Our Shared Shelf discussion

Arika wrote: "This book was available through my local library as a downloadable audiobook. I listened to the entire book today while getting ready and then running errands. I HIGHLY recommend trying to get It a..."

I didn't listen to it on audio, but even just reading it I felt like the author was having a conversation with her readers. It was a very interesting narrative style.

The NYT defines it a life changing book. It is indeed. I never really considered what is involved in gender fluidity. Well, now I think about it. Basically it doesn't matter to me but I can understand that it may a problem for someone. I expect the problems are mainly due because of bigotry. In this book there's a lot more, first of all about motherhood. We, my wife and me, had 3 children and even if we talk a lot and share a lot of experience; she never went so trivial. It taught me a lot too about motherhood. A lot I knew but there must space to learn more especially if it comes from other life style. Finally I enjoyed the book, its structure is queer (no chapter organisation, a lot of citation and so on) , but it is readable. It is sometime crude even rude. As wrote Diana (a few lines over) I had some difficulty to go through the beginning but ,well, I'm curious and I really wanted to see where the author will go. I'm just happy that I went on. It made my mind broader, it made me know a side of the world I couldn't imagine. Another good choice. Final consideration: whatever relation you're involved in, Love is what that's matter .

I initially thought to start this post with "I'm sorry," but then realized it would be so ironically inappropriate a way to start a review of this work. Honestly, I hated it. Didn't like the structure at all. Stream of consciousness regurgitation that it is, the lack of any linear narrative or even real cohesion drove me nuts. I tried to think of the writing more as poetry than prose, which helped a bit. Not enough. I could have dealt with the stream of consciousness style if topically it was organized. As it is, I cannot fathom what the point of the piece is: what is the reader supposed to glean from the text? In parts rant and in parts rave, it felt juvenile. Defensive. Unbelievably vague. Reference to terms of theory and art, references to feminists and authors by last name. No explanations. Even the margin notes others lauded I found not helpful at all. In short, I could not get over the structural fatalities to like the substance.

I finished the Argonauts novel and I had a hard time reading that book. It jumped around to actual events in her life and then to her analyzing those events and quoting other people's thoughts and opinions about those events. The book ideas and concepts jumped around so much that I had a hard time understanding the different ideas she discussed.

Book: The Argonauts
Author: Maggie Nelson
Rating 3 Out of 5 Stars

This is probably my least favourite of the Our Shared Shelf books that I have read so far. While I did find it to be an interesting read, I just didn't really gain anything from this one.

My biggest problem with the book was the set up. I found it to be very difficult to follow and very random. Granted the Caitlin Moran book we read earlier was kind of like that, but it just really didn't work for Maggie like it did for Caitlin. I just found that the jumping area from subject to subject, mostly while on the same page, was just too much. I really had a lot of trouble with keeping the different subjects straight. It also felt very repetitive in many places, which I think in part was the quotes. The quotes, to me, was another set up problem. They really did not add anything to Maggie's voice. They actually took a lot away from her.

Yes, this was a deep memoir and it did tackle a lot of things, ranging from the birth of a child to transitioning. However, I really did not find it all that moving. There was no deep thinking and I just did not gain any new insights. I felt like Maggie was trying to express all this by appealing to the emotions, but she just came up short. Again, this was the set up of the book. Had she just focused on one thing at a time, I really do feel like I would have gotten more out of this one.

Another problem was the fact that it seemed like Maggie was trying to write about things that were above her. It seemed like she was trying to come off as more as an academic than as a real person. There was just something about her that would not allow a connection to form like the one I got with Alice Walker, Caitlin Moran, and Gloria Steinem. She just felt so untouchable.

One thing that really bothered me was her reaction to finding out that her baby was a boy. I just hated how she went on and on about the things that she never could do with her son. And here I thought we were trying to be equal....

I guess my biggest issue with this one was Maggie is trying to cover some really intense things, but only hits the surface. It's like she's trying to put too much in such a short work and not lose anything. Well, I'm not going to lie: there was more than one place where I was lost with this one. It's like she expects you to get her point without really ever explaining it. The quotes, um, no, they really don't help your case.

Oh well, I guess it's on to the next book. I just realized that my last two book reviews have been kind of harsh, maybe the next one will be a lot better.

I am wondering if it is a left brain-right brain issue for whether someone likes the way this book was structured or not.

I'm quite late in getting my hands on The Argonauts, but it seems to me—from about halfway through—that the structure is at least in part nearly non-existent, at least to the classically-trained eye, because Nelson just wants to use her words. It takes courage and work to try and put the inexpressible somewhere within the expressible, and perhaps part of the lesson is that traditional paragraph and chapter structure, beyond being restrictive in the same way labels are explained to be throughout the novel, also lend themselves to the wistful belief that there can ever be perfect expression of the infinity within.

Amanda wrote: "I'm quite late in getting my hands on The Argonauts, but it seems to me—from about halfway through—that the structure is at least in part nearly non-existent, at least to the classically-trained ey..."

Great way of putting it! I am a huge fan of traditional structure, which is my biggest problem with this book.

I have a short attention span and a bad habit of glossing over sentences/paragraphs while reading, so I found this book a bit of a slow go and had to go back and re-read bits a few times.

But I realise now a few weeks after finishing it that I found myself telling people about this book more than I would normally, but also I remember much more about it than I normally would. I guess the unconventional structure and lack of chapters made it difficult to read at the time but also kind of drew me in - it took me a while to finish but I'm not surprised to see that some people read it in one sitting.

I would never, ever have picked up without the book club because even though I was interested in Maggie Nelson the lack of chapters would have made me run a mile! So that's good.

I didn't like this book but I did find it interesting at times. The structure was creative, very stream of thought and poetic, but it was very hard to follow. Like a few other readers, I did not feel the quotes added much. In fact, I felt they took away from the writing since they would just pop up out if nowhere in the middle of what could have been a thoughtful or emotional passage, ruining it. If the author wanted to make references, she really needed to incorporate them more. I got the sense that, as the author wrote the book, she was trying to understand and maybe even make peace with her relationship with Harry and the life they were building together. Could she be with a gender fluid person? How could she understand Harry? What did her relationship with him mean about her? Could they build a home and family together? Had their life become too traditional? What is a queer family? Above all, where did she fit in all of this? I still felt a lot of ambivalence from the author by the end, as if she was trying to convince herself of something. Did anyone else get a sense of the author's struggle throughout the book?

Arika wrote: "This book was available through my local library as a downloadable audiobook. I listened to the entire book today while getting ready and then running errands. I HIGHLY recommend trying to get It a..."

Interesting that you say this, because normally that is my go-to as well: audio almost ALWAYS makes a book easier to understand (for me). But this is one of those cases where I started in audio and could NOT follow it for anything, so switched to print. I've read all of one page and I HATE it so far. Way too Faulkner for me. I may push on, but I doubt it. Too many books in the world to waste time on one that I feel like I won't even remember when I'm done with it.