The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
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Steven Pinker, the bestselling author of The Language Instinct, deploys his gift for explaining big...
I Promise to be Good: The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud
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One of the most written-about literary figures in the past decade, Arthur Rimbaud left few traces...
Fictions
Jorge Luis Borges and Andrew Hurley
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The most popular anthology of Jorge Luis Borges's short stories, Fictions is a wildly original and...
Getting to Happy
4.0
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In "Waiting to Exhale", Terry McMillan chronicled the lives and love affairs of women in their...
Gordon: Victorian Hero
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Charles George Gordon was the preeminent military hero of the late-Victorian British Empire. A...
The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time
9.0
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We are in the midst of a sleep deprivation crisis, and this has profound consequences - on our...
The Spirituality of Age: A Seeker's Guide to Growing Older
Robert L. Weber and Carol Orsborn
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As we enter the years beyond midlife, our quest for an approach to aging takes on added urgency and...
ClareR (6062 KP) rated The First Woman in Books
Aug 11, 2021
The First Woman taught me so much that I didn’t know about the clan system in Uganda, and about what it means to be a woman there. To be honest, it seems something of a minefield to live in a system of not just clans, but also class and ethnic groups.
Kirabo, the main character, also has to deal with the patriarchal system, colonialism and the hardships of Idi Amin’s regime.
But this is essentially a coming of age story. It’s the story of how Kirabo lives and grows up, about her longing fo the mother she has never met, about how she wants to find a place for herself in the world. It’s about mwenkanonkano - feminism - and how hard it is for Ugandan men to accept it. And finally, it’s about kweluma, and how people police, instead of support, one another. As Nsuuta says to Kirabo: “That is when oppressed people turn on each other or on themselves and bite. It is a form of relief. If you cannot bite your oppressor, you bite yourself.”
I loved this book: I empathised with Kirabo and her grandmothers friend Nsuuta. I admired that children were always first and foremost in a family and a clans mind, and I have to admit to struggling a little with the fact that women didn’t seem to have any rights over their children.
Would I recommend this book? Yes, I would. It’s a book that I’m glad came up on the Jellybooks programme, so thank you Jellybooks!
Lyndsey Gollogly (2893 KP) rated Magical Midlife Madness (Levelling Up Book #1) in Books
Feb 13, 2021
LeftSideCut (3776 KP) rated It Follows (2015) in Movies
Oct 9, 2020
It's a very modern take on horror, acting as an age old cautionary tale about casual sex, masquerading as a creepy stalker flick.
The image of a person slowly walking towards you, staring at you the whole time is unsettling enough, but the entity's appearance will frequently change. This allows even people in the background shots to carry a weight of danger in the times where the audience is unaware of its whereabouts. It's a simple yet clever trick that gives It Follows a steady undercurrent of dread.
There's some really nice cinematography on display as well. Lingering shots of empty spaces are intimidating (I found myself constantly scanning for the entity, and got caught out more than once) It also has a phenomenal synth soundtrack courtesy of Disasterpiece. It will switch from ethereal to jarring in a flash and contributes greatly to the dark tone this film carries.
I wasn't a huge fan of the constant frame dissolves and screen wipes. It's kept taking me out of the narrative a bit, and the film suffers greatly with it's characters constantly making silly decisions. Although Maika Monroe is a solid lead.
Overall, It Follows is a genuinely unsettling horror-thriller with some truly chilling moments. It's just a little frustrating that the great concept isn't explored as much as it could have been.