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dontjudgeabrooke's Reviews (192)
The blurb for this collection says it contains "11 glittering stories of love in all its forms," but I'm pretty sure it meant to say "stories of infidelity in all its forms."
As someone who's still healing from having been cheated on, I'm very tired of cheating being used as a plot point — and it's way, way overused here. I'm talking nearly every single story. It's like Katherine Heiny couldn't possibly think of any other big dramatic thing that could happen in someone's love life. It's like she had a big red button labeled "CHEAT" beside her while she was writing and she slammed her fist down on it like 27 times while writing these stories.
One story was so triggering for me and my personal experience with betrayal that it made me feel sick to my stomach and I had to actively regulate my emotions afterward. And what's worse, many of these stories read as though they're glorifying the affairs to an extent. It seems like Heiny is asking her readers to feel charitable for these selfish assholes, but I didn't feel an ounce of charity toward any of them because why would I??
Also, this book could have easily been titled Men Are Scum. There are maybe two decent men to be found among all these stories. The rest are straight-up terrible, skeezy, predatory dirtbags. They're all either cheating on their spouses or preying on teenage girls. If I'm not mistaken, the last story tries to make us feel some amount of sympathy toward a guy in his late 30s who married a girl fresh out of high school who also worked in his store as a high schooler??? Don't think I will, thanks.
And on that note, there are several instances of much older men taking advantage of teenage girls that are all just quickly glossed over. Like in 11 stories/218 pages, this happens four or five times. Weird choice.
A lot of the female characters are encoded with a lot of "not like other girls" BS, particularly the mistresses, while the wives are depicted as frumpy, nagging shrews. Again, weird choice by a woman writer. Don't we have plenty (read: way too fucking much) of that from male authors?
Aside from all that, I'm just not sure many of these stories had anything much to say, and they were full of some of the most bizarre, nonsensical similes/metaphors I've ever read.
Giving it two stars because I somewhat enjoyed parts of "Chicken-Flavored and Lemon-Scented," "CobRa," and "Pandemic Behavior," and the ending of "Bridesmaid, Revisited" was probably the strongest in the collection.
As someone who's still healing from having been cheated on, I'm very tired of cheating being used as a plot point — and it's way, way overused here. I'm talking nearly every single story. It's like Katherine Heiny couldn't possibly think of any other big dramatic thing that could happen in someone's love life. It's like she had a big red button labeled "CHEAT" beside her while she was writing and she slammed her fist down on it like 27 times while writing these stories.
One story was so triggering for me and my personal experience with betrayal that it made me feel sick to my stomach and I had to actively regulate my emotions afterward. And what's worse, many of these stories read as though they're glorifying the affairs to an extent. It seems like Heiny is asking her readers to feel charitable for these selfish assholes, but I didn't feel an ounce of charity toward any of them because why would I??
Also, this book could have easily been titled Men Are Scum. There are maybe two decent men to be found among all these stories. The rest are straight-up terrible, skeezy, predatory dirtbags. They're all either cheating on their spouses or preying on teenage girls. If I'm not mistaken, the last story tries to make us feel some amount of sympathy toward a guy in his late 30s who married a girl fresh out of high school who also worked in his store as a high schooler??? Don't think I will, thanks.
And on that note, there are several instances of much older men taking advantage of teenage girls that are all just quickly glossed over. Like in 11 stories/218 pages, this happens four or five times. Weird choice.
A lot of the female characters are encoded with a lot of "not like other girls" BS, particularly the mistresses, while the wives are depicted as frumpy, nagging shrews. Again, weird choice by a woman writer. Don't we have plenty (read: way too fucking much) of that from male authors?
Aside from all that, I'm just not sure many of these stories had anything much to say, and they were full of some of the most bizarre, nonsensical similes/metaphors I've ever read.
Giving it two stars because I somewhat enjoyed parts of "Chicken-Flavored and Lemon-Scented," "CobRa," and "Pandemic Behavior," and the ending of "Bridesmaid, Revisited" was probably the strongest in the collection.
I really appreciate Rachel Bloom's work — Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was a comfort show for me a couple years ago when I was feeling very lonely and isolated in a new city. And this was an entertaining read, but through no fault of the book itself, I think I'm always going to remember the circumstances in which I listened to it more than the content.
