Ascolta > Recent Status Updates

I. The Old Lady and the Bus; II. The Hero and the Mouse; III. Mitsuru and the Last Photo

starting to slow

Oy. Vey. Midcentury Internalized Misogyny as plot device. 🙄

Wanda: Ch. 23

question whether either Brooks-Dalton or her editorial staff knows the difference between "complicit" and "compliant"

Oh no. This is a story about a toxic heteronormative marriage, toxic divorcé father.

CW: DV

Generously, this could be described as an allegory of adulthood; un-generously it's a clumsy love letter to 'golden age' Hollywood and film.

Skipping ahead liberally now. Garber's niche as YA author shines through at each over-written moment and emotionally stilted decision.

Started skipping wildly ahead.

this keeps getting almost DNF cringy, then pulling back to 'no I'm sticking with this'

Oh no. Turns out each chapter is punctuated by second person flashbacks to Folklore 'class' sessions. This is horridly overwritten.

Only prologue is in second person, it seems. Thankfully. Tho possible unlikable protagonists.

Hm. This going to be overwritten? Also - written in second person? Yikes.

AND Sachar's misogyny emerges.

Oy Ch. 55. Boring. We've apparently reached the point where this jumps the shark.

Protip: listen at 1.2 speed. Mitigates the THIS IS A CHILDREN'S BOOK tenor.

Oh no. Edoardo Ballerini reading an adult novel like it's a children's book Oy.

Blerg. This is turning into a full on romance, and so much more boring.

Starting to become so heartbreaking that I feel like I need to take a pause 😢

Ah ha. This may also be a story of misogyny. Of the male scholar's virgin-whore belief about women.

Okay, doing some interesting things with academia (rather than merely dry comedy). This is a meditation on minoritization and the 'model minority' phenom. On the work of the archive. It begs whether it's all a dream and on suggests (non too subtly) that historians only ever restate the work other other propagandists.

Ah, gender reversal.

now substantially less funny, but still okay