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4.03 AVERAGE
4.03 AVERAGE
reflective
medium-paced
reflective
fast-paced
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
i like to annotate my books and with this one, i found myself highlighting or underlining nearly every other sentence.
for me, it made me extremely emotional. zadie smith is a phenomenal writer and this book proves that fact. i loved especially the analyses provided in Screengrabs. i enjoy the reflections on people, and how humans are so complex and how traumas (not specifically, but as a feeling) are shared. and community exists but not in the way it’s reported in the news.
i don’t know. i really loved this.
for me, it made me extremely emotional. zadie smith is a phenomenal writer and this book proves that fact. i loved especially the analyses provided in Screengrabs. i enjoy the reflections on people, and how humans are so complex and how traumas (not specifically, but as a feeling) are shared. and community exists but not in the way it’s reported in the news.
i don’t know. i really loved this.
A collection of essays written during the first few months of lockdown, a thing of reflection on what has happened and an explorative work of things prompted by a sudden change of the world.
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
Second to last essay was really good, the rest felt too familiar such that I felt like I’d read them already,,, maybe because I read post-pandemic
4.5 stars. Just two of the essays didn’t provoke extensive mark ups and thought. From the jacket, “Intimations is a slim, suggestive volume with a wide scope...” I couldn’t agree more. Truly a book I will be suggesting everyone read.
From the book, “Has America metabolized contempt? Has it lived with the virus so long that it no longer fears it? Is there strong enough desire for a different America within America?”
From the book, “Has America metabolized contempt? Has it lived with the virus so long that it no longer fears it? Is there strong enough desire for a different America within America?”
Long-time fan of Zadie Smith's fiction, but I've never been big into her nonfiction. This latest, a tiny collection that circles around the pandemic and the unexpected transition to stay-at-home life, is...okay. Relatable, if you are actually a worker who stayed home this past year. Unfortunately, many didn't have the option to work remotely, and when I read essays on COVID life, I find that's the perspective missing from the discourse. Your mileage may vary, and Smith doesn't completely skip over acknowledgment of her privilege, but personally, give me essays written by fast food workers, nurses, etc., who didn't have the option to "slow down" and philosophize about life through a new lens this past year.
The first and only pandemic-era book I'll probably read. It's all I need. "Contempt as a virus," the final essay was my favorite. I like reading musings on the characters her in life and small daily interactions. The essays touched on pausing and the changing of the passage of time in the pandemic, but there wasn't really much connection to the perspective of the people she writes about necessarily.
The first couple of essays and I was leaning toward a 2 rating, but the middle vignettes of people in the City were quietly beautiful. And the last essay about the virus of contempt was spot on. Perfect. True. When did basic human rights become "left radicalism"? What if we too are leaning toward moral mediocrity?