosophy but had relevance). Schur critiques where this group of (mostly) old white guys deserves to be critiqued. I wish he had incorporated more modern thinkers – I guarantee that there is a school of feminist philosophy out there but the only woman who gets major time in this book is Ayn Rand (getting dunked on, properly so) although Schur does quote and draw from several women philosophers discussing and critiquing the “canon”. I do have to concede that this is a book about Western philosophy for the most part, and if I want more than the brief shout-out to ubuntu in terms of philosophy outside the white Western world, I'd need to look for a different book. (But I wanted to understand this first as the bedrock of so many modern US concepts.) Schur does discuss the more radical bents of all these folks but ends up “we take a little from each tradition”-ing his end conclusion into a sort of moderate “this is what your gut was telling you anyway, here's why it's pretty much right”.
It was funny at times and overdone at others. I also appreciated some of the Easter eggs related to The Good Place.
Maybe it was because I listened to this book rather than read it and that makes the teenage affect much heavier, or maybe Lin Manuel-Miranda's voice reading teen boys in love broke my suspension of disbelief, but this book's writing felt heavy on the cheese and sentimentality and light on plot. I don't remember feeling that way about the initial book, which I really loved. The sequel has its moments – the author has a poetic style that frequently resolves in great lines, the incorporation of the AIDS pandemic and the stakes of queerness in this world being high, and the characterization of the parents especially is multilayered. (It's rare to get a YA book where parents are people too, and even good people central to the book.) Often I felt like this book walked in circles; I felt unconvinced at certain plot points.
Other reviews have correctly pointed out that the plot point of transphobia in the first book was not resolved or addressed in the second. In hindsight there's no reason why Ari's brother's crime had to use a trans woman as a victim when the books do not deal with broader trans representation or issues in any way.
I flew through this book, partly because I did identify with a lot of the experiences and partly because I am a trash Zillennial so Jen's sense of humor soaked in internet memes and self deprecation really worked for me. There were several really poignant essays and concepts: The Power Dynamic, Neon Sweater. Knots (all in a row!), A Queer Love Story. There were also resonant parts of other essays. Jen's memoir encompasses queerness but also privilege, politics, parriarchy, technology etc., a kind of overlap that feels necessary to me.
Some small complaints. Jen pulls influence from Shiri Eisner whose book similarly has some resonant points and also some big flops. Jen also apparently has only had exclusively bad experiences with lesbians, and makes several offhanded quips about how lesbians don't like them. (These are mostly jokes and obviously the author's experiences are their own, but still.) (I'm disgustingly in love with a lesbian and thus defensive. Lesbians are great! Dating in New York just apparently sucks no matter which genders you're into.)
Some other reviewers have mentioned Jen's passages about privilege and unlearning. I feel split on these because while on one hand I think it's refreshing to have someone own up to being a clueless white person who did racist things and is trying to do better, and on the other hand the inserts felt performative in some ways (especially because... she is writing and making money on a book in a space/platform that QTPOC authors are often denied). But also, writing this book without acknowledgment of privilege or fuckups or the impacts of racism & race on queerness would be worse, and nonfiction books written explicitly about bisexuality already seem scarce. I'm not sure white people “unlearning” in public forums/platforms is ever not going to be somehow performative. For this reason I would say that anyone who doesn't want to deal with “unlearning” white people can skip this one, but there are essays and moments worth reading if you don't mind (or if you are or have been that same cringey “unlearning” white person... I have been, probably still am).
Jen doesn't write anything more revelatory than the queer theorists she often quotes. But couched in the narratives of their experiences, I resonated with many of the essays in a visceral way that sometimes doesn't happen for me with theory.
A slow start but as it progressed I became more compelled by the relationships between characters. I didn't realize this was a retelling of an HG Wells story until near the end. The climax and ending felt a little phoned in.
