Rachael

Western culture needs to learn from others about death.

Revisado: 10-28-24

In this brief but fascinating overview of death rituals around the world, Caitlin is asking us why our modern way of dealing with death is actually more of a way to avoid it. This avoidance is obviously unhealthy, but where do we go? The author is inspired by many diverse cultures where death is celebrated and not avoided, where people are allowed to be intimate with the process. This "holds space" in which grief can be processed healthily. The book makes one thing clear: current western, secular funeral practices aren't holding that space for us.

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There is still hope.

Revisado: 04-21-24

The author seemed to really understand what it feels like to grieve after a divorce. There was a lot of "therapy homework" involving writing, which I didn't do usually because I tend to listen while driving, cleaning, etc. But I did like to do the exercises mentally, just listen and think about the prompts. The book feels good to hear overall, you'll learn how to confront common problems people have when dealing with the emotional consequences of divorce. I learned how to believe in myself and value my strengths. I would recommend to a friend who had also recently gone through a divorce.

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A great summary of a story that's long, complex.

Revisado: 01-18-24

The Irish people all share a great, long, and noble history. For Irish-Americans, some of this history has been lost to assimilation and violent suppression. I was actually surprised to find Irish DNA made up about 1/3 of my genetic makeup and that I had Irish ancestors on both sides! My last name is German. But that counts for little when your mother finds out she was adopted at the age of 36. But also, Irish ancestry was often hidden. Because of the various periods of anti-migrant and anti-Catholic fervor throughout the history of this country, many Irish immigrants kept their heads down and tried to blend in. Their children spoke English, had English spellings of their names, and knew nothing of the culture they came from.

Books such as "The Story We Carry in Our Bones" are a major part of the modern effort to correct the historical injustice of the Irish being forced by external circumstances to forget their origin. Their past, our past, was hidden from us, and this book, and others, can act as a key to getting something precious back that was lost. It's not dry historical accounts either. The book is both passionate and narrative-driven, imagining Irish ancestor characters and how they would have actually lived through events being described.

I will warn the reader who is a history buff that this is only a summary of a lot of history. As such, you may find yourself wishing for more detail about certain topics. I recommend starting with this book if you're interested in exploring Irish and Irish-American history, but aren't sure where to start. But from here, you may want to branch out into other books to learn about topics covered by this book in more depth. This is an overview of everything there is, but it's more constellation than map. But for Irish-Americans wanting to discover the broad strokes history their ancestors likely went through, and to connect with these ancestors in a deep, not clinical, way, this is the perfect book for that.

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Had low expectations. Was still disappointed.

Revisado: 11-13-21

Ok so you know going into this to not expect a lot. Cheap book. But I didn't expect it to be as completely USELESS as it was! You cannot follow along because there's no visual guide. No PDF to download. If there is a companion physical book to purchase here, it should SAY that in the DESCRIPTION! I'm not any closer to being an expert in wire-wrapping jewelry. This is not a guide. It's a scam. And definitely don't use a credit on it; it's never worth it for a "book" that is only 12 minutes. Beware: DO NOT BUY THIS AUDIOBOOK.

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Okay story, less than expected..

Revisado: 04-24-21

I guess it's not good or not bad but kind of in the middle. I think it's hard to take older horror stories seriously because they've been spoofed, parodied, and also newer horror stories have built upon the foundation they laid down. This might be seen as a foundational text if you want to study the origins of vampire lore in 19th century gothic novels, but as a story by itself it is neither very thrilling nor very sexy. I was expecting it to be more erotic, because that's how it's built up and it's even called lesbian erotica. But stop if you're expecting that. First of all, they're girls, not adult women. Second, the POV characters feelings are described as a mixture of attraction and repulsion, she doesn't return Carmilla's passionate feelings for her. So it's not erotic and it's not a love story. There is no sex. The marketing surrounding this book kind of played up my expectations and I was let down. This is not "the first erotic lesbian vampire novel" this can be described as a one-sided obsession that the stalkee kind of passively submits to. Which I guess does set the stage for later vampire romance (you know who I'm talking about)! This is a main character who, despite being the main character and the narrator, is replaceable with a sexy lamp and it would make no difference to the plot. The conflict is between Carmilla who wants the girl, and her father who wants to protect her, and she is their football to fight over. She is also hopelessly weak, naive, and honestly seemed stupid because she was so slow to catch on that something was off about her 'guest' or to connect the deaths of peasants with her own 'dream' she experienced when bitten. Honestly you can tell she was written by a male author of the bad old days.

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No special advice, really.

Revisado: 01-02-21

Make a blog post every day. Make a YouTube video every day (Did I search for a book about being a successful YouTuber? No, I did not, I searched for a book on being a successful BLOGGER.). Do a bunch of social media crap (he says to use Google Plus so that's outdated advice), which was not advice I can follow since I have a deep work mindset and HATE social media. Make sure your blog is monetized with affiliate links. Also you can't write what you want, it has to be product reviews. That's the gist of this entire book. There's nothing that interesting, special, or unique here. There's nothing about this book that makes it worth having as a book when it could be summarized in a fairly short how-to blog article. I'm actually embarassed that I got my hopes up.

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Fun, naughty, gossipy.

