i’m not sure why i didn’t take “the diary of” in this title literally, but it truly does read as a diary, taking you through the day by day mundanities and absurdities that afflict a bookseller in a small town. 

this was very structured and i found it enjoyable to half listen to as an audiobook while multitasking, but i would not have been able to sit through reading this. nothing spectacular, but decent nonetheless. 

i ended up much more invested in this story than i expected. truly captivating: i couldn’t put it down. 

the main character truly does make some idiotic decisions, but i can’t say i wouldn’t have made some of the same ones. 

i am really in my feelings today, and this facilitated the flow of tears. cathartic, heartbreaking, poetic. beautiful writing, as usual. 

This reads like a journal, where Cecily Strong is working to process the grief of losing her cousin and of the pandemic 

This was the first book I’ve read by Malcolm Gladwell, and despite all the good things i’ve heard about his work, it will also be my last. In this book, Gladwell reduces sexual assault to miscommunication, engages in blatant victim blaming, and invalidates survivors of sexual assault. He goes into intense and unnecessary detail of assault of children, sympathizing with the perpetrators, and he turns the story of a brave woman’s disclosure into a chapter on college drinking culture, where he, as expected, blames alcohol for rape. 

This is clearly written from a place of immense privilege, and it’s infuriating to see the large platform that gladwell has been given. I do not have the time or energy to explain why this is wrong. There are many, many resources out there to educate yourself, and many ways that you can support survivors of sexual assault. Supporting this book and Gladwell is not one of them. 

eye-opening and moving and sometimes heartbreaking, writing this book gave emily ratajkowski her power back