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lattelibrarian's review
emotional
fast-paced
3.75
An introspective memoir that delves deep into crying: what it is, why we do it, and notable references. It makes for a sort of crying compendium that is both intriguing and utterly emotional.
noura's review
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Suicide, and Grief
abstab's review
5.0
beautiful prose and eloquent writing style. i enjoyed the structure of the book and felt like it connected very well
ellephuonglinhnguyen's review against another edition
4.0
Some mornings I awake with an enormous sensation inside me and cannot identify whether the urge is to cry or write a poem or fuck someone. All at once? My body has cross-indexed the impulse.
bimmbles's review
4.0
Read it a day too late for Pisces season, but this was a gorgeous weird string of prose and anecdotes and poetry all about crying. I liked it very much!
quenchgum's review
3.0
Welcome to the [b:Bluets|6798263|Bluets|Maggie Nelson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1354902976l/6798263._SY75_.jpg|7003912] of crying.
It was on my first venture to Brooklyn after moving to New York when a very cool bookseller at an independent bookstore recommended The Crying Book to me. She had tattoos and was working there while she got her MFA. She said she reads a ton of poetry, and she probably actually does. I did not mention my corporate law job, and we quickly made friends.
I obviously wanted her recommendations. I'm too dumb for real poetry, but I knew enough to put my best artsy foot forward. I told her that I loved Anne Carson's [b:Autobiography of Red|61049|Autobiography of Red|Anne Carson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403176248l/61049._SY75_.jpg|1396256], Claudia Rankine's [b:Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric|270903|Don’t Let Me Be Lonely An American Lyric|Claudia Rankine|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1632193453l/270903._SY75_.jpg|262629], and Maggie Nelson's general oeuvre (besides Bluets, see [b:The Argonauts|22929741|The Argonauts|Maggie Nelson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1410981835l/22929741._SX50_.jpg|42499230] and [b:On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint|56269292|On Freedom Four Songs of Care and Constraint|Maggie Nelson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1614089793l/56269292._SX50_.jpg|87473435]), each of which are basically poetry-adjacent. She went straight to the shelf to pull this book for me.
IMO, the bookseller was very cool, but Maggie Nelson did it better.
Christle's book focuses on the act of crying. It's a mushy subject, but I think that made it particularly well-suited to her creative approach of viewing tears through a number of different cultural, artistic, and academic lenses. She did things like intersperse her personal experiences with quotes from Roland Barthes and Gaston Bachelard (which isn't the type of thing you get to see every day) and talk through the import of different art installations and poems (which was incredible to finally understand, given my aforementioned dumbness). She leaned in to complexity by exploring how the vulnerability of crying is often weaponized inappropriately, or how different genders approach crying differently, with women more likely to enjoy sad moments (a unique form of a "hedonic reversal"). All of this was very cool. But in the end, the form of the book -- short, disjointed prose vignettes that only loosely relate to each other -- made it difficult to establish a strong narrative, and Heather Christle's excellent style and unique approach could only take her so far. I wanted deeper analyses and clearer connections. She wasn't trying to spell it out for me, but I guess I probably wanted her to.
It's closer to four stars than to two stars, but I rounded down to three because I just gave Middlemarch four stars and wouldn't be able to bear the false equivalence.
Anyway, my review doesn't mean much. I review dumb contracts all day and don't understand poetry. I do want to get an MFA, though. And I wish I got that girl's Instagram handle.
It was on my first venture to Brooklyn after moving to New York when a very cool bookseller at an independent bookstore recommended The Crying Book to me. She had tattoos and was working there while she got her MFA. She said she reads a ton of poetry, and she probably actually does. I did not mention my corporate law job, and we quickly made friends.
I obviously wanted her recommendations. I'm too dumb for real poetry, but I knew enough to put my best artsy foot forward. I told her that I loved Anne Carson's [b:Autobiography of Red|61049|Autobiography of Red|Anne Carson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403176248l/61049._SY75_.jpg|1396256], Claudia Rankine's [b:Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric|270903|Don’t Let Me Be Lonely An American Lyric|Claudia Rankine|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1632193453l/270903._SY75_.jpg|262629], and Maggie Nelson's general oeuvre (besides Bluets, see [b:The Argonauts|22929741|The Argonauts|Maggie Nelson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1410981835l/22929741._SX50_.jpg|42499230] and [b:On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint|56269292|On Freedom Four Songs of Care and Constraint|Maggie Nelson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1614089793l/56269292._SX50_.jpg|87473435]), each of which are basically poetry-adjacent. She went straight to the shelf to pull this book for me.
IMO, the bookseller was very cool, but Maggie Nelson did it better.
