rosepoints's reviews
129 reviews

i rarely cry while reading but this was such an emotional heavy-hitter. i truly don't have the words to fully encompass the horrors that siddharth kara described in this book, and it makes me feel so sick that we are building "a renewable future" on the backs of children and exploited workers in the congo. 100% recommend reading to learn more about this.

this painfully and obviously reads as a thin woman writing about being fat and for a book that claims to celebrate female bodies, the main character, roberta, constantly talks about being gorgeous when she was thin, hiding her belly, body-checking, and comparing herself to other bodies when she gains weight. 

in addition, there's little focus on the actual titular supper club, and the women feel shallow and ancillary to roberta's traumas. roberta herself seems to have so much internalized misogyny, and i don't feel like the supper club was "a transgressive and joyous collective of women who gather to celebrate, rather than admonish, their hungers" at all, whatsoever. roberta's relationship with stevie also reads as a rip-off of sally rooney's "conversations with friends" but at least in rooney's edition, there was actual credence lent to the queer nature of it and not the tokenization that appears in "supper club." also, the misgendering of a trans character really turned me off.

where is the sisterhood! where are the female friendships! where is the reclamation of self and hunger! instead of any of what it promises to deliver, this book ends up centering insufferable men and body image. total pass, would not recommend.

i will preface this review by saying that this book feels like it was not written for me, which probably colors my personal opinion of the book. instead, i think that this book would better serve people who are on the fence about vaccines, especially antivax mothers, and that’s probably what the author was going for, given her constant references to mothers and motherhood. 

eula biss traces the history of vaccination through metaphors, and the writing style reflects that perfectly: narrative, slightly pensive, and meditative. she intersperses references to literature like dracula, susan sontag, and mythology with her own experience as a mother, whether that be giving birth or raising her son who has severe allergies. there are tangents related to environmental health, the language we use to describe vaccination and disease (ex: herd mentality, military metaphors), etc. i found her analyses of literature and language to be the strongest part of the book and the part i enjoyed the most. it actually reminded me of a class i took in college called “outbreak narratives” where we discussed medical metaphors in dracula, virginia woolf’s and susan sontag’s writing, eugene roch’s paris malade, etc. 

unfortunately, i found myself wanting to learn more about the literature and history she references rather than her personal anxieties and stresses. because of this, the book served as more of a foundation for me to find other things to read rather than a true book i would enjoy on its own. i also found the book to meander a little too much for my liking. her analyses on a single source stretch across the entire book rather than being focused on a single chapter. she also mentions multiple anecdotes again and again but with mildly different references to mildly different metaphors. again, this probably strengthens the narrative for people who are struggling with vaccines, but it didn’t really help my own reading of it. i’m a very strong proponent for vaccines, graduated with a degree in biology, and work in medicine. i largely wanted to learn more about the history of vaccination, which was why i picked up the book in the first place, but found that it was more of an analysis of metaphors and fears around vaccination rather than a true history.

the only real critique of the book that i have is that she talks about autism in an odd way, ascribing it to a plague amongst young boys, which is off-putting. i am unsure if this is an attempt to appeal to the antivax audience but i didn’t love that. 

still, i would not let my review of this book discourage you from reading. if anything, it gave me a greater appreciation for vaccines and more sympathy for those who are afraid of vaccines. 

this feels like the book equivalent of a cards against humanity deck and i can't tell if that's a compliment or an insult 

i liked this collection of poems more than “unfortunately, it was paradise”, but as always, darwish has such a way with words that draws me in every time. i also felt like these poems more directly addressed palestine and israeli occupation compared to previous poems i’ve read of his about love and loss. it’s heartbreaking to think about how these poems still apply given current events, and it really emphasizes just how long and bloody this occupation is. 