Self help and productivity type books are usually a hit or miss for me but I generally enjoyed this one and found useful ways to reframe thinking around using time. I liked the combination of philosophy and ways of thinking about time and mortality, anecdotal contributions, and concrete suggestions and action items – it was a great balance that offered value across multiple axes. Considering purchasing a copy for periodic rereads and so I can annotate. It's almost worth it alone for the references to other texts to be adapted as a reading list!
Could've been a blog post, too much fluff, light on actual models of the $$$ idea to make the theory work. Also not that original. Overall disappointing.
Dense but compelling. (Most historical nonfiction puts me to sleep but this did not! It still took me a while to get through though.) I learned a lot about the period of indigenous expulsion in the 1830s formerly known to me as the Trail of Tears (though that was only a small part of it).
Most interesting to me was the way that the author was able to tie in the economic motivations of white colonists and planters, and the amount of research that went into putting dollars to the dispossession. I also had never been taught in school about the lengthy and egregious harrassment and occupation perpetuated against indigenous groups well before the “Indian removal act”, or that legislators framed the action as an act of paternalistic goodwill. It is frankly infuriating to read the primary source quotes that Saunt provides contrasted with the real experiences of Creeks, Chickasaws, Seminoles, and Cherokees (the groups on which this book focuses). I also appreciated the primary source quotes from Creek, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Seminole and other leaders and regular citizens, as their commentary is both biting and could probably still be quoted today without being out of context.
I think the thing that will most stick with me is that even though Saunt didn't always draw explicit connections between the murderous bureaucracy and political maneuvering of the 19th century and so similar happenings in modern US government, but it rang true for me throughout the book. Every time the Commissary Office decided to let private business get involved with the already heinous act of deportation, and the private business egregiously fucked over indigenous peoples, I wanted to bang my head against a wall. It's a tale as old as time, apparently.
I'd recommend this to anyone interested in learning more about indigenous resistance, economics, or state sanctioned and perpetuated misery in the name of paternalistic so-called “greater good”.
I know this is a story about coming of age, breaking away from home, yearning for adventure and the surreal and romance. The heroine's stream of conscious narration is beautiful, wrapped up in rich and incongruous descriptions of sights and sounds that make the backdrop of Mexico City and the Oaxacan coast both familiar and strange, eye popping and ordinary. It's the kind of book where more goes on in the internality of the characters than in the actual plot. Luisa is fascinated by shipwrecks and doomed quests, and finds herself on one as well. I think it was hard for me to connect with her because it was hard to determine what she really wanted – which is maybe the point, because Luisa doesn't quite know what she wants either.
Maybe a little too “literary” for me – but beautifully rendered scenes.
I enjoyed the book, but it took a while (until part 2) for me to get into it. The main character, Zenobia, is 17 in Part I and the author portrayed her as so obnoxious that it was hard to enjoy. Much of the charm in this book is in its rich atmosphere and setting, fast-paced and high-stakes plot, and romance. The writing itself was somewhat overblown, but I still enjoyed it.
It's hard to collect stories as good for adults as they are for children, but I enjoyed many of these stories so much!
Several days after gorging on this book and I'm still thinking about it. Partially because I really should've reread or at least done a Wikipedia deep dive on the events of the previous books and lore of the world. I loved the little domestic world, the relationships between characters (especially Camilla and Palamedes.... Whew!), Nona as a character. This book made me deeply fond of and emotional about a character named Hot Sauce. And the experience to read between the lines and know what's going on when the narrator, Nona, doesn't, would've been very delicious had I remembered more about the previous books lol. I loved it and love this series.
This is one of the strangest books I have ever read and I wish I could rate it in question marks. It seems to be less concerned with plot or character than with being as absolutely bizarre and disgusting and weirdly majestic as possible. I kept telling myself I didn't like it but couldn't stop reading it.
This book is clearly intended for a non-fiction audience, but it's well-written and its advice is sound. It's got some special blurbs for fiction writers as well. Mr. Sambuchino's success in platform-building can be seen on his Twitter and Facebook pages, and his words are definitely something to keep in mind, even for those of us (fiction writers) who have less need of a platform in today's literary market.