aimiller's Reviews (689)

This was a really beautiful little book; Bailey's musings on the slow life of the wild snail, connecting her own disability and the slow life it brings to snails, is more thoughtful than maybe I had anticipated, and it's just written so beautifully that even if you are not that interested in snails (I am no snail aficionado) you can still have a good time learning about snails and thinking about what a slowed down life might look like. So also an especially good read for our current Pandemic Times! 

Okay so: I'm glad I waited a little bit to read this so I could talk about it with people who had already read it. Without that, I really might have just gotten mad and carried that with me throughout the book. It really doesn't give any ground in letting you understand for the good part of the beginning, and does so intentionally

and frankly by the end I'm also not sure I know what's going on, but in a better way I think? That makes me excited for the third book, rather than just going "I don't get what is happening."

There are still things that make me wince; I have no idea how you approach this book if you were not on tumblr in 2012, and maybe if I wasn't there the immense number of now extremely old memes would not make me yell "oh come ON" every time, but woof. 

BUT, my little complaints aside, I did enjoy this I think even more than I did <em>Gideon the Ninth</em>; I loved all the mentor characters (Mercymorn for president because she mirrors exactly how I feel when I see most undergrads now,) and I loved seeing how these immortals are just broken people who really have no place to try to mentor anyone. Again, I found a lot of it confusing, but I think it was still okay, and I am definitely excited to get my hands on the next book when it comes out! 

A really gorgeous set of poems; Parker creates these rich worlds that are painful but also real and varied and beautiful, and the women that populate them face so much and are so real even when they are images or reference stereotypes. So many good poems in here; I think my favorite was "Toward a New Theory of Negro Propaganda." 

This was such a fun book to revisit. It made me laugh all over again, and though short, it's got such rich details and frankly really impressive pacing for a book for kids. The characters are so vivid, they jump off the page. I'm not sure how much nostalgia is coloring this, but I really did have a good time, so if you need a relaxing fun read, definitely recommend this one.  

This was SO GOOD. Gilpin takes this story of a radical union and makes a case that politics is not a process that doesn't matter to the shop floor, but that in fact radical politics--Communism, even--can have deep influence on shop politics, and that cementing solidarity across racial lines is possible through keeping an antagonistic relationship with management at the forefront. And she does so in a way that keeps the story rooted with people, and not with organization alphabet soup (which, I acknowledge, is necessary for some parts of labor history, but is definitely a challenge for folks new to the field.)

It's so carefully done and just really revs me up and makes me excited for the possibilities of radical politics in unionizing and what is possible--it gives an image of the world outside of a UAW style of long contracts that management chips away at over time, and is so powerful to see the FE workers support one another's grievances again and again and again. Just so good, definitely check it out. 

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Reread April 2021: Just as good if not better the second time! Gilpin just tells the story of the union so well and with so much care and attention to detail without losing the larger story. Absolutely still five stars; I bought a copy so I could annotate it and distribute it among friends, that's how much I loved it the first time and still love it. It really has shaped the way I understand union contracts, and I think it's just such a good introduction to good labor history. If you can get a hold of it, please check it out. It's just so good and a story told so well. 

Just DELIGHTFUL, and a beautiful next step for this series to take. It was so fun to be back in the world, and to see the growth that Sandry has. I'll admit that I kind of wish there was more with Pasco, because his arc seemed to go by pretty fast, and he was a fun character to follow, but there's already so much going on in this book that I understand why it was limited. Still so good, and just a joy to read. Makes me want to go onto the next one as soon as possible! 

This was really beautiful and also just so heartbreaking and tender at the same time. Unraveling the layers of care and love around Vivek was really powerful, and the book itself was just gorgeous. I'm  not sure how much I want to give away here, but it was so good to just be in this book and let it unfold around me as I read, and I hope other folks pick it up to have this experience. 

Just a fascinating, powerful, moving read. Lorde writes with such tenderness and care for women, even the difficult women in her life, and about her own growth, and lays out the problems that will continue to be with her for her life (making white lesbian women realize they ARE white, and ARE racist, just to name one.) It's also just. A beautiful book, one I will return to again and again, and one I strongly recommend other folks pick up if they haven't already! 

This was a really powerful work--eerie and creepy and also raised a lot of questions about justice and harm and how we go about repairing or not repairing harm. The last third was so gripping I read it in one sitting, and the first two thirds are disturbing (including

the brutal murders and evisceration of two women, including an Indigenous woman

) but also creepy and definitely set up that ending in incredible ways.

Jones lists a bunch of works that helped inspired this one, many of which were written by Indigenous women, and I think those might help me balance and work through some of my discomfort with the violence especially against Native women in this book, especially the <em>Deer Woman</em> comic by Elizabeth LaPensée (Anishinaabe/Métis/Irish).

 

Definitely a powerful read, and made me want to check out more of Jones's work! 

I dunno, I had a great time. So much going on all the time, even in the Describing Whales chapters. Yes it felt scattered sometimes because the whaling stuff kept jumping in and I'm sure there are deep Great American Novel reasons but I didn't approach reading it from that perspective (because I read it on my own, purposefully,) and I still had a great time (or maybe had a great time because I didn't read it that way?) 

The introductory essay in the edition I read, by Carl F. Hovde, I think helped me in approaching the question of narration/who is narrating so I wasn't bothered so much by the flipping of forms and narrators (and I'd recommend just reading the Whale Parts, before the final chapters where you actually get to the titular whale, as Herman Melville explaining to you that Whale are Fish and moving on from that point, because it makes them so much funnier.) 

I'd love to read like more commentary on the novel now that I've had a chance to just like enjoy it and vibe with it, but all of that aside I just had a great time and I do recommend reading it just for fun.