In May of this year, my grandma was in a really horrifying, hugely traumatic accident while out for a morning walk. Upon hearing the news, I immediately booked the last remaining seat on a flight back home for that evening, hoping against hope that she'd still be alive by the time I landed in Ohio.
Miraculously, she was. And for the next week and a half, my family members and I were constantly rotating in and out of the ICU. That week and a half was a bizarre mix of absolute terror and renewed love for the people in my life. I felt a closer kinship with my extended family members than I'd ever felt before, and I felt incredibly grateful for my best friends, who offered me respite from the hospital.
And of course, there was my grandma: At first I was scared to death to even see her, and seeing her for the first time was certainly a shock. But after that, I didn't want to leave her side. She looked so scared and small and vulnerable, and once she was able to start "communicating" a little bit, my family and I were really the only ones who could understand her.
After nine days that felt like a blur of windowless waiting rooms, fluorescent lights and the ceaseless noise of beeping ICU machines, I left Ohio to drive to a wedding in Pennsylvania, and so the bizarre mix of emotions only continued to get more bizarre.
And for much of the six-hour drive there, I listened to this audiobook. So again, in assessing its merit, I don't think I can judge it on its actual content so much as on what it offered me at that time. It gave me a break. For hours, I stared out at I-70 and really breathed for what felt like the first time in nine days while allowing myself to relax and even laugh a little. And I needed that.
Now I didn't finish the audiobook on that drive. Since then, my life has been consumed with working, unpacking my house, taking another trip back home, ending my long-term relationship, therapy, the death of a family pet, and just... trying not to drown. I haven't had a spare second to finish this book (or any book) until this past week, so here I am.
So yeah, I know Rachel Bloom put a lot of effort into writing this book and I found it enjoyable to listen to, so I apologize to her that the book itself has been forever eclipsed in my mind by where I was and what I was doing when I was listening to (the majority of) it. I hope I'll be able to clear the mental space to make my next book review about the actual book in question.
2023 has been wild, y'all.
*Listened to audiobook
In May of this year, my grandma was in a really horrifying, hugely traumatic accident while out for a morning walk. Upon hearing the news, I immediately booked the last remaining seat on a flight back home for that evening, hoping against hope that she'd still be alive by the time I landed in Ohio.
Miraculously, she was. And for the next week and a half, my family members and I were constantly rotating in and out of the ICU. That week and a half was a bizarre mix of absolute terror and renewed love for the people in my life. I felt a closer kinship with my extended family members than I'd ever felt before, and I felt incredibly grateful for my best friends, who offered me respite from the hospital.
And of course, there was my grandma: At first I was scared to death to even see her, and seeing her for the first time was certainly a shock. But after that, I didn't want to leave her side. She looked so scared and small and vulnerable, and once she was able to start "communicating" a little bit, my family and I were really the only ones who could understand her.
After nine days that felt like a blur of windowless waiting rooms, fluorescent lights and the ceaseless noise of beeping ICU machines, I left Ohio to drive to a wedding in Pennsylvania, and so the bizarre mix of emotions only continued to get more bizarre.
And for much of the six-hour drive there, I listened to this audiobook. So again, in assessing its merit, I don't think I can judge it on its actual content so much as on what it offered me at that time. It gave me a break. For hours, I stared out at I-70 and really breathed for what felt like the first time in nine days while allowing myself to relax and even laugh a little. And I needed that.
Now I didn't finish the audiobook on that drive. Since then, my life has been consumed with working, unpacking my house, taking another trip back home, ending my long-term relationship, therapy, the death of a family pet, and just... trying not to drown. I haven't had a spare second to finish this book (or any book) until this past week, so here I am.
So yeah, I know Rachel Bloom put a lot of effort into writing this book and I found it enjoyable to listen to, so I apologize to her that the book itself has been forever eclipsed in my mind by where I was and what I was doing when I was listening to (the majority of) it. I hope I'll be able to clear the mental space to make my next book review about the actual book in question.
2023 has been wild, y'all.
*Listened to audiobook
I tried desperately to understand and know my mother... at the expense of ever really knowing myself.
This memoir is an impressive blend of very difficult to read and very difficult to put down.
