Kate Elliott > Recent Status Updates

god, I love the tone of this. so much of it is “ha ha, sweetie, no.”

author understands philosophy is the dumbest smart thing, the smartest dumb thing, useless and also absolutely necessary

I think this is the right stance and I feel exactly the same way about literature… even and *especially* as an active poet…

I’ve gone from “being intimidated by the title” to “oh, this book is candy to me!”

I’ve gone from “being intimidated by the title” to “

some good pieces about practicing mindfulness/relational presence but like…ugh so much of this book is assuming equal power dynamics. And so many portions are a call to emotional labor that’s not really distributed evenly across genders. What do you do with a call to show up more…when you’re really historically burned out and the weight hits you differently than your partner?

I was texting a friend about how the straight men in this collection are using too much math—everything is angles.
And right after I sent the text and turned the page, a pussy got called a parabola.
I’m literally dead.

If you think the guy who wrote The Star Spangled Banner can also decently write about a NUDE in a BATH, you would be wrong.

And yes, there is a part where everyone has to fight to be real vs some ideal in relationships, but there’s a heavier weight for women when you’re also having to do the fight for personhood on a political/social/professional front. Yes it’s something you have to do…but I don’t think your partner should be making you flex intense bravery every godddamn day when the culture at large is doing it.

Not really sure about this book, a lot of the patterns they’re calling out just seem to be patriarchy without them saying “hey it’s patriarchy”…like all of his issues are mostly “I had to stop measuring her against a made up media ideal” and hers are all “I had to start learning how to fight to be myself”

Not really sure ab

Yes, I’m already winning at thematic New Year’s reading by reading a midwife novel. Boom.

Kind of rambly—would like more concrete specifics & less general narrative. Most of these concepts you can learn more concisely in an episode or two of Maintenance Phase or Sawbones. Was looking forward to a bigger narrative but am not sure the sprawl is justified.

damnnnn, throwing some real shade at Eliot and I am into it

“In short, the academic hottie had committed every imaginable sin against clarity.”

Did not expect to encounter the word “academic hottie” in this book 😂

Barely started and am already balking at paragraph length & lack of white space in a book about building easy reading experiences…

wow barely a chapter in and a lotttttt of metaverse fapping.
Ew.

I’m having such a tough time with some of the translation choices. They keep using a Scottish sounding dialect to indicate the village speech, which on the surface seems like a reasonable choice to establish regional variety, but like... the Scottish dialect is so singular and assertive and so very much itself that it keeps making it hard to believe this is happening in Norway.

this is the first male protagonist I’ve liked in YEARS but now I’m afraid things are going to go all “The Secret History except it’s Florida” based on the blurbs

Wow there’s some pretty limited taste considering how many authors are interviewed. A lot of high school staples and boring western canon and authors who admit to still reading Roth even though they hate him. Come on! Be more omnivorous.

Definitely bougie, doesn’t grapple with how much depends on privilege, but has some solid tidbits about social bravery, generosity, gratitude, learning to look for the unexpected, and acknowledging how much we depend on extended community to thrive. Idk, even though some of it is fluff, it feels really good to read a paean to social openness after 10+ years in the Seattle freeze where I lost a lot of those traits.

It sure icks me out that he always has to comment on whether a nun is attractive or not. Every goddamn time.

excellent so far. I’ve never seen such a seamless intertwining of feminist theory and memoir before. (Even though there are plenty of works that combine the two, they’re often pretty jagged in transitions.)

OMG. She just referred to Emerson as the “sugar daddy of American literature.”
Not to be all Twitter on Goodreads, but I am extremely here for this.

This is very good...but don’t read it while you’re job hunting...after quitting your last job due to burnout triggered health issues. It’s too real. Will have to come back to this later.

Business parables: as bad as you think they'll be.

Not worth continuing. Feels like a lo-fi episode of girls.

This just diverged from challenging traditional gender norms...into weird biological essentialism after detours into Kabbala and Chakra theory...

She then spends 1/3 of the book oversacralizing it... to a scarily intimidating level. Sex is like the priest going into the Holy of Holies? (In which he could be struck dead?)
Nbd guys. You should feel comfortable with this metaphor.

This is good and horrifying.

HAHAHAHA. Shocked he made it until the last chapter of the book to bring up Sophie's World!