bamboobones_rory's reviews
433 reviews

Non Violent Communication A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg

Go to review page

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

This book is very useful in the sense that it gives approaches to communicating step-by-step for conflict, feeling intense emotions, and communicating with people who are very emotionally charged (angry, outraged, etc) and just want to be listened to. A big chunk of this book is not about only active listening, but reflecting back to verify what you heard. 

Some of the author's personal examples didn't sit well with me because a few examples revolved around his need to be comfortable in an environment he wasn't used to, which I don't think should be a problem, since I have the strong opinion that it's ok to be a little uncomfortable if you are the odd one out or in a different cultural environment and that's OK. It's not harmful to be uncomfortable by experiencing new people and places. A lot of his example conversations and language were simplified and not how people talk in real life. I get that the goal is to give an example of how NVC works, but I wish there were examples of conversations that matched how people really talk. They are super corny. Some things in the book feel outdated. At the same time, he seems so incredibly compassionate and patient with people, and understands what humans need in situations more well than people usually vocalize themselves. He seems like an incredible peacekeeper and mediator and those skills are broken into small steps. I think despite the flaws, the basic skills are so useful that anyone can pick and choose what is useful to them. 
 
The 4 main pieces of NVC are: 
1. observations
2. feelings
3. needs
4. requests

Which are put together with
1. using the above to express yourself honestly
2. using the above to receive empathically 

Some major ideas:
-judgements and classifying people, even in our minds, promotes violence
-comparisons are judgements
-most common emotional language sets us up to not take responsibility for our emotions
-separate observation and evaluation and not deliver them together- otherwise people hear criticism 
-distinguish feelings from thoughts
-most conflict and feelings and judgements are expressions of unmet needs
-unmet needs are usually not stated but deflected into anger, conflict, and judgement
-people need to be able to ID emotions and needs and state them, and there are also skills for active listening and how to ask people to state their needs
-other people's actions stimulate our feelings about them, but are not the root cause (chapter 5, this concept is explained a lot more) 
-there are tips on expressing needs
-there are tips on receiving empathically (this is NOT the same as active listening, this is listening and reflecting back in a certain way to have the person re-confirm what they said, and tries to ask and get at their needs and not just the words they are saying or emotions they are having) 
-we need empathy to give empathy and the usual block is pain
-we are not angry by what other people say or do, that is the stimulus, but the driver behind the emotion is usually an unmet need or different older trigger from the past 
-violence comes from the belief that our pain is caused by others and they deserve punishment 
-our need is usually for the other person to hear our pain 
-the book zooms out on the actual underlying emotional causes of anger and violence and why people choose the act that way
-people often interpret intellectualizing as criticism when in a conflict 

The Siege by Peter David

Go to review page

Did not finish book. Stopped at 0%.
This was the first DS9 original story novel, and was written when only a few episodes were out. Keiko and Miles' relationship has uncomfortable language about Asian women and minor racism, and Keiko's characterization is unlike the show and she is shown to be less fun and less understanding. The way Captain Sisko was written also let me down. The writing isn't great and reads more like a goofy fanfic. It has fight scenes with Odo and a shapeshifter that are goofy in a cartoon way. It doesn't do the characters justice. 
Aristotle and Dante Dive Into the Waters of the World by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Go to review page

Did not finish book. Stopped at 0%.
This sequel wasn't as good as the first- I loved the first book, but this one didn't hook me. Felt like fluff and lack of plot. I read the first half then skimmed the end. 
Woodworm by Layla Martínez

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I am not sure how the heck to describe this book. 
You have to read it, it's more of an experience. 
It's neat that it continues the literary tradition of penny dreadful type books.
The characters are not very likeable, but they sure are interesting (read: insane) 
Some parts, with the narrator, a modern day transcriber of the manuscript, are pretty sad
This book is kinda batshit all around. 
Neuroqueer Heresies by Nick Walker

Go to review page

informative slow-paced

4.0

Concepts are important, but since it's a collection of essays and blog posts over many years, it is very repetitive. I think this could have been edited to condense a lot of material.

The concepts and arguments are valuable though to fighting for autistic and disabled autonomy. If you are already familiar with neuroqueer as a word, and trans autistic experiences, and other disability movements like mad liberation, this book is very repetitive. (see what I did there)
Enigma Tales by Una McCormack

Go to review page

adventurous emotional mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories by Samuel R. Delany

Go to review page

adventurous challenging emotional reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Binti: The Complete Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor

Go to review page

adventurous emotional
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

A Flat Place by Noreen Masud

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

This book feels haunting and like echoes and feels like the way marshland and bog winds feel. The landscapes Masud writes about feel like they are coming through the pages of the book. It reminded me of a feeling, that there is a point where pain and emptiness are so overwhelming, it feels more like wind echoing in a hollow tree, than something alive and within you. 

