Idea > Recent Status Updates

The chapter titled 'Patriarchy' has been the easiest to read so far because it echoes the feminist ideas I've been thinking about for years. Yet, it does so with more compassion towards men than most feminist discourse without ever condoning men's abuse of women. That's a huge win for an objective, healthy look at addressing this issue.

This chapter on shame first made me feel empathy towards the abusers and a ray of hope in tackling this issue.

Chapter 3. The Abusive Mind has been the hardest to read so far but also the most valuable. It presents a few different models for understanding why abusive behaviour happens. It also objectively presents the limitations of each approach. The hard part of it was accepting how attached I have been to certain easy and shallow interpretations. But finally the book tells me something I didn't know.

I'm not sure the extreme cases (knives, burning of children) should have come up at this time. It makes people think only that is domestic abuse and shut down in shock. It makes it easy to ignore the all the danger signs before that. We all know the brutal, sensational cases. We need to understand the subtler, the disturbing screams in the night, the unidentified thumps from next door.

Abusers are terrified by their victim's independence. Fear motivates their actions & gives them entitlement to abuse.

"Each household, a patriarchy in miniature, complete with its own web of rules or codes, rituals of deference, modes of enforcement, sanctions and forbidden places."
Patriarchy is about giving one individual unequal power over another. It is kept in place by rigid roles and allowed behaviours, divergence from which is punishable severely. So violence is integral to it.

"Each household, a patriarchy in miniature, complete with its own web of rules or codes, rituals of deference, modes of enforcement, sanctions and forbidden places."
Patriarchy is about giving one individual unequal power over another. It is kept in place by rigid roles and allowed behaviours, divergence from which is punishable severely. So violence is integral to it.

Do all Indian magical realism use this "I, of the exotic brown skin, from the ancient land that knows the mysteries of..." style?

2 chapters in and I'm so annoyed. The only reason I picked up this book was because I read Harly Quinn: Mad Love in the same series and loved it. But Batman? Sigh. Does anybody who is not male and overprivileged and obsessed with having a reason to be a whiny, broody asshole actually like Batman? I'm not the first so I guess that cuts me out of the intended audience anyway. Whew, am I glad I can just shut the book.

We left.
We did not say: Don't drive. You're drunk.
We did not say: We aren't letting you in that car when you are upset.
We did not say: We insist on going with you.
We did not say: This can wait until tomorrow. Anything - everything - can wait.

Right in the feels, man. This kept me up reading for another hour. WHY does John Green make horrible things happen to teenagers when being a teenager is horrible enough?

"She's cute, I thought, but you don't need to like a girl who treats you like you're ten: you've already got a mom." At least the book admits the girl is horrible and the boy is an idiot to fall for her. Paper Towns glorified the same rubbish.

Enjoyable as well as useful. I stopped here to replot my book, based on Cathy's proposed framework. Very good going, so far.

A boring story, droned out in the tone of a crusty old Hindu priest, illustrated with beautiful pictures. Disappointing, so far.

This book greatly improves when you fit known stories into these plot types. I did this with Neil Gaiman's Sandman:
Destiny - Apollo the Businessman
Death - Persephone the Maiden
Dream - Hades the Recluse
Destruction - Ares the Protector/Gladiator
Desire - Athena the Father's daughter
Despair - Demeter the Nurturer
Delirium - Persephone the Troubled Teen

Quotable: "There had been certain things I'd wanted badly in my childhood, and instead if getting them, I'd grown up; I did not want them any longer. But I said, "Thank you, Dad.""

My NetGalley license on this book expired so can't read any further.

I'm giving up this book as it's not particularly gripping me.

Not as funny in a collection as this is in a webcomic.

So much fun! This is not just a comic version of fairytales. Each story has a tiny difference, a tongue-in-cheek jab at the original story.

Having dipped in and out so many times, I think I've exhausted the whole book.