I love the term "vulnerability hangover"! I never had a word for that experience, but now I realize that's the perfect description. I'm barely into this book but I feel like I'm learning so much...

Been meaning to read this for a long while. Will be slow going as I'm currently reading bits and pieces of a lot of other things for novel research (finally working on a novel of my own! Woah!) but I'm excited to delve into this!

I was loving it up until the end... Still, if you love Gillian Flynn as much as I do you'll quite enjoy the writing! She paints an amazing picture and has such interesting characters. So, even though the ending wasn't for me, I had fun reading it :)

"What does it mean to 'pass'? To 'pass' places the burden of intelligibility on the person who seeks to 'pass': if we are not interpreted correctly, it is because we have failed to make our meaning clear. I reject that." - Kat Gupta

"People often misunderstand intersectionality as referring to the ways in which different aspects of our individual identities operate together to shape our experience, but actually it's about how interlocking systems of power impact us through patterns of privilege and oppression."

What an adventure! Almost dream-like, the mystery winds itself to a sharp peak, and then climbs down back into reality. I found myself unsure in the beginning, and then riveted all the way to the end. I fell in love with Piranesi even as he frustrated me, and I feared the halls even as I wanted to know more and more about them. I'm sad the journey is over.

"Perhaps that is what it is like being with other people. Perhaps even people you like and admire immensely can make you see the World in ways you would rather not."

💠 Tagged! And a smattering of other books
💠 E-Book - love my Kindle Paperwhite, great for chronic illness, but miss physical library trips!
💠 So far Piranesi gets a 3/5. I'm struggling to follow the descriptions at times, I wish there was a map or drawing of the general shape of things. The questions I have, though! I'm so intrigued.
💠 I do when on my kindle! Digitally marking up is easy😊

Tagging anyone ☺️!

Creds: @MoonWitch94 🙌🏾

I'm never reading one book at a time! This is the newest acquisition from the library in my growing list. The only challenge is juggling them all so I can finish reading before they're due back 😅. Anyway, I'm very excited for this one; it sounds like quite the adventure!

It's 3:50am where I'm at in the world. It‘s so early its still silent on the main city parkway I live by. The completeness of the silence and darkness made me hesitate to break it, to turn on a light. So I crept precariously to the sink for a glass of water and crept back to bed. Too early to be up in my opinion...but it's never too early for reading! 🤓. So I'm happily moving on another Pocket Change Collective book!

Quick, informative, and woven with the personal experiences of Alok Vaid-Menon, this book is definitely a pick for me. As someone who is genderqueer, I received a good break down on how I might respond to popular narratives that do harm. But I think this would be a good place to start for anyone who just want to know a little more about the those of us who traverse, or leave entirely, the gender binary.

"I have learned that the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power." - Alok Vaid-Menon

"The days that I feel most beautiful are the days that I am most afraid." - Alok Vaid-Menon

Woosah! It's been a hot minute. Life went up in flames fam. I've read a little here and there but mostly was busy inside my mind and in my life trying to figure things out. I went to pick up kindle to read and felt like this is a good representation of my reading life. But I'm back at it! Starting in with Loveless by Alice Oseman - thank goodness I also checked out the audio book! 😅

Mental health struck me down for awhile, but I'm back with this to help me focus the way I'm enjoying my reading!

"Big Beauty is just negging without the slimy actor. The constant destabilization of self is part and parcel of beauty's effectiveness as a social construct"

"At every turn, black women have been categorically excluded from being expert performers of persuasive speech act like in the public that adjudicated our humanity."

The story in this is so interesting, I was originally enthralled by the world. However, it reads like an action movie! I can see how that might be why the book is so popular, and I love a good action scene, but for me it's difficult to deal with for most of a book. There are other reasons why I bailed, but, the overall writing style isn't for me. I'm super excited for the movies though, this seems like it was written with a screen in mind!

"Through the simple expedient of demonizing and reifying the range of color on a pallette, American Africanism makes it possible to say and not say, to inscribe and erase, to escape and engage, to act out and act on, to historicize and render timeless. It provides a way of contemplating chaos and civilization, desire and fear, and a mechanism for testing the problems and blessings of freedom."

I'm so excited to finally start this! Let a new adventure begin 🤓😁!

What a huge, sweeping world! Stories all encompassing and interwoven in such enthralling ways. I can only say that I need book two to hurry up and get here so I can know what happens; anymore would be too much. The audible performance was stunning, btw. Highly recommend!

Reading Modern Tarot by Michelle Tea, referencing Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollock, and cracking open my birthday gift of Lisa Sterle's Modern Witch Tarot Journal. Insomnia sucks but Tarot honestly helps, it helps in all facets of my life to reflect and look inward ❤.

This year has been hellish for me in my struggle with mental health. Just awful. Joining this book club (SBG) was my step back into the world of enjoying books and socializing and it really helped me ❤ I never would have picked up something like Playing in the Dark on my own, but I love it so far and I'm so happy it was the exploration track pick this month. I started writing again this past year as well, and this book speaks to my love of both.

"Writing and reading are not all that distinct for a writer. Both exercises require being alert and ready for unaccountable beauty, for the intricateness of simple elegance in the writer's imagination, for the world that imagination evokes."

"'Usually,' Xiala said carefully, 'when someone describes a man as harmless, he ends up being a villain.'"

"People who feel compelled to flaunt all laws remain as bound to those laws as the person who follows them blindly".

Reading challenging (as of now, the writing is sweeping metaphors and similes in the context of an unfamiliar place and unfamiliat cultures - beautiful but definitely challenging) texts is always a bit of a messy affair for me...🤓

" ... People edging out other people to make money buying and selling something invisible just sounds like rich-people problems."

Yup! ?

My first #smartbrowngirl book club read! 💁🏾‍♀️