Sex Object

 Book 38 of my 2025 Reading Challenge

read from April 15 - 19

Sex Object by Jessica Valenti

published 2016

Summary (via Goodreads)

Author and Guardian US columnist Jessica Valenti has been leading the national conversation on gender and politics for over a decade. Now, in a darkly funny and bracing memoir, Valenti explores the toll that sexism takes from the every day to the existential. 

Sex Object explores the painful, funny, embarrassing, and sometimes illegal moments that shaped Valenti’s adolescence and young adulthood in New York City, revealing a much shakier inner life than the confident persona she has cultivated as one of the most recognizable feminists of her generation. 

My Opinion

2 stars

What would I be if I lived in a world that didn't hate women?

This question starts the memoir of Jessica Valenti and as the title suggests, it skews heavily to comments, entitlement, and sometimes the actual physically taking of her body by men.  I chose it from a display at the library and when I checked it out the librarian said she was happy I was taking it because apparently the display was to draw attention to books that need circulation or they'll be weeded.

At first I wanted to rate it a neutral 3 stars because I feel like a bad feminist if I don't but then I realized that inflating a rating just because she's writing about important content isn't the move.

You know how sometimes you read a memoir and relate to it so hard?  Or (more often for me) sometimes you read a memoir and don't relate at all but can understand their life based on their writing?  Unfortunately, this was neither for me.  The author and I have had completely different experiences but I struggled to understand her viewpoint because the book felt like it was skimming the surface with occasional bombs of deep reveals.

I did appreciate her unflinching honesty and hope she's found peace in her life.

Faye, Faraway

 Book 37 of my 2025 Reading Challenge

read from April 2 - 12

Faye, Faraway by Helen Fisher

published 2021

Summary (via the book jacket)

Every night, as Faye puts her daughters to bed, she thinks of her own mother, Jeanie, who died when Faye was eight. The pain of that loss has never left her, and that's why she wants her own girls to know how very much they are loved by her - and always will be, whatever happens.

Then one day, Faye gets her heart's desire when she travels back in time and is reunited not just with her mother but with her own younger self, the little girl she can scarcely remember.

Jeanie doesn't recognize grown-up Faye as her daughter, even though there is something eerily familiar about her. But the two women become close friends and share all kinds of secrets - except for the biggest secret of all, the secret of who Faye really is. Faye worries that telling the truth may prevent her from being able to return to the present day, to her dear husband and beloved daughters. Eventually she'll have to choose between those she loved in the past and those she loves in the here and now, and that knowledge presents her with an impossible choice.

If only she didn't have to make it...

My Opinion

3 stars

I checked this out from the library after seeing it in Bookpage.  Although 10 days passed from when I started to when I finished, that isn't a true representation of the reading.  I probably read it in 2-3 sittings; I read a lot the first day, lost my mind and wasn't reading anything for about a week, and then finished it in a day or two.

I love the concept of time travel and actually think about it a lot.  This book had a really interesting concept.  It stayed in reality more than I usually see for this type of book but trying to have explanations for everything also made it a bit clunky.

I like that it started right away and I was absorbed while reading.  However, it never quite made the jump from "good" to "great" for me and I didn't understand the looping of the ending and how a very big thing that happened in her childhood seemed to cause the time travel yet apparently she time travelled beforehand to make the big thing happen.

So this book felt a bit ambitious but I would read the author again and would love to see her take another pass at this idea.

Manboobs

 Book 36 of my 2025 Reading Challenge

read from April 2 - 7

Manboobs: A Memoir of Musicals, Visas, Hope and Cake 

by Komail Aijazuddin

published 2024

Summary (via the book jacket)

What do you do when you're too gay for Pakistan, too Pakistani to be gay in America, and ashamed of your body everywhere? How can you find happiness despite years of humiliation, physical danger, and a legion of Brooklyn hipsters who know you only as a queer from Whereveristan? How do you summon the courage to be yourself no matter where you are?

Even as a young child in Lahore, Komail Aijazuddin knew he was different - no one else at his all-boys prep school was pirouetting off their desks, or being bullied for their "manboobs", or spontaneously bursting into songs from The Little Mermaid, Aijazuddin began to believe his only chance at a happy, meaningful life would be found elsewhere: America, the land of the free, the home of the gays. But the hostility of a post-9/11 world and society's rejection of his art, his desires, and his body would soon teach him that finding happiness takes a lot more than a plane ticket. Searching for his place between two worlds while navigating a minefield of expectations, prejudice, and self-doubt, Aijazuddin discovered - sometimes painfully, sometimes hilariously - that there are people and places he'd need to let go of to move forward.

Manboobs is a riotously funny memoir of searching for love, seamlessly blending humor, politics, pop culture, and the bravery required to be yourself. Aijazuddin confidently announces himself as an exciting new voice in humor with his moving and charming reexamination of the American dream and our search for home.

My Opinion

3 stars

Being an effeminate boy is like carrying a bomb only other people can detonate, and I spent most of my childhood hiding the trigger switch from casual arsonists.

The memoir started with a note that it's more "true than real" as he recounts memories and I like that framing.  Although the author moves quickly through his life which could feel a little surface-level, stopping to think about what he's not saying adds an extra layer.  I don't think there's a single demographic he and I share but I appreciated reading his perspective.

Circumstance had deluded me into thinking we were on the 

same side, but the truth was we were only running from the same enemy.

That statement, recounting the lack of intersectionality some of the liberals around him share, stopped me in my tracks.  If this wasn't a library book and I was a highlighting type, that definitely would've been earmarked.

If anyone reading this is interested in the marketing, I checked this book out from the library after reading about it in Bookpage.