readingpicnic's Reviews (500)

Down the Drain

Julia Fox

5.0

Every female friendship in this book is so intense and homoerotic; very relatable for girl-likers.

Content Warnings

Supporting Students on the Autism Spectrum: A Practical Guide for Academic Libraries

Kerry R. Walton, Rachel M. McMullin

3.75

I found a lot of the content in this book very useful, especially since there isn't much literature on this topic (I will be digging into their references at some point). I will say that a few things bothered me while reading, such as the weird how to clock an autistic person vibes of a lot of it. The chapter talking about employing autistic people was also a bit strange with how it correlated autism with productivity in the workplace and talked about how certain employers seek out autistic people on purpose because they view their autistic traits as a utility (like the car wash example)? The statistics for how few autistic people are hired for jobs that they are qualified for, or hired at all, were dismal and saddening though. Some of the statements about autistic people's behaviors felt very generalizing and framed their strengths as surprising, like did you know autistic people have good traits, too! Here's how we can use those good traits to our advantage in the workplace and exploit them! I did write down a lot of the suggestions for making academic libraries more inviting and accessible for autistic people, but overall this book felt very off to me as an autistic person. I suppose it was written for a neurotypical audience, which is okay since they need to educate themselves and this is a good starting point, as long as they're critical of some of the wording.

Content Warnings

Time is a Mother

Ocean Vuong

3.0

The Amazon history chapter broke me and had me crying in the bathroom. Ocean’s narration is excellent as always, although a lot of the poetry just didn’t hook me like I expected it to.
My favorite lines: “Do you know how many hours I’ve wasted watching straight boys play video games? Enough.” Highly relatable.

Content Warnings

Heart Berries: A Memoir

Terese Marie Mailhot

5.0

Stellar audiobook performance, and an incredible writing style unlike any I've encountered before. I love unabashedly honest memoirs, especially those that dip into the weird and messy. I think that I judged this book by its cover and expected it to be soft poetry, but it was shocking, flagrant, in-your-face storytelling with a poetic flare that I could not put down. I felt like a kitten being carried around by the scruff of my neck listening to this while my mother cat runs down a treacherous path, enjoying the ride but also being like ahhhhh!

Content Warnings

Thunder Song

Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe

5.0

Very excellent audiobook narration by the author! Great dissection of the whiteness inherent in the punk music scene (which I keep accidentally reading about?) The breakdown of the colonial nature of monogamy was interesting and not something I knew much about--this memoir is queer in the best of ways.

Content Warnings

¡Hola Papi!: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons

John Paul Brammer

4.0

The audiobook performance by the author was great, and when I finished the audiobook this morning, I was left wanting more (maybe I should pay for his substack). Lots of messy queer partnerships, questions of racial and sexual identity, dealing with internalized homophobia, and honesty about mental health struggles. The chapter that's going to stick with me most is the one about grappling with a sexual assault and trying to forgive oneself for not understanding that's what it was at the time--feeling anger at oneself for having continued to interact with the person that harmed you in a benevolent way after it happened because it hadn't quite clicked yet. I've had similar anger at myself, so it was honestly really helpful to see the author verbalize this process of acknowledgement and forgiveness that we did not have the knowledge or understanding that we do now. Me when a self-help book actually helps me with something :0

Content Warnings

Parakeet

Marie-Helene Bertino

5.0

Geez, it’s like this book was made for me—it’s just a culmination of everything I’d want from a book, and I only read it on a whim because the author’s doing a reading nearby. This book has a delectable mix of magical realism and unreliable narrator, similar to Bunny by Mona Awad. This main character had so much going on at once and swirling around in her noggin, so her breakdown is very understandable: dealing with the trauma of surviving a violent attack, her marriage to a boring white guy growing dreadfully closer, being haunted by her dead bird grandmother, having near constant hallucinations, and reconnecting with her estranged trans sister. I’d say the stress levels I experienced are similar to my experience watching Shiva Baby. Currently crying thinking about the rekindling of the relationship between these two sisters; it was so beautiful and really fucking funny.

Content Warnings

While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

Meg Kissinger

5.0

This is such a devastating book, but I’m so glad it exists. The compassionate approach that the author takes towards severe mental illness and the honest thought processes of working towards this view is a point of view I don’t see very often. This book really hit hard as someone who has a lot of mental illness in my own family from both sides, but especially my mom’s side since her brother committed s*icide when she was in high school. I beg you to check the trigger warnings for this book, especially if you’ve lost (or almost lost) someone close to you to s*icide or dealt with s*icidal thoughts yourself, but it is so well written and has incredible narration from the author. The advice for living with the grief of losing someone in this way was very helpful I think, as this book was very well researched due to the author being a journalist who wrote extensively on how the mentally ill are treated in the US, but also contains personal advice on living with grief from some of her living siblings and people she connected with during her lifetime of research. I’m so glad I picked this up; thank you for the recommendation @bridgetish, this is why you’re my favorite booktoker.

Content Warnings

Where's Waldo: The Family Photoshoot

Martin Handford

For non-book records, review text and ratings are hidden. Only mood, pace, and content warnings are visible.

Content Warnings

They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

Hanif Abdurraqib

4.5

The narration for this was incredible, and I liked that the author added little notes to introduce each essay and is honest about his thought processes at the time of writing them. I do think there was some repetition I noticed across some essays, such as saying almost the same thing twice while talking about Carly Rae Jepsen in different essays, but other than that, this was an incredible and impactful read. I liked how music was woven throughout the book and how he was unafraid to turn a critical eye towards musicians and the punk scene. I can see some similarities between this book and Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma.

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