Jasmine’s Comments (group member since Nov 21, 2010)

Jasmine’s comments from the The Extra Cool Group! (of people Michael is experimenting on) group.

Jimmy wrote: "Wow, Jasmine! Great essay. Your response reminded me of something I wanted to add:
"

also thank you for reading it, as I said I assume people don't

that is because it is the longest post allow, I wasn't actually done, but when the letter counter turned red I decided to be.

I also went all psychological a couple of times, but these things happen. If anyone wants to have long post conversations about the development of identity in psychology and philosophy I'm game.

if you want more or elaboration let me know that is the exact number of characters it would let me use.

Sorry it's so long.

Okay so I am going to write this as I go back through my reviews, and one thing I've noticed is I had no idea how long it has been since I read some of these books.

Just on the stats side I've always tended toward high ratings, probably because most books that I don't like I don't finish (and many of these live on my currently read shelf for years) and I'm pretty good at knowing if I'll like a book quickly.

I joined in april of 2008 after karen bugged me about it for a while and I didn't do too much on the site for a while, but apparently I did start writing reviews pretty quickly after joining. The first one actually being from april 27, 2008.

Now since I"m looking through a lot I'm going to go through and make some comments probably stopping every "3 months or so" so look at what my reviews look like.

A lot of my first reviews are extremely short and they don't make a lot of sense even to me, but they do tend to be about the books. I say things like, "It is not only a book about philosophy vs. psychology. It is about the fight to not give up on the mind" I don't know what I was trying to say here and I don't think the statement makes a whole lot of sense. But I was clearly making some attempt to discuss philosophical themes in the book. It strikes me as a, this is what I learned type review. I see this in another early review where I refer to a novel as a good introduction to group therapy. There are also several moments where I talk about emotions, being afraid of being a therapist, finding the plague boring and wanting to be Meursault. There isn't a lot of theory of mind in the early reviews I wrote (say hello to psychology), basically they don't look like I expected anyone else to read them. None of my opinions are explained at all I just stated how I felt and moved on. This is super obvious when I notice references to my undergraduate colloquium. For example, "Although, the author wrote the book to show how people could become a part of the normal society after years of deviance, the book could be argued to be showing us what we lose when these people are recreated in the image of the ideal person." This is a great insight I think, but I don't explain it at all I just say it in the review. I think now if I wanted to talk about reading a book differently than the author intended I would first explain how I think it was meant to be read, why I think it can be read the other way, and then probably make some gesture to understand the author probably included both reads on purpose for some meta-fictional dialogue, which I may or may not believe depending on the author. I also make a lot of references to other books. For example I compare haunted to and then there were none, I have no idea what I was thinking when I did this but there it is.

I think what is interesting about looking back is that my reviews haven't changed as much as I thought a lot of these themes aren't uncommon in my current reviews.

Getting to august of that year I see what I actually remember as my early reviews, they tend to be super short and point out one thing I found fun about the book. the only long one that seems to be there is one I recently rewrote when I was considering the applications of philosophy (I do periodically rewrite old reviews when I want to promote a book or make a point about a subject now that I feel like I have some audience, as I said back then I didn't see it that way). The reviews in this era were super short and say things like this book is about fickleness or feral fridges. It is actually very clear that I don't think anyone is reading them, possibly I thought making them shorter would make people pay more attention since if I don't know someone I am more likely to read something shorter, they also read like lists of memory joggers just for myself. There actually is one long review I see now that says "I think everyone on the planet should be forced to read this book" it also says I changed other star ratings because it was so good. This for me looks like I was probably trying to justify changes I'd made to my friends on here and I think I might have staff rec'd the book at work so I might have been trying to convince people to buy it. It was a more mainstream book (a lot of what I was reading was palahniuk or feral fridges which karen wasn't going to read) so I might have thought I could convince people. Also the book wasn't that popular so it seemed more like someone might care what I had to say about it. The author of that book was also the first author I ever talked to personally, but that happened on myspace.

When my reviews start to get longer there are two things happening, some I complain about the context in which the book was assign and many of them I start to quote the book. This is very much my phase of let the book speak for itself. I felt for a long time that I couldn't compete with what the authors of the books had created so I didn't know what to write in reviews. So I have a lot of stuff that just points out really beautiful or meaningful passages in the text complete with page numbers, NYU trained me well. There is also a theme at this point that the longer reviews are books I read for school like walter lippman. This is probably related to the fact that writing helps me think and I was already writing extensive papers on these books so I felt like I had a lot to say about them. I still make a lot of inside references like one to HG wells history of the world (which is a book that I own) but most people I know don't know anything about. The reviews stay obsessively short the review of my favorite play on the planet is "A play about the French Revolution." Just based on the fact that I force my friends to listen to me rant about it on a regular basis for me this means that I didn't actually care if people were reading my reviews.
(End of 08 skip ahead to when things actually start to change drastically... maybe)

**sidenote dec 2008 my review of dear everybody is long, off topic, and references madame bovary and 13 reasons why, this could almost be a review I wrote now, I think that on some level the change is less in how I would approach a review and more in the amount of time I was willing to dedicate to reviews. Early in the process I wasn't willing to dedicate time because I didn't really use the site, I just asked greg for books in person and I didn't think anybody was reading the reviews I was writing, but I could have done what I do now if I had felt like it apparently. This theory is vindicated by the fact that longer reviews start to pop up for books like famous fathers that karen was also interested in (and I believe read after I reviewed it) so when I thought people were listening I acted like I was talking to other people.

this is not unlike my intellectual history as a general rule. When I started college I was told by several teachers that my conceptions of logic were flat out wrong and I didn't make any sense in written format. On some level I think goodreads really helped me practice and move more towards writing for other people even if I still write mostly for myself. I do after all still get very suprised when people read my reviews and comment on them, like michael did on the one about feminism and medicalization of the female body.

in 2009 there starts to be a sparadic mix of the longer reviews that are understandable and things like "If an alarm clock will snooze itself after 2 minutes without you getting your ass out of bed that is a design flaw." yeah that's the whole review for a book, I have no idea if I just quoted the book or if that meant something to me at the time, it certainly doesn't now, and it kind of depresses me I did that cause the book was really good. Another example "Althusser killed his wife." This is written on a book that has no apparent connection to althusser. In fact I don't even know who althusser is in reality I think a philosopher.