“the echo has no echo so she becomes the endless scream in the breaking news which was no longer breaking news” — the girl / the scream

i think this is my favorite out of all of darwish’s works that i’ve read to date. i’ve always been more of a prose girlie than a poetry girlie, but this is impeccable. it felt almost musical to read, and as always, laden with so many references and symbols. i almost certainly missed out on a good number of them, but the ones that i did notice really added to the narrative. i so desperately wish i was able to read this in the original arabic but the translated version was still gorgeously impactful. 

this is a book that i truly wish i read with other people or in a literature class because i felt like there were so many layers that i missed out on during my first reading of it. like, the analysis in the foreword about the first sentence of the book alone shows just how much depth there is to this book that i otherwise would’ve been unaware of. 

the story is so vibrant thanks to morrison’s lyrical prose, and despite being centered on a male protagonist, i found myself entranced by the depth of the female characters to the point where almost every line i highlighted and annotated in this book was about one of the female characters. admittedly, i picked this book up because i was interested in reading more books in the magical realism genre, but i personally found this book to be more of a generational family saga rather than a true magical realism book. that doesn’t detract from the quality of the prose nor the appeal of the plot, but that was one thing that i noted after finishing the book.

i definitely plan on re-reading this book again and perhaps even getting my own copy instead of relying on the dog-eared library copy. and again, i really do feel like i need to read this book with other people or at least look at someone else’s professional analysis on this book because it is so rich with symbols and allusions that i almost certainly didn’t get the full gravity of. such a great read!

this was such a powerful read and i couldn’t stop reading it until i had completely finished it. carol anderson talks about the white backlash towards black advancement and the institutional harm that it generates, and i felt like i learned something new in every chapter. anderson does not flinch away from describing the horrible injustices done to black people and traces through five major historical events and their ramifications while still making the book accessible for the general public. highly recommend!

i was recommended this book after reading “little fires everywhere” by the same author, so i definitely think that my review and rating are influenced by the fact that i read that book first before reading this one. i’ll abbreviate this book as EINTY and “little fires everywhere” as LFE in this review.

first off, i enjoyed reading EINTY more than LFE despite EINTY being the worse book imo, which is an odd place to be in. both are incredibly hamfisted in their themes and morals, but the prose in EINTY is more unwieldy and unrefined compared to LFE. EINTY is also much more obvious from the very beginning of the book whereas LFE only became obvious in the second half. 

however, EINTY was more emotionally compelling for me. the main cast had bigger, critical roles to play compared to the mishmash LFE presented me with. james’s struggle with his internalized racism, marilyn and her crushed dreams, lydia becoming the golden child and turning her siblings into “glass” children by default, they were all more interesting to me than the richardson family in LFE. 

admittedly, if i read EINTY and then LFE, i probably would’ve rated LFE higher, but as it stands right now, i was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed reading this. 

first off, i really liked reading this book, particularly because of this format. the previous books i’ve read on white nationalism were more traditional nonfiction books but this book reads almost like an ethnography or a magazine piece with three case studies revolving around three white women part of the alt-right. this format makes the women easier to understand and i could clearly see their trajectory into (and in the case of one, out) of the alt-right / white supremacy movement. the author does an excellent job tracking down these women’s histories and i appreciated the fact-checking and extensive citations and notes included throughout the book, especially given the alt-right’s propensity to claim “fake news” when it comes to media coverage on them. 

i do agree with the author in that we should understand white women like the three highlighted in the book in order to tackle the problems of the alt-right. however, i wish that there was more discussion on deradicalization and tangible actions we can take to address the issue like laura bates did in “men who hate women.” the author briefly touches on issues like the structure of youtube algorithms and common phrases and arguments that the alt-right makes in order to recruit people, but she never fully explains them. i don’t think that necessarily detracts from the book since that’s not what the book aims to do specifically, but i think it would’ve strengthened some of the arguments made in the book.

ultimately, this book describes how people can get radicalized in vulnerable moments, especially since all three of these women didn’t start off as modern-days versions of the KKK. it also demonstrates how internalized biases can start off as a seed and then grow into virulent hate, and i think that makes a compelling, albeit implicit, argument for the need to unlearn racism.