Jacob Blank > Recent Status Updates

Can't stop listening. Cried twice. A memoir with meaning, stakes, and solid perspective.

So this book rocks in a way that is so good and cool

Details coercive abuse so honestly that I can see this book being used by advocacy groups to help people understand how the quagmire of control and lies

Certainly a leftist history of the United States

Sure!

Oh, this miserable (sad) book

Apparently a huge driver of change is the urgency of fear.

How To Love a Chainsaw

My heart dropped when I thought she was about to say her name is pronounced “Anus”

Actually kind of a fierce critique of the limits of policing, albeit completely unintentional. Glossing over violence against women and casually admitting to entrapping sick and desperate poor people into property crime is so yikes.

Why am I hanging on every word? I’m such a sap.

Okay this is really good

A slow read, a little at a time is best. Explains most concepts with lyrical care and others with an assumption that you understand the jargon. A bit transcendentally academic and takes big swings with certain points and conclusions to fit a vibe. And a vibe it is- more of an invitation to think about ecology and economy differently.

Why I’m still continuing with this book:
60% sunk cost fallacy
40% I’m curious how Choi will torture her characters next

Oh we’re back in the contemporary lit trauma mines

Like a really good episode of The X-Files

Kind of a random Libby pickup. Fairly uncomfortable. Reads like The Handjob's Tale

Interesting-enough essays on gossip from a pop feminist lens that (so far) unfortunately refuses to budge from the position that women are infallibly ethical with gossip and never operate from the position of aggressor. This is kind of a long-standing gripe I've had with the podcast- no guest ever comes on and says "yeah, actually, I was bullied a lot and gossip played a crucial part in that". Big thesis shortcoming.

Cry count: 4

Let me just take a cry walk real quick

I’m deep in the contemporary lit mines

I don’t want to strip this book of its central subject with this statement, but this is turning out to be a definitive text on the slippery tactics of white supremacy in delegitimizing the experiences of Others.

Why is nobody talking about how funny this book is?

yeah this is really good

Some of the rawest and most liberating writing on depression I have ever read

One of the most boring pieces of writing about club music and rave culture I have ever read. It is steeped in about as much journalistic neutrality as a memoir can sustain and possibly using that as an affect to conjure a banality of extremes. Undergrounds of dangerous freedom and an aboveground teetering on the political cliff. Not making the mistake of putting them in opposition to each other. Hypnotically readable

So far there has been two mentions of club soup. Soup in German nightclubs meant for people who have been there way too long and need to eat so they don’t pass out.

Already googling words I have never laid my eyes on before