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caitgoss 's review for:
Arbitrary Stupid Goal
by Tamara Shopsin
There were some moments of this book that were great, like the titular "ASG". Shopsin is a great writer, and she had a lot to write about. An unconventional childhood, with an unconventional but loving and functional family. I like all those things.
I didn't love: The lack of narrative or linear timeline, because I don't want to work hard in my reading, and this is largely a memoir so, by it's nature, linear.
What made this tough for me, is that I just ... don't care about New York. She tells a charming story about how her parents are looking at buying a house four blocks from The Shop (capitals authors own), and two blocks from home can tell it's TOO FAR, and turn around without seeing the place. I fundamentally do not understand place in this way, and it made the book and the people in it, and the world they inhabit seem very small. Immediately after reading this I watched the movie In The Heights, which is also about people (the REAL New Yorkers) getting priced out of their part of New York, and how sad that is; and it just really cemented for me, that there is something there that New Yorkers get and I am not interested by.
Also: I read the ebook version of this, and the illustrations and photos were not legible- I think I might get the library copy just to see what I was missing.
I didn't love: The lack of narrative or linear timeline, because I don't want to work hard in my reading, and this is largely a memoir so, by it's nature, linear.
What made this tough for me, is that I just ... don't care about New York. She tells a charming story about how her parents are looking at buying a house four blocks from The Shop (capitals authors own), and two blocks from home can tell it's TOO FAR, and turn around without seeing the place. I fundamentally do not understand place in this way, and it made the book and the people in it, and the world they inhabit seem very small. Immediately after reading this I watched the movie In The Heights, which is also about people (the REAL New Yorkers) getting priced out of their part of New York, and how sad that is; and it just really cemented for me, that there is something there that New Yorkers get and I am not interested by.
Also: I read the ebook version of this, and the illustrations and photos were not legible- I think I might get the library copy just to see what I was missing.