Perfectly captures the original Marvel ethos in an interesting perspective: the daily life of an ordinary man as he witnesses the rise and fall of various heroes. He documents the encounters and goes back and forth as to wether the super heroes are good or bad. Really interesting, fantastic art.

There is so many insightful and thoughtful notions in these essays. And unlike some with this format, I felt that they all had the same standards and were all interesting. It covers so many things, gender inequality and sexism and feminism, and the methods of the all alt-right and other racism. All with nuance and sharp, biting insights.

This is such a great book. I am quickly beginning to like this format, which is funny because I usually liken it to short story collections, where it tends to be hit and miss. But I’ve read 2-3 this year that are absolutely eye opening and incredible so I will have to make a distinction from now on.

This was a pretty huge slog until about 60% into it for me. Historical fiction is a tricky beast, for me. You can pretty much set your watch for the tropes, which definitely show up en masse in this one. 6-7 rapes, karmic Justice, evil bishops. I wonder now if this influenced a lot of historical fiction? Wouldn’t be surprised if this was the blueprint for a bunch of it, to be honest.

There is some satisfaction in the excellent plotting, which built up nicely. No doubt the thematic through line mirroring the starting and stuttering with interventions of antagonistic forces to Tom’s dream; so powerful, apparently, his fairly loveless ex wife felt it needed to be on her tongue at death. A Bold Statement. And it IS satisfying that everything comes around and we circle back to each event so that it gives more context, plot wise. But it also makes the fiction feel slightly manufactured as well.

Things are a little to clean, even the dirt.

It’s difficult to prioritize accuracy and then have multiple rapes and wild, random acts, many of which are sexual in nature and trite, such as the gratuitous, obligatory sadist. People really like to show “evil” dudes with that trope. But yet all this mess ties up into a neat bow. It’s a readers satisfaction, and what bumped it up to 3 stars.

Though long, it did clip along pretty well, I found. Something I hadn’t expected, actually. The first chapter was a bit long, but I mean, it’s historical fiction and we need to be situated, so I don’t mind. It took me a long, long time though, to find something to care about. Especially after the very convenient plot points at the beginning that come ‘round. It’s so tropey at the times that you can pretty much see every character arc and plot point in the distance. You just trot on to see how nice the thing you’re about to witness has been constructed, pretty much.

Once I did, and things started to come together - albeit with the feeling of a jigsaw puzzle, rather than a painting trying to capture a historical moment - it did start to carve out some agency for the people I liked. I think every woman only got agency after being dominated, and I can hear the men shout about historical accuracy—in fiction. Where the cathedrals aren’t real. And the characters never existed. The writer can choose to decide what is important and what isn’t.

The verisimilitude isn’t that granular. We don’t follow the characters during plenty of events. So the choice to have gratuitous sex and sexual assault and what not, is the author saying this is important for the overall story. This means it’s fair for the reader to judge them within the fiction as established. And at the very least I can say I’m not interested in seeing that and I’m 100% sure women achieved agency through other means, even “historically”.

Power through surviving is all well and good, I was just so tired every time a chapter started happily and knew that the plotting demanded it’d end shitty for them, and if it was a woman, well assault was probably going. I understand that the guy is shitty and bad. We’ve seen him be that way the whole time. Not everything has to be cyclical and directly opposing to their initial action. No one really changes, they just wait for their own karmic Justice. If you’re bad, anticipate the down fall. If you’re good, you’ll earn it, but you’ve got good odds. Unless you’re a minor character.

I feel like this is the epitome of a 3 star book. Had I read it ten years ago or more, my mind probably would have been blown. These days, though, I am looking for a bit more than what all historical fiction has to offer and exceptional plotting.

This is verisimilitude done right. I liked how the thoughts of Pizza Girl conjure the ennui of a life where few things deviate from established patterns, and also readily telegraph the accents of her personality that are at odds with the perceived monotony. She’s funny and smart.

But grief is a thing that enters every aspect of a persons’ life. She’s lost her dad, forcing her to reckon with conflicting notions of who he was. Memories and verbal accounts from her mother surface from Pizza Girl’s stream of conscious.

