rosepoints's reviews
129 reviews

unfortunately, i picked up this book very specifically because i was interested in an essay collection that delved more deeply into viruses and their relationship with humans, but this book turned out to be a collection of essays that focus more on the author's queerness and personal experiences during the pandemic than anything else. given that the author is a microbiologist, i expected more niche information on viruses, bacteria, anything biological really, but i found the actual scientific information to be ancillary to the personal experiences that the author wanted to talk about. i do acknowledge that my rating and perception of the book is warped by its marketing and my own expectations. i very specifically wanted a collection of essays that dwelled in science and its ties to the world surrounding it,  and i very specifically wanted to know more about viruses, whether it be their scientific or their sociopolitical impact. i feel like i got a memoir instead, which would've been fine if that was the blurb, but that wasn't the case. 

moving past my own expectations, i think that the essays themselves are fine. i personally didn't enjoy the formatting of some of them such as the journal entries; i think that there could've been a better way to structure the essay while still conveying the core idea. some of the essays also dragged on a bit too much for my liking. some of the analogies and connections didn't really work for me either.

is the book worth reading? if you modulate your expectations, yes. i worry that my rating and review will dissuade readers from picking up the book, and i hope that isn't the case because i could really see some types of people enjoying it. it just didn't hit right with me and that's fine.

i hesitate to give this book this rating because i worry that it will convince other people not to read the memoir. i ended up rating it a 2 because the writer has a specific sense of humor that didn't always resonate with me, but i still thought she had valuable things to say. the book feels more like a conversation than a true memoir, and i can see how that can be engaging for others. it's just not necessarily the right fit for me, and i feel like i would rather read articles written by the author rather than a full book. i've also never heard of the author - i largely picked this book up based on the cover and the interesting typography of the title. moving forward, i'm eager to read her articles and follow her work in other media outlets.

altogether, a quick, engaging read that touches on different aspects of feminism, fat activism, online harassment etc. the writing style just didn't work for me for a full-length book, but don't let that dissuade you from reading it as well.

this honestly feels like a shittier great gatsby with less sex and less rage than advertised on the cover

for AAPI month, i wanted to learn more about asian american history, especially since most of my classes did not cover it. this book covers the history of japanese americans and chinese americans during and shortly after world war ii and it's incredibly informative in describing how these minorities mobilized and approached activism, the creation of the model minority, and the standards of white supremacy that got them there. the author also adds additional context about world war ii and the cold war that makes the activism make more sense, and altogether, i learned so much from this book.

however, this book is incredibly academic and dense, even moreso than other books i've read for my classes. i almost wonder if it would've been easier to read had the japanese and chinese experiences been split into two sections rather than alternating chronologically? but there's not much story-making/story-telling here, it's just the straight facts as they happened. this could make the book less accessible for the general reader, and that's unfortunate.

i was also more interested in learning about the model minority myth and race-making in the modern era, but this book primarily covers the two/three decades during and after wwii. still worth a read, just be ready to be patient with it.

let me start with the positive: the author's writing style is vivacious and drew me in right away. here are some of my favorite lines: "sun child, hair permanently whisked by wind, you were happy once." and "something greater than themselves swam in their blood; this would be their war." i can see why others wouldn't like it but the style was gorgeous and i really enjoyed it. 

however, the writing style alone does not make up for the disparate collection of short stories that comprise this novel. even though each story and character is supposed to be intertwined with each other, i felt like they were so disconnected. i personally don't mind non-linear narratives; i didn't mind it in a similar intergenerational saga like celeste ng's. however, the characters' interactions with each other are minimal and dry and given the brevity of the book, the number of characters ultimately detracted from the quality of the plot. 

i also felt like ana and her mother were ancillary to the plot, serving only to uphold jeannette's role in the story and to include a  short story on deportation on ice. if you took them out of the novel, it wouldn't have changed a single thing about the ending. instead, i think it would've been more interesting to focus solely on the family from cuba, delving more deeply into cuba's history and the traumas in their family. also, i'm sure that the author didn't mean to do it, but there are some paragraphs where it just seems like she's upholding the narrative that addicts can't be cured, and that's not super great. 

