In March, Bloomberg shared news of the company's purchase of data analytics firm Acunu, and earlier this week, TechCrunch reported that Apple had acquired search technology startup Ottocat in 2013. book review: Sleepwalking by Meg Wolitzerįollow pace, amore, libri on WordPress.Over the last few weeks, several previously unknown Apple acquisitions have surfaced.book review: The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James.book review: Either/Or by Elif Batuman | BookBrowse.I had one a million years ago when it first came out but I’m not really succinct enough for it (obviously) and now it terrifies me, it just seems like there’s SO much bullying!!! I do instagram because I like taking and seeing pretty pictures and besides goodreads that’s pretty much end of list for my social media efforts. It makes me feel better to hear more about the toxicity around it, because seriously, do not need.Īnd no Twitter for me. And agreed, they’re nowhere near as toxic (great word for it!) as MFA programs but I still always wonder if everything would be different if I’d have gone that route. So learn from my mistake and definitely do not do unless you really, really care. After I’ve already started them, that is! They just seemed like the best options at the time when I was floundering about what to do (and also needed a visa). I just don’t like being in school that much and I don’t feel enthusiastic about any profession enough to commit to an MA. Ugh I’ve dropped out of not one, but TWO MAs. You can pick up a copy of Topics of Conversation here on Book Depository.
“Her hair was down and her cheeks were stiff and pink from smiling and the freckles on her neck, down her forearms, dotting her ankles, they were shining, they were giving off some kind of heat, she was glowing.”Īgain, I don’t think this was a bad book, and if it interests you, I’d definitely encourage you to pick it up it just wasn’t what I was looking for and I found it rather unremarkable at the end of the day. I found that Popkey attempted to imitate the features of verbal speech in a way that came across to me as forced and labored it was peak stylized MFA-prose. This book is largely told in chunks of dialogue characters relaying monologues to the narrator. Basically: this is a book of commentary and ideas, and that’s not an inherently bad or valueless thing I just failed to engage with it.Īnyway, the thing that actually grated on me more than anything was Popkey’s writing. The aptly unnamed narrator of Topics of Conversation feels like a prototype of Generic Young Woman Angst – maybe that’s the point, maybe not – but her struggles all felt very Grand and Societal without being grounded in the microcosm enough to hold my interest.
But for me the difference between these two authors lies in the fact that Rooney explores themes through character, and Popkey explores themes at the expense of character. Both authors interrogate themes on womanhood, sex, sexuality, and give voice to a subset of young women who may have never seen these topics addressed so starkly in fiction. The Rachel Cusk comparisons are a dime a dozen, and I will spare you from that seeing as I’ve never read Rachel Cusk I will instead address the Sally Rooney comparisons. But at the same time, this did literally nothing for me, so here we are. In a way I feel a bit bad contributing to this book’s overwhelmingly negative reception, because I do think it has more going for it than its low Goodreads rating might suggest, and I can see where others could get something out of it.