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the dreaming must be fun this time of the year...

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This has been on the reading list for months now. D:

There are literally a dozen books ahead of it, though.

So, a funny thing happened on trigun twitter

(amazon link where its 50% off as of May 8th: https://www.amazon.com/This-How-You-Lose-Time/dp/1534430997/)

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Reading has never been an issue for me (moving to a new task after I've gotten started reading, though.....) but these tips seem like they really help people.

Tips for Reading with ADHD

(or without ADHD, if they help regardless)

Physical print:

cover the page with a piece of paper and reveal lines/paragraphs as you read them

use a highlighter to emphasize important/interesting parts

take notes as you go to be physically engaged with the material

Digital media:

copy and paste the text into a doc/word processor

change the font size/style/colour to something more legible

make your own paragraphs and spacing

copy and paste one paragraph at a time to isolate them from the distraction of the rest of the text

install a browser extension like BeeLine Reader or Mercury Reader

zoom in on the page and scroll slowly so you’re revealing lines as you read them

physically cover the screen and reveal lines as you read them

if you do better with physical media, print it out or find a physical copy

Both:

read out loud

pace, move around, or use a fidget while reading

set a timer for 5 minutes and read in small chunks with breaks in between

divide the material into sections and read one section at a time with breaks in between

have another person, audio book, or text-to-speech program read it aloud as you follow along

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You have to pretend that you get an endgame. You have to carry on like you will; otherwise, you can't carry on at all.

-Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (p 143)

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"Part of the beauty of legends is trying to determine what is actual fact and what has been influenced by the human element of storytelling."

-Keith Moore, Bone White by Ronald Malfi (p 87)

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The "To Be Read List" (Fall 2022)

I don't think I can keep up with reviews of every book I read or even half of them, it seems, but here's some of my fall list:

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

Bone White by Donald Malfi

Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey

The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

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Two Quick Reviews: The Other Man and The Novelist

(Both cover photos from Goodreads)

The Other Man by Farhad J. Dadyburjor feels very much like a wish-fulfillment fantasy and a cliché all in one. I wouldn’t say that I liked it very much, but I didn’t dislike it. It’s about a closeted gay man in India who’s the relatively young scion of a major company and a workaholic. His parents arrange a marriage for him, and he thinks that if he comes out, he’ll disappoint everyone, and his world will implode so he agrees to do it. Immediately after, he meets a guy on Grindr who’s only going to be in India for a month (incidentally, his wedding is in a month) and falls in love, yadda yadda, etc. Except our main character doesn’t tell him that he’s engaged and doesn’t tell his family or his fiancée… So for me, this was incredibly frustrating to read because… Just open your dang mouth. And the ending was just too neat for my liking. I’ll give this one a 2/5 stars, but I enjoyed it well enough.

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The Novelist by Jordan Castro was an entirely unpleasant experience. Sure, it was well-written but I’m really reminded that some men who think they’re good writers are really just pretentious twats who are enabled by people who really should just be taking their keyboard privileges away. I finished this book, but it was incredibly difficult. I really worked hard on this one, guys, just because a lot of professional reviews said it really spoke to the contemporary experience of trying to write something but instead by constantly distracted by Twitter, Instagram, life, dogs, spouses… Instead I got a ramble that included a multiple-page-long section on poop. That makes this our first 0/5 stars.

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If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales & Cale Dietrich

(image from Amazon)

I must admit that I read this because I had fallen a bit out of the “reading traditionally published works” lane and into the “exclusively reading fanfics” hole in my summer vacation. I wanted a cutesy quick read to get me back into things and I chose this novel because it’s very, very tangentially related to a fanfic I’m writing (did I mention I’m a very prolific fanfiction start-to-write-but-never-finisher?)

This is a super cute and super sweet story about a teenage boy band with a few big secrets… The one this story is advertised as being about is that one of the members is gay but closeted to the public and he becomes romantically involved with his bisexual bandmate. Personally, I thought that was the least of their problems, honestly.

Despite this being incredibly cute and marketed to me as a YA read, I wouldn’t exactly recommend it to a young teenage audience. Like, you can read it if you want and there’s no smut or anything (it’s all very “fade to black”), but I just wouldn’t be comfortable recommending a book in which there’s so much of boys talking about their downstairs dingalings and what they’d like to do to said dingdongs, so much drinking (these kids are 18 and they’re getting wasted), so much talk of drugs (coke is present, but other stuff too), and stuff like that.

That being said, while I wouldn’t recommend this book specifically to a teenage audience, I would recommend it more generally.

It’s not about partying (which exists frequently but isn't omnipresent) or even about the two main characters’ relationship; it’s about the entertainment industry and the people, especially child stars, in it. I loved getting to know the members of the group and finding out their personalities, their problems, their desires. They talked a lot about work and with each other as friends. While the group was fictional, it felt almost real while reading this book and felt like one of those backstage peeks at the inner workings of an internationally famous pop group that people would kill to get. I, being a human who loves sticking their nose into other people’s business, enjoyed it thoroughly.

I don’t want to give this a 5 as it wasn’t some work of great literature, but I’ll give it a 4/5 stars (with the caveat that it’s a 5/5 in my heart and it came at exactly the perfect time for me.)

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"What neede the artick people love star-light, To whom the sunne shines both by day and night."

