Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
Parts of this book made me feel like I should never attempt to write anything ever again.
2.5. There were some good lines and anecdotes but after getting halfway through I found this format tiring and I had problems caring about what she had to say.
Sometimes I think things that I don't share with another soul. Or perhaps I'll share them with my select devoted few. This book is full of those kind of things.
This is a diary but not in a chronological sense and while each entry starts with 'Today I' they often morph into reminiscences of things that happened in the distant past, or last week and opinion and philosophising.
It is an exploration of self in an almost Proustian manner, that concept of involuntary memory. I loved that Julavits seems to really know herself and (mostly) genuinely likes herself. It is mercifully free of self-loathing and self-aggrandising (which would have been an easy trap to fall into given the charmed life that is being examined).
Julavits is engaging and funny and I identified with so much of what she revealed here.
'I am also missing a person I know only from a book.'
This is a diary but not in a chronological sense and while each entry starts with 'Today I' they often morph into reminiscences of things that happened in the distant past, or last week and opinion and philosophising.
It is an exploration of self in an almost Proustian manner, that concept of involuntary memory. I loved that Julavits seems to really know herself and (mostly) genuinely likes herself. It is mercifully free of self-loathing and self-aggrandising (which would have been an easy trap to fall into given the charmed life that is being examined).
Julavits is engaging and funny and I identified with so much of what she revealed here.
'I am also missing a person I know only from a book.'
The beginning of this memoir felt slow to me; Julavits's choice to change the order of her diary entries bothered me and I couldn't understand her personality. Why was this even a diary at all? It was clearly written with the intention to be a book.
But then I kept reading.
There's something amazing about how you can connect with someone who in so many ways is unlike you. Yet once I settled in, I loved living inside Julavits's head and the world she created in the pages of a "diary." I didn't mind that situations felt forcibly linked because it's the type of thing I do in my own head. She said the things I think but an often too nervous about saying out loud or writing down. And by the end, she brought everything together. I realized she's been writing about what I fear every day- time is passing by us. By there are moments when we can grab on to it and not fear what time will bring next, but be reassured in what's coming next.
But then I kept reading.
There's something amazing about how you can connect with someone who in so many ways is unlike you. Yet once I settled in, I loved living inside Julavits's head and the world she created in the pages of a "diary." I didn't mind that situations felt forcibly linked because it's the type of thing I do in my own head. She said the things I think but an often too nervous about saying out loud or writing down. And by the end, she brought everything together. I realized she's been writing about what I fear every day- time is passing by us. By there are moments when we can grab on to it and not fear what time will bring next, but be reassured in what's coming next.
I liked this book so much that I didn’t even notice that each “entry” (chatty mini essay, really), began with the word “today” until I was 200 pages in. It’s possible I’m just *really* unobservant, but it really did feel fresh and new (and natural, because it’s more or less a journal) each time.
There were moments I was frustrated by the author, but mostly I found her so clever and funny and right about so many things. Even things I didn’t think I cared about at all became interesting (like The Bachelor). We worry about so many of the same things! There were times when I wanted the whole thing to be reshuffled back into the “true” order, but I think it worked well this way — you never feel trapped in the family’s day-to-day, and moving from one location to another really helps it never feel boring or too repetitive.
There were moments I was frustrated by the author, but mostly I found her so clever and funny and right about so many things. Even things I didn’t think I cared about at all became interesting (like The Bachelor). We worry about so many of the same things! There were times when I wanted the whole thing to be reshuffled back into the “true” order, but I think it worked well this way — you never feel trapped in the family’s day-to-day, and moving from one location to another really helps it never feel boring or too repetitive.
The flash nonfiction style is very jarring to get through. The only thing that kept me reading was knowing that there would be a beautiful nugget at the end of each entry. Narrative tone was very petty and self-conscious, wittingly, and it was fun for a while. But then tiresome. A good skim.
reflective
medium-paced
DNF at 30%. Sounded promising and intriguing, and clearly Julavits can write, but what this book seems to amount to is a collection of self-absorbed observations with no added-value and no real depth, which is sometimes annoying, and other times simply meaningless to anyone else but the author. An interesting experiment gone wrong.