I finished this way faster than I've finished any book in a long time, but not because it was fun and simple. It wasn't. It was hard and sometimes even brought up painful personal memories. Hearing her voice—the voice of this woman I used to watch on iCarly as a tween—crack as she recounted her trauma was heartbreaking. But I wanted so badly to get to the part of the story where Jennette finds a path toward peace that I couldn't stop reading. Maybe I needed the reassurance that such a path exists in my own life.
Within these pages are a number of things I could intimately relate to. Like Jennette, I have a complicated relationship with a dysfunctional mother who refuses to admit she has any problems, making it entirely (and unfairly) my responsibility to do the work of healing. Like Jennette, intense religion played a part in the loss of my first real love. Like Jennette, I've cycled through various forms of disordered eating for much of my life, which can be traced back to critical comments about my diet and body made by my mother throughout my upbringing. Like Deb, my mom even used to pull me in on some of her fad diets, including one that had me eating ice as a "snack" in the evenings so I could use the action of chewing to try and trick my body into feeling like it was eating more than it was.
There were so many moments when I thought, "God, how could it get any worse? How did she hold on to her will to live through all of this?" But that's the point. After 20 years of sacrificing her identity and wants and needs for her mother, her eating disorder, her directors, her agents, her boyfriends, etc., Jennette still managed to hold on to enough of herself to rebuild and find a way forward. That's where the hope lies. I'm so impressed and inspired by her ability to get to where she is now, and I wish her continued peace, healing and happiness. And yeah, I'm glad her mom died too.
P.S. When Mother's Day rolls around and all the "YOU OWE EVERYTHING TO YOUR MOTHER" "BOW DOWN AND WORSHIP THE WOMAN WHO GAVE YOU LIFE" commercials inevitably begin to air, can everyone please try to remember this book and the fact that lots of moms are more like Debra McCurdy than June Cleaver? Can we please cut that shit out? It's exhausting.
A couple quotes I noted because they sound like things I could have written:
This memoir is an impressive blend of very difficult to read and very difficult to put down.
I finished this way faster than I've finished any book in a long time, but not because it was fun and simple. It wasn't. It was hard and sometimes even brought up painful personal memories. Hearing her voice—the voice of this woman I used to watch on iCarly as a tween—crack as she recounted her trauma was heartbreaking. But I wanted so badly to get to the part of the story where Jennette finds a path toward peace that I couldn't stop reading. Maybe I needed the reassurance that such a path exists in my own life.
Within these pages are a number of things I could intimately relate to. Like Jennette, I have a complicated relationship with a dysfunctional mother who refuses to admit she has any problems, making it entirely (and unfairly) my responsibility to do the work of healing. Like Jennette, intense religion played a part in the loss of my first real love. Like Jennette, I've cycled through various forms of disordered eating for much of my life, which can be traced back to critical comments about my diet and body made by my mother throughout my upbringing. Like Deb, my mom even used to pull me in on some of her fad diets, including one that had me eating ice as a "snack" in the evenings so I could use the action of chewing to try and trick my body into feeling like it was eating more than it was.
There were so many moments when I thought, "God, how could it get any worse? How did she hold on to her will to live through all of this?" But that's the point. After 20 years of sacrificing her identity and wants and needs for her mother, her eating disorder, her directors, her agents, her boyfriends, etc., Jennette still managed to hold on to enough of herself to rebuild and find a way forward. That's where the hope lies. I'm so impressed and inspired by her ability to get to where she is now, and I wish her continued peace, healing and happiness. And yeah, I'm glad her mom died too.
P.S. When Mother's Day rolls around and all the "YOU OWE EVERYTHING TO YOUR MOTHER" "BOW DOWN AND WORSHIP THE WOMAN WHO GAVE YOU LIFE" commercials inevitably begin to air, can everyone please try to remember this book and the fact that lots of moms are more like Debra McCurdy than June Cleaver? Can we please cut that shit out? It's exhausting.
A couple quotes I noted because they sound like things I could have written:
- I want to do good work. I want to do work I'm proud of. This matters to me on a deep, inherent level. I want to make a difference, or at least feel like I'm making a difference through my work. Without that feeling, that connection, the work feels pointless and vapid. I feel pointless and vapid.
