Reviews - Something That May Shock and Discredit You

612 reviews for:

Something That May Shock and Discredit You

Incredible, lovely. It's hard to tell what in this book resonated because of Lavery's skill as a writer, and what felt like someone speaking a language I could understand. As he says in the book, "...while I dismissed relatively quickly the idea of my childhood as a source of guidance, I returned over and over again to the scriptures of my youth, to ground and locate myself in the stories of transformation that were already familiar to me. Not because I thought I needed religious permission to transition, and not because I thought Christian history was the best source of trans ontology, but because that history was mine unalterably and permanently, no matter what I decided to do with my future."

As ever, the writing is incisive, insightful, hilarious, and clever. Thank you for writing this book, it was truly a pleasure to read.

lreeve's review against another edition

4.0

challenging funny informative reflective slow-paced

town_scar's review against another edition

4.5

funny inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

My only critique is nothing to do with the writer and only to do with my incredibly lack of knowledge around classical texts and any Biblical stories. While some chapters explain the meaning, others do not. The latter confused me deeply, but that's nobody's fault but my own.

beccaruthe's review against another edition

3.0

funny reflective slow-paced

wodime's review against another edition

2.0

gonna be real: i only finished this because of sunk-cost fallacy, and because i'm so damn behind on my yearly reads. i wanted this to work for me, but i found it alternately twee and (unsuccessfully) pretentious, and repetitive besides. it feels like the author keeps making the same three points, or saying the same three things over and over again; and it doesn't help that so much of it leans on, and assumes a common baseline experience of, the new testament. (i'm jewish.) i'm sure that if this book works for you, it really works for you. but i dragged myself begrudgingly through the back half, and don't feel like i got much out of it.

make worse trans art.

ave_reviews's review against another edition

3.0

Daniel Lavery is, in my opinion, one of the funniest/smartest humans out there today, and I'm very glad to have read his memoir, as it offers something much different from his usual work for Slate. (and really makes me miss The Toast!) Lavery's incredibly clever weaving-together of memoir with absurdist humor is mildly reminiscent of David Sedaris, but his writing style and creative risk-taking is so unique.

It's difficult for me to evaluate "Something that May Shock and Discredit You" with any credibility, as so much of it went over my head - I admit my classics knowledge and religious education are not sufficient to fully appreciate all this memoir has to offer. That being said, it was a fascinating take on the trans memoir, a meditation on a rarely-publicized perspective on transition and self-acceptance.