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3.98 AVERAGE
3.98 AVERAGE
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
I started reading this at 10pm and stayed up reading far into the night. Daniel Ortberg's writing has a way of seeming flippant and nonchalant while at the same time being absolutely emotionally and spiritually devastating. His last book, The Merry Spinster, applied this to fairy tales and short pieces of fiction to provide insight and expose painful cultural truths, but when he uses this skill to share pieces of his own life and recent transition, it is utterly and masterfully done beyond any words I have in my brain. He made me cry a lot, is what I'm trying to say.
funny
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
A very fun read, especially since it feels like a trans writer write for trans people, and not as I've seen too often, for cis people, trying to educate them.
Not all chapters are fun or I enjoyed reading but the others make up for it.
Not all chapters are fun or I enjoyed reading but the others make up for it.
challenging
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
I think this is the book that convinced me it's ok for me to be trans. (I already knew it was ok for other people to be trans.) I've been thinking about it since. Thanks, Danny.
Daniel is obviously a clever thinker and skilled writer and there were bits of the book I enjoyed a lot, but 90% of the content required understanding outside references that I didn't know, or didn't know quite well enough to appreciate. Mostly I chalk this up to me just not being the right audience for this book, but I did find the references so wide-reaching and some so obscure or detailed that I wonder who the audience is meant to be. It felt to me like most readers would miss most of the book, unless they shared the author's precise education and history.
reflective
slow-paced
A few humorous moments in the lists and interludes, but overall I was not a fan. Much of this collection is reimaginings of classical mythology or bible stories. As someone both relatively unfamiliar and thoroughly uninterested in both, these sections dragged. On the other hand, I appreciated the thoughtful musings on transness. I might have appreciated this more in paper copy, as it would have been easier to skip chapters.
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
Hilarious, insightful, very specific but also very broadly applicable.