Eileen > Recent Status Updates

This books starts strong and offers some 'Engagement' affirmations that I need:
You are allowed to ask questions you want the answers to. You are allowed to show signs of the emotions you are feeling. Your enthusiasm is a gift, and the right people will cherish it. You are free to move toward things you are curious about. You are free to step away when you feel uncomfortable or disrespected.
Let's see where this goes

About three chapters of this feels like it might be enough for me. I think I have the main ideas. I'm resistant to the jargon - especially the term 'tor-mentor' although exile, neo-exiles, and basement children aren't exactly subtle either. My 'protector' says the anonymized wife in chapter 4's example should run before her husband murders her not wait for him to comfort his inner 'baby' and let him come home.

I've heard so many good things about this book but I'm finding early chapters annoyingly unscientific. I know that the term Asperger's has fallen out of popularity (because of connections to eugenics - Hans was a Nazi, it's a little more complicated than that, but AS is just part of autism these days.) I believe in heightened sensory profiles, but not that we're psychic. The chi, anima/animus bit rubs me wrong too.

I'm trying to keep an open mind but am already turned off by some aspects of the earliest portions of this book. The tendency to refer to the author's solutions as 'the secret to...' is off-putting as so far he hasn't said anything especially revolutionary. There's also already a degree of stereotyping about what men/women experience and how they behave. Men as 'stonewalling' women as negotiating change...

Suits my interests but it's a bit saccharine or sanitized or something (?) Author was a public figure on a UK television show and a competitive athelete in addition to his farm interests. Talks a little about his dyslexia and includes some of his sketches and family photos. Reads a bit like a memoir of a charmed life.

Starts slow. Reads young. Granddaughter of Dutch survivor refers to the Netherlands as Holland.

More of the same. Still has a YA feel with teen protagonists and wizard school setting, but "fuck" pops up in dialogue a couple of times and there's more discussion of sex and contraception. Regretting this choice for my 10yo although M was no doubt all about the monsters.

A promising beginning. The children's dialogue in not believable, but if you remember that they're growing up in Paris in the 1940s it is forgiveable.

Painfully slow. I can't remember the last time I struggles so much to keep my attention on a novel this short. Holding myself captive in the bathtub trying to get through it.

Dissimilar to the novel that I liked by the same author. Short enough that I'll finish it, but full of dark imagery and weird rituals that I'm not enjoying. Maybe they're untranslated because they represent place names, but I'm not entirely sure why the untranslated bits are still in Catalan. Wooden Bridge and Tall Rocks aren't that hard to translate, for example.

This middle grade/teen book centers a Bengali girl who comes out to her family. I am so distracted by this sentence on page 3 that I needed to note it somewhere:

Everyone's eyes are turned to the bride and groom-to-be so I thought this was the moment I could Google "gay happy endings" without someone peering over my shoulder.

Alternate universe internet or...? Dunno, the plot skates on past it.

This one might be too 'woo woo' for me to finish.

Half of this book is full of slang I only understand from watching Derry Girls.

Outrageous cover price. I read a third of this book at FNAC. I think it pulls together well others' ideas about needing to be heard and known and he articulates mistakes we make in conversation, but the title oversells the book. It has potential for 'autistic bookclub' but self-agrandizing aspects of the author's storytelling approach are tiresome. I'd finish reading this book, but I wouldn't pay 36 euro for it!

I really like the concept but the execution is poor. So repetitive, such dumb catch phrases for the robots, such a missed opportunity for presenting the kinds of facts that kids who choose this type of book would love!