The writing and emotions are intense yet detached and matches the back and forth of her descriptions of alternating between flashbacks and grief and derealization. Masud’s life experience is very different from my own, but as someone also with CPTSD, the emotions, and descriptions of derealization and relations to narratives struck me to the core. Some aspects felt similar to the book “What My Bones Know” by Stephanie Foo. 

The book alternates between Masud’s exploration of moors in England and Scotland, and the history of them over centuries, and memories of her unusual childhood in Pakistan and her relationship with dysfunctional family, and her journey to England. It was originally just about the flat landscapes and reflection, but became a book of processing developmental trauma. 

I loved this book but I’m gonna need to read some fun and silly books soon. It is beautiful writing but the mood is serious and somber. 

 

Some Quotes that stuck out to me:

“Someone donates to Winston’s Wish but looks the other way from refugees; someone fights for white women’s rights by not for those of Black women; someone donates to anti-racist groups but buys prawns farmed by modern slaves. Everyone makes deals around the humanity of other people, and how consistently they allow that humanity to be present to them. That’s how people make bearable homes in hostile worlds. My father was no exception. So my only issue a personal one. In the deal that my father happened to make with his world, it was me who didn’t count as human.” – pg 22 

On derealization: “the world becomes distant and two-dimensional: a ribbon of time, where all moments exist at once, with colours, and shapes, and mouths opening and closing harmlessly. People become blurry, and I have a strong sense that they are not actually there.” – pg 30 

 

“Staring out at the murky landscape beyond, where things moved and whispered and shifted, and one could never know for sure what was happening, or how one was implicated. Me on another island now, a wretched whelp by myself, wrapped in my own cramping body. Not knowing how to explain myself, wrapped in my own cramping body. Not knowing how to explain to myself why I still felt the chicken wire closing around me. 
The fens bound the possible and the impossible, the everyday and the fantastic, into one inscrutable plane.” Pg 39 

“I’d rather be grief-stricken than feel unreal.” – pg 58 

 
“We tell stories to make them visible. Or we tell stories so that we don’t have to look at them any longer.” – pg 78 

“The flat place is the place of grief, but also the place of the real. It’s real because of that grief: it displays itself starkly, and you are beside yourself in the face of what can’t be denied. But at least you are beside yourself. You have that consolation. You curl your fingers into a fist and pretend you are holding a hand.” – pg 91 

 
On British history: “Two things rose to the top of my mind as I researched the human zoo in Newcastle. First: People of colour have always been here, in Britain’s flat places, living and struggling. Violence and oppression form the bedrock of the landscape that I recognize and move through. Second: People have always been protesting. It’s just that no one has been listening.” -pg 133 


On loving a cat: “Cats do not understand smiles. So Morvern didn’t care whether I smiled or not. What mattered to Morvern was my presence and my hands and my voice. My face could stay dull and expressionless, unless she broke a real tender smile out of me by putting both paws on my peg and leaning up to see what I was doing. That was a gift which gave itself to her, effortlessly. If I was feeling especially numb and distant, words choked up in my throat or my head caught in the tide, all I needed to do was chirrup back to her chirrup, with a kind of brief hum in my throat. During lockdown we talked like this for hours, chirping back and forth….Mostly what Morvern did was to come and find me, wherever I was sitting in the flat, and to curl her tail around her feet and hunch into a ball, near me but facing away. I did some research. This meant, the internet said, that she was keeping watch for predators for both of us. This mean that she loved me. I loved her too. Unsmilingly, facing away, drifting in neutral. I loved her so much.” -pgs 138-140 

 
On British colonialism trauma: “The flat place is what happens when one’s reality is at odds with that of everyone else. When one’s truth comes starkly into contact with a world which denies it. Which cannot see it….This violent, hateful world is as real in Britain as it is in Pakistan. It happens in Britain, right now, as well as in the places Britian left in pieces when it had finished playing out its imperial fantasies. But Britain still won’t let itself know that.” – pg 204 

 
“And I don’t want to stop feeling the way I do. I don’t want to give up knowing, in this very visceral way, what I know about people and what they can do to you. About countries and what they can do to you. I don’t want to every be wholly relaxed, wholly at home, in a world of flowing fresh water built on the parched pain of others. The world itches, and so it should. When there is a truth which affirms itself insistently in a way that has no end and no resolution, when it receives no responsiveness or recognition, and has nowhere to site itself but in itself, entrenched in its own starkness- that’s the flat place. 

Cassandra, screaming, was in the flat place. Or rather, she entered it when the screaming, finally, stopped.” – page 207