Faye*'s Reviews > Bad Feminist

DNF ~30%

You know how people sometimes say they feel as if they read a completely different book than everybody else? So, I guess what this book has done for me is that I finally know what that feels like.

The best way I can describe my experience with Bad Feminist is this: Imagine yourself outside, maybe in a park, on a crisp autumn day. Leaves are falling, the sky is a greyish blue but it's dry, the sun is just about to come out. It's cold but not too cold, sunny but not too sunny. The perfect autumn day. There are leaves all around and they look so deliciously crunchy, you just want to step on them and hear that satisfying sound as they crunch beneath your boots. You see the perfect crunchy leaf, you zoom in on it and as you step on it, there is – nothing. It looked so perfectly crunchy, but it was actually damp and sodden and not crunchy at all. That's how I feel about this book. Non-crunchy. Non-satisfying.

While there are several very good quotes/ideas in this book, I also felt that there were a LOT of very weird ones. I'm going to try and not bore you very much longer with this (the question of why I'm writing a huge review about a book I haven't even finished when I can't be bothered to review some of those that I actually read, is one for another day) but I want to make clear why I did not like this:

1) I felt that the majority of the essays were pretty boring and useless. Maybe you have to be a fan of Roxane Gay's and be very (very) interested in her life and herself as a person but, personally, I did not get the point of them. Just one word: Scrabble.

2) Even though there were some great thoughts there (and I did highlight several), I always felt like Gay wasn't sure what exactly she wanted to say or accomplish. She kept contradicting herself as well as telling us things that weren't necessary. I also felt she was condemning people who judge others while being quite judgemental herself.

3) I can't stand spoilers and I especially do not understand why she had to put one in her essay book. Don't even try to convince me otherwise: no matter how old that book is (and six years is nothing!), there is just no need and it is rude. Just put a freaking Spoiler warning for God's sake.

And finally, to further illustrate my point of how much I did not get this, here are a few notes I saved on my tablet while reading (these are direct quotes from my iPad, not joking):
• HOW is this relevant?!?
• Why though?
• ...
• What is this supposed to even mean??? USELESS
• THIS IS SO USELESS!!!!!
• YYYYEEESSSSS (Sadly, not a quote by R G)
• Again?!?!?!?
• ?!?!?
• Um how about no?
• ?!?!?!?!
• ?!?!?!?
• ?!?!?!?!?!?!
• ROLLING MY EYES *AGAIN*
• Hhooooowwwww is this relevant???
• ???????!!!!!????????
• ???????!!!!!????????
• ROLLING MY EYES SO HARD

Huge shout-out to my most patient reading buddy Eli, who endured my constant whining and about a million screenshots and photos of passages that bored/enraged/confused me in those rare moments that I actually did manage to pick this up.


***********************************************

~~~Before reading~~~

I'm so here for all those feminist reads this month! Yay for buddy reading again with Eli