the problem with reading published books is that i don't know of a socially acceptable equivalent to yelling into an ao3 comment 'I STAYED UP TILL 4AM READING THIS AND I MEAN IT AS A COMPLIMENT IT WAS GREAT AAAAAHHHHHHH' you know? but for all of you, please take that as my rec for this book.

endpapers is about a bisexual, genderqueer bookbinder and is written by a bisexual, nonbinary author whose day job is working in publishing, so you can see why perhaps i don't feel equipped to have an objective review of it, bc it is just... so much my thing that even just writing that makes me feel like maybe i should restrict access to this post. i loved it. i don't read Literary Fiction or generally books set in a modern setting with no fantastical elements very often, and i'm pretty sure i found this when i went on a rabbit hole of 'nobinary books' recently (maybe i'll make another post about what else i've read/been reading from that rabbit hole? this was the only fiction book i saved from those searches tho) and probably wouldn't have even considered it if it hadn't been about a bookbinder. idk ,i just... i really liked it! the characters are messy but i cared about them, and i found it less frustrating than other 'main character is an artist but they're blocked and angsty about making art' stories i've encountered before, and the setting (shortly post-9/11 new york city) was really interesting to me, especially now that i know the author started seriously working on it in novemeber 2016.

i think there's something really nice for me in reading a book as specific and extremely focused on one character's experience in one particular limited time and place as this one is. maybe also it's a sign that this book just did that well, idk. but i didn't find myself thinking 'okay but what about other people? what about different experiences? what about other characters in this story?' in the way that sometimes i do find myself thinking that in other stories.

i read two books last weekend and then put off recording reactions until now lol. the two books are The World We Make, by N. K. Jemisin, and Killers of a Certain Age, by Deanna Raybourn.

vague timestamps:
2:06 - world we make
14:29 - killers of a certain age
32:12 - me talking about my reading challenge/habits over the past few years

GUESS WHAT I READ ANOTHER BOOK ALREADY!!!

second book i read this year is Babel, by R. F. Kuang. i recorded another response and i think i had some interesting things to say, but if you want my ~review~, it's that i stayed up WAY too late last night reading because i couldn't put it down. i would love to know if any of you have read it and have thoughts, because i have seen some criticism that i think is fair, even if i didn't feel the same way!

something i didn't get to in my audio response is that i really fucking respect that this book picks a viewpoint and commits to it. i don't necessarily agree with some of the characters' viewpoints that i think the book suggests as correct, and i found myself like 'okay but what about people who view this differently' but like... this book doesn't need to do that! it can say, no this is about the necessity of violence, and it's FINE that it doesn't feel the need to also portray a complicated moral quadary of other characters with equally valid and different and successful approaches.

idk this just feels like the right place for me to yeet all these spoilery nona thoughts

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this is gonna be general thoughts about the book/reading experience and also some specific spoilers.

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i'm trying to read more, and i don't like writing reviews on goodreads but maybe i'll try writing review-ish things on here? idk what i'm doing i just like talking and it's more gratifying to write it down where someone might (but probably won't) see it than to just go through it in my head where definitely no one can hear it

i've, as mentioned, been on a huge DC Comics kick lately, and it's even stretched to reading comic books! wild! i've never been a comic book reader, most of what i've read has been stand-alone graphic novels or limited series. but this recent DC kick was set off by Young Justice, and then fueled by the old teen titans cartoon, so i figured, hey, why not read some of the source comics? especially when i realized i could check them out from the library—

insert shameless plug here: if you have a library card, you most likely have access to Overdrive/Libby and also Hoopla! Libby (which is overdrive's new app, overdrive being the company and the name of the old app) is an app that lets you check out ebooks and e-audio books. Hoopla also lets you check out ebooks and e-audio books, although they have a much smaller selection, but they also have some tv shows and movies, and more importantly here, more comics! it's all free, go read some shit, use someone else's library card login if you need to like any other subscription service (except this one is free. i want to emphasize the free part).

—and so i did! here are my (not at all organized or coherent) thoughts about The New Teen Titans, volume 1 (the first 8 issues of the original comic run, written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by George Perez, from 1980)

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 So, one of the reasons I made a DW was to post loooooong things that didn't really work well on tumblr (specifically bc you can't scroll past on mobile).

I was on a plane recently, and decided to keep plugging away at my (3rd? 4th?) full reread of the Superstition hockey series. It meant I couldn't send all my comments as I went, like I have been doing, so I decided to put them on here in case anyone else wanted to read them. This starts at the beginning of Chapter 2 and goes through the end of Breakaway.

(sorry in advance for how unreadable some of them are)

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