-Edward II by Christopher Marlowe

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The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

(image from Time.com)

What can I say about the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale? The Handmaid's Tale is such an amazing book and The Testaments didn't disappoint me. I liked it so much that I told my little brother to read The Handmaid’s Tale just so that he can also read The Testaments.

I saw someone criticize this book as veering into the “too-YA” territory with characters just telling you what happened. I think this is an incredibly unfair criticism; what do they think the word “testament” even means?! Besides, most of the main actors in the plot are young women/girls, meaning they’re pretty much the YA target audience. I think it’s a stylistic choice. It contrasts nicely with Aunt Lydia’s POV, which is of an older, educated woman.

In this, Aunt Lydia is in a similar boat to the handmaid of the previous book, who was also a college-educated woman suddenly a part of this new society. I really liked how their stories were in some ways parallel and in others, completely divergent. I feel

The handmaid does not appear physically in this book, which was a bit disappointing to me (but also not really), but her actions have consequences, her life is important, and her presence is felt by not only the reader but also by the characters. This feels satisfying, I think.

I guess it's satisfying because it's true to how the things we do have a tendency to affect others' lives and behaviors even if we aren't present. We're not the main characters of the story of life, but at the same time, even the very important people are just side characters in our stories. Weird how that works, huh?

Anyways, 5/5 stars.

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Before summer break, I posted two possible futures: one in which productive things happened and the other in which they didn't.

Anyways, they didn't, but I'm back.

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"There’s darkness in the world. And I think overcoming that darkness, that darkness externally and internally is a beautiful thing."

-Gerard Way (source)

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Most people's handwriting isn't fit for the eyes of a professional calligrapher, so what's wrong with drawing pictures a real artist would consider worthless?

-Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada (p26)

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Though I didn't particularly miss my village, sometimes I'd suddenly get homesick for the taste of certain foods.

-Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada (p 101)

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Summer break is starting and that means there are possibilities as to how it will go:

I finish typing up the two reviews for the books I've read (The Testaments and The Other Man), read and review a few more, and have a lovely and productive time.

I do absolutely nothing and laze around for a month before I return to lesson planning, waiting around for classes, and sometimes alleviating my boredom on Tumblr.

(In reality, I've read four books since the last thing I posted here, but I don't want to review Anne Rice books since I still bear a grudge against her fanfic stance when she was alive and I also don't want to review nonfiction, so that's where I've been.)

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Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada

(Image from Amazon)

If there was ever a book I wanted translator's notes for, it would be this one.

It's a book about language, about culture about friendship and unexpected connections... And it's so hard to explain.

This is a long review and I have many feelings, so I'm going to put this under a read more.

I guess I'd describe it as an optimistic diasporic novel set in a happy dystopia. The characters have a vague knowledge that things aren't quite right in their society, but that's not the focus of the story or of the characters. In that way, I guess it's like everyday life, isn't it? You know something's not right or not fair, but unless you're actively going out and protesting at this moment, your focus is on work or on studying or on cleaning your house or on scrolling through Tumblr or on any of the other thousands of things you do in life.

The main character here is Japanese, and she lost her country. But like literally, though. Japan's just somehow gone.

She has a job telling what she remembers of traditional Japanese stories to refugees, but she hasn't been able to find anyone who speaks Japanese. Instead, she has created her own pidgin which is transcribed in the English version as English with the Japanese sentence structure but is described as a mixture of Danish, Swedish, and other Scandinavian languages in a way that makes sense to her. (This is one of the reasons I want translator's notes so badly.)

She goes on TV and talks about being from a country that doesn't exist anymore and gets the attention of a linguist. Together they go across Europe to look for another Japanese-speaker, picking up new friends along the way.

One of these friends happens to be a trans woman originally from India. Her chapter is fine, but the second thing that makes me desperate for translation notes is that the other characters refer to her as "him" even when they comment that she presents as a woman (though she herself admits she isn't quite passing as one). Now the reason why I want the translator to explain this is because in Japanese, you really have to go out of your way to use gendered pronouns, at least to the extent that they were used in the book. Until I get my hands on the Japanese text (which may be never, TBH), I'm going to assume this was a choice on the part of the translator, which I find really gross.

Despite all of that, I did enjoy it as a different kind of diasporic novel. I'm used to the concept of the diaspora being honestly a bit bleak: you've left everything behind and now you're adrift in search of scraps of familiarity while trying so hard to assimilate. This has those elements, but in a somehow fun and cute way? Like the main character finds someone who self-studied Japanese and rather than be disappointed she didn't find another member of her culture, she basically thinks, "Oh, that's almost just as good!" She wants so hard to share her culture that it doesn't matter who she shares it with.

And yet, at the same time, there were so many parts of it that were just so real and #immigrantlife. They made me want to send this book to my parents with such ferocity... Like the parts where the writer describes how you don't always miss where you're from, but you miss certain little things. You feel a bit stuck in time when you leave your home country because all your points of reference are gone. And also how you have to be more careful in your new country than natives of that place, lest you get in trouble with the law "just for being an immigrant"...

(So obviously, I have some things that may be a bit of trauma to go through with a therapist.... But sue me! I went through this stuff in childhood and I'm doing it again in my 20s, so I'm allowed to have some issues, thanks.)

Anyways, 4/5 stars for me.

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education was much like religion in that the teacher is the priest, the minister, the pastor, and that with no faith, there is no meaning, there's nothing worth reading

-Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda