Gorgeous

Love this book so much and the author’s voice is so soothing and inviting
Beautiful writing
Highly recommended

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Not for Razzle fans.

Imteresting exploration of contemporary feminist issues influenced by the post structuralist work of Judith Butler through the lens of the life of a lesbian mother.

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1 person found this helpful

Gorgeous

I had to get used to Nelson's storytelling but once i got into this I couldn't stop listening, her writing is beautiful

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Yes.

All I have to say is “yes”. Innovative and brainy, yes; but never at the cost of its driving force: feeling. This book is incredibly grounded, and brings the “angels (of philosophy) back down to earth”, to tell them (and us) about the realities that lofty languages often fail to completely describe. Writing. Thinking. Queerness. Sex. Memory. Identity. Childhood. Development. Relationality. Motherhood. Nelson doesn’t have THE answers, but she has hers - and offers them knowing that this, too, is “good enough”. Absolutely brilliant and evocative in equal measure. Blew my mind with alarming pace.

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Keep your ship afloat in these challenging times

Saw this recommended elsewhere and thought I would follow the random thread. It was perfect as serendipity often is. Love MN’s style and am looking forward to her other work. So rich with thought, subject and sources. Truly inspired.

I will listen to it 5 times and still get more from it.

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Even better read out loud

A hugely inspiring literary experience , which I enjoyed even more as read by the author than reading it myself (which I loved!) She started out writing poetry & that comes through in the delivery. Bravo.

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Tedious self - regarding and dull

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

A different story. Less plodding performance. Bought on the back of 5 sar reviews in the Irish Tmes newspaper. - very disappointed.

What could Maggie Nelson have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Anything - humourless and po faced, completely without drama. Dreadful.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Flat bland delivery. But with those words, it would be hard to do better.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Argonauts?

Take it back and start again. It was people with no real problems navel gazing. Who cares what your sexuality is ? Get over it, be glad you found love. The book made men looks like aliens - I'm a woman btw. Absolutely teenage in its internal referencing . Shocking really for an adult.

Any additional comments?

Widen your interests author. Try a joke or an elegant phrase. Stop reading Hemingway, way too much sequential obviousness"....we did this and then we did that. ...

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2 people found this helpful

Drags

There's no engagement, just a drag to read. No sense of discovery, of the writer's joy, pain, frustration, heartache, etc... to events unfolding. Nothing to emotionally cling onto. Nothing driving it forward.

It leaves you feeling depleted. The monotone voice doesn't help matters. Just difficult to listen to / read. You don't want to spend any time with the writer, there's no warmth there; no passion or sense things moving along. A lack of a sense of journey through ideas.

The ideas are interesting though, it's just the presentation, the journey, and the structure of it that's lacking. If you're already interested in the topics, you'll be interested in this, but Nelson isn't bringing anyone on board who might disagree with her opinions at the start of the text.

"Sometimes, when I'm teaching, when I interject a comment without anyone calling on me, without caring that I just spoke a moment before, or when I interrupt someone to redirect the conversation away from an eddy I personally find fruitless, I feel high on the knowledge that I can talk as much as I want to, as quickly as I want to, in any direction that I want to, without anyone overtly rolling her eyes at me or suggesting I go to speech therapy. I'm not saying this is good pedagogy. I am saying that its pleasures are deep."

Just read that.

They say you shouldn't confine a dolphin in concrete tanks because the endless sound of their own sonar bouncing back at them eventually drives them mad. That's the best metaphor for how reading this book felt. Inward-looking, self-obsessed writing. You're meant to talk at length about yourself in an autobiography, but this is unengaging and self-indulgent.

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1 person found this helpful

CAN NOT THE AUTHOR READ THE BOOK

Sounds dull and self-indulgent with abstract compacting of structuralist thought. Tedious. Frustrating. Bring it to life.

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