PositiveChicago Review of BooksThis is a sociology book for a general audience. Lindemann breaks down concepts deftly and lightly. The research never prevents the book from being enjoyable to me as a lay reader, although I also don’t have the credentials to evaluate or respond to it. Lindemann combines foundational sociology texts with pop-culture references, and there’s a visceral delight to seeing Émile Durkheim paired with My Strange Addiction ... Most of the chapters provide perspectives from scholars discussing why the boundaries of these social constructs are less clear-cut than they seem, as well as Lindemann’s analysis of how they exist within reality television ... Reality television is both a reflection of our social narratives, which Lindemann believes are more conservative than many people like to believe, as well as a gear in the machine that perpetuates them ... Lindemann generally refrains from making value judgements or calls-to-action, beyond the action of viewing reality television through a critical and sociologically-imaginative eye ... The book is most compelling when it addresses the forces that draw audiences to reality television and simultaneously repulse them.
David Hoon Kim
PositiveCleveland Review of BooksLanguage provides a form of displacement, and Paris is a Party, Paris is a Ghost explores how unfamiliar tongues compel us to rewrite the worlds we’re situated within ... What Paris is a Party, Paris is a Ghost is trying to say, exactly, is not straightforward. It’s about loss and language but it’s also about, as Henrik put it, \'an exhilarating loneliness\' ... Kim is an expert writer at the sentence level—each paragraph is written intricately enough to stand alone.
