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A review by nevernat
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino

challenging inspiring reflective

4.0

this book was not at all what I expected. when I first picked it up, I didn't know much about it other than the topic of the first essay, "The I in Internet" (which is the main reason I wanted to read the book in the first place; I had been looking for books about social media and internet culture and thought the entire book was going to be exactly like that first essay in terms of subject matter, which it isn't, in case you're wondering; though social media culture is a major theme, it's not all that Trick Mirror is about) and assumed that all, or at least most, nonfiction was dry and uninteresting and that I was going to end up returning my copy back to the library within an hour of reading.

that, as you can tell by my four star rating, was not the case at all, and I have to say, I think Trick Mirror might be one of my favorite books that I've read this year. though I didn't "get" and/or didn't particularly enjoy reading every individual essay ("Ecstasy" was my favorite, half due to the beautiful writing and half due to the fact I understood it the most), there was just something about the experience of reading the collection as a whole. Jia Tolentino's voice is witty and refreshing and kept me hooked, even when I didn't necessarily understand what she was saying (as much as I loved it, her writing felt very challenging to comprehend at times). these essays have opened my eyes to the beauty of a genre I've disregarded my entire life, and I'm so excited to read—and learn to write—more nonfiction like this in the future.

anyways, I hope to come back to this book someday, at a time in my life where I'm able to really digest the contents of every single essay, but for now, I'm content with where it's taken me. 
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