peeled_grape's reviews
137 reviews

Immediately put it down after it defended Zionism. How the fuck are you gonna write a book about fascism and defend Zionism? FUCK that. It also said that white people suddenly not being overrepresented is "painful." Is it?? IS IT?? Just a racist book. Read WEB DuBois instead.

WOOOWWWW. I was trying to figure out what the pleasure of Anna Karenina was, but I think it is just a pleasure to be reading it. Loved this, so much.

I will say I disliked Levin quite a bit (which is funnier considering he’s Tolstoy’s self-insert). God, the Russian farming sections. Struggled through that. I wonder what made Tolstoy name the book after Anna when Levin is featured more heavily. He seems to be the main protagonist here. Sections 2 and 3 are slow, but 8 is the disappointing one. So much happens between 7 and 8 we don’t get to see and should!!

Very slow paced. The internalized homophobia is overwhelmingly present. I swear to god, I don't give a shit about French and I am not looking up the meaning of random phrases every other line. Jesus.

Also: Giovanni sucks lollll. I mean so does David--I think Hella is maybe the one person who doesn't suck--but Giovanni's "I'll kill myself if you leave me" thing made me dislike him quite a bit.

It’s so fucking wild to me that Quintana died immediately before the book was published. Right after the events described.

The book was good and fine but it’s wild to read about a medical crisis from a rich person’s perspective. She could live in a hotel in LA to be with her daughter in the UCLA ICU while having a permanent residence in New York. Worry over money was not mentioned once. Like damn. It was also a bit pretentious at times (like one paragraph that went something like “Quintana was in the ICU / it reminded me of a trip to Thailand I took once” like bro what the fuck do you mean). The audiobook also has piano music in the background at the end of certain chapters and I fucking hated that fancy-Christmas-dinner ass music. I found the repetition moving, but otherwise found the book somewhat unremarkable. I was so annoyed by how rich they were and how many times expensive vacations come up.

Part memoir, part essay, and extremely meditative. Between the World and Me is in conversation with this one (and not just because it gets its title from a quote in TFNT). 

They’re all definitely dead in that last chapter, right?? Or Celie is dreaming it? Cause the ship sinking was a THING, right???

Walker is transphobic and antisemitic and this book does depict all Black men as violent. Is it bad that I find the book compelling all the same?? I need to think about it more.

Some of these lines are going to stick with me for a while: “I was meant for the library, not the classroom”; the idea that race is the child of racism, not the other way around, etc. 

Reference for: police brutality, racism