too fat too slutty too loud

March 24, 2020

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Collections

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week is a genre freebie, so we get to chose our own topics! As I’ve written about before around here, essay and short story collections don’t tend to be my favorites…but that doesn’t mean they all need to go in the trash bin. There are some great ones out there, and in a time when you might find yourself more easily distractable than ever, they make good books to pick up and put down.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?: Mindy Kaling’s writing style is breezy and relatable, and these essays about her life and the kinds of things that preoccupy 20somethign women are amusing and enjoyable.

Me Talk Pretty One Day: It’s hard to go wrong with a David Sedaris collection…he’s so witty and manages to be laugh-out-loud funny a way that’s rare for me reading something in print.

Bossypants: I love Tina Fey’s sense of humor, and while not every essay in this collection is a total winner, overall it’s one of the funnier books by comedians I’ve read!

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: I love pop culture, and refuse to apologize for loving it, and if you’re the same way, Chuck Klosterman may be for you.

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: This collection by Buzzfeed’s Anne Helen Petersen explores the way society punishes women for stepping outside of the social boundaries it otherwise sets.

Battleborn: I have to admit that I’m biased towards a story collection set in and figured in the state where I live (Nevada), but this is truly an amazing piece of work.

A Visit From the Goon Squad: This is billed as a novel, but it’s much more a collection of short stories so that’s what I’m calling it. Anyways, it’s very very good.

The Things They Carried: I’m not usually very into war narratives, but this collection about a group of soldiers during the Vietnam War is a classic for a reason.

There There: This is another one that calls itself a novel but is actually interlinked stories from various perspectives and features some absolutely incredible writing.

Olive Kitteridge: I am from small-town America, so this collection about a little town in Maine and a difficult woman who lives there really resonated with me.

December 6, 2018

Book 158: Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud

“There’s a highly circumscribed performance of femininity expected at each stage of a woman’s life—a certain way her face and body should look. All of these ideals are some form of striving for youthfulness, but only to the extent that it’s ‘appropriate’, and with any part of the body that fails its duty hidden from sight.”

Dates read: July 4-6, 2017

Rating: 7/10

Like most girls of my age, when I was little, I was told that I could be anything I wanted to be. And for a while, I (and I assume most everyone else) believed it. But as you grow up, you realize that no matter what you are, girls are expected to not be “too much”. Don’t be too smart, that intimidates the boys. Don’t be too ambitious, set goals that are high but not too high. Don’t be too capable, guys like being the ones to “rescue” you from spiders and leaky faucets. Don’t be too direct, people won’t think you’re very nice. Look how big this box is, you have all the room you need in here. Don’t get out of it.

I’ve long-since looked forward to Anne Helen Petersen’s work on Buzzfeed. She’s so good at not just really looking under the surface of our cultural climate, especially in how we perceive and treat women, but explaining it in a compelling, understandable way. If you haven’t read her Cool Girl essay, go read it right now because it’s phenomenal. And so of course I was psyched when I found out she was writing a book, Too Fat Too Slutty Too Loud, about women who transgress our social norms. Who among us hasn’t stepped outside the lines, peeked out from inside the box and felt blowback for it? Who hasn’t looked at the women who do get out there and live out there and regarded them with a curious mixture of revulsion and envy? Petersen highlights nine (well, ten technically) “unruly” women, focusing on how each in turn has challenged the expectations we place on lady people. Many of these challenges focus on the body, from Serena Williams’ “too strong” frame to Madonna’s refusal to cover up because she’s “too old” to Caitlyn Jenner’s “too queer” gender confirmation surgery. There are also women who make other choices they’re not supposed to: Hilary Clinton might be smart and ambitious, but she’s “too shrill”, and Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer (the Broad City team) make us uncomfortable because they’re “too gross”.

I wanted this book to be amazing and mind-blowing and incredible. And it was good! Petersen’s writing is lively and insightful and serious without being ponderous. But I think maybe it would have worked better if it had been split into two volumes, one focusing on body and one focusing on personality. The essays felt like they skimmed the surface, taking a shallow dive into concepts that deserve deeper thought and analysis that I would have loved to read Petersen’s take on. In writing about how Nicki Minaj is “too slutty”, for example, Petersen refers to and gives some brief background on how black female bodies are sexualized and fetishized. But there’s so much there that because the book needed to be a reasonable length and there are eight other subjects, she doesn’t really have space to really give it the full context it deserves. I felt the same way, perhaps even more strongly, about the chapter on Jenner and trans issues. It would have felt problematic to leave the gender binary untouched entirely, but to only briefly interact with it doesn’t feel quite right either.

