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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
I loved this book! I’m now inspired to think through friendships as big, important, essential relationships and encouraged to find and put forth the effort into maintaining them.
Cute book! It’s not what I thought it was going to be, but not necessarily in a bad way. I loved hearing insights about friendship through professionals and through the authors’ experiences because I feel like friendship doesn’t get studied as much as romantic relationships. Sometimes I felt like this book was written mostly just as a step in the authors’ friendship journey, but overall I really enjoyed it. I’m definitely rethinking how I treat the friendships that I currently have.
I flew through this book! I am a listener to the podcast so felt like I was reading it in Aminatou & Ann's voices which definitely helped. Honestly the fact that there's hardly any books entirely focussed on friendship (and female friendship at that) is a fascinating thing and definitely something I'll look into more. I wish I bought a physical copy (not just on Kindle) as I really wanted to highlight stuff and I already feel like I want to go back and re-read things to have another read after things sink in a bit more. It made me think about my friendships, the fact that I don't really talk to my friends about our friendships - and just how important of a relationship they are in everyone's life. There's not many books not even just like self-help books, but like even just in general, that are a look at important friendships and the role of this support in peoples' lives. Totally recommend to read, we read it for my book club and I can't wait to talk about it.
Omg I read this so fast, it's such a lovely book. I'm obsessed with friendship but this book made me rethink so many friendships and examine how I can be better. I honestly didn't think I could dive even further into being intentional with my relationships but I'm in my feels now swooning over all of my friendships.
I first heard about this book from Dope Lab's podcast episode "What about your friends?" While listening to the episode, I felt validated by Sow and Friedman's emphasis on platonic friendships as just as valid & necessary as romantic ones. Another validating point -- Dr. Marisa Franco, a friendship expert interviewed on the podcast, also talked about the hole that you can feel when a friendship ends without clear reason, despite the fact that it's socially acceptable for friends to just drift away (vs. a romantic relationship, where there's more of a clear reasoning for a break-up). All of this made me super excited to read this book!
I thought that the book elaborated on many of the points touched on in the podcast, with specific attention paid to Sow and Friedman's real life friendship highs and lows. I've read a few reviews here that say the book was boring and full of random details, but I felt like the details painted a clear picture of Sow and Friedman's friendship in a way that I enjoyed & valued. I also like to watch day-in-the-life YouTube vlogs, so maybe these two things fall into similar interest categories? The one distracting aspect of the book was the narrative style. It took some time for me to get accustomed to the "we", "Aminatou", and "Ann" narrators switching back and forth, especially because I don't often read books written in the second person.
All in all, I very much enjoyed and, in fact, flew through this read. I'm looking forward to reading more about friendships (starting first with Dr. Marisa Franco) in the future!
Also ~shout out to Aunt Kathy for sending this to me for my birthday :-)
I thought that the book elaborated on many of the points touched on in the podcast, with specific attention paid to Sow and Friedman's real life friendship highs and lows. I've read a few reviews here that say the book was boring and full of random details, but I felt like the details painted a clear picture of Sow and Friedman's friendship in a way that I enjoyed & valued. I also like to watch day-in-the-life YouTube vlogs, so maybe these two things fall into similar interest categories? The one distracting aspect of the book was the narrative style. It took some time for me to get accustomed to the "we", "Aminatou", and "Ann" narrators switching back and forth, especially because I don't often read books written in the second person.
All in all, I very much enjoyed and, in fact, flew through this read. I'm looking forward to reading more about friendships (starting first with Dr. Marisa Franco) in the future!
Also ~shout out to Aunt Kathy for sending this to me for my birthday :-)
I was pleasantly surprised by this one - I had listened to the Podcast of Ann and Aminatou and was (kind of) unimpressed actually. I dunno, I listen to a lot of pods and this just didn't do it for me!
But, I was pleasantly surprised by the honesty in this book. In fact, I think the candid way these ladies spoke about the ups and downs in their friendship made their podcast MAKE SENSE - I understood now why I felt that way about the podcast when I listened to it. Overall, the relationship between the two women (through the podcast, anyway) seemed contrived and strained, and now reading the book, I understand why.
I rated this book so highly because it is unique - I have never come across anything quite like it. It perfectly illustrates 1) changes in friendships and why they happen 2) uses data to back that up (love data) and 3) speaks about the uniqueness of female friendships which are valuable, painful, and important all at once! Both ladies spoke so honestly about the changes in their friendship, and how "big friendships" are so valuable (and take effort to maintain!)
Really enjoyed this one - obviously not a MASTERPIECE, but that isn't what it is striving to be. Just a good look at something which I don't feel like is talked about with frequency ("big friendships") and what they mean to us.
But, I was pleasantly surprised by the honesty in this book. In fact, I think the candid way these ladies spoke about the ups and downs in their friendship made their podcast MAKE SENSE - I understood now why I felt that way about the podcast when I listened to it. Overall, the relationship between the two women (through the podcast, anyway) seemed contrived and strained, and now reading the book, I understand why.
I rated this book so highly because it is unique - I have never come across anything quite like it. It perfectly illustrates 1) changes in friendships and why they happen 2) uses data to back that up (love data) and 3) speaks about the uniqueness of female friendships which are valuable, painful, and important all at once! Both ladies spoke so honestly about the changes in their friendship, and how "big friendships" are so valuable (and take effort to maintain!)
Really enjoyed this one - obviously not a MASTERPIECE, but that isn't what it is striving to be. Just a good look at something which I don't feel like is talked about with frequency ("big friendships") and what they mean to us.
The narrative style was very distracting to me with the constant switch between first and third person from one paragraph to another, but I found many interesting insights about friendship on a variety of aspects (race, long-distance, illness, ghosting, support, communication, etc.). Very focused on female friendships, sucks for you if you're a guy, I guess.
informative
medium-paced