shane_the_reading_rat's Reviews (1.21k)

anytime i see a mystery and think “oh, this looks cute!” i need someone to walk up and remind me that 99 percent of the time if i read a mystery or thriller i fucking hate it. least favorite genre why do i keep trying with it

this was cool !! learned about a lot of people i previously didn’t know of
this does fall into similar pitfalls as other ya nonfiction though, in that this ends up being very “moral of the story” at the end of most of the essays. wasn’t a fan of that but otherwise this rocked

it’s really interesting reading both this and Man Alive back-to-back, and i definitely recommend taking that approach if you have access to both books (go with Man Alive first).
im so conflicted between a 4 and a 5 for this, so 4.5 it is. i think this book is amazing, thomas page mcbee has such a strong writing style, in particular in writing memoirs. i found the sections of the book that were more about masculinity in general to be a tad weaker than the rest, but the memoir sections and how he writes fighting are easily strong enough to make up for it.
a small selection of my favorite quotes:

and finally, the final sentence (the ending that made me tear up):

another trans man memoir! apparently this is just my thing now
i found out about thomas page mcbee through oliver radclyffe’s memoir, Frighten the Horses (which was also really good)
(i also have thomas’s other book downloaded on libby and plan to start it soon)
i definitely thought this was good, the timejumps werent my thing and i would have preferred a chronological timeline, but eh. this is his story, not mine.
i liked the writing style a lot and im hoping his other book is a 5 star for me :)

a lot of my thoughts on this are going to go into my reading journal and not here as this hit me very personally, but,, wow.
this book floored me
i love it so much and i want you to love it too
ive never really read a memoir from a trans man before and it hit me incredibly hard and i related so deeply to so much of this book. i now have massive respect for oliver radclyffe

the constant usage of the 2nd person in every single pov is throwing me off so badly and i dont like it. the premise is so up my alley so this is very sad :/ (+ multi-pov stories are hit-or-miss for me and this one with SEVEN POVS is most definitely a miss)

did not expect to like this so much??? it went so hard 

wouldve worked better for me if i read this in winter

i think the marketing for this book definitely made a bit of a misstep, so fair warning for anyone wanting to read it: this centers much less on book banning and much more on amanda jones’s experience with cyber bullying/severe harassment and her legal battle with alt-right people. still great just different from how it appears!!
ive been following kelly jensen’s reporting about book bans on Book Riot for at least a couple of years now, so ive known about this book since late last year and it’s finally out :D
amanda jones seems lovely and i hope she experiences so much happiness in her life
definitely wanted to read this because of three interconnected reasons: i plan to get a library science degree, im trans, and ultimately when i settle somewhere permanently i want to still live in the american south (hopefully, that may not work out and i wouldnt be surprised). these things are kinda an uphill battle so ive been trying to stay super up to date on whats happening to libraries, especially in my state.
sorry to get personal !! this book is good !! i like it !!

i got through exactly 50% of this then skimmed the rest
i think the key to enjoying this book is 1: liking breaking-the-fourth-wall humor, 2: liking referential humor. i like neither of these, so i found a lot of this book to be frustrating 
objectively, i think its fine, i just personally did not like it much at all