One essay, though, that really made me think was the piece about “too loud” Jennifer Weiner, who won’t just quietly accept the judgment of her writing about women and their lives (which, to be perfectly honest, I don’t personally much care for) as mere “chick lit” not to be taken seriously. I know I fall into that trap with my own reading, disdaining titles with pastel covers or shoes and shopping bags prominently displayed. It’s snobbish, but if I’m being transparent here, I will say that it takes a lot to get me to take a second look at a title deemed “women’s fiction”. Which is actually pretty bullshit of me. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is just as good as Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, so why is the former a “girl book” and the latter a book for everyone? There’s not a good reason why we treat stories about women’s lives and problems, written by women, as lesser than books written by and about men. I love Nick Hornby, but he writes lighter fare that would probably be shrugged off if he and his protagonists were ladies. I need to do some work to think about my own internalized misogyny, especially when it comes to my reading choices.

Tell me, blog friends…do you think of books by and about women as less important than books by and about men?

One year ago, I was reading: The Games (review to come)

Two years ago, I was reading: Seating Arrangements

Three years ago, I was reading: Occidental Mythology

December 12, 2017

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Books of 2017

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week, we’re looking at our favorite books of the year. Instead of doing a list of my favorite books I’ve read this year, I like to focus this list on my favorite 2017 releases. The books I read that came out this year are a bit of a mixed bag, but here were my 10 favorites!

The Bear and the Nightingale: I absolutely loved this YA fantasy based on Russian folklore. The best part? It’s the first of a trilogy!

Shattered: This book relied heavily on interviews with staffers and painted an inside picture of a campaign that some people I know (who worked on it) disagree with, but seems like it comports with what we saw happening on the outside. I thought it was really interesting and well-written.

Who Thought This Was A Good Idea?: As a woman who works in politics, I’m always interested in reading about the experience of other women who work in politics because there aren’t nearly enough of us. And Alyssa Mastromonaco’s book is funny and smart and wonderful.

Lincoln In The Bardo: This was a weird book, tbh. It’s written more like a play than anything else. But once you kind of get used to the way it’s trying to tell its story, it gets inside your head and your heart.

La Belle Sauvage: Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series is one of my all-time favorites, and I’ll admit I was nervous about whether this, the first in a second trilogy, would measure up. It’s not as immediately great as The Golden Compass, but it’s very good indeed and I’m so excited for the other two!

The Hate U Give: This was one of the most-hyped books of the year, and while I didn’t think it quite measured up to the stratospheric expectations, it was very good and very timely and very much worth reading.

Stay With Me: From the blurb, you think you’re getting into about a book about a marriage tested when a second wife enters the picture. But with each new twist, it becomes about so much more, and it’s an unforgettable story of love and loss.

If We Were Villains: This is so heavily “inspired by” Donna Tartt’s The Secret History that it’s almost more of a retelling, but it’s an entertaining read.

Too Fat Too Slutty Too Loud: I love Anne Helen Petersen’s writing about celebrity, so I wanted this book about famous women who transgress social expectations to be brilliant. Alas, it is only good, but it’s still very much thought-provoking.

Chemistry: A Chinese-American grad student who seems like she has it made blows it all up and then tries to figure out what’s next. On the way, she comes to terms with how unhappy her “great” life had made her and has a reckoning with the ways her upbringing has continued to resonate through her life.

August 15, 2017

Top Ten Tuesday: Recommendations For Feminists

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! I am so excited that Top Ten Tuesday is back, y’all! Putting these lists together is honestly so fun, both to do for my own blog and reading what other people have come up with. Anyways, today’s topic is recommendations for a particular group of people, and I thought I’d put together some recommendations for feminists. I’ve tried to mix it up with both fiction and nonfiction so no matter what you read, you can find something here.

Bossypants: Tina Fey’s book is one of the few comedian-writes-collection-of-amusing-essays that I thought actually lived up to the hype. It’s not 100% on, but it’s funny and insightful and a must-read for being an ambitious female in the world.

