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ralovesbooks's reviews
1431 reviews
Memorial by Bryan Washington
3.0
This book was an erratic, messy blur, which I get that some people like, but it doesn't hit for me.
"No one gets to choose what steadies them."
"What conversations do you have when you feel like there's nothing you want to say?"
"No one gets to choose what steadies them."
"What conversations do you have when you feel like there's nothing you want to say?"
Where the Line Bleeds by Jesmyn Ward
4.0
I hate to break my 5-star streak with Jesmyn, but it didn't help for me to read her debut last of all. I can see the bones of what her writing will become, but this one was so rough in comparison. Still good! Just not AS good, which is totally understandable.
"Ma-mee let the memory slide from her shoulder like a slipping sheet."
"Ma-mee let the memory slide from her shoulder like a slipping sheet."
Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
4.0
This book is so good, but ugggh, Queenie, stop making such bad decisions! I felt for her the entire time and just wanted good things for her.
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
3.0
I love a fairy tale retelling, and this was one was super interesting in the choices made, but it was way too long at parts, and the pacing was rough. User error: I read it over the summer when it is definitely a winter book.
Make It Scream, Make It Burn: Essays by Leslie Jamison
4.0
I don't know what prompted me to borrow this essay collection from the library, but I'm glad I did. It's very good journalism: clear-eyed, deep, and heartfelt.
Maximum Exposure
Annie calls her work a form of love, and considers love a form of focused attention. ... And if Annie's work is fueled by love, then it's a form of love that doesn't blunt or distort her gaze. Her love sharpens her sight.
The Quickening
I have found that usually when I try to articulate this to people -- "I felt like I wasn't supposed to take up so much space" -- they understand it absolutely or not at all. And if a person understands it absolutely, she is probably a woman.
Maximum Exposure
Annie calls her work a form of love, and considers love a form of focused attention. ... And if Annie's work is fueled by love, then it's a form of love that doesn't blunt or distort her gaze. Her love sharpens her sight.
The Quickening
I have found that usually when I try to articulate this to people -- "I felt like I wasn't supposed to take up so much space" -- they understand it absolutely or not at all. And if a person understands it absolutely, she is probably a woman.
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
3.0
It's hard/impossible to live up to the Broken Earth series, which I need to reread, but there was a lot going on in this world, and I didn't feel the need to continue in the series. Love NK Jemisin, though!
Outlawed by Anna North
4.0
Gotta love speculative fiction about women and women's rights, set as a Western! Seriously, though, this is very good.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
4.0
I'm glad I read this book because it's a work of art and craft, but wow, I felt out of it because I wasn't alive in the 60s, and I have a very dim grasp of events at that time. But Didion can't be beat for a turn of phrase, and I felt like each piece was a class in economy and forthrightness. I loved "On Keeping a Notebook" especially.
Where the Kissing Never Stops
She did not want, then or ever, to entertain; she wanted to move people, to establish with them some communion of emotion.
On Keeping a Notebook
Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all?
Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.
...our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable "I."
...bits of the mind's string--too short to use...
It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about.
On Going Home
...some nameless anxiety colored the emotional charges between me and the place that I came from.
Letter from Paradise, 21' 19"N, 157' 52"W
I lack all temperament for paradise, real or facsimile.
Goodbye to All That
It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.
New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city for only the very young.
New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself.
I was not then guilt-ridden about spending afternoons that way, because I still had all the afternoons in the world.
Where the Kissing Never Stops
She did not want, then or ever, to entertain; she wanted to move people, to establish with them some communion of emotion.
On Keeping a Notebook
Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all?
Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.
...our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable "I."
...bits of the mind's string--too short to use...
It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about.
On Going Home
...some nameless anxiety colored the emotional charges between me and the place that I came from.
Letter from Paradise, 21' 19"N, 157' 52"W
I lack all temperament for paradise, real or facsimile.
Goodbye to All That
It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.
New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city for only the very young.
New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself.
I was not then guilt-ridden about spending afternoons that way, because I still had all the afternoons in the world.
There There by Tommy Orange
4.0
I knew that I'd have a hard time keeping track of all the threads, and I did, but this book is a fascinating web of stories, and I'm glad I read it.
"Voice can take a long time to come all the way out, brother," Bobby said. "Be patient."
"Voice can take a long time to come all the way out, brother," Bobby said. "Be patient."
How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur
Did not finish book. Stopped at 60%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 60%.
Thanks to Simon & Schuster Audio and Libro.fm for my free copy. It was entertaining to hear Mike Schurr and the Good Place folks talk about philosophy, but not interesting enough. I definitely fell asleep a few times along the way before I gave up.