Whats everyone reading?

[Rara Avis]

"I'm with the band" - Pamela des Barnes

Just awful; so many really creepy and disturbing things happening casually from one page to the next. This is tempered somewhat by some genuinely lol moments but overall just WTF?

I understand she is now a creative writing teacher and the mind boggles that a woman who teaches people how to write never passed beyond writing like a teenage girl. I had initially thought she was going for an 'Artist as a Young Man' vibe where Joyce's writing improves as he ages but I was very wrong on that count. Her prose is insufferable. I'm not finished yet but I don't see it improving.

This is a book that seems to be written without a single shred of self reflection, examination or criticism 0f herself, the men she associated with or the times and their impact. Maybe I was expecting too much.

[Barrington Boots]

I read this too and I felt exactly the same as you: the writing style is very basic, and there's no 'second act' where the author comes to any kind of self-realisation or evolves.
It may be that we're looking at this through a modern lense where we're expecting that to happen, when really the whole thing is self-realistion, ie. she just wanted to shag rockstars and have a laugh, and therefore this book just wasn't for me. I found it all a bit grim in a way though, because to my mind most of the men in the book treated her like crap.

Would not recommend!

[Rara Avis]

You're probably right about that but it's such a cop out. Whatever about the 60s but I'm sure her recollections of the 70s have not incorporated any of the feminist thinking that was prevalent at the time.
It's a rock and roll version of 'Pray, keep sweet and obey' or whatever that Netflix documentary was called.

So far I've read about teenagers giving adult men hand jobs, adults watching girls as young as 12 perform sex acts on each other, the casually mentioned death of a 3 year old that happened in her presence that's simply never referred to again, the possible sexual assault of a young woman in a public place, two of her friends are on heroin and she's almost been sexually assaulted three times (she hasn't even turned 21).

Yeah it's all very peace and love except she seems to spend a lot of her time crying over guys that use her for sex and move on and not an ounce of introspection in sight.