ashfromthetrash's reviews
55 reviews

good god i’m absolutely devastated, in pain, speechless. i can’t wait for this movie to absolutely break me!

after finishing, i’m still wondering how differently i would have read this if i was still at my mental low point from a while back. i think i would have connected to the main character more. i felt somewhat detached from the main character until the final part of the book, where i suddenly found myself reading all the nastiest aspects of my own life as if written in a mirror, from multiple characters at that.

“god, i ask you. is trustfulness a sin?”

it was hard to read but i am glad i did. the epilogue made me cry. “everything passes.” man. yeah.

so many bad things to say about this book... yes it was interesting, yes the life of freeman is fascinating. is it fun to try and get into his head, imagine his reasoning? yes. is it acceptable to go so far in "getting in his head" that you excuse his actions and border on idolizing him as an idealistic hero? i can't get behind it.

el-hai omitted so many details from freeman's life in order to cherry pick stories that showed him as a progressive go-getter rather than a non-licensed man performing assembly-line surgeries with an ice pick. i cannot express enough how much i dislike freeman, and the fact that el-hai didn't provide an objective view of the horrific medical damage he did baffled me.

So delightful to read, an absolutely fascinating look into how FDR was able to hide his paralysis from the public, how the entire country rallied around him and his wishes, and all from the perspective from an author who was also a polio victim. It hardly felt like a biography and certainly not a history book; it felt like I was looking into the life of someone renowned in intimate ways I never thought of before. If you are even remotely interested in FDR, political strategy, or disability history, I absolutely cannot recommend this enough!

i would say the first half of this book was beautiful, stunning, lovely. the second half was hard to stomach and extremely graphic. obviously reading through a cultural lens is important but with some subjects i just cannot get behind that. the first part was beautiful though and a really lovely look into African culture and society.

i love books that include: dark academia aesthetic,
questionable moral characters, questionably unreliable narrators, homoerotic subtext, vague endings, war backdrop.

this book included all of them!!!

genuinely i truly enjoyed reading this. it was short, exciting, sad, i connected to the characters, i felt that the themes were strong, and i truly believe that if i reread it i could analyze it and learn even more. the insight provided by the afterward also made it ten times better!! such a quick read with strong messages, vibrant characters, and great vibes. great book to get back into reading :)