i’ve heard lots of good things about this book and unfortunately it didn’t live up to my expectations. it attempts to hype up women to go after their dreams, and reiterates a lot of valid points about building habits, prioritizing yourself, and the value of self-worth. 

however, a lot of her book includes ideas that she’s borrowed from other people. there’s a lot of emphasis on physical appearance and weight in order to feel confident, a brief statement about how you can immediately quit smoking if you want to badly enough, quite a bit of ableism, and she discounts mental illness as something that you can fix if you just wake up early and practice self care. there’s a lot of contradictory statements btw acknowledging the value of collaboration and accepting help, and claiming they she has a “self-made” business which she created on her own. a lot of her advice hinges on people having the financial means to support themselves while doing unpaid work to gain experience in their chosen field, which is not attainable for most people. 

so, overall i didn’t love this book, and even though there are some parts of it that offer good advice, i don’t recommend it 

i bought it for $4 and had zero expectations besides thinking that manic depression is interesting and liking food 

it’s a very human account of bipolar II, which is a different perspective than i’m used to. it’s super honest, and talks about personal experience and living life with a mental illness, rather than just the clinical presentation 

this is very short, and i think that it is a valuable read. it provides a very real account of misogyny in everyday life, and emphasizes that women of color are disproportionately impacted by sexism, even if it’s not always intentional. there are a lot of subtle and unconscious ways that people of different genders are disparately treated, and this seeks to exemplify that in some real world examples. 

this story is really compelling and broke my heart, but i really enjoyed reading this! 

the characters experience a lot of loss, but i think their resiliency in times of hardship makes this book so intriguing and hard to put down. 

this one’s long, but it’s worth the read.  

i’ve never read anything by margaret atwood before, and i really couldn’t tell you why bc this was SO GOOD! her storytelling is fantastic, and it makes this dystopian society really come to life. 

There were WAY too many ethical violations for me to overlook within this book, and I kept hoping it would get better and it didn’t. 

this book covers a series of really difficult medical cases, and walks you through the process of diagnosis. the stories are well written and very honest—it doesn’t try to sugarcoat initial misdiagnoses or the difficulty of finding the right diagnosis. 

ps. this is based on a new york times column, and there’s also a netflix series based on that!