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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
As a big fan of female friendships, I loved reading about these two friends.
I liked this! Easy going, much more narrative than directive, but highly relatable. It was a nice palette cleanser.
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
So idk these girlies or listen to their podcast but I liked the concepts they discussed in the book! (i.e., maintaining long-distance friendships, the fact that there isn’t a lot out there about how to navigate tricky friendship situations.) it’s made me want to study platonic friendships!!!!!! But also it was honestly mostly just about their friendship, so if you don’t know them this might not be super riveting tbh
I am not a huge fan of non fiction and I haven't read enough of them to tell you why. But I really enjoyed reading this book. Friendships have always been important to me and by a factor of the culture I grew up in, the strong friendships my parents have and the strong ones I have had, I value them a lot in life. For me, reading this book was finding a way to articulate a lot of what I feel about friendship into compartments. I think this book is an important one to read for anyone who wants to understand the fact that friendship is an important relationship in life.
The book is fun to read, it's the story of two women who talk about their friendships. It's about a friendship in America and about two women who live in America. One of them is an immigrant and a person of colour. I think that brought in some relatable content for me. The book has some amazing chapters that talk about the difficulties and challenges that pop up in friendships and just the acknowledgment is reassuring because no one ever talked about how there can be rough patches between friends. It's also an important insight into how there is no magical *fix* to friendships. Like everything good in life, a strong friendship is hard, complicated and requires work. It's a good read especially in isolating times. Would recommend reading it with a close friend to discuss this with them.
The book is fun to read, it's the story of two women who talk about their friendships. It's about a friendship in America and about two women who live in America. One of them is an immigrant and a person of colour. I think that brought in some relatable content for me. The book has some amazing chapters that talk about the difficulties and challenges that pop up in friendships and just the acknowledgment is reassuring because no one ever talked about how there can be rough patches between friends. It's also an important insight into how there is no magical *fix* to friendships. Like everything good in life, a strong friendship is hard, complicated and requires work. It's a good read especially in isolating times. Would recommend reading it with a close friend to discuss this with them.
funny
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
In How We Keep Eachother Close, long time friends (and co-authors) Animatou and Ann tell the story of their decade-long, sometimes beautiful, sometimes complicated, friendship. The book shares a lot of intimate details: details of joy, loss, illness, discomfort, and harm. Unlike other contemporary books on friendship, How We Keep Eachother Close doesn't have a ton of research, but is more a narrative of how to hold on to one of american culture's most underrated pairings: the platonic friendship. Friendships, like people, change. Take away here is that they also take commitment, understanding, and hard conversations. Friendship requires labor to last. I wanted to give this five stars because I appreciated that it talked about friendship across difference - much of the reading I've done on friendship sort of skirts around difference and inadvertently assumes friends are the same race, gender, sexual orientation, and on the same side of the political spectrum. In How We Keep Eachother Close, Aminatou and Ann touch on the explicit discussions they've had throughout the years about race (Aminatou is Black and Ann is white), which I appreciated. Maybe it's unfair to withhold .25 of a star because the book didn't touch on the specific niche I wanted it to (all the books on friendship I've read have only really touched on friendships between cishet women), but alas, it is my Storygraph.
There were some interesting insights about friendships and the upkeep involved in them, though I think I would have found more to like if I had gotten around to listening to the Call Your Girlfriend podcast before reading this. As it is, I wasn't very familiar with the authors themselves so I wasn't as emotionally invested. Still, an entertaining read.
Big Friendship was a light, quick and enjoyable read. But, it really left me wanting more. The authors spent a significant amount of time establishing how they met and became friends but much less time on how they maintained the friendship. Based on the title, I expected and hoped for much more of the later.
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
This provoked a lot of thoughts, the chief of which was how much I love my friends
Content Warnings
Moderate: Cancer, Chronic illness, Drug use, Racial slurs, Medical content, Grief, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, Deportation
For the majority of this book- I kept asking myself “why did this get made”. It was navel gazing and send importance at the highest levels. However the last 1/3 of the book redeems it and makes a case for existence- and the ideas come through. I might recommend skipping to the final 2-3 chapters- as everything leading up to it is basically inside jokes and self importance
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced