madgerdes's Reviews (970)

I love learning!

The comparisons she made between her life and birding/the lives of birds began to feel a bit heavy handed as the book went on but overall this was a fun read!

I read this book because I wasn’t as familiar with the case as I ought to be, considering how often my students bring it up in assignments and discussions. I wanted to learn more about the incident, its media response, and the involved parties. I wish the author went further with his critique of true crime, but to do that within the confines of this book as it’s written probably would have required some willful cognitive dissonance on his part. It felt like he was dancing around compelling arguments about the exploitation of tragedy, especially when he brought up the number of true crime influencers who descended on Moscow after the murders or when he talked about the citizen sleuths sending death threats to people who had already been cleared of potential involvement. Maybe it was cognitive dissonance, maybe he thinks of himself as a “good” true crime author who is different, maybe he didn’t want to isolate a potential audience of true crime junkies – I don’t know. But it left a bad taste in my mouth especially in conjunction with the amount of reconstruction of the victim’s lives he did. I do believe there are ways to tell victim-centered stories of harm, but this wasn’t it. He spent a weird amount of time talking about victims’ Instagram captions, and justified some of this by talking about how he obtained a lot of his information from publicly available data. The level of depth he went into regarding the victims’ private lives did not sit well with me. It’s possible that he had the green flag from their families, that’s something I need to look into. While he didn’t sensationalize the descriptions of the crime itself, I’d say this book still falls short of being a “moral” or “good” true crime story (a separate conversation is whether or not that’s even possible under capitalism). There’s also something insidious about publishing a book about this case before the trial has even occurred that I can’t fully articulate yet. It feels similar to the influencers and reporters who rushed to the scene, clamoring to be the first to break the story. 

This felt startlingly familiar at times, as if it’s a tale from our own impending future - the slow slide towards this society rather than something that happened all at once. I think this book was beautifully written, and I’m always a fan of books with dual past and present timelines both careening towards some defining moment. I’m surprised the average ratings on this book aren’t higher!! I picked it up because it was marked as a bookseller favorite at Fact and Fiction, so I didn’t pay attention to how it was rated on storygraph before I started. Also a good reminder that crowd sourced ratings for art may not always resonate! 

Johnson & Johnson your days are numbered (by that I mean since the FDA has become an industry prop you’ll probably keep getting away with it)

Western liberalism is irredeemable. I’m glad I went with the audiobook - listening to the author read this himself added depths I may have missed on a physical read through. I’ve already purchased a copy to keep on my shelf and return to again and again 

Pretty entry level feminism/body autonomy and responsibility stuff, but overall a good read to see how to distill some of the arguments I often over complicate! I did learn some stuff (had no idea that the placebo period from birth control pills was originally conceptualized to try and convince the pope to get on board) but also found myself frustrated that the sources weren’t cited in the book. I know the author lists them online and it was an intentional choice to not literally double the length of the book but an in text citation or author mention would have been appreciated lol 

I found myself racing to finish this one. I can see how the general premise & black box may not appeal to some, but I ate it all up. I loved the extended metaphors about performances and meaning and life. The musings on family were unexpected based on what I perceived this book to be about, but that was easily my favorite part. I can see myself reading this again!