Rowan's Bookshelf (Carleigh) > Recent Status Updates

To the Johns and "to the ones who watched" were also very powerful. I love the repeating theme of the one thing we hate the most is what we fear in ourselves. I love the messages of forgiving and love and if we knew each other we would stop being afraid

To the ones whose body shall shake the heavens" and "to the sisterhood of trans femmes" are my favorites so far

Grace is literally so repressed and jealous, I don't love her, but her chapters are fine. Glad the hip thing didn't drag out into a 3rd act breakup

Wasn't expecting Carmilla's twist! Hopefully it will be interesting and keep up the pace rather than the tired" learn how to be a vampire" stuff i never care about

The writing is really simple and also pretentious but considering these characters...I feel like it's supposed to feel that way

Grace is SO repressed i feel sad for her

Oh this book is SO BASED for tearing down terfs

Oh my GOD this whole "bet" kiss is awesome. Girl kissing her on the jaw is NOT less gay lmao

I was kind of annoyed by Phoebe but I have quickly come to like her cocky and sunny personality

It's all very surface level to me, some interesting facts and stats I didn't know about, but i wish it really broke down how fatphobia affects people rather than just anecdotes. More societal-level stuff

Okay chapter on demoralizing fatness, a bit redundant and leaning on a moral argument that can easily be waved away. I would have liked more on food justice than what is here, and more emphasis on the idea that we can make a "bad/unhealthy" decision simply because we value food more

A bit vague but interesting discussion on the relation between fatness and race, especially the early equation during the slave trade to "prove" black people should be enslaved, because fat suddenly = gluttonous and lazy.

Got much more out of chapter 2, the studies seemed more relevant to showing that fat doesn't not equal healthy, and that health may have little to do with fatness at all. Interested to see her theories on why we hate fate so much

Fairly certain like the last 20% of this has been sex scenes

We sure Alfie doesn't just have autism? He's giving me Spectrum vibes. How else does something go SO WRONG as the paparazzi photos.
There's also random bits of dialogue that we're just told happens rather than actually seeing it. Like her "giving it to him" is just. Said happened instead of it playing out

This man isn't even grumpy he has anxiety lol
But it is kind of weird that they were basically in a meeting and then suddenly he's doing her hair. Hmm.

Hell yeah Yorkshire accent narrator

Not super impressed by the first chapter - very obvious and known issues. Love that trans people were given pretty much the center stage for how fatness just compounds other minority issues and access

Kind of just listing single study findings as facts without adding much, the stats are eye opening but the citations are just ONE study usually

Raquel should kill Nick tbh team up with Anita's ghost to do it

Oh hell yeah I didn't know this was magical realism but I LOVE IT

Really surprised to see this as only 320 pages because the audiobook is so long lol but the narrator for Anita is GREAT

wonder if this "realization" of her cowboy self and her mom's ghost twin is actually a realization, or just something for the book - a good tie in to the theme of colonialism throughout or if she literally viewed herself as a cowboy when things got hard. Good imagery either way

am SO interested in the history of eurasians in Hong Kong - the affair with a white man caused the grandmother to sever ties with her family and caused her shame, but ended up giving her mixed daughter an "in" to upper society - all because of the history of colonialism making a new class. plus how diff the authors experience with identity in america is vs her moms in hong kong

Narrator doesn't get enough into why she's so distant from her mother, besides this whole "cowboy" american persona she has - even when going through the grandma's memoir she skims over the devastating parts for facts. I'm assuming this is building to something hopefully

Surprised that author thinks her grandmother was "less sympathetic" after learning she had to prostitute herself to provide for her daughter - how is that not sympathetic? Sure she was romanitcizing a lot of her life, but I can't not feel for her more when learning what she did

Timeline definitely jumps around in the first chapter - its to set up context, but it would be nice if the chapter didn't say we were in one decade then keep talking about the present and what happened several decades later

Like reading the history and her journey with her mom. Some of it is so abstract its a bit hard to understand though - especially the feelings of her mom loving her but also being like another person sometimes

The article thing is a little dumb, but that's highschool and honestly I can see it happening, just not at this level of drama. But these are some remarkably mature teenagers lol