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kaimetcalfe's review
3.0
Graphic: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Death of parent, and Suicide
Moderate: Drug use
Minor: Infidelity
tangleroot_eli's review
I read it all because it's relatively short, and I kept wanting to find out what the point was going to be. But engagementwise I checked out on page 24, when Bechdel refers to the modern day as "these lax and decadent times." Which, OK, we have more sneaker choices than you did as a kid. But saying we live in "lax and decadent times" feels disingenuous at best and willfully obtuse at worst when legislatures and courts strip our civil rights pretty much daily and people have to crowdfund everything from housing and food to healthcare and funerals.
Near the end there's a Spaceballs-esque moment where Bechdel-the-character starts writing this book. She describes it as a "lighthearted" look at her relationship with exercise. Later she acknowledges that she's having trouble figuring out how to end the book because she's still not sure what it's about. At that moment I finally understood this book: it never knew what it was about, and so tried to be about everything, and therefore ended up not really being about anything. (Except maybe an ad for L.L. Bean and Patagonia.)
The parts about the Romantics, the Beatniks, Adrienne Rich, and Buddhism are... okay, I guess. I learned a thing or two. But I couldn't help noticing that these parts are most likely to appear whenever Bechdel comes really close to expressing and processing actual emotions. Maybe it's the hifalutin equivalent of a fade-to-black in a sex scene; we don't need to see someone's personal emotional catharsis, so we get poets instead. But it also feels like a dodge: just when it feels like Bechdel's really getting somewhere in dealing with her various issues, we suddenly get a page of Margaret Fuller's or Jack Kerouac's issues, instead.
I also felt dismay that Bechdel never acknowledges, or even seems to notice. that exercise is every bit as much an addiction for her as alcohol and prescription meds are. She starts exercising less; she starts drinking more. She stops drinking; she ramps up her exercise to what seem like unhealthy levels. But because our society says "drugs bad, exercise good!" Bechdel never has to face the fact that she's trading one ill-advised coping mechanism for another, despite repeated references to exertion-induced tachycardia and other health concerns indicating that exercise is not a universal good for her, at least not the way she's doing it.
In the end, Bechdel's own words from the beginning of the book sum up my feelings about it:
"You might well ask what use another book about fitness by a white lady could possibly be.
…"
Graphic: Drug abuse, Death of parent, Grief, Medical content, Alcohol, Mental illness, Self harm, Addiction, and Drug use
Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Toxic relationship, Cancer, Suicide, Terminal illness, and Animal death
Minor: Violence, Sexual harassment, Ableism, Car accident, and Infidelity
CN exercise addictionclarabooksit's review
3.0
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, and Grief
Moderate: Infidelity and Death of parent
Minor: Suicide, Animal death, and Sexual harassment
karolinaz's review
4.75
Graphic: Terminal illness, Death, Addiction, Body horror, Car accident, Mental illness, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Cancer, Death of parent, Medical content, and Panic attacks/disorders
Moderate: Drug abuse, Cultural appropriation, Animal death, Infidelity, Misogyny, Drug use, Alcoholism, Suicide, and Homophobia
sebrittainclark's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Death of parent and Alcoholism
Moderate: Suicide
Minor: Infidelity and Drug abuse