- Why do we romanticize the dead? Why can't we be honest about them? Especially moms. They're the most romanticized of anyone. Moms are saints. Angels by merely existing. NO ONE could possibly understand what it's like to be a mom. Men will never understand. Women with no children will never understand. No one but moms know the hardship of motherhood, and we non-moms must heap nothing but praise upon moms because we lowly, pitiful non-moms are mere peasants compared to the goddesses we call mothers.
*Listened to audiobook
Every once in a great while you come across a piece of art that connects with your soul and resonates through your bones in a way that makes you want to stay alive, to continue bearing witness to art like that. Hadestown is one such example.
I've seen Hadestown twice on stage, and both times it's left me in full-body sobs—partially because it's a tragedy and partially because it's so beautiful it almost breaks me. This insight into Mitchell's songwriting process and the show's evolution throughout its many iterations just allowed me to appreciate it on yet another level.
I've seen Hadestown twice on stage, and both times it's left me in full-body sobs—partially because it's a tragedy and partially because it's so beautiful it almost breaks me. This insight into Mitchell's songwriting process and the show's evolution throughout its many iterations just allowed me to appreciate it on yet another level.
I'm very intrigued by water and stories that feature water as a central component, but this just never clicked into place for me. The lush prose was a little too lush while also trying too hard to be edgy and gritty. I never felt a connection to Leah or Miri; their relationship and they as individuals felt cold and removed. The fact that their voices were nearly identical didn't help the matter.
Leah's chapters were very brief while Miri's were overlong, and this should have been the other way around. All of Miri's chapters felt like they were saying the same thing over and over again, and I was far more interested in what happened on the submarine voyage than in Miri talking about her late mother in vague terms ad nauseam or getting coffee with a "friend" she doesn't even like for the 15th time.
The horror elements were by far the most interesting part, and I wish this book had fully committed to being a horror novel.
I agree with other reviewers that it almost certainly would have worked better as a short story. Some more snippets from other reviews that I wholeheartedly agree with: "lack of substance," "prioritizes language over characters or story," "structural haziness," "screams MFA."
*Listened to audiobook
Leah's chapters were very brief while Miri's were overlong, and this should have been the other way around. All of Miri's chapters felt like they were saying the same thing over and over again, and I was far more interested in what happened on the submarine voyage than in Miri talking about her late mother in vague terms ad nauseam or getting coffee with a "friend" she doesn't even like for the 15th time.
The horror elements were by far the most interesting part, and I wish this book had fully committed to being a horror novel.
I agree with other reviewers that it almost certainly would have worked better as a short story. Some more snippets from other reviews that I wholeheartedly agree with: "lack of substance," "prioritizes language over characters or story," "structural haziness," "screams MFA."
*Listened to audiobook
Meh. I wanted something mindlessly entertaining to listen to, but I wasn't particularly entertained. I'm not sure "retyping the Wiki plot summaries of various 90s/00s movies but with more all-caps, elongated vowels and snarky humor" should've been a book. There's also the occasional liberal talking point, all of which I'm already familiar and in agreement with, so nothing original or enlightening to be gleaned there either.
*Listened to audiobook
*Listened to audiobook
It's been a month since I finished this book and I'd honestly forgotten to review it till now, so I'm just gonna write down the notes I took as I was reading.
-Have romance authors ever seen a human face?
-This book about two people falling in love while editing a book together has so many easy editing errors.
-The endless mentions of Charlie's lips twitching/chin creasing/eyes flashing are starting to make me concerned for him. And every time his weird "pouty-smirk" thing comes up I just imagine him doing the Flynn Rider smolder.
-Reading the "smut" in these books always feels like reading the written version of a Marvel fight scene.
-This could easily be 100 pages shorter. I'm not sure there's ever a valid reason for a book like this to exceed 300 pages.
-If this grown woman calls her sister "Sissy" one more time, I stg
-I don't care how much of a savvy businesswoman you are, no woman loves wearing heels to this extent. This is verging on pathological.
-So many portions of this book read like Buzzfeed listicles of the top things to do in NYC.
-I don't buy that a woman like Nora has this extreme level of obsession with and involvement in her sister's life. I'm glad it's finally called out for being unhealthy, but I find it really hard to believe that a person as competent as Nora would put off her life and career dreams for 10 YEARS to take care of a fully-independent (and also competent) younger sibling. Furthermore, you're telling me this incredible literary agent who's known for being a "shark" (although she's definitely not) isn't capable of having ONE direct conversation with her sister? I don't bite.
