murrderdith's reviews
493 reviews

I actually listened to this, which I recommend because Poehler narrates the memoir (with a few guests) and does so brilliantly. I will also buy a physical copy so I can go back and underline a few sections I found listening to over and over. It isn't that she's saying anything particularly new, but her voice in this book resonated with me. I'm going to apply "good for her, not for me" to more of my life. I like it. I knew it before, probably, but it helps to hear from someone I admire makes me feel less guilty about wanting or not wanting things I'm told I should not want or want, respectively.

This book feels like a cool aunt or older sister and if my niece was slightly older (she just turned eight) and could appreciate all the jokes, I would give her this book.

Even though I gave California 2 stars, there were aspects of the novel I really enjoyed. Lepucki has a clear voice and the story never felt overly rushed. She took the time to let events unfold, never giving the reader more than she really needed in any particular scene--a necessary skill when writing dystopia. But that might be just the thing that frustrated me. California felt a little like, I don't know, paint-by-numbers storytelling? There's the couple alone in the wilderness, ominous hints that our own current economic/environmental/political climate led to these dire conditions, the "too good to be true" community that is not the salvation they were hoping for, etc.

The author is clearly well-versed in end-of-the-world stories, but I got the sense that she wasn't fully ready to let go of those other stories in order to tell her own? I look forward to reading her next novel. I hope that it is more her own.

What makes this novel is its telling. Diaz’s narration through Yunior should be studied in creative writing classes. He mixes coarse Spanish slang with so-called $10 words and off-hand references to Unus the Watcher and Dune (“Fear is the mindkiller” Oscar repeats to himself toward the end of the novel and his life.) Diaz was asked in a interview after this novel’s release whether he worried that reader unfamiliar with Spanish might be put off by his use of it. He noted, rightly, that people regularly read novels that are a third Elvish. Admittedly, the Spanish in Oscar Wao is not the sort you’d get in a high school class, but it shouldn’t deter anyone. Certainly not when there’s Google. If anything, it’s the references to early Star Trek and Lord of the Rings that had me reaching for my phone to make sure I was getting the joke. Yunior’s Spanish is as necessary to the authenticity of his narrative as is his working knowledge of Middle Earth.

I’m not sure what else to say about this book right now except that I love it. My boyfriend has asked me to read this since he read it early last year and I think that it will be one of those books I evangelize.

I "read" this on audio. About 2 hours into the collection, I bought the paperback and will re-read it in that format. That said, I loved listening to these essays. I found myself pausing and rewinding (do we call it that on iPhones?) to scribble down certain passages. This line, in particular, stuck with me:

“A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.”