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alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)
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Such a creative retelling of Northanger Abbey. I loved the horror film references (though I havent seen most of them since I’m a scaredy cat) and what they mean to the main character (analogy to the queer experience). That added depth to the whole work. Overall great story!
Direct and to the point, but putting Murray's words into practice takes a lot of soul searching abd discipline. This book says many things I have never heard preached before, and I've heard a lot of sermons.
The main new concept for me is that living a life of full, complete obedience is not only the will of God, but also possible and something that every christian should believe and strive for. Murray says at one point that it's no wonder why the church is generally weak and ineffective. Our sole purpose is to obey the will of God, like organs of our body do not have an independent will and when they are healthy complete their sole purpose. Yet very few christians believe this to be possible "in this life". If your immediate reaction to this idea is "Wellll...." then maybe you should read the book.
It took me a long time to get through a relatively short book because the material is very practical, not very repetitive, and asks for immediate application. The final two chapters challenged me in ways that I believe will benefit me in the long term. Like I said, I've never heard this kind of teaching before.
The main new concept for me is that living a life of full, complete obedience is not only the will of God, but also possible and something that every christian should believe and strive for. Murray says at one point that it's no wonder why the church is generally weak and ineffective. Our sole purpose is to obey the will of God, like organs of our body do not have an independent will and when they are healthy complete their sole purpose. Yet very few christians believe this to be possible "in this life". If your immediate reaction to this idea is "Wellll...." then maybe you should read the book.
It took me a long time to get through a relatively short book because the material is very practical, not very repetitive, and asks for immediate application. The final two chapters challenged me in ways that I believe will benefit me in the long term. Like I said, I've never heard this kind of teaching before.
It's incredible how fresh these essays felt, 60 years on. Didion's various attempts at distilling and communicating the California spirit, much closer to Californication than Party in the USA, are fascinating in the way of trying to get a wide angle lens on something you know at the microscopic level. From small lines -- "Misinformation about rattlesnakes is leitmotiv of the insomniac imagination in Los Angeles," -- to entire essays, hers is an honest and possessive description of characters, currents, and the collective unconscious in the San Bernadino Valley.
The final essay, "Goodbye to All That" describes her motivation to move back to Southern California after living in NYC for 8 years: in short, west coast best coast. Her home was calling her back. Far from naive, her decision came after years of reporting on burnt out lives, frazzled dreams, and hopes derailed (aka the preceeding essays). I admire her acceptance of what isn't perfect and her refusual to gloss over the undesirable.
I have to say though, reading this really made me want to go read some more Jia Tolentino essays. These women have a similar voice, for sure.
The final essay, "Goodbye to All That" describes her motivation to move back to Southern California after living in NYC for 8 years: in short, west coast best coast. Her home was calling her back. Far from naive, her decision came after years of reporting on burnt out lives, frazzled dreams, and hopes derailed (aka the preceeding essays). I admire her acceptance of what isn't perfect and her refusual to gloss over the undesirable.
I have to say though, reading this really made me want to go read some more Jia Tolentino essays. These women have a similar voice, for sure.
I won't pretend that I understood. This review gave me hope lol: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/53877416
Fascinating! I thought I knew quite a bit about western art history but I learned a lot from this book. The CIA funding Abstract Expressionists, Norman Rockwell's career after he left the Saturday Evening Post, Van Gogh's possible murder, and what shook me the most: Fountain is maybe not a Duchamp piece. Shooketh, I tell you!
Great to listen to on audio since the author is a podcast host :)
Great to listen to on audio since the author is a podcast host :)
I loved this memoir. The author wove stories from the Quran together with her life experiences, making relgious characters come alive and step into the questions, struggles and triumphs of a queer, feminist, tri-cultural woman in the 21st century.
I picked this book up on a whim and I'm grateful I did.
I picked this book up on a whim and I'm grateful I did.
This book was everything I hoped it would be: Florida man meets Rat Race in a riproaring hunt for treasure in the Everglades.
This is totally not the sort of book I typically read (I like my fiction to be brooding and by a woman) but I had such a good time listening to the audio of this. Well written, great timing, hilarious characters and structured for maximum slapstick humor. You can tell the author had a fun time writing it. So if you need a palate cleanser from the deluge of novels that have been MFA'd to death, I'd recommend this one.
This is totally not the sort of book I typically read (I like my fiction to be brooding and by a woman) but I had such a good time listening to the audio of this. Well written, great timing, hilarious characters and structured for maximum slapstick humor. You can tell the author had a fun time writing it. So if you need a palate cleanser from the deluge of novels that have been MFA'd to death, I'd recommend this one.
I was drawn to this book because of I grew up swimming competitively. Jade Song so intimately captures the sensation of being a teenage swimmer that it is clear they also lived this experience.
