Gillian > Recent Status Updates

Well I do not care for these plot twists at all

How am I supposed to work when this book is so good

Almost halfway through this book and I couldn’t tell you a single characters name or a single thing that has happened but the vibes are good enough

This feels like a highly important work to read for anyone working in the agricultural space; I learned that Steinbeck wrote this work originally as a series of articles for the San Francisco news about the plight of migrant farm workers.
It’s insane to me how current this story still feels, how little has changed in the almost 100 years since it’s publishing. Quintessentially American.

I was getting bored with some of this car trouble when BOOM exactly what I suspected and hoped not to hear: that California isnt all its cracked up to be.
and so we perceive the shadow of exploitative labor practices in agriculture
And also I love these chapters that break up the main plot.

The pivot to first person was unexpected and at first unwelcome, but I think Yuzuki pulled it off. Really enjoying this read

The dynamic between Riko and Kajii vaguely reminds me of that between Clarice starling and Hannibal lecter…friends, ish.
I love these rich descriptions of food, it makes me wonder at the work of the translator for some of these words.
Devouring this book and hungry for more

Really original story and storytelling. I’m digging the precise, colorful, and (scusa) delicious descriptions of food and the pleasure of eating, rudely interrupted by reminders of the expectations of women’s bodies. I love Japanese feminist literature.

I like her advice of needing your community, and also what’s outside it. I also think her advice on standup comedy about needing to get out of your typical demographic audience applies outside of standup. She talks so much about her now ex husband

Definitely confirming ali Wongs badass status in my mind. Eating a still-beating cobra heart in Vietnam?? Also my god, the candid descriptions of her body as a mom…badass and so horrifying I myself had a physical reaction.

“The power seeks power entirely for its own sake…no one ever seized power with the intention of relinquished it. Power is not the means, it is an end”
Oop

“When war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded.”
SCREAMS AND THROWS COMPUTER OUT THE WINDOW

“If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction…for if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and learn to think for themselves…in the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”
HmmMmmmM

It’s pretty silly but good. Definitely picked up in the second half I’d say

I read this for the first time when I was just coming into political consciousness.

“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words…in the end, the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words—in reality, one word. Don’t you see the beauty of that?…The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it”

“What does it say about our culture the desire for weight loss is considered a default feature of womanhood?”
Damn. This book is making me so sad and frustrated.

I couldn’t put this book down

The themes Steinbeck deploys—the tenuous, competitive yet necessarily interdependent coexistence between humans and the rest of the natural world and the consequences of this tension in agriculture, cycles of poverty—shine through his prose.
“The bank isn’t like a man.
Yes but the bank is only made of men.
No, you’re quite wrong there…it’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.”

The constant switching of narrative voice has me lost and searching for stability although I am able to continue to follow the plot line. Reading this really does just feel like a sucker-punch to the gut. This book is such an important read to even touch on fully comprehending the far-reaching consequences of political violence that ripple through those survivors connected to the murdered and echo through time

Kang writes with such searing descriptions of experiencing/surviving violence it's hard to believe it wasn't experienced first hand

I don’t know if I’ve ever read a book written in second person. It evokes for me a completely different feeling, truly like I’m situated in the book. The shift then between narration to an afterlife first person felt somehow like a relief, but immediately unsettling given the goriness of the context. Curious to see where it goes

Whiteheads storytelling in this novel is irresistible. I am feeling so much for Elwood

Already breaking my heart