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All Things Are Too Small
All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess | Becca Rothfeld
2 posts | 2 read | 6 to read
What is the relationship between Marie Kondo and many modern novels? Why do we get addicted to stories - particularly when they're about serial killers? Seven years after #metoo, how can we have the sex we really want? Is it ok to think Troll 2 is a good film? In All Things Are Too Small, virtuoso young critic and philosopher Becca Rothfeld turns her clear gaze to a series of interconnected cultural and political questions - about aesthetics, taste, literature, equality, power and sexuality. In a healthy culture, she argues, economic security allows for wild extremes of aesthetic experimentation, yet in our society we've got it flipped. The gap between rich and poor yawns hideously wide, while we compensate with misguided attempts to effect equality in love and art, where it does not belong. Our culture's embrace of minimalism has left our souls impoverished: decluttering has reduced our living spaces to empty non-places; the mindfulness trend has emptied our minds of the thoughts that make us who we are; the regularization of sex has drained it of unpredictability and therefore true eroticism; and our quest for balance has yielded fictions whose protagonists aspire to excise their appetites. As intellectually illuminating as it is gloriously carnal and earthy, All Things Are Too Small is a much needed tonic in a world of oppressive sterility and limitation, and a soul cry for derangement, imbalance, obsession, ravishment and disorder.
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review
fredthemoose
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Mehso-so

⭐️⭐️⭐️ I thought this would be essays about liking big, overdone things in a world trying to praise minimalism. It kind of was that, but in a much more cerebral/philosophical (and less accessible) way, with topics focusing more on gender roles and relationships and societal expectations (and probably a lot I forgot or just didn‘t really engage with) and not so much in praise of venti Starbucks orders. So philosophical that I just didn‘t care much.

review
Hooked_on_books
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Pickpick

I found this on Time‘s best books of the year and I‘m glad I did. The essays here explore a number of things recently popular in our culture, like mindfulness, Marie Kondo, consent and more, delving into them and in many cases tearing them carefully down. I enjoyed it but think I would have liked it better in print, which would have allowed me down a bit to mull it over.

Amiable Looks good —stacking! 2mo
Megabooks Yes, read this earlier this year, and it's definitely one that you mull over a bit.
2mo
55 likes4 stack adds2 comments