i read 14 books and dnf'd 6 in october 2024

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Күн бұрын

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@thelefthandedreader6632 Ай бұрын

Yes, I love how Post Horn builds into something really nuanced. Yuppy culture is really interesting for so many reasons. I’m glad to know about that book.

@kiranreader 11 күн бұрын

yes! its such an interesting book!! have you read will and testament by hjorth?

@casskrug 20 күн бұрын

first of all this top is such a slay!! seems like the joan didion biography did her justice in a way that didion & babitz didn’t, i was gonna read the world according to joan didion this month but didn’t get around to it

@TomBrzezicki Ай бұрын

Your discussion of “The Strangers’ House: Writing Northern Ireland” by Alexander Poots provided a good cue for me to bring up another Irish book by an Irish author, one which you recommended back in your “June Reading Wrap Up” video of several months ago. I’m referring to “We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland” by the Irish journalist and author, Fintan O’Toole, published in 2021. The book was not quite what I expected. I had assumed O’Toole would write a popular history of 20th century Ireland from his own particular point of view. Instead, he really does give us the “personal history” he promises in his book title. He begins his story in 1958, the year he was born, and continues to the present day. Along the way, he presents the reader with a broad view of various aspects of Irish life-domestic politics, the role of the Catholic Church, The Troubles, economic development, education, social and cultural matters-all of them illustrated by incidents from his own life experiences to show the effect of these societal forces on individuals and families. At close to 600 pages and packed with information and anecdote, “We Don’t Know Ourselves” is a difficult book to summarize. There is, however, one constant theme throughout O’Toole’s work and that is the close partnership between the Irish government and the Catholic Church that permitted an extremely repressive social regime to be imposed upon the Irish people for most of the 20th century. Ireland became a country where classic films such as “Casablanca” were censored, where condoms could only be purchased with a prescription, and where bishops would complain that the simple line drawings used by department stores to advertise women’s underwear were too suggestive. Ireland was also a country where schoolgirls gave birth to babies in cow pastures because sex education was non-existent, and where women from the south of the island would travel to Northern Ireland to buy contraceptives, only to realize they had no idea what they looked like. As O’Toole points out, the fact that sex was never openly discussed meant that the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests was even less likely to be reported. The same goes for the generations of boys and girls sent to the notorious industrial schools, where many were physically and sexually abused. The other peculiar aspect of the Irish character was its ability to compartmentalize their experiences of everyday life so as to hold mutually contradictory thoughts in its mind at the same time. O’Toole describes it as “our unique way of life-the way of ambiguity and unknowing, of dodging and weaving around reality.” This helped me better understand how the Irish government could, on the one hand, condemn the IRA’s bombing campaign in Northern Ireland during the Troubles of the 1970s and ‘80s, yet also celebrate the men and women who organized the Irish Rebellion in Dublin in 1916, the very act that set the pattern for using violence to achieve political ends in Ireland until the signing of the Belfast Agreement of 1998. Of course, O’Toole doesn’t dwell exclusively in the shadows of Irish history during the 20th century. He also discusses Irish literature, theatre, and music, and the global popularity of the entertainment phenomenon “Riverdance”. As any moviegoer knows, any of the most popular film stars in recent years have been Irish. All you have to do is see a film set in Ireland to be overcome by a feeling of homesickness for a place you may never have been. My favourite film of recent years has been “An Cailín Ciúin”-“The Quiet Girl”-based on Claire Keegan’s long short story “Foster”. All in all, I appreciated O’Toole’s honest approach in telling his story, and found his book to be enormously informative and entertaining.

@SapphireChristella Ай бұрын

Honestly for October I’ve been in such a book slump I needed a completely pallet cleanser so I read some alien romance novels. Weird but not horrible and now I feel like my heads back in the game to go back to my usually realistic fiction. All of these books sound really interesting and I like your take on memoirs. It wouldn’t be very sincere if people spent the whole book trying to make themselves look good. They like to have their business in the streets and the least it can be is entertaining. I enjoy listening to you speak about what you’re reading because it’s very different from most booktubers I follow. Also I LOVE your shirt. It’s beautiful and looks great on you.

@bibliosophie Ай бұрын

"i do not want a moral... i want you to be soo delusional" LOLLLL. i see yr point. i also guffawed when you couldn't remember any dude's name in the memoir. seems right. i am interested in the sprawl despite yr dnf, and maybe also triumph of the yuppies. i'm glad you mentioned them

@kiranreader 11 күн бұрын

yes!! would love to hear your thoughts if you read the nonfic books i dnf'd!

@nathansnook Ай бұрын

omg can't believe you finally did the mammoth on Didion's life! perhaps i'll follow suit and do audio book to sprint through it. and on the topic of Didion, you make an interesting note about Didion's fiction! it does sort of wash over you and with her writing, you really have to pay attention to what is going on otherwise a reread is required. i find her fiction to be much more vague than her nonfiction, but you would think that her nonfiction would bring clarity to fiction! recently got my arc of Paradise Logic! can't wait to get to it! sounds quirky!