alexture's reviews
948 reviews

I've been changing my entire world every decade at most for my entire life, and it gets lonely out there.

Moving to a not-actually-new city and having to start from not-really-scratch has been very hard for the past six months, and my whole approach of friendship doesn't help – I struggle a lot with keeping friends, with creating relationships that aren't a Fight Club type "best friend for the duration of one flight" thing.

So, a bit desperate, I read this book.

Turned out it wasn't a self-help mess that should have been six, maybe eight if I'm generous, instagram slides (looking at you, The Mountain is you) but a well thought out book with many, many psych studies references. I'll put it in the "acceptable pop science books" section over there (it's the one that I hope will be safe from the If Books could kill podcast).

Platonic is an excellent book. It starts with attachment theory, which I don't really vibe with (possibly because I'm avoidant), and then uses it as a loose framework for the actually interesting stuff instead of rigidly closing up every paragraph into one or the other type of attachment. This way, everyone gets to learn something!

The book talks about making new friends, about keeping them, about being less afraid of rejection and about accepting invites more often if you want people to actually invite you again (oops). It also has a huge part about conflict, which can get a bit... American... and ends with very valuable tips for being a minority with "majority" friends. This had some stuff I had never read before and I found it really excellent.

Bref: a great read, for me at least.

Hêtre pourpre m'a dit de faire mon coming-out à ma grand-mère puis a passé le reste de ses pages à me faire passer un très mauvais moment. J'ai pas pu arrêter de le lire.

Toutes les dix pages, un paragraphe exprimait tout ce que j'avais besoin de lire et justifiait le reste de ma lecture.

Le mélange des langues (avec une traduction absolument phénoménale de Rose Labourie) reflétait ce qui se passe dans mon cerveau.

Et accessoirement ma lecture tombe pile au moment où je veux me remettre à l'allemand, une délicieuse coïncidence.

Such an excellent book with such a disappointing ending.

I was really invested in the conspiracy arc and having it end nowhere AND sprinkled with magical realism when the plot could have been just as solid without it?

I truly hope fanfic writers will write the conspiracy arc I need to read. This is excellent material for, well, something else.

This is so long. I'd finish it as a regular book but the audiobook format makes it even longer and I almost dread starting to play it now.

some books should be a 10-slide instagram carousel. this is one of them.

je n'ai absolument aucun intérêt pour le narrateur en giga chien 

Un livre pour enfants (et jeunes ados) vraiment très cool, qui raconte une histoire toute mignonne avec une fin qu'on aimerait bien voir dans la vraie vie !

 This was an interesting and thought-provoking read on high performance sport and mostly on doping. 

Doping is a highly emotional issue and going through its history with a new lens took me out of my comfort zone − and it was fascinating. Beamish seems to have a very clear opinion that anti-doping policies are a direct consequence of the cold war, and to a lesser extent of the war on drugs. They’re paternalistic, they’re deeply useless, they’re actively harmful (especially in the case of sex testing), and they lead to so much more danger than doing nothing. Beamish for example argues that steroids are not nearly as dangerous as the myriad of weird mixtures created to evade steroid testing. 

This book should probably not be taken on its own, it goes against pretty much all we’re told about doping and I need to do more research. But it made me think a lot and will lead me to more nuance in the future. 

Fastest, highest, strongest : a critique of high-performance sport is available to borrow and read for free on the Internet Archive.