Max Boock > Recent Status Updates

Chapter 4 about the vampire bats and pleasure and pain was interesting. But I just want to be done with this book.

As Montag flees the city, he jumps in the river. When he exits the river he is reborn into the wilderness as a free man, a criminal, a holder of knowledge and a keeper of words. I love the metaphor of him being baptized and then returning to the wilderness as an animal, especially in juxtaposition to the “clean” city.

Chapter 2 is a little more interesting than the first; learned about a new species. I do appreciate the author introducing us to individual animals that represent their species at large.

There’s a reason this is my third attempt listening to this book.
For starters, the main title is misleading; the author doesn’t really make any argument related to animal sentience of consciousness, but is just talking about senses. If that continues to be the case, I recommend people read Ed Yong’s book instead.
The first chapter was dry + information-dense, and lacked any significant takeaway.

Do not recommend - see review.

There’s not much being added to Jeremy’s character. Or really Lowen’s character…we just keep learning more about Verity as we get to read more of her autobiography, but our other main characters are remaining stagnant.

I do relate with the way Verity describes her disgust and repulsion during pregnancy and being a mother. That’s how I feel, which is exactly why I would NEVER risk being a mother and would never birth a child I hated. Obviously.

If this had been written as a horror with a side of romance it would’ve been better.

Colleen Hoover is obsessed with trauma and tragedy…I’m only a third into this book and there is trauma EVERYWHERE. Big T Trauma. Actually, just fully-capitalized TRAUMA

It is very hot writing, if not realistic at all. Like I think this is how some women dream getting proposed to, but nothing is that perfect.
There’s some weird layering between who an author is without her books and who she is with her books and how people perceive you differently.

I don’t like how the character believes she’s pathetic for being curious

Part 2. I loved the conversation between Montag and Faber and Montag thinking critically about whether or not his mindset change is him thinking for himself or just listening to the other side, and Faber saying he is wise simply for thinking about that.
Saved a couple quotes from this part about what happens when we unroot ourselves from the earth.
Great cliffhanger.

Part 1. Immediately it’s good, and I can see why this is assigned reading in so many high schools (but for some reason, not mine): TONS of symbolism and themes to pick up on.
So much happens in part one, with no chapters to give you a break in the main character’s mental breakdown/growth.

It’s really captivating writing, especially when it gets explicit, but it makes me uncomfortable. This power dynamic is overdone…like the woman literally says that she “needs” the man after only knowing him for three days and half that time is spent “f**cking”? No, thank you. I dislike immensely the idea of love taking over a woman’s brain. Like she seems smart…and then…

teeth marks in the headboard??

Tragedy stacked upon tragedy, all in the first chapter.

One of the best introductions for an ecological nonfiction book that I have read. Fascinating research on “road ecology”.

Title is wholly misleading. It should have been named “Origins of Fatphobia: the influences of race and religion on bodies and weight”.

Part 2 hardly comments at all about black peoples and their bodies. It’s in this part that I believe the author loses her theme a bit, focusing too much on extraneous details about race almost exclusively within the continent of Europe, and white races. It’s a lot of interesting information, but doesn’t tie into the theme the author is trying to make, which is that fatphobia stems from anti-blackness.

So far this book reads like a toned down, more accessible version of a dissertation. Very clinical in the presentation of evidence to support the thesis. I am only partway through part 2, but I feel like mostly I have just been reading opinions from white male scholars/philosophers/“scientists” of Europe. I would appreciate at least a caveat from the author that these cultural snapshots are only just that.