Days of Distraction

The absolute pinnacle of relaxing novels. Wes Anderson needs to adapt this into a film.

First I thought this would turn into a companion piece to [b:Uncanny Valley: A Memoir 45186565 Uncanny Valley A Memoir Anna Wiener https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1559568004l/45186565.SY75.jpg 69908892] with the San Francisco tech angle, but then it became a study of interracial relationships. There were interesting moments and thoughts in here, but it somehow started to fizzle out midway. I thought it was actually quite funny that the protagonist was curating news articles for social media feeds, because the writing had this snippet thread quality (a mix of opinions, mundane life details, and interesting historical facts), where there weren't clear starts and stops and I kinda just kept reading like you keep scrolling, despite it not being super engaging.

This reads like such a debut novel workshopped out of an MFA program where the POC author is forced to reckon with her Asian-American identity and biracial relationship by throwing everything she has out onto the page in a lightly fictionalized autobiography.

But as an Asian-American, bi-racially married dude working in tech this is just such a me book. The San Francisco tech environment with its open plan office spaces, standing desks and online watercooler chat fretting about the next round of imminent layoffs feels intimately familiar. The micro-aggressions experienced when travelling, the sixth sense of knowing just how much you might stand out in certain environments and how you contend with that in opposition to the blithe indifference whiteness can simply take for granted. And just the sheer fun of assembled “Snippets of Asian America” and how history has regarded the “yellow peril” over the years and how some have raised their defiant voices in demanding to be wholly seen. So yeah, I dug this book. Your mileage may vary.