28 year-old white queer lady in San Francisco. Knitter, transit geek, and sometime editor and cyclist. Planting peas and potatoes to prefigure an anarchist future. I listen to a lot of nonfiction audiobooks.
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26% complete! bluestocking has read 8 of 30 books.
The true story of how a middle-class Black girl from Minneapolis became one of the …
Parts of this were interesting, particularly at the beginning. Mostly it ended up being a grim picture of abuse and the way the prison system destroys families.
The true story of how a middle-class Black girl from Minneapolis became one of the single biggest threats to the …
The true story of how a middle-class Black girl from Minneapolis became one of the …
Content warning minor spoilers and a little misandry and maybe a little too personal lol
so what I’m getting from this book is an affirmation that if you make more money than a man you’re dating they will always covet it and ruin it for you and also use that money to make themselves seem wealthy/desirable to other women
hits too close to home, tbh!
The true story of how a middle-class Black girl from Minneapolis became one of the single biggest threats to the …
The true story of how a middle-class Black girl from Minneapolis became one of the …
Content warning mild spoilers for the very beginning of the book
the opening of this book and the first chapter are absolutely WILD, omg??? we open with her escaping prison by just straight up walking out and then the next chapter is her obsessively stalking Michael Jackson as a 13 year-old in 1974, including calling his grandfather on a regular basis to try and get in touch with him and eventually flying to LA and GOING TO HIS HOUSE to meet him. I can't WAIT to see where this goes.
"An eminent sociologist--and coauthor, with Aziz Ansari, of the #1 New York Times bestseller Modern …
Parts of this were interesting and worthwhile. I appreciated the focus on specific studies and examples of positive changes that have been made (and are still being made!) toward the beginning of the book, and the historical and cultural context discussing why some cultures and locations have robust third places and why others don't in the middle of the book.
I was really put off at various points by the lack of depth in the author's analysis, however. Particularly at the end when he discussed the "Polis Stations," I found myself yelling "PLEASE read Angela Davis or ANYTHING about prison abolition!!" at the audiobook as it played. I feel like the book suffers from having been published in 2019, and in many ways it feels quite dated just six years later. The bits about "reaching across the aisle" feel trite and a little nauseating in April 2025. And, as someone …
Parts of this were interesting and worthwhile. I appreciated the focus on specific studies and examples of positive changes that have been made (and are still being made!) toward the beginning of the book, and the historical and cultural context discussing why some cultures and locations have robust third places and why others don't in the middle of the book.
I was really put off at various points by the lack of depth in the author's analysis, however. Particularly at the end when he discussed the "Polis Stations," I found myself yelling "PLEASE read Angela Davis or ANYTHING about prison abolition!!" at the audiobook as it played. I feel like the book suffers from having been published in 2019, and in many ways it feels quite dated just six years later. The bits about "reaching across the aisle" feel trite and a little nauseating in April 2025. And, as someone who is from and still lives in the Bay Area, much of the authors' final chapters made me roll my eyes. His criticisms of various tech corps and the billionaires who built their wealth from them are incredibly mild, and frankly read like reputation laundering (and I would've said the same had I read the book in 2019, because all the same people still sucked pondwater then and we'd all had years to recognize it by that point) and also tainted by a misguided belief that tech barons and megacorps are telling the truth when they say they want to do any kind of good in the world and not just extract every ounce of value they can. Capitalism and capitalists might be bad and destroying social cohesion actually!!
Basically: there are some nuggets in this that made it feel worthwhile for me to read, if only to give me a jumping off point to dive into the work of the researchers the author cites, but altogether the analysis felt shallow and at many stages like it missed the forest for the trees.
"An eminent sociologist--and coauthor, with Aziz Ansari, of the #1 New York Times bestseller Modern Romance--makes the provocative case that …
"An eminent sociologist--and coauthor, with Aziz Ansari, of the #1 New York Times bestseller Modern …
Parts of this were interesting and worthwhile. I appreciated the focus on specific studies and examples of positive changes that have been made (and are still being made!) toward the beginning of the book, and the historical and cultural context discussing why some cultures and locations have robust third places and why others don't in the middle of the book.
I was really put off at various points by the lack of depth in the author's analysis, however. Particularly at the end when he discussed the "Polis Stations," I found myself yelling "PLEASE read Angela Davis or ANYTHING about prison abolition!!" at the audiobook as it played. I feel like the book suffers from having been published in 2019, and in many ways it feels quite dated just six years later. The bits about "reaching across the aisle" feel trite and a little nauseating in April 2025. And, as someone …
Parts of this were interesting and worthwhile. I appreciated the focus on specific studies and examples of positive changes that have been made (and are still being made!) toward the beginning of the book, and the historical and cultural context discussing why some cultures and locations have robust third places and why others don't in the middle of the book.
I was really put off at various points by the lack of depth in the author's analysis, however. Particularly at the end when he discussed the "Polis Stations," I found myself yelling "PLEASE read Angela Davis or ANYTHING about prison abolition!!" at the audiobook as it played. I feel like the book suffers from having been published in 2019, and in many ways it feels quite dated just six years later. The bits about "reaching across the aisle" feel trite and a little nauseating in April 2025. And, as someone who is from and still lives in the Bay Area, much of the authors' final chapters made me roll my eyes. His criticisms of various tech corps and the billionaires who built their wealth from them are incredibly mild, and frankly read like reputation laundering (and I would've said the same had I read the book in 2019, because all the same people still sucked pondwater then and we'd all had years to recognize it by that point) and also tainted by a misguided belief that tech barons and megacorps are telling the truth when they say they want to do any kind of good in the world and not just extract every ounce of value they can. Capitalism and capitalists might be bad and destroying social cohesion actually!!
Basically: there are some nuggets in this that made it feel worthwhile for me to read, if only to give me a jumping off point to dive into the work of the researchers the author cites, but altogether the analysis felt shallow and at many stages like it missed the forest for the trees.
Logen Ninefingers, infamous barbarian, has finally run out of luck. Caught in one feud too …
starting this immediately after Jitterbug Perfume gave me such tonal whiplash and my reaction within the first couple pages was “oh, this is Boy Fantasy.” I’ve read a lot of Boy Fantasy in my time, and it’s not a bad thing—just not something I would generally seek out myself. I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would in those first couple pages (and straight up just enjoying it, period), and I’m curious enough about where this series goes to have added the next book to my TBR.
Logen Ninefingers, infamous barbarian, has finally run out of luck. Caught in one feud too many, he’s on the verge …
A provocative, elegantly written analysis of female desire, consent, and sexuality in the age of MeToo
Women are in a …
A provocative, elegantly written analysis of female desire, consent, and sexuality in the age of MeToo
Women are in a …
@emmadilemma@ramblingreaders.org It's definitely one of those books I know will be deeply meaningful and fun for the right readers, but at this point any recommendation requires caveats. It is very much a novel written by a particular kind of whimsical white man in the early '80s who spent his formative years in the south.
