Book Reviews!

Gonna DNF this just bc I've read it before and 450 pages of it is a Lot, and I'd rather be reading something else. I'm most of the way through again and it's feeling pretty samey. Parts of the book are absolutely hilarious, but it throws a lot at the wall and not everything sticks. The timeline being loopty doopty is hard to manage, adding as much chaos into the story as there is chaos in the story already. aaand it's definitely a book written in the 60s about soldiers in the 40s, so there's lots of stuff that isn't up to 21st century social standards even with the context of it being heavy satire / dark humor.

Kinda the more I'm thinking about the book the less I care to defend it lol. It's funny and not without merit, but I don't know that I'd recommend it for any particular reason. Nothing in it has really hit me other than some parts of some characters being relatable, but that follows the same track of throwing a lot at the wall etc. Relating to the meek outsider who misses his wife, that's so me. I don't even have a wife.

It might also just be the fact that the current administration's leadership in a war that 'we' chose is just as bad and far less funny.

Stealing some excerpts from my diary but also focusing more on the book itself and not my own tangents

I watched iCarly growing up so I knew of her. Was more of a Miranda Cosgrove guy bc of Drake and Josh though. I did watch her Last Meals epi, which was great, as they all are. I also don't have strong attachments to pretty much anything from childhood if I haven't relived it in adulthood (like ATLA) so I have no real memory of the show that's separable from other sporadic memories of other shows.

Having her childhood so mapped out is an astounding amount of effort by itself, but for it to be the level of fucked up that it is and to persevere in recreating it in a fashion that sounds as truthful as it could be given the nature of memory is such a strength of will that I madly respect. I'm sure parts of it were easier due to the documented nature of her mother's hoarding and being a child/teen/adult-ish actress, but it's all very cohesive and powerful and horrifying. Telling it to the world is another thing entirely, and she does it very well.

I can't begin to touch on the issues with her mother. Not qualified other than as a fellow human being to say that sucks.

I was surprised by some of the things that weren't as important as I might otherwise have thought, though with how much she had going on at all times I can't say it's too surprising. OCD didn't seem to be much more than a fact of life for her. I don't know much about it still, but either it wasn't connected much to her overall wellbeing or it just wasn't stated to be. Mom and Eating Disorder disorder stuff just vastly overpowered it. Mormonism also didn't seem to have much negative effect, outside of normal social stuff that would have found some other way to be present in her life (e.g. being told her family is likely to go inactive by some other girl; outsider-ism is definitely not unique to Mormons). Honestly the restraint around sex probably helped her out for a while, not that there wasn't a ton of other issues that made early relationships awful for her.

My favorite thing in the whole book is that she never named the showrunner. There's so much power in names, and just as much in not using them. Edmond Dantes not being named for hundreds and hundreds of pages in The Count of Monte Cristo always gets me thinking about that, how much it defines a person and how vulnerable it can be to be named or to not be named. Whittling a horrible, abusive, powerful man down into a job title is no less than he deserves, though calling him The Creator does build a sort of mysticism that maintains that air of unassailable power for better or worse. I only vaguely remember hearing stuff as it came out about all that, but the firsthand accounts she gave were all just so icky and skin-crawling. I'm sure it was good for her to be able to recount that in the same manner and detail as everything else, with its relevance to her growth.

I'm also so happy to hear that she and Miranda were actually great friends for a long long time! That's awesome.

Relationship stuff is really hard to figure out, and this book was not about her figuring that out. Her second book might be? But it's still a pretty bad area for me to dwell in personally, so I probably won't read that any time soon. It was... interesting to hear her experiences. Men can be so gross. Horny is a blight upon humanity. The unabridged nature of some of the scenes definitely was an artistic choice lol, but sex is a powerful thing and it's not inappropriate to let it be an equally powerful narrative tool when it's so directly relevant to relationships.

The therapy saga was so blessedly heartwarming in all of its struggles and small victories. The universal, inescapable truth that you're going to therapy because you're in love with somebody and want to be better for them. The secondhand pride of her going her first 24 hours without purging, and the fall of facing the deeper issues that such a small reprieve will inevitably uncover. Worksheets, journaling, crying over the stupidest shit that nobody else would cry over but its the biggest thing in the world for you in that moment. The slow, crawling, molasses in winter pace of progress, that you can look back on years later and see how fucking far you've gone and be so proud because you know the work and the struggle and the cost and the time. Being on the far side of your issues and seeing other people in a different light who haven't made that same journey yet. Looking her past dead in the eye and saying what it is. Knowing it's not over. Ever over.

The book is obviously a therapy exercise. I've done similar stuff in my own completely not-ED related therapy. Especially when writing as an act is so valued to the writer, being able to tell your own story in your own words and know it and assert it and validate it, it's such a powerful tool. Nothing is worse than not knowing why you're fucked up, but knowing that you are; and going to therapy and having them be like, so easily able to pick apart your brain in ways that you never could do yourself, it's embarassing and humiliating and humbling and validating all at the same time. It's the same way that teaching a subject makes you know it more completely. A therapist teaches, but you still have to learn it for yourself. It certainly isn't enough to know the story; real change takes real work, and she did well at showing that too.

I need to go back to therapy tbh, but writing so much lately is doing an okay job too. Thanks, Jennette.