clownface's reviews
77 reviews

Just messy, editing wise. Tons of misspelled words, especially names, poor or confusing sentence structure, etc. The history is interesting, but the pre-colonial section is miles better than the colonial and post-colonial - I'd say read this up until it starts talking about Hernan Cortes, then jump ship.

1. It feels incredibly disingenuous to brand this book as being about the horrible, awful LGBT folk of history past, and then have 90% of the people mentioned be, basically, fine. Like, they're not heroes, but the standards presented here for what makes someone a "bad" person are way too modern and (forgive me for this phrase) "politically correct."

2. Only including ONE woman and ONE person of color as subjects is... disheartening. Also, having that one woman be Margaret Mead was dumb. She's obviously not above criticism, but come on, man - she's possibly the most important anthropologist in western history who dedicated her life to promoting values like sex positivity, feminism, and racial equality. And the section on Margaret Mead seemed, to me at least, significantly harsher in tone than any of the other sections.

3. Tying into my above point, the range of what counts as "bad" is way, way, way too broad. On what planet are literal fascists equivalent to some guy writing dirty poems? The idea that these are all gays "condemned by history" for being "bad" doesn't even work - even if Margaret Mead, Yukio Mishima, Pim Fortuyn, Hadrian, and Lawrence of Arabia are all widely considered incredible and important historical figures, in spite of (or, in many cases, because of) their "bad" actions! The method of judging who 'counts' as a 'bad gay' for the purposes of inclusion in this book are sloppy.

4. A lot of the promotional material for this book, and many of its positive reviews, talk about a incredibly engaging and witty, jokey tone - that's just not how this book reads. It's pretty boring for long sections at a time with very little in the way of clever, funny asides.

Yasssss algae! This book convinced me to eat, like, a TON more seaweed. Very successful.

Wonderful history, very engaging, but I wish Weatherford engaged in just a little less Genghis Khan apologia. (Obviously I expected it, going into this book, but still...)

Fun information, but the attempt to use the author's own house as a framing device was, basically, stupid. Wish it was a little less rambling.

There are two big "twists" in this book, and neither of them worked. Explanation beyond the spoiler:

The reveal that Anna's family members are actually dead was too, too obvious to anyone with common sense. Obviously she's grieving the entire time, and though she converses with her deceased husband, it's very unsubtly just a mental projection. I honestly thought that it was so obvious that it wouldn't even be a twist, but when it's "revealed", all of the plot halts as if it is some major world-shattering revelation. Dumb.

The second twist, the reveal that the teenage boy is actually the killer, has the complete opposite problem. There are literally zero signs of his devious nature throughout at all, so it comes completely out of nowhere. Poor plotting for a mystery.

Despite the flop twists, this book was actually pretty good. I gave it a pretty positive score because I did genuinely enjoy the characters and the pacing and the premise. Give it a try anyways!

Just kind of boring. And beyond that, the author repeatedly insists that this book is heavily informed by indigenous American perspectives, but it really just isn't. Seemingly the only indigenous person even mentioned in this book is introduced with a "she's blonde and blue-eyed, but she's still definitely indigenous, I promise," which is kind of just poor taste, to me. It felt sarcastic and orientalist.

An exquisite blend of anthropology, biology, history, theology, and beyond. Sympathetic, educational, funny, this one has it all. Woohoo! Let's all drink some wine!

Moshfegh has a way of coming up with concepts that aren't really that demented, but somehow worm their way into your head in a deeply disturbing way. The constant reminders throughout the first portion of the book that something is going to go horribly wrong soon are tantalizing instead of annoying, like such reminders normally are.

So many disparate parts that nonetheless fit together easily and are just fun to read. The character work here is some of the best I've seen. Not as intensely magnetic as Gone Girl, but what is?