I start comparing myself to greg and karen a lot in april 2009 (and possibly before) maybe this is whe I found out about voting or that karen was famous. I might also just have been trying to process differences in taste. when you are younger you feel weird about people not liking what you like and you feel like you have to justify your taste and your right to have it. Some of my reviews the appeal to authority is really clear, one is just a quote of a teacher I had who was a fucking genius. I think there is definitely a kind of searching for a place sense at this point where a lot of the reviews are one line totally nonsensical reviews which I think denote a sense of sort of floating and feeling like there isn't a purpose and meaning behind what your doing and then there being reviews that are heavily trying to define myself off other people or in line with other people. Max stirner talks about the infant defining the self by rejecting the outside world, I think these reviews might be that phase of development. Where on one hand I wanted to be seperate, but on another hand I was looking for acceptance and inclusion so I had a tendency to appeal to other people's opinions that I thought were more right to prove people should listen to me. This is an important step between feeling like no one is listening and getting your own voice.

Developing from that point you start to get more moments of me degrading authors which I think is a really good sign. I say something about hornby being "horrifically depressing" and not liking a novella by hansen who I do generally like. This probably is around the time that I was finishing up being in therapy and it was definitely the time when I was with my ex. Outside context does matter. where I was just generally getting a lot of validation that I did have the right to my own feelings and interpretations, which really wasn't the way I was raised. There are still a lot of the lower level, small reviews but when I review something seriously there is definitely a harder edge to it at that point and There are more mocking tones. Basically I started to stop worrying about how other people would react. A lot of this is down to the site. I hadn't had a lot of problems with people being mean to me here. I frequent a forum about religion regularly, but I don't generally tend to give serious opinions there because you get attacked and have to get through these giant fights. I don't want to fight so I just talk to friends and don't get involved in debates. I seldom get called out for anything on this site, and if there is a fight it clears up quickly so I think that it tends to foster the ability to express a wider variety of opinions. There is even a review I added of a book I had read years before on porn which comes down to the fact that I didn't feel like I needed to hide that I read things like that. Parts of that were the site and parts were my job. I mean I've always come off as a more rural modest person so I would get weird reactions when I would talk about liking baitille, sad, and legs mcneill, but working in a bookstore people thought it was cool. Even people who didn't like the books mocked it in a nice way not in a mean there is something wrong with you kind of way. You get that on this site too. There is a lot of validation here. If you don't like something someone else likes they generally will tell you there are other people who feel that way they just happen to disagree. There is a lot of tolerance here. On the other hand in the real world I was also writing a really long paper on tolerance and pluralism and the need for understanding and that probably also made me more comfortable being different.

Okay I'm going to run out of characters, but basically the more comfortable I got the more I was willing to share, my reviews got longer, more clear (because I wasn't afraid of people knowing my opinions) and the digressions were less couched because I wasn't as worried about being judged, because hell did it.

I hate boca

"that's what she said"

it's creepy to stalk married guys.

do you want a book? I've really only sent joel books, I considered sending one to josh because I needed one to sell because karen was going to have to send them back, but he probably wouldn't have like it anyway, and he doesn't know anything about it.

I also gave karen a book which I think caris has now.

'extra-cool' member!

twss

also one of his books has pictures of penises (peni?) on every page, that's classy.

his books are really good, help a bear is eating me is really well done, in the novella book the one about the penis is totally awesome as is the one about the butt, the title novella not quite as amazing, but that is in comparison to him not to other authors who are not as amazing.

yay!!!

I just moved into an apartment with a ton of storage, but I broke a shelf when I moved in so I'm freaked about overloading stuff and technically I'm not suppose to buy any more furniture

I was really freaked out about eating carrots as a kid. (You know how most kids are freaked out about eating babe). I figured if you weren't allowed to kill anything you would have to starve to death.

I very much enjoyed the talking cow from hhgttg

My stance on semen is it's vegetarian unless I don't want to do the work.

YAY!

Yeah I've sent books to people from on here, but it is just part of my evil plan to get their addresses so I can then stalk them, that's why I only give books to attractive men.

okay no worries if you beg out.

i don't friend people based on reviews. I have enough reviews to read what with greg and his book reports, I friend people if they entertain me

mfso, I had no intention of starting an ethical argument. I have messed up twice both times with gummi bears, because I have this stress thing that requires harbio gummi bears.


to keep this light, Semen vegetarian or not?

Seriously this is the first question I get asked on dates when someone finds out I've vegetarian.



I feel the same way about dairy, but I really like cheese I try to buy expensive cheese so I'll eat less of it.

no your actual shelves are totally awesomely cool, I'm glad you talked about them.

before I moved i had piles cause I didn't have enough shelves.

Fiction, science fiction, comics, biography, philosophy (and essays), psychology with a specific piles for borderline and sociopathy, history, religion with a specific pile for buddhism.

now it's more anywhere I can find to put books and probably over christmas break I'll go through and sort them. I might sort of follow jackie but use library of congress.

I love robert corimer

yay. karen was suppose to bring me eyeheart everything, because you are sadly under appreciated and I can't find a copy for myself, but she was irresponsible and forgot, so I have to live without it for another week.
you should be more famous!!