soph

THE INTERSECTIONALITY OF IT ALL!!!!!!

i really appreciated that this book was not overly hand holding, or overly telling, or even banging me over the head with statistics. what it really did for me was methodically lay out the ways in which the label of laziness has poisoned us against compassion and reflection. very solid, very balanced, and very real.

i think the only thing i would have liked more was for it to really go fully into the marxism lmao. but i sort of get why it didn't. it's so interesting to go through the reviews here on goodreads for this book now after finishing it because i can see that this was already too challenging for a number of readers to accept, so i think my hope is this paves the way for even deeper and more meaningful and intersectional conversations on productivity “lean in” culture.

i read this in 2013, right after i turned 23 and was at the end of my 4 months of travel, in wellington nz getting ready to head back to chicago. and after having a three-year dry spell with reading, i soaked this up in a way that i can't even explain.

objectively, this book has a lot of flaws. if you haven't read it by now, i think being critical about it while enjoying it is a really important thing for you to consider going into it. but subjectively, this book, when i read it, felt like it was written specifically for me.

i really hoped cline would take the problematic parts of this and learn and improve on it with his future writing, but it seems he's gone the opposite way, which is hugely disappointing to say the least, but no more than i expect from a white straight cis male. that being said, this book still holds a really special place in my heart, and i'm so glad i read it when i did. it got me back into scifi/fantasy, and fiction in general, and reminded me why i love reading, and why i love to get completely lost in worlds.

update 4/28/21: lol how shocking https://twitter.com/Intentionaut/status/1386746223709806593

dnf @ 30%

i understand the perspective of this book and how it could be helpful to some people who are possibly in positions of privilege/power to actually change or establish their own company culture, but the beginning of this fails to even touch or recognize the intersection of capitalism and poc/minority inequality, ESPECIALLY IN TECH, and i just really don't have the time. glad basecamp has figured their shit out i guess, and if this is somehow a read for you that helps you to see that your shitshow of a job COULD be done differently, that's cool. i didn't finish it so i can't say with certainty this book won't also tell you how to get there, but that's the vibe i got, and i'd rather read something else that's more grounded in reality, or at the very least, acknowledges the intersection of systemic issues.

also the book is written in 1st person pov but the audiobook is narrated by a woman and i found that incredibly jarring and honestly telling of the inherent bias in this lmao