Look, I think I need to give up the ghost and accept that contemporary romances will never work for me. I can't get down with their single-mindedness; I need more tension in my stories than wondering if two people who are obviously going to get together are going to get together. I've never found a modern romance that makes me feel anything for the characters or their relationships. These books don't have enough substance to pad out their page length and so resort to being extremely repetitive and picking small details (a woman's small stature, for instance, or a man's crooked smile) to harp on ad nauseam and they just feel...empty.
Pros: I liked the setting, although I'm from a small town and currently live two hours from Asheville, so there's probably a good amount of bias involved. I also like that it at least attempted to subvert some common romance tropes?
My highest praise for this book is that I finished it and it's the best contemporary romance I've read. Unfortunately, that's not saying much.
-Have romance authors ever seen a human face?
-This book about two people falling in love while editing a book together has so many easy editing errors.
-The endless mentions of Charlie's lips twitching/chin creasing/eyes flashing are starting to make me concerned for him. And every time his weird "pouty-smirk" thing comes up I just imagine him doing the Flynn Rider smolder.
-Reading the "smut" in these books always feels like reading the written version of a Marvel fight scene.
-This could easily be 100 pages shorter. I'm not sure there's ever a valid reason for a book like this to exceed 300 pages.
-If this grown woman calls her sister "Sissy" one more time, I stg
-I don't care how much of a savvy businesswoman you are, no woman loves wearing heels to this extent. This is verging on pathological.
-So many portions of this book read like Buzzfeed listicles of the top things to do in NYC.
-I don't buy that a woman like Nora has this extreme level of obsession with and involvement in her sister's life. I'm glad it's finally called out for being unhealthy, but I find it really hard to believe that a person as competent as Nora would put off her life and career dreams for 10 YEARS to take care of a fully-independent (and also competent) younger sibling. Furthermore, you're telling me this incredible literary agent who's known for being a "shark" (although she's definitely not) isn't capable of having ONE direct conversation with her sister? I don't bite.
Look, I think I need to give up the ghost and accept that contemporary romances will never work for me. I can't get down with their single-mindedness; I need more tension in my stories than wondering if two people who are obviously going to get together are going to get together. I've never found a modern romance that makes me feel anything for the characters or their relationships. These books don't have enough substance to pad out their page length and so resort to being extremely repetitive and picking small details (a woman's small stature, for instance, or a man's crooked smile) to harp on ad nauseam and they just feel...empty.
Pros: I liked the setting, although I'm from a small town and currently live two hours from Asheville, so there's probably a good amount of bias involved. I also like that it at least attempted to subvert some common romance tropes?
My highest praise for this book is that I finished it and it's the best contemporary romance I've read. Unfortunately, that's not saying much.
I'm in awe of how much life this man has packed into his years. His passion for music is absolutely infectious. Long live Rock Jesus
*Listened to audiobook while following along with physical book
*Listened to audiobook while following along with physical book
While I was taking an illuminating peek into Biblical times with The Book of Longings, I was given an equally informative portrayal of Elizabethan life with this book. I enjoy this kind of historical fiction, the kind that allows you a true glimpse of what life was like in a different time, rather than the kind that's just romance using a certain period of history as an unexplored backdrop. My favorite part and the best example of what I loved about O'Farrell's writing may well have been the labyrinthine chapter that follows the origins of the affliction that eventually kills Hamnet (AKA The Brotherhood of the Traveling Flea). Knocked off two stars because it felt like it was missing something — some element of emotionality, maybe? — and the second half of the book felt a bit aimless.
also Agnes is a witchy queen and we love her
also Agnes is a witchy queen and we love her
This is exactly my type of book. It feels like a well-researched window into a period of history that I've seriously neglected, because although I grew up going to church and have learned the basic gist of Jesus's life countless times, I've somehow never really considered the day-to-day life of the people around him or the finer details of their culture and society. It never explicitly validates or rejects Christian beliefs, which I really appreciate, and Kidd's methods of walking this line while incorporating nods to familiar Bible stories were really clever. I found the writing breathtaking, the history endlessly fascinating, the characters beautifully human, and I loved every bit of it.