The book is written mostly in first person, with the mc Ren Yu narrating her transformation from a human girl to a transcendent mermaid. It is a tense, dark, isolating journey, with her best friend/paramour Cathy being the sole source of light. Cathy and Ren's relationship is complex, interesting, and unhealthy on both sides tbh. There is also the uncomfortable and intrusive presence of their coach Jim, whose million little actions add up to a picture of a predator. Ren's relationship with her parents and Chinese identity is also complicated and layered and refreshingly well-written with many scenes showing Ren not embarressed by her otherness but trying to fit herself into a world that isn't ready to accept her. At the very least, the world doesn't care enough to try to understand. And when Ren reveals herself as a mermaid, only Cathy is willing to accept her for who she is.
The book is written mostly in first person, with the mc Ren Yu narrating her transformation from a human girl to a transcendent mermaid. It is a tense, dark, isolating journey, with her best friend/paramour Cathy being the sole source of light. Cathy and Ren's relationship is complex, interesting, and unhealthy on both sides tbh. There is also the uncomfortable and intrusive presence of their coach Jim, whose million little actions add up to a picture of a predator. Ren's relationship with her parents and Chinese identity is also complicated and layered and refreshingly well-written with many scenes showing Ren not embarressed by her otherness but trying to fit herself into a world that isn't ready to accept her. At the very least, the world doesn't care enough to try to understand. And when Ren reveals herself as a mermaid, only Cathy is willing to accept her for who she is.
#AlisaReadstheWorld : Argentina
I didn’t enjoy reading this book. There is next to zero dialogue and no traditional plot to speak of. The translation was heavy handed in some areas. It reads like a hallucinogenic dream sequence (I hate dream sequences as a rule across all mediums), jumping frenetically from the microscopic to the cosmic and from the 22nd century to the 18th often in the same sentence.
On top of all that, I listened to this on audio and the narrator absolutely butchers the Portuguese in the book. Like, how can someone who has a good accent in Spanish kill Portuguese so bad?? If she had read the Portuguese in a Spanish accent at least it would have been closer. Plus, there are some grammatical mistakes in the Portuguese. Ugh.
Anyways, the book is a literary experiment that attempts to show how sexual gender dynamics in the biological natural world inform our digital decisions and structures. It posits that blockchain and other digital innovations are based on desire for capital (and ultimately human capital via biological reproduction, sexual power, and political dominance), and are in fact an evolutionary step in the human species. Just like rats, orchids, cockroaches, and other biological species known for their fecundity and adaptive prowess thrive in the world’s sewage and decomposing mass, so the next step in human evolution is being conceived on the dark web, encoded in digital viruses, and being programmed by the slime that is 4- and 8-chan. The idea is that the internet and big data are not tools for human evolution—they are human evolution itself.
Unfortunately I didn’t really understand that this was the message of the book until the final 15’ of it, so I spent much of the book completely lost and frustrated at the nasty sexual references (care to guess what part of the female anatomy that “mini Jabba the Hut sitting in his throne room” refers to?). I think that the overall idea is interesting but the medium was not the correct one. Poetry, installation art, or perhaps an experimental web design project would have been better.
I didn’t enjoy reading this book. There is next to zero dialogue and no traditional plot to speak of. The translation was heavy handed in some areas. It reads like a hallucinogenic dream sequence (I hate dream sequences as a rule across all mediums), jumping frenetically from the microscopic to the cosmic and from the 22nd century to the 18th often in the same sentence.
On top of all that, I listened to this on audio and the narrator absolutely butchers the Portuguese in the book. Like, how can someone who has a good accent in Spanish kill Portuguese so bad?? If she had read the Portuguese in a Spanish accent at least it would have been closer. Plus, there are some grammatical mistakes in the Portuguese. Ugh.
Anyways, the book is a literary experiment that attempts to show how sexual gender dynamics in the biological natural world inform our digital decisions and structures. It posits that blockchain and other digital innovations are based on desire for capital (and ultimately human capital via biological reproduction, sexual power, and political dominance), and are in fact an evolutionary step in the human species. Just like rats, orchids, cockroaches, and other biological species known for their fecundity and adaptive prowess thrive in the world’s sewage and decomposing mass, so the next step in human evolution is being conceived on the dark web, encoded in digital viruses, and being programmed by the slime that is 4- and 8-chan. The idea is that the internet and big data are not tools for human evolution—they are human evolution itself.
Unfortunately I didn’t really understand that this was the message of the book until the final 15’ of it, so I spent much of the book completely lost and frustrated at the nasty sexual references (care to guess what part of the female anatomy that “mini Jabba the Hut sitting in his throne room” refers to?). I think that the overall idea is interesting but the medium was not the correct one. Poetry, installation art, or perhaps an experimental web design project would have been better.