The Dry Season: Finding Pleasure in a Year Without Sex by Melissa Febos

4.17 AVERAGE

rootlessshaw's review

4.75
challenging emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

senakasone's review against another edition

3.5
emotional reflective medium-paced
rayyyyoflight's profile picture

rayyyyoflight's review against another edition

5.0
dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced
One of the best books I have ever read. I have never felt more SEEN in a body of work from her journey of her queer identity, addiction, sex & relationships and ultimately just figuring out how to exist and live in the world in a more aligned way. I will be rereading, recommending and referencing this book for years to come. 

abrockli's review against another edition

4.5
hopeful informative reflective medium-paced
mwelbel's profile picture

mwelbel's review against another edition

4.5
The wonder of Melissa Febos is that she convinced me that she needed to write this book, or rather experience the growth process she outlined therein, in order to, as she puts it, “find aloneness in the company of the one [she] loved”. Reading memoir by a prolific ingenue like Febos makes me hyper-skeptical: needn’t an author be self-realized / self-aware to a point of worthiness of writing memoir in the first place? I’m almost like “ how could she possibly be a Love addict when she’s written so much about Love before without that particular thing explicated? (that said I haven’t read everything she’s written so maybe she did but I think the point still stands) but doing some meta-evaluation of that thought (as anne-laure le cunff encourages in tiny experiments which i just read) I  realize it’s related to a certain idolatry i hold of accomplished authors and perhaps an insecurity/lack of trust in myself in regards to the validity of the how i conceive of my own life and past experiences. trusting myself to know myself (and my knowing in general, i suppose) is a theme that keeps showing up lately and i didn’t mean for this to become a book review x journal entry collab but here we are 👍👍👍 anyway Melissa Febos is a deeply gifted writer, I took down so many quotes from this book, and I would love to make myself a syllabus from all of the readings and references she cites in it.


lifeinpoetry's profile picture

lifeinpoetry's review against another edition

4.25
challenging emotional reflective medium-paced
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peanutsmom99's profile picture

peanutsmom99's review against another edition

5.0
emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced
nobody talk to me i have so many problems

afstolley's review against another edition

4.5
medium-paced
xgengar's profile picture

xgengar's review against another edition

4.5
challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced
jo_lafaith's profile picture

jo_lafaith's review against another edition

4.0
“I was so averse to confronting my emotions that I needed to be boiled in them ever so slowly, like the proverbial frog. A slow-boiling pot gets the job done.” 
 
“We are taught that obsession is romantic, but at its far reaches it is not. It is Hell.” 
 
💌 Thank you so much to @aaknopf for sending me a copy of this terrific memoir! 
🏳️‍🌈 This was part of my Pride reading for June. 
 
I love a thoughtful person. People who go to this length to understand themselves, their behaviors, others and their actions — it’s an intense and difficult headspace, and a foundation for empathy and a self-criticism that seeks to “do better”. It’s vulnerable and when we listen to people like this, there’s much to learn about ourselves. This memoir is carefully and intentionally crafted. The historical research, literary reflections, the therapeutic parsing out of conscious and unconscious impulses, actions, all help her to know herself, and to be better to herself. But, also — by extension, to be better to others, even those people who hurt her, to understand where their violence had come from. Insightful, thorough and incredibly human, I appreciated this so much.