meh/style
Adelle Waldman,
Sarah Rose Etter,
Lydia Kiesling,
Tahmima Anam,
Ellen Pao,
Jenny Zhang,
Carrie Sun,
Claire Stanford,
Gabriela Garcia
Bunny had even come to love the long Repro nights and their time-and-a-half pay, the way she imagined an athlete would love an away game at a distant stadium. When she looked at her bank account every two weeks and saw that $1,072 was deposited there, she felt a miserly happiness. She spent money on nothing but gas, Zumba, Starbucks, and her share of groceries. She packed spartan and sensible lunches, sating afternoon hunger with salted almonds and La Vache Qui Rit. She was always slightly hungry, the hunger forming a slender iron rebar that held up the habitual laxity of her character and flesh. She ate her peanut butter sandwiches with smug slowness while her colleagues went to Buffalo Wild Wings. Her bank account fattened as her body attenuated.
i dont like the way this is written [too obvious] but the details are interesting
Bunny was surprised at this. Obama was heroic to her, a symbol of the victory of good over evil. And he had gotten Osama bin Laden, whatever that was worth—although after the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan, it did seem a little beside the point. Frank Turnbridge had said, “Finally, something good out of Obama-nation,” and Bunny bristled within.
lmao. hate this. too obvious. like a wikipedia page in simple english
“Please get in,” she said. “I can drop you somewhere.” Gulbahar had been beautifully hostessing all day, and Elizabeth hated to keep her longer. She knew little of Gulbahar’s life outside of her work. She assumed she was unmarried—no ring—but she didn’t know for sure. Elizabeth had been amazed to learn that the receptionist in the BP office, a very young woman, had two small kids. Their photos were on her desk; she had first assumed they were her younger siblings. Elizabeth was constantly being surprised by the revealed information of people’s lives.
such boring writing
Even a spate of sternly worded articles called “Guess What: Tech Has an Ethics Problem” was not making tech have less of an ethics problem. Oh man. If that wasn’t doing it, what would??
the extra ? is maybe superfluous
After the blows came kicks sometimes. With mud-caked boots. Drawing blood from a broken nose that never repaired right, from split lips and knocked-out teeth. She should have feared death but she didn't. In the moments when Daniel appeared ready to kill her, all thought ceased, and she retracted into the shell of her arms, saw splinters of light, spinning walls, felt like a child on a merry-go-round thrust off and ready to hit the floor. Sometimes, at the crescent of raw fear, she felt free, like she soared. The pain came later.
the level of detail is too maudlin/artless for me but the ending is nice. though idk why "crescent" fits here - why not crescendo?
How was she to know that Carmen had stood at the back door that night? That she'd seen her father's face slowly consumed by licking flames and tiptoed back into the house? In fifteen years, Carmen would board a plane to Miami, and Dolores would never see her again. She would think it was politics that had divided her from her firstborn daughter.
ok this is a cool twist but why state the last sentence explicitly, and in such a matter-of-fact way (without any new detail or color)? it kinda ruins the vibes
[...] You're not like other girls, he says, and I wind the words tight around me, a cape. The world is full of other girls - shiny-haired, giggle-glowing, simultaneously pure and sex-enthralled, groups of them, worlds of them, walking in community, writhing under club lights, running through parks. But if he says he doesn't like other girls, if I am not an "other girl," he will be mine, not theirs.
Except that I know deep down that I am other girls. They spin in me and around me. I am of them: my coworker who has been wearing the same lipstick shade, Barely Legal, every day since some guy leaned over the counter and complimented her on the color. [...] Sasha who is no longer my best friend, because her boyfriend told her he thought she should dress more like me [...] and so she realized I was not an other girl to him or that she was not a special girl, a chosen girl, or that all the categories collapse at the behest of the men who make them and that it is just easier to pretend that we have any control in the first place. Control is pushing me away.
the prose feels a bit clunky but the "categories collapse" bit is kinda nice
[...] It wasn’t just Handler’s politics that repelled her, it was the entire ideology these life-hacking white boys espoused. Unable to explain their privilege by any other means, they had convinced themselves and others that everything that had landed in their laps had landed there not through basic structural imbalance but through some sort of philosophy. Tech-bros weren’t overpaid and over-lauded because they’d had everything handed to them on a plate, went the accepted wisdom, but because they’d focused, or lived their vision, or actualised. Because they’d done it, anyone could do it. Because anyone could do it, anyone who didn’t do it had only themselves to blame.
i mean i dont disagree with this obviously but the style feels heavy-handed?
this also glosses over the potential contradiction in "because they’d done it, anyone could do it" - surely they dont actually think anyone could do it; they think they are one of a lucky few with the natural talent. but they also know that feels unfair so they cloak it in pretensions of universality despite not actually believing in it. idk. should be investigated more.
‘OK,’ said Hugo as the car eased up to the kerb and he took in the scene, ‘I’m seeing an ambulance.’
Teddy didn’t look at the ambulance but instead checked his tablet for news of it.
‘I’m not seeing anything that would suggest an ambulance,’ he said.
‘I’m literally looking at the ambulance, Teddy.’
Teddy tapped around. ‘Looking at it doesn’t tell us anything,’ he said.
‘It tells us it fucking exists,’ said Hugo.
‘Right. An ambulance exists. I could have told you that without seeing one, no? It’s irrelevant. That ambulance could just be there as a matter of protocol. Visual confirmation of its presence is, like, literally useless at this point.’
‘Maybe we should briefly speculate,’ said Hugo.
i think this would be funnier if the fact that Teddy didn't look at the ambulance were conveyed more obliquely & w/o the all-seeing eye. like instead of that second line, something a little more basic/perfunctory: "Teddy pulled out his tablet and tapped at it for a few scconds."
[...] “How are you with positive feedback? Because I don’t give it.” That’s fine: I had a Korean piano teacher who was not one for positive reinforcement; plus, my mom’s Chinese. I avoided alluding to Amy Chua because I did not believe I had a tiger mother; not once did Mom (or Dad) ask to see my report card. (Although they did find a way to comment on all other parts of my life—how I chewed at the wrong pace or smiled at the wrong width—I was determined to excel at everything so they would have méi huà jiǎng, a phrase used when something was so good, there would be no words speak.) [...]
annoying ... one step above cut fruit poetry