madgerdes's Reviews (970)

One of my goals this year (ironically) was to be less tied to specific numeric goals and outcomes. I’ve spent so much of my life barreling towards goals and outcomes and deadlines, and I wanted this year to be a bit slower for the sake of some mindful self-discovery. Usually I BLAST through books because I’m excited about what’s happening or what I’m learning, but I want to be more intentional sometimes. That being said, I spent six weeks reading this book and it turns out that when you intentionally slow down to think and absorb you really learn a lot more – who knew! 

This is the most important book I’ve read in a while. I can see myself turning back to it as a student and an educator. 

I’ll come back to this! I’m trying to do too much rn between reading for class and reading for my own brain, and something needed to give. I want to focus on finishing who’s afraid of gender!! Needed to release myself from unnecessary pressure lol 

Another instance of picking up the right book at the right time. I really enjoyed this, and found myself wanting to read slowly, to savor and think about it, rather than blasting through to the end to “find out what happens” because in the end we know what happens already. I bought this book in 2019 as a blind date with a book from Trident Booksellers. I think if I read it any sooner than I did, I wouldn’t have appreciated the metaphor and history. The edition I read had a Zadie Smith introduction that definitely enhanced my reading experience. I’m usually bored by “war” fiction but this was an exception! 

I decided to reread this for the first time since grad school because I assigned a few chapters to my students this semester and my main takeaways from this reread are 1) this book shaped my worldview and research agenda in more ways than I realized, 2) you could write the same book now but substitute crime & drugs with crime & immigration, 3) a reaffirmed belief that examining political and media rhetoric MATTERS in tangible ways, and 4) I feel incredibly motivated to keep doing what I’m trying to do in my crime, justice, and media class this semester. It’s a small effort in the grand scheme of ever-encroaching techno authoritarianism but I do feel like I can really empower these students  

This is another book I don’t know how to rate!! It’s hard to distill my experience of reading this down to one number! That tension comes down to 1) while I was actively reading, I found the book to be quietly profound (being moved by mundanity, etc). The portrayal of the forest, the animals, and the passage of time were beautiful and complex! 2) While I wasn’t actively reading the book, I didn’t find myself thinking about going back to read more? When I’m really engrossed in a book it’ll pop into my mind throughout the day, but this book didn’t really pass through my mind until I settled down to read for the evening (as usual). 

Now that I’m typing this out, I wonder if that’s part of what this book has communicated to me! Life can be mundane and mysterious at the same time, sometimes we just have to trudge forward even if we lose our curiosity about where it’s going?? Because it’s going somewhere! And we’ll get there eventually! I’m rambling now but I think I enjoyed this book more than I realized. I can see myself reading it again.  

It’s hard to rate this book! There are two reasons I picked it up: 1) I want to read James this year, and decided to read this and reread Huck Finn before reading James and 2) I’m on somewhat of a “classics” appreciation journey in both film and literature. This journey is not necessarily a comparison of historical and modern media, nor have I been doing it to become more “well read” per se because I disagree with the way that characteristic is usually defined!  Rather, something has gotten me curious about the “foundations” of the modern era of film and literature. I want to understand more of the lasting tropes and references! Rating this and other books I read in this journey might be difficult because I’m not necessarily reading them for the same type of curiosity that I approach my usual reads with. This book was funny in a predictable way – but that’s probably because (I assume) it helped shape a lot of the humor in 1900s American literature? But even though the humor was predictable, I did enjoy it! I did find the characters lovable despite their flaws, etc etc etc, and enjoyed some of the low-level critiques on society of that time. I found it  difficult to get past the racial slurs and stereotypes, which is what I’m struggling most to contend with. Trying to balance the existence of a piece of art as a product of its time as both a criticism and a way to understand said art is something I don’t have the language for yet but I’m hoping to find some as I’m on this journey! 

It’s been a long time since a mystery pulled me in like this!

Twilight rereads are always a highlight of my literary adventures 

Sometimes you pick up a book at exactly the right time – I’m glad this one came to me when it did