I read Blue is the warmest color today 
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Are you feeling blue now? :((
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I definitely did 
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I think this is a solid video discussing concerns with reading and its relationship with TikTok and social media in general.
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Great video! It made me remember that one reason I cancelled my Goodreads account was because I constantly felt that I wasn’t reading enough. I eventually burnt out completely and had to redefine my relationship with the hobby.
I also like the idea of seeing my games collection as fine wine, waiting for the right moment. However, I am definitely overdoing the consumption side of things, and then I remember that I’m buying a digital licence and wonder how much damage that is actually doing.
I have never installed TikTok, I only see some content on other social media, and I’m not going to change that. I’m glad I don’t have kids who I need to balance having access to social media with not letting social media take over their thoughts and souls and turn them into consumer machines. That’s a full-time job for parents, but denying them access completely is not the answer.
I want to read more because I miss the times back when I was reading more, but it’s currently hard for me to sit down with a book. I have tried audiobooks, but I get easily distracted. It’s a process, and that’s OK.
As I get older, I feel that the quantity of media I have consumed throughout my lifetime doesn’t matter; only the quality of that lifetime counts. Looking out of a window on a rainy day can be more meaningful — it’s a shame that we live in a world where only things that can be measured in monetary terms count.
Also the jab against Twilight. Chef’s kiss 
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I try to remind myself that nonproductive time can be more meaningful than making progress on a hobby. It’s a hard thing to balance but I think I’m getting better about it. I still feel bothered if I haven’t completed anything in awhile but I don’t beat myself over it as much anymore.
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Pretending to read to look cool.
Man, the world has changed.
I also wish people would stop calling things “takes.” To me, a “take” is to a well constructed argument what a TikTok video is to a documentary
I’ve stopped using platforms like StoryGraph and actually started writing my thoughts on books I’m reading in a notebook. I find it makes the connections much more impactful and I reflect on things more. Doing it with games as well, but I’m not ditching Grouvee. 
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I understand “take” as a synonym for opinion. “This is my take” feels equivalent to “this is my opinion.”
I love the act of writing but I’m too impatient. It is much more convenient for me to type my thoughts. I don’t mind StoryGraph so much because it doesn’t just focus on the amount of books you read like Goodreads but also considers the amount of pages. There’s also a bunch of other fun stats it considers so even if you only read 5 books, you’ll still have fun infographics to look at.
But I am also well aware at this point what is realistic for me to read in a year is so I don’t feel using an online book tracker is negatively impacting me. I will never read as much as other people and I’m okay with that.
I also think reading to look cool has been around since forever, so I don’t think the world has changed in that aspect. As the video stated, owning books is a social status symbol so it wouldn’t be far-fetched that to be seen with a book or reading would also convey the same thing.
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I’ve been reading Frans de Waal takes on primatology and the development of intelligence and empathy and I have nothing else to say that “wow the guy is good”. Highly recommend.
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I wanted to try to read books that are mentioned in the videos of the booktubers I watch so I created a reading challenge to coincide with this video. I am currently wrapping up the last book (finishing up Divergent still) and thought I’d share my own thoughts on them.
- Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer - Twilight Saga #4
I remember being a huge fan of the Twilight series and getting a first edition copy of this book, reading it in my empty bedroom closet mid-move. I have a pretty complicated relationship with this series and its impact on me growing up. I reread it years ago as an adult and while I was prepared for the cringe and unhealthy relationship dynamics, I wasn’t prepared how triggering it would be. My overall thought on this book is negative to say the least but it’s also a little nostalgic. Human emotions are complicated.
- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, and John Tiffany - Harry Potter #8
I’m not a fan of screenplays. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed reading one. On top of being written by a TERF, this one is absolute garbage. It reads like poorly written fanfiction. It’s messy, character personalities feel completely rewritten, and just bottom of the barrel story-telling. Glad I didn’t pay to see this on stage when it released.
- Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi - Shatter Me #1
The main character’s behavior changes rapidly in a short period of time, the author doesn’t convince empathy for the villain but the main character certainly falls for it, there is a love story that is delivered on a platter, and an ending that tries to be a grand reveal of the series to come but weakens the opening for this book. It could be worse.
- Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas - Throne of Glass #1
Maas prefers skipping interesting action scenes or simply starts a chapter in the midst of a sequence. Main character focuses way too much on how hot the characters she’s supposed to hate are. The first 9 pages almost broke me but I persisted into a very mid, unimaginative setting that is as closed off as the castle it takes place in. The author fails to make me feel there is a fantasy world beyond the bedroom the main character lives in for most of the story who is also supposed to be an amazing lethal assassin but is immediately nerfed for plot reasons that are plain stupid. I am told it gets better. I will not be finding out.
- Uprooted by Naomi Novik
I feel like most people wanted to read this book because of the cover. The worst part about its story is the romance. I think it was just put in there to add something beyond the immediate plot, which is fairly forgettable but not necessarily bad. The magic system is weak. I feel like this could’ve been a much more interesting story if it leaned into horror fantasy but as it is now, it is a very vanilla dark fantasy novel that I will forget shortly.
- Me Before You by Jojo Moyes - Me Before You #1
I remember loving this book when I first read it. I also remember a coworker spoiling it for me cause he had seen the movie. That workplace taught me to hide what I read. Anyway, I did read this whole series and while I enjoyed the first book the best, the other entries were okay and enjoyable. I imagine if I reread this book now, I may not like it as much as I would recognize its problematic approach to writing a disabled person’s story.
- Divergent by Veronica Roth - Divergent #1
I haven’t finished this book but I’m pretty far in so I’ll just share my current thoughts. There are a few places in the beginning I find a bit hokey or cringe but I am surprised to find how much I am liking it. I’m not sure if I’m enjoying it but maybe that’s just my hesitancy since this is a YA book with some angst and I find it hard to admit liking such a title. Where I’m at currently in the book, I’ve been able to relate to the main character a lot. There are moments where they don’t see the obvious, and usually I find that annoying, but Roth has written believable sheltered and isolated 16 year olds so they don’t come off as intentionally oblivious as much as inexperienced and socially vulnerable.
EDIT: The ending of Divergent felt rushed. There were plot threads that could’ve been expanded on and a lot of rapid fire death that were supposed to be impactful but simply weren’t. They felt too convenient and planned to keep the characters/plot moving. Just a lot of laziness here.
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Sharing some quotes from the first chapter of the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.
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And what’s more, our white dentist believed that Indians only felt half as much pain as white people did, so he only gave us half the Novocain.
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My head was so big that little Indian skulls orbited around it. Some of the kids called me Orbit. And other kids just called me Globe. The bullies would pick me up, spin me in circles, put their finger down on my skull, and say, “I want to go there.”
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I draw because words are too unpredictable. I draw because words are too limited. If you speak and write in English, or Spanish, or Chinese, or any other language, then only a certain percentage of human beings will get your meaning. But when you draw a picture, everybody can understand it. If I draw a cartoon of a flower, then every man, woman, and child in the world can look at it and say, “That’s a flower.” So I draw because I want to talk to the world. And I want the world to pay attention to me. I feel important with a pen in my hand. I feel like I might grow up to be somebody important. An artist. Maybe a famous artist. Maybe a rich artist. That’s the only way I can become rich and famous. Just take a look at the world. Almost all of the rich and famous brown people are artists. They re singers and actors and writers and dancers and directors and poets. So I draw because I feel like it might be my only real chance to escape the reservation. I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.
Some more from the second chapter:
- Do you know the worst things about being poor? Oh, maybe you’ve done the math in your head and you figure: Poverty = empty refrigerator + empty stomach. And sure, sometimes, my family misses a meal, and sleep is the only thing we have for dinner, but I know that, sooner or later, my parents will come bursting through the door with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Original Recipe. And hey, in a weird way, being hungry makes food taste better. There is nothing better than a chicken leg when you haven’t eaten for (approximately) eighteen-and-a-half hours. And believe me, a good piece of chicken can make anybody believe in the existence of God. So hunger is not the worst thing about being poor.
- She was a Spokane Indian and a bad liar, which didn’t make any sense. We Indians really should be better liars, considering how often we’ve been lied to.
