Stacey

Good, but I was hoping for a bit more.

Revisado: 04-04-25

I have been following Ezra Klein for a long time and I was looking forward to this book. I liked the deep dive into the history and practice of bureaucratic morass. I like how the authors found areas of success 2.2 as potential models for the future and I can definitely see how all of these subjects can face the same types of obstacles to actually getting stuff done, but at times the book felt disorganized. Still, I am hoping that this attitude can inspire those of us on the progressive side to make some changes that actually accomplish the goals that we wish to see embodied.

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Enjoyable memoir with wonderfully detailed descriptions of the natural world

Revisado: 08-02-24

This author shares her life story and anchors each chapter with a constellation. From young adulthood through middle age, describes her journey with life, illness and love. Her descriptions of the natural world are compelling.

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Interesting and useful read

Revisado: 10-28-23

I am looking forward to putting these negotiation strategies to work. It is interesting that some of what he suggests are the “soft skills” that women are usually discouraged from employing.

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Interesting and important premise; terrible book

Revisado: 05-04-21

Wow, this book is so disappointing.
I purchased this book because it was recommended by Natalie Wynn on the Ezra Klein podcast last week. While I love Natalie’s content and think she has a lot of important contributions to nuanced discourse, I think this book recommendation was not good.
The premise is fascinating and important and true - that people in power can conflate normal conflict (or less-powerful people just existing in a way that the powerful don't like) with "abuse" to justify the harm that the powerful inflict on the power-less. The beginning of the book promised a deep dive into this concept, from the family level to the global political level. She acknowledges the existence of “real abuse” in the introduction, but says she isn’t going to address that, just the “misuse” of claims of abuse.
But right away the book got terrible. The author spends the whole first chapter complaining about things that have nothing to do with the premise. She complains about email and concludes that you can *only* have meaningful conversations by telephone or face to face. She claims that a desire to communicate in text is the equivalent of abusive "shunning." She says that any form of one person unilaterally deciding to go "no contact" from another is abusive and wrong and that everyone should always be willing and available to discuss everything and repair/ build relationships. She places a lot of burden on the person being “hit on” or receiving friendship overtures to help the person hitting on them self-actualize, regardless of the person’s interest in being friends or romantic partners. She says that her own experience of not being able to admit her homosexuality to herself in early years and brushing off advances from women, means that people who receive unwelcome advances need to just open themselves up to the advances as an opportunity to transform. She complains about her busy friend cancelling on her lunch plans by email and insists that the “right” way for the friend to resolve this would be through telephone, not email. Not only does some of the conduct she is advocating for sound like “real abuse” (like ignoring an individual’s stated desire for you to not contact them), but by not addressing any distinction between her definition of real abuse and misuse of abuse, there is nothing to be gained by this writing – how would you even know if a situation calls for opening yourself up to mutual transformation and understanding if you can’t identify the difference between an opportunity for discourse and abusive power-plays? The author comes off as advocating for the person desiring connection to just force it on the object of their desire.
The book is entirely from the author’s personal experience and makes a lot of unsupported, conclusory statements, without even logical arguments to persuade the reader. I gave this author a chance to move past the initial terrible beginning, but I had to stop reading after the first full chapter (after the introductory chapter). I had such high hopes for this book initially that I bought the audiobook, and the kindle edition and this was 2 hours in to the 8 hour audiobook (read badly by the author at a snail’s pace). I do NOT recommend.

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esto le resultó útil a 15 personas

Thorough, but needed better reader and editor.

Revisado: 07-26-17

The reader was really awful - she had a lot of long weird pauses in the middle of sentences and a generally unpleasant cadence to her speech. I was able to tolerate the audio by increasing the speed to 1.25. The subject matter is fascinating and the author is certainly thorough, but a lot of the "personal stories of the girls" sound like obituary quotes - so trite and saccharine that they really do not give us an understanding of who they were - and there were so many "kind, good-humored, working-class girls" in the story that it was hard to keep track of who was who. The author also tends to gush and use trite phrases such as "she was shining, shining for justice"; these become tiresome quickly. This book could have used a good editor.

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Good memoir. A little short on details

Revisado: 01-07-16

Overall, this is a really good story. Franklin is honest and sharing his journey through his relationships including mistakes.

There are times I wish for a little more detail on the interpersonal friction between Celeste and franklins other lovers. Franklin talks a lot about the other lovers bumping into the rules and limits of Franklin and Celeste's agreement. But there's not a lot of explanation as to what that actually looked like.

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Engaging story

Revisado: 01-30-15

Well-written and entertaining. It kind of reminded me of Middlesex, combining cultural issues, non-traditional body issues, and quirky individuals in the story. The reading was very well done; I was not really a fan of the musical
transitions, but they weren't a big problem. The story left me wanting more, in a good way.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Compassion and common sense

Revisado: 01-26-15

This is a delightful read: touching, funny, and wise. You don't have to agree with every piece of advice to enjoy the thought-provoking questions and responses from the Dear Sugar advice column.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Well-researched history of women and alcohol

Revisado: 01-26-15

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which included a thorough history of alcohol in America, focusing particularly on the private and public relationship between women and alcohol. The author does an excellent job of mixing historical and scientific facts with personal stories. The author also delves thoroughly into the AA movement and its successes and failures for women; because 12 step programs are heralded as the only "real" answer to addictive behaviors and are so thoroughly embedded in our cultural narrative and judicial system, it makes sense that the author spends a lot of time confronting AA mythologies with both statistical evidence and personal stories. Other reviewers have pointed out that there is only a small portion of the book dedicated to the "and how they can regain control;" the author offers a few pharmacological and behavioral strategies for dealing with women's problem drinking, but this part of the book is not as well developed as the earlier sections. Overall, a very interesting read.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

Interesting glimpse into a life so unlike my own

Revisado: 01-26-15

Coates memoir of his boyhood-to-manhood years was an interesting read. The language and tone is quite different from his current writing at the Atlantic; fortunately, those unfamiliar with the slang in the book can get help from the internet (I had to Google phrases like "giving dap"). I am so unfamiliar with the world of his youth - I read this knowing nothing of black boys growing up in the city during the crack era. Coates lyrically describes his life and the ways it typified and departed from the life of his peers. It was a very worthwhile read and well-performed by the reader.

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esto le resultó útil a 54 personas