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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
An interesting perspective, but I️ found it hard to empathize with the author throughout a number of her life events and found myself wanting to hear far more stories about her reporting than she shared.
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Really well written and interesting, I sometimes find memoirs really boring but this was actually lovely and I really enjoyed it. It explores a lot about expectations of women, how they changed in the past, and motherhood, as well as exploring queer love and difficult topics such as alcoholism (I have elaborated on these in the trigger warnings). Overall a really good read, not super happy but it feels hopeful.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Miscarriage
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism
This book was completely heartbreaking, but so beautifully written. After reading this, I cannot believe how underrated she is.
I've been wanting to read this for a while but meh. Maybe book club will prompt some more discussion. Independently, it has not sparked much reaction in me.
All the criticism is valid. I’m not sure if I really liked Levy, but I enjoyed her story. It was indeed very well written on a sentence-level and her way of describing specific feelings and experiences of growing up was sometimes shockingly relatable. However it was a highly condensed and at times rushed story. Clearly she wanted to examine some things a lot more than others. Large swaths of context were fully missed, which made for a disjointed and jumpy reading experience.
It’s really rare for me to not finish a book but I just couldn’t with this privileged “feminism.”
reflective
slow-paced
In honor of pride, I decided to pick up Ariel Levy’s critically-acclaimed memoir.
I read The Rules Do Not Apply in one sitting. I can only begin to list the amount of emotions I felt for and towards the author: anger, pain, denial, empathy... I haven’t personally experienced a lot of what Ariel goes through in the book, and can only imagine the toll it took on her. She built what she felt was the perfect life (though not by society’s standards) only have it crumble down around her, slowly and excruciatingly.
The memoir takes us on Ariel’s journey of lust, love and loss — and her resilience and sense of humor through it all is astonishing and inspiring.
I read The Rules Do Not Apply in one sitting. I can only begin to list the amount of emotions I felt for and towards the author: anger, pain, denial, empathy... I haven’t personally experienced a lot of what Ariel goes through in the book, and can only imagine the toll it took on her. She built what she felt was the perfect life (though not by society’s standards) only have it crumble down around her, slowly and excruciatingly.
The memoir takes us on Ariel’s journey of lust, love and loss — and her resilience and sense of humor through it all is astonishing and inspiring.
Not a good book for you if oversharers on Facebook drive you crazy.