Read: April 29th - May 5th
I have teared up and full on cried so much during this already. Its a very accurate in every way portrayal of transness, of being an artist and wanting to make art about your life, and of mourning. It follows a trans woman writing about a friend of her's who died. Just a couple pages in I started crying as one of the side character's had the name of a dead trans woman friend I lost 2 years ago. Some of the things written have the exact vibe of relaying a story about a dear friend, maybe it wasn't actually as funny or witty as you remembered it, but you still gladly share the memory. The format is so unique as well, I wonder what planning it was like. It goes very in depth into the (fictional) show the dead character loved, and also of the personal moments between the author & many other people. Worldbuilding such a personal world with so many realistic memories seems like a unique challenge.
Thoughts after finishing
This did make me cry even more... It just felt so realistic. It felt like a really good representation of how Big life is. The character it centers, Vivian, has a bunch of endeavors (and also a bunch of things she had no interest in), and she felt so real. There was also more than a few lines that made me like, cringe, a bit but its stuff i Know.. like I know this is really how queer people talk to eachother, I've had those types of conversations, it just feels less pleasant reading it on paper LOL. This book also references a lot of real (and fake) media, like songs and stuff, and I find it was done in a good way. Usually mentioning songs in a book is a death sentence to me lol. This was also extremely readable - the sections are so short that you just move onto the next one and have new thoughts, and if you're a bit bored of one part, theres the next.
Read: April 7th - 81/450
Just started this book. It's my dad's favourite book of all time and he's been telling me to read it for years, so I'm highly anticipating it.. The writing style is incredibly unique, I've never read anything similar to this. (Added after 3 weeks) I am admitedly having a harder time getting through this one. I enjoy it but its really, really dense and theres a lot in it that you just inherently won't understand (mentions of Maori cultural things, and sections spoken in untranslated Maori). I've accepted I'll probably peck through this for a while instead of it being a quick read like Little Fires Everywhere or Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian).
Read: March 24th - March 27th
Well this is the fastest I've read anything in a while! I had some criticisms initially, but when I thought about them more, they seemed more purposeful for the story. Like, the core of the story is contrasting wealth & poverty, but it felt like the poverty part was portrated very positively. But this whole book is very idealist due to that being the nature of wealth, and so maybe that's on purpose. Secondly I thought the books pacing was interesting.. There's a whole 100 pages of backstory before we even touch the main conflict. I enjoyed this leisurely style for like 70 pages, but by 100, I was Itching for something to actually happen. This felt necessary for the parts of the book I loved, though.
Spoilers in this parapgraph
There was a lot I loved about this book. The many different perspectives lets you explore the relationships between all these characters very thoroughly. As a result, even in the ending when Izzy framed her whole family as horrible and living lives she could never agree with, I still sympathized with all her siblings. I also love seeing this dynamic of a rich and a poor household being explored.. A lot of this was very relatable as a poor person when I started dating & befriending much wealthier people than me. All of the commentary about motherhood made me cry as well.. Whenever it was relevant. The pain of characters like Mrs. McCullough and Bebe Chow is so real, and I've seen it in women in my life (altho I would've given the baby back to Ms. Chow. Any day). The miscommunication between the families was realistic and had me on the edge of my seat going, oh my god I hope someone realizes theres more to this story!!!
Read: February 13th - March 20th
I've been interested in East Africa because I'm travelling to Tanzania later this year. While having fun doing research online, I also ended up invested in Namibia, Angola and Uganda, so I seeked out a book. This is a very general book, but a good starting off point if you want to start learning about Africa. And whew this is a hefty book! I had to read it in one chapter increments because the writing was so dense it was hard for me to process multiple chapters in a row. There's a lot of really good information in this, but the author writes things in a very biased way sometimes which offput me at times. There are a lot of sources referenced, I've been reading some of 'em to learn more. I wish my library had a better selection of Africa books that were more specific..
Read: February 13th - March 3rd
I recently had a trip through Native land in Nevada and so when I saw this book at the library I instantly wanted to read it. The first interview had me reading through tears the entire time. I cried a lot throughout the whole thing. The amount of pain detailed in all of these interviews, even the less extreme ones, hurts me so much. The harm of colonialism and the US's & Canada's governments is not talked about nearly enough. There is also a lot of joy in these statements. Reading about the connection to their communities & the earth that is felt during rituals, events, and spiritual practices was really compelling to me. I'm white and I've always felt very disconnected from even my extended family, and to know that there are people who have become so connected to the area around them makes me hopeful. There is a very wide amount of accounts in here - people on reservations, with no connection to their culture, who grew up on the land, who switched between these places, - and it was interesting to the see the similar threads throughout all these locations. Lots of homelessness, sexual abuse, and alcoholism no matter where you look.
Read: January 2nd-12th
One of my highschool teachers gave me this as a graduation gift. It contains several surreal stories that are told as if its completely normal. I really enjoyed these stories, except for one in the middle (Light And The Sufferer) that I found way too long and disrupted my interest in these short stories.. I enjoyed the more surreal and hard to understand stories a lot more than the ones written in clear, matter of fact fashions.
My favourite story was the very first story, Al by Carol Emshwiller. I enjoyed the stream-of-consciousness writing style and the weird facts of the world they live in. They talk about enjoying music & art as if its a feature only of their particular culture (they live in an isolated town) and I liked that a lot for some reason. The narrator also yearns a lot, and plans/thinks about her life with the mysterious Al figure, which reminded me of myself a lot. I like to plan my life with any stranger I think looks interesting LOL.