Finally finished reading both chapters! The audiobook went a lot easier for these; dunno why. Maybe I just listened to them in a better frame of mind. I feel like I was able to understand most of what happened just from listening, though as always I missed a lot of details that I only caught when reading.
I was also a fellow picky eater, haha, so I both empathize with Alex and also feel less forgiving of his eating habits because of it… What ended up snapping me out of it was living in the dorms in undergrad and having to eat cafeteria food, which was admittedly a gentler experience than what he’s going through… I believe in him, though!
