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books_highlighters_me's review against another edition
5.0
I didn’t think I was going to like this book this much at first. The way it touched on topics mixed with the amazing humour was just insane!
I enjoyed every moment of it and I ended up loving the characters. Baby Braga, Hamhock, the author’s parents, raisin. Everyone was so adorable in their own way and I think what made them so loveable was the way everything was told.
Reading this book was a complete ride for me. I felt sad, happy, overwhelmed and I even felt the butterflies. I fell in love with her friendship with Baby Braga and I just adored their dynamic.
I really can’t put it into words. This one is just a masterpiece. Take my word for it.
I enjoyed every moment of it and I ended up loving the characters. Baby Braga, Hamhock, the author’s parents, raisin. Everyone was so adorable in their own way and I think what made them so loveable was the way everything was told.
Reading this book was a complete ride for me. I felt sad, happy, overwhelmed and I even felt the butterflies. I fell in love with her friendship with Baby Braga and I just adored their dynamic.
I really can’t put it into words. This one is just a masterpiece. Take my word for it.
archangelesq's review against another edition
4.0
One thing I lack a lot in my life is perspective on how other people live, and the struggles they face. I have lots of friends who share stories and struggles with me, but they are mostly of American descent. This book adds a completely different cultural element to these stories, making for a very informative and enjoyable read. Her stories are heartfelt, and gave me a different view on the tough subjects of rape culture and sexism, among other things. Would definitely recommend this book.
jencunn2024's review against another edition
4.0
Scaachi Koul is a gifted Canadian writer with Indian heritage, and once I got far enough into this I remembered some of her work for Buzzfeed. These personal essays are entertaining and funny and wise and enlightening and sad and ugly and beautiful. I really love how she mixes personal narrative with social reflection and commentary seamlessly. I loved her critiques of culture and society. She takes on tropes and stereotypes and offers different perspectives on racism and feminism. This is a great book for discussion in classrooms, book clubs, and so forth.
unaverage_j0's review against another edition
emotional
funny
informative
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
3.25
jessrock's review against another edition
funny
informative
fast-paced
4.0
The description of this book made me expect it to be a collection of humorous personal essays, a type of book I almost always hate because the humor inevitably feels like it's trying too hard, with authors that exaggerate things to make themselves look bad in a wink-wink, we all know I'm exaggerating this for the laughs kind of way.
One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter does start out that way, with an awkward opening essay about her fear of flying, where she contrasts her many paranoias with the even-keeled nature of her boyfriend, whom she insists on calling "Hamhock" for the duration of the entire book. She discloses almost immediately that at the time the essay is set, she is just turning 24 and her boyfriend is more than a decade older. She's Indian and he's white, so alarm bells immediately started going off about the sort of white men who like to date significantly younger women they see as "exotic." He pops up now and again in other essays but never with enough detail to know if he deserved the cringe I felt when he was first introduced, but that first essay really didn't do a good job of setting the tone for me.
After that essay, though? The rest of the book gets a whole lot better. The overall humor in the essays is very dry, not usually pushing for a cheap laugh. She's at her best when she's writing about social injustices; she talks about shadism and how differently her light brown skin is perceived in Canada and in India, and she talks about the difficulties of being a woman whose body doesn't meet societal ideals in her homeland or in her parents' homeland either, and she talks about rape culture and getting into party scenes in college and learning how men use alcohol as an excuse to take advantage of women. I also really enjoyed most of her essays about her family, as she navigates being the Canadian-born daughter of Indian immigrants and the sometimes very different hopes they have for her.
There were some weak spots throughout the book; the essay about Twitter didn't feel like it fit with the rest of the book and didn't do anything for me, and I rarely enjoyed any of the essays that featured "Hamhock" since she seemed to base her relationship with him around trying to provoke him.
There's nothing groundbreaking in this book, but Koul has a really strong voice when she isn't trying too hard to be funny, and I liked this book a lot more than I expected to.
One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter does start out that way, with an awkward opening essay about her fear of flying, where she contrasts her many paranoias with the even-keeled nature of her boyfriend, whom she insists on calling "Hamhock" for the duration of the entire book. She discloses almost immediately that at the time the essay is set, she is just turning 24 and her boyfriend is more than a decade older. She's Indian and he's white, so alarm bells immediately started going off about the sort of white men who like to date significantly younger women they see as "exotic." He pops up now and again in other essays but never with enough detail to know if he deserved the cringe I felt when he was first introduced, but that first essay really didn't do a good job of setting the tone for me.
After that essay, though? The rest of the book gets a whole lot better. The overall humor in the essays is very dry, not usually pushing for a cheap laugh. She's at her best when she's writing about social injustices; she talks about shadism and how differently her light brown skin is perceived in Canada and in India, and she talks about the difficulties of being a woman whose body doesn't meet societal ideals in her homeland or in her parents' homeland either, and she talks about rape culture and getting into party scenes in college and learning how men use alcohol as an excuse to take advantage of women. I also really enjoyed most of her essays about her family, as she navigates being the Canadian-born daughter of Indian immigrants and the sometimes very different hopes they have for her.
There were some weak spots throughout the book; the essay about Twitter didn't feel like it fit with the rest of the book and didn't do anything for me, and I rarely enjoyed any of the essays that featured "Hamhock" since she seemed to base her relationship with him around trying to provoke him.
There's nothing groundbreaking in this book, but Koul has a really strong voice when she isn't trying too hard to be funny, and I liked this book a lot more than I expected to.