Danielle
This is an important book for women in sport – especially running.
The subtitle is apt. This is a memoir about the frustrations of a female athlete's career in a world where value in sport was (and largely, still is) determined by the male gaze. For example:
- A complete lack of understanding around puberty and performance, and how women trying to fight it off by starving themselves risk long-term damage to their bodies and their minds (and it's poorly researched, so we don't even know the full extent of that)
- An overwhelmingly high ratio of male head coaches for women's teams, almost always with a female assistant coach there to help exclusively with the “period stuff” that male coaches apparently can't stomach
- How eating disorders are rampant in female endurance athletes, and yet coaches and the NCAA have no protocols or guidelines for prevention or getting individuals help (whereas there are robust guidelines for concussions)
- How pregnancy is treated like a suspension in sports contracts, all but entirely suspending support for pregnant athletes even though those athletes are still contractually required to make appearances and cannot pursue other sponsorships (and how if a woman even so much as mentioned getting pregnant at Nike, they risked slashes to their contracts, hamstrung by right of first refusal) whereas men are never penalized in the same way, for obvious reasons, even if they too have or want a family
- How women are routinely sexualized in sport (think: Sports Illustrated Body Issue, or women's track uniforms being glorified bathing suits) instead of being appreciate for athletic talent and individual preference
-etc.
Again, I think this is an important book because even though there have been societal strides (pun intended?) in recent years following all the Nike/NOP whistleblowing, there are still fundamental gaps in the ways we support girls and women in sport.
My only issue with this book – and it's not really an issue, I really like the book – is that it's trying to be a memoir and a hard-hitting, research-backed non-fiction and I don't know that it does either entirely successfully. Hearing Lauren's life story is great, but I think less memoir and more research would have been better suited to the overall thesis of this one.
But, it's good writing, and again – very much so worth the read.
This one surprised me. This is the first work book-club book that I've thoroughly enjoyed, and would absolutely recommend. It's witty (in a quintessentially British way), very readable, and presents a realistic take on how mental illness impacts relationships. While intense at times, it's ultimately uplifting. I got sucked in and couldn't stop.
This is a great book on sports psychology. Through inspirational tales of triumph over adversity interwoven with psychological theory, the author makes a compelling case for the power of mental resiliency in sport, and better yet, offers very concrete advice to build that resiliency. Broadly, that advice can be boiled down to:
1) Accept the situation - clearly see what is happening
2) Embrace the situation - make a plan to do the best you can in light of what is happening
3) Commit to executing the new plan
As a chronically injured runner, hearing stories of amazing comebacks of all kinds was exactly what I needed to get me through some punishing cross-training sessions as I take time off of running to let a nagging injury calm down. I have been able to apply these steps to re-frame my perspective and adjust my training the best I can to accommodate the injury, even though that training is lonely, boring, time-consuming, and overall way less fun than running.
A quote that really stuck out to me “Find a way, don't force a way [sic].”
Definitely recommend this for anyone who loves endurance sport, but struggles with injury (or any other setback).
This is a book about grief and the pandemic. Strong loses her cousin early in the year, and then the pandemic hits soon after and between the anxiety of the virus, SNL going on indefinite hiatus, a pseudo-breakup, and a bunch of other shit. She also brings up perhaps every other trauma from her entire life, somehow, probably because the space of the pandemic and the immense grief of her initial loss forced her to really examine the grief she has accumulated throughout her life.
Unsurprisingly, this is a sad book.
It feels strange giving a rating to what is essentially a narrative of someone's grieving process.I appreciate the author's vulnerability and learning more about her life and her loved ones.
This was disappointing. I love words, and learning new words, and abstract concepts of language. And so I did love some of the themes of this book – how words are at once futile and arbitrary shapes that someone somewhere decided would mean something and that words are also super powerful in that they can give abstractions a meaning and shared understanding.
However the narrative really doesn't make sense and the characters are flimsy at best. A book about words should have phenomenal writing, but this prose was just okay. Overall a very meh read, though I did learn some new words (and some fake ones).
This is an informative, well-researched book on the challenges faced by modern-day mothers in a variety of situations in the US. The argument is that structurally & culturally, the US is pretty damning to mothers, and that the pandemic made things a lot worse.
