 Hello and welcome to another episode of Disturbing Book Reviews with Julia. Today I'm going to be reviewing two disturbing books while doing some repairs on my teddy bear brownie. Everyone say hi brownie. If anyone says even one mean thing about how he looks, I swear to f**king god I'm gonna f**k you. No Julia, don't say that. The first book I'll be reviewing is Tender is the Flesh. And I don't have a copy of it because it was a library book, so I'm just gonna edit it so it looks like I'm holding it. Look at this bullshit. Damn girl, does everything gotta be about you? I will be the first to admit this is less of a review and more about just glowing recommendation. I love this book. The premise of Tender is the Flesh is that in the future there's this deadly virus that spreads. Let's try again. Okay, the premise of Tender is the Flesh is that there is a deadly virus that infects all animals but can be spread to humans. Okay, let's just start over. So the premise is that all animals get infected with this mysterious and very deadly virus that can be transmitted to humans through scratches and bites, etc. But it can also be spread through consuming meat or animal products. Out of desperation, humanity has been forced to kill every animal. Tender is the Flesh picks up years after this catastrophic world event when the meat industry has resorted to breeding and consuming humans. But these livestock humans are no longer referred to as humans, they're called head as in a man or a woman would be a male or a female head. I feel like a lot of people's initial reaction to the plot is like horror, like, oh, how barbaric. How could they be driven to cannibalism? That's disgusting. But then the book does this amazing job at actually explaining and showing you realistically how humanity was driven to this point. Like really think about all the ways that animals are used in our society. Like losing animals wouldn't just mean losing meat. It would mean losing eggs, dairy, gelatin, wool, leather. And think of all the ways that animals are used besides consumption, like pets, transportation, animal testing. The loss of animals means that now hundreds of millions of people now have no source of income because animals contribute to such a large amount of people's diets, world hunger goes through the roof, suicide skyrockets. Honestly, the most disturbing part of the book isn't the cannibalism or the gore. It's just the cold hard realism. I'm just now realizing that all the times that I'm showing on brownie. He's completely out of frame. You just see me like this. Scalp check. Our main character, Marcos, is in charge of one of these head slaughterhouses. And despite the fact that he is objectively profiting off of this industry, he's not like getting any kind of pleasure out of it. In fact, we see him interacting with many clients and suppliers of the head. And very few of them are like villainous and sadistically giddy about what they're doing. A lot of them operate with this attitude of what choice do I have? I have to make money somehow. I was just blown away by this book's ability to show me a character who is making money off killing and eating people and have me say, yeah, I get it. I might do the same thing if I were in his position. That all being said, tender as the flesh is never sympathetic towards these characters and their actions, you know? Like you are never allowed to forget that the head are people. They are men, women and children. And as we're reading about them getting their vocal cords cut and getting raped and dissected and hunted for sport, we look to Marcos for some kind of explanation or excuse and he offers none. He doesn't pretend to be innocent at all. He feels like shit. He hates himself. But again, what choice do we have? If he's not running this slaughterhouse, someone else will. Probably my favorite quote in the book is said by this butcher who's a regular customer of Marcos. And they're talking about life and death in their society. And she just says, do you think we're not going to pay for what we're doing right now? Do you? This book presents such a unique and uncomfortable perspective on humanity's relationship with nature and how we're both completely dominant over it and yet completely at its mercy. Thing one billion that I really like about this book is the fact that it is unarguably boldly about animal welfare and the cruelty that humans enact on animals. And yet it never feels preachy. Like it never feels like it's PETA scolding me or anything. It's just objectively telling you what you already know. Humans do this to animals every day for money. And if you don't like that tough because it's not changing anytime soon. In case you haven't noticed, I've only been talking about the world building and not about the actual story of this story. And that's for a few reasons. The first reason is that obviously the world building is my favorite part of this book. I'm blown away by how fleshed out and ghoulish yet realistic it is. I love it. And secondly, I want you to experience this story for yourself and come to your own