Lynzo > Recent Status Updates

I started this once, and didn't get very far. The first chapter isn't as gripping right from the get-go as her other later work is, but it picks up and now I'm into it. I should have never doubted Barbara Kingsolver, one of my very favorite authors. Silly me.

Now I'm rereading books in Spanish that I've always meant to reread anyway, and this one is great!

I already love this writer and this vulnerability on full display is really powerful. Also I enjoy learning about her life because so much of it shows up in her characters. The novels aren't autobiographical necessarily, but there's always a lot of an author in their work. Learning about them then and seeing those connections is a beautiful thing. LOVE Hala Alyan.

Holy shit did I know that Alberta Williams King was murdered in her own church? No I did not. I also don't think I really knew that her other son Alfred Daniel died tragically young as well, just about a year after Martin Jr was assassinated. Unimaginable tragedy just kept coming for the Kings.

I really want to just finish this because I don't want to stop but I also never want it to end. So I am forcing myself to pace myself. Hala Alyan is a hell of a storyteller.

So much unknown (to me) vocabulary! This is why I always got stuck in the first chapter, as I also insisted in stopping and writing it all down.

Wow, that chapter was a doozy. I couldn't stop so I didn't. "The Road to Damascus."

Loving this so far!

Hold on, Viagra relieves period pain? But any research or testing won't be funded because men can't believe in the concept just because they don't experience it themselves? Fuck that shit.

"What problem were NASA scientists solving when they decided to give Valerie, their space-navigation robot, breasts?" 😅

Oh god this is just so GOOD! Long sweeping family dramas over decades told from multiple perspectives - yes please! I love this family, this story.

"The men (and it would have been men) who originally devised the schedule knew how they traveled and they designed around their needs. They didn't deliberately set out to exclude women. They just didn't think about them. They didn't think to consider if women's needs might be different." I sense a pattern beginning....

I am totally sucked into this story/stories. I'm unemployed so I get to read as much as I want.

Qué barbaridad de los soldados. Se me olvidó lo brutales que fueron a los ciudadanos inocentes.

"I wanted to comfort the afflicted, but more than that, I wanted to afflict the comfortable"

Wild how Carter's reputation and legacy was so overrated, he didn't do shit for the people he promised to help. Even I forgot all his terrible policies and how he maintained the status quo for the rich. No American president has ever been good.

My god, how much time and effort went into creating this anthology. The editor's notes show the reality of creating art during a genocide, the delays because of no Internet, having to bury and mourn a loved one, being displaced yet again, all the while trying to survive the nearly constant bombardment and destruction. I am ready to be undone by these stories.

Gutting. I'm absolutely bereft. Palestinians have been through so much and IT CONTINUES TODAY. Reading about the 1967 war & the Sabra & Shatilah Massacre in 1982.... and look at what's happening now. This fictional family has been subjected to terror and devastation and it really helps you feel the pain and rage that everyone should feel.

Wow, this first chapter makes me want to piss on andrew johnson's grave.

I wanted to read this again but only the Spanish language version is available so I'm trying. It's tough reading in a second language but I find myself wanting to keep going. Plus I already know the story.

When you read Palestinian literature, you know it's going to be heartbreaking and you know it's even moreso because of the ongoing current gcide, and you're going to grow your hatred for the zio state that has done this for almost 80 years. It's worth it though. To get even a small glimpse of life before the nakba is lovely. And the resilience is unmatched. Fk israhell.

Reading about how the US came in and fucked it all up because they were so scared of communism...tale as old as time, but I didn't know the extent of it in Korea. Decades of brutal dictatorships backed by the US - I can't believe I didn't see it before. It's infuriating, the paternalism that said Koreans can't possibly run Korea so the US must. INFURIATING!

OMG I know the bad thing is coming but I don't remember exactly when and the foreshadowing is NUTS. This is my 4th reading of this book and I hate Nathan Price so damn much.

ah omg I AM SO INVESTED! This is my first time reading SA Cosby but I can tell you it won't be my last.

This is really great, I scaled back my # of books to focus on this one more. You can tell this guy is a writer's writer, every chapter is a self contained world with autobiographical interludes woven throughout. See, he's even got me doing it! I love Josephine Baker and Whitney Houston so much and he gave them the flowers they deserve.

Argh, I keep shouting at this brilliant clever woman to stop being dickmatized by these loser dudes who use her! It's so relatable lol and so infuriating!

Oh I am hooked! This is great.

Oh man, this feels like a novel but it's real! The 70s-80s were still pretty analog so it was easier to, say, book preteen you and your friends a plane ticket to LA from Minneapolis (where you KNOW PRINCE!) to meet Michael Jackson. Like, what?! She is so brilliant but also clever.