Amber Lea > Recent Status Updates

I don't know about this Sam chick anymore..."damn it Charlie, you're respecting my wishes instead of imposing your own wants and needs on me...what is wrong with you?" Like sure, there's something to be said for being assertive but...in this case he was doing the right thing.

Mary Elizabeth...ouch.

This is both better and worse than I expected. I thought it would be a bunch of douchey angst, but that's not what you get with this protagonist at all. I'm having a really hard time reading him as 14-15 years old though. He feels more 11-12. And I'm pretty frustrated by the writing style overall. And the fact that it's letters written by a boy named Charlie is fucking with me because of Flowers for Algernon.

I started this book assuming I might hate it...it seems like one of those books that maybe you had to read when you were in high school and still an idiot, and as an adult you might be like, "god teenagers are idiots..." We'll see.

This book references livejournal a lot and I find that hilarious.

I feel hopelessly overwhelmed by the idea of make up. Like, why at it's very simplest do you still need seven or eight different products? Shit's ridiculous.

This book is starting to depress me. But not through any real fault of the author...she writes good beauty tips. But the idea that I'm supposed to be trying to look effortlessly beautiful with all this EFFORT is gross. And it's not even that much effort, these are relatively low effort tips, but come on. If I followed most of these tips it would seriously cut into my life-having and for what?

Seriously though. If your relationship is this bad, you should really break up and learn how to act like adults. Also, your partner may be abusive.

The chapter on how teen girls learn sexuality doesn't seem too far off to me. A lot of the girls she's talking about are probably about 3-4 years younger than me.

This is what I mean: she's talking about a transman, and the transman wants to be referred to as "he" and he's saying that the gender binary is ridiculous, and the author is like, "Gee, that's such a confusing position." Because she doesn't understand how someone can identify as male AND be open to a range of gender identities. How you identify and what you're comfortable with are two different things, clown.

If you want to know the truth, I mostly picked this book because of the pretty illustrations. I'm a sucker for art! Aside from a few choice punch to the gut sentences, this book isn't so bad. It actually seems to be exactly what I needed. (Like tips on how to make your hair look nice without spending a lot of time or money on it.)

See, I want to get one of those "fancy" decent paying jobs, and I'm pretty sure the secret is looking sharp and pretending to have confidence in my abilities BUT since I did not spend the last 28 years perfecting my look I have no idea what I'm doing (hair curlers? How do those work?) and I was hoping I could cheat by reading a book about it. This will probably be painful.

I wish this book spoke with more empathy. There's definitely a judgmental tone and I feel like it detracts from some pretty valid points.

I think a little piece of my soul died while I was reading the positive psychology chapter. But the last chapter is entitled "How Positive Psychology Destroyed the Economy" and the first two paragraphs have really lifted my spirits.

I very much feel like this book needs some disclaimers. I mean, it's a book about how to deal with arguments, but there's never anything that stops you and says, "Hey man, verbal abuse is bad. You should get away from that shit." It's just like, "How to cope with getting yelled at..." Uhh, NO.

She really doesn't like Martin Seligman. I could drive over to his house and punch him in the nuts. He's probably about 10 miles from here.

Oh god, corporate-style megachurches. I'm so depressed right now I can't move.

Dude, now there's some serious corporate insight.

Boo on Calvinism, amiright?

hahaha, the chapter on the Secret is great. She's like, "Do you know how science works?" and everyone she talks to is like, "Of course...not really." And she's like, "I feel so alone."

Dude, the first chapter of this book articulates why the whole breast cancer awareness movement is so goddamned obnoxious. I love this book already.

Oh my god, I'm incapable of skipping over irrelevant information. I'm already an expert on birth control and yet here I am, reading about it some more. *passes out face first into the book* God, the chapter on pregnancy is next.

Holy crap. I bought this book and then promptly lost it. I just found it under a pile of sweaters.

No more sex books by middle-aged straight women. I can't take it anymore.

So far it's not telling me anything I haven't figured out for myself, but goddamn, I could have used this about 10 years ago. I used to be the absolute worst at making myself feel like shit. But I hope this book has good tips on how to be more effective in a conflict.

It's getting better. Honestly, I found the first chapter a little problematic. (But still full of valid points that you don't get to hear very often.) Now it's getting into feminist history and at this point I want to mail a copy to Lou Paget with a post-it that says, "Hey man, I think you need to read this."

"Sexuality is inherent, it is a fundamental part of being human, and it is a lot more complicated than we seem to be willing to admit. Different things are attractive to different people and sexual tastes run wide and wild. Yet somehow, we have accepted as fact the myth that sexiness needs to be something divorced from the everyday experience of being ourselves."

A-fucking-men.

I feel like this book would have a different tone if it was written today. The "raunch culture" has matured a bit since this book was written and isn't quite the horrible feminist nightmare it used to be. Thus, this book sounds pretty slut-shamey in its word choice at times. But the sex positive moment sucks in that it doesn't address the issues in this book which is why I bought it. So we'll see.

Alright! A jab at porn. Good, good.

"Perhaps this works for porn stars in which the so-called plot is generally directed at stimulating a man's masturbatory fantasy -- not giving real women and men a realistic picture of a woman having an orgasm."

This book gets minus a million points for consistency. Too little, too late, book. Now my boyfriend wants a degrading pterodactyl gang bang.

Oh my god, this book actually said something worth reading, and it's in one of those obnoxious historical facts blockquotes. "What if all this 'dysfunction' is not so much a lack of interest in sex, but a lack of interest in the type of sex that society considers normal?" I can't help but point out...this is not a fact. Nor is it historical. But you know, still. Good point.