Like most books I've read about motherhood, I find the experience of reading this book a bit depressing: the chapters focus on how difficult it is to exist normally/continue working through pregnancy, the general lack of paid leave, the history of discrimination against pregnant women and mothers, the pressures of social media, the exorbitant costs of child care, child rearing falling more often to mothers than fathers, etc.
And I get it – that's what the book is about. It's to show the dismal state of affairs, presumably in the hopes of inciting change via legislation, community organizing, and shifting sociocultural beliefs around motherhood to make things better. But the mention of that – what can be done, I mean, what actions we can take – is only briefly mentioned at the end. There are glimmers of hope for change, but it makes it difficult for one to be excited about motherhood when it's made out to sound like one monumental, soul-sucking struggle.
The author mentions her daughters are the best thing she ever did in her life the acknowledgements, but that doesn't come through at all in the book. Ultimately, the line that hit me the hardest, which came towards the very end, reads: “Even about the things we love most, we are truly ambivalent.” That really resonates.
Anyways. The book is okay. It reads more like a research paper than a book – an engaging research paper, but not the most fun thing to sink your teeth into.
Love love Pema Chodron. Every time I read one of her books I'm always highlighting like crazy. Even though I've been meditating on and off for several years, this “beginner's” book is still enlightening with helpful activities, reminders, and general insightfulness. I think it's a great read for anyone on the meditation path, or for anyone looking for some general life advice.
From the outset, I got sucked into this book. There's something so relatable, yet fascinating about the narrator's consciousness — the way she describes her perception of herself and others is true to the experience of personal relationships. The smallest, most random things about a loved one — like showing up to lunch with pants that are too short, or a sad look of disappointment— will suddenly overwhelm you with a crushing love for them. Similarly, small slights or gestures — a certain twitch of the mustache, a distant look, a dismissive response — will make you hate them.
Relationships are complex, mysterious. We can spend our lives with people and continuously learn new things about them, and have revelations about relationship dynamics 30+ years on. This book is really a fascinating exploration of all that, and something about the writing made it hard for me to put down.
The introduction is a super interesting but brief history of NYC in the mid-19th century, and particularly the Schermerhorn family. The rest are illustrated letters from the author, Gene, to his nephew, Phil, in the late 18th century describing what it was like growing up in New York in the 1850s.
While the letters themselves are quite boring, and the illustrations immature and likely inaccurate, I did find it fascinating that New York was essentially just farms and country side north of 23rd street, with literal pigs running amok on 6th ave. Wild (literally)!
The narrator is a doctor working at the hospital in Morningside Heights (very near my old apartment) just before and just after the onset of the pandemic. The pandemic looms in the background as a harbinger of racism and distress for Americans of Chinese descent, like Joan. When Joan's father dies, she grieves in the way she knows: by throwing herself even more whole-heartedly into her work, which is both her identity and her home.
The style of this book takes a little while to find a rhythm, but then it builds momentum into some complex thoughts about children of immigrants, Chinese language and culture, and how we define “home.” It's a quick read and well-worth it.
There's a lot of hype around this memoir, and I can see why. Jennette McCurdy offers us a view deep into the consciousness of a child star, with all the trauma that we in the public to some degree acknowledge comes with child stardom from seeing so many of them crash and burn into deeply troubled adulthoods. The author has experienced all of those traumas and then some: a complicated relationship with an emotional abusive (and clearly mentally unwell) mother, who battles (and loses) with cancer; the author's own mental illness, including an eating disorder; toxic work environments; toxic romantic relationships; being treated like chattel by an industry that cares more about making money than anyone's health or well-being; and the list goes on. It's rare to get this kind of insight into what goes on behind the scenes of happy-go-lucky children's shows, and the author does a fantastic job of going deep and getting vulnerable in telling her story.
I did enjoy this book, and so so appreciate the author for telling her truth and so wonderfully portraying her complicated feelings around her relationship to her mother. But I didn't love this book. It was definitely very good for a celebrity memoir, but that feels like an asterisk. Maybe it was the author's fairly deadpan delivery, maybe it's that I didn't really know who Jennette McCurdy was before reading this, maybe I can't relate enough to be deeply touched by her story. Regardless, I'm glad she wrote it, and I'm glad I listened to it.
