Reviews tagging 'Alcoholism'

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler

23 reviews

albernikolauras's review against another edition

informative reflective medium-paced

4.25

A memoir that uses sea creatures as framing and metaphor. This is a lovely memoir that freely winds between life experiences and facts on the sea creatures the chapter references. Imbler's writing can lean a tad overly metaphorical, but the audiobook made this barely an issue. Imbler's chapters are more like essays exploring different aspects of themselves and their lives than a chronological memoir, which I felt worked perfectly for the format and the discussions they wanted to have.

Essays cross subjects like race, gender, queer romance, and complicated parents.

My favorite essays were "Starving Octopus" and "We Swarm."

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism

Moderate: Fatphobia, Sexual content, and Rape

madelinegl's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Dysphoria, Body shaming, Eating disorder, and Animal death

Moderate: Alcoholism, Lesbophobia, Racism, Transphobia, Sexual assault, and Homophobia

ambert's review

dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.5

 I'll be honest, when I first saw this book as one of the nominees for Goodread's book of the year I thought that it was a book that would follow sea creatures as they interact in the ocean. Almost like a food chain, going deeper into the sea as time goes on.
I have never been happier to be wrong about a book's topic.
This is an incredibly poignant memoir for those who don't quite know who they are, but know they are getting there. Each essay is an examination of an amazing sea creature and their unique social or morphological attributes, intertwined with experiences from the author's life. 
My favorite of the essays has to be 'My Mother and the Starving Octopus', where Imbler connects an extraordinary Mother Octopus who stands vigil over her eggs for an astonishing 53 months, and how her mother's body image affects how Imbler sees herself. VERY relatable. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fatphobia, Eating disorder, Dysphoria, Body shaming, and Sexual content

Moderate: Sexual assault, War, Pedophilia, Racism, Rape, Alcoholism, and Animal death

Minor: Bullying, Alcohol, and Drug use

One of the chapters (octopus) deals with body image, both theirs and their mother's. It also covers eating disorders, wanting an eating disorder to become skinny, fatshaming themselves, etc. Another chapter (sandstriker) deals with sexual assault, alcoholism, and has the most sexual content out of any other chapter. Many chapters talk about the unfortunate fact of marine biology research being: The best way to learn about an animal is to take a carcass of one for a specimen. This results in many researchers having to kill the animal they are studying so that they can dissect it or preserve it for later studying. Another chapter (sturgeon) details the jopurney her grandmother took to escape japanese-controlled China in the 1940s, and the realities of war. Later chapters deal with their transition and how they still struggle with body dysmorphia, and many chapters speak about the racism they face today.

wonderreads's review

challenging emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Body shaming, Rape, Homophobia, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Alcoholism

dananana's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative reflective

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Sexual content, Eating disorder, Sexual assault, Rape, and Body shaming

Moderate: Animal death, Racism, and Homophobia

arayo's review against another edition

informative reflective

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Eating disorder, Sexual assault, Dysphoria, and Alcoholism

Minor: Xenophobia

maxthefish's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

4.5

This is a book about queer science and I love queer people and science. I don't know what else there is to say

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual assault and Alcoholism

taratearex's review

hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

This was excellent, I highly recommend the audiobook read by the author, but I want to pick up a physical copy for rereading and highlighting.

This is a beautiful memoir of a life told through the stories of sea creatures. I did not read any reviews of this before I read it so I was kind of expecting it to be heavier on the science than memoir, but it is the opposite- definitely great for someone who doesn't read a lot of science or nonfiction, but still super interesting and insightful information about sea creatures. But it's really the combining of the two into storytelling that is just so beautifully done, sometimes a story would start and I'd wonder how it was going to relate to the sea creature and other times I could kind of see where we were going, but it always interesting and beautiful. This book is also just extremely queer, which was beautiful, comforting, heartbreaking, and hopeful. 

If you liked Carmen Maria Machado's memoir In the Dream house for it's unconventional approach to a memoir I think you'll like this. It also reminded me of Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong for it's memoir mixed with nonfiction, but definitely just overall recommend!

 cw: sexual assault/rape, alcohol abuse, blacking out/SA, fatphobia/eating disorder, transphobia, gender dysphoria 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Sexual assault, Transphobia, Alcoholism, Eating disorder, and Fatphobia

pipn_t's review against another edition

adventurous challenging informative mysterious reflective fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual assault and Alcoholism

remimicha's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual violence, Racism, Misogyny, Fatphobia, Body shaming, Animal death, Sexual assault, Injury/Injury detail, Eating disorder, Adult/minor relationship, Sexual content, and Alcoholism