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root's reviews
57 reviews
What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill
Did not finish book. Stopped at 12%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 12%.
Neoliberal hot mess. The core idea of the book that we should care about improving material conditions of future generations is a good one, though I think this is a thought that most people at least wish would happen once in their lives and one that many people strive to do anyway before a book philosophizing on the subject was published.
The rest of what I read was drivel, to the point that I could not imagine wasting more time reading the entirety of this. Talking about the founding fathers being inspirational in their future vision of the United States, how we should make future generations richer (without thinking of the fact that it invariably means a larger, more drastic wage divide for the poor), etc.
The rest of what I read was drivel, to the point that I could not imagine wasting more time reading the entirety of this. Talking about the founding fathers being inspirational in their future vision of the United States, how we should make future generations richer (without thinking of the fact that it invariably means a larger, more drastic wage divide for the poor), etc.
Bless the Blood: A Cancer Memoir by Walela Nehanda
This book was likely only published under YA because many authors of color, particularly people who are perceived as women, tend to get relegated to YA by publishers. I am not 100% sure if this happened to this author but, given the material is pretty adult and clearly written with the caliber of adult poetry, it is fairly likely.
I don't want to give this a star rating as I tend to feel bad when I don't like a memoir much (it feels like putting a rating is judging their life rather than the writing or the ideas within). But I thought I would at least say the YA piece.
I don't want to give this a star rating as I tend to feel bad when I don't like a memoir much (it feels like putting a rating is judging their life rather than the writing or the ideas within). But I thought I would at least say the YA piece.
How to Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia by Kelsey Osgood
0.5
Osgood has exactly two points to make in the entirety of this nearly 300 page book: the first is that we societally normalize and even praise disordered eating in our every day lives which naturally contributes to the development of eating disorders as well as the ability for people with EDs to go undetected and without help because people fail to notice how serious the behavior is. The second is that eating disorder focused media, while claiming to have the goal of spreading awareness of the reality of eating disorders, tend to function more as guides full of tips and tricks or triggering material to those that engage in or are wanting to engage in disordered eating habits due to the amount of excessive detail in the media, and tend to romanticize the disorder.
The rest of the book is essentially just beating your head in with those two points over and over, combined with a frankly impressive and embarrassing amount of projection from the author. It would be fine if this were simply a memoir describing her personal experiences, but she makes many broad and general claims about everyone with eating disorders.
The author claims that everyone who has ever written or talked about their eating disorder is doing so "to brag" about their eating disorder as competition to be the "best" at anorexia, and then later reveals that when she found out that someone she knew was writing a book about anorexia at the same time as she was, she had a breakdown about how the other person she knew "had better stats" than her and was "better at anorexia" than her as well as generally talks about how she views/viewed everyone with eating disorders as competition to the point of assuming anyone who confides in her about their disordered eating habits must be competing instead of simply seeing her as a friend they can trust. She condemns adding excessive detail in ED related media (which I do agree with) but then turns around and adds a lot of detail about her own disorder as well as the disorders and appearances of other people she's met. She claims everyone with anorexia has the eating disorder for "vanity" reasons and that everyone with anorexia just copied their behaviors from various ED related media and specific celebrities and that anorexics "study" to have their disorder only to reveal that she, in her own words, "wanted to become anorexic" and researched anorexia and copied the behaviors. The author is obsessed with the validity of her experience while judging the validity of everyone else's experiences including claiming some woman from the 1940s who she couldn't have possibly ever met "probably didn't meet schizophrenia criteria" and was only doing it for attention and in the next sentence states that this woman was diagnosed schizophrenic at a ward without knowing what schizophrenia was. The term "attention whore" is thrown around quite a lot for someone motivated by attention to the point of wishing she had been "kidnapped or something."
Overall, a pathetic author in both writing quality and personality, and this book could have been 2 paragraphs maximum. I wish many wonderful things to the people she's treated horribly in this book.
The rest of the book is essentially just beating your head in with those two points over and over, combined with a frankly impressive and embarrassing amount of projection from the author. It would be fine if this were simply a memoir describing her personal experiences, but she makes many broad and general claims about everyone with eating disorders.