conclusions on it. Like the book, I'm not going to hold your hand and tell you what to think and feel about Marcos and his actions. So do I recommend this book? Yes, obviously yes, a thousand times yes. This I guess is my spoiler free review. Go read it. Now next let's talk about the book cows. Cows is a doozy. I guess let's start with the story. Meet Steven, our protagonist. He's a 20 something man who is living in an apartment with his horribly abusive mother. Pretty much everything he knows about the world is through television and he's in love with the woman in the apartment above them. But his version of love is just how he comprehends love for what he's seen on TV. Steven is a very anxious neurotic miserable man in an attempt to get even just a little bit of power or control over his life. He takes a job at a cow slaughterhouse. Hey, wait. Both these books have slaughterhouses in them. Shit, I didn't plan that. Unfortunately for Steven though, his abuse continues in his slaughterhouse job as the majority of the employees of the slaughterhouse are engaged in what seems to be a cult of sorts and they regularly carry out this ritualistic bestiality and rape of the cows before they slaughter and eat them. And this sexual violence is forced upon Steven as well. My man, Steven, just cannot catch a break, can he? Excuse me. What? So to get into actually reviewing the book, cows is easily the grossest book I've ever read. People say that haunted by Chuck Pollinock is the grossest book ever written. No, bitch. One thing that you can say about this author is that he is amazing at writing descriptions. So vivid, in fact, that it ruins my night. Like the gross stuff in this book isn't just the gore and the slaughterhouse and the bestiality. It's also like feces and vomit and mold and rot and you can smell it and taste it as you're reading it. Cows is the only book I've ever read that has made me feel physically ill to the point that while reading it at times, I had to periodically stop and put the book down and take breaks because I felt myself starting to like get sick to want to puke reading it. For those of you who have read the book and you're wondering what brought me to that point, let's say it's when Steven makes dinner for his mother. This book has what I guess I'm going to call a high learning curve. As in, a lot of the gross material is right at the beginning of the book. Like there's no easing you into it. He's like, you want to read this shit? Read it, bitch. Not only that, but this book has a very unique way of introducing characters in that it doesn't introduce them. Like for example, his first day at the slaughterhouse, we get this sentence. Crips led him through the office corridors where the air was guilty with knowledge of the killings out back. Who the fuck is Crips? I swear to God, I reread this chapter like eight times just looking for where I missed Crips getting introduced. No, this is him getting introduced. His introduction is just, this guy leads him down the hallway. I'm not going to lie about midway through the book. I started feeling very discouraged because like I said, there's a high learning curve. You got to slog through a lot of fuck shit right at the beginning. And I started thinking to myself like if this is all the book is, if this is all it has to offer is descriptions of bestiality and people eating shit over and over and over again. Then I've already experienced all the book has to offer and I don't think I'd be missing out on anything if I were to just quit reading right now. And then a cow starts talking. Baby, I was back in about halfway through the book. A cow starts talking to Stephen through the vents and I have never seen a book go from a one to a 10 so fast. This talking cow immediately becomes my favorite character and he basically just explains to Stephen. Listen, there's a secret society of cows that is living in the sewers and tunnels under the city. We escaped this very slaughterhouse and over time have learned how to talk and evolved past the point of common cows. We have come up with a plot to kill Cripps and we need you in on it. Out of fucking nowhere, the story goes from being an honestly pretty boring torture porn to being this psychological political thriller about a cult of cows, a cow cult. It's just fantastic. It's fucking fantastic. Like suddenly I couldn't put the book down. To avoid spoiling the whole book, if this review has made you want to check it out for yourself, I'm gonna stop here with the plot. But I, oh God, I have so many mixed feelings. This book baffles me in both the best and the worst ways. Do I recommend it? I don't know. You know, I really don't know. Like the good parts are so good, but you have to go through so much in order to get to them and I honestly, I haven't decided yet if it's worth it. You know, stop eating stuff off the ground, baby. Pat acts like she's never eaten in her life. She acts like we are actively starving her to death. This is the face of a very privileged little girl who gets food every single, single day and yet still feels they need