Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
I'm so glad I took a chance on this one and requesteThanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
I'm so glad I took a chance on this one and requested the ARC. It was so much fun! It avoided literally everything that usually makes me avoid reading biographies: the tedious linear structure, the grandiloquence and navel-gazing that comes with writing about a much-lauded (or controversial) figure (and the author trying to "earn it"), and to be honest, the dull bits. Q: A Voyage Around the Queen is not a standard biography, so despite my having called it one, make sure your expectations are set properly. We don't get any primary sources from the Queen herself, we don't get much behind the scenes input of decisions of state or politics of any kind. What we DO get is a series of primary sources from everyone but Lilibet herself, and not necessarily the people you would expect.
This isn't so much a book about Queen Elizabeth II, but a book about how she affected the world around her throughout the 70+ years of her rule (and some before that as well). Here are two examples of what you will get with this book: 1) There is an entire chapter of people's dreams about the Queen, which Brown seems to have sourced from a multitude of places (my favorite was the writer Kingsley Amis's); and 2) There is a chapter devoted to the thwarted ambitions of a woman who desperately wanted to be one of the Queen's Ladies in Waiting (which I did not know was still a thing!!). We see her diaries as a young girl, and that she's still obsessing about it as an elderly woman. The chapter on the Coronation was a real treat, from the noble who attended out of spite while holding a 103+ degree fever, to a ten-year old Paul McCartney, who won an essay contest about the Queen's impending reign.
The best thing about this format is that he gets so many opinions and stories from so many different places that the reader can form their own picture and opinions of the Queen. I do not give a fig about the monarchy or the royal family, but this was a really good read. Will definitely be checking out more books from this author.
And I didn't even get around to talking about the extensive corgi lineages!...more
Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn't affected the content of my review.
This was so incredibly informative and useful. My maiThanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn't affected the content of my review.
This was so incredibly informative and useful. My main takeaway from reading this actually has more to do with me than the content of the book, and that's holy cow I've just blithely swanning about the internet for almost 30 years having NO IDEA how it actually works, and just completely taking it for granted. Even as a person who considers herself pretty on top of cyber security, you know, for an average person. I use a Password Manager! I encrypt emails with sensitive information! I never click on the links!
So, this was eye-opening in that regard, and I learned a TON about how the Internet actually works and how it was built and evolved, all while learning about how hackers and other actors, both bad and good, exploit loopholes both in the technology, and perhaps even more importantly, in human behavior (called here upcode, vs. the downcode of software and hardware and programming).
Thanks to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
The Marquis de Sade was an absolute maniac. A lot oThanks to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
The Marquis de Sade was an absolute maniac. A lot of people have tried to justify him as a free thinker, an artist, a revolutionary, someone on the cutting edge of everything. I think he just did whatever he wanted because he couldn't control himself and damn the consequences. I don't think he was that deep. Similarly, people try to say that 120 Days of Sodom is a work of literature, pushing boundaries, and cataloguing the variety of human sexuality. I've read the book. I think Sade just wanted to document his sexual fantasies and then retreat into the corner of his cell in the Bastille with his custom dildoes (fun fact I learned in this book) and have himself a good time. He also perpetrated actual harm on actual people! No murder, as far as anyone is aware, but definitely kidnapping, assault, sexual assault, poisoning, and who knows what else. His contemporaries would have also charged him with such crimes as sodomy, blasphemy, and other "sexual crimes." The French government hanged and burned him in effigy because they couldn't catch him. And I find him incredibly interesting to read about.
And he continued to inspire mania in others long after his death. People were fascinated by his life throughout history and made important political and scientific decisions because of him and his work. And the manuscript of 120 Days of Sodom, famously lost in the storming of the Bastille, has just as intense a legacy as the person who wrote it. Joel Warner traces the movements of the scrolled manuscript throughout history, and it has certainly had an interesting journey.
The book is equal parts a biography of Sade and the tracing of this manuscript. I found both parts fascinating. Sade's life was a trainwreck of pleasure-seeking gone awry. And the manuscript changed hands many times, intersecting with NAZIs, Sade's direct descendants, investment schemes, and more. My favorite part of the book is that Warner takes the time to detail the people involved in a very fun way, and lets himself go off on historical tangents that were so informative. For instance, I had NO idea that there was such a vibrant queer community developing in post-WWI Berlin, and that the government was on the verge of decriminalizing homosexuality before it collapsed and the NAZIs took over.
Anyway, this was one of the most entertaining non-fiction books I've ever read, so I'm definitely buying myself a copy and will be re-reading in the future. Highly recommend....more
I liked this but it didn't really deliver what it promised. We do see "inside the world's most notorious groups" (30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 3 Book 5/30
I liked this but it didn't really deliver what it promised. We do see "inside the world's most notorious groups" (there were quite a lot of non-American cults in here, which was a pleasant surprise), but I think it is disingenuous of the subtitle to imply that this book tries to understand why people joined these cults, at least in any way beyond the most shallow and obvious (vulnerable people are catnip to cult leaders, who seek them out). This book is a lot less nuanced than that, reading more like a series of unconnected histories of each cult than any unified exploration of humanity's relationships to cults.
