Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

excuse me while i devour her entire new yorker back catalogue

“Everything about this woman has been preemptively controlled to the point that she can afford the impression of spontaneity and, more important, the sensation of it—having worked to rid her life of artificial obstacles, she often feels legitimately carefree.”
☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️
This felt like a cool book before I read it, and I’m happy to report that it ended up being so. I love Jia’s authorial voice which ties the entire book together beautifully.

The range of topics in these “reflections on self-delusion” is more wide-ranging than I anticipated. Some of the essays were more difficult to read than others, and I’d definitely throw out a content warning on the essay about rape culture (I skipped through a few parts myself).

Ultimately, I truly enjoyed this book. What started out as a “side read” during down time quickly transformed into the audiobook I listened to on my multiple daily commutes (it also kickstarted my @librofm subscription—support local and small businesses!). I am just now entering the final essay of the book, and I’ll be sad not to have more of Jia’s writing to accompany me every day.

A mixed bag of essays. One or two are pretty good - but these essays don't go together very well, the central theme is pretty vague. I think Tolentino does good writing/cultural criticism at the New Yorker, but I don't think this collection works well as a book. It's a pretty bland, completely defanged feminist reading of media that have been talked about to death already. It ends up being pretty tedious. If you have somehow managed to get through the past decade without ever considering gender and media this could, I suppose, be a good primer.

Well-researched and pretty well-written as you’re carried along sentence by sentence, but I felt like most of the essays left me wondering what her point was. A few days after reading it I only remember the general topics of each essay.