thespeedyreader

[thespeedyreader]

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony

- Jill Thomas Doyle

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[thespeedyreader]

walter whites garden

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[thespeedyreader]

April 24th, 2023

Had a wonderful weekend, took some time off. I hope I'll find time to write by the end of this week, my days are so packed...

[thespeedyreader]

please understand

[thespeedyreader]

Art Details Series: Women & Books  | Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, Victor Gabriel Gilbert, Lilla Cabot Perry, Louis Emile Adan, Thomas Benjamin Kennington, Seymour Joseph Guy, Delphin Enjolras, Ethel Porter Bailey |

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[thespeedyreader]

person who is chronically outside

[thespeedyreader]

winter book recommendations ❄️

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa

Death with Interruptions by José Saramago

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig 

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

The Luzhin Defense by Vladimir Nabokov

The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida by Clarissa Goenawan

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Breaking Stalin’s Nose by Eugene Yelchin

buy me a coffee

[thespeedyreader]

please be the hot new trend for next year. Please

[thespeedyreader]

winter pics that cheer me up

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all the time

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december……

[thespeedyreader]

Increased awareness of the importance of mental health is no bad thing, especially in the aftermath of a punishing pandemic. But in many cases, the prevalence of what The New Yorker’s Katy Waldman has termed “Instagram therapy” has exacerbated a broader cultural trend toward solipsism, masquerading as “self-care.” The idea of self-care, in turn, has been largely divorced from its links to activism and is now often used to frame individual pleasurable actions, like taking a bubble bath or canceling plans, as morally worthy, even necessary. The exhortation to take care of ourselves, to protect our mental well-being at any cost, has become a mantra for a newly dominant ideology.

It’s not just that this Instagram therapy gives its adherents a convenient excuse to bail on dinner parties or silence our phones when friends text us in tears. Rather, it’s that according to this newly prevalent gospel of self-actualization, the pursuit of private happiness has increasingly become culturally celebrated as the ultimate goal. The “authentic” self — to use another common buzzword — is characterized by personal desires and individual longings. Conversely, obligations, including obligations to imperfect and often downright difficult people, are often framed as mere unpleasant circumstance, inimical to the solitary pursuit of our best life. Feelings have become the authoritative guide to what we ought to do, at the expense of our sense of communal obligations.

[…]

Yet it is precisely that rejection of our communal lives that makes therapy culture — at least the version of it on social media and in wellness advertisements — such an imperfect substitute. The idea that we are “authentic” only insofar as we cut ourselves off from one another, that the truest or most fundamental parts of our humanity can be found in our desires and not our obligations, risks cutting us off from one of the most important truths about being human: We are social animals. And while the call to cut off the “toxic” or to pursue the mantra of “live your best life,” or “you are enough” may well serve some of us in individual cases, the normalization of narratives of personal liberation threaten to further weaken our already frayed social bonds. “We are a relational species,” Dr. Cohen noted, adding that we need connection “to really thrive and survive.”

[thespeedyreader]

poetry recommendations for december

The Untrustworthy Speaker by Louise Glück

Ashes and Blossoms by Faiz Ahmad Faiz

Raw With Love by Charles Bukowski

Dear [ ] by Nick Lantz

The Language of the Birds by Richard Siken

A Prayer by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Snowdrops by Louise Glück

The Road Away by Kim Sowol

From June to December: Summer Villanelle by Wendy Cope

“After My Brother’s Death, I Reflect on the Iliad,” by Elisa Gonzalez

Letter to a Lost Friend by Barbara Hamby

buy me a coffee

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