ellaellaellaetc's Reviews (494)

oh my... it's hard to put into words how much I FELT this book. i always thought that I would go vegetarian somewhere in the vague future with the sort of excuse of "once my (abysmal) iron levels get better" I'll fr go vego like 100%. i also always thought that if I went vegetarian I would do it purely because of environmental reasons and not one of animal rights/welfare. like I knew that a lot of animals were treated poorly and believed that that should change but not enough to fully stop eating meat. but😅😅 um😅😅 this book tells you that YOU the reader already generally know how bad the meat industry is, we all do. most people (myself included) don't WANT to know how terrible we treat animals every single day but wow.

it was actually really difficult for me to get through this book at certain parts which I wasn't expecting. i thought i fully understood what I was in for but it was so much worse than that. i have been making excuses for myself for a really long time but I'm going to start phasing out meat eating NOW. what I love about this book is that it does not demonize meat eaters and does not advocate for everyone in the entire world to stop eating meat. it advocates for YOU to care about animal welfare and encourages you to question how far you are willing to go to ignore what injustices that you know are happening in favour of you eating a yummy meal. factory farming is the issue at hand but there's almost no way in our society to ethically eat meat.

it actually made me think about the tv the good place quite a lot actually, if you've seen the show you'll know that it talks about how people are inherently good however it's literally impossible to be a good person in modern society because of the ripple on effects of your actions and how (i know that this phrase is overused but it's true "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism". in a hypothetical world (or 100 years ago...) where there was no factory farming, ethical debates about whether it is okay for humans to farm and then slaughter & eat them could be had, however, it is now impossible to have these discussions outside of the context of factory farms unless you're out there tending to your own animals, breeding them, raising them, feeding them, caring for them when they're sick and then ultimately slaughtering and eating them. 

I found myself being really disgusted by the scent of meat while I was reading this, that's how much of a visceral reaction this book had on me. while I can't say that I will never ever eat meat again, I don't think I will be able to do so without thinking of this book and without a heavy amount of guilt. I know a lot of my friends are vegetarian so if you have any tips for me please let me know! it's going to be difficult to juggle with coeliac disease but I'm going to try.
 
two quotes really stuck with me: 
"Not responding is a response-we are equally responsible for what we don't do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle".
&
"We can't plead ignorance, only indifference. Those alive today are the generations that came to know better. We have the burden and the opportunity of living in the moment when the critique of factory farming broke into the popular consciousness. We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, what did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals"

these quotes can be applied to almost every single injustice that we continue to perpetuate by our inaction - climate change, the fast fashion industry, the mistreatment of uyghur muslims in china, the current attack on trans rights in the states and around the world. even if we're not the CEOs expanding our near monopolies or the government officials turning a blind eye to human rights issues, we are still contributing (in some ways more than others) to the injustices of the world with our ignorance or with our compliance ans lack of questioning (or the intentional evasion of the truth). while I obviously mainly took in the ideas about eating animals, this book also made me take a really introspective look about myself and think about what I'm actually doing for the issues that I actually care about. Everyone should read this book and if you don't want to only because you don't want to know and you're afraid of what you'll have to give up after you know, you're not only part of the problem and you're perpetuating it.

 while ig i can appreciate that maybe at it's time this was slay but wow this was maybe some of the least subtle messaging I've ever seen in maybe my entire life??? and the language was not extremely simple either (maybe that's just a different time period thing though) so you can't say that this story was.only made for children. don't really know why I decided to read this on the last day of march but I while I didn't exactly enjoy the experience of reading this, I'm glad I've read it. not something I think I'm ever going to revisit during christmas time or otherwise 

 wow nail polish matches this cover exactly how exciting! this book felt like a first draft. it had the skeleton of an excellent story and on paper has everything I love (self destructive woman in her early to mid twenties kinda failing at life/relationships and is burnt out at such a young age #slay) however, it was not done all that well. the pacing of this felt very off once we got to the mid point. all the stuff about the amercian election felt very randomly thrown in as it was never talked about before and then was a major part of the story. as well as her talk with her mother at the end, it was very impactful but I feel like that conversation wasn't earned because that moment was not built up and would have hit a lot harder if we had known more about the mum in the first place. her going to new york should have happened WAY earlier in the book for feel natural or it should have happened at the very end with her experiencing the same thing there and ending halfway through her trip or something idk. i did like how her past got more revealed as the book went on, those reveals were perfectly timed and I loved her relationship with all the other women and her complex/self destructive relationship to female friendship how much she craves it. it was also lovely to read a book about a messy asian girl. while I love this genre of sad girl fiction, it's often a very white genre and it's great to read about asian girls fucking up their life by accident but also kinda on purpose cause omg that's me fr. regardless, I'll be excited to read new stuff from the author because the potential is there! also i love reading more aus fiction😚😚 

