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octavia_cade 's review for:

4.0

I came across this on a list of books worth reading, and I'm so glad I did. It's hilarious. It's also hard to classify. I thought about putting it on my "criticism" shelf, because it side-eyes all the things, but I keep that shelf for literary criticism - basically where I keep reference books. I thought about putting it in "politics" because a lot of this is related to activism, or on the "feminism" or "race" shelves because there's some focus on how to usefully interact with people who aren't you. In the end, though, I'm creating a "self help" shelf for this, because if there's anything holding this collection of essays together it's Ajayi's argument for how to prioritise common sense and decent behaviour and self-respect. It's almost like an etiquette book, but it goes deeper than that, encouraging people not to act like fools on social media, for instance. These are things we should all know but frequently forget - as she acknowledges she does herself, there's a sold strain of self-awareness here - and I both laughed my arse off and winced my way through a lot of it.