Reviews and Comments

bluestocking

bluestocking@sfba.club

Joined 1 year, 6 months ago

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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Jenny Odell: How to Do Nothing (2019)

In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and …

Ehhh...

This is really just okay. I got excited at first at the beginning when she mentioned being from the Bay Area and growing up in a similar environment to what I did (parents working in tech, growing up in strip mall suburbia in the South Bay), but overall I just wasn't impressed with the arguments made or the examples of how one should "resist the attention economy." It felt deeply individualistic--very "well just use your willpower to put your phone down and touch grass sometimes!" Reading this in 2025, with knowledge about things like dark patterns, the degree to which our behavior is constantly tracked (and, arguably, in some ways even predetermined by tech algorithms), the ways this information is being utilized to cause real harm and violence on a mass scale... it just didn't hit.

I did appreciate the degree of historical grounding re: things like the hippie communes …

Emily Nagoski, Amelia Nagoski: Burnout (Hardcover, 2019, Ballantine Books)

The phrase "human giver syndrome" changed me

This was a 3.75 for me. I did overall really like this book--it has Nagoski's signature voice (and literally, too, since I listed to the audiobook!) that feels both knowledgeable and playful, and sympathetic without being entirely cloying. I gleaned a lot of useful information from this about how to actually manage stress in ways that are lasting... and also had to acknowledge that a lot of the stuff that I choose to carry isn't really mine to worry about. It's wild hearing a phrase like "human giver syndrome" and hearing it described and going "oh, so, like, my whole personality? coooool cool cool cool." Would recommend this to anyone who constantly feels like they're drowning. It's a self-help book for sure, but backed by research and with many actionable solutions and useful examples.

I think the only part I didn't like was the bit re: body positivity, not because …

Jen Manion: Female Husbands (Hardcover, 2020, Cambridge University Press)

Long before people identified as transgender or lesbian, there were female husbands and the women …

We've always been here!!!

This was a fascinating read. It charts 200 years of women's (and "women's") queerness in the US and UK. It never goes so far as to label the female husbands it selects as particular subjects of study in specific ways (e.g. "She was definitely a lesbian!" "He was for sure a trans man!") and also uses they/them pronouns for each of them, and I appreciated how much it centered the ambiguity of what being a "female husband" meant. The ways that the term changed, both as it came into fashion and then eventually fell out of it, the ways it and the female husbands themselves interacted with waves of feminist politics and social mores--just a thoroughly good read (or, in my case, listen). Definitely a book I'd like to own a physical copy of for reference at some point.

Tanya Smith: Never Saw Me Coming (Paperback, 2025, Quercus)

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

Tanya Smith: Never Saw Me Coming (Paperback, 2025, Quercus)

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

Eric Klinenberg: Palaces for the People (Hardcover, 2018, Broadway Books)

"An eminent sociologist--and coauthor, with Aziz Ansari, of the #1 New York Times bestseller Modern …

2.5/5 - It has its moments but mostly feels shallow and dated

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 …

finished reading Palaces for the People by Eric Klinenberg

Eric Klinenberg: Palaces for the People (Hardcover, 2018, Broadway Books)

"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 …

reviewed The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie (The First Law, #1)

Joe Abercrombie: The Blade Itself (Paperback, 2008, Pyr)

Logen Ninefingers, infamous barbarian, has finally run out of luck. Caught in one feud too …

boy fantasy, all grown up

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.