I decided to not take any physical books for this trip and will be reading ebooks from my library (that I already own) so I pre-took all of the photos I'm uploading while I'm away. this is my first time using this ebook feature on my phone (I havr a kindle but for those i have to buy the ebooks - I usually only use my phone for audiobooks) and i realised very quick into this trip though that part of the reason why I like reading so much is to give my eyes a break from a screen, so when I tried to read this on the plane I just got a headache. this is odd to me because I never had an issue with wattpad when I used it or ao3?? i did have it on dark mode for this which may be a factor. also it loses the romance of reading that I admittedly enjoy. while I'm glad that I have the option to read ebooks on my phone, after this trip I will only read ebooks if it's not available as an audiobook and do not want to read it enough to buy a physical copy. will also only read the ebook version if I'm planning on reading in short intervals, eg. on a half and hour tram ride or whatever, any more than that and I will just read a physical book or use my kindle for something else, the book being free isn't enough for me in this situation lol. anyway, onto the actual book review and not format review. slay? this is nonfiction!!!!! lisa taddeo followed three actual women over the past 8 or so years and told their story!!! i can't decide whether the 3 women having relatively similar stories is good because of them or bad because of lack of diversity/the women blurring together in my mind... this was very insightful book and i screenshotted a lot of excellent quotes! also there were quite a few books mentioned in the Maggie parts of the story all of which I had read; freakonomics (a very recent review!), twilight (annotated, much like my copy is digitally annotated 🤑🤑) and the Gruffalo, slay! although it was great it didn't really MOVE me or anything or blow me away 

first of my Europe trip reads!!!!! finished this baddie on the plane❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 and by baddie i mean that this was not a good book :/// loved the message however the story was boring and I didn't feel attached to really any of the characters, how sad :/ 1.75 stars ig

 i think i need to start reading more Australian writers! i have met every single character in this book. this was getting close to being too pretentious but I think it's self awareness made it skate by and I really enjoyed the thesis of the book as spoken by the characters (so sally rooney of her 🤭🤭) i fond it difficult to really explain what I loved about this book but the writing was solid, what it said was amazing and showed such a real experience? slayed. this was the perfect recommendation for me, literally everything that I like in a book wrapped into one. i will give it a 4.25 because I really really liked it. but like. that's it. didn't especially blow me away but I still highly highly recommend! 

 wow this was great! i didn't realise that this was one of those books that weaves in and out following different characters that are all semi-connected when I first began and I'm glad I didn't cause I usually hate those stories for no reason and I might not have picked it up. I'm so so glad that I kept with it despite not liking the format because I actually really really enjoyed it and hearing the different perspectives of the other characters really enhanced the story!!! i think because we spent such long chapters with each character and their story progresses passed their own chapter this was very satisfying for me to read. i can't think of more to say but I may edit this post with more thoughts because wow!! i just want to discuss this book with someone via voicenotes because I think that's what this book deserves, if I ever end up starting a book club I think this will be my first pick! 

finally finished this monster of a book, and tbh, it was okay. like i can't deny that the writing was good but I don't really think I "got" this book and i don't really understand why so many people connected with this book so deeply. I was very intrigued in the first half but after the thing that they say will happen happens, I found myself very bored. It didn't really feel like this book discussed things that people say it discussed like class and elitism. I didn't hate this and I'm glad I read it so now I know my opinion on it but this was far too long and I just didn't care enough

 sorry I was so so bored. this book really lacked subtlety and I didn't really care about any of these characters or what happened to them. i don't really have much to say cause I didn't hate this or anything but I just feel a lot of apathy for this book 

the art in this was amazing! i was so so captivated by the progression of all the character and suit dragons, loved all the inspiration and seeing how it was incorporated into the final product. as an art book this is like almost 5 stars. the stories in this though? another story. i didn't care about any of the characters (there were too many to care tbh) and all seemed very similar in stories. low-key forgot everything immediately after reading, she should have stuck to basic character descriptions and light explanations of the world's politics, wasn't a fan. anyway this was written to compliment a deck of cards that she designed with amazing character designs and as that it slayed but the added stories just dragged everything down and stopped it from being fun to read which it previously was, thank you bianca for letting me borrow this!