finally, i would heed the warnings about sexual abuse and assault. it is a common narrative throughout the book and i wasn't expecting it to be that prevalent. 

altogether, i would still look forward to seeing what other books gabriela garcia writes in the future since i think she has a lot of potential, but this novel was a miss for me personally.

this was a book i picked up largely because i was intrigued by the cover and the title, and i started it without knowing anything about the author or the plot. doireann ní ghríofa is an irish writer and the book is essentially about her tracing through the life of an obscure irish poet named eibhlín dubh ní chonaill. the book is half about eibhlín and half about doireann herself, and it covers themes regarding motherhood, invisibility, and female labor. doireann ní ghríofan also translates the original gaelic poem into english and although i don't know any gaelic, i found the final translated poem to be beautiful.

the prose and writing style itself is quite lyrical, and at times, i felt like doireann was writing poetry rather than a memoir. this can either be a good or bad thing depending on what kind of books you prefer. personally, i enjoyed the writing style but not the content. i am just not interested in the ordeals of motherhood, being pregnant, breastfeeding and milk, all that. nearly the entire book is about mothering and having children, especially since doireann is a mother of four and her experience with being pregnant and raising her children is intricately tied to her search for eibhlín's history. that being said, if you are a mother or are interested in having children, i could see this being a great book for you. i'm just not the right target audience for this book and that's okay.

i think i just need to stop reading books with such high expectations because those are usually the books i end up disliking the most. this was one of those cases. "the idiot" by elif batuman is a book that came highly recommended from people whose taste in books i trust greatly, so i waited on a hold list at my library for several months in order to read this. unfortunately, this was just a total miss for me. 

selin is a turkish-american girl who starts her first year at harvard, and the story essentially covers her freshman experiences in near-excruciating detail. she moves into her dorm, tries to get along with her roommates, takes a bunch of classes, and ends up in this weird limbo situation with an older hungarian guy named ivan. the book is a bildungsroman and goes through selin's college life with a nostalgic and utterly accurate depiction of the trials and tribulations of a girl's first year at college. however, that accuracy and agonizing attention to detail results in a book where nothing ever really happens and i found the pace to be tedious. 

there are interesting bits and pieces here and there that kept me going. for example, selin ends up in linguistics and so, language and communication end up being a big theme in her relationships with others and especially ivan. the story is also set in the 90s where the internet was just starting to take off, so there's that additional dynamic of communicating irl vs online. the book also manages to perfectly capture the vibe of the ivory tower and academia with how deeply it delves into intellectual stimulation and references to obscure academic topics, and i was reminded of my own college days at a liberal arts school. however, these didn't make up for the slow pace and the tedious ramblings here and there. 

although this book is titled, “the empathy exams,” i feel like it is more about pain rather than empathy. how do people experience pain? how do narratives centered around pain unfold? how do people translate their pain into something that others can understand? although the author terms that as empathy and sentimentality, i personally felt like this was a series of essays about pain and the way it transforms people rather than about true empathy. in addition to that, i usually approach collections of short stories or essays with the understanding that i won’t love all of them equally, but this book felt especially difficult in that the good ones were outstanding and merited a full 5 stars, but the bad ones were....honestly 1 star at best. 

she always finds a way to bring the essay back to her own personal experiences, and although that can reveal new layers and meaning to a story, it doesn’t work for every story. for example, she wrote an essay about patients with morgellons disease, which is often termed as “delusional infestation” where people believe that their skin lesions are from fibers and parasites. it could have been an interesting narrative about belief, illness narratives, and patient / provider trust, but then she sorta fixates on how she might have it and about the time she got a parasite in bolivia. it detracted from the overall message. a similar thing happens when she talks about a prisoner in west virginia, and instead of centralizing on the prison narrative, she talks about how guilty she feels about being free while he's not, and it made the whole essay seem rather shallow. i also just didn't love her story about getting punched in the face in nicaragua, but i feel like she's aware of that because she self-references that in another essay about how she loves to dwell in her own pain and find meaning in it. however, her essays on things like the empathy exams, the female experience of pain, etc were powerful and moving.