Revisado: 04-25-20

I'm a big fan of Stephen Fry, because of Blackadder. I didn't know he was gay. The part on gays and lesbians in the Victorian era was fascinating. I also liked the parts about sex and the female orgasm, which was actually considered important in Victorian times because they believed it was necessary for pregnancy. A noble lie, if I've ever heard of one! Then there are the more tragic stories, such as the fate of people in mental institutions, and the part about live humans being showcased in circuses. It's interesting that the ethics of that are, while problematic, still a topic of debate. Because many of those people, whether "freaks" or foreigners whose exoticness who drew crowds, could not work a normal job. The circus was the only way they could make a living, and many seemed to also enjoy the fame. I mean, acrobats, clowns, and jugglers today like performing for crowds too, but I wouldn't call them exploited. Anyway, this is a good one to listen to with friends, or romantic partners, because many of the topics get the old brain juices going and are good conversation simulators. Overall I found this highly enjoyable and entertaining. I'm always fascinated by this kind of history, and I like the way the book challenges our assumptions about what the Victorians were like.

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It kind of assumes the listener is a Christian.

Revisado: 08-10-19

Well I guess it's not that odd of an assumption. I mean, there's probably not a lot of people like me who are interested in discussions like this of the Bible purely as literature, without caring what religious connotations certain interpretations of passages may have (for example, whether billiards is a sin, as they talk about how it is considered such among Christians in Indonesia). But, these authors are clearly not just Christians, but missionaries. And this is not just a book about reading or understanding the Bible as one might an ordinary literary text, but it heavily focuses on the cultural barriers of Western missionaries dealing with non-Western (primarily East Asian, primarily Indonesian specifically) audiences. It's as much about how culture changes our perception of the Bible (which is what I expected to find) as it is about how hard it is from people of one culture to convert people of a very different culture. I wasn't that interested in these parts of the story. First, because they're assuming I'm a Christian and I'm not. Second, they're assuming the audience doesn't know anything about collectivist Asian countries, and I have experience and knowledge of that already. What I wanted was more focus on the culture of the authors of the books of the Bible, not their own missionary stories, and I could care less if their attempt at cultural colonizing is successful or not.

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I couldn't get into this

Revisado: 08-10-17

I didn't end up finishing it. The beginning just didn't suck me in. Not a good book in audio form. Might be better in print. Seemed dense, going on and on about DNA and stuff without the plot taking off.

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I found it to drag in the middle (the story).

Revisado: 05-29-16

I liked some aspects of the story, but the it was sometimes boring and hard to get through. I quit listening about halfway through because I stopped caring. I liked the politics and the interesting ecology of the planet Arrakis.

But the incessant, barely relevant prattling of the princess Irulan, who never seems to shut up, is a stumbling block to enjoying this narrative. In other books I've read, like the Mistborn series, the text snippets between chapters were memorable and actually conveyed intriguing tidbits of foreshadowing. And they were brief. Irulan scribbled up a storm, writing many books, and the snippets we get from them are neither interesting nor directly connected to the plot. Sometimes she interrupts an exciting action scene to prattle about philosophy and religion. I eventually gave her the nickname Princess Irritate. It's like there are two books being written in one, and they interfere with each other. In some places, her varied musings sound completely unrelated, making you wonder why Herbert wastes the reader's time with them. In other places, they seem like too much foreshadowing. Either way, you kind of end up wishing that the princess Irulan would just shut the bleep up and stay in her own damn story. Some of the laid-on-thick foreshadowing made certain events so obvious that the story stopped being interesting or fun for me. They tell you pretty much everything that's going to happen before it happens. I quit listening because I quit caring because of it.

It's also a dense book, I think without the narrators being so good at what they're doing, I wouldn't have gotten into it at all. Never read something just because people tell you it's a classic. I could find ten little-known sci-fi books that are better than this. It's a nice story concept, but it's not executed well.

Edit: I eventually finished it. Quarantine will do that. I do like the exciting action of the climax, and the progression of Paul and his mother Jessica learning more and growing in power, as Paul tries to avert the disastrous things he saw in his visions of the future. But it all came unglued for me again by the way it ends romantically, which makes 0 sense and actually isn't romantic at all.

(Spoiler) Paul becomes god-like and takes over the empire, and falls in love with a Fremen woman. She bears his child, but the child dies. Then at the end, he cannot marry that woman. Princess Irulan is in fact a woman he marries instead, not for love, but because she's in the imperial line, and to satisfy some bendy jesuit plotting? Makes no sense. In the scene right before he does this, he gets into a knife fight and has the ability to rearrange the molecules in the poison of the enemy's knife, to heal himself and prevent the poison from killing him. He could have probably turned the whole imperial family into mashed potatoes. Why couldn't he marry anyone he goddamned wants? It's not even a good male power fantasy. Rand getting a blonde, brunette, and redhead in the Wheel of Time series is a good male power fantasy, because he loves all three of them. Paul had never spoken to and didn't know Irulan at all, and had no intention of loving her in the future even. It made me so mad. Fantasies of an Irulan being beheaded or hung dance in my head.

Can't say it's a story that's aged well, either. It's obviously a "white savior" power fantasy.

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