Each cult is explored in long chapters with almost zero comparative analysis between them, and there are about ten of them (I didn't count). My ability to pay attention to the various chapters varied wildly. I think there must be something going on with the style here, though I can't pinpoint exactly what, that meant the less familiar I was with whatever group a chapter was about, the less it was able to hold my attention. No surprise, the two that are sticking with me most vividly are the ones about Charles Manson (which opens up the book) and Keith Raniere. Each chapter follows a pattern: Learn about the cult leader from childhood and then follow as they form the cult, and then eventually lead the cult to grisly ends. We actually get more about the psychology of the leaders than we do the followers, so the title really is misleading.
I listened to the audio version, which was well done. Each cult gets a separate narrator and they all did good jobs. ...more
This book was infuriating, but very interesting. If you're looking to rage-out at the patriarchy, The Woman They Could Not Silence will certainly do tThis book was infuriating, but very interesting. If you're looking to rage-out at the patriarchy, The Woman They Could Not Silence will certainly do the trick. But also, because Elizabeth Packard was a badass who changed things for thousands of people in her lifetime and many more into the future, you get a happyish ending as well to lift you back from your cleansing rage.
Elizabeth Packard was committed to an asylum in the 1860s by her husband; because he said she was insane, she was insane. This was legal at the time. Her mistake? Thinking for herself and questioning him, particularly on the subject of religion (he was a pastor). What follows is Elizabeth's journey to come to terms with her years-long imprisonment, to help her fellow "patients" (some of whom are genuinely mentally ill, but many of whom are not), and upon finally winning her release, spending the rest of her life campaigning for mental health reform, and women's rights. And winning!
This was a bit slow to engage my emotions at first, but as soon as things started going wrong at the asylum, I was hooked. The horrors she saw enacted on the mentally ill patients, the punishments dealt to those women they just wanted to keep in line, the gaslighting and manipulation of the doctor Elizabeth had placed her trust in, and the disregard of her humanity will all make your blood boil. But that slow start is the reason it's not getting five stars.
I did the audiobook and it's narrated by the author. She does a great job, and will read to you in a British accent, so I recommend that option if you like audiobooks....more
This book probably deserves a more thorough review than I'm about to give it. I wasn't planning to review it at all, but I need to express some thoughThis book probably deserves a more thorough review than I'm about to give it. I wasn't planning to review it at all, but I need to express some thoughts!
-This book is about the gays that the queer community does not really want to claim as part of its own because they were "evil or complicated" or both. The authors use the term "bad gays" as an umbrella but know its imperfect. -The overall mission of the book, aside from exploring these rejected gays, is purportedly to trace the evolution of our modern conception of what it means to be gay or queer through the lens of these "bad gays," many of whom were white and inextricably part of the patriarchal white supremacist systems that birthed our modern culture. -I've seen a lot of criticism about there not being representation of non-white folks or those who identify as something other than male in this book, but these criticisms miss the point, or at least don't take their criticisms the right point. The book isn't aiming to explore marginalized gays, but the bad gays who were front and center of culture, politics, and the sciences, those who wrote the narrative. So of course there won't be many marginalized bad gays in here, because their voices weren't shaping the dominant culture. Those would be the white, male ones (for the most part; there is one woman in here, Margaret Mead, and one Japanese man, Yukio Mishimi). -Each individual chapter was well-written, thoughtful and thought provoking, well-researched, and well-argued on its own. Some were amusing and some were horrifying. -I do not think, however, the book did a good enough job bringing each chapter into the whole. It felt really disconnected, and it didn't do enough to justify its focus on these bad white queers by tracing their ideas and contributions to culture and the conversation to our modern conceptions of queerness, in relation to women, those outside the gender binary, non-white and non-Western queers. There needed to be more connecting threads between chapters and to the point of the book as a whole. -I still think it's worth reading. I actually learned a lot, and rethought some concepts I'd taken as given. The authors are not writing in a vacuum, and all of the chapters consider those non-bad queers who don't get their own chapter titles, but who are always directly affected by the actions of the bad, evil, complicated queers. -I would read another book by these authors for sure. -I liked the audiobook, but just know going in that it wasn't proofed properly, there are a couple sections where multiple takes of the same line were left in.
[3.5 stars]
Read Harder Challenge 2023: Read a nonfiction book about BIPOC and/or queer history....more
This was a fun book, just as the cover and (extremely good) title promised. Butts: A Backstory is a cultural microhistory of the butt that pretty muchThis was a fun book, just as the cover and (extremely good) title promised. Butts: A Backstory is a cultural microhistory of the butt that pretty much covers every aspect of it that you would want or expect it to.
We start with the evolutionary purpose of the butt and then move on to such topics as: Sarah Baartman (“The Hottentot Venus”, and why everything about what happened to her and even that moniker is super racist and tragic); the impact of butts on fashion and the impact of fashion on butts (where did bustles come from? why can you never find a pair of jeans that fit? and why is everything so tragically linked to eugenics?); re-explorations of Josephine Baker, Jennifer Lopez, Sir Mix-A-Lot (“Baby Got Back”), Miley Cyrus (along with a history of twerking), and the Buns of Steel phenomenon.