to eat lint off the ground until she throws up. Oh, I'm sorry. I love you. And there's a lot of other really interesting, are you kidding me? Another really interesting concept in this book that I haven't even gotten the chance to touch on is Lucy, his upstairs neighbor who he's in love with. And by in love, I mean, he's desiring the version of love that he sees on TV. Now, Lucy is completely insane in her own way and I really feel like it just got glossed over. On one hand, that's a total shame. I want to know more about her, but on the other hand, I feel like the lack of attention that she gets is intentional. It's reflecting the way that Steven doesn't really see women as people because he's only ever really experienced women either through his abusive mother or from the doting housewives that he sees on TV. He views women as a thing that will nurture a thing to fuck a thing that will clean your house and give you babies. I'm going to read a little quote from the book that I think really exemplifies this and it is also just a fascinating and well worded look at objectification in general. He didn't care about trying to generate love anymore. All he wanted was her there in the flat to bear his child, to dress like a wife, to eat with and be warm to the touch. As long as she was there and alive, he could invest her with whatever qualities he wanted by sheer effort of will. He could make himself see her as he needed her to be. Whoo, holy fuck. I damn it. I'm going to have to read it again. Like that's really what it comes down to is that if I was given the task of rereading this book, I don't know if I want to. I don't know. Like I said, I don't know if it's worth it. Oh my God, wait. I can't believe I forgot to bring this up. Um, at one point a cow says the n-word. One of the cows calls Stephen the n-word like as an insult. I beg your fucking pardon. This raises so many more questions about the cows and this universe such as how do cows conceptualize races in humans? Do cows have their own kind of cow prejudice? Um, where the hell did the cow learn that word? Who have you been hanging out with, young man? I feel like that is a great example of this book's problem where it's just a teeter-totter. It's walking this tightrope, going back and forth between shock value and deliberately trying to disgust and offend the audience and then really cool, really exciting and thought-provoking ideas and some fucking great writing. And I don't think this book fully succeeds. I don't think it pulls off what it's attempting to do. Hello, is everyone's favorite character Jules from the future? First of all, I need to introduce you all to the other cat. This is Stella, my childhood cat. She's been my best friend for all these years. She's never in the videos because it's always Tilly stealing the spotlight. She's a hundred years old. Actually, she's 15. She just recently had her cancer and she's my best friend. She's my reason for living. I love her so much. She doesn't know. She doesn't know my feelings. I'm here to tell you that I have recently reread cows. Yes, even all the parts that I really didn't want to reread. Basically, the conclusion that I've come to is that for me, I don't recommend it. You know, the parts of the book that I found really interesting and really exciting and really cool do not outweigh the parts that I felt were just a chore to read through. And I think it also means a lot that even though I wasn't the target audience for this book, I still was able to appreciate a lot of it. If you leave me right now, I'm going to freak out. I'm actually going to go Joker mode right now. The conclusion that I came to is that this isn't the kind of book for me. It's just not. But it's obviously the kind of book for a lot of other people. A lot of people really enjoy it. If you're the kind of person who loves shock horror, you love pushing your limits, you love art that makes you uncomfortable, then yes, check this out. If you can't, I'll insert trigger warning here. Oh, yeah. Um, also if you're the kind of person who's okay with a cow saying the N word, I'm not over that. I'm still not over that. It's been weeks since I finished this book. I'm not over that up until that point in the book race relations is never brought up. Where did a cow learn a racial slur? Hmm? Where answer me? I'm like actually tearing up right now. I'm like confused and upset. Like are the cows also racist? Like are the cows racist? I'm going to send it back over to past Julia in this video now girl. Get me out of here. There's a little update on brownie. It's not much. I've just fixed some of the stitches and parts where his fur is wearing thin just so he can be a little bit more secure. I think we're looking good. I'm going to do some more later tonight. As always, thank you so much for watching. Subscribe if you want to. Don't if you don't. If you have any recommendations for very disturbing books that you'd like me to review, please comment them and let me know. Have you read cows or tender as the flesh? And what did you think of them? I always want to hear it.