Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.49 AVERAGE
3.49 AVERAGE
funny
reflective
So much food for thought… Excellent read!
challenging
dark
medium-paced
reflective
fast-paced
Natasha Brown doesn’t waste a single word…
And I LOVE it.
Universality takes enormous topics and compresses them into fragments so sharp and spare they almost seem harmless at first glance.
But if you’re awake to it, you realize quickly: this is a scalpel at work.
“This is what they call the universal,” she writes, knowing full well the lie in that word, how it has always been coded, belonging to those who have the luxury of being unmarked.
She dismantles that illusion piece by piece, exposing how “universality” has been built by erasing anyone whose existence disrupts it.
This isn’t a book for the casual reader.
It demands presence.
It demands that you do the assembling yourself.
Brown makes you feel the lived dissonance of being reduced to an identity.
She writes from that impossible space, moving through the world as someone constantly read through the lenses of race and gender and class, seen only as a symbol or a “type,” but never granted the simple dignity of existing as a full, complex human being.
It’s the psychic toll of being hyper-visible and yet invisible all at once.
She interrogates everything: the liberal pretense of neutrality, the progressive obsession with categorization, the psychic cost of being “the only one” in elite spaces.
And beneath all of it hums quiet grief…the mourning for a world where we could just be, “not a symbol, not a category, not a role.”
It’s philosophical without being abstract, personal without being confessional.
It’s the kind of book that works on you slowly, rearranging the way you see the frameworks we live inside.
This isn’t a book to skim or “get through.”
It’s a book to sit with, to turn over in your mind, to read again because its brilliance lives in the spaces between the words.
And I LOVE it.
Universality takes enormous topics and compresses them into fragments so sharp and spare they almost seem harmless at first glance.
But if you’re awake to it, you realize quickly: this is a scalpel at work.
“This is what they call the universal,” she writes, knowing full well the lie in that word, how it has always been coded, belonging to those who have the luxury of being unmarked.
She dismantles that illusion piece by piece, exposing how “universality” has been built by erasing anyone whose existence disrupts it.
This isn’t a book for the casual reader.
It demands presence.
It demands that you do the assembling yourself.
Brown makes you feel the lived dissonance of being reduced to an identity.
She writes from that impossible space, moving through the world as someone constantly read through the lenses of race and gender and class, seen only as a symbol or a “type,” but never granted the simple dignity of existing as a full, complex human being.
It’s the psychic toll of being hyper-visible and yet invisible all at once.
She interrogates everything: the liberal pretense of neutrality, the progressive obsession with categorization, the psychic cost of being “the only one” in elite spaces.
And beneath all of it hums quiet grief…the mourning for a world where we could just be, “not a symbol, not a category, not a role.”
It’s philosophical without being abstract, personal without being confessional.
It’s the kind of book that works on you slowly, rearranging the way you see the frameworks we live inside.
This isn’t a book to skim or “get through.”
It’s a book to sit with, to turn over in your mind, to read again because its brilliance lives in the spaces between the words.
The article in the beginning is the only interesting part of the story…skimmed the rest after realizing all the character driven chapters were boring.
dark
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
tense
medium-paced
***½ rounding up.
I decided on a bit of a whim to attempt to read as much of the Booker longest as possible. This is 1 out of 13. This one was on my radar before the Booker list was announced.
I liked the structure and writing and I appreciated that she packed so much into this short book (I do feel it could have been longer though; more on that in a minute). It started out strong for me. The first half reminded me of <u> Birnam Wood</u> a bit. This book attempts to cover a lot of big issues (spin a wheel on current issues and it's likely here-DEI, billionaires, "wokeness", media bias, COVID) in a small package and some of the finer points may have been lost on me since I am not British (although I think there are many parallels to the US in current events). In the end, I wanted more of the original story. The social commentary at times felt like it came at the expense of the core plot. The characters were well developed for how short the book was, but I do think she could have played with that more had the book been a touch longer. I did appreciate how the characters came together. I wanted to like this more than I did, but it's probably one of those books I appreciate more with a bit of distance.
{library, hardcover}
I decided on a bit of a whim to attempt to read as much of the Booker longest as possible. This is 1 out of 13. This one was on my radar before the Booker list was announced.
I liked the structure and writing and I appreciated that she packed so much into this short book (I do feel it could have been longer though; more on that in a minute). It started out strong for me. The first half reminded me of <u> Birnam Wood</u> a bit. This book attempts to cover a lot of big issues (spin a wheel on current issues and it's likely here-DEI, billionaires, "wokeness", media bias, COVID) in a small package and some of the finer points may have been lost on me since I am not British (although I think there are many parallels to the US in current events). In the end, I wanted more of the original story. The social commentary at times felt like it came at the expense of the core plot. The characters were well developed for how short the book was, but I do think she could have played with that more had the book been a touch longer. I did appreciate how the characters came together. I wanted to like this more than I did, but it's probably one of those books I appreciate more with a bit of distance.
{library, hardcover}
dark
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No