Based on a true story (cue Google frenzy), this novel tells the story of the experiment of the Mission 2 Terranauts: eight scientists who desperately believe in the mission of living for 2 years in an enclosed full ecosystem in Arizona. The experiment is to show that Earth could be replicated in other places, e.g. Mars. However, this experiment becomes one that is much less about science and much more about close group dynamics as the cult-like belief in the mission grinds up against serious health concerns, romantic and sexual relationships, and just general differences of opinion. It's like taking your colleagues and putting them in a Lord of the Flies situation — relationships that might have been tense otherwise get so tense that they snap.
This book was interesting and super easy to read. I enjoyed the way that each chapter switched narrators, but found it a bit strange that it cycled between just three people. Some characters were very underdeveloped and I can't say I totally believe their motivations. I really did not like the stereotypes that it played into, the women being obsessed with their appearances and violently jealous of each other to the point that they can't form meaningful friendships, and men being incredibly surface-level and obsessed with sex.
Overall, it was an easy read about a weird blip in history I knew nothing about, but the flaws in character development were frustrating.
This is a very funny book about motherhood, but it's not like a lot of other books on motherhood. It's not all, “my baby is amazing and my life changed 1000% for the better and it's hard but so rewarding!!!” Klein's essays show a picture of motherhood that is more conflicted. Actually, it's mostly negative. While I thought the essays themselves we're honest and hilarious, I did feel a bit disheartened about my own future foray into motherhood (which is admittedly still very conceptual).
I'm sure it was a cathartic writing experience, and I could absolutely feel & understand her frustrations and all of the identity-grappling and physical-grappling and emotional-grappling that one must deal with when entering motherhood. But it kind of felt like talking to a friend who only calls you to complain - they will assure you that everything is fine with their [relationship, job, child], but for your part, you only hear the bad stuff. So it's hard to believe that their [relationship, job, child] really is fine. That's how I feel about this book. There are some lovely moments where I do feel her intense love for her son, but those are overpowered by exhaustion and what feels like regret. I just wish she left me a little more positivity... something to look forward to in becoming a mother. But I guess that's not what this is about.
Aside: I can totally see how Jessi Klein would get a ton of shit for some of the stuff she says in this book, and I'll say that's likely undeserved. People can be truly intense about their ideas of parenting. Can't we just accept that other people have different feelings, experiences, and expectations than we do, and that there is no perfect way to do anything? Cool.
This reading experience was very similar to when I accidentally picked up 50 Shades of Grey thinking it would be a mystery/thriller (it had handcuffs on the cover! I was so young and unaware!). I thought this was going to be a YA fantasy, and based on its popularity, a fairly good one.
Wrong!!
This is 100% fantasy smut. It was both a terrible romance and a terrible fantasy. The world-building was hand-wavy and horribly incomplete; the magic system is never explained, at all, based completely on the author's whims of romance and necessity of plot. Characters' motivations do not make sense and there is little to no complexity in thought. It's a macrame of cliches from the fantasy/romance canon: some mixture of Hunger Games, Beauty & the Beast, and Game of Thrones (among others). Nothing feels original. No character has a personality.
I had several other issues with the plot line; for one, Feyre had no complicated feelings whatsoever when she found out (through blatantly expositional dialogue) that her lover, Tamlin, had captured her because the love of a human would break his court's curse. Wouldn't that make one wonder, at least a little, about that ulterior motive? And the sexy scenes are just... not for me, I guess.
And when it comes to the trials Feyre must face at the end – for our “strong” heroine, I found it frustrating that she really only survived one based on her own merit. Everything else was accomplished through some other character helping her through completely unexplained “poof!”-type magic.
All in all, this series just isn't for me.
While I do love Parks & Rec, I wouldn't say I'm a superfan. I think Nick Offerman is a good actor, and have enjoyed some podcasts he's been on, so I figured I would see if his writing is any good.
Answer: sort of. I'll be real, I don't think he has a particular talent for narrative humor or compelling story-telling. I also don't love when memoirs blur genre lines into self-help, especially when the advice is around eating red meat and working with wood (I am a vegetarian, and no thank you). However, there were some silly little zingers that made the listen enjoyable. I love the love that Offerman has for his friends, family, and partner. Other than that, I didn't find too much compelling here.
An ode to video games and the creation of art, this book tells the story of two childhood friends with a complicated personal relationship and an epic creative collaboration. Sam and Sadie meet as youngsters under fraught circumstances and forge a bond over video games. Years later as young adults, they cross paths again and feel a magnetic, unstoppable pull to create games together. Their strengths compliment each other, but their unrelenting passion (/stubbornness) to actualize their vision often puts them at intense creative odds. But through the turbulence of their lives, they always come back to the game.
