Intimations

Narrated by the author\’s own lovely voice, I listened to it completely in a day. The author offered an incredibly unique and insightful perspective into the issues exploding before us this very day. The issues of racism and inequality amplified many times over by the pandemic and how our country\’s structures have been incapable of dealing with it and in fact have exacerbated its impact and led to many unnecessary deaths. As an older white male these essays were eye-popping to me.

Zadie Smith is an excellent and oftentimes hilarious reader of this book as she does accents of Americans and other people with a frightening precision. She’s also brilliant. A tier 1 essayist with so many profound insights that I’ll be getting the physical book to experience them many times more.

Beautiful, clever, thought provoking, funny, convicting, tender. Less than 2 hours of time but I know I’ll be thinking about it for weeks.

I bought this because of an NPR review, very positive. It seems to me Ms. Smith just turned on the recorder and started talking. A bit stream of consciousness. No preparation, organization, revision. Nothing to remember. Lazy.

Michelle Adamo NtonSpuoovnnrembuesrhg oustr2rfSu at u9:n4ef5l AtMlgid · Shared with Public Zadie Smith is a talented essayist. In Intimations, her essays have a sense of urgency… right here… right now. To cope, Smith did what writers do, she wrote! Luckily for us as her talent puts into words so many of the things that I (and, I suspect, many others) have been feeling. \”I felt like telling the truth, as unvarnished as I could manage it”. Smith is donating all royalties to charity. On racism: Referring to the pandemic as “The Global Humbling” (which I love), Smith draws an analogy between it and racism. I truly believe that many people are unaware that they carry the virus at all until the very moment you find yourself phoning the cops to explain the race of the man you thought looked suspicious walking through his own neighborhood, or who spoke back to you in Central Park… To fear the contagion of poverty is reasonable. To keep voting for policies that ensure the permanent existence of an underclass is what is meant by “structural racism.” On the virus: The supposed democratic nature of plague—the way in which it can strike all registered voters equally—turns out to be somewhat overstated. A plague it is, but American hierarchies, hundreds of years in the making, are not so easily overturned. Black and Latino people are now dying at twice the rate of white and Asian people. More poor people are dying than rich. More in urban centers than in the country. On death: Death comes to all—but in America it has long been considered reasonable to offer the best chance of delay to the highest bidder. On essential workers: People thank God for “essential” workers they once considered lowly, who not so long ago they despised for wanting 15 bucks an hour. On change: “Change comes from the realization that what you’ve been told is “just the way things are” is, in fact, not nature but ideology.” I bought this ebook, then found it so meaningful that I wanted to hear it in Smith’s own voice so, I bought the audio book too! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ For more book reviews and recommendations follow me at #emptynestreader #instagram #facebook #Goodreads #Intimations #ZadieSmith #PenguinBooks #essays #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagramalabama #bookstagrammichigan #bookreviews #bookreviewer #bookrecommendations #readingbringsjoy #whatimreading #goodreadschallenge #igbooks #novemberreads #5starread #readalittlelearnalittlelivealittle #ebooks #kindle #kindlebooks #librarybooks #nonfictionnovember #audible #audiobooks #emptynestreaderaudiobooks? MORE QUOTES from Zadie Smith: I used to think that there would one day be a vacine: that if enough black people named the virus, explained it, demonstrated how it operates, videoed its effects, protested it peacefully, revealed how widespread it really is, how the symptoms arise, how so many Americans keep giving it to each other, irresponsibly and shamefully, generation after generation, causing intolerable and unending damage both to individual bodies and to the body politic—I thought if that knowledge became as widespread as could possibly be managed or imagined that we might finally reach some kind of herd immunity. I don’t think that anymore.” “… the truth is that not enough carriers of this virus have ever been willing to risk the potential loss of any aspect of their social capital to find out what kind of America might lie on the other side of segregation. They are very happy to \”blackout\” their social media for a day, to read all-black books, and \”educate\” themselves about black issues — as long as this education does not occur in the form of actual black children attending their actual schools.”

Galaxyaudiobook Member Benefit

- Able to comment

- List watched audiobooks

- List favorite audiobooks

- Bookmark will only available for Galaxyaudiobook member