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323 reviews

infelizmente o único melodrama rimado que eu gosto é aquele da lorde. tem uns trechos bem bons, me identifiquei bastante, mas chegou um momento que cada acerto era seguido de cinco reviradas de olho, a maioria durante os poemas. sem contar que ela pesquisou o paradeiro de todo mundo na internet, só não o dos próprios pais??? meses de terapia paga sei lá como, e nada da família aparentemente saudável e inofensiva. a querida precisou que a namorada — que a amava o suficiente pra perdoá-la, mas não pra salvar o contato dos sogros — ouvisse por acaso um anúncio no rádio. tudo bem que 2019 é pré pandemia, mas não tão pré assim. e um problema mais meu: como uma mulher que cresceu como uma garota pobre e triste, dificilmente consigo sentir pena de quem tem rede de apoio e condição financeira pra procurar ajuda, tanto que parei de curtir a leitura assim que foi revelado que ela tem os dois. like girrrrl. não que eu fosse perdoar o melodrama pseudo poético se ela fosse uma perdedora de verdade, mas eu poderia ter tentado. inclusive, é dito que ela fez terapia por anos antes da cronologia da história, mas não o porquê. mesmo assim, a personagem demonstra choque com a necessidade de ter que tomar remédios depois de sumir por um ano e ainda tentar suicídio. enfim, continuei lendo devido ao "mistério" da causa da fuga, e de novo foi difícil levar a sério, mesmo que o livro seja baseado na experiência da autora. verídico ou não, não foi transposto da melhor forma. ou talvez minha adolescência tenha me dado uma casca grossa demais.

"the worst has already happened."

as expected, extremely triggering for older sisters. but that's not why i'm giving it 5 stars. i don't judge a story by its level of sadness or the number of hard-hitting topics it discusses. i'm giving it 5 stars due to the fact that i can't remember ever being this impressed by a young adult book. i liked Six of Crows and A Deadly Education just fine, but they still felt pretty ya to me. this one forgets to remind you, except for two, maybe three instances, none related to characterization. a young protagonist who acts like it, and an author more concerned with portraying her in honesty than selling her to other young people. one week since finishing the book and i still catch myself missing Sadie. that feeling of watching Tár not quite believing Lydia Tár isn't real because not many people feel that expansive. as if they expanded the world a litte. except that Sadie is completely unremarkable, only remembered for her stutter. it's her, a stolen knife and broken words. she doesn't want to be remembered, however, she wants to be dangerous. she wants it so bad, the way only someone who always has to protect without ever being safe could. a wish hard to grant and hard to forget.

another thing that made this a memorable reading experience for me was the full-cast audiobook: it edges perfection. i had always planned to listen to it so i could better immerse myself in the podcast episodes that intertwine the chapters narrated by the protagonist. this meta quality provides the sole reason for Sadie to have endured on my tbr, as i couldn't care less about true crime podcasts and rarely pick up books of this genre (the who-did-it, what-happens-next, where-do-we-go-now type of books) or with this thematic (calling all women to read and rant about the real-life nightmare that could happen to them at any moment! what? you don’t like literature?). thankfully, everything is dealt with care: the narrative haunts the reader without being graphic, and the side characters' perceptions of the abusers bare a heartbreaking plausibility. furthermore, the audiobook enhances the story's format —a girl on a mission versus the investigation that follows her traces months late— so the atmosphere is also on point.

