Price of Salt and Open Borders
Feb. 22nd, 2026 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearThe Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith is a 1952 novel about a young woman named Therese who falls in love with an older woman named Carol.
I have to admit, I struggled quite a lot with this book... All the conversations felt very stilted and unnatural and it was pretty boring.
I also found Therese very frustrating as a protagonist as all her relationships seemed quite problematic and I wished she would stand up for herself more.
But then, she was only 19 and it was 1952...
The last ten pages were a lot more gripping, with many twists and turns going on in Therese's head, as she considered her various options - but none of them felt like good ones to me, so I was going to be dissatisfied with whatever she picked - and I was.
Disappointing.
Open Borders by Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith is a comic book all about immigration, looking at all the various arguments against it and refuting them with stats and science.
I like the graphic format as a way to present nonfiction, but I didn't feel like it was executed as well as it could have been here. The text was basically a very dense essay, chopped up into little bits with accompanying pictures, when it could have been done in a much more dynamic, narrative style that would have made it a lot easier to digest and retain.
However, I learned some interesting things - and it's definitely all even more relevant now than when it was published in 2019.
I have to admit, I struggled quite a lot with this book... All the conversations felt very stilted and unnatural and it was pretty boring.
I also found Therese very frustrating as a protagonist as all her relationships seemed quite problematic and I wished she would stand up for herself more.
But then, she was only 19 and it was 1952...
The last ten pages were a lot more gripping, with many twists and turns going on in Therese's head, as she considered her various options - but none of them felt like good ones to me, so I was going to be dissatisfied with whatever she picked - and I was.
Disappointing.
Open Borders by Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith is a comic book all about immigration, looking at all the various arguments against it and refuting them with stats and science.
I like the graphic format as a way to present nonfiction, but I didn't feel like it was executed as well as it could have been here. The text was basically a very dense essay, chopped up into little bits with accompanying pictures, when it could have been done in a much more dynamic, narrative style that would have made it a lot easier to digest and retain.
However, I learned some interesting things - and it's definitely all even more relevant now than when it was published in 2019.
