Ah yes the month of quarantine...you'd think that'd be plenty of time for me to catch up on my reading and not, you know, dick around doing anything as long as it's not productive.
March Book Reviews
We Were Eight Years In Power (Ta-Nehisi Coates)
6/10 I'm giving this book a 6 instead of a 5 for its quality, rather than the actual amount of enjoyment I got out of it. This book is really a great look at African American race relations in America. Nominally, it covers the eight years of the Obama presidency, but it pulls in information about slavery, the Civil War, and many previous government administrations. It's incredibly well researched and informed and that's really my problem with it. Its language is a bit too formal and academic for me to really enjoy reading it. It has makes seem really interesting points! There's a lot of stuff about the subject that I didn't know about! But I just felt like I had to slog through a school reading to get to the part I felt engaged by. My favorite is probably the article from the 8th year, just because it leans more towards biographical and it was much easier to read. Still, this book definitely has worth, but it's really more of a case of pearls before swine in my case.
Run Hide Repeat (Pauline Dakin)
4.5/10 I was wondering whether to give it a three or two stars because objectively speaking it wasn't THAT bad. There were some parts that I might've enjoyed reading! But thinking about it again, I think my overall experience with this book was just 'I didn't like it'. It was filled with so, so, so much pointless bullshit. Every single tedious minutiae even when it had nothing to do with the premise of the book. I was led to believe that the author knew she was on the run, knew that there was something wrong every time they moved houses - but no, she just passed it off as a family quirk until the big 'reveal' way later in her adulthood. Then the rest of the book is her detailing every single one of their moves and houses and sometimes connecting it to the reveal. Also, the post-reveal was such an anti-climax it could only be real life. The way they dealt with it, even the way she tried to reveal the truth in the end, was just so boring? There was no real resolution, no complete, satisfying ending. It was a mish-mash of a biography that was written too realistic about its unrealism too be really engaging. Anyway, I think it just proves that sometimes, life can be stranger than fiction but fiction's a lot more fun to read.
Savage Appetites (Rachel Monroe)
6.5/10 This was a pretty decent read. I didn't hate it, but it wasn't amazing either. The factual parts of it was fun, in an article kind of way. I didn't care much for the author's own experiences, like at all. I feel like maybe it could've been more fun as a bigger collection of stories with less rumination or the same stories but with more insight on the why. Despite it's introduction, I wished for maybe a bit more time spend on why these particular women or rather women in general were attracted to true crime. Still, I liked the stories she choose and the roles in each one that she highlighted. It's a good way to pass the time.
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