even more striking is the contrast between Sadie’s stutter and her fierce, almost vicious inner voice that gets tender bit by bit once she starts thinking about her murdered sister. she's always ready to put her knife to use and cut through whatever meat blocking her way (or at least she thinks she is, urges herself to be); then comes a memory or some vision of the past engraved in her subconsciousness and projected onto the world –for there are Sadies and Matties everywhere– combined with a yearning she can’t completely vanquish, and her narration takes a different color, becomes somewhat dreamy, a bit surreal. it’s a shame when Courtney Summers breaks the spell to remind us of the ya label attached to her book and explain that these visions are just Sadie’s trauma resurfacing. anyone can figure that out by themselves and still be caught off guard every time it happens as the memories pop up so naturally yet so abruptly our first thought is that we’re meeting new characters or passing strangers by. the author found a great way of incorporating flashbacks without the usual dullness that comes with them, so there was no need to show her hand like that (elements of the story that could use an actual explanation, like the mother’s motivations, get none). anyhow, the audiobook’s cast doesn’t waste all the groundwork and makes an already good story shine bright. now i wonder if the text alone would've been this dazzling. i know that last line wouldn’t have hit me as hard.

for someone who hates acting, Jennette's narration is strikingly good, making the audiobook a richer experience than the raw text. but i don't wanna hear or read the word mom ever again. "i'm sure she’s dying." fucking finally. also, i expected the second part to focus on the author's journey of recognizing and eventually accepting that her mother was her biggest abuser rather than her biggest hero. however, she dumped the first therapist who brought this up, and the topic was largely ignored for the rest of the book until the last chapter. there, we're told that this journey did take place off-page, in an approach that misses the point of a book with such a title. my favorite part was the beginning, which focused on her childhood. it's always fascinating to read through a child's point of view, and any woman who had a lot on her shoulders or was the emotional support for her mother from a young age can relate to the tragically hilarious episodes narrated here. unfortunately, too many of us know what is like to be a good girl and a bitter woman. on the other hand, i don't think is humanly possible for anyone to remember so many details—the exact words, thoughts and moments—from the early years of their life. that's even more unconvincing in contrast with the adult years, where, ironically, the biggest time jumps occur, and the narrative becomes somewhat disjointed, albeit still featuring unrealistically detailed dialogues. it's not that i don't believe in what she went through, i just couldn't quite suspend my disbelief regarding the way she chose to write about it. her style leaves a mark, though, and i hope to see her name on the cover of a fiction book someday. so, as a reader who never picks up memoirs, i'm surprised to know they can be written like a novel, in the present tense even. i'm also relieved that Miranda turned out to be as nice as Carly, was crossing my fingers about that.

would've appreciated this more if it were a standard self-help or psychology book and the author didn't try to be funny. if there's something that won't take a smile out of me is comedians. the chances are less than zero if they're speaking in english. haha my job is to make you laugh. well, you don't. my own misery is way funnier.

nothing that i didn't already know to some extent (accompanied by a disregard for the direct influence of capitalism in the lack of depth in our lives). the concept of deep work is familiar to anyone who's spent at least a couple of hours on the productivity side of YouTube, but before reading the book that coined it, i had already expanded on it to include, besides professional (knowledge) work, any cognitive activity meaningful to me. this type of "work", from reading a book to watching a movie, has to get at least 30 minutes straight of my attention. that's because im the kind of person who schedules even my hobbies, otherwise i don't do them (e.g. 3 blocks of 30 minutes for reading spread throughout the day) –which is actually a strategy suggested here: schedule everything, even your rest and leisure times, so you always know what to do next and your brain can't trick you into thinking you don't. (for some reason, authors always recommend using a notebook, which i find ridiculous, bc i'll never open the damn notebook again, but i'll definitely check my phone. so i just ignore them and use the todoist app instead, pinning "today" tasks on my home screen.) this may sound exhausting or robotic, but it's actually freeing, especially if you consider the way focus and willpower work and schedule even your procrastination habits. you can't use the "just this one more time" excuse if it's already scheduled bc if it's already scheduled, you're not abdicating it forever, and if you're not abdicating it forever, you're not pushing your willpower to the limit, but saving it for the real work. plus, there's no point in creating a schedule free of distractions if you're "subconsciously planning" to give in eventually. in case the habit or activity in question is truly bad for you, you can slowly but surely (instead of drastically but ingenuously) remove it from your schedule, strengthening your willpower muscle and building a healthy pathway in your brain. just think like a drug addict, we're all drug addicts. by the way, for people new to Deep Work, great complementary reading would be Stolen Focus and the trilogy of habit —The Willpower Instinct, The Power of Habit and Atomic Habits— as these books better explain why our brain can't handle switching tasks all the time, and how it can both get addicted to "shallow" activities and be trained like an athlete to pursue deep ones.