The author claims that everyone who has ever written or talked about their eating disorder is doing so "to brag" about their eating disorder as competition to be the "best" at anorexia, and then later reveals that when she found out that someone she knew was writing a book about anorexia at the same time as she was, she had a breakdown about how the other person she knew "had better stats" than her and was "better at anorexia" than her as well as generally talks about how she views/viewed everyone with eating disorders as competition to the point of assuming anyone who confides in her about their disordered eating habits must be competing instead of simply seeing her as a friend they can trust. She condemns adding excessive detail in ED related media (which I do agree with) but then turns around and adds a lot of detail about her own disorder as well as the disorders and appearances of other people she's met. She claims everyone with anorexia has the eating disorder for "vanity" reasons and that everyone with anorexia just copied their behaviors from various ED related media and specific celebrities and that anorexics "study" to have their disorder only to reveal that she, in her own words, "wanted to become anorexic" and researched anorexia and copied the behaviors. The author is obsessed with the validity of her experience while judging the validity of everyone else's experiences including claiming some woman from the 1940s who she couldn't have possibly ever met "probably didn't meet schizophrenia criteria" and was only doing it for attention and in the next sentence states that this woman was diagnosed schizophrenic at a ward without knowing what schizophrenia was. The term "attention whore" is thrown around quite a lot for someone motivated by attention to the point of wishing she had been "kidnapped or something."
Overall, a pathetic author in both writing quality and personality, and this book could have been 2 paragraphs maximum. I wish many wonderful things to the people she's treated horribly in this book.
Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
2.5
There are a lot of points made in this book that need to exist and need to be talked about, but there are also a lot of just very irritating and reductive takes in this book that just really draw away from it.
The equation of "femmes" = (cis dyadic feminine) womanhood, otherwise the conclusions drawn do not make sense. The idea that all WoC somehow have one collective experience when there are so many factors to it. The idea that there are zero healthcare workers with personal experience (while at the same time repeatedly talking about disabled people are constantly being each others' carers). The idea that disabled people have the same perspective on disability politics and disability justice and that the only way they wouldn't have the same perspective would be if they were struggling with internalized ableism.
The last point also coincides with a specific frustration I have that often the loudest ones talking about disability politics are people who are not severely disabled--we get many takes about how "freeing" it is to stop forcing yourself to work/socialize/etc and while I get that and I am not discounting the experience, there are many disabled people who would kill to be able enough that forcing yourself is even an option. There are many who do not have a choice but to rely on the systems that the author (and many others) talk about is so horrible that they avoid it even though they "should" use it. I am tired of "I didn't go to xyz Dr/use xyz service because they'll be [insert bigotry form] to me because the system is broken and what if I lose my independence." Many of us have already lost it. Many of us have no choice. I am tired of seeing so many peoples' every day realities be considered, very openly and brazenly, someone's worst case nightmare scenario and have them dub this disability justice to talk about how scary it would be. Ultimately it is just very irritating to repeatedly get the same exact perspective of disability from disabled people with low-mid support needs and then have them insist that this experience is the only one if you aren't oppressing yourself or letting other people oppress you or somehow not being radical enough.
Also, it felt really weird to me to have a nonblack author claim that Marsha P Johnson and Audre Lorde are their ancestors. Like I don't know about all that...
The equation of "femmes" = (cis dyadic feminine) womanhood, otherwise the conclusions drawn do not make sense. The idea that all WoC somehow have one collective experience when there are so many factors to it. The idea that there are zero healthcare workers with personal experience (while at the same time repeatedly talking about disabled people are constantly being each others' carers). The idea that disabled people have the same perspective on disability politics and disability justice and that the only way they wouldn't have the same perspective would be if they were struggling with internalized ableism.
The last point also coincides with a specific frustration I have that often the loudest ones talking about disability politics are people who are not severely disabled--we get many takes about how "freeing" it is to stop forcing yourself to work/socialize/etc and while I get that and I am not discounting the experience, there are many disabled people who would kill to be able enough that forcing yourself is even an option. There are many who do not have a choice but to rely on the systems that the author (and many others) talk about is so horrible that they avoid it even though they "should" use it. I am tired of "I didn't go to xyz Dr/use xyz service because they'll be [insert bigotry form] to me because the system is broken and what if I lose my independence." Many of us have already lost it. Many of us have no choice. I am tired of seeing so many peoples' every day realities be considered, very openly and brazenly, someone's worst case nightmare scenario and have them dub this disability justice to talk about how scary it would be. Ultimately it is just very irritating to repeatedly get the same exact perspective of disability from disabled people with low-mid support needs and then have them insist that this experience is the only one if you aren't oppressing yourself or letting other people oppress you or somehow not being radical enough.
Also, it felt really weird to me to have a nonblack author claim that Marsha P Johnson and Audre Lorde are their ancestors. Like I don't know about all that...