A small girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm in rural …
Lyrical and Cozy
5 stars
This was very cozy and comforting, but also bittersweet. This is the most on-point narration from a child's point of view that I can remember since Room (the child is older and more aware, here though).
Each character had emotional depth, and it was a joy to see the narrator become more confident.
Listened to as an audiobook in one sitting. Author's voice sounded like how I imagined the character. Definitely a re-listen in the future.
I was excited about this book because I expected it to be primarily about cults, but it was much more of a body horror/monster book.
The thing I look for in a work about cults in some understanding off why people joined the cult. Cults appeal to psychological vulnerabilities, and everyone has them. For, e.g., The People's Temple or Heaven's Gate, I primarily see the grave evil they did while still understanding what they offered and how they convinced people they were improving the world and themselves. The Angels are all stick and no carrot. I don't see what their members get out of it. I don't exactly need their systematic theology, but I need to know more about how they arrived at such an extreme belief and what's in it for the common person in the pews. A simple change here would be to make the Angels the only …
I was excited about this book because I expected it to be primarily about cults, but it was much more of a body horror/monster book.
The thing I look for in a work about cults in some understanding off why people joined the cult. Cults appeal to psychological vulnerabilities, and everyone has them. For, e.g., The People's Temple or Heaven's Gate, I primarily see the grave evil they did while still understanding what they offered and how they convinced people they were improving the world and themselves. The Angels are all stick and no carrot. I don't see what their members get out of it. I don't exactly need their systematic theology, but I need to know more about how they arrived at such an extreme belief and what's in it for the common person in the pews. A simple change here would be to make the Angels the only ones who had medication to survive the virus.
I don't know Andrew Joseph White's background, but the way he writes is like someone who grew up going to the downtown First Methodist church a few times a year, and maybe went to Six Flags America with the youth group. In other words, he writes like a person who's reasonably familiar with Christianity, but hasn't experienced or deeply researched religious trauma. The religious elements felt like a Hallowe'en costume for the villains.
This feels somewhat like a book from the 2000s. In that era it felt like religion was the cause of queerphobia. People had legitimately never (knowingly) met a queer person, and believed what their church told them. That feels out of place in the 2020s when religion is increasingly downstream of culture. A lot of people who identify as Evangelical never go to church. They have the regressive social views first and then identify with a religion to justify them.
I thought the body horror part was effective. I will have to think through and discuss how the monster/body horror theme relates to the trans experience.
The story of Revelation is a highly symbolic liberatory narrative about a minority religious group surviving under imperial occupation. Some modern Christians, primarily in America, misread it as a triumphalist story about God proving them right and torturing their enemies. There's a good novel in there about how we misperceive monsters in the same way, but I don't think this novel gets there.
The thing I look for in a work about cults in some understanding off why people joined the cult.
I will have to think through how the body horror part relates to the trans experience.
Gadsby's unique stand-up special Nanette was a viral success that left audiences captivated by her …
Could have used a tighter edit
3 stars
I enjoyed the insight on the comedy writing process, but the long early sections about Hannah's childhood made the book difficult to get into.
I did respect how the author set boundaries and kept the memoir focused on things she wanted to talk about. Some of the repeated bits (Stop! __ time) got tiresome.
I went into this wondering if there would be a sudden twist like in Nanette and there wasn't, which I think was the right call. Don't want to get put into a box.
Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans …
Capitivatingly Written
4 stars
I thought the written and description were very strong and the magically realism elements worked well.
It took time for me to get invested in the story, but it accelerated toward the end. I wish a bit more had happened to the characters and the characters were a bit more distinct from each other.
I enjoyed the historical sections a bit more than the present one. It was interesting to read from the transmasc perspective, and I'd like to read more in the future.