Reviews tagging 'Xenophobia'

Spare by Prince Harry

17 reviews

bootsmom3's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

3.0


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twylghast's review against another edition

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informative slow-paced

0.25

This was really bad. I have to admit to being biased, in that I had low expectations due to disliking both Harry and Meghan and William and Charles and Kate and pretty much all the people involved in all this. Why did I read it, then? To add fuel to the fire, or maybe be proven wrong. The first thing was the one that happened.

There was no accountability anywhere here, that’s issue number one. Not once did it seem like any blame was taken for anything ever, be it the Nazi thing, the blatant hypocrisy of calling someone a Paki and then bemoaning the way others use the word nigger, or being horrified over elephants and rhinos being killed but cool with ‘culling’ deer and birds back in good ol’ England, or even at times acting as though smoking a blunt is hideous and completely unhealthy one moment but totally cool the next (let’s say nothing of how blunts are so unhealthy drugs but mushrooms and ayahuasca are totally not that). I have no problem with drugs, by the way. I’m just incensed by the stupidity displayed here…in fact, I might need some drugs myself, after this book. It’s therapeutic. It helps connects to gods - as he suggests. Plus, he sees his mother and grandmother in birds. Did that need to be in the book? It’s so personal. Plus he also hunts birds. (Sorry, I’m nitpicking. Hard to resist the temptation, there’s so much of it.)

Nothing new was found here. Maybe something in the story of his early and late life, but from the point of their marriage onwards, I might as well have stopped reading, you could get that bit by watching the ridiculous Oprah interview - I did say I was biased. 

Which leads me to all the name-dropping. Getting checked for STDs with Rihanna? Meeting Batman? Meeting and getting ignored by the cast of Friends? Becoming friends with the not-so-secret misogynist Tyler Perry? Plus Elton John? Fucking ew. Mostly to the last two, and the overall name-dropping thing. It’s so fucking pathetic, which about sums up Harold, and this memoir.

It was extremely boring, and extremely slow. I’ve read more amusing grocery lists. Some bits and pieces almost got interesting, but then it’d all muddle back into the endless muck that was this book.

It could have been relevant, despite my dislike, but something went wrong somewhere. If you’re gonna ghostwrite, for fuck’s sake, at least get somebody good. I’m gonna find that ghost so I can avoid reading anything by him - or her - in the future. It was really that bad.

‘Spare’ yourself that torture if you haven’t read this yet.

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brindolyn's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

3.5


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null4444's review against another edition

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informative medium-paced

4.5


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mads_reads_books's review against another edition

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emotional funny informative reflective sad tense slow-paced
I wish Harry had taken more ownership of the impacts of his actions. Particularly when talking about the time he wore a Nazi uniform to a party. He simply says he feels great shame and that he spoke with a rabbi to learn more about the Holocaust. In this time of antisemitism and hate crimes I think it was dismissive of Harry not to speak further to denounce and condemn antisemitism within this work or even to apologize for and condemn the other young men in particular who likely felt emboldened and supported by him due to this costume to act on and publicly share their own antisemitic beliefs 

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cheuksin's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny informative sad tense slow-paced

3.75

This book is essentially trauma dumping for 400 pages. I never thought I’d feel sympathy for a royal yet here I am. 

The tunnel is called Pont de l'Alma, I told him.
Yes, yes. He knew it.
I want to go through it.
You want to go through the tunnel?
At sixty-five miles per hour - to be precise.
Sixty-five?
Yes.
The exact speed Mummy's car had supposedly been driving 

Wow. The ghostwriter really worked some magic. At some times it does feel like someone tried to stretch an sentence into and essay. Harry mentions his mother in pretty much every paragraph. Oversharing is a understatement. 

Honestly, anyone who could hate Harry and Megan after reading this book is a heartless bastard. My neutral opinion of Will and Kate has also depreciated.

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imy_hull's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.5


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