As an animal rights activist who is also a biology student, little has weighed on me more heavily in my day-to-day life than the ubiquity of biomedical animal testing.
Tag: books
The first half of December was dominated by finals, but, as I realized, it’s the last December of my life (most likely) that I will be in that situation.
It’s been a while since I’ve written a book recommendation list post, but recently, as I found myself perusing the Internet for suggestions on media to replace the void left by the show I had recently finished watching (rather than going straight to watching it again, as I was fairly tempted to do) I was reminded of how useful, and fun to write, these types of posts are.
Wouldn’t we be better off without all this gosh darn technology?
I haven’t done one of these in years.
“If I smoked cigarettes, I would sit at a train station with this book and light up.” – Me when I was 19 and thought smoking looked super cool, maybe in part due to this book’s iconic cover, but that’s a conversation for another day.
It turns out there’s a drawback to having what is functionally an online journal for six years, even if you mostly just write about books.
“Little Red Barns is a groundbreaking investigation of factory farms and the unprecedented measures being taken to hide their impact — on animals, public health, and the environment — from the public.”
I listened to this book while on a bus to New York City (at least until Spotify informed me I ran out of free audiobook listening hours, which was interesting since I literally pay that service $10 a month, but I digress). Fortunately I was able to finish it using the services of the good old-fashioned library.
“Do you know what happened already?
Did you know her?
Did you see it on the internet?
Did you listen to a podcast?
Did the hosts make jokes?
Did you see the pictures of the body?
Did you look for them?”
I knew this book would be a difficult read, but I did not expect it to be quite as good as it was.
Picture a bunch of rich people with too much time on their hands, too many drugs at their disposal and a severe lack of empathy.
This is a tough one. Ottessa Moshfegh is one of my favorite writers; she always finds a way to create an atmosphere of intense dread and transfixing disgust in the worlds she creates.
An over-the-top satire on Wall Street culture, rife with brand name obsessions, spectacular misogyny and, of course, murder.
Ah, existentialism. The word conjures images of French cafes, cigarettes and black and white photos, but what is it really?
Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead is a beautifully-written and philosophically intriguing novel with strong animal rights undertones.
A Scanner Darkly is both a novel about an intriguing sci-fi world and a disturbing exploration of substance abuse.
I long to write essays like Joan Didion
Why do I have such an obsession with weird disturbing books by female authors?
Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides is at once a lyrical portrait of 90s suburbia and a biting critique of how teenage girls are perceived by society.
Frappes and Fiction 