samarakroeger's reviews
550 reviews

low-key the most overhyped Annie Ernaux book.  idk I think she's at her best when the narrative feels very intimate to her and that is not the point of this book.

obviously it's still worth the read, I just expected this to be my favorite from her.

kinda clunky and trying to do too much

I had no reason to pick this book up other than a passing interest in standardized testing (never taken the SAT, though). It’s a memoir of an experimental year-long project, in the same mold as an AJ Jacobs book. 

It was entertainingly written and also out of date (SAT was overhauled, post-pandemic standardized testing is a different landscape, rise of test-optional schools, computer-based tests, etc.).  

a fairly run of the mill memoir that took a preachy turn towards the end. 

Dr. Harper tries to interweave her traumatic upbringing with vignettes about her ER patients but spends too much time lecturing on the beauty of yoga and not enough on meaningful self-reflection. I thought she was leaning too heavily on the inevitable emotions of the ER (like dead babies) to carry the heft of the memoir. It didn’t really work. 

There’s still plenty of interesting material to engage in, though, so I’m not mad about finally reading it. 

say. it. with. me.   we're here for the sapphic sports romance!

never got the point of sports romances until i tried a sapphic one lol.  yay women's sports!

by the time i finally got around to reading this, my expectations had been so sufficiently lowered that i wasn't mad about it being (almost) 3 stars.  idk what that says about me.

also, why would you use the word exciting in your title if the book is anything but?

maybe i'm in my cowboy era now?  

didn’t love the repetitive writing style but I can’t help but admire Backman’s excellent character work.  There’s a lot of people to keep track of (I kept a running list), but it’s worth it. 

this took me a really long time to read. it’s heavy and in hindsight not the best candidate for annotation. 

I’m shocked that I actually read this book bc my track record with Heti is middling at best. I first encountered her writing through excerpts from this project that were serialized in the New York Times in early 2022, though, which I remember liking. I then read Motherhood (eh) and Pure Colour (nope) in 2022. 

This is a really cool concept for an experimental book, and it is exactly what it claims to be. I’d highly recommend listening to the audiobook in one sitting — the entries naturally become more cohesive in that format. It’s almost like looking at a shuffled photo album of someone’s life: there’s some recurring characters, though it’s unclear what their relationship looks like as a whole, and only a selection of life is actually documented. We don’t get to truly know the narrator or the characters, but some intimacy is achieved through small glimpses into private thoughts and feelings. 

Anyways, this book certainly isn’t for everyone, but I’m glad I gave Sheila Heti another shot. Maybe it’s all the Annie Ernaux I read last year.