instrutivo, mas repetitivo. forma uma espécie de trilogia do hábito junto com The Power of Habit e Atomic Habits. este livro, mais do que os outros dois, deixa claro o desequilíbrio entre a sociedade moderna, tão violentamente futurista, e a força primitiva de nossos genes. no entanto, cada um dos três, em uma mistura de neurociência, psicologia e auto ajuda, pega o leitor pela mão e lhe propõe estratégias para não descarrilhar antes que o capitalismo corroa por completo o seu cérebro ("você tá na merda, mas dá pra caminhar por ela sem escorregar e bater a cabeça"). apesar dessas estratégias muitas vezes se sobreporem, e de eu me questionar até que ponto os estudos que as corroboram são confiáveis, a "trilogia do hábito" é esclarecedora, relacionável e até reconfortante, tornando bem simples sua aplicabilidade.

I read this book exactly one year ago but never reviewed it. It was my first self-help book and I was surprised by its practical advice that can be easily applied to daily life. After finishing it, I realized I was already following some of the tips in my reading system. There's nothing groundbreaking or original here, especially if you're familiar with the productivity side of YouTube. However, those channels talking about how to get things done take a lot from Atomic Habits (and the author, in turn, took a lot from others). Among the creators I know in the field, Elizabeth Phillips seems the only one offering refreshing or more realistic content (and content more suited for people with ADHD, I dare say). Although her thumbnails lately give me "AI-generated" vibes, she and James Clear have helped me too see how I approach things more clearly and where to go from there.

contrary to what the words "time management" on the cover suggest, Four Thousand Weeks reads more like a philosophy text than a self-help book (there are whole paragraphs dedicated to Heidegger's masterwork, Being and Time). its most disappointing aspect, however, is not this genre ambiguity, but the joyful George Orwell quotation at the very end. the author could address Heidegger's nazi past and antisemitic views, but couldn't refrain from doing that. and this came out after the pandemic. the world is ending and we're still proudly quoting George Orwell. it's like opening a fiction book in 2024 and finding a Harry Potter reference in it. let us fucking move on. 4 stars bc the audiobook still felt like therapy. not very useful, yet quite helpful.

more like a complementary reading to Atomic Habits, as it explains how habits work neurologically, than an actual guide, even though it was published first (or perhaps because of it). paused it many times to read and do other things, but three ideas stuck with me. first, the concept of keystone habits (like that one action you repeat every morning and defines your whole day), which create a positive domino effect when controlled. thus, instead of obsessing over every behavior you want to change, you might find it easier to focus on those basic habits that directly influence the course of your day and night. secondly, the fact habits aren't directly related to or do not depend on memory, so that even amnesiacs can build complex ones. finally, the golden rule of habit change: bad habits can't be extinguished, only transformed. using the same cue and providing the same reward, you can change the routine or sequence of behaviors that links them, but this link will always be ingrained in your brain. these three factors explain why I hardly go about my day as planned the night before, and why, on the other hand, I need chains of habits and borderline obsessive rituals to properly function. as a pathological anxious and sleep deprived person, with an undiagnosed executive dysfunction, I could never rely on my memory or attention span, much less outside help, thorough my life. for that reason, I'm always taking notes, setting reminders and trying new routines, while fighting the cues to my many bad habits and getting depressed over my depressive cravings. so the good news is that memory isn't everything. the bad is that I'm a little too compulsive.

turns out my deep fear of developing Alzheimer may be actually a premonition.