Too Fat Too Slutty Too Loud: This recently-published collection of essays from Buzzfeed’s peerless Anne Helen Petersen profiles the ways in which famous women exemplify culture prohibitions against being too much, and how they’ve escaped (or in some cases, haven’t) from the consequences for violation. Anyone interested in both pop culture and feminism should get their paws on this.

The Creation of Anne Boleyn: She was Queen of England for only about 1000 days hundreds of years ago but she’s been a subject of fascination ever since. Susan Bordo chronicles the ways that the perception of this long-ago royal have changed over time, reflecting overall shifts in how women are treated.

Under The Banner of Heaven: I considered adding Reading Lolita in Tehran instead of this book here, in the “religious fundamentalism leading to oppression of women” slot. But I think it’s easy for white people in the Western world to look at a Muslim country in the Middle East and point the finger at them for oppressing women. It happens right here in the US, too. This is the best Krakauer, for my money.

My Horizontal Life: Sure, it’s easy to respect “good” women, like Tina Fey, who for all her genuine feminist bona fides is still quite traditional in many ways. It’s more challenging to look at a woman like Chelsea Handler, who is perceived as having slept her way into her E! show that she did before her current Netflix gig. But feminism includes women who don’t necessarily do things the way other women approve of, and Handler’s stories about being drunk and on drugs and sleeping with who she wanted when she wanted are pretty funny in her first memoir.

The Handmaid’s Tale: This feminist classic has been recently revitalized by the Hulu production of it, and none too soon because it’s just as relevant as when it was first published. Most chilling is the way that not only men control women, but the ways in which other women’s cooperation is necessary and so easily given.

Americanah: Being a woman in the world is one thing, but we can’t forget the necessity of considering how other identities intersect with femaleness. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel focuses on an African female experience, both in Africa and America, and her protagonist Ifemelu is as rich and complicated and ambiguous a character as any ever written, regardless of gender.

So Big: A recent book club exploration of a Willa Cather novel reminded me of how much I liked this book, which won Edna Ferber a Pulitzer Prize. She crafts a story of a woman who faces long odds and disappointments and changes in fate with good humor and cheer, without being saccharine about it, and it’s a testament to women’s perseverance.

The Group: For better or worse, many women I know are as much defined by their friendships as they are by their romantic relationships. It’s not really a progressive view of femaleness in that the women involved are often catty, but it’s worth reminding ourselves that the struggles we face (work or family life, breast or bottle) are ones that have been around for generations.

Wild Magic: For a younger reader wanting to explore female-driven adventures, any Tamora Pierce series will do. But for me, the series kicked off by this book was my favorite…I’ve always loved animals, so Daine’s brand of nature-based power was right up my alley.

July 31, 2017

A Month In The Life: July 2017

This post is coming at you from my beloved Michigan! We’re probably somewhere near the Mackinac Bridge right now on our way back to Ann Arbor, but this is scheduled to auto-post. I am zero percent looking forward to having driven all day today and then traveling back to Reno all day tomorrow, but that’s how it worked out scheduling-wise, so that’s how we’re doing it. Now that I’ve whined about my entirely self-inflicted wounds, let’s look back at the last month, eh?

In Books…

The Good German: I know that I saw the George Clooney movie they made out of this book when I was in college but I didn’t remember it at all. It’s a shame it wasn’t better, because this story about Berlin immediately after WWII and the questions of guilt and blame for the atrocities committed by the Nazis was both thoughtful and twisty and quite good.
My Antonia: I do really like it when the book club selections match up with things I’m already planning to read. This Willa Cather pioneer classic didn’t have much of a traditional story structure, but her writing, especially about the lonesome loveliness of the prairie, is beautiful.
Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: I love Anne Helen Peterson’s writing about celebrity culture at Buzzfeed, so I was stoked to be approved for an ARC of her book about female celebrities that transgress social boundaries. I think I would have liked to see fewer focuses to allow for more in-depth discussions (a lot of times it felt like it was skimming the surface of something much deeper) but it’s still an incisive look at the ways women are constrained in how much we’re allowed to be.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: I’m sure you, like me, have heard the massive hype around this Pulitzer Prize winner. It’s all true. It’s incredible. Beautiful and funny and heartbreaking and hopeful and sad and holy smokes it’s so good.
Crazy Rich Asians: I’ve generally found that a way to avoid book hangover after reading something stellar is to make a major tonal shift for my next read. And so I went from a Great American Novel to a frothy send-up of the rich and fabulous of Singapore. It was ultimately a little too frothy, with not enough substance, and employed one of my least favorite tropes: drama that could have been avoided if people talked to each other.
Valley of the Moon: A good reminder of why I need to let go of my genre snobbery, this time-travel romance was well-written and enjoyable.
Me Talk Pretty One Day: This was my first Sedaris essay collection and I found them to run the gamut from generally amusing to actually laughing out loud while reading (which I don’t do very often). I’ll read more of his stuff for sure.
Station Eleven: The post-apocalypse subgenre has been a popular one lately, making it hard to find a unique take. But Emily St. John Mandel’s novel is haunting and elegant and a real pleasure to read.