I’ve always found narratives with a catalyst like grief to be interesting. It’s one of the only things that feels like it should be so broad that it ought to be generic, but in practice the specificity of the conflict triggers internal and external factors in such unique ways that anyone finds it accessible and easy to empathize with. It also has an unwieldy and unique property, since grief is unique to the individual. You find yourself being surprised at how they work through it and what the climax ends up being.

It’s an easy framework for defying expectations and endearment, as it does here.

This wasn’t on my radar until I saw The Poptimist Stop Asian Hate Reading List YouTube video. Check it out, there are lots of great picks here: https://youtu.be/8xTmhWJlis4

This was alright, but coming off of the Broken Earth Trilogy, it feels like a collection of interesting ideas that haven’t quite coalesced in the communication of world building. Some of the characters stand out well and are what propelled it for me, despite having a lot of questions that weren’t answered about the world and the somewhat strange plot delivery that makes it feel like not much happens.

Interesting and thought provoking. Pretty different read for me. I don’t typically read about war because it’s almost always tropey. This, however, was anything but. It grows more complex and interesting as you go on, and the final chapter was really great. The story feels like it’s morphing and so different and that makes you look harder for the answer. I enjoyed that a lot.

The only thing I disliked, which unfortunately needled me constantly, was the repetition of information already given to the reader. It creates a unique cadence but it’s really annoying retreading so much ground, especially in the first half. Just constantly circling the exact same thing that happened. Not in a new way either. Just exactly the same thought in the way that telling a story form memory sometimes will do. But just like with dialogue, the reader doesn’t need that aspect to understand; or I feel I don’t anyway. Ultra Realism is not a particular quality I like in dialogue, nor other aspects of fiction. We decide what we look at in a scene with intentionality, so it bugged me a lot. Otherwise it’d probably have been a 5 star read or a 4.5 rounded up.

Intense and surprisingly granular. It’s interesting what she chooses to include and what she doesn’t. It’s a bit of a mixed bag for me, as this feels disjointed or meandering from the centre. Especially around food? It could almost be a legit cook book at times. Despite this, there’s plenty of moments that were affecting. She has a unique visual relationship with objects that springboard her into thoughts that was really interesting.

There is that quality though, sometimes, when things are described with such specificity that it undermines the memoir, you know? Like… some of this must be fiction how could you recall all this detail from 10 year old memories during innocuous and inconsequential connective tissue events? The less subjective memories are, the more I pull back as a reader. That’s just how I tend to react.

It’s also just… weird sometimes when the author chooses to narrate their own book. It’s really hard to narrate anything effectively, but with this kind of subject matter, more so. The author gave a pretty disaffected reading and they took the wind of the sails of impactful moments. The writing is pretty strong regardless, it’s just, yeah, weird. I think usually authors should not be the ones narrating because when you know it’s them and it’s almost always flat, it’s difficult not to think I could get more from the voice just reading it off text. Yet I somehow always end up thinking when I choose the audiobook that it could be that rare time when the text really comes alive because the author knows their material so well and have most likely spoken it aloud when writing and editing it.

The audiobook is fairly well narrated and the concept is great. I think I’d have liked it more in print, because with so many characters and one narrator who doesn’t change their voice whatsoever, it makes it difficult to differentiate between everyone and has the effect of having a lot of the stories run together.

It also has the shortcoming of short stories collection, where some stories are, of course, more interesting than others. The concept really helps the ones that aren’t as punchy and are more predictable feel like they play more of a part.

I’d be curious to see what the prose and style would be like if I ever find this in a shop.

It’s wild reading this after so many years. It doesn’t feel long ago. Especially at a societal pace. More things with MeToo happened, but it certainly seems like how Justice is allocated to victims plays out exactly as described by the author. It is a fundamental aspect of living, to be required to violate your identity in society.

Even in the sense of what Justice is in capitalism, to think she would have had to file for restitution and that take an additional amount of time that’s carved out nebulously. Infractions to pile up to make it harder to get any kind of advocacy; no matter how poor.

I can’t recommend this memoir enough. It really does feel like a reclaiming of identity, in all its multifaceted parts. Even in the statement that everyone should have read by now, when she was unknown but her story is grounded in such specificity that it spoke to everyone. And here is more of that, in all the context and detail and structure constructed to draw further through lines from what happened to her and our culture.