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A review by birdykinsreads
No Judgment: Essays by Lauren Oyler
2.0
Acerbic essays with an off-putting tone only magnified when listening to the audiobook read by the author. She feels like the type of person who would corner you at a party and talk at you for hours, uninterested in anything but the sound of her own voice. I believe that she believes she’s the smartest person in the room. I fell asleep once listening to this, oops, and found myself tuning out a lot despite making an honest attempt to focus and give it a shot. We did not vibe.
In one of the essays she discusses review culture and Goodreads, (hiiiiiii) and uses the book American Dirt to illustrate how elitism and bad reviews in certain spaces didn’t translate to sales. Felt a bit egregious to discuss this book while completely ignoring the reason it received such backlash in the first place—the author misrepresented herself. She identified as white only until she started marketing this book and then mentioned a Puerto Rican grandmother when she realized it might be a problem. The book was called out for problematic storylines and stereotypical characters by Latinx authors and readers to rightly point out the problems with platforming and supporting a white author writing a book about Mexican migrants instead of choosing to support #ownvoices books with the same vigor and marketing budget. It was a big part of an important conversation and feels strange to talk about it in this capacity without any mention of that. It wasn’t elitism that was trying to discourage reading and platforming this book as much as it was marginalized voices expressing their discontent with the status quo, and actually it’s not a surprise at all that those issues would be ignored by most readers and do nothing to prevent it becoming a bestseller. I never read it for that reason.
This was towards the beginning of the book and was the moment I realized oooooh I’m not going to enjoy this one, nope nope nope! Especially when she writes with what feels like a very condescending air. I found the essays about review culture (minus the above) and auto-fiction interesting but not enough to balance out the tedious more personal ones about her life in Berlin, the movie Tár (haven’t seen it) and her anxiety. And I did not appreciate her opinions enough to make up for the general (for me) ick of her tone.
I’m sure there’s plenty of people who this collection might appeal to, but it was not for me. If you plan on reading it, you might want to avoid the audiobook.
In one of the essays she discusses review culture and Goodreads, (hiiiiiii) and uses the book American Dirt to illustrate how elitism and bad reviews in certain spaces didn’t translate to sales. Felt a bit egregious to discuss this book while completely ignoring the reason it received such backlash in the first place—the author misrepresented herself. She identified as white only until she started marketing this book and then mentioned a Puerto Rican grandmother when she realized it might be a problem. The book was called out for problematic storylines and stereotypical characters by Latinx authors and readers to rightly point out the problems with platforming and supporting a white author writing a book about Mexican migrants instead of choosing to support #ownvoices books with the same vigor and marketing budget. It was a big part of an important conversation and feels strange to talk about it in this capacity without any mention of that. It wasn’t elitism that was trying to discourage reading and platforming this book as much as it was marginalized voices expressing their discontent with the status quo, and actually it’s not a surprise at all that those issues would be ignored by most readers and do nothing to prevent it becoming a bestseller. I never read it for that reason.
This was towards the beginning of the book and was the moment I realized oooooh I’m not going to enjoy this one, nope nope nope! Especially when she writes with what feels like a very condescending air. I found the essays about review culture (minus the above) and auto-fiction interesting but not enough to balance out the tedious more personal ones about her life in Berlin, the movie Tár (haven’t seen it) and her anxiety. And I did not appreciate her opinions enough to make up for the general (for me) ick of her tone.
I’m sure there’s plenty of people who this collection might appeal to, but it was not for me. If you plan on reading it, you might want to avoid the audiobook.