Emily > Recent Status Updates

books don't often make me cry but I am WEEPING

This protagonist has a massive white savior complex that permeates every single paragraph-- I want to give this book a chance, but it's appalling, frankly, that this white woman sees herself as so superior to non-white people that she simply must go save them. This is a popular book and no reviews I have read mention this?!?!?! Still chasing the murder mystery high I got from Liz Moore's "God of the Woods"...

the title and cover of this book are so annoying that I considered sending it directly back to the library

reading this book out of spite. I just finished chapters 5/6, which are literally an eating disorder instruction manual filled with misinformation. A subsection of chapter 5 is titled "ignore diet philosophies"-- incredibly ironic given that the author tells people to obsess over every morsel of food they consume and demonizes objectively healthy foods like whole grains and oils low in saturated fat.

this is a phenomenal collection, both because of the poetry and because it's interspersed with the author's fascinating life story in 1600s Japan

"sleeping at a temple / with my true face / moon viewing"

"still I want to see / a flower in first light / a god’s face"

"if taken in my hand / it would vanish in hot tears / autumn frost"

Good main message (question the dominant stories of our culture) but there are so many factually wrong things in here, I'm almost embarrassed to admit I'm reading this garbage. The secondary message is deifying a horribly cringy "noble savage" trope. Incredibly simplistic and reductive views of ecological phenomena (especially population dynamics). Blames all society's problems on the agricultural revolution. Yikes.

actively reading 5 books at one time is probably evidence that I'm spiraling

I found this book very powerful in high school and the message still resonates with me...but the entire story is written as a play-by-play of a "Socratic method" conversation and it's mildly obnoxious tbh

I feel like a high school English teacher would go bananas for this book

"old school true crime, that will be fun!" I thought. no. this book is for people who are already intimately familiar with and deeply invested in this story. I'm so proud of myself for not finishing a book I am not having fun reading.

I actually started reading this book about 3 weeks ago (not today) and:
- it took approx 1200 pages for me to get invested this series (the first book was sooo mediocre) but I am now HOOKED
- the main characters can be really annoying though
- where is Marsh?? ugh he's been gone for several hundred pages after disappearing in a really juicy piece of the story, I hate when authors do this

APG has quite literally re-invented what it means to write a biography

Predictably, I'm both sad and hungry

Terrifying, unsettling, completely fucked up, blends horror tropes in totally new and brilliant ways, I love it

This book is already so good

Who can comfortably read an 850 page hardback??? My hands are too arthritic to hold this dictionary-sized novel. Unfortunately the story is interesting and I want to know what happens so I will persist. Next time I want to read a large book I guess I'll start working out well in advance.