In Life…

We went to see Ali Wong! If you haven’t seen her Baby Cobra standup special, filmed when she was very pregnant, it’s a must. I nearly wept with laughter. She was very, very funny live and we had a great time.
We went to Michigan: Technically, like I mentioned above, we’re still there. My dad is from a small town in the western half of the Upper Peninsula, and there’s a family reunion at grandpa’s every summer. I’ve obviously been a bunch of times over my life and most recently went two years ago, but this was Drew’s first time there. We spent a few days downstate with family and friends and then headed to the UP and we’re driving back today and then on an airplane tomorrow! We had a great time in both peninsulas, I very much miss Michigan so I’m always stoked to go back, especially when we had fantastic weather.

One Thing:

I’ve made a couple stabs at organizing my library with cataloging software, but I stopped using them and then things got really out of date really quickly. So I just did another round using libib.com, a service that I really like and want to/hope I keep using. Instead of getting ambitious and curating a list of my “want to read” books or including my Kindle titles, I’m keeping it simple-ish and restricting it to my physical library ONLY. The link to my personal library is here if you’re curious about what I own in print.

Gratuitous Pug Picture:

June 6, 2017

Top Ten Tuesday: 10 Non-Fiction Books That I’ve Recently Added To My TBR List

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week, we’re looking at books in a particular genre we’ve recently added to our TBR. Since I read fairly widely across genres, the best one I could think of to highlight is non-fiction, which I love.

Prince Charles: The first of many “British royalty” titles in my list. I’ve actually gotten more and more interested in Charles, who will have to be one of the oldest guys ever to inherit the throne when he does, right? He’s spent his whole life in waiting to be king.

Hitler Ascent: WWII, on the other hand, is not one of my preferred reading topics. It’s just never especially drawn me in. But in an age of creeping authoritarianism, the life of one of the most ruthless dictators to ever come to power is something I find myself wanting to explore.

The King Who Had To Go: I wrote about this one last week because it’s both a recent addition and coming out later this year! It’s about the British abdication crisis in the early 20th century.

Too Fat Too Slutty Too Loud: Ann Helen Peterson’s work for Buzzfeed is amazing (as is her TinyLetter), so I can’t wait to read her book about being a woman.

The Hospital Always Wins: This is a memoir from a man who developed mental illness and was committed to a mental institution, and then tried to get out. The way civil commitment works (and just as often, doesn’t work) is totally fascinating as an intersection of law and psychology.

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes: As a native Michigander, I love the Great Lakes with my whole heart. It’s 1/5th of the fresh water in the entire world, so we should ALL love the Great Lakes. They’re a delicate and vital ecosystem and need to be protected.

A Magnificent Obsession: More British royalty! This about the love affair between Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and how she and the country were impacted by his death.

Word By Word: I’m an avowed word nerd…I love language, and dictionaries are fascinating. We treat them as gatekeepers and guardians of purity, but they’re not really meant to be that at all. They’re meant to be reflections of language as it is used, so this look inside how a dictionary functions looks amazing.

Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve: Analyzing data is a powerful tool, but I think sometimes gets treated too much like it’s infallible. Data can be and often is manipulated to support predetermined conclusions (pay attention to the research methods portion of any study you read!). That being said, it can do some neat tricks, so this analytics take on literature sounds super interesting.

White Trash: Back into the Serious category, America prides itself on being a country of easy social movement (as opposed to the hereditary aristocracy of the Old World). But social class has a great deal of power and resonance here as well, even if we’d rather it didn’t, and this book looks at how it’s played out since the US started to exist.

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