Firstly, thank you to Alyssa for sending me a copy of this book! After seeing it on so many TBRs and reading positive reviews, I was eager to see what the hype was about. Sadly for me, this book was just okay. Many aspects of reading this book – tangibles and intangibles – made the narrative feel unbelievable to me. And when the narrative is unbelievable, I can't immerse myself in it. I feel like a reader reading rather than an emotionally invested third party. The traumas the characters experience don't feel real. Most of the characters are unlikeable, and the only character that is likable is faultless, and therefore completely unbelievable. The “love” between characters doesn't feel real, or developed enough. The author experiments with different narrative styles, but never sticks to one, which feels indecisive and fractured.
I enjoyed some of the video game metaphors for life, appreciated the literary references, and found the reading experience to be easy and at least somewhat pleasant. I can see how this book might resonate more for those with a passion for video games, but I didn't find it particularly special.
Joy Harjo's story of her childhood and teenage years depict the harrowing experience of growing up indigenous on stolen land. Her early life is a microcosm of the devastation that white people have brought to Native Americans, filled with abuse, alcoholism, racism, and poverty. Yet through it all, she has art, poetry, and an innate spirituality and sense of truth in herself that carries her through the hardship.
Her poetry doesn't particularly resonate with me, but it is very evocative of her culture and her Native history. I very much so enjoyed her story and the power with which she told it, even if some of it felt a bit like word soup to me.
Episodic in nature, this is a book that reads a lot like a TV show. In that way, it's entertaining: Ray Carney, the protagonist, is a furniture salesman trying to make his way as a business owner with a young family in 1960's Harlem. While Carney is sympathetic, he's not entirely straight – though not entirely crooked, either. He's “bent,” as it calls out in the first line of the book.
The book is divided into 3 sections, and each section revolves around a different criminal plot in which Carney happens to find himself as a key player. The plot takes on similar shapes as other hijinks-crime narratives, but with the historical backdrop of NYC at a pivotal time in history for black Americans. The author does an excellent job of capturing the vernacular of the time, and all throughout the tone hits just right. However, as is my complaint with the other Whitehead book I read, it's too plot-driven for my tastes, too surface-level. I found myself fighting not to skim certain sections and I never got excited to pick it up again, even I did mostly enjoy it while reading. Having lived in Harlem right in the center of where the action takes place, I did enjoy reading about the neighborhood as it was 60 years back – had it not been for my personal experience there, this would be a 2.5 star book. It's not bad, it's just not my thing.
This is not the kind of book that I want to rate on a 5-star scale. Edited by Brene Brown and Tarana Burke, this collection of essays creates space for black writers to be vulnerable, and for me to put a rating on someone's vulnerability feels incredibly wrong. These essays range from deeply personal to more academic, but each one tells the unique story of the author, and each one sheds shame by claiming vulnerability as cleansing and powerful. I'm not the primary audience for this book, but nonetheless, found it impactful and insightful. Absolutely worth a listen.
I've never listened to the podcast, but I thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook. Through a series of seemingly unrelated essay topics, Green tells a story of what it is to be a reflective person living in the Anthropocene – the age of humans. Each essay ends in a rating out of five stars, which is indicative of how we tend view the world around us: how it adds to our singular life, our singular perspective, our singular enjoyment.
As the essays build – and they range from “Air Conditioning” to “CNN” to “The Notes App” to “Sunsets” – we learn about these topics, and the author, and the painful and desperate and hopeful times of the pandemic. The act of reviewing exposes so much of ourselves and our emotional states, and in that way, this is more like a memoir than anything else. Each new chapter beings a new topic and is refreshed with new anecdotes, so it never feels stale. That, and some of the writing is so good, and so relevant and powerful, you'll have to stop to rewind/reread and turn the phrases over a few more times and let them dissolve like a hard candy in your mouth. I learned a lot about a whole variety of random things, but what I really appreciated about this book is that it felt like a warm, friendly hug at the end of a really hard time (the pandemic being the hard time).
If I have any complaints, it's only that some of the chapters were less interesting or vulnerable than others, but writing that out feels like such a minor complaint. This is a pandemic book that gets at the pandemic better than any other book I've read (/listened to), because it's so rich in context that doesn't even read like context until you realize everything is context.
Now I'm waxing. I give this book 4.5 stars.