Christle's book focuses on the act of crying. It's a mushy subject, but I think that made it particularly well-suited to her creative approach of viewing tears through a number of different cultural, artistic, and academic lenses. She did things like intersperse her personal experiences with quotes from Roland Barthes and Gaston Bachelard (which isn't the type of thing you get to see every day) and talk through the import of different art installations and poems (which was incredible to finally understand, given my aforementioned dumbness). She leaned in to complexity by exploring how the vulnerability of crying is often weaponized inappropriately, or how different genders approach crying differently, with women more likely to enjoy sad moments (a unique form of a "hedonic reversal"). All of this was very cool. But in the end, the form of the book -- short, disjointed prose vignettes that only loosely relate to each other -- made it difficult to establish a strong narrative, and Heather Christle's excellent style and unique approach could only take her so far. I wanted deeper analyses and clearer connections. She wasn't trying to spell it out for me, but I guess I probably wanted her to.
It's closer to four stars than to two stars, but I rounded down to three because I just gave Middlemarch four stars and wouldn't be able to bear the false equivalence.
Anyway, my review doesn't mean much. I review dumb contracts all day and don't understand poetry. I do want to get an MFA, though. And I wish I got that girl's Instagram handle.
sol_13's review against another edition
4.0
Este libro no es una narración íntima y tampoco es un ensayo del razonamiento ajeno. Este libro, a pesar de claramente estar dirigido a una tercera persona lectora, mientras lo lees da la sensación de realmente por un proceso de encuentro, entendimiento y admiración hacia las lágrimas, llorar y el llanto.
Las lágrimas y el proceso por el cuál lloramos suele considerarse algo muy íntimo, humano e incluso poco habitual, pero en este libro este esquema se destruye por completo. Llorar puede ser una interacción propia o con el entorno. Con este libro he descubierto muchos datos que desconocía por completo sobre las lágrimas y sobre quién las derrama y quién las derramó. De esta forma algo tan inevitable, respuesta fisiológica básica, empieza a coger una dimensión completamente distinta: pasas de estar llorando con el pecho encogido en el suelo sin que sientas las lágrimas a completamente apreciarlas con una entidad completa y compartida.
Este libro tiene un hilo en el cual la autora va avanzando en sus experiencias personales mientras da pinceladas, obras escritas, obras artísticas que lo mencionan o estudian y reflexiones sobre esta naturaleza del llanto. Una de ellas es la obra ''I'm too sad to tell you'', la cual tuve la oportunidad de disfrutar en persona. Las lágrimas no son nunca sólo lágrimas y siempre son de verdad. El no sólo ser datos y experiencias ajenas a la autora sobre el dolor y el llanto, hace que no sea una obra simplemente descriptiva, sino que se siente como un proceso propio e íntimo de encuentro.
Como contra el hilo para mí no tiene final, el libro se acaba como si pudiera seguir. No esperaba una conclusión, pero si que me dejase alguna sensación de cierre. También, todo esto está desarrollado en párrafos cortados por pausas *** que a veces dan la sensación de no tener mucho orden o maquetación más que anotación en una libreta de ideas, pensamientos y reflexiones, a la vez que también se le encuentra un sentido a cada paso.
Las lágrimas son una expresión, un lenguaje propio que no es tan sencillo de recoger. Puedes producir el llanto, puedes llorar, las lágrimas ajenas y propias plagan la vida de ciertas personas como sus obras.
Las lágrimas y el proceso por el cuál lloramos suele considerarse algo muy íntimo, humano e incluso poco habitual, pero en este libro este esquema se destruye por completo. Llorar puede ser una interacción propia o con el entorno. Con este libro he descubierto muchos datos que desconocía por completo sobre las lágrimas y sobre quién las derrama y quién las derramó. De esta forma algo tan inevitable, respuesta fisiológica básica, empieza a coger una dimensión completamente distinta: pasas de estar llorando con el pecho encogido en el suelo sin que sientas las lágrimas a completamente apreciarlas con una entidad completa y compartida.
Este libro tiene un hilo en el cual la autora va avanzando en sus experiencias personales mientras da pinceladas, obras escritas, obras artísticas que lo mencionan o estudian y reflexiones sobre esta naturaleza del llanto. Una de ellas es la obra ''I'm too sad to tell you'', la cual tuve la oportunidad de disfrutar en persona. Las lágrimas no son nunca sólo lágrimas y siempre son de verdad. El no sólo ser datos y experiencias ajenas a la autora sobre el dolor y el llanto, hace que no sea una obra simplemente descriptiva, sino que se siente como un proceso propio e íntimo de encuentro.
Como contra el hilo para mí no tiene final, el libro se acaba como si pudiera seguir. No esperaba una conclusión, pero si que me dejase alguna sensación de cierre. También, todo esto está desarrollado en párrafos cortados por pausas *** que a veces dan la sensación de no tener mucho orden o maquetación más que anotación en una libreta de ideas, pensamientos y reflexiones, a la vez que también se le encuentra un sentido a cada paso.
Las lágrimas son una expresión, un lenguaje propio que no es tan sencillo de recoger. Puedes producir el llanto, puedes llorar, las lágrimas ajenas y propias plagan la vida de ciertas personas como sus obras.