i also just love her prose in general. i understand that this writing style isn't for everyone but to me, i think there is a certain gift in being able to translate a mundane experience into a beautiful narrative and finding new symbols and meaning in previously ordinary things. i read a library copy of this book but i would love to purchase my own and thoroughly annotate it. because the stand-out essays were so so good, i finally settled on a 5 star rating for this book, but if you do choose to read, just be aware of the self-centralization of the narratives and read with a grain of salt. 

in "perilous bounty," tom philpott primarily focuses on the ecological degradation caused by agriculture in california and the midwest. more specifically, he touches upon california's water crisis in terms of decreasing snowmelt and depleted aquifers, soil erosion in the midwest, toxic algal blooms caused by fertilizer runoff, and the regional shifts in climate caused by global warming. altogether, i would categorize this as an environmental science book rather than a book that focuses on food. 

overall, i appreciated the emphasis on broader, systemic solutions rather than individualistic ones, and he specifically writes, "we have reached the limits of 'market-as-movement' to transform the food system... well-off consumers should vote with their forks three times a day, but the pace of positive change they create has been no match for big food's massive inertia and the rapid advance of climate change." he's entirely correct in that, and it's refreshing to see this in his writing. he suggests various solutions like the use of cover crops in the midwest, scaling back agriculture to meet california's current water supply, shifting federal policy and government subsidies away from monocultures of corn/soybeans and towards alternative options, and encouraging agriculture in other regions of the US to support local and regional food chains. because i'm not an expert in agriculture, i have no idea if these solutions are feasible, but to me, his reasoning seemed sound enough. 

i also appreciated his explanation of the science behind the environmental phenomenon occurring. for every piece of jargon he used, he offered a working definition, and i felt like he did his best to explain scientific concepts to a general audience. there are a few places here and there where i wondered if this would be understandable to a layman (ex: the explanation of california's wet / dry phases and the semipermanent pressure systems between the poles and subtropic regions, i could see someone not fully understanding the el nino effect in california there). however, it's pretty decent compared to other nonfiction books out there. good scientific communication is hard!

in terms of improvements, i did think that the midwest section was less organized compared to the previous chapters on california. it's not going to hinder your understanding of the concepts imo but it could have been organized to flow better from topic to topic. i also wish that there was a touch more discussion on the social ramifications of big agriculture in the united states. for example, he briefly touches on the labor required for melon farming in the california section, and he mentions the impact of immigration and deportation policies as well as the rise of minimum wage. however, it's a brief sentence or two and then he barrels onward to focus on water consumption of nut farming. i understand that this is a book primarily focused on ecological degradation, but i wished that there was just a little more discussion on the people impacted and involved in big agriculture as well. i'd rather have that than the lengthy discussion on the author's experience with interviewing someone from monsanto. 

altogether, it's worth the read, and i enjoyed the book - would recommend!

this is a nonfiction book i think most people would enjoy reading, and that’s high praise for a nonfiction book in my opinion. moore does such a good job of situating the reader in the emotional grip and the sheer injustice of the situation, and that’s a rare talent.

the radium girls refer to the women who got radium poisoning from painting watches with luminous, radioactive paint. they used small, delicate brushes that they pointed with their lips, in order to waste less material, and that caused them to ingest powdered radium. they lost bones, teeth, and their livelihoods to this occupational hazard, and it took years and years for them to finally get some legal justice for the company's negligence. 

but the thing i appreciate so much about this book is the dedication towards depicting each woman’s character, their bravery and strength, and the lives that they lived. most nonfiction books tend to focus on the political or legal ramifications of the situation, which can be informative, but in those cases, i feel like we lose out on the humanity and the emotional weight of it all. excellent book and would recommend if you are looking to dip your toes into the nonfiction genre.