Meags > Recent Status Updates

We’re off to a good start with an epigraph from Buffy. ❤️

I thought she said she couldn’t love? “God, I loved that house.” Maybe she’ll clarify. It is literally the beginning. But I confess I’m already skeptical of her claim to be a sociopath.

DNF @ 25%

This book is fine. Love Bradley Whitford as narrator. But I gave up on it for a variety of reasons. For one, we are still in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and as yet we are too close to really see the big picture yet. The book that comes out in 20 years will be good. Also, the author mostly seemed to want to brag about how knew what to do.

ALC provided from Libro.fm’s Librarian program.

At chapter 2

“Speech becomes rhetoric, or a persuasive form of speech, only when the one speaking can make a legitimate claim to some form of authority. It can be moral authority or legal authority or rational authority. At every turn, black women have been categorically excluded from being expert performers of persuasive speech acts in the public that adjudicates our humanity.”

“Watching otherwise rational human beings rhapsodize about Bundy’s “charm” and “brilliance” while furrowing their brows over Elizabeth Warren’s dubious “likability” creates a particularly American kind of whiplash.”

“That’s not to say that you believe in meaning, you must also believe in God. It is to say, though, that if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, therefore, life itself doesn’t have any. In other words, existential claims have no weight; all knowledge is scientific knowledge.”

I listened to the first two chapters and so far it’s great.

“Ms. Ofrah opens a folder that’s on her desk, takes a piece of paper out, and pushes it toward me. It’s a photograph of Khalil’s black hairbrush, the one he used in the car.

‘That’s the so-called gun,’ Ms. Ofrah explains.

...

A hairbrush.
Khalil died over a fucking hairbrush.”

“They act like I’m the official representative of the black race and they owe me an explanation. I think I understand though. If I sit out a protest, I’m making a statement, but if they sit out a protest, they look racist.”

“‘Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.’”

“All of this is my fault. The riots, gunshots, tear gas, all of it, are ultimately my fault. I forgot to tell the cops that Khalil got out with his hands up. I didn’t mention that the officer pointed his gun at me. I didn’t say something right, and now that cop’s not getting arrested.”

“Goodbyes hurt the most when the other person’s already gone.”

“The truth casts a shadow over the kitchen—people like us in situations like this becomes hashtags, but they rarely get justice.”

“Funerals, I had decided, are for the living.”

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

"Up for anything, Tally thought, just like she used to be herself. They were definitely seniors, less than a year behind her, but she was amazed at how young they seemed." Spoken like a true teenager 😆

Tally sat back, shaking her head, coughing once more. The flowers were so beautiful, so delicate and unthreatening, but they choked everything around them.

Mallory shut her eyes, thinking how rah-rah everyone else had been since the accident, pushing her forward, never letting her give up, never giving her even a moment to doubt herself. Sometimes they'd meant well–like Mama–other times it was because helplessness makes other people uncomfortable.

To hell with this, she thought, reaching for his hand. Never mind they barely knew each other, or that they were in public, or...or a million other reasons why she shouldn't. The man needed to be touched, dammit. And she was handy.

"The precarious fantasy crashed down around her as quickly as it had begun. It was impossible. Not worth thinking about.

She was cyborg, and she would never go to the ball."