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3.98 AVERAGE
3.98 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Delightful
Daniel Ortberg has such a gift for writing in ways that tease the senses. If you're familiar with The Toast .net, then you know this style of prose, of taking things and leading them into a new becoming. Heartfelt and lovely to read.
Daniel Ortberg has such a gift for writing in ways that tease the senses. If you're familiar with The Toast .net, then you know this style of prose, of taking things and leading them into a new becoming. Heartfelt and lovely to read.
funny
reflective
As someone whose relationship to her body has also been “I just work here”, this did make me put the book down and think about my gender for like a good 10 or 20 minutes. Very good!
funny
reflective
slow-paced
The definitive book for transmascs of evangelical experience. I’ve highlighted more passages in this book than perhaps all other books I’ve read put together! I think it’s wonderful and while I do think some of the pop culture essays are laborious, this book has had too profound an effect on me to rate it less than five stars.
funny
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
funny
reflective
fast-paced
daniel lavery's specialty is riffing on popular media/culture (this is not a diss! he is one of the very few people who does it very well!) so the essays built around media i was familiar with hit hard, and the ones built around things in my cultural blindspot didn't really hit at all.
"jacob and the angel wrasslin' till noon at least" was personally incredibly hot to me, which is probably embarrassing.
"jacob and the angel wrasslin' till noon at least" was personally incredibly hot to me, which is probably embarrassing.
funny
reflective
medium-paced
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
I've been a fan of his since the Toast days, and I love his weird, distinctive style of writing. A good mixture of reflective and silly.
I put off saying anything about this after I read it. I was catching up on a lot of recent trans (/trans-adjacent) memoirs at the time, and I thought maybe my lukewarm response was because I was a little burnt out. A while later I still think there were a few stand-out sections, but most of the book didn't do much for me. Generally I'm a fan of his writing, and this certainly played to my interest in the interaction of transness/theology -- so I'm not exactly sure why this didn't connect with me.
That said, the stuff Daniel writes about starting/being on T always cracks me up (including his post today that prompted this update), so I'm going to land positive on the star scale.
That said, the stuff Daniel writes about starting/being on T always cracks me up (including his post today that prompted this update), so I'm going to land positive on the star scale.
This book will remain on my nightstand and I will reread it over and over, clinging to it like a life raft until I make it through the next few years. Maybe then I’ll have something more coherent to say about it too.