It was entertaining, informative, and thought-provoking. I had a great time, and you should check this book out if you, too, want to be informed and thought-provoked while having a great time. I also recommend the audiobook. The introduction is read by the author (a veteran of RadioLab*), and then Emily Tremaine takes over, and she does such a great job I kept forgetting the author wasn’t reading the book herself.
*In fact, I first heard from this author about butts on her RadioLab episode, “Butt Stuff,” which covers the same material as the evolutionary chapter (but with more info on the man vs. horse race in AZ), though it has been reworked for this book. The podcast ep is fun, though, so check it out!
I’d never heard of this until last year, but then immediately put it on my TBR after reading a review of it from someone I follow, as it sounded reallI’d never heard of this until last year, but then immediately put it on my TBR after reading a review of it from someone I follow, as it sounded really interesting. And it was interesting! For the most part. Large parts were a slog. It also didn’t really do what I wanted it to do, except in the preface, which was written in 2014 and not included in the original publication.
Edward Ball descends from the Ball family, wealthy plantation owners and people responsible for enslaving thousands of Black people over two hundred and fifty years. He discovered that his family had kept all their papers, a wealth of historical information, including information on the enslaved people the Balls owned. He decided to find out what he could, and in the process confront how his family actually treated the people they owned.
Almost no one in his family was happy about him digging through their past like this; none of them wanted their bubbles popped. Especially as the oral history of slavery in the Ball family was one where they had told themselves constantly and over generations that they weren’t like other slaveowners. They took care of the people they owned, they never beat them, never raped them, etc. So if this was true, why was his family so mad he was looking?
Interestingly, Ball does find evidence, both historical and through the oral histories of Black families whose ancestors were Ball slaves, that there was some truth to this family legacy. The Balls, historically, do seem to have been “better masters” than other slaveowners, but to say that they never mistreated their slaves is a) patently absurd, because even if true, owning slaves pretty much tops all those other crimes, and b) of course, there was still evidence that Ball slaves were beaten, imprisoned, raped, etc. Ball slaves were still instrumental in a couple of slave revolts. Ball finds lots of evidence that members of the Ball family had children with their slaves, whether due to rape, a single sexual encounter, or because that Ball family member was in a relationship (as it were) with the slave. (He finds evidence that the people in this latter category were often freed in their master’s wills, left money, or property.)
Also interesting were the conversations Ball had with some of his family members, many of whom display staggeringly paternalistic racism, and a general cluelessness I found astounding (willful ignorance might be a better term).
Where this book lost me was the endless family history of the Balls, especially when unconnected to his larger points, or to larger historical events. I just did not care. I think his perspective might have failed him a little here, because of course he finds the minutia of his own family history interesting. He also has an irritating writing tic, where he has to describe the way people look, and it gets pretty cringey at times, especially when he’s describing Black people. The preface really was one of the highlights of the book, and can’t imagine the book without it. That’s where you get most of the analysis, and more modern thoughts about race and generational trauma. I wanted more of that analysis throughout the book.
Overall, still worth checking out, bearing in mind that it’s over twenty years old, and that you’ll have to wade through 1,000 Elias Balls, or whatever, to get to the interesting stuff.
"The ____'s Guide to _____ a/and ______" Accountability Rating: I have decided to start holding books accountable for frivolously using the extremely "The ____'s Guide to _____ a/and ______" Accountability Rating: I have decided to start holding books accountable for frivolously using the extremely overused title construction this book also uses. This book gets an 10/10. It is an actual guide to dinosaurs for grown-ups! Absolutely 100% ratio of title accuracy to contents of book. No notes.
Alternate Titles for This Book: No alternate titles needed....more
All I've got in my head right now is that line from Spaceballs: “At last we meet again for the first time, for the last time.” I say that because everAll I've got in my head right now is that line from Spaceballs: “At last we meet again for the first time, for the last time.” I say that because every year I read a handful of books that I am just absolutely at a loss for how to review. This is my first one of 2022! I just want to say la la la la la and maybe read it again, but I'm expected instead to verbalize my thoughts about a book that covered so much and was so good and so interesting! There, that's some helpful information for you.
Well, I guess I can say this book does what it says on the tin! It is an examination (a very interesting one) of the way that language is used in cultish environments to indoctrinate people or make them continue with pursuits or take part in organizations that harm them or are actively against their best interests, and that isolate them from their friends and families. She talks about infamous cults like Jonestown and Heaven's Gate, as well as cult religions like Scientology, but she also covers MLM's (my favorite part!) and the cultish atmosphere of modern day fitness programs like SoulCycle. She breaks down language concepts like thought-terminating clichés and the way cults and cultish organizations co-opt language to provide a moment of conversion.
What I really need to do is buy the hard copy and read it again. I did the audio, which was great, but doesn't lend as well to highlighting and re-reading.
P.S. While I was reading this book thanks a friend's recommendation in the comments on one of my status updates, I also listened to The Dream podcast, and it was so great, although listening to them both at once has led to some slight confusion because I keep forgetting which part was in the book and which was in the podcast. Highly recommend that one! And this book, obviously....more