Scan barcode
gorgeousgirl's reviews
338 reviews
We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir by Raja Shehadeh
heartbreaking w hindsight. his father's brave insistence on making peace & doing so legally in the face of imperial & colonial powers who would use any excuse to knock down justice... man, i didn't think i could hate the british more than i already do when it came to the case of the frozen Palestinian money. every little indignity they can manage to inflict on the colonized :(
Everybody by Olivia Laing
5.0
okay wow wow WOW! genuinely can't say anything more than that this book is so precious & life-affirming to me, especially now. let's never forget ana mendieta, malcolm x, nina simone, all our elders who dreamed of & fought for freedom, how they learned & how they saw
Adèle by Leïla Slimani
hmmm idk feels MUCH more cliche & conservative than what i expected :/ didn't enjoy the injected british-isms in the translation, maybe they stood out more bcz the audiobook narrator was also british. ultimately pretty boring.
doesn't feel like it had anything meaningful to say abt adele's "sex addiction," the narrative is not wanting to pathologize her as richard does. but it really can't be as trite as adele seeking whatever self-actualization thru sex & richard coming down on it w the iron fist of the patriarchy. which she seems to want from the start, like that's why she's in her boring empty marriage already, idk why she has to play More house as punishment. like we're told that she was already keeping up appearances, what difference is there in her redoubled submission to him?
like what's it saying! anything at all? "a lot of empty sex will make u sad but life under patriarchy is sadder" ??? "the empty sex won't fulfill u but doing bourgeois wifely duties will?" ??? i think it's another literary novel that favours mundane description over having any voice or opinion, like maybe things that don't have any point to make. are worse?
(setting it around the arab spring: maybe some really oblique comment on how the revolutions, both the people's & adele's fail? in which case, super bleh & boring)
P.S. read that she wanted to write abt sex as unremarkable & mundane in this book, except the sensation of sex is meant to carry the book forward until adele is discovered & then her subsequent submissive celibacy & richard's desire/lack of is also supposed to provoke (perverse?) curiousity. so again like, feels like a serious lack of clarity
doesn't feel like it had anything meaningful to say abt adele's "sex addiction," the narrative is not wanting to pathologize her as richard does. but it really can't be as trite as adele seeking whatever self-actualization thru sex & richard coming down on it w the iron fist of the patriarchy. which she seems to want from the start, like that's why she's in her boring empty marriage already, idk why she has to play More house as punishment. like we're told that she was already keeping up appearances, what difference is there in her redoubled submission to him?
like what's it saying! anything at all? "a lot of empty sex will make u sad but life under patriarchy is sadder" ??? "the empty sex won't fulfill u but doing bourgeois wifely duties will?" ??? i think it's another literary novel that favours mundane description over having any voice or opinion, like maybe things that don't have any point to make. are worse?
(setting it around the arab spring: maybe some really oblique comment on how the revolutions, both the people's & adele's fail? in which case, super bleh & boring)
P.S. read that she wanted to write abt sex as unremarkable & mundane in this book, except the sensation of sex is meant to carry the book forward until adele is discovered & then her subsequent submissive celibacy & richard's desire/lack of is also supposed to provoke (perverse?) curiousity. so again like, feels like a serious lack of clarity
Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price
Did not finish book.
Did not finish book.
lol i don't need to be gently convinced away from overwork, wrong audience for it? issue w psychological approach to a sociological/material problem?
Against Civility: The Hidden Racism in Our Obsession with Civility by Alex Zamalin
Did not finish book.
Did not finish book.
thought it would be more academic, already agree w the sentiment. seems to be 4 a liberal audience that needs convincing
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
5.0
powerful. extremely precise, extremely haunting
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide, Torture, Colonisation, Racism, Pedophilia, Police brutality, Hate crime, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence
Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee
Did not finish book. Stopped at 38%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 38%.
sorry i just got bored w the disaffected diaspora thing. was expecting some of the weirdness from My Year Abroad but this was v stock-standard