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*There was nothing I could do to save Oscar. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. So I lay down on the floor beside him and patted his head and whispered his name for hours.
- It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor.
- A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.
A couple from the third chapter:
- “It’s not like anybody’s going to notice if you go away so you might as well gut it out.”
- “Dad said I wasn’t listening so he got all drunk and tried to make my ear a little bigger.”
I finished Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky and is one of the most inventive, interesting and intelligent sci-fi stories I’ve experienced.
I alse read The Man with the Golden Gun. It was racist and bad. I mean, it’s bad because is racist but is also bad on its own as an novel and a story. Somehow, is still kinda better than the awful movie.
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I’ve been reading Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Mother and Daughter in the Gilded Age, which is a (nonfiction) biography of both women.
For those who are unfamiliar, Consuelo Vanderbilt was perhaps the most famous of America’s “Dollar Princesses:” the daughters of American robber-barons who were sought as brides by European nobility who had titles and estates, but little cash with which to maintain them, thanks to a long agricultural recession that had greatly reduced their income (which was derived mainly from rents paid by the common folk living on their estates). These were overtly arranged marriages, at a time when most Americans and Europeans were marrying for love, where the bride gained a title and the social status it conferred, and the groom reaped a dowry to save his estate from falling into ruin.
One of the questions the biographer carefully dances around, offering up evidence both for and against while maintaining authorial neutrality, is whether this was a good deal for Consuelo. Her marriage to the Duke of Marlborough was an unhappy one, yet after their divorce she became an influential philanthropist and outspoken suffragist.
Her mother, Alva, was often vilified in the gossip papers of the day as a crass, attention-seeking dellitante, yet she had always maintained that her motive for marrying Consuelo off was her belief that as a titled woman in Europe, Consuelo would be able to influence society and use her intellect to a vastly greater degree than was socially permissible for wives in rich American society of the time. She was seemingly proven right by this, although it wasn’t until after her divorce that Consuelo fully stepped into such a role. Alva herself also went on to become an influential leader in the American suffrage movement.
Even if we suppose Alva had been 100% noble in her intentions and that she was proven right in the end, did that perversely feminist goal justify forcing her daughter into an unwanted marriage? The author’s treatment provides plenty of evidence to argue in either direction, and leaves it to the reader to decide what judgment history ought to pass on Alva.
It’s always a little hard to evaluate a biography, as the author both does and does not write the story. As Josh Groban sang, life is a gradual series of revelations that occur over a period of time. It’s not some carefully crafted story, it’s a mess, and we’re all gonna die. The task of a biographer is to make some narrative sense out of that mess without distorting the truth.
Thus far (I’m only about 2/3 of the way through) I think the author has done that quite well. She has meticulously researched these women and at times even shows instances where some of what people today commonly believe to be true about them isn’t actually supported by the evidence. At times, she presents material that casts the women in unflattering light, and at other times, she casts doubt on the veracity of contemporary criticisms leveled at either woman. She also injects a subtle, cheeky humor now and then, as in this passage about the Duke and Duchess’s afternoon drives about town during their honeymoon at one of the Vanderbilts’ vacation estates, Idle Hour:
The coaching drives rather annoyed the residents of nearby Sayville and caused frustration for the Islip Cornet Band which was quite determined to give the Duke and Duchess a surprise concert. The original intention had been to turn up at Idle Hour uninvited until a member of the band panicked and suggested they should seek permission; after which the plan was abandoned. One afternoon, however, the Duke and Duchess seemed about to make an unexpected drive through Islip and the players scrambled to produce a tune - but the Duke, possibly suspecting that he was about to be ambushed by a cornet band, turned the coach round and headed back for Idle Hour before it could organise itself.
As I haven’t finished the book yet, I’m not sure how to finish this post. I guess like this!
I think this book sounds and looks really neat and now I want it pretty badly. Especially since this artist seems to like it.
$10 for a book of this size is such a steal. I still need to read it.
Interesting take on why we don’t like AI art by very famous author.
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So I haven’t watched this video yet (I will), but I had a couple people ask me if I had heard about Sanderson’s deal with Apple. Then we were making jokes about how fast and prolific this man is. I think AI actually dislikes Sanderson because he’s going to take their jobs.
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