Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness

Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness by Kristen Radtke

59 reviews

cheye13's review against another edition

reflective sad fast-paced

3.0

I really appreciated the narrative here, particularly with the research, but it felt like so much dimension was missing. We cover the generic American male and female, but never branch out into other spheres of loneliness – lgbtq, bipoc, children, prisoners. Arguably, that was not what the book was attempting to do, given the structure of the project, but it is what the synopsis implied. Ultimately, this book simply whet my appetite for a more comprehensive, traditionally written study of the topic.

All that being said, this is a very effective and evocative project. It's exceptionally well-researched and structured well. While there is no offered solution past the examination and acceptance of the phenomenon of American loneliness, it does reach out a hand to hold. This book ultimately validates a lot of emotions stemming from isolation and offers: we are not alone in our loneliness. It's not much, but we've gotta start somewhere.

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kyriannaj's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

2.75

This book felt like the beginning part of a journey, not the whole journey. There's little hope or encouraging parts to hold on to in all the lonely darkness this book deals with. It's clearly an incredibly well researched piece, but with how heavy and dark the content can become, I wish more research was done to show us how to reconnect among this loneliness. Many times I felt it was building to something, or there was the start of a beautiful concept, only to be abruptly cut off and the topic changed leaving the book feeling disjointed. While this isn't the fault of the author's, due to it being written pre-COVID there is no mention of it other than the beginning author's note. Which left the whole book feeling very 'small scale' compared to what the world had just experienced.
The last 100 pages or so were incredibly difficult to read, especially with imagery. It's about Harry Harlow's monkey experiments, which I struggle to understand why they were necessary to include in the first place, at such a graphic level.

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wimzie's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

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moonbrained's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

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jetpackted's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective fast-paced

4.0

Deeply affecting and very thoughtful. I'll be thinking about this book for a while.

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lilybear3's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

The writing is incredible and I wrote a bunch of them down so I could remember them. It was really insightful, though I wished some things were more in-depth. I don't know if that could've been achieved with a graphic novel format, but that's something I would've liked. However, I did learn a lot about Dr. Harry Harlow and his monkey experiments, which a lot of people have heard of, but maybe just the most famous one (cloth monkey & wire monkey). He did a lot more experiments with monkeys so check those Content Warnings.

Overall, I don't have a whole lot of thoughts other than I liked it and I'd be interested in learning more.

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